The Giant Leap, Thirty Five Years Ago

If you look closely at the "moon landing" you will notice beside the landing module an empty six pack of Budweiser that my uncle Bob left there in 1969 thus proving that the "landing" actually took place right outside Vegas. Also, you will notice on the third landing a bevy of lovely dancing girls in the background (you must look close because the TV networks tried to censore it). I also saw "Buzz" Aldrin shooing away a wild rabbit.

In that July of 1969, i was sitting out on the gallery, looking up at the moon while i listened to the television commentary. I was living with my aunt in Virginia then; she sat in the living room, and was gettin a little tipsy. She continually repeated that it was all a hoax, that it couldn't be real, that it was being televised from a Hollywood sound studio. I've never understood what about the event frightened and angered her.

I suggest that the conspiracy theorists got busy that very night, and have been at it ever since.

i remember when that happened, we were at my uncle donalds house on oahu. the adults were glued to the television, being only 8 at the time i was too busy doing what 8 year old boys do.

i read another article which i can't seem to find now, that was titled something along the line of "thirty five years ago the greatest hoax ever staged"

I doubt many educated people take the hoax concept seriously, but looking at it rationally, I'm thinking that possibly other nations could triangulate the ship's radio signals and find its position, see it in large telescopes before it got too far away, or at least would have had some technical means of determining that it was or wasn't a hoax. Also, who could keep a secret that big? NASA employs and employed thousands of people and the number who would have had to know that the development program didn't correspond to a real landing would have been pretty large. I doubt that in an organization that large you could pretend to be doing one development program, but actually be doing a vastly different one without a lot of people either knowing it or smelling a rat.

As far as i'm concerned, you've stated at the outset the prime objection to the vast majority of conspiracy theories. Conspirators cannot be expected to keep their secrets forever, and they are often engaged in a type of deceit which would lead to resentment and distrust among the conspirators.

Having spent most of my career working for manufacturers of technical products of one type or another, I can't believe it would be possible to conduct a huge development program which seemed to be developing one thing, but was actually developing something else. It would be impossible to generate such a massive illusion for the employees working on it. A very large number of people would be required to keep the news story of the century quiet for the rest of their lives. Apart from the people doing the development itself, think about the people managing communications with the ship, both at NASA and at tracking stations around the world which use radio telescopes which have to be aimed at the ship. How do you fool them?

Did anyone else see the fabulous "documentary" with Kissinger and Kubrick's widow, and half the neocons taking part, finally "revealing" the hoax?

It was hilarious - I thought I was dreaming - until I realised it was April Fool's Day.

Have you seen the film 'Scorpion Rising' from the 70's? Apart from starring OJ Simpson, it's a very good take on the whole Moon-hoax-thing, using a fictional Mars landing instead.

One thing about the Moon landings that puzzles me is the computing power available at the time. I read a news article last year about some new military jet currently undergoing R&D which uses 2 million lines of code in its on-board flight computer. The same article mentioned that the NASA computers running the Moon landings were only using 16,000 lines!

I still think the landings happened though.

I was not alive at the time this happened but I definitely believe that we landed on the moon. I honestly didn't hear about the hoax until maybe a year or so ago and it was through this web site..

Bad Astronomy

I figure a lot of you have seen this, but if not it's a really great article, and web site in my opinion. It is specific to a Fox network program about the hoax that I didn't see either. I miss so much without TV ha ha. Yeah right

I was very young at the time....

My Dad woke me up and asked me to follow him to our black and white TV. I was eight years old and it was very late. It was hard to stay awake.

I still remember it, so my Dad's enthusiasm must have been profound.

I remember it taking FOREVER for them to get anything done, unlike most TV Sci-fi, most things happen slowly in space. They kept getting closer and closer to that endless grey; beep.... beep....beep... crackle... pffffthirteen feet...beep...beep....pffftwelve feet....why didn't they just do like regular TV and land already...

I think I fell asleep again. But my father woke me and I saw the first step. Recorded in my memory for what has turned out to be over thirty years now.

Still, I don't remember being all that impressed at the time. It's hard to impress an eight year old with a mere moon landing, when everything in the world is so new. From a child's perspective it was "So we landed on the moon, big deal; airplanes, submarines, nuclear bombs, telescopes,
rockets.... just another thing that adults can do."

But I still remember, and now I know what I witnessed on that dreamy sleepless night so long ago.

I wonder if I'll live long enough to see a man step onto Mars.

