TFC 28th June 09 guests Rafeeg & Ognir- ZioMoon Landing Hoax

[mchawe]

@Tim_Fitz
Re the freemasonery angle.
Why would you take a hammer to the Moon...if you really went there ?   Heavy and useless (unless part of your tool kit to fix the Moon Buggy if it broke down!) ....Unless to perform some weird kind of Freemasonery rite with a falcon feather.
Until now, I believed in the Moon landings.
If they had used wires, I can't understand why they didn't do a proper job and make the "astronauts" jump 14 ft.
Not to have dust on the feet of the Lunar Module... very careless !
The trouble is that when you make up a lie, it is virtually impossible not to overlook something or other.

[Whaler]

Here's a little summary of the main points put forth in "Wagging the Moon Doggie".
(Note: I think he's completely off when he uses "Nazi" stuff to refute the Moon Landings.)

Summary/Key Points in McGowan's Moon Landing Hoax Pieces

This is not as fun to read as the real thing, but hopefully useful if you want to get an overview or look at a specific section.

Part 1-- :
1) we did it 40 years ago with relatively crude technology, but haven't done it since; neither has any other country; arguments that there is no reason to go back or that it is too expensive don't really hold up
2) we send astronauts up in the space shuttle regularly but still no one has gone further than low earth orbit
3) NASA has "lost" all of the original moon landing recordings – a huge amount of material
4) near-perfect moon-to-earth transmissions very unlikely given technology of '60s
5) NASA transmissions weren't really "live" but taped off a NASA monitor
6) In moon footage, astronauts really just look they are moving awkwardly on earth at half normal speed
7) Astronauts never do anything particularly impressive in terms of jumps, as they should have been capable of
Wouldn't astronauts move QUICKER on the moon, in lower gravity and no air resistance?
9) Also missing from the Moon missions was recordings with voice data, biomedical monitoring data, and telemetry data to monitor the location and mechanical functioning of the spaceship. All of that data, the entire alleged record of the Moon landings, was on the 13,000+ reels that are said to be 'missing.' Also missing, according to NASA and its various subcontractors, are the original plans/blueprints for the lunar modules. And for the lunar rovers. And for the entire multi-sectioned Saturn V rockets.

Part 2--
1) moon rocks could have been easily obtained from Antartica; von Braun went on mysterious mission to expedition to Antartica during developmental stage of Apollo missions
2) at least one official moon rock was a fraud
3) many other official moon rocks have disappeared
4) why it is that in the 1960s we possessed the advanced technology required to actually land men on the Moon, but in the 21st century we don't even have the technology required to get an unmanned craft close enough to the Moon to take usable photographs? Or could it be that there's just nothing there to photograph?
5) LROC photos supposedly showing Apollo lander are not convincing and are essentially worthless
6) why it is then that just about everyone seems to want to send unmanned probes there, or to train enormously powerful telescopes on the Moon's surface? What could they possibly learn about the "parking lot" from those distances that our astronauts didn't already discover by actually being there?
7) "Laser targets" on moon could easily have been placed there by unmanned probes, or lasers just bounced off moon rock
the lunar modules look cheesy and poorly constructed
9) the lunar modules are small and do not seem to have enough space for everything they would need
10) very hard to believe the moon buggy actually fit in there a for the later mission
11) the lunar module on display in the museum has miniature astronauts
12) the landing of the lunar module was never tested in proper conditions except officially on the actual mission—and landing would be extremely tricky with the setup they had
13) On Earth, it took many long years of trial and error, many failed test flights, many unfortunate accidents, and many, many trips back to the drawing board before we could safely and reliably launch men into low-Earth orbit. But on the Moon we did it perfectly the first time.
14) Today, we can't even launch a space shuttle from right here on planet Earth without occasionally blowing one up, even though sending spacecraft into low-Earth orbit is considerably easier than sending spacecraft all the way to the Moon and back. It would appear then that we can draw the following conclusion: although technology has advanced immeasurably since the first Apollo Moon landing and we have significantly downgraded our goals in space, we can't come close to matching the amazing safety record we had in the Apollo days.
15) Apollo spacecraft, which officially performed flawlessly, with the exception of Apollo 13, were produced at a surprisingly fast rate in the 60's

Part 3--
1) 1969 was a strange time in the US; lots of turmoil and upheaval in popular culture
2) lots of people actually doubted the moon landings at the time
3) Nixon had an obvious reason for the show—distraction from the awful Vietnam war, and it needed to work successfully
4) various terrible news events (mostly relating to the war) and the Apollo trips dovetailed
5) Radiation exposure in space a major problem--- NASA says it is a big problem now. The Apollo ships simply didn't have proper radiation protection.
6) Astronauts haven't gotten cancer from all the radiation they should have been exposed to

Part 4—
1) the photos were taken from a very odd and cumbersome system—chest mounted cameras-- that didn't allow exposure setting, focusing or framing; hard to believe the amazing and perfect shots taken could have been taken with this system
2) The odds then of getting exposure, focus and framing correct under these conditions on any given shot would have been exceedingly low. And yet, amazingly enough, on the overwhelming majority of the photos, they got all three right.
3) Debunker explanations of how the photography was done are flawed—in terms of depth of field, and use of a 500mm lens.
4) Film would have been ruined by the radiation on the moon
5) Stars should have come out in at least some of the photos, and why didn't one astronaut bother to TRY to take pics of the stars?
6) Shadows may show different light sources: http://davesweb.cnchost.com/AS11-40-5925HR.jpg
7) Too much light on the astronaut here: http://davesweb.cnchost.com/AS11-40-5869HR.jpg and http://davesweb.cnchost.com/AS11-40-5903HR.jpg; this photo shows how the shadows should have looked: http://davesweb.cnchost.com/NASA_Apollo ... ehicle.jpg
"If the camera is stopped down to avoid overexposing extremely bright highlights, it cannot simultaneously capture full detail in the shadows. And if the aperture and shutter speeds are set to capture detail in the shadows, the camera would necessarily also capture the brilliant stars, which would be far brighter than anything lying in the lunar shadows. Other planets would be pretty hard to miss in the lunar sky as well, though none can be seen in any of NASA's photos."
9) Obvious photo compositing here: http://davesweb.cnchost.com/Apollo_CSM_lunar_orbit.jpg

Part 5--
1) http://davesweb.cnchost.com/AS11-40-5864HR.jpg -- the soil under the LEM is completely undisturbed. "Not only is there no crater, there is no sign of scorching and none of the small 'Moon rocks' and not a speck of 'lunar soil' has been displaced! And if you refer back to the earlier close-up of the module's landing pod, you will see that not so much as a single grain of 'lunar soil' settled onto the lunar modules while they were setting down. http://davesweb.cnchost.com/AS11-40-5925HR.jpg
2) Not at all clear how the spacesuits protected the astronauts from temperatures ranging from -260F to +280F.
3) None of the pictures of the spacesuits shows them strongly pressurized, which would have been required.
4) Micrometeorites a real problem on the moon, and could have easily killed an astronaut.
5) President George W. Bush announced on January 14, 2004 that America was going to be returning to the Moon, and we were told by NASA types and various television talking heads that such a goal would require about fifteen years to achieve. No one in the media thought to ask why it would take fifteen years to do with twenty-first century technology what it took only eight years to accomplish with 1960s technology. Not one voice was raised to ask how with the twin advantages of improved technology and prior experience it would still take twice as long this time around.
6) NASA footage of the blastoff from the lunar surface is fraudulent, due to the ability of the moon-based camera to pan and tilt up to track the rising ship (there should have been a delay even if there was a remote control for this)
7) "Astronaut Steve Lindsey, after being chosen to command the final planned mission of the space shuttle, had this to say: "Everybody at NASA feels the same way. We're in favor of taking the next step and getting out of low-Earth orbit." So while technology in every other realm of human existence continues to take giant strides forward, everyone at NASA appears to want to take a big step backwards. To 1969."

