Man didn't land on the moon in 1969

I will use this round for constructive. Equipment CapabilitiesThe rockets used for the Apollo missions (which regardless of whether or not man landed on the moon, did indeed exist and launch) were absurdly massive. See the below schematic for the size comparison of the various rockets we have launched into space. The only spacecraft comparable in size to the Saturn V rocket are the modern SLS rockets, which are capable of lifting 70-140 tonnes into Low Earth Orbit (LEO), the Saturn V itself was capable of bringing 118 tonnes to LEO (including the 70 tonnes Skylab via. substitution of its third stage). [ . https://en.wikipedia.org..., . https://en.wikipedia.org...] The New Horizons probe that is about to pass Pluto was launched on the comparatively tiny Atlas V rocket, with other probes such as the Voyager & Pioneer probes – all of which are on solar escape trajectories – were launched from comparable sized rockets. [ . https://en.wikipedia.org...]Thus, we have only one conclusion. The Saturn V rocket was capable of, and did, send a lot of stuff very far away. The Apollo missions were exactly an example of a lot of stuff, since they had to transport all the life support, lunar module with both descent and ascent stages, as well as samples and equipment to the moon and back. Far more in mass than any unmanned probe would require (which is partially why unfortunately it is much more cost effective to send lots of unmanned missions to Mars/Moon instead of one human mission). Given that all the components of the Apollo missions were indeed manufacturered, including the lunar, service and command modules, along with all the relative equipment and life support systems – and given that the specifications for these are public knowledge – why the heck would NASA launch them without astronauts if they already did all the hard work to have the technology ready, built and tested? [ . http://history.nasa.gov..., . http://history.nasa.gov..., . https://www.hq.nasa.gov...]When assessing a crime one needs to assess the means motive and opportunity. Well given the “crime” in this case is landing man on the moon, NASA clearly did have the motive (huge US drive to beat the Soviets), the opportunity (prime financial and political environment), and the opportunity (with all the necessary equipment constructed and ready). Samples from Moon382 kilograms of lunar rocks brought back to Earth 2200 separate samples from six different locations. These samples are frequently lent out to researchers and Apollo rocks have generated thousands of publications in a plethora of peer-reviewed journals. [. https://scholar.google.co.uk...] The scientific value and access to these samples immediately rules out fabrication of their origins, as fraudulent samples would quickly be detected. The Moon rocks were found to be much older than any extant Earth rocks, and have a various markers, including countless micrometeorite craters, trapped solar wind (e. g. helium-3), a distinctive minerology (such as high quantity of plagioclase feldspar, pyroxene, olivine, and ilmenite) and a very specific ratio of iron oxide tomaganese oxide ratio. [ . http://meteorites.wustl.edu...]Within extremely short periods of time, exceptionally large quantities of Moon rocks were scavenged from the Moon over the course of the Apollo 11-17 (excluding 13) missions. Goodwill Moon rocks from Apollo missions 11 and 17 were given to 135 heads of state including the Soviets (and also exchanged a sample for 1 gram of Luna mission samples). Bias and conspiracy was literally impossible for these samples, which necessarily required humans to scavenge with the variety and speed at which they were gathered. TrackingThe Apollo missions were tracked by numerous third-parties, not least of which were the Soviets, who were in a competing space program of their own. Furthermore, Apollo telemetry & communications from the craft were intercepted and tracked by numerous third parties, including the Soviets, Bochum Radio Observatory, and even home-built equipment. [432 Record, W4HHK Apollo 16 Reception". QST Magazine (American Radio Relay League). June 1971. pp. 93–94. , . http://www.honeysucklecreek.net...]The Soviets would clearly be a prime candidate for calling BS on a faked Apollo programme, yet they have never contested the Apollo program, nor the claim that NASA put a man on the Moon. They even went as far as to exchange lunar samples as already mentioned. Tertiary Evidence The Lunar Reconnaicanse Orbiter (LRO) Probably the cleanest evidence for man landing on the moon are the Apollo landing sites as viewed from the LRO. The descent stage and plethora of equipment and disturbance of the landing site is quite obvious when looking at the pictures: There are two features to note. The relatively linear wheel tracks of the lunar buggy (which leave two parallel wheel tracks, as any car driving through sand/snow would leave), and the much less linear and rougher solid tracks. These are from where the astronauts traversed by foot. The decreased linearity is to be expected of a human walking through uneven terrain, inspecting as they go alone. Whereas the increased linearity of the buggy tracks are to be expected for someone trying to get from A to B quickly in a vehicle. [ . https://www.nasa.gov...] Thus, we have powerful evidence that man walked on the moon. For comparison, here is the Apollo 12 landing site: Clearly, the tracks here on a mission with no roving vehicle are very different to those seen in Apollo 17, with them being solid, singular and erratic compared with the smooth single trajectory of a wheeled vehicle. [ . https://www.nasa.gov...]Scale The Apollo project employed 500,000 people, and spanned 11 years, not to mention the predecessor Gemini project. If NASA really didn’t send man to the moon, then a conspiracy on the scale required would have entailed so many people involved that whistleblowers would have been inevitable. For example the Watergate scandal, a conspiracy on the scale of several orders of magnitudes smaller than 9/11, was quickly outed with leaks. Iran-Contra, Enron [. http://en.wikipedia.org..., . http://en.wikipedia.org...] and of course the NSA & Edward Snowden to name just a few were also leaked operations which again was nowhere near the scale required for a moon landing hoax to be successful. SELENE PhotographsThe landing sites were very specific back in the 1960’s, however technology back then was nowhere near good enough to know what the terrain looked like from ground level. Thus if we assume that the moon landings were faked, then we would expect that the photographs we do have are only an extremely rough approximation to the data we had at the time. Then we have the photographs from the Apollo missions, and these can be confirmed to be genuine by comparing the old photographs of the lunar landscape, with modern reconstructed images of the landscape from modern landscape surveillance data. The photo below is form the Apollo 15 mission, with rover in frame: Compare this with the reconstruction: The landscapes match perfectly, which is virtually impossible with a faked setup at the time. Moreover the SELENE mission is a Japanese one, rendering further conspiracy even less plausible. [ . http://global.jaxa.jp...]