Where to start? :lol:
LOL First up, I apologise for missing UC's "tosser" comment. I was doing a lot while trying to moderate the topic yesterday and missed it. Personally, I think if somebody has to resort to name calling, then I lose respect for the person making the argument. It belittles the facts kind of thing. That works on both sides...
Anyway, no more name calling, let's just keep this to "the facts" now please?
Secondly, I've said it time and again, this isn't personal. It's a forum board and it's people's opinions. Somebody who finds your ideas credulous is going to try and work out why you think like that. That doesn't mean that they think that about you completely. I know both you and Karen and what's written in here doesn't change my opinion of the fact you're both lovely people. It doesn't make me think any less of you, or any more of you - it's just simply a heated discussion over a wildly differing of opinions. Please don't take it personally. I don't think you are though Phil? Your posts have been very straight, sincere and have avoided becoming irate. That's the best approach to take.
As for support? I'm trying to moderate. That's my job here and I'm trying to keep things on an even keel. I obviously have a side in the debate, but not in the "personal" arguments. On that, I'm trying to keep central and mediate. I've apologised above for missing direct personal insults, and wont again.
I think, like Martyn, this is a really interesting topic. Like Martyn, I want to know why people believe this. To me, it's like somebody trying to convince me 2+2 = 7. I know there are theories as to why, but it really is pulling apart what I consider to be a fundamental truth. That doesn't mean I can't be swayed, but it is that kind of thing.
So I'd like to see a kind of proof, answer, proof answer kind of discussion to try and nail this - no more attacking personal beliefs?
Philthy said:
The late Jack White's reputation was slurred but you didnt dismiss the actual photos. Look at them. There are loads of questions to be asked about these photos. de bunk them. All of them. That is evidence.
http://www.braeunig.us/space/hoax-jw.htm
There are literally dozens of pages on the internet explaining all of Jack White's theories away. Mythbusters also did an entire show proving them wrong.
These pages are written by experts in science and photography. Dozens of them, a lot with experiments you can do at home which prove that it happened just as it did in the real photos.
Philthy said:
I also posted a film " A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon" which no one has commented on and yet it contains lots of information and Nasa footage which adds weight to my view.
I think for most people (especially me), we don't have time or inclination to watch things. If there's a site which summarises the films, I'll take my time and read it. I just don't tend to watch documentaries like this, I prefer cold hard facts written down which I can then re-read and question as I go along.
I've certainly watched several hours of "Moon Hoax" documentaries though over the years. I just can't remember many in detail, but I know that none of them really convinced me.
A set of "proofs" from the documentaries presented is much better than asking people to sit through hours of footage.
Philthy said:
Martyns mirrors on the moon is interesting but as loefet pointed out they could have been put there by a non manned mission.
Bart Sibrel doesn't even believe the Space Shuttles go to space, so the question is, has anything ever been to the moon. Where do you pick up on some theories and reject others? If you think a guy is right on 20 points, but wrong on 20 - shouldn't it leave doubt about all his theories?
Philthy said:
Furies comment - First up, there are several people who walked on the surface of the moon. Ask them, they'll tell you they did it. It would stand up in a court of law.
Well Furie here is a film for you to watch. Only three of the astronaughts interviewed would swear on a bible that they had been on the moon and one of them that did, stated that he didnt believe anyway! So I dont think they are going to stand up in court.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZYpfKf3tCc[/youtube]
That was honestly, painful to watch.
Bart Sibrel set up "fake kids TV interviews" with the astronauts. He pretended that they were going to be filming a show for kids where they interviewed people who had walked on the moon. Bart lured the astronauts onto camera with him, then barraged the astronauts with questions about if the moon landings were real or not. He then confronts them, asking them to swear they did it. Of course, you only see the "aggressive cut". You don't see the rest of it.
They are all, without fail, utterly offended by this. They have been duped by this guy so he can come along and accuse them of not doing something. These guys risked their lives for the "American Dream", and they are offended by anybody questioning that. They were all goaded.
