Makes my head spin. We seem to produce people that cannot conceive of things which they merely don't understand well could be true. Or alternately, I suppose it's as easy to say that people generally believe the first thing they hear on a subject is the truth.

Over the last few days, based on a Newsweek article (my unvarnished opinion of Newsweek will result in my permanent ban here) I have read people claiming that "the" if not several or all of the moon landing(s) was/were a hoax because of everything from "no stars are visible in the moon photos and where did the multiple light sources come from, there's only one sun" to "we don't have the means to do it today it couldn't have been done in 1969" and back to "there's a stage hand reflected in the astronaut's [curved, funhouse mirror-like] visor." and "jet engines can't work in space". (For real I have seen these arguments and statements).

Hopefully, none of my esteemed SimHQ colleagues buy these bills of goods, being intelligent and educated people who have displayed some kind of understanding of sciences and engineering required for flight, etc., due to our shared pastimes. If any of you have bought into that, well if you ID yourselves in this thread I will, legitimately, be jotting down your username on this pad of paper (which you can't see). I have learned that it is wise to ID the loonies. I won't argue them here; visit Moonbase Clavius at clavius.org please.

Anyway. What people are ignorant of- I mean of course the moon-hoaxer crowd by that- is that the moon landings were incredible feats of courage and scientific triumph- but are, merely, comparable to feats in the deep ocean that we achieved at the same general time.

A favorite book of mine is The Silent War https://www.amazon.com/Silent-War-Cold-Battle-Beneath/dp/0743223268 which deals with these things.

Recommended

I like the theory that Stanley Kubrick was hired to film the Moon Landings, but being a perfectionist demanded they do it on location.

I used to work with a hard core hoax believer. One of his big arguments was that the hatch on the lunar module was too small for the astronauts to go in and out of with their life support back packs on.

I think a lot of moon hoaxers are so just to be contrary or to be "cool" in their minds. The true believers are just stupid.

One thing that many of these hoaxers do not question is the following:

If the moon landings were faked wouldn't the Soviets be the first to tell the world that it was? There was a good reason as to why the Soviets abandoned their efforts to land on the moon (by the way they did send rovers as well as the Chinese). The landing sites can be seen from orbit:

Apollo 11 as seen from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter:



But my biggest concern is that at least in the USA if not most of the planet will give into this type of scenario (clip from the movie "Interstellar") in schools today if not in the near future:

used to be you received education at school

I had an economics teacher who didnt believe in the moon landing. He would always teach a class at the end of the year showing the landing along with a bunch of newspaper and magazine articles then divide the class in groups. Those who thought it happened and those who thought it didnt happen and then make them debate both sides. Even though he didnt believe we landed on the moon he never pushed his view on the kids which was kind of him.

I don’t know what these people think is so hard about going to the moon that we can’t do it now, let alone in 1969. Have you ever shot skeet/trap or thrown a ball at a moving person? Congratulations, you have the fundamentals of sending a spacecraft to the moon or any other celestial object. The physical technology is where we fell short, the math had been worked out hundreds of years earlier.

Oh come on, of course it was faked. Look at this leaked footage from internal discussions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE-tpiAiiHo

Well it was basically the same in Noahs day and they all laughed at him for building an Arc in the middle of the desert

But I enjoy a good debate no need to say I am right you are wrong.. if we are all robots it would be a pretty dull world..

I just go buy what the Bible says let those that believe, believe and those that don't believe not to believe

an No I don't say we did not go but it is good to debate.. And as you pointed out oif we really did not go I am sure Russia would be quick to point it out. Never been there myself..Dont mean it did not happen..

Nobody laughed at Noah's Arc. The giggled at the boat a bit.

WARNING: MANY, MANY "F" BOMBS!

This is why they would never let me be an astronaut:



WARNING: MANY, MANY "F" BOMBS!

"I abso-f*cking-lutely am walking on the f*cking Moon!"

"Noah's Ark"

Well...I'm not going to go into what I feel about THAT whole story. But people actually believe that we couldn't do it then and can't do it now? How do they suppose we got two land rovers down and operating on Mars!!? Or is that a hoax, too? They don't believe we could have gone to the moon, but they'll tell you that we've gotten all of our technology from aliens. Because we aren't smart enough to come up with it ourselves.
My fellow man constantly disappoints and embarrasses me.
You know, we really haven't come all that far, intelligence-wise, from Cro-Magnum man. The great minds that have gotten us to where we are, are in the great minority. It's really been just a relatively few great minds that have been pushing the brooms that shove the rest of mankind forward. If you don't believe that, next time you're traveling 70 miles an hour in your car on the highway, glance over at the idiot next to you who is also doing 70....and looking at his or her cellphone instead of the road!

