Moon Hoax

NASA image AS11-40-5903, cropped from the bottom and the sides but not from the top

Moon hoax (also known as Moon landing hoax or Apollo hoax) refers to the doubt or dissent that men landed on the Moon in 1969–1972 during the Apollo programme. Those who think so (called here Moon sceptics) suspect or claim that NASA lied to the world, filming everything on Earth and making up evidence such as rock samples. Some Moon sceptics dispute the authenticity of the Skylab space station too.^{(p. 162)}

Questioning man's way to the Moon is almost an absolute taboo in scientific circles. But in the Internet, the debate between NASA defenders and Moon sceptics goes on, and public support for the latter grows. An official admission of a hoax would likely have the most grave consequences for NASA, the USA, and all people and organisations involved in space exploration worldwide. This would also challenge the future manned Moon and Mars missions.

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People and organisations said to be involved in hoaxing

• Prof. Dr Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (1912–1977), claimed by Bart Sibrel, Ralph René,^{(pp. 16, 54)}, Aron Ranen^{(part 5, 6:14–7:21)} and Stanislav Pokrovsky, and Prof. Dr John Owen Annexstad, claimed by Stanislav Pokrovsky to be complicit in the hoax by collecting lunar meteorites to be used as the basis for "Moon rocks" during their expeditions to Antarctica in 1967.
• Dr Robert Rowe Gilruth (1913–2000), then director of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Centre, Lunar Module chief designer in Houston (see Wernher von Braun's "right hand" Ernst Stuhlinger in at 38:09), and Apollo programme lead. Willy Brunner and Gerhard Wisnewski claim^{(p. 127)} that Gilruth "was the real filmmaker of the Moon landing" ("war die engentliche Regisseur der Mondlandung").^(38:44)
• Colonel Frank Frederick Borman, II (b. 1928), Gemini 7 and Apollo 8 flight commander. He visited the USSR just before the Apollo 11 flight (as Alexander Popov says, to reconnoitre whether the Russians believed in the Apollo 8 orbiting the Moon and help decide if they can "swallow" a much larger Apollo 11 Moon landing hoax). He was also one of the Skylab programme managers.
• Donald Kent Slayton (1924–1993), NASA Chief Astronaut in 1968, claimed by Sam Colby to be one of the main hoax perpetrators.
• Michael J. Tuttle, Simithsonian Institution webmaster, claimed by Sam Colby to have made fake photos in the mid-1990s and to have admitted that. Colby says that 95% of the NASA Moon photos were never seen before the spread of the Internet.
• Walter Leland Cronkite, Jr (1916–2009), CBS journalist who Bill Kaysing says "was the father figure that NASA chose to essentially hype the whole project".
• William M. Thompson (1920–2002) who had written the following: "I was actually part of the team that created the faked Moon landings and I am ready to talk about them. I have physical evidence to prove that they were faked", to Sam Colby and Kenneth Vardon.
• The Lookout Mountain Laboratory, claimed by David McGowan to have done the post-production on the Apollo footage after the official "deactivation" of the studio in 1969.

Details

Some specific issues are listed below.