Part 6--
1) LCROSS bombing of the moon apparently a disappointment
2) The mission to find water kind of pointless given no current plans to go to moon

Part 7--
1) when JFK said the US would go to the moon by the end of the decade, US had extremely minimal experience with spaceflight
2) Soviets beat the US in a huge number of space milestones
3) "of course, it makes perfect sense that America's first true spacecraft, coming as it did during the infancy of the Space Age, would also stand to this day as the most complicated and sophisticated spacecraft "ever conceived." After all, didn't Henry Ford build the most complicated and sophisticated automobile ever conceived? And didn't Orville and Wilbur build the most complicated and sophisticated aircraft ever conceived? And didn't Alexander Graham Bell invent the IPhone?"
4) conceptually, the LEM was supposed to be extremely clean, any dust or debris could be a hazard. Not clear how they planned to keep the LEM clean once it was on the moon and astronauts were walking in and out.

Part 8--
1) for "future" trips to the moon, NASA has taken extra precautions for moon dust contamination in the LEM and for guarding against radiation. Why wasn't this a concern or a major problem in 1969?
2) The LEM used the first throttle-controlled rocket engine ever to land on the moon, and of course, no one was able to land it properly on the earth, in tests
3) The LEM ascent engine was never tested in its final form
4) Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas was a movie set of sorts: on television it looked pretty damned impressive, for the era at least-- an enormous room filled with computer consoles, each staffed by a key member of the Apollo team diligently monitoring his computer screen for any signs of trouble. In reality, as Apollo 11 computer engineer Jack Garman clues us in, "the computer screens that we looked at in Mission Control weren't computer screens at all. They were televisions. All the letters, or characters, [they] were all hand drawn. I don't necessarily mean with a brush, but I mean they were painted on a slide."
5) "The skin on the crew cabin [of the lunar module] was very thin, and that was all done because of weight savings." ... "If you really took your finger and poked hard at it, you could poke right through the outer skin of the spacecraft. It was about the thickness of two layers of aluminum foil." Project Manager Thomas Kelly concurred, noting that "the skin, the aluminum alloy skin of the crew compartment was about 12/1000s of an inch thick. That's equivalent to about three layers of Reynold's Wrap that you would use in the kitchen."" Not clear how this thing was pressurized then.
6) Official story has fragile lunar modules exposed "to the hazards of a lengthy space flight" also involves a docking maneuver in outer space, of unclear procedure at thousands of miles per hour, something that never could have been practiced ahead of time.

Part 9--
1) "Mythbusters" debunking of the hoax is bogus
2) Apollo astronauts never perform any seriously high jumps, even though this can be done easily in free-fall machines
3) Not clear how NASA designed Apollo space suits as early designs were not good and easily overheated in Florida sun
4) "Gemini astronaut Ed White allegedly became the first American to perform a space-walk, despite the fact that NASA did not yet appear to have a suit that would allow for such a maneuver. Nevertheless, on June 3, 1965, White allegedly performed a successful 22-minute EVA (extra-vehicular activity, in NASA jargon) which was yet another "We can do it too!" response to the Soviet Union's first space-walk." His walk was likely a fake.
5) After White, 3 astronauts in a row failed to do a spacewalk
6) "The Apollo spacesuits supposedly weighed in at 180 pounds each, including the PLSS backpacks. You would think that with the advanced technology now available, NASA would have been able to streamline the package. To the contrary, the suits now worn aboard the space shuttle weigh in at 310 pounds each. And ILC claims that it takes three months and 5,000 man-hours to produce each one. Back in the '60s, they claimed to be cranking out a minimum of nine of them for each Apollo flight."
7) There are flaws in the official Apollo 13 story, involving the temperature, water condensation and food supplies

Part 10--
1) "Apollo 8 was only the third launch of a Saturn V rocket, and the first to carry a crew. The first two Saturn V launches, Apollo 4 and Apollo 6, were what NASA referred to as "all-up" tests of the three-stage launch vehicle. Those tests didn't go so well."... "Without taking any of the preliminary steps, and with a launch vehicle that had failed on its last outing, and without knowing if the ship itself could make the journey there and back, America was going to send men all the way to the Moon!"
2) Before Apollo, NASA didn't have such a good record for spaceflight
3) The unmanned Lunar Orbiter program officially sent back relatively few pictures from the moon, may have set up shots for the faked Apollo program
4) "One final note on the Lunar Orbiters: during their flights to and around the Moon, the five satellites recorded twenty-two "micrometeoroid events." The eight lunar modules that made the trip to the Moon apparently recorded no such events. Or maybe the guys just put some duct tape over the holes."
5) Previous tests with docking a spacecraft to another spacecraft were not very successful.
6) Probe-and-drogue mechanism used to dock CM and LEM. Not clear how, with the probe-and-drogue assembly having been removed, the LEM was able to dock with the command module the second time, upon its return from the lunar surface.

Part 11--
1) "The very first Moonwalk by Neil and Buzz was broadcast ('live' of course) at 9:00 PM Eastern time, as though it were a Monday Night Football game. Prime time Moonwalks became a staple of the Apollo program, to such an extent that it was not at all uncommon for the networks to be deluged with complaints when a popular weekly sitcom was preempted for yet another fake 'live' Moonwalk. After the second fake Moon landing, NASA began adding exciting new elements to the Apollo missions to combat public apathy. Apollo 13, of course, added the element of danger. Apollo 14 brought us the Moon in Technicolor, with the first color video broadcasts. Apollo 15 kept us entertained with the addition of a Moon buggy. And Apollo 17 featured the first, and only, spectacular night launch of a Saturn V rocket."
2) "Despite all the acclaim he has received for his exploits as an astronaut, Neil Armstrong clearly has been unjustly denied recognition of his astounding abilities as a photographer. Some may argue that he clearly was not playing in the same league as, say, an Ansel Adams, but I beg to differ. Adams created some awe-inspiring work, to be sure, but could he have done so while wearing a spacesuit, gloves and helmet, and with his camera mounted to his chest, and while acclimating himself to an environment that featured no air, greatly reduced gravity, and extreme heat and cold?"
3) The fold-up Rover buggy "seems to be missing such things as a floor pan, and seats, and cameras, and antennae, and battery packs, and various other components – which raises a few questions, such as where were all the other rover parts stowed? How many empty equipment bays were available to accommodate all the various rover components? And how long exactly did it take the astronauts, given the limitations imposed by their suits and gloves, to deploy and fully assemble a Moon buggy?"

