Argument from incredulity
the quality of those pictures are only going to get better over the years. moon hoaxers are going to find it harder and harder to deny it
prop c? why dont you show us some evidence of what your saying
well they had to make it believable
[h=3]What Neil & Buzz Left on the Moon[/h]
What Neil & Buzz Left on the MoonJuly 20, 2004: The most famous thing Neil Armstrong left on the moon 35 years ago is a footprint, a boot-shaped depression in the gray moondust. Millions of people have seen pictures of it, and one day, years from now, lunar tourists will flock to the Sea of Tranquility to see it in person. Peering over the rails ‌ "hey, mom, is that the first one?"
A cutting-edge science experiment left behind in the Sea of Tranquility by Apollo 11 astronauts is still running today.
Will anyone notice, 100 feet away, something else Armstrong left behind?
Ringed by footprints, sitting in the moondust, lies a 2-foot wide panel studded with 100 mirrors pointing at Earth: the "lunar laser ranging retroreflector array." Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong put it there on July 21, 1969, about an hour before the end of their final moonwalk. Thirty-five years later, it's the only Apollo science experiment still running.
Right: The Apollo 11 lunar laser ranging retroreflector array. [More]
University of Maryland physics professor Carroll Alley was the project's principal investigator during the Apollo years, and he follows its progress today. "Using these mirrors," explains Alley, "we can 'ping' the moon with laser pulses and measure the Earth-moon distance very precisely. This is a wonderful way to learn about the moon's orbit and to test theories of gravity."
Here's how it works: A laser pulse shoots out of a telescope on Earth, crosses the Earth-moon divide, and hits the array. Because the mirrors are "corner-cube reflectors," they send the pulse straight back where it came from. "It's like hitting a ball into the corner of a squash court," explains Alley. Back on Earth, telescopes intercept the returning pulse--"usually just a single photon," he marvels.
The round-trip travel time pinpoints the moon's distance with staggering precision: better than a few centimeters out of 385,000 km, typically. Targeting the mirrors and catching their faint reflections is a challenge, but astronomers have been doing it for 35 years. A key observing site is the McDonald Observatory in Texas where a 0.7 meter telescope regularly pings reflectors in the Sea of Tranquility (Apollo 11), at Fra Mauro (Apollo 14) and Hadley Rille (Apollo 15), and, sometimes, in the Sea of Serenity. There's a set of mirrors there onboard the parked Soviet Lunokhud 2 moon rover--maybe the coolest-looking robot ever built.
In this way, for decades, researchers have carefully traced the moon's orbit, and they've learned some remarkable things, among them:
(1) The moon is spiraling away from Earth at a rate of 3.8 cm per year. Why? Earth's ocean tides are responsible.
(2) The moon probably has a liquid core.
(3) The universal force of gravity is very stable. Newton's gravitational constant G has changed less than 1 part in 100-billion since the laser experiments began.
Physicists have also used the laser results to check Einstein's theory of gravity, the general theory of relativity. So far, so good: Einstein's equations predict the shape of the moon's orbit as well as laser ranging can measure it. But Einstein, constantly tested, isn't out of the woods yet. Some physicists (Alley is one of them) believe his general theory of relativity is flawed. If there is a flaw, lunar laser ranging might yet find it.
Right: Lunar laser ranging at the McDonald Observatory. [More]
NASA and the National Science Foundation are funding a new facility in New Mexico, the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation or, appropriately, "APOLLO" for short. Using a 3.5-meter telescope with good atmospheric "seeing," researchers there will examine the moon's orbit with millimeter precision, 10 times better than before.
"Who knows what they'll discover?" wonders Alley.
More and better data could reveal strange fluctuations in gravity, amendments to Einstein, the "sloshing" of the moon's core. Time will tell ... and there's plenty of time. Lunar mirrors require no power source. They haven't been covered with moondust or pelted by meteoroids, as early Apollo planners feared. Lunar ranging should continue for decades, perhaps for centuries.
Picture this: Tourists in the Sea of Tranquility, looking up at Earth. Half of the planet is dark, including New Mexico where a pinprick of light appears. A laser.
"Hey, mom," stepping over a footprint, "what's that star?"
Editor's Note: Among many early contributors to the the lunar laser ranging retroreflector array project, Prof. Alley credits Robert Henry Dicke, James Faller, Peter Bender, Douglas Currie and Bendix Corporation. A complete list may be found in Alley's account of the project, "Laser ranging to retro-reflectors on the Moon as a test of theories of gravity," published in Quantum Optics, Experimental Gravitation, and Measurement Theory, Eds. P Meystre and M.O. Scully, Plenum Publishing (1982).
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/21jul_llr/
Actually yes, it does look like there is radial disturbance of the regolith.