General

Statement of NASA or its defenders	Statement of Moon sceptics or scientists
Burden of proof "Precisely because of human fallibility, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." (Carl Sagan) The burden of proof is on those who make such claims without any credible evidence to support them (i.e. those who deny the Apollo Moon landings).	"When scientists fail to require independent duplication of such an outlandish claim after over 30 years have passed, science is degraded to the status of being just another religion." (Bart Sibrel) The authenticity of a scientific discovery (manned flights to the Moon) should be proven by its author (the USA) and those who share its point of view (the defenders).
Keeping it secret Too many people were involved with the project to keep a secret like this. More than 400,000 people worked on the Apollo project for nearly ten years, and a dozen men who walked on the Moon returned to Earth to recount their experiences. It would have been significantly easier to actually land on the Moon than to generate such a massive conspiracy to fake such a landing.	NASA engineering-technical personnel was about 13,000. Much fewer people were in the know, and there are examples in history for secrets known by a lot of people but kept for many years (N-1 rocket, cruiser Belfast crashes, Enigma machine message decryption, cargo vessel Rona sinking, operations of British submarines in Swedish waters accusing the Soviets, etc). The Manhattan Project employed hundreds of thousands of people and hardly a word was leaked out.(p. 19) If someone who attended the Apollo programme admits a hoax, he will lose his prestige and risks being declared insane or killed.(p. 423)
Denouncement by the USSR With their own competing Moon programme, the Soviets could be expected to have cried foul if the US tried to fake the Moon landings.(p. 173)	Even if the Russians did suspect the landings were not authentic, the act of calling the USA liars of this magnitude at the height of the Cold War could have instigated a war, and perhaps they thought it better not to chance that. Russia could have blabbed to the world that the Moon landings were fake, and probably would have done were Khrushchev in power, but the West would say they were jealous because the USA had beaten them to it. On 8 July 1972, the US government announced the sale of about one quarter of the entire crop of wheat to the USSR at a fixed price of $1.63 per bushel. The market price at the time of the announcement was $1.50 but immediately soared to a new high of $2.44 a bushel. That's how the USA bought the silence of the USSR on the Moon programme.(p. 41) Since 1967, the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee has helped the USA while impeding the Soviet Moon programme by all means. The Proton rocket failure in September 1967 was a result of a diversion.(p. 172) The N-1 rocket failure in June 1969 was a result of in internal engine explosion caused by a foreign metallic object. In 1970, the USSR and the USA secretly agreed to hide from the public some circumstances of the latter's Moon programme. In 1974, the Politburo ordered the destruction of 3 ready-to-fly N-1 rockets. (The USA and Japan's NASDA bought and licensed their NK-33 engines a couple of decades later, and NASA will use them, marketed by GenCorp Aerojet as AJ26, in the Orbital Sciences Taurus II expendable launch system.) Since 1976, no Soviet space robot has flown to the Moon—the Politburo stopped their flights to prevent an Apollo hoax disclosure. And the 1980s Politburo led the USSR to a break-up. As a result, the Russian leadership cancelled the Energia rocket in 1993. All these actions were in favour of the USA.
1967 deaths On the death of Virgil Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee (in the Apollo 1 fire), Edward Givens (on a car crash), Clifton Williams (on a T-38 jet trainer), Michael Adams (on an X-15 high-altitude experimental aircraft), Robert Lawrence (on an F-104B combat trainer), Russel Rogers (on an F-105 fighter), and Thomas Baron with all his family (at a railroad crossing) in 1967, the NASA defenders asked: Why remove the disagreeable along with the unique experimental aircraft or the first spacecraft prototype?	3 of the X-15 were built, and its last flight was a year later (in 1968), out of 9 service years in total. Apollo 1 was not the first prototype but had a serial number of 012.. For many years before and after 1967 both the US and Soviet space industry had from 0 to 3 death cases per year. Only in 1967, a year before the first manned Apollo flight, there were 11 death cases. The Apollo 1 crew was still alive for at least 15 minutes after the craft caught fire, because their autopsy found that they have managed to develop pulmatory oedema, which cannot happen if they had died earlier.(p. 95) Senior NASA astronaut and Apollo 1 commander Virgil Grissom was a sharp critic of the programme. "Quite a number of things are not in order with this spacecraft, he once said. "It's not as good as the ones we flew before." He publicly called the Apollo capsule "a bucket of bolts" and the spacecraft "a heap of old scrap". On 22 January 1967 (5 days before his death), he picked the largest lemon from his lemon garden in Texas, and intended to hang it on the Apollo spacecraft—as a symbol of failure. (In December 1966, a report made by Joe Shea noted that "At least 20,000 failures of all kinds had been logged, more than 200 of them in the environmental control system.")(p. 115) Grissom had received death threats earlier, which his family saw as coming from the space programme. "If there ever is a serious accident in the space programme, it's likely to be me", he said to his wife.(p. 39)(pp. 87–90) NASA quality engineer Thomas Baron died with his family a week after his 500-page report analysing the Apollo 1 incident was deposed before the Congressational committee, and the report vanished.(p. 94)
Jump height Lunar explorers should be able to jump vertical distances up to 12 or 14 ft (4 ± 0.3 m) on the Moon, unencumbered with a spacesuit or other equipment, but will experience difficulty in maintaining their balance. However, falls from these heights under similar conditions are not likely to result in personal injury. The EMU (Extravehicular Mobility Unit, or the Apollo spacesuit) tested on Apollo 9 and used on Apollo 11–14 weighs about 85 kg fully charged.	Assuming astronaut's body weight of 85 kg, his total weight including the space suit would be 170 kg, so he could achieve jump heights of 2 m. But the maximum jump height shown by an Apollo astronaut was 0.42 m, which is five times less.
