Moon landing conspiracy theory disproved by new graphics card

[aronth5]

Mythbusters did a whole episode on Moon landing conspiracy theory. Fascinating!
http://mythbustersresults.com/nasa-moon-landing

"One of the NASA photos is fake because Neil Armstrong can be clearly seen while in the shadow of the lunar lander.
busted
To test this myth, the Mythbusters built a large-scale replica of the landing site, allowing them to take a photo which was nearly identical to the original NASA photo.
The Mythbusters explained that Armstrong was visible because of ambient light being reflected off of the Moon’s surface.

 

[physicsfita]

Sigh. This thread reminds me of the bad old days when I also taught Astronomy (in addition to Physics) -- every course offering, multiple students would bring up this grawlix. The only thing that got any traction was when I turned it around by demanding proof that over 35,000 people were still actively participating in a conspiracy for several decades, and not one of them had yet sold their story to the press, or made a deathbed confession. Even then, I still had "true believers". I need to go sit in a corner and weep now... :crying:

 

[rolosrevenge]

 

[brianman]

our amazing government that has the well oiled master plan

Haha. Thanks for that laugh.

 

[FreeOfPge]

Splashing down -back to Earth, this thread has become a personal attack thread where those with questions about the validity of a moon landing are being portrayed as unpatriotic. This could not be further from the truth, please keep in mind that during the cold war, and while America was racing to the moon, there was a real life intergalactic battle (of sorts) taking place deep beneath the tides of our oceans. The submarine battles claimed many lives and gathered real data that helped us win the cold war. This battle continues today.

While this seems a bit off topic to the moon landing, it's not. Money was often allocated to the space program publicly, while secretly funding deep sea missions, AKA, mass public deception. NASA was used as a convenient way to fund vitally important, super secret underwater missions.

My point, it's not unpatriotic or slandering to say the American public was deceived by our government - we have been deceived TO PROTECT OUR SAFETY AND FREEDOM. If, the moon landing was part of the deception, who knows? Could it have been? Yes. While I personally believe we did land on the moon, questions remain, that doesn't make me unpatriotic.

Anyway, I have work to do and have to run. If anyone's interested, there's an excellent non-fiction book, Blind Man's Bluff, it details some of this deception.

Wiki for Blind Man's Bluff: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Man's_Bluff:_The_Untold_Story_of_American_Submarine_Espionage
NY Times outline, with a link to the first chapter (upper lefthand corner) http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/20/reviews/981220.20naftalt.html

 

[chickensevil]

To be clear, while there was a little snark in my post, I was legitimately trying to explain the view as best as I understood it. I had never heard the twist about deflecting the money elsewhere, so that one is new to me. But just FYI the government doesn't need to deflect funding through another agency when they already have funding that doesn't actually get accounted for in the budgeting process. Black Bag operations are billed differently especially when it comes to the super secret programs, There really wasn't enough money going into NASA... like... ever, that would amount to anything special like that. It would have been more convenient to funnel the money into the Air Force since they are already launching tons of rockets (even back then) for their own secret stuff and directing that elsewhere would have been much easier and it would have been a lot more money.

Not saying they weren't doing things with subs and other spying programs, I just don't see why they would use NASA to hide it when there are better places and easier places to hide the funding.

That being said, NASA and going to the moon was very much a program that was initiated during the cold war as a show of power. Because the same rockets that we are sticking harmless satellites on publically shows our power to launch a rocket into Russia's back door and blow them up (and same with Russia to us) so just as we kept building more and more nukes and testing explosions, we were launching rockets showing the reach of our full power. Was there an underlying motive behind NASA in the 50s/60s yes. Was the motive to a cover for some giant conspiracy... no not really. Everyone at the time was well aware of the pissing contest going on between us and Russia.

 

[markwj]

Yeah. The 'difficult times' line in my post was alluding to precisely this. With the Cold War at it's peak, rockets to the moon meant as much about gaining the high ground as it did about advancing human exploration.

 

[FreeOfPge]

No problem, and thank you for the honest responses (and clarifying).

I should note, just to be fair, money was 'shifted' both directions - surely going to other secret programs as well.

 

[djplong]

The easiest way to disprove the Conspiracy Theorists claiming we never went to the moon is this..

The Soviets were tracking our every move in space. It wasn't difficult - all the information on where we were was public. If those signals with Armstrong's voice were coming from anywhere BUT the moon, the Soviets would have had a FIELD DAY with the news!

Kind of like "How come all those Bigfoot footprints were from creatures wearing shoes?" - the toes on every one of those imprints show the signs of having been wearing shoes all their lives. The Big Toe on a primate will line up differently if left alone from birth.

Simple questions to disprove outlandish theories.