DID WE LAND ON THE MOON?

DID WE LAND ON THE MOON?

A Debunking of the Moon Hoax Theory

On February 15, 2001 the FOX television network aired a program titled Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land On The Moon? This program showed alleged evidence that NASA faked the moon landings. This hoax theory has been around for several years, but this is the first time it has been presented to such a wide audience. Since this Website, Rocket and Space Technology, is dedicated to the men and women who brought the moon landings to fruition, I feel the time is right for me to speak out on this topic.

This TV program capitalizes on America's fixation with government conspiracies by sensationalizing the notion that NASA perpetrated a multi-billion dollar hoax on the world. In my opinion, the FOX network acted irresponsibly by airing this program. What they produced is a TV show filled with sloppy research, scientific inaccuracies and erroneous conclusions. To support such an absurd theory and to cast doubt in the minds of the American public is an insult to the courage of the astronauts and the brilliance of the engineers who worked to achieve mankind's greatest technological feat. FOX is apparently only concerned with ratings while exhibiting total disregard for the integrity of America's true heroes.

Some of the most prominent advocates of the hoax theory are Bill Kaysing, author of We Never Went To The Moon, Ralph Rene, author of NASA Mooned America, David Percy and Mary Bennett, co-authors of Dark Moon: Apollo and the Whistle Blowers and, more recently, Bart Sibrel, producer of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon. These people, and other hoax advocates, usually point to alleged anomalies in the Apollo photo and video record as evidence of their claims. The FOX program featured many of these claims while providing very little refuting evidence or testimony. Below are my comments refuting both the evidence presented in the TV program and many other common hoax allegations. I invite you to draw your own conclusions, but I suspect you will find the facts speak for themselves.

The likelihood of success was calculated to be so small that it is inconceivable the moon landings could have actually taken place.

Bill Kaysing has claimed that the chance of a successful landing on the moon was calculated to be 0.0017% (1 in 60,000). The source of this information appears to be a report prepared by the Rocketdyne company in the late 1950s. This assessment was, of course, based on understanding and technology existing at the time of the report. As tremendous resources were poured into the problem over the next decade, the reliability studies improved dramatically.

During the mid-1960s the Apollo Support Department of the General Electric Company in Florida conducted extensive mission reliability studies for NASA. These studies were based on very elaborate reliability models of all of the systems. A reliability profile over the course of a mission was generated by computer simulation, and a large number of such simulations were carried out for different scenarios. Based on those studies, the probability of landing on the moon and returning safely to earth never dropped below 90%.

Every Apollo mission before number 11 was plagued by about 20,000 defects apiece. Yet, with the exception of Apollo 13, NASA claims there wasn't one major technical problem on any of their Moon missions.

This is the claim of hoax advocate Ralph Rene. Although I am unfamiliar with the source of this information, Mr. Rene's assertion is clear; the early missions had so many insurmountable problems that NASA decided to abandon the moon landings and fake it. Even if the data is accurate, there is a big difference between a "defect" and a "major technical problem". None of the Apollo missions, with the exception of number 13, experienced a major technical problem that prohibited the crews from successfully completing their missions. Also, the early Apollo flights were test missions designed specifically to shake out bugs in the hardware and procedures. Finally, the moon landings were far from flawless. There were numerous technical problems but, thanks to the skill of the flight controllers, engineers and astronauts, the problems were either corrected or circumvented such that the crews were able to complete their missions with amazing success.

The poor video quality of the first moon landings was a deliberate ploy so nobody could properly examine it.

Television pictures of the Apollo 11 landing were sent directly to Earth from the surface of the Moon using the Lunar Module's antenna and power supply. This placed a restriction on the amount of bandwidth that could be transmitted. Apollo 11 was thereby limited to using a black-and-white, slow-scan TV camera with a scan rate of 10 frames-per-second at 320 lines-per-frame. In order to broadcast the images to the world, the pictures had to first be converted to the commercial TV standards. In the US, this was the EIA standard of 30 frames-per-second at 525 lines-per-frame. The pictures transmitted from the Moon were displayed on a 10-inch black-and-white monitor and a vidicon camera was pointed at the screen and the pictures were scanned at the EIA standard. A number of peculiar image artifacts were seen on the images. One set of artifacts was produced by sunlight reflecting off the astronauts and the LM onto the TV camera's lens. These reflections produced the ghostly effects perceived by the public. Other prominent artifacts were the result of spots burnt into the monitor screens from which the optical conversions were produced.

