Did they land on the Moon?

[beaky]

You're still missing my point. Nobody is disputing that or suggesting that Apollo 11 didn't reach the Moon & go into orbit around it. That would be ridiculous as thousands of people actually witnessed the rocket launched with their own eyes & the Soviets would have been monitoring it the whole time. The way I see it the only thing that could have been faked was that first Moon landing & the moon walk itself.

Some of the "theories" out there refute even that; they feel that the Van Allen Belt is some sort of cosmic barrier through which living humans cannot pass (and of course they have yet to prove it, whereas NASA has done otherwise).
As far as faking the landing/surface EVA goes, why would they create six more entire manned missions only to fake the next five landings?
 Are there actually people who think that the first was faked, but not the rest?
Everybody here knows my opinion on all this, but just thought of that question... have a wonderful holiday season here on the good Earth, everybody!!!

[Hagar]

[quote]As far as faking the landing/surface EVA goes, why would they create six more entire manned missions only to fake the next five landings?

[RichieB16]

Once committed that mission had to succeed as if anything had gone wrong & those astronauts had failed to return it's unlikely that there would have been any others.

I think if Apollo 11 had ended in tragitiy that they would have continued the program and eventually landed a man on the moon.  It would have certainly ended any hope of doing it by the end 1969 but I believe they would have found the problem end attempted it again because of how important it was politically to beat the Russians.  Plus, as it turned out (although we may not have known this at the time) the Russians were way behind us in their manned lunar program.  If Apollo 11 had ended in a fatal accident, its unlikely that our next landing attempt would anytime before 1971 but the Russians still probably wouldn't have succeded by then either.  I believe as long as the Russian's hadn't landed a man on the moon-we wern't going to give up.

[Hagar]

[quote]I think if Apollo 11 had ended in tragitiy that they would have continued the program and eventually landed a man on the moon.

[RichieB16]

Maybe, but I really think they would have.  You mention the space shuttle, but in both cases the flaw was found and the program continued.  It took a while, but eventually they were flying again (although they have been grounded again-they will fly again).  Dispite the fact that there is really no international political reason to continue the shuttle program-they still are.

With the political importance of the Apollo program, I can't imagine they would cancel it if there was a fatal accident during the first landinf attempt.  Bare in mind, there was a fatal accident on the launch pad in 1967 that occured when the rocket wasn't even fueled, a whole crew was lost (including the astronaut who was planned to make the first landing).  There would undoubtly be a delay until whatever problem could be solved (like with the shuttles) but eventually they would have flown again I believe-especially if the Russians had yet to make a landing.  And looking back, judging by where the Russians were with their program, by the time Apollo was back on its feet (probably a 2 year delay) it is unlikely the Russians would have landed yet.

So, in my opinion, they would have continued the program.

[TacitBlue]

NASA was a little different back then I believe. They werent affraid to try something new and they didn't analyze everything to the point that you couldn't actually do it. Also, there is a political obligation to keep the shuttle going. The US promised to complete the ISS, and from what I understand, that is pretty much the only reason they are keeping the shuttle going.

[Hagar]

You could both be right but we shall never know. That's the fascination of it & why these conspiracy theories exist. Nobody can prove them true any more than it can be proved that there is not some basis behind them & everyone likes a mystery. I never set out to change anyone's mind on this but if I've made a few people think about it instead of rejecting it out of hand then I've succeeded in my objective.

I've thoroughly enjoyed this discussion & from checking my facts by reading several different accounts I now know more about the Space Race & the Apollo missions than I ever knew. I could go on for several pages & explain exactly how this could have been done but by that time nobody would bother reading what I have to say. What nobody seems to have picked up on is that what I've been saying is probably the best argument against the conspiracy theories.

I'll leave this with a parting thought. While reading about the Soviet lunar program I was reminded that they sent an unmanned spacecraft to orbit the Moon & return. While it was in orbit a recording of a human voice was transmitted from the module & it was first thought at NASA that this was actually a manned mission. If the Soviets hadn't admitted that this was simply a recording nobody could have proved otherwise.