My Grandad used to run the Normandy Veterans Association in the UK. If anyone had gone up to them and said "I don't believe you were on a Normandy Beach, no British soldier landed there, swear to me you were there" they'd get a punch from any of those members. And rightly so. If you do something heroic and amazing, then it's just plain rude to be questioned like that and to try and force you into something. They reacted correctly, they reacted like they we being treated shamefully - which they were.
Philthy said:
Almost 40 years ago, with *combined CSM and LM guidance computer memory totaling only 10.3% [152kb] of a common 1.4MB [1474.56kb] floppy disk, NASA claims to have traveled 60,000% as far as any other manned spacecraft has gone before or since. Basically a household calculator (or discount watch) took 27 men [Apollo 8 to 17] to the moon and back,
I'll split this
First up, the onboard computer was indeed that small. However, all the computer control was done using mainframes back at Houston. These computers were much more powerful. So yes, the command module computer was rubbish, but it was a simple device designed to do simple task. The calculations were carried out back at base.
I also used to have a Spectrum 48k computer that could do these calculations with 5% of the memory of a floppy disk...
It's also worth noting that NASA recently okayed an upgrade to their shuttle flight systems. Which modern day computer processor did they choose? AMD Athlon? Pentium Dual Core?
Actually, a 1990 first release Pentium chip. They don't need anything else.
Philthy said:
with the help of slide rules - accounting for fuel consumption, angle of approach, lunar landing, rate of descent, and so on.
I have a quote for you here:
Bruno Stanek said:
In 1969/70, when I was an instructor at the Swiss Institute of Technology (pre-pre-PC era...), I solved the boundary value three body problem for my own personal enjoyment on our CDC 1604: fitting time of departure and arrival, orbital height and inclination of the respective lunar/earth parking orbits and approximate nodes (actually these were precisely determined mathematically because I did not get them from the usual NASA publications). Having x,y,z in five minute intervals, I transformed those to equatorial as well as topocentric astronomical coordinates and supplied the data to well equipped amateur astronomers. I remember mentioning my "project" during one of my live Apollo broadcasts on Swiss National TV and two promising responses reached me. One was a Mr. Seiler in neighboring Bavaria/Germany near Munich who took astro photographs through a 0.5-meter-telescope. He was successful: his long exposure not only showed the LM-CSM-combination at the right location - even the velocity vector proved itself by the right direction of the trace of the moving spacecraft on his film!
He was one of thousands of
independentpeople around the world who hand calculated the mission data - for fun.
It may be rocket science, but that's why the world has rocket scientists
Philthy said:
Yet at a distance of under 300 miles from Earth, we have lost the lives of 14 Shuttle astronauts who never left Earth orbit.
Out of over 100 shuttle missions, there have been two failures. That's less than a 2% failure rate.
Out of 17 Apollo missions, there were two failures. The Apollo missions were always known to be risky, which was one big factor in cancelling the project. That's around a 10% failure rate and both Apollo 11 and Apollo 13 were very lucky to return.
Philthy said:
In 9 trips there were no incidents involving small meteors, even though the hull of the craft dubbed the LM had a hull so thin in places that a screwdriver wall fall through the floor if dropped.
It's not like the Lunar Module travelled hundreds of thousands of miles through space like this. It was protected inside the Apollo rocket until it was deployed to drop to the moon. This is the very last stage of the landing process. The moon doesn't collect debris in the same way the earth does. There's no layer of "crap" around it waiting to punch a hole through a craft coming down. It didn't happen, because the lunar module was in clean space, and only for a relatively short journey.
Even today, the chances of a space craft hitting "debris" around Earth is slim.
Philthy said:
Yes, Space is a big place - but there were no injuries or damage except Apollo 13's apparent self-inflicted wound? Van Allen made it clear in his 1958-59 report that travelers to the moon would need go around the belts, approaching the moon by first departing through the space directly above the the north or south poles of the Earth. These limitations alone, make the trip to the moon a theory, and not a fact.
That's odd...
Dr James Van Allen said:
The claim that radiation exposure during the Apollo missions would have been fatal to the astronauts is only one example of such nonsense
And they did go through the Van Allen belt... They measured the radiation in the Van Allen belt and chose the weakest points.