Part 12--
1) The now-canceled Constellation Program to go "back to" the moon was begun in 2005, and at the end, aimed for men on the moon by 2028. The Apollo program allegedly landed men on the Moon in a mere eight years. It shouldn't take almost three times as long to get back to the Moon with today's technology as it did in the 60's!
2) "In May of 1966, after spending five years working on the Apollo project, we were just a-year-and-a-half away from the launch of the first Saturn V. In 2010, after spending five years working on the Constellation project, NASA has nothing to present to us but a hefty bill"
3) "If NASA returns to the moon in 2020 as planned, astronauts will step out in a brand-new space suit. It will give them new mobility and flexibility on the lunar surface while still protecting them from its harsh environment ... The space agency has awarded a $500 million, 6.5-year contract for the design and development of the Constellation space suit." Astronauts performing EVAs these days currently use something known as the Extravehicular Mobility Unit: "It has a hard upper torso, layers of material to protect astronauts from micrometeoroids and radiation, a temperature-regulation system, and its own life support and communication system. The EMU weighs over 300 pounds and has limited leg mobility – astronauts feet are normally locked in place on foot restraints while performing extravehicular tasks, and during Apollo missions, which used a different EMU suit, astronauts were forced to develop a bunny hop to traverse the lunar surface." It is absurd that is takes about four times as long to develop a spacesuit now than it did back in the 1960s.
4) Wernher von Braunn, one of NASA's chief rocket scientists, was a real Nazi
5) Nazi connection to MIT where idea of Apollo missions was developed
6) Computer programming for Apollo was critical for the mission but poorly specified according to one of the computer engineers. "Despite the overwhelming obstacles faced by the MIT team, and the seemingly lackadaisical approach taken with the project, the Apollo guidance system, as would be expected, performed nearly flawlessly on every outing."

http://forum.davidicke.com/showthread.php?t=93095

toseek wrote:


There are more than a few problems with McGowan's claims:

It is commonly believed that man will fly directly from the earth to the moon, but to do this, we would require a vehicle of such gigantic proportions that it would prove an economic impossibility. It would have to develop sufficient speed to penetrate the atmosphere and overcome the earth s gravity and, having traveled all the way to the moon, it must still have enough fuel to land safely and make the return trip to earth. Furthermore, in order to give the expedition a margin of safety, we would not use one ship alone, but a minimum of three & each rocket ship would be taller than New York s Empire State Building [almost º mile high] and weigh about ten times the tonnage of the Queen Mary, or some 800,000 tons.

Wernher von Braun, the father of the Apollo space program, writing in Conquest of the Moon

The key word here is "directly". Von Braun is referring to a mission mode known as direct ascent, where one huge rocket takes off from the Earth, lands on the Moon, takes off again, and comes back to Earth. That's very different from the approach that was eventually chosen, which involved a separate spacecraft specifically for landing on the Moon. (McGowan actually talks about this later.)

As it turns out, however, NASA doesn t actually have all of that Moonwalking footage anymore. Truth be told, they don t have any of it.

Not true. The tapes missing were the ones recorded for Apollo 11 by the Australian tracking stations. That's all.

Given the complete lack of air resistance, shouldn t things actually fall faster on the Moon?

Um, no.

Also missing, according to NASA and its various subcontractors, are the original plans/blueprints for the lunar modules. And for the lunar rovers. And for the entire multi-sectioned Saturn V rockets.

Not true. It's all on microfilm at the Marshall Space Flight Center.

As it turns out, authentic Moon rocks are available right here on Earth, in the form of lunar meteorites.

True, but in far smaller quantities than the 800+ pounds brought back by Apollo. And the only way we know these are lunar meteorites are by comparing them to the Apollo samples - the first one was only identified in 1982.

The problem, alas, is that the only known source for authenticated Moon rocks is NASA, the very same folks who are known to occasionally hand out chunks of petrified wood.

There's no evidence that NASA has anything at all to do with the Dutch "moon rock," or in fact that any American ever claimed that it was in fact a Moon rock.

It appears then that having a control rock wouldn t really be of much help after all, since nearly 90% of the alleged Moon rocks that we would want to test don t seem to be around any more.

The missing Moon rocks are those given as gifts to governments around the world. The total weight of them all combined is under 2 pounds. There are still over 840 pounds of Moon rocks available for study.

For at least two decades now, since the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, we have been promised dazzling images of the lunar modules sitting on the surface of the Moon.

Only the hoaxers have ever claimed that Hubble could image the lunar modules. Anyone who knows the first thing about optics knows it's impossible.

In March of 2005, Space.com boldly announced that a European spacecraft now orbiting the Moon could turn out to be a time machine of sorts as it photographs old landing sites of Soviet robotic probes and the areas where American Apollo crews set down and explored."

NASA can't be held responsible for what journalists claim. SMART-1 was never going to get detailed images of the Apollo landing sites.

Who knew, by the way, that the European Space Agency had the technology and the budget to send a spacecraft off to orbit the Moon? Who knew that the Europeans even had a space agency? I wonder, given that they obviously have the technology to send spacecraft to the Moon, why they haven t sent any manned missions there? I would think that it should be fairly easy to send some guys to at least orbit the Moon & right? I mean, all they have to do is add a couple seats to the spacecraft design that they already have and they should be ready to go.

Who would believe that someone writing about the space program would be so ignorant as not to know that Europeans had a space agency? Who would be so ignorant as to think the only difference between an unmanned spacecraft and a manned one is the number of seats you put on it?
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Too many to fit into one post, in fact:

Does anyone truly believe – and I'm including all the True Believers out there – that we had the technology in the late 1960s and early 1970s to hit a target of that size with a laser beam from at least 234,000 miles away? Does anyone believe that we have the technology to do it now?

Yes. It's not a big deal - the beam of the laser expands to several kilometers wide over the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

Next up is the massive amount of fuel that will be required to power all of those rockets, for both the ascent and descent stages of the mission. The ascent stage in particular is going to be a bit of a fuel hog, as ascending 69 miles and breaking free of the Moon's gravity is a formidable challenge, to say the least.

It doesn't have to break free of the Moon's gravity - it just has to get into orbit.

I'm not at all sure how the air conditioning system is going to work, come to think of it, since air conditioning requires a steady supply of – and please stop me if I am stating the obvious here – air.

Cooling does not require air.

It would help, of course, if our spacecraft was heavily insulated in some manner, but that doesn't appear to be the case

Appearances - to someone as ignorant as the author, at least - can be deceiving. The LM was well insulated.

To be perfectly honest, I'm not really sure why we have to pack the damn rover. There is no real compelling reason to take it to the Moon ... except for the fact that they make for good TV, and that seems to be of paramount importance. And as can be seen below, it should easily fit into our spaceship.

The rover made it possible to do much more science in much less time. And it wasn't put inside the LM, but fastened to the side.

NASA has done something very odd, by the way, with the lunar module that it has on display for museum visitors to marvel at: it has staffed it with miniature astronauts wearing miniature space suits (the module may also be scaled slightly larger than the 'real' modules that allegedly landed on the Moon).

This exhibit is around 10 miles from my house. I have no idea what McGowan is talking about here: the exhibit includes an actual lunar module and full-sized astronauts.

These remarkable spacecraft – and I understandably get a little choked up here talking about this, because I am just so damn proud of our team of Nazi scientists – managed to make six perfect take-offs from the surface of the Moon! And understand here people that they did that, amazingly enough, with completely untested technology!

The lunar module was thoroughly tested, both piecemeal and as a unit, with three test flights (Apollo 5, Apollo 9, and Apollo 10) before the landings.

Today, of course, we can't even launch a space shuttle from right here on planet Earth without occasionally blowing one up, even though we have lowered our sights considerably.

The space shuttle went 25 missions before the first failure (and even that one could be attributed to human error). There were only 11 manned Apollo missions (15 if you count Skylab and Apollo-Soyuz).

Lead, which is considerably denser than concrete, is actually the preferred material to use for radiation shielding

That depends very much on the type of radiation. It's definitely not preferred for radiation in space.

So one of the reasons that we know the Moon rocks are real, you see, is because they were blasted with ridiculously high levels of radiation while sitting on the surface of the Moon. And our astronauts, one would assume, would have been blasted with the very same ridiculously high levels of radiation, but since this was NASA's attempt at a 'debunking' article, they apparently would prefer that you don't spend too much time analyzing what they have to say.

There's a big difference between three days of exposure and billions of years.

Because the lighting conditions on the Moon are pretty unique, as you well know, and nobody had ever been there before, so I'm not really seeing how NASA's photographers were able to work the exposures out "ahead of time."