Apollo 11 was only a first step in what was to be increasingly ambitious missions, thus it was lacking in some capabilities. Among these was the ability to transmit high-quality TV pictures. Later missions, starting with Apollo 12, had enough time in the schedule to permit the astronauts to erect large freestanding dish antennas. This increased the amount of bandwidth that could be transmitted, thus allowing complex color TV pictures to be sent directly to Earth.

There can't be any pictures taken on the Moon because the film would melt in the 250° temperatures.

The Apollo astronauts used what was, at the time, a special transparency film produced by Eastman Kodak under a NASA contract. The photosensitive emulsions layers where placed on an ESTAR polyester film base, which had previously been used primarily for motion picture film. The melting point of Estar is 490° F, although some shrinkage and distortion can occur at around 200° F. Fortunately the film was never exposed to this kind of temperature. The cameras were protected inside a special case designed to keep them cool. The situation on the airless Moon is much different than in your oven, for instance. Without convection or conduction, the only method of heat transfer is radiation. Radiative heat can be effectively directed away from an object by wrapping it in a material with a reflective surface, usually simply a white material. The camera casings, as well as most of the astronauts' clothing, were indeed white.

Every Apollo photograph appears to be perfectly composed, focused and exposed, despite the fact the astronauts used cameras without viewfinders and light meters.

The implication is that the astronauts could not have achieved this apparent level of perfection. The obvious answer is that they did not, as is evident by this badly underexposed example [see photo]. The photos to which the hoax advocates refer are publicity photos released by NASA. Surely, NASA isn't going to release the foul-ups and blunders. Also, what appears to be perfect composition is, in many cases, the result of cropping. If all the photographs were uncropped, the number, size and pattern of crosshairs would be identical in every photo, which clearly is not the case. I don't mean to take anything away from the astronauts because they performed a remarkable job, which can be explained in three words: practice, practice, and practice. Perhaps no humans have ever been better prepared for a job than the Apollo astronauts.

The black sky should be full of stars, yet none are visible in any of the Apollo photographs.

This claim is one I hear frequently, and is one of the easiest to refute. The answer is very simple: they are too faint. The Apollo photos are of brightly lit objects on the surface of the Moon, for which fast exposure settings were required. The fast exposures simply did not allow enough starlight into the camera to record an image on the film. For the same reason, images of Earth taken from orbit also lack stars. The stars are there; they just don't appear in the pictures. The hoax advocates often argue that stars should be visible, and some of their claims are valid, however they fail to recognize the difference between "seeing" stars and "photographing" stars. The astronauts could have recorded star images in their photos by increasing exposures, but they were not there to take star pictures. The purpose of the photos was to record the astronauts' activities on the surface of the Moon.

Bill Kaysing claims that NASA has perpetrated the lie that stars cannot be seen in space to validate the lack of stars in the Apollo photos. This assertion is utterly ridiculous; in fact, NASA has released many photos in which stars are visible. Common among these are long-exposure nighttime photographs of aurora taken by space shuttle astronauts. This example [see photo] is a four-second exposure taken from the flight deck of the shuttle Endeavour.

The astronauts should have seen a beautiful star-filled sky above them, yet they never mention it.

Even though there was a black sky above them, the astronauts still had to contend with the glare of a brightly lit lunar surface. The bright landscape prevented the astronauts' eyes from becoming dark adapted, thus making it nearly impossible to see faint stars. It would be like trying to see stars at night on Earth while someone is shining a flashlight directly into your eyes. Some astronauts reported that, while inside the LM, they could see stars through the upper rendezvous window. Also, astronaut Gene Cernan said that, while standing in the shadow of the Apollo 17 LM, he could see some stars while he was outside.

