Moon Hoax:Purported Mistakes
From SkepticWiki
Of course, proponents of the Moon Hoax theory are going to look for mistakes that NASA apparently made in order to prove that it was all a hoax. As usual, these purported "mistakes" have other explanations.
Contents |
[edit] The "C" Rock
One of the biggest mistakes, according to the hoax theorists, is that NASA's prop department, when the fake moon landings were filmed, accidentally placed a fake rock in the wrong orientation and the prop label (a capital letter "C") was visible. It can be clearly seen in a photograph on NASA's website (look on the larger rock towards the bottom left of the picture; the "C" is clearly visible on the left side of the rock), so this can be no fakery on the part of the moon hoax proponents.
[edit] Discussion
Actually, in the original photograph, the "C" is not present. It's the result of a piece of hair or fiber getting between the plates when the photograph was duplicated.
[edit] The "Waving" Flag
In the video of the astronauts planting the US flag, the flag can be clearly seen waving in the breeze, we are told by the hoax theorists. Look at the video clip starting about one minute in: the flag is clearly waving. There is no air on the moon, so, we are told, this must have been faked on a sound stage somewhere on Earth.
[edit] Discussion
The flag is indeed waving, but it's waving because Armstrong and Aldrin have their hands on the pole trying to plant it into the ground. In order to make the pole go in deeper, they twist it back and forth, and this causes the flag to swing. As there is no air, there is no resistance to this swing and the flag continues to move back and forth as they work with it. When they release it about thirty seconds later, the flag swings to a stop and doesn't move again.
Also, in the still photographs, the flag appears to be blowing in a very stiff wind. This appearance is due to a rod that hinged out from the top of the flagpole which the flag hung from like a curtain off a curtain rod in order to give the flag a more photogenic appearance than it would have had had it drooped against the side of the flagpole. It had a wrinkled appearance due to being stowed during the flight to the Moon. A comparison of images of the flag soon after deployment with pictures taken during the EVA and even after the crew left the surface from the cabin windows will show that the flag has exactly the same blown appearance hours after its deployment. A flag actually blowing in the wind would have a different shape in every single image.
Here's a question for the theorists: if the flag is waving because of a breeze, why doesn't it blow around the dust on the floor of the set, too?
[edit] Watery Footprints
It can be clearly seen in the photos from the moon, such as this photo of Buzz Aldrin's footprint, that the dirt the impression was made in, according to the hoax theorists, must contain liquid water. Since there is no liquid water on the moon, this must have been faked on Earth and NASA used dirt with a water content to comprise the soil the astronauts were walking on, or so the hoax theorists claim.
[edit] Discussion
Actually, it is very easy and common for fine powder to leave such distinct impressions. Try it with talcum powder. The lunar surface is very similar, being made of fine dark gray powder. The footprints are held in place by friction and the fact that there's no air to erode them.
[edit] Dust and Prints
Speaking of footprints, there's no reason why there should be dust and prints near the Lunar Module (sometimes wrongly called the Lunar Lander), at least according to the hoax theorists. The blast of the engine, they say, should have blown all the dust away. Sprinkle a bit of flour on a table and blow on it: the flour will go everywhere and won't be anywhere near the the blast. So there should have been no dust to make the footprints to begin with.
[edit] Discussion
If you try the above (which would certainly leave you with the task of cleaning up the ensuing mess), you'll see that the flour doesn't just go out, it goes up, over, and everywhere. The reason why is that the air in the room helps you blow it around. You aren't just blowing on the flour; you're blowing on the air around the flour, too. But there is no air on the moon. The only dust that would get blown away on the moon is the dust that comes into direct contact with the rocket exhaust, which is the dust directly under the nozzle. The air just isn't there to keep blowing out the dust over a larger radius. If anything, the dust immediately around the module would have been thicker because it now has a layer of dust on top that was originally under the module's rocket nozzle.
[edit] No Blast Crater
One of the giveaways, according to the hoax theorists, is that there is no blast crater on the moon underneath the Lunar Module. With 10,000 pounds of thrust at its disposal, the Lunar Module should have blasted a large hole in the surface of the moon. As it is, it's not even scorched.
