Why haven't we been back to the moon?

[HalfLotus]

Do you even try to find rebuttals to these stupid claims you post beforehand? I've found it really easy to find these things, so I can only guess that you're just too intellectually lazy/dishonest to properly look into these things before you throw them out.

http://lokishammer.dragon-rider.org/Apollo/Apollo11/

Sibrel's claims are just wrong. And he's engaging in deliberate manipulation, too.

That analysis misrepresents/misunderstands the video in several ways, then sets about "debunking" the straw men it has created, mostly the transparency issue. I italicize the parts where he's confused:

He states that the "Earth" shown on this footage is actually one of the following:
- A transparency stuck to the window and which is being filmed from across the command capsule
- That it really is the Earth, but it is seen as small and circular because it has been filmed through a shaped by a cut-out placed over the window
- Or that it really is the Earth, but that it is shaped by filming it through a small round window.

He gets the first two completely wrong, and the third one partially right. What the video actually says is that three things are happening, not "one of" three:

1.) It is the earth, not a transparency of the earth.
2.) It's the earth being framed by a window being filmed from across the spaceship, thus making it appear smaller.
3.) They use a transparency to create the shadowed "dark side" of the earth.

The wrap-up questions aren't much better:

1) How can the Earth remain the same throughout each broadcast if being filmed from low earth obit?
2) Why are all three images of the Earth different if they are a Transparency as Sibrel claims?
3) Why does Sibrel deliberately remove the GET 30:28 transmission from Astronaut Monkey Business?
4) How can a Tranparency be shrunk and then disappear from the window?
5) If the Earth is so obviously outside the windows in Low Earth Orbit, how is the empty window achieved?

1) doesn't even make sense. They're in the same place (low orbit), so the earth looks the same.

2) contradicts 1) (lol), and the video doesn't claim the earth is a transparency, but that the "dark side" is created by one.

3) is a good question, and although he shows a frame from the edited out footage, it's not much unlike many other frames, and doesn't do anything to disprove the video's claims. Maybe just edited for time or clarity?

4) Again he's still on the transparency, riding that straw man hard. The video does NOT claim the earth itself is a transparency.

5) The empty window frame he shows is interesting, but not as compelling as the video. On top of the numerous misrepresentations, I find that analysis wholly unconvincing.

[realpolitic]

$600 toilet seats are a thing of the past

They're just a relic; from excesses in the Reagan administration; now we have $5200 1 inch brackets . I'm so glad these "patriots" will spare no expense, while they're cutting "nonessential" programs like education, so kids don't grow up as "math terrorists" who would dare question such an expenditure.

[Whoha]

High Tech job creation

[HalfLotus]

They're just a relic; from excesses in the Reagan administration; now we have $5200 1 inch brackets . I'm so glad these "patriots" will spare no expense, while they're cutting "nonessential" programs like education, so kids don't grow up as "math terrorists" who would dare question such an expenditure.

[Flubber]

But, following the conventional "reasoning", if all that mattered was the first manned mission - popping the proverbial lunar cherry - then why did we send five more manned missions after Apollo 11? Six if you include Apollo 13's failure.

Clearly we'd already proven ourselves the top dogs with the biggest dicks aboard Apollo 11's maiden voyage. Americans were even complaining that the astronauts were interrupting I Love Lucy episodes. The money could've been spent winning the Cold War against Russia, or the simultaneous 'hot' war in Vietnam, or God-only-knows-how-many covert wars at the time. Russians had supposedly scrapped their entire program since they weren't number one. But we decided to send five more manned missions in just three years.

So it very obviously wasn't all about being "first", because we decided we wanted to be first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth!

And yet no country in the 37 years since has wanted to or been capable of being lucky number seven? Think of the marketing opportunities!

Well-- I think the politicians of the day, while on some level thinking that being first was the really important thing, also had to think that there was some benefit to the whole exercise. None of them at the time were saying "We want to be first in beating the Russians in doing something completely useless"-- So their plan was to go to the moon again and again. They then did this . .. but public excitement faded, they had learned most of what they can learn in brief manned visits, and the Russians essentially dropped out of the space race (they had probably stolen enough of the US data to know that the benefits were not worth the cost) --

So after the flurry of visits there were no more. To me this is largely budgetary inertia. When you have an existing program with existing funding its there and assumed to continue. Once that has ended for a while a new moon shot is a whole new budget, creating a need for a new organization and the first question anyone would ask is "why exactly would we do his now?"-- Seriously-- pick any organization with a budget and compare how hard it is to continue an existing program versus trying to get funding for a new one.

As you point out, all the missions to the moon were in the early days when NASA was revelling in its success and the appropriations for all those misssions would have been made as part of the planning to get there first. And I can just imagine what amazing ideas you would come up with if they had only gone once and then stopped. Bottom line is after getting there once it would have seemed weird to just say "game over" and shut down NASA. So they kept their budget and went a few more times. Then when the public cared less -- then the moon missions stopped. Typical government behavior if you ask me-- cut a program the public isn't passionate about anymore.