What's the big deal? They know how bright the Sun is, they know how much the lunar soil reflects.

For those who don't find that at all unusual, here is an experiment that you can try at home: grab the nearest 35MM SLR camera and strap it around your neck. It is probably an automatic camera so you will have to set it for manual focus and manual exposure. Now you will need to put on the thickest pair of winter gloves that you can find, as well as a motorcycle helmet with a visor. Once you have done all that, here is your assignment: walk around your neighborhood with the camera pressed firmly to your chest and snap a bunch of photos. You will need to fiddle with the focus and exposure settings, of course, which is going to be a real ***** since you won't be able to see or feel what you are doing. Also, needless to say, you'll just have to guess on the framing of all the shots.

If you're really going to do this experiment, then you should train with the camera for several months before making this attempt, which is what the astronauts did.

Even if our fine astronauts could have captured all of those images, the film would have never survived the journey in such pristine condition. Even very brief exposure to the relatively low levels of radiation used in airport security terminals can damage photographic film, so how would the film have fared after prolonged, continuous exposure to far higher levels of radiation? And what of the 540° F temperature fluctuations? That must have been some amazingly resilient film stock – and yet another example of the lost technology of the 1960s.

Airport security radiation isn't enough to damage any but the most sensitive film, and the film was never exposed to 540-degree fluctuations - those reflect what the Moon experiences during the course of a lunar day (an Earth month), and they weren't there nearly that long.

Due to the lack of atmosphere on the Moon, light is not scattered and travels only in a straight line from the sun and is reflected back in the same direction.

Not true. Why would it go back in the same direction?

All of the scenes below, for example, which are obviously not very well lit, would have required long exposures – exposures that would have definitely captured the brilliantly shining stars, since they would have been the brightest objects in the camera's field of view.

McGowan is showing images of the lunar surface in full, unfiltered sunlight and making the idiotic claim that the stars would be even brighter.

Phil also conveniently forgets that the view from the Moon is not filtered through an atmosphere, so the stars have many times the luminosity as here on Earth.

Not true. Earth's atmosphere absorbs only about a third visible light, so there would be only a moderate difference between the brightness of the stars on Earth and on the Moon.

The shadows in the foreground and in the background are at nearly right angles, a phenomenon that cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be explained away as a perceptual problem

The shadows aren't anywhere near being at right angles to each other, and the difference can be explained by lens distortions.

n truth, Goddard's "nifty demonstrations" are entirely dependent upon the effects of atmosphere causing the light to disperse, and thus they have no validity whatsoever.

Goddard's demonstrations do not depend on atmospheric effects.

but what we're really looking for here is depth of field, which this photo has very little of. The photographer has focused on the United States sign (and he did it blindly!), but little else is sharply focused.

The extremes are very slightly blurry in this very enlarged shot, but the edges are still remarkably clear. If it truly lacked depth of field, the stuff at the extremes would be unintelligible blobs.

which would, I would think, make it difficult for a portion of that lunar terrain to obscure part of the ship's S-band antennae assembly.

The S-band antenna is in fact cut off at that point so it can be retracted. This is obvious in numerous photos if McGowan had only bothered to look.

Specifically, there is no crater visible under any of the modules, despite the fact that NASA's own artist renderings clearly showed the presence of a substantial crater. Also, not a speck of dust appears to have been displaced by the 10,000 lb reverse-thrust engine that powered the alleged descent.

Do I really need to refute this nonsense yet again?

In addition, despite the ridiculously close proximity of the immensely powerful rocket engine, no noise from that engine can be heard on the video.

The descent engine had 10,000 pounds of thrust - hardly "immensely powerful" and was on the other side of the descent stage from the astronauts.

As can be seen in the photo above, the area directly under what is supposed to be the nozzle of the descent stage engine is completely undisturbed. Not only is there no crater, there is no sign of scorching and none of the small 'Moon rocks' and not a speck of 'lunar soil' has been displaced!

McGowan cherry-picks a photo where he can at least vaguely support this claim. There are others that show significant displacement and scouring.

First of all, no one with an ounce of common sense is going to cut the engine and let their three-ton spaceship simply drop onto the lunar surface. Nor are they going to cruise on in while progressively easing up on the throttle, effortlessly setting the module down, as Plait claims, like "a car pulls into a parking spot," as if they had been landing lunar modules since the day they were born.

Except that's exactly what they did do. And if they hadn't cut the thrust, instead of landing, they would have gone shooting off back into orbit, which is what happens when you fire a 10,000-pound rocket engine at the base of a spacecraft that now weighs only a few thousand pounds because you're in lunar gravity and have used up most of your fuel.

Then there was the ever-reliable lunar module finding, catching and docking with another ship while in lunar orbit, utilizing some more completely untested technology.

First off, the technology had been tested, and, second, they knew where the other ship was - there was no need to "find" it, just to get to the same orbit at the same time.

What that means is that, after traipsing around in the sun for a spell, the astronauts would have had to step into the shadows to reenter the spacecraft. And when they did so, those spacesuits were apparently smart enough to react instantly and switch over from turbo-charged air conditioning to blast-furnace heating in the blink of an eye.

That would not have been necessary - the temperature exchange, due to the lack of atmosphere, was very gradual.

And it is perfectly obvious from all the photos that the suits were not, in fact, pressurized, because if they were, the astronauts would have looked like the Michelin Man bouncing around on the surface of the Moon.

How does he figure this?

According to NASA, every square inch of every exposed surface of every rock allegedly gathered from the surface of the Moon shows this pattern. By extension then, we know that every square inch of the lunar surface is peppered with meteoroid craters. There really is no safe place to hang out. There you are minding your own business lining up your golf shot, and the next thing you know a meteoroid is ripping through your spacesuit at 50,000 mph. That has to sting a little bit.

Again, this is over billions of years, as contrasted with a few hours for the astronauts.

Anyway, doesn't it seem just a little strange that experts would now suggest that if we get to work right away, we might be able to land men on the Moon by the year 2020? Isn't that like saying that with a lot of hard work and a little luck, we might be able to develop a video game as technologically advanced as Pong by the year 2025? Or that by 2030, the scientific community might produce a battery-operated calculator small enough to fit into your pocket?

It would if it cost $125 billion to develop a computer game, and if the relevant technology hadn't improved more than marginally over the last 40 years.

And there apparently either wasn't any delay in the signal or NASA had the foresight to hire a remote camera operator who was able to see a few seconds into the future.

He didn't have to see into the future - he knew when the liftoff was going to happen.

The other thing that I don't believe has been discussed here, CM, is the fact that NASA is a completely Masonic operation, top down, bottom up.



[youtube:36rksok1]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMAvpDdcq88[/youtube]36rksok1]

All the more reason they can't be trusted; all the more reason their moon landing stage theatrics can't be trusted.

What is the tie that binds in keeping a lid on this gross conspiracy? A blood oath sworn by every single one of the Astronauts--all of whom happen to be Freemasons.

The Jewish-Masonic Apollo 11 crew


The whole thing is a Jew operation.



And for those who are offended at the revealing of these Masonic traitors, know this: they are not heroes, they didn't go to the moon, they sold out the United States of America by swearing allegiance to the Jewish Masonic Lodge of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.

Ya, everyone knows that some of the Astronauts were masons. That's not even a secret. They did weird little rituals up there. There are photos. Armstrong and Aldrin also did some kind of weird ceremony involving drinking wine when they landed.

That means jack shit. Just because they were masons doesn't mean that the all 6 of the moon missions were faked. Christopher Columbus was all Jewed up also... It doesn't mean that his voyage was faked. They(Aldrin & Armstrong) were/are masons because they were hot shot astronauts and were influential. They are Masons just like most people that rise to position of power in the west. Nothing new there.