[edit] Discussion
If you think about it, you realize that there's no way they would have been using all 10,000 pounds of thrust when they landed. Since the same engine was used to take off again, the 10,000 pounds of thrust would have caused the Lunar Module to literally rocket off into space! Since the weight of the module, the astronauts, and the equipment in the one-sixth lunar gravity totalled about 3,000 pounds, then running the engines at 3,000 pounds would have caused them to hover in place. So they throttled down to slightly less than that in order to land softly.
The circular engine nozzle had a diameter of 54 inches, and so, according to the equation A = πr², its area would have been about 2,290 square inches. That means that, at 3,000 pounds of thrust, the module's engine output was a pressure of only 1.3 psi. For comparison: an astronaut who weighs 250 pounds on Earth, plus a 100-pound spacesuit, will weigh 60 pounds on the moon. If the astronaut's foot is 5 inches by 12 inches, and therefore has an area of 60 square inches, this means that each step taken by the astronaut has a pressure of 1 psi. If the astronaut is carrying an 18-pound moon rock, that will bring his pressure up to 1.3 psi. And in such a case, he certainly wouldn't be leaving a blast crater with every step!
On top of that, the Lander came in at an angle so there was no point at which it hovered over the landing site.
There are many examples of jet and rocket engines on Earth which do not leave craters despite much higher thrust than the LM descent engine used. For example the DC-X which tested vertical takeoff and landings during short flights at White Sands. One flight made an emergency landing off the paved area out in the desert and left an area disturbed so "heavily" that the site was difficult to find after the rocket had been moved from the landing site. The DC-X used an engine with a thrust of some 60,000 pounds - 20 times the thrust of the LM descent engine at landing. The expectation of a blast crater under the LM at landing is in fact based on errant physics, even for larger thrust engines. However, to say that the soil under the LM was undisturbed is defintitely not true. There are many photographs showing the surface under the LM and it can be seen to have been scoured by the rocket engine in the seconds before engine shutdown as the LM approached the surface and has a radially disturbed pattern. Films of the landings clearly show the radially blown dust flying off on ballistic trajectories away from the LM as they made their final approach to the surface.
[edit] A Game of Golf
On the Apollo 14 mission, Alan Shepard takes a moment to play a quick game of golf. After he hit the ball, Mission Control said that he had sliced it. But a slice is caused by air flowing around the ball. How could this be, if the moon has no air on it?
[edit] Discussion
The simple answer here is that the hoax theorists lack a sense of humor. The golf "game" can be seen in this video. Shepard jokes about making "a little sand trap shot," since the moon is covered with fine dust. The shot was made more difficult by the fact that his suit didn't let him use both hands. On the first hit, he hit "more dirt than ball." When he swung again, he hit the ball off-center and bumped it about three feet to the right. This is what prompted Fred Haise at Mission Control to jest, "That looked like a slice to me, Al." It wasn't a real slice; the awkwardness of the suit and the sand caused him to hit it off to one side.
Incidentally, Shepard would probably appreciate us pointing out that his next shot was "straight as a die," and the shot after that went for "miles and miles and miles," prompting Haise to reply, "Very good, Al."
[edit] Phantom Cameraman
If Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon, who took the video of his first step on the moon?
[edit] Discussion
Fortunately, the engineers at NASA are much smarter than the hoax theorists, and so this monumental event was, in fact, able to be filmed. Armstrong simply pulled on a lanyard as he descended, and this allowed the Modular Equipment Stowage Assembly (MESA) to hinge down about 120 degrees from the side of the LM. The MESA was a table-like platform on which much of the equipment the astronauts used outside including the rock boxes, hammer, Solar Wind Experiments and so forth were attached. The TV camera was also stowed on the MESA and aimed in such a way as to view the ladder area so that the camera could watch the astronauts descend to the lunar surface. Later, the TV camera was removed from the MESA, mounted on a tripod, had a lens changed and then moved out away from the LM and placed so it could view the LM area where the astronauts spent most of their time.
[edit] Phantom Cameraman II
In this video, the astronauts in the Apollo 16 Lunar Module prepare for takeoff. Clearly, the camera is panning around under human control. So, who's operating the camera?
[edit] Discussion
That would be Ed Fendell at Mission Control. It was a remotely-controlled TV camera attached to the rover.
[edit] Photos placed on pad of Lunar Module
There are a couple of objects on the pad in the bottom right of this photo that certain conspiracy theorists claim are photos from previous missions.
[edit] Discussion
The objects are almost certainly discarded foil.
