Apollo 11 40th anniversary edition of MoonLander3D

Just as a quick note, your nice font for the green titles is coming up as Times New Roman (or other generic serif font).

Yep thats got it – lol @ filesize – hopefully it will still fit in the lunar module’s RAM!

@John grrr don’t get me started! I expect you’re just doing it to wind me up (mission accomplished 😉 ), but in case you’re not, make sure you fully understand thermal dynamics in a vacuum before throwing these accusations around. 🙂

Good point… You won’t be able to recreate those conditions in your oven at home. I think you’ll find that there are no thermal dynamics in a vacuum, just pure badass radiated heat from the sun, with the opposite in the shadows.

I’m really keen to see 3d-extrapolated models from photos of the landings. They will settle *all* arguments forever, and we’re very close to having the technology.

Till then, here’s a quote from the president at the time of the apollo 11 mission:

“Never say no when a client asks for something, even if it is the moon. You can always try, and anyhow there is plenty of time afterwards to explain that it was not possible.” – Richard Nixon.

Seb, The problem with debunking proof of a negative is that it doesn’t prove a positive, although it’s pretty easy to convince most people that they are one and the same:

“they were all put to bed and proved incorrect – i.e. the moon landings were real!” – for example.

Take the divergent shadows in the photos – sure, perspective will cause that to happen anyway, but that doesn’t prove that the photos were taken on the moon, merely that the proof that they were faked doesn’t hold up.

Like I said – 3d extrapolation. Then we’ll find out if the divergent shadows fit the perspective distortion. There will be no argument then.

Seb, I’ve yet to be convinced by the photos. I honestly have no idea about the landings.

Scientifically, 40 years is an embarrasingly long time not to be able to repeat an experiment.

Seb, looks like you are trying real hard not too get drawn in… 😉

@John, I think it would be harder to fake a landing than to actually do it. There are way too many people involved for no one to talk and reveal the “truth”.

As for not proving the positive. NASA is innocent until proven guilty. You are trying to prove them guilty of lying and you are being shot down left and right by Seb… therefore they stay innocent.

@John,
How would the 3D Models prove the photos are real and not just “accurate” fakes?

also.. there were many photo’s taken. fake or real, consistent results would be statistically irrefutable.

@Chris Johnston (ignoring the hoax theorists with as much will power as I can muster) That’s a great idea, was def something I was thinking about. I’ll add it to the list. There will definitely have to be an update soon I think!

Seb, the new photos are nowhere near as convincing as the old ones, so I don’t think there’s any point using them as evidence. Some real close-ups showing detailed corellation(sp?) with the old photos would probably sway my opinion though.

As for the van allen radiation, the only people who can really tell us how dangerous it is are NASA. That’s a circular argument waiting to happen…

As for ‘we can indeed know that they went to the moon’ that sounds more like a strong belief than knowledge, why dress it up?

@John – You’re a Flash guy?! I thought you were just some random douche bag who came here to deny facts! Dude you should know better. Seriously, wtf?

“As for the van allen radiation, the only people who can really tell us how dangerous it is are NASA. That’s a circular argument waiting to happen…”

Good point. If a corporation, say, is accused of tampering with scientific results to prove the effectiveness of a given drug, using their evidence to prove that they didn’t tamper with the evidence is kinda counter-productive, wouldn’t you say?

So both the believers and the sceptics fall prey to the same disadvantage: the only evidence of proof can be provided by the same agency whose truthfulness is under question.

And for that matter, never said I was an expert in radiation (funny how I need to be an expert on something just to have an opinion?), just that I was convinced by the evidence brought forth in this documentary.

And I highly doubt that Dr James Van Allen ever said any such thing. In fact, many prominent scientists of the day were concerned about the effects of space radiation, which was known due to a multitude of unmanned probes of that period (60’s).

Astronaut Sally Ride penned the Ride Report in 1987, stating in sum that it would take 30 years of R&D to get back to the moon from the current day. So in other words, it would have taken 50+ more years to do something again that was already done a half dozen times already?

I know that questioning the landing on such an auspicious celebration is tantamount to cursing in a church, and I apologize for the bad timing, raining on anyone’s parade. But while we’re busy patting NASA on the back for something they did over 40 years ago, why don’t they stop living off the glory of the old days and do it again already? What, current generations are not supposed to “live the dream”?

Gee, what a concept: if we actually went there, maybe after 40 years we’d still have the technology to go, much cheaper and much easier this time, seen as we have space stations and all. Funny no one has… I’ll believe that it did happen, when someone gets their thumbs out of their bums and goes back… and tells everyone exactly how they did it.

Iain.

I’m not arguing that it didn’t happen. I think that’s where we have our lines crossed. I’m saying that I need a lot more convincing.

Not believing != believing in a hoax.

What we all believe is that the americans went to incredible lengths to win the space race, I’m just unsure about their methods, whereas you seem certain.

Good for you, but my jury is still out.

“the ’skeptics’ guide? they wouldn’t know skepticism if it hit them over the head with a brick.
It seems a popular trend these days for people with an agenda to dress themselves up as skeptics and then foist their beliefs onto people.”

