[chris (OP)]

The 40th anniversary of the first manned-Moon-landings has (predictably) spawned a resurgence in "the moon landings were an elaborate hoax" claims.

Still, a picture paints a thousand words....

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/main/index.html

Chris

[turnipsock]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wym04J_3Ls0

Nasa could have saved some money and just watched Mythbusters.

Ir would be cheaper to send people to the moon than go to all the bother of faking it...they would have to pay people to hush up the whole thing so it would cost a fortune.

[exton]

It paints words that fall on deaf ears; to the conspiracy theorist, a photo like that is just a doctored hoax meant to cover up the original conspiracy.

I don't entirely understand conspiracy theorists. I think a lot of different factors go into making someone think that way.

[Ethos]

People just like mysteries and when none are available, the nut cases just invent one.

[exton]

Yeah, but i don't think that's an adequate insight into their mindset. They don't merely invent things; people who are consciously fabricating something rarely come to believe it themselves, and even then, they only do so with a great amount of effort.

I think there's more to it than that.

[lyner]

It's kept alive for commercial reasons. There's lots of money in a good conspiracy.

[LeeE]

I actually heard a 'professor' on Rad4 who was in denial about it (I didn't catch what he was a professor of though) and I was dismayed that the Beeb gave airtime to Jeanette Winterson's uninformed musings on the subject.  In all the cases I've heard of Moon landing denial it comes down to ignorance.  It's especially annoying to hear people claim that the photographs taken on the moon were 'too good' - it's as though people think that unless you've got an auto-exposure camera it's impossible to take photographs.  They seem to think that the light levels on the moon were somehow impossible to predict, whereas the opposite is actually the case, and they simply don't seem to understand that hand held light meters exist or that bracketing exposures is common practice, and you'll only see the shots that worked, not all the ones where the exposure was out.  They also seem completely unaware of depth of field with regard to focusing issues.

It's these sorts of people who have made me a misanthropist.

[Don_1]

It's kept alive for commercial reasons. There's lots of money in a good conspiracy.

Yeah..... just take a look at the banks for confirmation of that! I'm going to start a conspiracy that banks look after their customers best interest. Nah.... Nobody in their right mind would buy that!

[lyner]

Good Photos:
The easiest exposures to estimate that you could imagine.
 Illuminant: totally predictable.
Weather conditions: totally predictable.
Time of 'day': constant throughout.

Use a wide angle, excellent quality, lens with slow, fine grain film ( excellent lighting conditions).
Crop the pictures to compose the print.
Armstrong knew the subjects he was required to record.
Tell him to avoid shooting at the Sun.
Recipe for excellent shots.

Astronauts were selected for being 'good at things'. Oh he could land the damned thing then he could produce a good photo of it.

A box. Brownie would have done quite well, in fact.

[AllenG]

When Buzz Aldrin was confronted by a moon-shot-was-faked-conspiracy-theorist who was calling him a coward and a lier, General Aldrin responded with a splendid right hook smack in the loud mouth's maw.

And it's on YouTube

I for one salute you, Buzz.

[Stefanb]

Because obviously conspiracy theorists are smarter than the Russians were. How would the Russians, with all their advanced technology in the Cold War era, know the difference between a hoax and the real deal? Duh...

And that punch was, to say the least, amazing!   []

[SPECTRUM]

Have the conspiracy people not got a point regarding the missing stars.

newbielink:http://www.thespoof.com/ [nonactive] rest removed - self aggrandizing spam)

[lyner]

Not at all.
Film has a certain contrast range it can cope with (i.e. brightest to darkest object recordable). If you try to photograph the stars from Earth, you need a wide aperture and several seconds (even) of exposure. That would have totally overexposed the pictures of the expedition. For a proper exposure of the photos they wanted, the stars would have been so under exposed as to not register on the film at all.

[neilep]

When Buzz Aldrin was confronted by a moon-shot-was-faked-conspiracy-theorist who was calling him a coward and a lier, General Aldrin responded with a splendid right hook smack in the loud mouth's maw.

And it's on YouTube

I for one salute you, Buzz.

Excellent punch !..I hope Buzz followed through with a head butt then a kick to the groin !!




I personally think that the whole Moon is a conspiracy theory .

I think NASA went to somewhat little trouble to time travel back 4 billion years or so to set in orbit a big back lit screen purely for the reason that they could create the illusion that we have a satellite body and that we have set foot on it. I don't even think the moon is there !...Yes..yes..I am sure I am right !

[LeeE]

Good Photos:
The easiest exposures to estimate that you could imagine.
 Illuminant: totally predictable.
Weather conditions: totally predictable.
Time of 'day': constant throughout.

Use a wide angle, excellent quality, lens with slow, fine grain film ( excellent lighting conditions).
Crop the pictures to compose the print.
Armstrong knew the subjects he was required to record.
Tell him to avoid shooting at the Sun.
Recipe for excellent shots.

Astronauts were selected for being 'good at things'. Oh he could land the damned thing then he could produce a good photo of it.

A box. Brownie would have done quite well, in fact.

Exactly right SC.

[lyner]

Pro photographers often expose their pictures based on 'incident light' readings. TOTALLY predictable, on the Moon. Pre-set the camera before your trip!

[LeeE]

Yup.

[lightarrow]

This effect has been proved?:

and this one too?:

[FlashValor]

I think the rationale is more that they did go to the moon but that the photos and videos they presented were fake - at least part of them. By none other than Stanley Kubrick. Check this out:
newbielink:http://jayweidner.com/AlchemicalKubrickIIb.html [nonactive]
Reminds me of the movie "Capricorn One" ( newbielink:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capricorn_One [nonactive]). Usually there's always a grain of truth in these things.

[lyner]

What an amazing 'halfway house' idea.
So they managed to get the whole expedition there and back but they 'chose' to fake the records?
Whatever for? Whatever the quality of real live pictures we would have lapped them up. As it happened, it was easy to get good pictures there. Why should that be suspect? The lighting was good enough and so were the cameras. Shooting the event was technically easy. I seem to remember that they did manage to cook a TV camera by pointing it at the Sun, on one occasion. Would they have bothered to simulate that accident?

Capricorn One was a movie. It is full of Movie Mistakes - which you'd expect.
Anyone can photoshop lines on a landscape picture. Most landscapes have layers to them - even seascapes do.  That other link proves nothing but that film makers can do a fairly decent job, sometimes. Mostly they don't - or at least, didn't, before computers came along.

If you really want to find a conspiracy, at least find an interesting one and one which is relevant to us. It's a pity the conspiracy theorists weren't more wide awake about the Banks!