Russian probes were the first and the last to visit the Moon in the 1959-1976 era. Soviet Luna and Zond missions also photographed the Moon, with Luna 3 giving humanity the first view of the lunar farside in 1959. There were a total of 24 Luna missions, with the early missions being photographic orbiters and the latter being landers. The Luna 13 robotic probe successfully soft landed on the Moon in February, 1966, beating the American soft-lander probe by four months, and providing detailed pictures of the Moon's surface. Luna 16 in 1970 was the first of three Soviet probes to returned a lunar sample (after Apollo 11). Some of the Luna probes also had robotic rovers to drive around the lunar surface, called Lunokhod. The five Zond spacecraft were of a different design and operated concurrently between 1965 and 1970, all photographic orbiters, while the Luna missions started focusing on landing on the Moon. The Luna 24 mission was the last mission to the Moon in 1976, a sample return mission.

[H]

[quote]well, he can't fall faster than 1/6 g, that "lighter objects" fall slower on earth is due to atmospheric friction.on earth, in the first second an object falls about 5 m (1/2*9.82m*1s

[TacitBlue]

Alright, that's it! everybody get in the spaceship, we're going to fingure this out once and for all.
Hmmmm.. maybe this could be on Mythbusters in a few years...?

[H]

Hagar, this is not a refute of your propositions but, to support Richie and Tacit somewhat, it was a different NASA at the time. In the 1980s public and tax support was not what it was in the 1970s, to say nothing of what it was in the the 1960s. The effects of mishaps, more anticipated than later on when the technology was expected to have been 'perfected' , did not have the 'braking' capacity that they did later on.
It would have taken more than even a couple major failed missions -- even with lives lost. Public support was still strong enough at the start of the 1980s (I'm old enough for that to be well-recorded in memory) so, even had it been extended a decade for a landing, I'm sure it would have bee seen through (your arguments actually support that factor).

[H]

Alright, that's it! everybody get in the spaceship, we're going to fingure this out once and for all. Hmmmm.. maybe this could be on Mythbusters in a few years...?

How? If you're going to apply the formula for a free-falling object, the space ship won't get off of the ground.

[Rifleman]

My interest in the whole situation was total, inthat, I grabbed and read everything I could get my hands on at the time, and to see the logical progression of it all, allows me to have less than minor doubt about the entire program....,.Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo, were in my estimation, done in a very scientific manner, learning all the way and applying those lessons to the needs of the next steps along the way.............

..............if it was indeed a fake of some sort, then I say... " What a lot of time, money, and lives were wasted, just to fool the world ! "

[myshelf]

The formula is totally inaccurate, nigh inapplicable for well more than the person's height. Even the average man will outrun a race horse in the first yard or more -- they are not free-falling objects; their mass/gravity still plays a part but their power plant certainly has a major "initial" effect; the risidual effect varies accordingly until the max is reached.

the formula is simplified, but it's correct, neglecting atmospheric friction.

[Hagar]

..............if it was indeed a fake of some sort, then I say... " What a lot of time, money, and lives were wasted, just to fool the world ! "

The sole objective of the manned space program was to put a man on the Moon before the USSR, nothing more nothing less. This was so important that no effort or expense would be spared & it would involve convincing (or fooling) not only the Soviets but the whole World. If you can't see that you're missing the point.
As I said much earlier during this discussion: Hagar said:

I believe that it's more than likely that Neil Armstrong did walk on the Moon in 1969. If he didn't & it was faked then it was the biggest propaganda coup in history.

[myshelf]

i think faking the whole thing would have been more effort than doing it for real.

having said that, i think they rehearsed the EVA's pretty extensive, and maybe some of the pic and vids from those rehearsals somehow made it to the public, either accidental or on purpose.