[Whaler]

@Tim_Fitz
Re the freemasonery angle.
Why would you take a hammer to the Moon...if you really went there ?   Heavy and useless (unless part of your tool kit to fix the Moon Buggy if it broke down!) ....Unless to perform some weird kind of Freemasonery rite with a falcon feather.
Until now, I believed in the Moon landings.
If they had used wires, I can't understand why they didn't do a proper job and make the "astronauts" jump 14 ft.
Not to have dust on the feet of the Lunar Module... very careless !
The trouble is that when you make up a lie, it is virtually impossible not to overlook something or other.

Ya, they would have brought a hammer to the moon for that or any other repairs....or for the experiment they preplanned. They would have brought the feather because it was extremely light weight and they had preplanned an experiment with the hammer.

Unless to perform some weird kind of Freemasonery rite with a falcon feather

That is also a possibility. I don't think that it is evidence of 6 faked moon landings though.

Not to have dust on the feet of the Lunar Module... very careless !

Moon hoaxers have a habit of cherry picking a couple of photos out of hundreds that somewhat support their theory.

Until now, I believed in the Moon landings.

really??? I guess I'm gonna have to crank it up a notch then.

[Whaler]

"My husband directed the fake moon landing" says Stanley Kubrick's widow

http://www.firetown.com/blog/2011/03/21/my-husband-directed-the-fake-moon-landing-says-stanley-kubricks-widow/

Ya, ok Stanley Kubrick was an insider Illuminati Jew...no disputing that. Why assume that his wife is on the level then? What is this broad selling or promoting?
http://www.christianekubrick.com/



Why hasn't the Nazi/Masonic priesthood of NASA eliminated her?

So Kubrik found the time to stage 6 moonlandings? You do realize this guy was a crazed, type A perfectionist right? He was famous for driving his actors/producers/studio crazy for taking way to long to shoot movies. Sorry, no way this guy found the time to shoot hundreds of hours of footage and still maintained his regular activities as a Hollywood director.

Also....

http://www.clavius.org/movies.html

Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey showed that convincing special effects were possible in 1968, and that accurate depictions of space travel could be produced on movie soundstages.

It's up to individual preference whether to believe the effects in 2001 were credible and accurate. We don't believe they were actually created in outer space. Here's where the cat gets let out of the bag:

    * There are too many goofs. In several scenes we can see evidence that this is a manufactured film. We can see the edges of scenery panels, fly wires, reflections of equipment, rear projections, etc. These imperfections appear in every feature film despite efforts from filmmakers. Kubrick had several months and a large budget to orchestrate what would eventually be only two and a half hours of final product, and there were still errors. The Apollo program produced ten times that much footage with no editing seams and with no obvious mistakes.
    * The astronomy is wrong. The views from earth to the moon, and of the earth from the lunar surface don't match. For example, the earth is high in the lunar sky as seen from Clavius; it should be low on the horizon. The phase of the earth changes radically between scenes.
    * The photography is wrong. As in every space movie, we see a moving starfield in all the space scenes in 2001, along with sunlit objects. You cannot photograph both with the same camera settings. And even if you had a magical camera that could do it, the starfield shouldn't move. The cinematic reason for the moving starfield is to provide a background against which the motion of the foreground can be reckoned; filmmakers acknowledge it doesn't really happen that way, but it needs to happen in a movie.
    * The propulsion is wrong. As Dr. Floyd's lunar transport lands, the dust billows as it would in an atmosphere, because it was filmed in an atmosphere. The dust would displace in a vacuum, but it would tend to form a flat sheet and would disperse quickly. When Dave Bowman blows the emergency hatch on the pod in order to re-enter the airlock, the pod stays right there. It should have been propelled away from the ship by the force of the escaping air.
    * The zero-gravity scenes are wrong. As Dr. Floyd ascends to orbit he sips through a straw, and the fluid level drops back down to the container when he lets go. Sure, it could be a vacuum effect, but it's not the way drinking happens currently in zero gravity. In several scenes you can see supposedly weightless people moving as if there were gravity -- "grip soles" notwithstanding:
          o The Pan-Am captain hunches over Dr. Floyd's seat as a man in normal gravity would have done in order to rest his body weight on the seat back. Such a "hunker" is intuitive in gravity, but uncomfortable and unnatural in weightlessness.
          o Dr. Floyd's tray rises up from his lap -- presumably because Dr. Floyd has forgotten to secure it. What made it spontaneously start floating upward? Why did it sway from side to side? And why did it stop floating upward for no visible reason a split-second before Dr. Floyd grabs it? Newton screams "fraud!" at this sort of cinematic license.
    * The low-gravity scenes are wrong. The space station floor curves upward correctly to indicate the inside of a torus that spins to provide artificial gravity. But as the characters move about the scene they remain vertical with respect to the frame. They should instead tilt perpendicular to the angle of the floor where they are standing. There are numerous scenes that supposedly take place on the lunar surface, but no evidence of lesser gravity can be seen. The characters move as they would have on earth.
    * The lunar landscape is wrong. Kubrick shows us sharp-pointed mountains even though high-definition close-range photographs from Lunar Orbiter 2 (1966) showed the rounded mountains familiar in Apollo photographs.

Again conspiracists claim to be able to identify obscure and minute anomalies in Apollo photos and video, but they can't seem to do it with their own evidence. Nevertheless the important point is the conspiracist argument that NASA could do it because Kubrick could do it. As we've seen, Kubrick can't do it. He can't establish and maintain a truly credible "hoax" for two hours. Nor are the special effects convincing enough to fool observant people into actually thinking they represent space or lunar environments.
But there's actual evidence -- historical accounts -- that Kubrick worked with NASA to fake the footage.

Many conspiracists, led by Clyde Lewis, point to an article circling around the Internet which purports to describe in detail the process Kubrick used to fake the moon landings. But the article is obviously intended as a joke, as a careful reading reveals.
Stanley Kubrick's and Peter Hyams' budgets were very small compared to NASA's. With $40 billion and professional physicists on hand to correct mistakes, these directors could have made the effects much more convincing.

If so then the supposed genius of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Kubrick are irrelevant. The argument was that Kubrick was such a brilliant filmmaker he could have made a convincing hoax. But if Kubrick would have needed expert advisors, then those advisors (not Kubrick) would have been the real geniuses behind it. The conspiracists are just back to speculating about what might be done with supposedly limitless resources. The demonstrable state of the art in 1968 -- compelling but not convincing -- doesn't really have much to do with that.

And it really didn't have much to do with budget. The problems in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Capricorn One had more to do with deciding what effects to attempt rather than attempting good ones and failing. Budget would have increased the quality of the effects, but not their faithfulness to real life. No matter how much money you spend making a realistic starfield, it doesn't compensate for the fact that you shouldn't see one -- much less a moving one. The glitches also deal with basic filmmaking techniques, something Kubrick should already have known, and physicists wouldn't necessarily be helpful.

Consider also Silent Running. Kubrick budgeted $10 million for 2001: A Space Odyssey, while Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running was shot for about a tenth the cost. Trumbull produced the visual effects for both films. Silent Running is less ambitious than Kubrick's masterpiece, but achieves a greater level of consistency and credibility. Increasing the budget does not automatically increase the quality and seamlessness of the final product.

[youtube:2rnosd0r]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNbeN_V_NNw[/youtube]2rnosd0r]

[youtube:2rnosd0r]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK3Jnl6Zyhk[/youtube]2rnosd0r]

So Kubrik found the time to stage 6 moon landings? You do realize this guy was a crazed, type A perfectionist right? He was famous for driving his actors/producers/studio crazy for taking way to long to shoot movies. Sorry, no way this guy found the time to shoot thousands of hours of footage and still maintained his regular activities as a Hollywood director.