Lunar samples Between 1969 and 1972, six Apollo missions brought back 382 kg of lunar rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand and dust from the lunar surface. Lunar samples are prepared for shipment to scientists and educators at NASA's Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility. Nearly 400 samples are distributed each year for research and teaching projects. All samples (split or intact) must be returned to the NASA Johnson Space Centre after being studied. There are plenty of museums, including the Smithsonian and others, where members of the public can touch and examine rocks from the Moon.	Unlike the Apollo lunar samples, their Soviet counterparts exhibit triboluminescence and non-oxidation, contain 6 to 9 times more Mercury (which should be uniformly distributed on the lunar surface), orders of magnitude more molybdenum, wolfram, cadmium and silver, and have 50 times lower thermoluminescence sensitivity. Also, A. Dollfus and E. Bouell of the Paris Observatory found that unlike the NASA samples, the polarisation of reflected light from the Soviet samples corresponds to that from the Moon surface.(pp. 141–152, 208–210, 216–224, 231–232) Geochemist Minoru Ozima of the Tokyo University discovered that the nitrogen-14/nitrogen-15 isotope ratio in the Apollo lunar samples is very different from that in the solar wind whose blasts drilled these atoms into the lunar soil. The explanation is simple—the Apollo's soil was made on Earth.(pp. 467–470) In the 1990s, publications about lunar soil simulation started to appear. They could not have appeared earlier as this would raise questions about the Apollo programme.
Curating the samples Carlton Allen, Astromaterials Curator Manager: "We in the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office continue our core missions providing samples of extraterrestrial material to the international science and education communities and curating these unique samples for future generations."	Poor contemporary scientists. With their instruments, they can register every single atom in a substance, but they were denied trust. Poor future generations of scientists. In the 21st, and possibly in the 22nd century, they will of course lack such splendid crafts and rockets as "Apollos" and Saturn-Vs were in the 20th century. They will not be able to fly up the Moon and get fresh lunar stones. But NASA took care of them: it did not give the lunar stones to its contemporaries, and set them aside for them.
Who first brought Moon soil to Earth? 16 July 1969: Apollo 11: First lunar soil and rock samples returned to Earth.	First lunar soil was brought to Earth by the Soviet space robots Luna 16 (1970), Luna 20 (1972), and Luna 24 (1976).
Light reflectors On 21 July 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin left lunar laser ranging reflectors on the Moon surface. They reflect pulses of laser light fired from the Earth, helping measure its distance to the Moon with high accuracy. Apollo 14 and 15 also left each one such reflector.	The Apollo 11, 14 and 15 reflectors were left on the Moon by secret Surveyor 8, 9, and 10 unmanned probes that were not really cancelled as declared.
TV and radio signals received from the Moon 20% of mankind at the time watched Neil Armstrong's first steps on the Moon. Three tracking stations were receiving these signals from the Moon simultaneously. They were CSIRO's Parkes Radio Telescope, the Honeysuckle Creek tracking station outside Canberra, and NASA's Goldstone station in California. They received the voice communication with and between the astronauts, and spacecraft and biomedical telemetry radio signals from the Moon too.	The TV and radio signals were emitted from Earth to the Moon and re-translated to Earth by the radio equipment of special secret Surveyor or Orbiter unmanned crafts.(pp. 196, 197) (27 of 61 US space rocket launches in 1968 were secret, and 20 of 47 in 1969).
Tracking by the USSR Unable to track Apollo flights due to incompatibility issues, in 1968 the USSR built in Simferopol (Crimea) a dedicated tracking facility with a S-band (13 cm) antenna with a diameter of 32 m. To track the spacecraft on their lunar orbits, their data was needed. As it was not published, it was calculated based on the start and Moon arrival times of the Apollo crafts reported on US radio. Apollo 8, 10, 11 and 12 from December 1968 to November 1969 were tracked, including voice communications of the astronauts with Earth, TV images, and telemetry data.	This was the only Soviet tracking facility. The fact that orbit data was calculated based on the start and Moon arrival times of the Apollo crafts reported on US radio means that the USSR did not fix the fact of "Apollos" leaving Earth orbit for the Moon nor did it track their movement on the spaceway Eath—Moon. Because if they fixed and tracked, then no orbit calculation or using US radio reports about the start and Moon arrival times would be needed. Thus the fact of "Apollos" leaving Earth orbit and the entire flight from the Earth to the Moon were left totally unconfirmed by Soviet means. Nor did the USSR track this in a telescope, as reported from the only Soviet facility capable of that—the Sternberg Astronomical Institute in Moscow.
Waving US flag Not every waving flag needs a breeze—at least not in space. When astronauts were planting the flagpole they rotated it back and forth to better penetrate the lunar soil (anyone who's set a blunt tent-post will know how this works). So of course the flag waved! Unfurling a piece of rolled-up cloth with stored angular momentum will naturally result in waves and ripples—no breeze required!	The backpacks, designed for one-sixth gravity, must have had the cooling systems removed, to allow for movement without falling over. With very near and hot studio lighting, that left one hot astronaut inside... The necessary mammoth amounts of air-conditioning were probably responsible for the air count... This rare clip [showing waving US flag], attained decades ago, was never rereleased, with the inevitable increasing experience and scrutiny.(29:36–30:38)
Moon surface photos Michael Collins used this map to mark the estimated [Apollo 11] Lunar Module locations given to him by Houston.	"Moon" surfaces like this have artificially been prepared on the Earth (Flagstaff, Arizona) in the 1960s, as Dr Farook El Baz explained in the BBC film "Moon" (see also ). At 17:00 in that film, an experienced hand of a master superimposes a slight veil on a photo of this artificial surface to get a cosmic look.
LRO images A set of recent still images was published by NASA on July 17, 2009. Taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission, these images show lunar landers, including that of Apollo 11, standing on the surface, science experiments, and, in one case, astronaut footprints in a line between the Apollo 14 lander and a nearby science experiment. A month after LROC's first image of the Apollo 11 landing site was acquired, the LRO passed over again providing the [LRO Camera] (LROC) instrument a new view of the historic site.	Photos showing those objects can be made on a printed lunar surface photos with rough models of the objects added, or using a computer. Anyone with a bit of common sense should realize that NASA could have Photoshopped these landing site photos much more easily than taking them from an orbiting probe.

