IS AMERICA LAND ON MOON

Facts about the Moon
An average days temperature on the moon ranges from 260� F to 280� F, too (hot) for film to survive. At those temperatures, film crinkles up into a ball.

The mid-day temperature on the moon is indeed around 260 degrees Fahrenheit, however, the low temperature in the dark of night is about minus 250 degrees Fahrenheit! The lunar landings and following exploration was done when the sun was low, within a day or so of local sunrise at the landing site at the time of the landing, so that temperatures were actually quite moderate, even after a full 3 days on the lunar surface. The film in the cameras was also kept in magazines that provided some protection from the extreme temperatures even when left in direct sunlight. In a vacuum without an atmosphere to conduct heat, film inside the magazines it was carried in is quite well protected from the heat of direct sunlight.

About 20 miles about [sic] the Earth, there is a radiation belt named the Van Allen belt. No human can get through this belt, If you try than you get hit with 300+ rads of radiation. Unless they are surrounded on each side by 4 feet on lead.

In fact, the Van Allen radiation belts extend from about 600 miles up to more than 40,000 miles from Earth with the region of highest radiation intensity being between around 2,000 miles and 12,000 miles above Earth. The astronauts exposure to those radiation belts is brief (less than 4 hours total - they begin their time in this region while traveling at 25,000 MPH! And they pass through it twice, once outbound, and again on their return. They spend less than an hour in the densest part of the belt.) and they are well protected in their spacecraft. Here is a link to a webpage that describes the radiation environment and physiological effects on the Apollo astronauts.

Also, the belt is toroidal in shape (like a donut) and the trajectories of the Apollo spacecraft were designed to avoid the worst part of the Van Allen belts. Even the discoverer of the Van Allen belts, Professor James A. Van Allen, has noted that the belts would not have been dangerous to the Apollo astronauts given their trajectories and their spacecraft.

There are millions of micro-metors [sic] traveling at speeds up to 6000 MPH, which would tear the ship to pieces.

In fact there are many more than "millions" of bits of would be meteors out in space, and they travel at speeds as high as at least 120,000 MPH! Despite the large numbers and high speeds, the space density of these objects is quite low so the average interval between impacts on an astronaut is extremely low. The spacesuits the astronauts wore on the lunar surface had layers designed to stop such small particles (we're talking micron sized bits!) to protect the astronaut.

If you look at the pictures/video of people on the moon, you will never see more than 3 stars.

See our earlier discussion on stars in lunar images. Briefly, the images are exposed for the daylight scenes and star images are badly underexposed and therefore not visible. And wait, I thought they didn't show any stars? (see the early discussion by this TMLWFer.)

When the LEM set down on the Lunar surface, it gave out 3000 lb. worth of thrust. This would have created a massive hole underneath the Lunar Module, but in pictures of the Lunar Module, the ground underneath is untouched.

On the contrary, there are many photographs which show the disturbance of the lunar soil under or near the Lunar Module. For example, see AS11-40-5892 or AS11-40-5921 (from the ALSJ) which shows not only some discoloration under the descent engine, but also some radial disturbance in the soil from the outward blast. Also, see AS12-46-6781 which shows a trail of disturbed soil along the ground track of the Apollo 12 lunar module. On the left edge of this frame is the TV camera with some footprints right next to the small crater. The engine exhaust trail goes almost straight across the lower part of the image, about a quarter of the way from the bottom of the frame. There is some disturbed soil caused by an astronaut's footprints that angles diagonally across the exhaust trail, meeting it at the right edge of the image. If the landings were faked, placing a blast crater under the LM would be the most obvious thing to do in order to "fool" the unwitting public. In fact, there was plenty of dust, but the moons' regolith is rather densely packed due to billions of years of gardening and a lack of air on the moon.