Just to demonstrate this point, here is a great doc on his life:

Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures full version

Just click the youtube link under the video to watch it on youtube. Embedding is disabled for it but you can watch it on youtube.

[youtube:2rnosd0r]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chs0yiPUmjg[/youtube]2rnosd0r]



parts 1-6 out of 14

[youtube:2rnosd0r]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=big-Ezv66fg[/youtube]2rnosd0r]

[youtube:2rnosd0r]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmcqP5sLPYY[/youtube]2rnosd0r]

[youtube:2rnosd0r]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdbcGV3uxlk[/youtube]2rnosd0r]

[youtube:2rnosd0r]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGuTf2WmCBo[/youtube]2rnosd0r]

[youtube:2rnosd0r]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDn6h0Gl8lU[/youtube]2rnosd0r]

[youtube:2rnosd0r]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiKlZ73b-Xs[/youtube]2rnosd0r]

[Christopher Marlowe]

Astrobrandt does a whole video of a strawman argument?  And then that strawman apparently had strawbabies. What's troublesome is that AB has such a critical eye when he's looking at a cool movie, but he can't notice the obvious bullsh*t in the apollo hoax pictures/videos. It's also troublesome that AB is such bloviating bore.  

AB has the nerve to show the apollo astroNOT in the shadow of the LEM with his backpack lit up?  The mythbusters supposedly proved this could be done, using Portland cement as a substitute for the moon's reflective albido. But as I read on a blogpost somewhere, "F*ck mythbusters, the only thing those two fags bust is nuts inside each others *ssholes."  The Mythbusters says the moon's albido is 7% to 10%, and they measure their test model at 8%.

But Jarrah White points out that Portland gray cement has an albido of 35 to 40%; Portland white cement has an albido of 70 to 80%. You see, MB are depending on the zombies not to check up on the facts.

Here is Jarrah White proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the mythbusters are lying fags:
[youtube:3htud0lt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPni1ESWlNU[/youtube]3htud0lt]
[youtube:3htud0lt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxLx7bpDW9Q[/youtube]3htud0lt]
[youtube:3htud0lt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yEaZsiXkVPI[/youtube]3htud0lt]
[youtube:3htud0lt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRJNhxCcxRM[/youtube]3htud0lt]

[Whaler]

Astrobrandt does a whole video of a strawman argument?  And then that strawman apparently had strawbabies. What's troublesome is that AB has such a critical eye when he's looking at a cool movie, but he can't notice the obvious bullsh*t in the apollo hoax pictures/videos. It's also troublesome that AB is such bloviating bore.  

AB has the nerve to show the apollo astroNOT in the shadow of the LEM with his backpack lit up?  

 :lol:

You hate that guy with a passion. He is a bit smug...although I kinda like his vids.

He has some very important/sad news. Just uploaded a few hours ago.

[youtube:2e67001y]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjttUPGaQIo[/youtube]2e67001y]











 






















:clap:  :up:  

[Timothy_Fitzpatrick]

lol@strawbabies!

[Whaler]

Jarrah White Debunked by AstroBrandt

[youtube:3l9xmetp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQgRjV4RGrY[/youtube]3l9xmetp]

[youtube:3l9xmetp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUBy5Xzf9ok[/youtube]3l9xmetp]

[youtube:3l9xmetp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruYtL8kPhkg[/youtube]3l9xmetp]

Dealing with the myth busters stuff
[youtube:3l9xmetp]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krpuXKDq4f8[/youtube]3l9xmetp]

[Timothy_Fitzpatrick]

Whaler, anti-Freemasonry goes along with the territory of being anti-Jewish...why? Because they are one and the same, more or less. If you claim not to trust Jews, then you also have to claim not to trust Freemasons. Do you trust Jews or something?

[Whaler]

Whaler, anti-Freemasonry goes along with the territory of being anti-Jewish...why? Because they are one and the same, more or less. If you claim not to trust Jews, then you also have to claim not to trust Freemasons. Do you trust Jews or something?

but it's not as if I'm relying only on the word of a few astronauts...It's not as if the only evidence for six manned missions out there is a few Apollo astronauts saying,"we went to the moon". There's shit loads more evidence than that.

Here is that "fake Dutch moon rock" nonsense completely discredited and debunked. As are all of the kooky claims made by the moon-hoaxers. The moon hoax theory needs to be brought behind the barn and shot...put out of it's misery.

The Moonstone of The Netherlands - Part 1
[youtube:r1f87ny7]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHALUGcEEiQ[/youtube]r1f87ny7]

pt2
[youtube:r1f87ny7]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGQhArtFqIM[/youtube]r1f87ny7]

[youtube:r1f87ny7]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBmJTWMPf0U[/youtube]r1f87ny7]

Shadows on the Moon - Revisited
[youtube:r1f87ny7]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZB-DosUGeY[/youtube]r1f87ny7]

Letters from the Moon - The "C" Rock Reloaded
[youtube:r1f87ny7]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxwL4DCzUN4[/youtube]r1f87ny7]

Moon Hoax Theory Lies: Wire Supports and Slow Motion
[youtube:r1f87ny7]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBICR4PTLfc[/youtube]r1f87ny7]

The MoonFaker Chronicles Episode 216: Radioactive Absurdity
[youtube:r1f87ny7]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ecizkmuw4rk[/youtube]r1f87ny7]


When We Left Earth

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=9BA75FCD5F4412C9

[Timothy_Fitzpatrick]

OK, Whaler, what about the Van Allen belts?

[Whaler]

OK, Whaler, what about the Van Allen belts?

I addressed that already. The second post deals with that.

If y'all are wondering why some of the videos I posted are not available, it's because Jarrah White had a hissy fit and had Youtube delete the vids. Yup, silencing moonhoax advocates is a Jewish conspiracy :roll:  :crazy:  :crazy:
Give me a f%*!ing break  

[youtube:1fhxda6l]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90GFoXkdQhU[/youtube]1fhxda6l]

[Timothy_Fitzpatrick]

Download: https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/407242 ... on..__XviD

[Whaler]

90-second pwnage: Jarrah debunks himself
[youtube:2wxs020u]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG3UcK9j4Xg[/youtube]2wxs020u]

Re: Apollo Moon Landing Hoax: The Case of the Missing Tracks, follow up.
[youtube:2wxs020u]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKTSJ0RTuMk[/youtube]2wxs020u]

J. White has gone on a rampage/hissy fit to get all of the videos debunking his claims falsely and illegally removed from youtube. Pathetic.

The Blunder-Boy Who Cried DMCA
[youtube:2wxs020u]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6xY7WFQ3OI[/youtube]2wxs020u]

"A Funny Thing..." Moon Conspiracy debunked pt 1 of 2
[youtube:2wxs020u]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMrB857Oaxw[/youtube]2wxs020u]

"A Funny Thing..." Moon Conspiracy debunked pt 2 of 2
[youtube:2wxs020u]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYA_g2AJ0fc[/youtube]2wxs020u]

[Whaler]

Download: https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/407242 ... on..__XviD

"The recent Fox TV show, which I saw, is an ingenious and entertaining assemblage of nonsense. The claim that radiation exposure during the Apollo missions would have been fatal to the astronauts is only one example of such nonsense." -- Dr. James Van Allen



http://www.clavius.org/envrad.html
This general charge is usually made by people who don't understand very much at all about radiation. After witnessing the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the tragedy of Chernobyl it is not surprising that the idea of radiation should elicit an intuitively fearful reaction. But when you understand the different types of radiation and what can be done about them, it becomes a manageable problem to avoid radiation exposure.
It doesn't matter how difficult or expensive it might have been to falsify the lunar landings. Since it was absolutely impossible to solve the radiation problem, the landings had to have been faked.

