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[ililiilliillliii]

Hi guys,

I saw an artifact-quality video recently (http://www.petapixel.com/2010/04/26/apollo-11-launch-at-500-frames-per-second/) and my enjoyment of it was mildly lessened by all these people who think the moon landing was faked.  I'm an aerospace engineering grad student and I also work part time at NASA, so this kind of hits close to home for me.

Why do surprisingly many people insist it was faked?  It seems like it's basically rooted in a deep mistrust of the government that was maybe warranted in the 60's (what with the CIA testing drugs on unwitting subjects, the environment of the cold war and all) but has stuck around and stayed fashionable until today.  There's this general distrust of science as well, although everyone is eagerly willing to take everything we get from it for granted.  These, combined with the rather specialized knowledge involved in going around in space seems to make Apollo a magnet for conspiracy theories. 

There are no technical reasons why we couldn't do it at the time...the arguments involving the van Allen belts, the computer technology of the time, etc. are easily refuted with a little bit of research and specialized knowledge.  The worst one I've heard was from a guy at the golden gate bridge that the lunar lander ascent engines were tiny compared to the Saturn V, so how could it have taken off from the moon?  It's hard to address that one in person, since before you can start talking about conic sections and the gravitational parameter of the moon and the logarithmic nature of the rocket equation you've already lost them when you first pause for thought, which identifies yourself as an 'other' who's part of the system and can't be trusted.  When you start talking about the physics involved, that's apparently a 'proof from authority' and I'm somehow just repeating the party line. 

Also, did you know that a specially modified F-15 once went from brakes locked on the runway to 98,400 feet in three minutes, 28 seconds?  Imagine if the cold war hadn't ended - we'd either all be living on the moon by now or we'd all be hideously mutated survivors roaming a radioactive wasteland.  Either one sounds like an attractive alternative to finals week.

[Hungry]

Stuff like war really does fuel technology, just think if WW2 never ended...we might be nuclear mutants living on the moon.

Things like this make wonder if I'll ever finish enough of my project to have even parts of it go into space.../sigh

When people try to say the moon landing was faked I point and laugh at them, it's quite fun.

[Neonivek]

Well it is because tons of money is flooded into research and because people tend to care less about human life. Inventing the Nuke and Long Range missles cost a lot of people their lives.

Honestly, you tell someone that your working on a new kind of weaponry and that there is a 50/50 chance they will drop dead all for minimum wage or even free... they won't do it.

[alway]

Why do surprisingly many people insist it was faked?

Because surprisingly many people are complete morons.

[HAMMERMILL]

I don't think it was a hoax but a couple of things I still don't get...

I find it rather astounding that you can send a world-wide live television broadcast from the surface of the moon, with with the rather modest broadcasting equipment the brought with them.

I'm still amazed that not only did they land the capsule perfectly, they launched from the surface of the moon and managed to plot a tragectory that brought them back almost effortlessly, all with a pretty primitive set up.

[ChairmanPoo]

because they were very smart!

no seriously, it's a fake. Look at this pic, you can see the cameramen reflected in the astronaut's visor! LOL

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Virex]

I don't think it was a hoax but a couple of things I still don't get...

I find it rather astounding that you can send a world-wide live television broadcast from the surface of the moon, with with the rather modest broadcasting equipment the brought with them.

I'm still amazed that not only did they land the capsule perfectly, they launched from the surface of the moon and managed to plot a tragectory that brought them back almost effortlessly, all with a pretty primitive set up.

That's the beauty of proper physics at work. I wish we could get that kind of accuracy in my field... (One book sugested staying 10% under the flooding point of an absorption column to avoid all the water sprouting out at the top. Good idea of course, but if you can reduce that to 5% you need something like a 10% smaller column)

[Aqizzar]

I find it rather astounding that you can send a world-wide live television broadcast from the surface of the moon, with with the rather modest broadcasting equipment the brought with them.

They didn't.  They broadcast an incredibly weak signal, that was picked up by satellites and rebroadcast around the world.  Duh.

I'm still amazed that not only did they land the capsule perfectly, they launched from the surface of the moon and managed to plot a tragectory that brought them back almost effortlessly, all with a pretty primitive set up.