Also, the expectation of having a blast crater (presumably looking like a fresh impact crater?) under the LM is flawed. Does a garden hose sprayed at high pressure into the dirt create a blast crater? It surely blows the surface dirt in a radial direction and will clear out a small hole, but not a blast crater (like an explosion of dynamite, perhaps?). There is even an Earthly example of a rocket landing on dirt. The DC-X was a test flight program of a vertical takeoff and landing rocket. On one of its last flights, it made an emergency landing outside of the pad area. Despite the hydrogen/oxygen engine producing a thrust of some 60,000 pounds (about 20 times the thrust of the LM descent engine!), the engine produced a mark on the desert floor that was barely recognizable. Given that the descent stage engine bell is about 5 feet across at the bottom, and that thrust of the engine at touchdown was about 3,000 pounds, that blast pressure of the rocket exhaust was only about 1 pound per square inch - not much different from the pressure caused by the weight of an astronaut on the Moon standing on one foot while walking across the surface.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But why would they do it?
I have come up with three reasons why NASA would fake a landing on the moon:
MONEY. NASA gathered about 30 billion dollars pretending to go to the moon. That means that someone is getting a lot of money in their pockets.

That would be all of the aerospace companies and their workers who built the rockets, spacecraft, rovers, spacesuits, launchpads, etc. as well as those who supplied them with the raw materials they needed. We spent that money on our own people - not one cent was spent in space or on the Moon. It's been said that for every penny invested, we got something like 7 cents back in spinoffs, including jumpstarts on integrated circuit technology (and ultimately therefore, the computer you are using to read this webpage), component miniaturization, materials science and a long list of other items. These things would have been developed anyway, most likely, but their use in the Apollo program sped their developement up a great deal.

ATTENTION. If you ever saw the movie "Wag the Dog", the president has sexual relations with a 12 year old. This information goes out to the media 1 week before elections. So, to get the publics mind off of the little Girl, the president stages a war with Albania. The moon shots were the same concept. People did not like what was going on with the Vietnam war, so, to get the publics mind off of all the bad things going on in Vietnam, the US faked a moon landing. If you check your dates, we abruptly stopped going to the moon around the same time the Vietnam War Ended.

Check the dates and facts a little more closely. Plans to end the Apollo moon landings were already in the works by the time we made our first landing in 1969 - years before the end of the war in Vietnam was even in sight. Our first lunar exploration ended far from abruptly. It was planned well in advance. There were originally moonlandings planned through Apollo 20, but first Apollo's 19 and 20 were cut, then Apollo 18, making Apollo 17 our last lunar landing of the 20th Century. The Apollo program was initiated before the U.S. was substantially involved in Vietnam, and more than 4 years before it could be considered a war. Apollo grew out of a cold war conflict over the minds and opinions of our technological prowess in the world and its eventual success was due to the hard work and sacrifice of literally 100's of thousands of people who built the Saturn V rocket and the Apollo spacecraft. Tell them that their work was some elaborate hoax.

TO WIN THE SPACE RACE -- Back in the late 60's early 70's, Russia and the US were in a heated battle to see, well, pretty much who was better. Once the US realized that they couldn't send a man to the moon, they couldn't just say, "OK Russia, we give up."

And the Russians are going to roll over and go along with the hoax? It would have been fairly easy to discredit the Apollo missions in real-time if they were truly being faked so that an embarrased Soviet government would be able to expose it rather than decide to cover up their own failed attempts to get to the Moon. (They claimed at the time to not have been trying to land men on the Moon, but we now know that they in fact had a very agressive manned Lunar program.)