Needless to say this is a very simplistic statement. Yes, there is deadly radiation in the Van Allen belts, but the nature of that radiation was known to the Apollo engineers and they were able to make suitable preparations. The principle danger of the Van Allen belts is high-energy protons, which are not that difficult to shield against. And the Apollo navigators plotted a course through the thinnest parts of the belts and arranged for the spacecraft to pass through them quickly, limiting the exposure.
The Van Allen belts span only about forty degrees of earth's latitude -- twenty degrees above and below the magnetic equator. The diagrams of Apollo's translunar trajectory printed in various press releases are not entirely accurate. They tend to show only a two-dimensional version of the actual trajectory. The actual trajectory was three-dimensional. The highly technical reports of Apollo, accessible to but not generally understood by the public, give the three-dimensional details of the translunar trajectory.
Each mission flew a slightly different trajectory in order to access its landing site, but the orbital inclination of the translunar coast trajectory was always in the neighborhood of 30°. Stated another way, the geometric plane containing the translunar trajectory was inclined to the earth's equator by about 30°. A spacecraft following that trajectory would bypass all but the edges of the Van Allen belts.
This is not to dispute that passage through the Van Allen belts would be dangerous. But NASA conducted a series of experiments designed to investigate the nature of the Van Allen belts, culminating in the repeated traversal of the Southern Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly (an intense, low-hanging patch of Van Allen belt) by the Gemini 10 astronauts.
There are lots of pages with lots of very hardcore details about the radiation levels, etc. But I can't make head nor tail of it. :lol:
Philthy said:
Furie wrote - You're calling several presidents, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and a lot of other people complete and utter liars of the highest order.
Yes I am. Do you trust your goverment and politicians?
I'll split this one as well.
It's a difficult question to answer. Essentially, no. I's be naive to think that there aren't things going on in the back ground we don't know about. However, we elect these people. I know a lad who is an MP now. He was sincere and really wanted to actually help with his politics. Yes, he may now be "corrupted", but that wasn't why he entered politics. I think it's unfair to suggest that every single member of the government is a liar and a cheat. Often, you find they don't lie anyway, they just avoid the truth.
Philthy said:
The astronaughts are working for Nasa and Nasa is a goverment agency just like the CIA etc. Do you think they never lie to you and everything that they are doing is upfront and you are informed of it?
No, and I don't expect them to either. However, to consider that absolutely everything they do is a complete fabrication is wrong headed. Does the shuttle make regular trips? Does the international space station exist? Is the Hubble Telescope in space? All true, NASA hasn't covered those up. Yet not one of those things was as highly covered by media, press agencies and the rest of the world as the moon landings.
Stephen Fry said:
The US Government could even cover up where CLinton's dick had been - how on Earth could they cover up the most televised and covered even in history?
Just because we don't know it all doesn't mean everything is immediately a lie.
Philthy said:
Furie wrote - That's a pretty harsh judgement on those people. If the basis of your argument is that these people are liars and cheats, then you have to get your own side questioned in a similar way.
Why do I? These people are elected into office or working for the goverment paid for by the tax payer. What has that got to do with me?
The fact one of them may live around the corner from you? Our local MP lives less than a mile away. WE vote for them. WE vote them out. This is what it has to do with you. These aren't nameless people working for covert secret services nobody knows about. These are high profile figures whose lives are often under a media microscope.
The point is though, you are calling "American heroes" liars. If you're going to do that, then you need to have a massive amount of evidence and be 100% clean yourself. Sibrel, White and Kaysing are a long way from open, honest and decent people.
That's pulling away from facts into conjecture and personal opinion though - so I think it's a route best left unfollowed.
Phew. Hopefully there's some stuff there to chew over anyway. What I'm really interested in though are the big questions. You can chew the cud over photo evidence, hull thickness, etc, but for the hoax to work, you need to be able to answer the big questions raised.
1. Why the hoax at all? NASA had the money, the craft and the technology.
2. Why do the Russians (with spies in US government and NASA) believe it happened? They have the most to gain from refuting it.
3. How over 40 years has the conspiracy been kept quiet, considering it involves hundreds of thousands of people?
If those higher questions can't be answered, then things like "stars or not", "tinpot calculator computers" and "the letter C on a rock" don't mean anything.