This is a common method of argument that attempts to prove something that can't be proven, by disproving something else. In this case the reader is compelled to accept the conspiracy theory and all its attendant problems and improbabilities, simply on the basis that no matter how difficult, absurd, or far-fetched a particular proposition may be, if it's the only alternative to something clearly impossible then it must -- somehow -- have come to pass. This false dilemma is aimed at pushing the reader past healthy skepticism and into a frame of mind where the absurd seems plausible.

The false dilemma is only convincing if the supposedly impossible alternative is made to seem truly impossible. And so conspiracists argue very strenuously that the radiation from various sources spelled absolute doom for the Apollo missions. They quote frightening statistics and cite various highly technical sources to try to establish to the reader that the radiation poses a deadly threat.

But in fact most conspiracists know only slightly more about radiation than the average reader. This means only a very few people in the world can dispute their allegations, and the conspiracists can simply dismiss them as part of the conspiracy.
The Van Allen belts are full of deadly radiation, and anyone passing through them would be fried.

Needless to say this is a very simplistic statement. Yes, there is deadly radiation in the Van Allen belts, but the nature of that radiation was known to the Apollo engineers and they were able to make suitable preparations. The principle danger of the Van Allen belts is high-energy protons, which are not that difficult to shield against. And the Apollo navigators plotted a course through the thinnest parts of the belts and arranged for the spacecraft to pass through them quickly, limiting the exposure.

The Van Allen belts span only about forty degrees of earth's latitude -- twenty degrees above and below the magnetic equator. The diagrams of Apollo's translunar trajectory printed in various press releases are not entirely accurate. They tend to show only a two-dimensional version of the actual trajectory. The actual trajectory was three-dimensional. The highly technical reports of Apollo, accessible to but not generally understood by the public, give the three-dimensional details of the translunar trajectory.

Each mission flew a slightly different trajectory in order to access its landing site, but the orbital inclination of the translunar coast trajectory was always in the neighborhood of 30°. Stated another way, the geometric plane containing the translunar trajectory was inclined to the earth's equator by about 30°. A spacecraft following that trajectory would bypass all but the edges of the Van Allen belts.

This is not to dispute that passage through the Van Allen belts would be dangerous. But NASA conducted a series of experiments designed to investigate the nature of the Van Allen belts, culminating in the repeated traversal of the Southern Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly (an intense, low-hanging patch of Van Allen belt) by the Gemini 10 astronauts.
NASA defenders make a big deal about the Southern Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly, but the Apollo spacecraft ventured into the more intense parts of the belts.

True, but the point was to validate the scientific models using hard data, and to ascertain that a spacecraft hull would indeed attenuate the radiation as predicted.
We know the space shuttle passes through the Southern Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly (SAMA), but since the shuttle astronauts have time in each orbit to recover, the effects are not felt as strongly. The Apollo astronauts spent around four hours at a single stretch in the Van Allen belts. [Mary Bennett]

This is exactly the opposite of the recovery principle. If the shuttle astronauts spend 30 minutes of each 90-minute orbit passing through the SAMA, that sums to an exposure of 8 hours per day. The human body does not recover from radiation in a matter of minutes but rather hours and days. The damaged tissue must be regenerated. If radiation exposure is more or less continuous over several days, such as in the shuttle scenario, the tissue never has time to regenerate before being damaged by continuing radiation.

Even though the outlying parts of the Van Allen belts contain more intense radiation than the SAMA, a four-hour passage followed by days of relatively little exposure offers a better recovery scenario than days of accumulated low-level exposure.

The four-hour figure is reasonable, but somewhat arbitrary. Since the Van Allen belts vary in flux and energy, it's not as if there's a clearly demarcated boundary. It's a bit like walking over a hill. If the slope gently increases from flat and level to 30° or so, where do you say the hill starts?
It would require six feet (two meters) of lead in order to shield from the Van Allen belts. The Apollo spacecraft had nowhere near this amount of shielding and so could not have provided the astronauts adequate protection.

The "six feet of lead" statistic appears in many conspiracist charges, but no one has yet owned up to being the definitive source of that figure. In fact, six feet (2 m) of lead would probably shield against a very large atomic explosion, far in excess of the normal radiation encountered in space or in the Van Allen belts.

While such drastic measures are needed to shield against intense, high-frequency electromagnetic radiation, that is not the nature of the radiation in the Van Allen belts. In fact, because the Van Allen belts are composed of high-energy protons and high-energy electrons, metal shielding is actually counterproductive because of the Bremsstrahlung that would be induced.

Metals can be used to shield against particle radiation, but they are not the ideal substance. Polyethylene is the choice of particle shielding today, and various substances were available to the Apollo engineers to absorb Van Allen radiation. The fibrous insulation between the inner and outer hulls of the command module was likely the most effective form of radiation shielding. When metals must be used in spacecraft (e.g., for structural strength) then a lighter metal such as aluminum is better than heavier metals such as steel or lead. The lower the atomic number, the less Bremsstrahlung.

The notion that only vast amounts of a very heavy metal could shield against Van Allen belt radiation is a good indicator of how poorly though out the conspiracist radiation case is. What the conspiracists say is the only way of shielding against the Van Allen belt radiation turns out to be the worst way to attempt to do it!
Official NASA documents describing the pre-Apollo studies of the Van Allen belts clearly state that shielding was recommended for the Apollo spacecraft, yet no shielding was provided. [Mary Bennett and David Percy]

Commensurate with the common perception of radiation as an inescapably deadly force is the notion of radiation shielding as universally heavy and dense. Percy and others seem to rely on the notion that radiation shielding, if present, would have been very conspicuous -- or prohibitively bulky.

As discussed in the previous question, shielding against particles is not the same as shielding against rays. To say that the Apollo spacecraft did not provide adequate shielding is to ignore both the construction of the Apollo command module and the principles of radiation shielding.

And it must be kept in mind that shielding was only one element of a multi-pronged solution for safely traversing the Van Allen belts. It was never intended that the shielding in the command module would provide the only protection for the astronauts. The shielding was adequate to protect the astronauts against the circumstances of the trajectory and exposure duration worked out by the mission planners.
NASA apologists come up with different numbers for estimates of the exposure in the Van Allen belts. This suggests they really don't know what they're talking about. [Mary Bennett and David Percy]

All the estimates we've seen lie within the same order of magnitude and generally outline a plausible method of computation. This stands in contrast to the conspiracist estimates which generally have no quantitative support.

Computing the precise exposure for Apollo astronauts is very difficult. That's why the astronauts wore dosimeters to measure the actual exposure. The factors involved in computing expected exposure analytically include:

    Exact trajectory. The Van Allen belts are not uniformly shaped. They have thick and thin spots. And the level of radiation is not constant at all points. Toward the center of the belt cross sections there is more radiation than at the edges. Most Apollo enthusiasts do not know the exact trajectory or how it relates to the location of the Van Allen belts. But they know that they don't know this, and so they frequently do their computations assuming the astronauts passed through the densest parts, and therefore err on the side of overestimating the exposure.

    Exact velocity. Exposure time is very important to a correct computation of radiation dosage. Because the velocity of the spacecraft is constantly changing, the same ambiguity which governs the geometry of the trajectory also governs the rate at which it is followed. And most enthusiasts (and all conspiracists) lack the information and skill to precisely determine the velocity of the spacecraft during the Van Allen belt traversal, and therefore the exposure time.