Flight-specific

Statement or document of NASA and/or its defenders	Statement of Moon sceptics
Strange rotating object Snoopy (the Apollo 10 Lunar Module) rose up from the Moon to join Charlie Brown (the Command Module).(20:59–21:01)	What is the rotating object flying past the lunar module at 21:00?
"Flight" over a Moon globe? [Stuart Roosa] It's 2001 type stuff. That old moors just growing magnificently fast, and it's just filling up that hatch window... and you're drifting into the shadow. 04 06 54 42 LMP ([Apollo 10] Lunar Module Pilot) [Eugene Cernan] "OK baby." 04 06 54 47 CDR (Commander) [Thomas Stafford] "2, OK, 12, 10" 04 06 54 53 LMP "8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1" 04 06 55 O1 LMP "Burn." 04 06 55 02 CDR "OK. OK, it's burning down." 04 06 55 05 LMP "Burning? OK. Got 60 to go; 34 to go; 100 to go; 78 to go, 50 to go; 20 to go; stand by, Tom."(p. 218)(6:57–7:29)	The ring-shaped structure gets dark in 11 seconds, but the terminator (the border between the light and darkness) on the Moon moves only 70 m for such a short time, whereas the distance to the horizon for an orbit height of about 110 km is about 600 km. 70 m vs 600 km is a too great discrepancy. And why it suddenly gets lit up shortly after that? All this is explainable if we assume that NASA used their huge Moon globes for filming.
Prevention of destruction or of reconnaissance? On 16 July 1969, from 8:00 to 9:00 EST (Apollo 11 was launched at 8:32), near the Cape Canaveral Space Centre, 7 Soviet trawlers with reconnaissance equipment on board were met by 15 US surface ships, 7 submarines and an unspecified number of P-3 Orion-type maritime patrol and reconnaissance aircraft with electronic warfare equipment on board, of US Second Fleet. 12 minutes before the Apollo 11 launch, all US coastal, ship and aircraft radio jamming equipment was switched on full power and then switched off 4 minutes after Apollo 11 reached Earth orbit. The operation was justified by an alleged danger that the Soviet ships can try to radio-jam the Saturn V electronic equipment and thus destroy the flight. The danger was later recognised as non-existent, and the $320 million spent on the operation as wasted.	To destroy the rocket would be suicidal for the Soviets as it would equal to declaring a nuclear war. The real reason why the Soviet reconnaissance was suppressed was to not let it receive the Saturn V telemetry data, which would reveal the non-conformance of its real speed and altitude to the declared values and that the flight does not proceed as declared.
1000 page TV scenario Astronomer Richard West of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) who commented the Apollo 11 Moon landing at the Danish TV says that they had a manual of 1000 pages or so where it was exactly described what the astronauts had to do at what time (in at 9:21).	How can it be relied that everything would go in accordance with the 1000-page instruction manual, when every detail was done for the first time? But if it was a play, then an instruction (or scenario) is absolutely necessary. If the actors don't strictly follow the instructions of the director, the show will inevitably fail.
Famous shot of Aldrin "walking on the Moon" Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, [Apollo 11] lunar module pilot, walks on the surface of the Moon near the leg of the Lunar Module (LM) "Eagle" during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity (EVA). Astronaut Neil Armstrong, commander, took this photograph with a 70 mm lunar surface camera.	The face shield (right) shows inconsistent ground lighting, left side spot lit. Ground hotspot around astronaut (top left) but dark horizon, unlike sunshine. Rock in the distance (left) front lit, while astronaut is back lit. Rock shadow should be parallel to astronaut's. Dark side of astronaut fully lit, but no flashbulb, while his shadow is solid black.
Splashdown At 13:35 P.M., as the [Apollo 11] command module with its human passengers and its cargo of Moon rocks sped on a north-easterly course 80 [nautical] miles above the Gilbert Islands, it slammed into the atmosphere and streaked like a flaming meteor towards a soft landing in the water below. Fifteen minutes later the command ship's three parachutes lowered it gently, at 21 [nautical] miles an hour, into the Pacific 950 [nautical] miles south-west of Hawaii, 2.7 [nautical] miles (5 km) from its aiming point and 13.8 [nautical] miles (25.6 km) from the [aircraft] carrier Hornet, the recovery ship. Man's first expedition to another world was over. President Nixon watched the recovery from one of the Hornet's two bridges. He caught a glimpse of the spaceship's fiery re-entry into the atmosphere, but shared in the disappointment of the crew and millions of television viewers when the craft splashed down out of sight of the ship. [Apollo 11] capsule was first righted by flotation bags.