The 1969 Moon Landing Was A Complete Hoax

Greetings RMK, Sorry your previous attempt at getting a debate about this going ended rather poorly. Let's hope I can make it more interesting. Skipping the percentage of people who buy into the conspiracy theory (50% of Americans believe in Creationism over the science of Evolution…) the happening of the moon landing during the ‘space race' is of course very plausible. There were many space missions going on during that era. There was not one, but a total of six manned lunar missions, spanning a period of time between 1969-72. These were all successful missions. I'd enjoy seeing where you got your ‘success rate' figure. The reason manned lunar landings have not been continued until this day is simply political — the Cold War is over, the space race has ended, this leaves very little political incentive to fund putting men on the moon. NASA's budget as it stands now is a mere 13 billion dollars. Compare that to inflation-adjusted budgets of the late 1960's — nearly double, and precisely when the big space race occurred. War, and other earthly concerns are at present dwarfing the desire for space exploration in America. Here's a link to the budget history: http://en.wikipedia.org... Now, to address your points: Naturally NASA has not allotted money for future manned missions to the Moon in their budget: it's too small. However, the desire to send men to the moon is not gone: they wish to allot $104 billion dollars to have men on the moon for a week in 2018 (http://www.space.com...). As for Russia abandoning the moon missions, their space agency states quite the opposite: they are planning to send men there by 2025, and establish a lunar base in 2027-2032 (http://en.rian.ru...) The astronauts on the mission do exist, and get quite angry when people try and claim that they are liars and phoneys. When Buzz Aldrin got called a coward and a liar by a Lunar Landing hoaxer, he proceeded to punch him in the face. I have a good friend from college who lives right next to the astronaut who took the picture of "Earth Rising". They have no need to defend themselves or make public appearances because, to them, the fact that they landed on the moon is not in need of defending. As for the missing tapes, drawings, etc. — I don't see how it means much. It's assumed they're buried somewhere at Goddard Space Center. Assuming everything you said was accurate, I might consider this evidence, but, as your other points are incorrect, this alone means nothing. Now, the star claim. If you could provide evidence of the "lack of stars" stated in a press conference, that would be useful. As far as not seeing them in picturesï¿½— they're there; just faint. Try taking a picture of the night sky down here on Earth, when it's clear out, odds are you won't be able to see stars in your photograph either unless you set the exposure to a certain value. Fast exposure captures bright objects, stars aren't bright, and with the quick exposure times used by the astronauts, stars wouldn't show up at all. Try it yourself. The different location, but same background claim is easily cleared up, when it's realized that the hill is the exact same hill. That is correct. A NASA official erred and claimed it was a separate location. Phil Plait, famous for his Bad Astronomy podcast, did a little investigating himself and spoke with the editor of the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, and found out that the two clips that were accidentally claimed to be taken miles apart were filmed within three minutes of each other. Thus, it makes sense that it is the same hill, the astronauts didn't move. As for signs of a blast craterï¿½—ï¿½why would there be? The lander did not take off at lightning speed, it gradually landed and gradually left. Analogously, does your car leave tire skid marks on the road when you pull into a parking lot? Unless you slam on your breaks and slide into it, I would wager no. Soft landing results in little to no disturbance of the resulting terrain. Now, for the similar rocks. Well, first of all, you would expect them to be similar if you've done some reading about the formation of the moon. It's the result of an impactor blowing off part of the Earth into space. The moon IS the Earth in terms of geology. Since Antarctica is a relatively undisturbed region on Earth, and the moon is geologically dead, finding the same rocks is nothing special. They aren't totally identical though, as they lacked minerals found in water. However, since the impactor happened long before liquid water took much of a hold on Earth, this is again no surprise. As for the lander making no impression: it did. It didn't leave a gaping hole because it wasn't dropped on the surface. And it didn't make a large impact crater because there is no air on the moon to blow things around. On Earth, air molecules bump things, so if you blow on some dust, you might end up affecting dust particles several feet from where you directed your breath. On the moon, there is no air to affect nearby dust particles. The only dust that would move would be that touched by other dust particles or directly by the rocket exhaust. By the way, most of my information has come from Phil Plait's excellent rebuttal of a whole host of moon-hoaxer arguments. I would highly suggest reading it: http://www.badastronomy.com... He is an astronomer. I am a physics major and verify that his arguments about the dynamics of dust particles, etc. are correct. You can find answers to your claims all over the internet; I would suggest Plait's first and foremost however. Looking forward to your response.