I've read today that many people think we can't get an object out of orbit even now. Seriously, what is being taught in schools?

Well I was gonna put a statement here best left for PWEC..

What is being taught in schools Not much I guess..

But, but, what about the Van Allen belt ?

AN oldie, but a goodie:

It's great when Van Allen is brought up by the hoax theorists

I love Van Allen Ain't Talking bout love is one of my favorites hehe

Well that video had nothing to do with the Van Allen Belt.. but I did see it before..

Calling Buzz Aldrin a coward and a liar is just begging for a punch to the mouth. In an Alabama court he would have been acquitted of an assault charge under the "fighting words" defense.

Honestly, I don't understand the Moon Hoax people.

Governments do a lot of things right, but one thing they do terribly is intrigue and keeping secrets that go further than ten people - and they usually screw that up.

There is a ton of physical evidence we were on the Moon, and a whole bunch of nations with telescopes that would love to expose a lie like that.

The Russians and the Chinese would have been fighting for first in line to reveal a hoax if there were one. It is just another example of the boundlessness of stupidity that some humans are capable of. Unfortunately, they get to reproduce.

Well, all you have to do is go to some of the idiot sites on the 'net, they are enough to make you lose all faith in humanity, if you ever had any. I saw a post today where a grown young woman asked why the water doens't drain off the South Pole into outer space. I almost pray it's an attention-getting joke or a fake. What are they learning in school? Everything but useful knowledge, it would seem. Not universally. But too much of the time. But they can put condoms on bananas!

The moon landing believers are probably of two camps: True believers and those who make a fortune off of them. The true believers I don't understand. It seems, like many of these sorts of things, to invest them as the only ones with this "special knowledge" of the "real truth". They typically feel marginalized, perhaps some real social maladjustment, who knows? But on this one thing, by glory, they know "the truth". Sad.

When I look back though, the Saturn V and the Apollo 11 landing does appear to me as a stunning achievement, coming just under 66 years after Orville and Wilbur managed to fly a few feet under power. It also seems to be a pinnacle of sorts. Not that we haven't done more good things; look at all the great things we've done with Voyager, Casini, Opportunity, Spirit, Curiosity, and a host of others; and of course, the ISS, Hubble, & hopefully James Webb coming up. But that late 60's crap seemed to me (I was a teenager) to just screw up the nations's soul in a way. We're broke, deeply divided, seemingly unable to speak in any sort of moderate, respectful or intelligent way with each other (unless we agree...). On the science side, NASA has had to struggle for a budget, the Shuttle was not what we expected, we're buying rocket seats from Russia while our SLS lumbers along behind schedule and over cost. There seems to be no vision, but maybe I'm wrong. I hope I am. I was just talking with a younger co-worker today (early 30's) who is a space enthusiast, and we were wondering what the picture will be like in 2035, another 66 years since the Apollo 11 landing. I guess we'll see!

The Mercury/Apollo missions were the right program at the right time for the technology needs of the nation.

Transistors were new but common, electronic computing was maturing, and the materials research of WWII had grown during the 1950's to the point where it was ready to leap to the next level.

From a pure science standpoint, we needed Mercury/Apollo to give us a vehicle to justify the research. There was no other way Congress was going to allocate funds for it.

And, of course, if you really want a massive research project to perfect the ICBM without a lot of peacenik pinkos getting all fussy about "saving the planet," you make it about the romance of Space Exploration, American Pride, and beating those F*cking Soviets.

Today we're not innovating in Space Exploration so much as improving the technology in ways that aren't really obvious to the average Joe. Yes, I know the astronauts didn't really drink Tang, but I sure did. A lot of it. It was terrible, but it came with a friggin' Moon Buggy and two little astronauts to ride in it, powered by a rubber band guaranteed to break in less than .014521 seconds and be discarded. So buy more Tang, Mom!

Apollo brought back Moon rocks they pulled from the divots carved from the surface with golf clubs. How cool was that?

The Mars rovers send back pictures that look crappy. Like bad CGI crappy. Or fake taken-from-a-flip-phone-in-Arizona looking. Never mind that the rovers outlived their expected lifespan by five years and have made all sorts of amazing discoveries - when was the last time the guys at NASA (or one of their grant recipients) invented something as cool as velcro? Or as useful as a wireless heart monitor?