There are several photographs of objects that are in shadows, yet they appear lighted and with surprising detail. Objects located in shadows should appear totally black.

The problem with this statement is that it fails to consider reflected sunlight. Next to the Sun, the largest source of light on the Moon is the lunar surface itself, which reflects large amounts of sunlight. At the Earth-Sun distance, maximum solar illumination is about 10,000 lumens per square foot; however, if the Sun is not directly overhead its rays will strike the surface obliquely. This decreases the intensity of sunlight per unit area. A typical Sun elevation during the Apollo landings was about 20 degrees, thus the illumination per square foot was about 3,400 lumens. Since the Moon's surface reflects about 10% of the light it receives, each square foot of surface reflected about 340 lumens. This is equivalent to the luminosity of a 35-watt light bulb. This amount of light easily explains the illumination observed in the Apollo photographs.

In many photographs the shadow side of the astronauts appear illuminated, while the shadow side of rocks appear totally black.

This Apollo 17 photograph [see photo] is a good example of the above hoax claim. The explanation is apparent from the photo itself. Look at the astronaut's feet and you will see that the shadow in this area is just as dark as that of the foreground rocks. The lunar surface acts as a reflector to illuminate the shadow side of the astronaut. At the elevation of the astronaut's feet, and the foreground rocks, this reflector surface is mostly covered by the adjacent shadows. However, at the elevation of the astronaut's head and torso, the shadows cover a much smaller percentage of the surface. For example, on a flat surface the angular distance from horizon to horizon is 180 degrees. At an elevation of five feet, a one-foot wide shadow subtends an angle of 11.4 degrees, or only 6% of the distance from horizon to horizon. At two inches above the ground, this shadow subtends an angle of 143 degrees, or nearly 80% of the surface. Furthermore, the rocks are darker and less reflective than the astronaut's white space suit.

Shadows cast on the lunar surface should be parallel. Some shadows in the Apollo photos are not parallel indicating more than one light source, thus the photos are fakes.

Again there is a sound explanation; it is a simple a matter of perspective. A photo is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional world, hence parallel lines may not appear as such on film. We all know how lines on a highway appear to diverge as they approach the observer, yet we know they are parallel. Another important factor that comes into play here is the slope of the ground. Let's consider two shadows - one cast on an upward slope and the other on a downward slope. If viewed from the side, these shadows would appear to go off in different directions. However, if viewed from high above, they would be seen as parallel. In other words, looks can be deceiving. There is no evidence of NASA trickery here.

This photograph [see photo], taken on Earth, is an excellent example illustrating how perspective causes shadows to appear non-parallel when seen on film. In this example [see photo] the astronaut on the right is standing on a small rise. The sloping ground has caused his shadow to elongate and appear at a different angle than the shadow of the astronaut on the left. Also note, if two spotlights produced the shadows then each astronaut would have two shadows.

Apollo 11 footage shows the astronauts' shadows increasing and decreasing in length as they move about. This is because they are in close proximity to a large artificial light source that causes their shadows to change as they move toward or away from the light.

This claim comes from David Percy, who displays this image [see photo] on his Web site. A brief examination reveals that Percy's explanation cannot possibly account for the shadows. If the shadows were produced as described, then the closer an astronaut is to the light source, the shorter his shadow will be, which is just the opposite of what we see. Percy claims ground slope cannot explain the shadows because the terrain is essentially flat. On a large scale the Apollo 11 site was essentially flat, however there were local undulations in the ground surface. Since we are looking at a two-dimensional image we cannot see the slope of the ground, but we can infer it from the shadows. It appears the ground is sloping upward and away from left astronaut either to the top-left, the bottom-right, or a combination of both. Remember, shadows cast on a downward slope are lengthened, while those cast on an upward slope are shortened. It seems that a change in ground slope is the only feasible explanation for the shadows we see.

Many Apollo photographs show lighting "hot spots", as well as a darkening of the surface toward the horizon. Sunlight should not produce hot spots, nor should the surface fade in an airless environment.