John, you couldn’t be more wrong if you tried. If you actually listen to the SGU podcast, you will find that the only agenda is the promotion of science and critical thinking, and they couldn’t any more respected by fellow skeptics. You have confused your lazy, post-modern denial of reality with skepticism.

FYI:

“A scientific (or empirical) skeptic is one who questions the reliability of certain kinds of claims by subjecting them to a systematic investigation … Whereas a philosophical skeptic may deny the very existence of knowledge, an empirical skeptic merely seeks likely proof before accepting that knowledge.”

Despite your claims, it is obvious that no proof of the moon landings will be sufficient for you, so you are the believer, or at least a “philosophical skeptic”. I could be convinced that the moon landings were a hoax by actual evidence, rather than badly researched conjecture, but until that happens, the evidence points to no hoax.

skeptic ( = greek for thinker ) is someone that thinks, has ideas therefore has an opinion on things. Simple as that..

I’d guess either they all happened or all didn’t, and the first mission should be regarded as a test case.

I draw the line when I feel I’m expected to share someones beliefs without question; Because then I know it’s emotionally charged dogma I’m rejecting and not fact.

I much into hoax theories for the same reason….

For the record, I’m a Flash developer too, and (I think) I am in the same camp as John here. And I think both camps are the believer and the sceptic: both believe they have the ‘moral high ground’, but in fact it is simply a matter of perspective. One believes that the manned landings did happen, the other believes they did not; one disbelieves the hoax theories, the other disbelieves the official story.

I for one do think it’s an incredible achievement that we went to the moon; this is not what I’m debating. I think that all the unmanned missions did happen, as did all the other space endeavours by NASA, which could explain all the artifacts ‘left behind’ and all the hard scientific data gathered which were supposed to have been collected by the manned missions. Just that the manned lunar landings have just enough irregularities to point to a hoax, albeit a very carefully crafted and concealed one. I’m not much on conspiracy theories either, and I don’t purport to know exactly what happened.

But consider, if NASA did go to the moon as they have said, why are there so many irregularities in the photographic evidence? Why has no other nation ever mounted a manned exploration to the moon? Why have we never gone back? There are so many pieces that do not fit. I would rather be ignorant of the anomalous data and believe as many do that this was an incredible achievement in human history. But as an amateur scientist and a programmer, I cannot ignore irregularities in accumulated data simply because I want it to be so, that I my mind is simply faulty logic.

Whether you believe or do not believe this achievement took place, I encourage you to examine all the information surrounding these events, without the weight of rhetoric from either side of the fence.

“Why has no other nation ever mounted a manned exploration to the moon?”
Because its made of chesse you thick f***

Great game seb, still love the original.

As Seb has pointed out there are plenty of holes in the arguments FOR a hoax. If there are glaring inconsistencies in the photographic evidence then those of us who swallowed the official story are being asked to believe that a hoax of such huge proportions (involving thousands of individuals, none of whom have come forward in the 40 years since to provide any evidence) was perpetrated by some of the most intelligent people on the planet – but then they went and filmed the thing in a windy aircraft hanger so the flag was flapping – or some other equally dumb mistake was made.

If there are inconsistencies in the evidence then yes, by all means, question them, but denying the whole existence of such a historic event because of them? That, to me, is faulty logic.

It’s incredibly easy to come up with conspiracy theories around the US space program (or pretty much anything else, for that matter) for instance Apollo 13 was clearly a publicity stunt to re-ignite the public’s waning interest in the space program. for 2 years I had to put up with a science teacher who claimed that the moon landings were fake because the depth of dust on the moon was so much less than what was expected by NASA (hence the length of the legs on the Eagle Lander) that it PROVED the universe was a great deal younger than cosmologists claimed. This PROVED that the earth was only however many thousand years old that christians claim it to be. So claiming to be a scientist is no guarantee of objectivity… or even common-sense.

The argument will rage on… until the chinese get there and find the footprints… which will have been put there by automated robots or something…

A great game. This should be put in arcades!

Dear Seb,

I know you must be tired of this moon walking debate but I think it is extremely important that everyone get it right. It seems many people cannot make a call on this issue because of our lying government. I say “our” lying government because, even though I am a Yank, we actually have the same government (but that is another story). To be brief, there is absolutely no way any human being has come anywhere near the moon… in 1969 or in any other year.

Step back and take a look at the virtually endless amount of evidence against the moon landing. Remember the first rule of science, that is, you cannot prove anything absolutely true but you can prove it absolutely false. There is one site I would like to recommend to you that is nice because it has a great deal of the Apollo evidence in one place. WARNING, it is extensive! It took me several hours just to breeze over the Jack White photographic evidence. The piece of evidence that finally serves to convince is different for everyone because there is so much evidence from which to choose. For me, I think it was the severity of radiation reported by an experimental shuttle flight at only 400 miles out (they are usually orbiting at 200 miles out).

From an intuitive point of view, recall that the LEM was said to have blasted from the moon then re-docked with the orbiting command capsule speeding at mach 4. Think about the kind of computing power needed for that kind of docking. Did you really think they pulled it off with a computer smaller than a calculator? Regarding the lunar reflectors, it turns out that you can bounce a laser off the moon without them.

Here is the link I recommended: Aulis.com

The white rabbit says to feed your head but don’t feed it junk.