(left photo)	If Nixon could see the spacecraft's entry into the atmosphere down its sloping trajectory, the sky must have been exceptionally clear, assuring direct visibleness of hundreds of kilometres. Then the craft descending on three huge parachutes at only 25 km should have been noticeable too: aircraft carrier's bridges are 40–50 m above sea level, corresponding to a horizon of 20–25 km, so the high flying parachutes would be visible. But only a helicopter and the capsule were filmed, without even its parachutes.(left photo) And if the splashdown accuracy was only 5 km, why was not the ship at the aiming point but stayed 25 km away? Finally, even today Soyuz spacecraft's landing accuracy (50–60 km) is an order of magnitude worse than the average of 4 km Apollo could achieve back then, which makes such high accuracy unreal. All issues vanish if we assume that the crew did not fly but the capsule with it was dropped in advance far enough (25 km) from the ship. Craft entry into the atmosphere can be imitated by a ballistic missile with a suitable head surface material to produce enough fire.(pp. 254–257)
18-day quarantine As [Apollo 11] astronauts in special isolation suits watched, frogman scrubbed the capsule down with disinfectant.(right photo) Apollo crew waved as they entered quarantine trainer aboard Hornet. The astronauts then settled down for an 18-day quarantine to make certain their contact with the Moon had not contaminated or infected them in any way.	What bacteria can there be on the Moon, tilled already for several billions of years every 27 days now by space cold of −150°C, now by Sun heat of +150°C, and irradiated by streams of radiation from the Sun flares? Do Earth medics have such sterilisers? And why scrub the craft down with disinfectant if it had flown through the atmosphere in a cloud with a temperature of several thousands of degrees on its return? And, if lunar bacteria do exist and are so hardy, then what quatantine, and what disinfectant can help against them? But if there was a hoax, the quarantine was important for its success. The black [gas] masks on the astronauts' faces helped them avoid unwanted sights by the welcoming people (and questions from the press during the whole quarantine) while getting used to their most important role (Moon flight stories), having ensured three weeks later that the world public opinion had already believed Apollo Moon landings. It did, so next Apollo crews had no quarantine.
TV camera failure? The [Apollo 12] colour television camera provided satisfactory television coverage for approximately 40 minutes at the beginning of the first extravehicular activity. Thereafter, the video display showed only white in an irregular pattern in the upper part of the picture and black in the remainder. The camera was turned off after repeated attempts by the crew to restore a satisfactory picture. In the process of moving the camera on the lunar surface, a portion of the target in the secondary-electron conductivity vidicon must have received a high solar input, either directly from the Sun or from some highly reflective surface. That portion of the target was destroyed, as was evidenced by the white appearance of the upper part of the picture.	However the camera is not securely locked into position, and then for over a period of time the camera changes its view as you can see. And as you can hear, everyone thinks it's all very funny.(0:45–1:37) But as the fixing on its stand is not tight enough, the camera is slowly drooping and this fact is demonstrated by the changing images captured over a period of time.(2:14–2:18) (At that time—116:16:02—Alan Bean says that he hit the camera on the top with his hammer.) It would not have been possible to see this differential imaging if the camera had really been destroyed by being pointed for a while directly into the Sun—the official reason for its failure.(1:20:19–1:20:52)
A studio photo? This view of the damaged Apollo 13 Service Module (SM) was photographed from the Lunar Module/Command Module following SM jettisoning.	The rear side of a spotlight is clearly seen on the top right edge of the photo. When brightness and contrast are increased, a halo due to reflection of its light by dust is seen. So the photo was made in a studio.
Apollo boilerplate found by the USSR In early 1970, the Soviet Union recovered an empty Apollo capsule and returned it to the US several months later. The capsule was identified at NASA as the BP-1227 training capsule lost a while back.	It was on the night of 11–12 April 1970, the night after Apollo 13 was launched, and it was its capsule and not BP-1227.