    Exact energy and flux. In any given cubic meter of the Van Allen belts there will be a soup of particles at various energy levels and fluences. Energy describes the velocity of the particle, how far it will penetrate, and how much damage it will do if it hits something. Flux is the density of particles, how many of them pass through a given area in a second. Generally, the higher the energy the lower the flux. Low-energy particles (i.e., protons 30 MeV and below) can be ignored because they do not penetrate the spacecraft outer hull. But at each point along the trajectory through the Van Allen belts there is a different continuum of flux and energy. It requires a lot of mathematics to fully solve this system. And since some of the variables are hard to determine, they're typically approximated.

    Probabilistic factors. Even should a high-energy particle penetrate the spacecraft hull to the interior, it will only cause problems in the human organism if it is absorbed in tissue. It is possible for the particles to pass through the body without colliding, in which case they are harmless. The human body varies in density. Particles are more likely to collide with dense tissue like bone. The amount of absorbed radiation is a statistical probability based on how much radiation is detected by dosimeters.

To summarize then, a fully accurate analytical solution must first determine the exact trajectory of the spacecraft through the Van Allen belts. This will give a continuous function describing particle flux and energy at each point along the trajectory.

At each point in the trajectory we will have a function giving flux per given energy level. So a 100 MeV proton will have, say, a flux of 20,000 particles per square centimeter per second at that point in space. But for other energy levels the flux will be different at the same point. The total irradiation inside a spacecraft will be the sum of all the fluences at energies capable of penetrating the hull and shielding.

And at each point along the trajectory the velocity of the spacecraft must be determined so it can be known how much time the spacecraft spends at that point. This is multiplied by the conglomeration of fluences to arrive at a dose.

This dose is simply the amount of radiation present. It must be converted to a meaningful value that describes its likely effect on human tissue. Again, energy and fluence come into play, because low-energy particles (but still high enough to penetrate the shield) are likely to accumulated in the outer layers of the skin and cause damage which is sloughed off harmlessly. High-energy particles are absorbed in the bones and internal organs, causing much greater injury.

The procedure for analytically computing a radiation dose is simple enough in principle as outlined above, but of course is very difficult to actually carry out. This is why engineers generally don't try to compute the dosage to any great degree of accuracy ahead of time. They are happy simply to arrive at an order of magnitude which provides adequate design criteria. The actual radiation exposure is always measured, not computed.
So then was it measured on Apollo?

Yes. Each astronaut wore a personal dosimeter. The accumulated dose for each astronaut was regularly reported to Mission Control over the radio.
New evidence has shown that the Van Allen belts are indeed stronger and more dangerous than NASA says. [Bart Sibrel]

Sibrel misinterprets the source article published by CNN. It was reported only that the Van Allen belts were slightly larger in places and slightly denser than previously understood. This is not a new reality, merely a refinement of existing figures. We are still studying the Van Allen belts and must occasionally revise our numerical models. The new findings have implications for the astronauts in the Alpha space station. Since these astronauts will be exposed to the fringes of the Van Allen belts for an extended period, it is prudent now to provide a bit of extra polyethylene shielding to the sleeping quarters. For transitory exposure such as in Apollo missions, the new findings add only a negligible hazard.

Sibrel and others argue that NASA has under-reported the intensity of the Van Allen belts for many years as part of a cover-up. They argue that the real magnitude of the radiation is now being made known, and that it's strong enough to have precluded a successful Apollo mission.

Unfortunately that's a very naive argument. The United States has never been the only spacefaring nation, nor the only nation ever to study the Van Allen belts. Canada provide valuable data to the Apollo project, and the USSR duplicated all the U.S. research, and may even have conducted more. For thirty years the same body of engineering data used to produce the Apollo spacecraft has been used by all nations in designing communication satellites, probes, and other devices intended to operate in and beyond the Van Allen belts. If this data had seriously under-reported the actual radiation present, the spacecraft engineered to those standards would all have failed prematurely due to radiation damage.

This is a very important point since it involves the financial interests (to the tune of billions of dollars!) of countries with no special desire to protect the reputation of the United States. Had this data been seriously wrong, someone surely would have complained by now. Satellites are insured against premature loss, and the insurers want to make sure the spacecraft are engineered to the best possible standards. There is immense worldwide economic incentive to having the best available data on the Van Allen belts, so it's highly improbable the the U.S. has been intentionally providing erroneous data to the entire world for thirty years.
An orbital nuclear detonation in 1962 code-named Starfish Prime created a third Van Allen belt composed of high-energy electrons. This belt was a hundred times more intense than the existing Van Allen belts and was computed to have a half-life of 20 years. [Bennett and Percy, Dark Moon, p. 309]

The authors give no reference for the claim that this artificial radiation belt was "a hundred times" more "intense" than the naturally-occurring belts. Nor do they define what is meant by "intense". The Starfish Prime test did in fact produce a temporary artificial radiation belt, and it's true that this belt persisted longer than anticipated. But it was not an impediment to the Apollo missions because it had dissipated to a safe level by then, and was very small (and easily avoided) to start with.

Radioactive half-life applies to radioisotopes only. It does not apply to clouds of magnetically-retained charged particles. The authors imply that their theory is confirmed by expert authors, but in fact the author they cite discusses only the general concept of radioactive half-life. Bennett and Percy are responsible for having misapplied it to this problem. Radioactive half-life and particle belts have nothing at all to do with each other. The dispersal of this belt doesn't have anything to do with radioactive decay, and a great deal to do with solar weather and shifting magnetic fields.

The authors argue that such a radiation belt would still be highly intense to this day. However they have shown no evidence that any of the radiation from Starfish Prime is still there. Instead they refer to irrelevant scientific principles and claim it "must" still be there.
A secret study done by the Soviet Union and obtained by the CIA determined that a meter of lead would be required to shield against deep space radiation.

Many conspiracists allude to this alleged report, but none of them can attest to actually having seen it. Since they can argue the alleged report is closely held by the CIA and therefore still top secret, the conspiracists are protected from refutation. No one can prove the non-existence of any document, much less one that is allegedly classified by an intelligence agency. Unfortunately it's more straightforward to note that the conspiracists cannot expect the world to accept an argument based on evidence which they cannot produce. If it's so top secret, how do they know about it?

It's fairly easy to show that such a document likely does not exist. We know that great thicknesses of lead are not required to shield against particle radiation. We know that Soviet science and engineering were excellent. We note with no small amusement and no small suspicion that the conclusion of the alleged report contradicts the commonly accepted principles of physics, and that it instead bears a striking resemblance to the naive assertions of inexpert conspiracy theorists who claim that only thick sheets of lead are suitable for radiation shielding. The alleged report is plausible to the lay reader but utterly unconvincing to the scientist.

History provides the final proof. Had the Soviets actually believed that great thicknesses of material were required to shield against radiation, they would have questioned the design of the Apollo spacecraft. The spacecraft clearly did not provide a meter of lead shielding, yet NASA claims it successfully traversed the Van Allen belts. Yet the Soviets acknowledged then and continue to acknowledge today that the Apollo program was a clear success.

In recent years the Western world has been able to examine the Soviet spacecraft design which was to have carried cosmonauts to the moon. They did not provide a meter of lead for their spacecraft either.
Soviet cosmonauts have been quoted as saying radiation was a very grave concern.

And NASA officials have been quoted as saying essentially the same thing. Radiation is a very great concern, but there's a vast difference between a "concern" and an insurmountable obstacle. The conspiracist argument relies on the radiation problem being insurmountable, and nothing said by either NASA or cosmonauts conveys the notion that these problems couldn't