The only thing that throws me is I remember learning in school how there is some insanely powerful magnetic force around the earth between us and the moon (higher than where our satillites orbit) that will pretty much kill anything that tries to pass through it that isn't surrounded by like, 10 feet of solid metal.

How did the astronauts get around that problem? Or was my teacher just full of it?

Teacher was full of it. What can ya do.

I remember when Alan Shephard went up, they called it Shephard's Hook, as he went to a suborbital altitude in space, and then the capsule fell back to splash down in . . . the Bermuda Triangle (whoooOOOOOooooo . . . eerie music). After that, they put televisions in all the schools (they were not common then, and many people objected that we were not there to watch television, but rather to learn). So we watched the rest of the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo stuff in the classroom, as well as at home. I vividly remember John Glenn's first flight. I also remember him on Name That Tune. Exciting times for those with some degree, at least, of imagination.

the next u.s manned flight to the moon may be in 2020. i think the year 2525 would be a better choice. story

In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do, and say
Is in the pill you took today
In the year 4545
Ain't gonna need your teeth, won't need your eyes
You won't find a thing chew
Nobody's gonna look at you
In the year 5555
Your arms are hanging limp at your sides
Your legs got not nothing to do
Some machine is doing that for you
In the year 6565
Ain't gonna need no husband, won't need no wife
You'll pick your son, pick your daughter too
From the bottom of a long glass tube
In the year 7510
If God's a-comin' he ought to make it by then
Maybe he'll look around himself and say
Guess it's time for the Judgement day
In the year 8510
God is gonna shake his mighty head
He'll either say I'm pleased where man has been
Or tear it down and start again
In the year 9595
I'm kinda wondering if man is gonna be alive
He's taken everything this old earth can give
And he ain't put back nothing
Now it's been 10,000 years
Man has cried a billion tears
For what he never knew
Now man's reign is through
But through the eternal night
The twinkling of starlight
So very far away
Maybe it's only yesterday
In the year 2525
If man is still alive
If woman can survive
They may find
In the year 3535
Ain't gonna need to tell the truth, tell no lies
Everything you think, do or say
Is in the pill you took today ....(fading...)

zager evans

JustanObserver wrote:


Your teacher may have been referring to the Van Allen Belts. Here was a link I found with a quick google search.
Van Allen belts

It does not explain how they accomplished actually shielding the space ship. If I can find something better i'll post it.

Capricorn 1, starring James Brolin, was also a movie that fed the conspiracy theory, Duke.

Back with a couple links for those interested in the Van Allen radiation belts. Though I did not find anything stating exactly how they accomplished the shielding, I did see Aluminum mentioned quite a few times. It seems from what I read that they did what they could to minimize the risk, but were not really able to completely shield the astronauts. The risk might even increase once you are outside of the belts and directly exposed to the solar wind. If a solar flare occurs of the right intensity I read something stating it could potentially kill someone only wearing a space suit, say standing on the moon. My impression was this meant very quick death, and not caused by cancer years later. I mention this because I read that it is thought the Van Allen belts help to shield the earth from the solar wind. That the trapped particles in the belt are trapped solar wind particles. This last part may not be correct, im still reading.

With satellites like SOHO constantly fixed on the Sun, im thinking they could do a lot to predict these storms so you had time to get back to the ship for extra shielding. Everything I read suggested that this was to minimize the effect, and most likely not be able to shield 100% of the radiation. Interesting for sure.

First interesting link:
Van Allen radiation - travel to the moon

and the other:
Radiation belts

This is from your first link: "The Apollo spacecraft passed through the Van Allen belt quite quickly, so that in the short time they were exposed, the astronauts did not receive a dose of radiation considered dangerous, at least not compared to the inevitable other risks in the mission."

It is correct.

The Bad Astronomy link you posted above also contains answers to this question (since the radiation belt stuff is commonly used in the Moon Hoax theories).

That is bad wording for what I meant, I apologize. I guess I meant I didn't find anything stating specifically how thick of shielding they used, or if they needed a special shape. I was hoping to find something stating specifically what they used on the first mission, second mission, ect. That might have been super wishful thinking though.

There was reference in one of the links that gave an example of how much radiation would past through so much shielding.. I was hoping they would say "for mission 1 we used..".

Since I heard that 'this was a hoax' i've been trying to read every now and again all that I could. Those details I was searching for are not really important anyway, im always a sucker for the little details