The solder ball "bug" in the LEM Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14): "Our next major problem was the well-known one of the solder ball in the abort switch, which happened just two hours before we were scheduled to go down to the lunar surface, and we noticed as we were on our last circuit of the Moon before starting down, while checking out the lunar module and getting ready, that the abort light came on in the lunar module. And that was a surprise. It shouldn't do that."	Harry Hurt explains what happened after the mission: "Only after their return to Earth did they learn that the bug illuminating the 'Abort' light was a loose solder ball in the wiring." How did NASA discover that drop of loose solder after the [Lunar Excursion Module] (LEM) was dropped back onto the Moon? I'm really beginning to believe that the CIA resurrected Merlin the Magician and gave him a job with NASA as the assistant to the Wizard of Oz.(p. 117)
The Galileo's experiment Apollo 15 astronauts repeated Galileo's experiment. (Apollo 15 TV camera frame rate was 20 fps.)	More than a half of the frames in the NASA (.mpg) film are repeated, and after removing them, the acceleration it was taken under was calculated as 9.5 ± 2 m/s². The experiment may have been filmed at NASA's Space Power Facility (SPF) vacuum chamber. Also, the same experiment was conducted in a London studio without a vacuum chamber and with the same results in the film "What happened on the Moon?".
Composite photo? A view of the Apollo 15 Command and Service Module from the Lunar Module.	If it were an actual three-dimensional scene, the spaceship would be 69 miles above the lunar surface—which would, I would think, make it difficult for a portion of that lunar terrain to obscure part of the ship's S-band antennæ assembly.
Shrink-wrapped photo on Moon surface? Charlie [Duke, Apollo 16] put a picture of the Duke family—Charlie, Dotty, and sons Charles and Tom—on the surface and took several pictures of it. This image is the best of the series.	But why did Charles Duke have it shrink-wrapped in plastic? First of all it would puff up and lose its seal or burst in the vacuum when the lunar module's atmosphere was removed. Then there is the question of what would happen when Duke placed it on the Moon's surface at 100°C. Would he succeed in photographing it before it melted and became ugly and deformed?(pp. 158, 159)
Lifted by a wire? Charlie [Duke, Apollo 16] has dropped the hammer. He tries to bob down to get it but loses his balance and lands heavily on his hands and knees... Charlie wants John [Young] to push back on his head so he can rotate his torso up and over his knees. Instead, John goes to Charlie's left side and holds out his hand... Charlie takes John's hand and rises, albeit awkwardly.(0:54–1:20)	David Percy comments: "The astronaut is getting up with the wire taking the weight, relieving him of five sixths of the Earth's gravity. A magic trick? No, just the help of a wire man."(2:06–2:36)
Docking in lunar orbit 177:38:58 [Thomas] Mattingly (Apollo 16): "OK, about 5 feet." 177:40:37 Mattingly: "Doesn't look like it. I don't have any barber poles (stripped indicators' output; means it's all OK). There we go. Took a couple of extra blurps to get you. OK. Are you free?" 177:40:52 Mattingly: "OK." 177:41:00 Mattingly: "OK, it looks - looks pretty fair. How about if I just retract you?" 177:41:25 Mattingly: "I believe we're there." 177:41:27 Mattingly: "Casper's captured Orion!" The inspection is complete. Command module and lunar module manoeuvre to docking.(24:34–24:44)(28:13–30:18)	No control thruster activity is visible (contrast this with the photo of the Apollo taken from the Soyuz). Attitude changes made by the lunar module while manoeuvring in lunar orbit look remarkably like a model is being manipulated in front of a lunar backdrop.
Earth angle over the horizon In each of the following Apollo 17 archive photos, the Earth (with an angular diameter of 1.9±0.1°) is at a different angle over the horizon: AS17-137-20910—16°, AS17-134-20473—32°, AS17-134-20384—34°, AS17-137-20957—16°, AS17-137-20960—16°	Calculating from the coordinates of the Apollo 17 lunar landing site (20.16° North and 30.77° East), the Earth should be at constant 53.4° above the lunar horizon.
Return to orbit 188:01:27 [Apollo 17] lunar lift-off film. The television camera was mounted on the rover which Gene [Cernan] parked about 145 m east of (behind) the lunar module. The ascent stage ignites and climbs, spacecraft foil and dust flying in all directions. Ed Fendell in Houston anticipates exactly the timing of ignition, lift-off, and the rate of climb, and the camera tilts to follows the ascent.	Awesome! 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.
Skylab interior photo Astronaut Charles Conrad, Jr, Skylab-2 commander, smiles happily for the camera after a hot bath in the shower in the crew quarters of the Orbital Workshop of the Skylab space station.	The towel at the upper right corner hangs as on Earth, so there was no weightlessness and the photo was taken on Earth, not Earth orbit.