The guys on the ISS seem to be doing....I dunno. Playing racketball in microgravity, I reckon. At one point they had the most unsexy sort of human shaped robot ever made up there, but other than they sent it up there I know squat about how it worked out.

Landed on the moon? What moon. It doesn't exist. Prove it. What you see in the sky is a fake backdrop.

Moon landing deniers? Bah! That's child's play compared to something like Holocaust deniers.

Moon landing deniers, Holocaust deniers and 9/11 "Truthers" are all the same to me.

I'm not surprised some fools believe in the hoax nonsense, given how there's so many folks that believe in other nonsense. Remember, half the population is to the left of middle:



100 isn't that smart, either. But remember, they can't help it, as they only have the deck of cards they were dealt and can't trade some in for a new draw.

I ignore them--it's a little easier as I get older I'm finding, and slowly beginning to realize how my dad could say that in his early sixties before he passed away. Can't win a debate versus a clown, because if they're dumb enough to believe stupid crap, no amount of logic and reason will ever convince them otherwise. Their brains aren't wired to understand it.

I can't wait until we land on Mars. What are they going to say then? Or even better... when aliens visit us for real(if they ever do). Oh, I can see it now, some nutjob running out of the crowd with a knife or scissors trying to cut open the "rubber suit" to prove the alien is fake. Maybe after they're zapped with a raygun or disintegrated into a smoking pile of flesh the rest of them will believe. Maybe. Probably not, though, that'll be staged too.

Our schools are like a modern Harrison Bergeron. They don't want smarts and intelligence anymore, they want willing zombie drones. Read the story here if you haven't before:

https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Bergeron_djvu.txt

Here's a quote that is pertinent:

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983.

I think that quote also applies to a lot of what happens in the UK secondary and college sectors as well. Hope I haven't PWEC'd this thread.

Have you read "Blind Man's Bluff", if so how does it compare? I've read BMB and it is very good.

Of course! Intriguing book. Dr. Craven, the author of 'The Silent War', features prominently in it.

In his book Dr. Craven alludes to some inaccuracies in Blind Man's Bluff. But overall, I would say that the two books compliment each other greatly. If you liked Blind Man's Bluff, you will like The Silent War.

A related book which probably does not feature as much fact as it does deduction is Red Star Rogue. It should be read with a huge grain of salt, but it raises some fascinating points and possibilities. An exciting read, if taken as fiction only. Not like a novel, but in how the events tie together.

I used to think this was an argument that should work on moonlanding conspiracy theorists. But that is not the way conspiracy theorists operate.

When I was at university I got into an argument about that. I asked what they thought the motivation for faking the moonlandings was.
They answered "to one-up the russians."

So I asked why the russians did not expose the program as fake.
The aswer to that was "Duh, the russians were in on it".

Ok, so what was the motivation for the US again?
"Duh, one-upping the russians"

And why did the russians not expose it?
"Are you a dummy? I told you, they were in on it".


I kinda gave up then. Every single time I have talked to deniers, it has turned out that they have no basic understanding of physics. Like, not even a little bit.
And the only research they do is amongst other deniers. So they just confirm their beliefs. They never do any actual research on the physical aspects. It's all feels before reals.

we had to beat the Russians to the moon ....and we did ...... kind of (that's as much detail as i can provide)

We beat the Russians to the Moon because we live in a free society. Then Prez Kennedy made a seemingly impossible challenge.
We accepted. And we did.

[sidenote - I read somewhere that mentioned that at the height of the Apollo program, 1 out of 4 Americans were involved directly,
or indirectly] That's pretty cool.

...and they did it all with guts, slide rules, and cigarettes.

And they all managed to keep the fact that it was a hoax...a secret. They could really keep a secret back then!

No doubt that some dummies really believe these crazy conspiracies but I think most people claim to believe in them just to generate attention to themselves.

I don't doubt that you are correct but I have trouble understanding why someone would align themselves with such a nonsensical viewpoint just to gain notoriety.

Why would someone post a YouTube video of them doing really stupid stuff for the World to see?

They are starved for attention and have personal psychological issues? They probably figure that some attention is better than no attention even if its negative.

I think someone here on SimHQ a few months ago posted a Youtube video of some guy putting fireworks in his ass and then lighting them? Stupidity for the purpose of getting attention is more common than you think.