I don't know why the Russians never went to the moon. I'm guessing they had enough of the US data to not need to go for scientific purposes and probably saw no point in pointing out to the world they were number 2. They were fighting to be number 1 and everyone knew there were TWO superpowers then.

Now ?? Chinese ascendency is such that on some measures they are a "superpower" now. But they have been a relatively backward place for so long that I think that this is their government trying to make a splash that they have arrived as a top power. Being "number 2" was of no interest to Russia in the 60s or 70s or 80s-- For China though, being one of only two nations to have done this would be important to their psyche and national pride I think. India may be pursuing this for similar reasons

[Boris Godunov]

Ok, so you harp on something that's of relatively minor significance compared to the very thorough analysis of the actual footage that was below that which shows conclusively that the shots weren't faked. Gotcha. Shouldn't have expected better, I know, given your hand-waving dismissal of the other site because in his intro the author just wasn't precise enough in his grammar for your tastes (although what he said was entirely correct).

I did let the moon rock thing go, though, and shouldn't have missed that: It's very easy to tell the difference between the meteorites that landed on Earth vs. rocks collected on the moon. The meteorites show evidence of impact events, show the effects of exposure to water, etc. that the moon samples do not.

On top of that, the Apollo missions collected a total of 380+ kilos of moon rocks. To date, only about 30 kilos of moon meteorites have been found all over the world, including those Antarctic rocks. Meteorites are extremely rare, and the idea that there was some mother lode of them that NASA luckily discovered in time to pass off a hoax is ludicrous.

There are no reputable geologists who have ever disputed the authenticity of the moon rocks. Not a single peer-reviewed paper or article anywhere, none. That's quite a conspiracy.

[Serb]

And why has no other country in the world been there? Referring to manned missions of course.

Two most common explanations I see are, "No reason to." and "Can't afford it."

You forgot about the third and the most plausible version - "you've never been there".

[Boris Godunov]

Jesus, Serb, read the whole ****ing thread next time.

[Serb]

Oh, come on, it's just a third page - not so late to mention this obvious thing once again even if it was already mentioned on the previous page.

[Serb]

Watch Apollo 13 (great movie!) to see how the public quickly lost interest. The last planned Apollo missions were cancelled due to lost interest in the missions by the large public. It's nothing like Star Wars, Star Trek or Avatar.

You have mentioned some great sources of scientific/historical knowledge.

I admire your wisdom, Sir.

[Serb]

If my dad had slides of such a thing and then made tons of copies of the pictures and destroyed the slides, it would be of the same importance. None.

"Most historic human journey ever?" Really? Did it really change the course of human history much? If we'd never gone to the moon, would our lives be remarkably different today?



It suggests that since they had copies of everything, taking up space with the originals wasn't that important to some people, sure. Even so, so what? It's not like scientists/engineers are known for sentimental attachment to such things. There's not much logical reason to occupy space with originals when you have perfectly good copies that take up considerably less space, thanks to the conversion processes.

Sorry, Boris that sounds like bull****. Very weak arguments. The guy clearly beats you with just the common sense.

[Boris Godunov]

Oh, come on, it's just a third page - not so late to mention this obvious thing once again even if it was already mentioned on the previous page.

It's been the focus of the entire ****ing thread since page 1.

The original post was just HL's roundabout way of intimating the Moon landing hoax.

[RGBVideo]

this thread:

OP reads like your typical troll post

IT'S A CONSPIRACY! A 50-YEAR OLD CONSPIRACY! I WILL REVEAL IT BY POSTING A RANT ON THE INTERNET DISPLAYING MY UTTER IGNORANCE ON THE RELATED TECHNICAL INFORMATION I PRETEND TO BE AN EXPERT OF!

[Flubber]

On the 'lost originals" point-- I have not looked at that in any detail but apparently many of the electronic media of the time would degrade over time. So copying to better media would have been only prudent and would likely have to be repeated from time to time.

Also we are talking about massive quatities of data. Somewhere there was probably a record of the oxygen level in the spacecraft or something similarly mundane. After that had been seen so that there was nothing at all interesting in it why would anyone expend any amount of effort to save it. Perhaps the oxygen level recorder machine taped over the prior mission when they did the next one

[Flubber]

Oh and generally my biggest reason not to believe most conspiracy theories is the fact of how very many people have to be "in on it" and how complex it becomes.

If someone puts forth that a couple of world or industry leaders conspired to do x or y to make money, I have little difficulty with that premise. But when hundreds or thousands of people have to keep a secret for 40 years . . . I find it hard to believe humans could do that --- UNLESS maybe all those involved are actually SUPER-ROBOTS