Discrepancies in NASA documents

First NASA document	NASA document or astronaut statement found to contradict the first document
Earthrise photos The first photo of Earthrise by a human as he watched the event unfold (AS08-13-2329) was taken on 24 December 1968.	There is yet another photo (AS08-14-2392) of the same Earthrise at the same time and place but with a window frame and said to be taken two days earlier. A sceptic says that both photos are taken by a secret Lunar Orbiter unmanned craft and not from Apollo 8.(p. 190)
Visibility of stars from the Lunar Module 103:12:44 [Neil] Armstrong (Apollo 11): "I'd say the colour of the local surface is very comparable to that we observed from orbit at this Sun angle—about 10° Sun angle, or that nature." 103:22:30 Armstrong: "From the surface, we could not see any stars out the window; but out my overhead hatch (means the overhead rendezvous window), I'm looking at the Earth. It's big and bright and beautiful."	[Alan] Bean, from the [Apollo 12] 1969 Technical Debrief—"Star (and) Earth visibility was interesting. We could always see stars at the upper rendezvous window." The Sun is currently 5.5° above the eastern horizon. With the Sun 10° above the horizon, stars should have been visible out the Apollo 11 overhead window too.
Visibility of stars from the lunar surface [Neil] Armstrong (Apollo 11): "We were never able to see stars from the lunar surface or on the daylight side of the Moon by eye without looking through the optics." [Michael] Collins (Command Module pilot): "I don't remember seeing any."(1:06:00–1:06:19) (Collins' remark is misattributed to [Edwin] Aldrin in the transcript. In his book "Liftoff", Collins writes "My God, the stars are everywhere, even below me. They are somewhat brighter than on Earth")(p. 33) Alan Bean (Apollo 12): "Oh so carefully, I removed my silver pin, took one last look at it, and gave it my strongest underarm toss out towards Surveyor. I can still remember how it flashed in the bright sunlight then disappeared in the distance. It was the only star I ever saw up in the black sky, the sunlight was just too bright on the Moon's surface to see any of the others." Stars are not readily seen in the daylight lunar sky by either the human eye or a camera because of the brightness of the sunlight surface.	103:22:54 Duke: "...Gene Cernan says that, while standing in the shadow of the Apollo 17 [Lunar Module] (LM), he could see some stars while he was outside." (Correction on the star visibility issue from the Moon is introduced later.) Astronauts' reminiscences contradict the descriptions of the star sky observed by Soviet cosmonauts (Leonov, Lebedev, Savinykh) on the dayside of the orbit; light from the Earth (Earth albedo 0.367, Moon albedo 0.12) did not hamper them see the stars. For example, Leonov says that "the brightest of the stars can be recognised when they are farther than 30° away from the daylight luminary [the Sun]". On the Moon, the sky is black—even during the day—and the stars are always visible. In fact, the Moon is about the poorest reflector in the solar system... The Moon reflects only 7% of the sunlight that falls upon it.
Omitted telltale astronauts' words from journal text? 116:07:19 [Alan] Bean (Apollo 12): "OK. You go ahead. That's difficult, because it's so tender up here on these legs." 116:07:26 [Charles] Conrad: "Well, I don't see the Earth anywhere in the sight."	Listening to the RealVideo clip (1:39–1:45), Alan Bean actually said "It's difficult tricking them", and Charles Conrad replied "Yea, I know."
Moon landing trajectory and dust visibility [Charles] Conrad (Apollo 12), from the 1969 Technical Debrief—"As soon as I got the vehicle stopped in horizontal velocity at 300 feet (figure 4–12 from the Apollo 12 Mission Report indicates that he stopped almost all of his forwards motion at about 220 ft), we picked up a tremendous amount of dust—much more than I had expected. It looked a lot worse than it did in the films I saw of Neil's landing. It seemed to me that we got the dust much higher than Neil indicated. It could be because we were in a hover, higher up, coming down...".	According to the Apollo 12 land path, at 300 ft (90 m) the module was almost half a kilometre far from the landing place and was descending not vertically but down a very gently sloping trajectory, and dust was first seen at a 3 times less height of 30 m (100 ft).
Fred Haise on the Moon? [Fred] Haise and fellow [Apollo 13] crewmen, James Lovell (spacecraft commander) and John Swigert (command module pilot), working closely with Houston ground controllers, converted their lunar module "Aquarius" into an effective lifeboat. Their emergency activation and operation of lunar module systems conserved both electrical power and water in sufficient supply to assure their safety and survival while in space and for the return to Earth.	Edwin Aldrin (Apollo 11): "The highlight of the evening was a film showing Fred Haise, my back-up on the flight to the Moon, stumbling around on the surface of the Moon until, in desperation, he retreated to the lunar lander which, the moment he stepped on the ladder, tumbled into pieces around him."(p. 164)
Dust blowing After the landing of the Apollo 14 lunar module, the engine has worked for several more seconds and the jets of dust flying from under the module are clearly seen.(4:46–4:56)	There are no signs of blowing the dust on the photo of the surface under the Apollo 14 lunar module.
Separation—Contradictory times and distances to Earth 03:42:29 [Apollo 17] Commander [Eugene Cernan]: "Separation, Houston." This photo shows the [Apollo 12] Spacecraft-LM Adapter (SLA) above centre. (Altitude at [SLA] separation was about 3,800 nautical miles—about 7,000 km.)	A Full Earth from the Apollo 17 Command Module at about 5 hours 6 minutes, shortly after separation of the docked CSM-LM from the S-IVB at 4 hours 45 minutes.
When was the descent engine stopped? 113:01:43 [Harrison] Schmitt (Apollo 17): "Stand by. 25 feet, down at 2. Fuel's good. 20 feet. Going down at 2. 10 feet. 10 feet." 113:01:58 Schmitt: "Contact." (Pause) 113:02:03 Schmitt: (Reading a checklist) "Stop, push. Engine stop; Engine Arm; Proceed; Command Override, Off; Mode Control, Att(itude) Hold; PGNS, Auto." 113:02:11 [Eugene] Cernan: "OK, Houston. The Challenger has landed!"	Eugene Cernan: "We shut the engine down some 3 m above the surface."(part 6, 6:02–6:26)
Lunar rovers had an engine muffler? 120:10:55 [Eugene] Cernan (Apollo 17): "Just don't step on it." (Pause) 120:11:01 [Harrison] Schmitt: "I do that (pause) in training, though." (Pause). 120:11:13 Cernan: "Ooh. (Grunting and breathing hard) Hey, Bob, just out of curiosity, what kind of heart rates has this drill been producing on me?"	Listening to the RealVideo clip (17:11–17:41), these words are missing from both the journal text and the MP3 audio clip: 120:10:57 Flight/EVA: "OK, we definitely did not want Flight to figure the rover's muffler at this point. He has it as a stick with mine as an optional, as an option, and ah we're, at this stage of the game, we're screwing around. We definitely do not want to figure this muffler. Since we're being called upon, I'm sure you all recognise not to do this anymore."