Well, like Abraham Lincoln said during his Gettysburg Address 154 years ago ... "Just because you read it on the Internet, doesn't make it true."

And of course that Twitter comment from Abe got a very big “dislike” from Jefferson Davis!

I suppose that is possible, since it was before Sherman cut the south's lines of communications...

At least there are no Civil War deniers.

Pics or it didn't happen

How about Waterloo deniers ?

I deny that there was anything "civil" about it and that the proper name for that conflict is "The War of Northern Aggression".

Waterloo occurred well before the advent of photography so that one is much easier to deny. :-)

Yeah, I guess that explains it. There is a video of a guy filling a bathtub with various hot sauces and then immersing himself in it.

There is a bumper sticker that says, "Stupidity should be painful" Apparently, it sometimes is but not often enough.

C'Mon Man! You cannot bring that up without posting a video, this one is still my favorite . . .I am still laughing typing this



"Pull Your Sack Up"

Speaking of faking it does the movie Capricorn One hold up? I remember liking it back in the day.

Can you imagine the story he told at the Emergency room ? " I fell on it."

Haha. Yes the mind that can believe the moon landing was faked AND at the same time believe nasa and the US government have been putting folk on mars for decades.

"They" also 'did' the cover up of the Aliens at Roswell and the perfect assassination of Princess Diana for Prince Philip.

And in a different style the secret society running the world - The Inebriartii

The Inebriarti.

When I'm feeling that I'm stupid, I watch Young Earth Creationists, Feminists, and Flat Earther videos on YouTube. Funny how I've not come across "fake moon landing" videos in my travels, but I'll put them up there with the rest of the loonies.

To debate something is fine, but like it or not, there is always, always, ALWAYS a correct answer for facts like these. Sure, you can debate whether chocolate cake is superior to banana cake or whether blue is a better color than red, but on things based on FACTS, there can only be one answer that the evidence points towards and to deny these is to

I think you can find people today that will argue that water isn't wet.

I have to admit I enjoy watching a decent conspiracy video it's a guilty pleasure. Even at my age I'm amazed at what some people are willing to believe. I'm OK with the "shallow end" of the conspiracy theories, like JFK etc, they have some interesting notions. And of course flat-earthers are just hilarious, even though I have to say I have learned something watching them. Occasionally one will ask a question that I don't know the answer to. But you know - Google it and then I know

And of course, at the top of the conspiracy pyramid, sitting atop it like the all-seeing eye on the dollar's Illuminati symbol, is David Icke. That guy is just about as crazy as it's possible to get. If you listen to how he himself describes his process of thinking, it sounds like he's describing mental illness.

Those are people who crave the attention that invariably comes with being "off the wall". Everyone wants their 5 minutes of fame before they head back into the black abyss of apathy.

Yeah, but if you want attention, go bake a nice cake or something. I can't understand why people instead opt to have their balls smashed by a 2x4....

Which of those do you think will get more views on YouTube?

Bingo! We have a winner.

You can't really eat the cake through YouTube though, so that's not a fair assessment

Fairness has very little to do with attention getting in today's internet connected world.

Besides, someone can get a lot of mileage/reuse out of a 2x4, so they are being eco-friendly!

I am totally stealing that for all time.

Hahaha.... like someone said, I guess negative publicity is better than no publicity, but at that stage, I would really be questioning my life choices.... or maybe I'm just quite a private person IRL so different mindset?

I'd like to think folks here on SimHQ are smart enough to make less self-injurious choices.

Besides, someone on here who wants attention can just be argumentative in the forums, and save the wear and tear on their groins!

Oh, trust me, I don't do the arguments for publicity

I love how conspiracy theorists tend to say 'hurr durr the government is inept', and on the other hand say 'The government is covering everything up!'

I'm pretty sure the "flat earther" with the rocket just claimed to be a flat earther so he could get donations from idiots.

“hurr durr” .... Bigot much ?

That's pretty much my theory. The latest plan is to launch a rocket to prove that the Earth is flat. I think that was the guy's plan all along and all this was just a way to drum up publicity and funding. I'm just jealous he found a way to sucker other people into funding it for him.

Speaking of which, I believe the Earth is flat and if the internet gives me enough money I'll be able to afford flying lessons and an airplane to prove it.
I should get on that flight physical and look into ground schools. I should have though of this brilliant plan 10 years ago.

Plenty of ways to sucker people out of their money. What better evidence to prove how gullible humans are than the fact that tarot card readers/fortune tellers are still around! Some of them even have stores in strip malls!