On the contrary, there are many photographs which show the disturbance of the lunar soil under or near the Lunar Module. For example, see AS11-40-5892 or AS11-40-5921 (from the ALSJ) which shows not only some discoloration under the descent engine, but also some radial disturbance in the soil from the outward blast. Also, see AS12-46-6781 which shows a trail of disturbed soil along the ground track of the Apollo 12 lunar module. On the left edge of this frame is the TV camera with some footprints right next to the small crater. The engine exhaust trail goes almost straight across the lower part of the image, about a quarter of the way from the bottom of the frame. There is some disturbed soil caused by an astronaut's footprints that angles diagonally across the exhaust trail, meeting it at the right edge of the image. If the landings were faked, placing a blast crater under the LM would be the most obvious thing to do in order to "fool" the unwitting public. In fact, there was plenty of dust, but the moons' regolith is rather densely packed due to billions of years of gardening and a lack of air on the moon.

Also, the expectation of having a blast crater (presumably looking like a fresh impact crater?) under the LM is flawed. Does a garden hose sprayed at high pressure into the dirt create a blast crater? It surely blows the surface dirt in a radial direction and will clear out a small hole, but not a blast crater (like an explosion of dynamite, perhaps?). There is even an Earthly example of a rocket landing on dirt. The DC-X was a test flight program of a vertical takeoff and landing rocket. On one of its last flights, it made an emergency landing outside of the pad area. Despite the hydrogen/oxygen engine producing a thrust of some 60,000 pounds (about 20 times the thrust of the LM descent engine!), the engine produced a mark on the desert floor that was barely recognizable. Given that the descent stage engine bell is about 5 feet across at the bottom, and that thrust of the engine at touchdown was about 3,000 pounds, that blast pressure of the rocket exhaust was only about 1 pound per square inch - not much different from the pressure caused by the weight of an astronaut on the Moon standing on one foot while walking across the surface.

The Sun is the primary light source, however, it lights up not only the lunar surface, but the LM, the astronauts spacesuit, and anything else on the lunar surface so that light scattered off of those objects will fill the dark shadows with light. Try going into a small darkened room and shine a flashlight on the wall. The side of you opposite the flashlight which only sees the lighted wall will be lit by the scattered light off the wall from the flashlight spot. The Earth also adds some fill light to the shadows, but the Sun dominates the lighting on the Moon.

Another thing to consider is that the astronauts spacesuit is almost pure white, like a sheet of paper, while the lunar surface is charcoal black. The photographic exposures make the sunlit lunar surface look much lighter in color than it is and also allows the images to show detail in the shadows, particularly of bright white space suits that are not very strongly lit by the scattered light off of the lunar surface, the LM, and anything else on the moon.


Looking at area C you will notice that the surface of the moon fades off into the distance, then is met with the moon's horizon. In a no-atmosphere environment, the ground shouldn't have faded out, but stayed crystal sharp unto the moon's horizon.

This is a simple case of lighting effects. The scattering angle off the near surface is viewed from a steeper angle than that of the lunar surface off in the distance. The local terrain contributes greatly to the brightness of the near surface too. The apparent out of focus of the horizon area is caused by the image being focused on the astronaut in the foreground - simple optics. Also, the Lunar Module reflects significant amounts of light into the area behind Aldrin as can be seen in this image of the general area.

Looking at area D you can plainly see some type of structure reflected through Aldrins helmet. I do not know what it is, but it is there.
There are two items that are seen reflected on the left side of Aldrin's visor. One is the Solar Wind Collection (SWC) experiment and the second is the Flag. The exact location of the two astronauts in this image is around on the left side of the LM as viewed from in front of the LM (where the ladder is located) so that the smaller, leftmost object is the SWC and the "mystery object" is the Flag. AS11-40-5886 from the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal (refered to later as ALSJ) shows both the Flag and the SWC. The famous picture was taken by Armstrong from the area right of the SWC while Aldrin was standing just on the other side of the footpad visible on the right in this image. The two items appear small and far away despite their relative nearness due to the convex, spherical shaped visor, making objects appear farther away than they actually are - not much different from your rearview mirror which does something similar, allowing you a more complete view of the area it shows while shrinking objects seen in the mirror. See the closeup of this image at the top of this webpage for a better view of what is seen in Aldrin's visor.