The 1969 Moon Landing Was A Complete Hoax

Thanks for the timely response, I'll begin by saying that whether you choose to accept it or not there is simply no more impetus to send us to the moon. Space exploration, while something scientists would love to see happen, is not going to unless there is political motivation (say, the Cold War). Landing on the moon is a perfectly feasible project for NASA, we've pulled off much more difficult maneuvers, albeit without the people (tracking the trajectory of a comet so that we can smash something into at blazing speeds in order to shoot off particles that a nearby satellite can analyze, for instance.) Feel free to call it impossible. Unless you are an engineer I don't think you're capable of making any sort of ‘feasibility' claims. Bart Sibrel is a well-known hoax-proponent yes, and as I've already pointed out in the first response, Phil Plait and numerous others have gone to great lengths to put up full refutations of his work. Sibrel is not a physicist or an engineer, and yet makes claims about the moon landing that anyone who has studied physics or engineering would realize are flawed. And in the Earth Rising photograph there is no reflection of any kind. The picture was taken aboard the Apollo 8 spacecraft after it came back from the far side of the moon. If you have a reflection in the color photograph, by all means, link the image and I'll take a look at it. I don't have time to type on long rebuttals to your arguments when the answers are quite easy to find; I will summarize again Phil Plait's responses that he has provided on his website http://www.badastronomy.com... 1) The claim of identical backgrounds is due to the lack of air on the moon. The backgrounds are the same, but the photograph is shot from different points. On Earth, things look blurry far away because air particles scatter the light and obscure the image. The further away, the more difficult it is to see. On the moon, there is no air, no obscuring, so the objects look clear regardless of distance. Plait links this video http://www.hq.nasa.gov... showing that a small-looking boulder is actually the size of a house, an example of how distances can't be judged on the moon by sight alone. 2) I still don't see your point about the missing tapes. They're missing, yes. Unless you have other points defining this as a hoax, when we take this piece of information alone, it's much more reasonable to attribute to clerical error rather than a big conspiracy by NASA. 3) You mentioned the stars not being seen again: again, I challenge you to go outside at night with the same exposure settings, and try to take a picture of the stars. You won't be able to, because the camera won't collect enough light with the tiny exposure time. As far as astronauts having conflicting stories; so what? People don't remember things the same, and some were probably focused on their work more than others and didn't have time to gawk at the stars. There is a perfectly reasonable physical explanation for the lack of stars in the photographs, it's not evidence of some conspiracy in the slightest. 4) The lack of a blast crater from landing is again, just as I stated. Yes, I am perfectly serious; it's quite simple dynamics. The Lander weighed 17 tons on Earth, the gravity on the moon is much less. Drop a boxcar from several hundred feet up and you won't make a huge hole in the Earth. The moon is not covered in thick dust, there is no reason for there to be a blast crater. The lack of air again made the movement of dust very restricted in comparison to Earth take-offs. As for the lack of flames — this is explained in two ways. On Earth, fires burn because of the air. There is no air on the moon. Second of all, the landers used a fuel mixture of dinitrogen tetroxide and hydrazine. This flame is transparent. Thus, you can't see it. I'll skip to your more well-thought-out points and leave the crosshairs and different shadow angles arguments for you to look up on Plait's website. All the information is there, all you have to do is look. As far as the footprints go — there's no wind, there's no air, there is no strong gravity, so, tell me, what is going to disturb the footprints? And now, for the radiation claim. This is pure and simple poor understanding of astronomy. 1) The Apollo spacecraft passed through the Van Allen belt very quickly. 2) The spacecraft and spacesuits deflected most of the radiation. The notion of the Van Allen belt being "deadly" was taken from an interview with a Russian cosmonaut who had never even passed through the Van Allen belt and so had no idea what it would even be like. In fact, actual measurements show that the average radiation exposure on the Apollo flights never exceeded 1.14 rads (the rest of the missions recorded were at least half of this value). This is one-fifth of the recommended maximum radiation dose for radiation workers in a year. Most values were around one-tenth. For more information try: http://www.wwheaton.com... and http://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov... for a table of actual values measured. The camera film was as safe as the astronauts were. As far as transmissions, I don't know where you got your value of two seconds, but communication with the moon is very rapid. The use of electromagnetic waves meant that the signals propagated back and forth at the speed of light. We can do a little math now: The round trip from the Earth to Moon and back is ~800,000 km. The speed of light is 300,000 km/s. Thus, the round trip signal takes 2.6 seconds or so. I'd like to see where you got your figure of >2 seconds from. As far as the deaths of the astronauts goes — again, your point would be? Your other points are not convincing so this taken alone is as meaningless as the missing pictures/film claim. Again, most of this is simple misunderstanding of physics. I hope you will take some time reading my sources before you post again. Most of your ‘problems with the moon landing' are addressed there.