Technological legacy

Statement or document of NASA and/or its defenders	Statement of Moon sceptics
Moon race legacy Hook-and-loop fasteners, polytetrafluoroethylene non-stick coating, disposable nappies—here are only the most well-known results [of the Apollo programme] in everyday life. It has been counted that the spreading of "lunar" technologies gave the US economy an effect, estimated to more than $20bn. But the space technology created strictly for conquering of the Moon did not get further development.	Here is what remained with the USSR after the end of the Moon race: The Proton rocket and the Soyuz spacecraft which were both developed for circumlunar, not circumterrestrial flights.
Why is the Saturn V no longer used? Notwithstanding the great carrying capacity, the Saturn [V] expendable launch systems did not get use—they got nothing to carry. The mass of even the most sophisticated artificial Earth satellites does not exceed 20 t. Yet another obstacle is the complexity and cost of service of the huge rocket.	If we could build it from scratch in a few years in the 60's, and we already have all the plans, why not rebuild it now? Did they really have the load capacity NASA claims they had? The reason that the Saturn V was quietly forgotten was that it never preformed as stated... If NASA had attempted to correct the problems with the Saturn V it would have become apparent that the rocket could not have sent people to the Moon and that the Moon landings were faked. If the Saturn V carried the International Space Station (ISS) modules, which are now not heavier than 20 t, their mass could quadruple while their number be reduced four times, along with the number of the docking assemblies for space rendezvous, whose mass is now about one-seventh of the mass of the entire ISS. The number of the dangerous space rendezvous procedures would also be reduced. The cost of the two Proton rockets and one Space Shuttle used to carry three ISS modules is roughly equal to the cost of one Saturn V. And the ISS cost is thousands of times greater than the Saturn V service cost. Also, the launching cost for 1 kg of cargo using the Space Shuttle turns out to be much higher than using the Saturn V.(drawing 4) But for some reason, the Americans have money for the "prodigal" Shuttles and not for the "frugal" Saturns. And why is the F-1 engine no longer used but the US Atlas V rocket uses the Russian RD-180 engines instead that are nothing else but one half of the RD-170/171 engines of the Soviet Energia and Zenith rockets? The F-1 engine failure modes (especially combustion instability) need substantial research and the Russian RD-180 is recommended as a model for its modification, if it is to be used in future manned flights to the Moon and Mars.

Quotes by famous people

“

I can't be 100% sure that man actually walked on the Moon. It's possible that NASA could have covered it up, just in order to cut corners, and to be the first to allegedly go to the Moon.

”

—Dr Brian Todd O'Leary, NASA astronaut & Apollo programme adviser^{(5:22–5:45)}

“

Just a month before, Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong had left their colleague, Michael Collins, aboard spaceship Columbia and walked on the Moon, beating by five months President Kennedy's goal of putting a man on the Moon before the decade was out. The old carpenter asked me if I really believed it happened. I said sure, I saw it on television. He disagreed; he said that he didn't believe it for a minute, that "them television fellers" could make things look real that weren't. Back then, I thought he was a crank. During my eight years in Washington, I saw some things on TV that made me wonder if he wasn't ahead of his time.

”

—Dr William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States of America (1993–2001)

“

The date of the so-called return to the Moon slipped from 2020 to heaven-knows when... I ask my friends and readers to get behind Obama's new policy. Join with me and help usher in a new age of space. A space programme that truly goes somewhere!

”

—Dr Buzz Aldrin (born Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr), astronaut, the Apollo 11 lunar module pilot

See also

• Moon
• NASA
• Apollo programme

External links

Sceptical Inquiry: Hoaxes: Lunar Landing at the Open Directory Project