The lander and the astronauts in it did not plot the course.  An army of engineers with slide-rules and long-hand math plotted the course months before the mission ever started, and the trip there and back was done by a very precise schedule.  In the infamous words of Werner von Braun, the astronauts themselves were essentially just payload.

I've always wondered just how many people in 1969 thought the moon landing was a hoax, compared to the one-third or so of Americans today.  I think it's a sign of eroding faith in the efficacy and honesty of government in any capacity echoing backwards into history, in a completely ridiculous and mindless trajectory.

[HAMMERMILL]

I'd say people probably disliked and distrusted the government even more in 1969 then they do today.

[Googolplexed]

I'm still amazed that not only did they land the capsule perfectly, they launched from the surface of the moon and managed to plot a tragectory that brought them back almost effortlessly, all with a pretty primitive set up.

Plotting the trajectory would have been easy.
They did have an on-board computer, even if slow by todays standards, it would still be pretty fast for calculating something (relatively speaking) simple like a trajectory.

[Il Palazzo]

I'm still amazed that not only did they land the capsule perfectly, they launched from the surface of the moon and managed to plot a tragectory that brought them back almost effortlessly, all with a pretty primitive set up.

Plotting the trajectory would have been easy.
They did have an on-board computer, even if slow by todays standards, it would still be pretty fast for calculating something (relatively speaking) simple like a trajectory.

Somebody needs to play Orbiter more.

[Googolplexed]

I'm still amazed that not only did they land the capsule perfectly, they launched from the surface of the moon and managed to plot a tragectory that brought them back almost effortlessly, all with a pretty primitive set up.

Plotting the trajectory would have been easy.
They did have an on-board computer, even if slow by todays standards, it would still be pretty fast for calculating something (relatively speaking) simple like a trajectory.

Somebody needs to play Orbiter more.

Yeah, and the fact that I CAN play orbiter shows how easy it is(having no formal training or anything of the sort)
I don't doubt it was hard, it took years of work to get everything to where it was etc, but theres much harder stuff then trajectory calculations.
Come to think of it, computers from the 40s did this kind of work(For artillery projectiles)

[Il Palazzo]

Now imagine playing Orbiter without magically-efficient fuel on board, without MFDs, without constantly updated Earth maps, and with a computer that's not exactly on par with Atari XL/XE, and which probably requires working knowledge of programming language to get any data in or from it.
Then you just need to reach Earth at exactly the right time and angle to hit the designated landing spot - no huge correction burns allowed, no banking in atmosphere to bleed away the velocity.

If you think that's easy, then I bow before your superior intelligence.

[Ephemeriis]

Yeah, and the fact that I CAN play orbiter shows how easy it is(having no formal training or anything of the sort)
I don't doubt it was hard, it took years of work etc, but theres much harder stuff then trajectory calculations.

Getting the lunar module back to Earth in one piece is significantly harder than playing orbiter.

While the math itself is no more complicated than any other calculus, I assure you that they spent an awful lot of time on the calculations. 

Come to think of it, computers from the 40s did this kind of work(For artillery projectiles)

Those were simple ballistic calculations and did not need to be all that precise.

As for why people believe the landing was a hoax...  I've always been of the opinion that if we really did land on the moon, it means that the world/universe is much bigger than these folks can handle.

Some of the most vocal hoaxers that I've personally met have never been far beyond the city limits of their home town.  They have trouble grasping the idea that there's a whole world full of people out there.  And they're genuinely freaked out by the idea that there's all those billions of light-years worth of space around us.  I think it is easier for them just to think of the moon/sun/stars and lights in the sky.

[Googolplexed]

Again, I'm only stating theoretical calculations and stuff, not the practical side of using them once calculated.

Is there was problems, they had a radio link and a whole army of scientists waiting back at base.
Compared to the actual design of the rocket and modules, and the various aspects of flying them, the calculations would have been one of the easier parts.

I'm not trying to be smart-ass or smug here. If I was tasked with flying one of the apollo missions I would fail terribly, hell I'm terrible at orbiter. All I'm trying to say was that the technology for calculating trajectories did exist, and was used to good effect and harder parts of the mission existed then just that, I'm not trying to state anything other then that point