Probably because there is really no debate. NASA and Hubble engineers don't have anything to prove. I posted pictures from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Higher res pictures are forthcoming but I doubt Hubble will be able to see more clearly than the LROC.
What image numbers are these? How do I know there was no alterations? I'm pulling my images direct from ALSJ.this is two separate landing areas look at the mountains in the back
You already know that Russians had the first man spacewalk, first woman, satellite etc. But all of a sudden USA claims to put a man on the moon in response to Soviet accomplishments and basically undercutting rpevious Russian space achievements. With this in mind and if the landings were faked(although I do find the Apollo 16 boondoggle debatable), where's the Soviet rebuttal? I think the Russians had more than enough radar capabilities and more reason to be the first to openly flame this Amerikan hoax.
15 Reasons Why Man Has Never Set Foot on The Moon
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15. "Tricky Dick" Richard Nixon was president at the time. He was the king of cover-up, secret tapes and scandal. Think about all of his potential antics that were not discovered.
14. A successful manned mission to the moon offered a wonderful pride-boosting distraction for the near revolt of the US citizens over 50,000 deaths in the Vietnam War.
13. The Soviets had a five-to-one superiority to the U.S. in manned hours in space. They were first in achieving the following seven important milestones:
1. First manmade satellite in earth orbit
2. First man in space
3. First man to orbit the earth
4. First woman in space
5. The first crew of three astronauts onboard one spacecraft
6. The first space walk
7. The first of two orbiting space craft rendezvousing
This put America at a perceived military disadvantage in missile technology during the very height of the Cold War.
12. Neil Armstrong, the first man to supposedly walk on the moon, refuses to give interviews to anyone on the subject. "Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies." Collins also refuses to be interviewed. Aldrin, who granted an interview, threatened to sue us if we showed it to anyone.
11. Newly retouched photographs correct errors from previously released versions. Why would they be updating thirty-year-old pictures if they really went to the moon?
With Prop ID "C"
After: "C" Removed
10. Rediscovered lost footage shows the American flag blowing in the wind. The wind was probably caused by intense air-conditioning used to cool the astronauts in their lightened, uncirculated, space suits. The cooling systems in the backpacks would have been removed to lighten the load not designed for earth's six times heavier gravity, otherwise they might have fallen over.
9. Enlarged photographs underneath the lunar lander's 10,000 lb. thrust engine show the soil completely undisturbed. During ground tests there was grave concern for the vehicle falling into the hole the engine created as it descended. An oversight that they would have to keep consistent for all subsequent moon missions. They attributed it to the effect of no atmosphere (except for the flag blowing in the wind - see # 10!)
8. Rare, uncirculated photographs, allegedly from the moon's surface, show scenes supposedly lit solely by sunlight. Yet they contain shadows that do not run parallel with each other, indicating supplemental artificial light. Sunlight would cast shadows that would never intersect.
7. The moon is 250,000 miles away. The space shuttle has never gone more than 400 miles from the Earth. Except for Apollo astronauts, no humans even claim to have gone beyond low-earth orbit. When the space shuttle astronauts did get to an altitude of 400 miles, the radiation of the Van Allen belts forced them to a lower altitude. The Van Allen radiation belts exist because the Earth's magnetic field traps the solar wind.
6. The top portion of the lunar module which landed on the moon supposedly popped up off the moon with two astronauts aboard, entered lunar orbit 60 miles up, and docked with the command module in lunar orbit. To look at its design and think such could have actually occurred is absolutely ludicrous. The fuel tanks were nowhere near one-sixth the size of those on the space shuttle as one would expect to achieve lunar orbit.
5. The surface of the moon is a vacuum. The landing module would have been heated to 250 degrees on the light side where they landed. There is no way they could have rejected the heat for as long as 72 hours as they claim on some Apollo missions. How long do you think you could keep your car cool on a hot day running off battery power?
4. Take a look at the lunar module which supposedly flew from lunar orbit to the surface of the moon. It is a cylindrical shape with a high center of gravity and one big thrust engine at the bottom. Upon just looking at this design, to think it would not immediately pinwheel and crash, as the lunar module trainer did three weeks prior on Earth, is absurd.
3. After the Apollo 11 mission, Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin gave a press conference. When asked whether they remembered seeing any stars from the surface of the moon, Collins, who was supposedly in the command module the whole time, gave a wrong answer to a question he should not have been answering. The relevant portion of this clip is in my documentary; viewing it with an understanding of the circumstances makes it clear they were lying about having traveled to the moon. I'm saying Collins blew it right then and there and I honestly cannot understand why there is even further discussion on the whole topic. Furthermore, if you obtain a written transcript of the press conference you'll see that the comment is erroneously attributed to Aldrin. Honest mistake or cover-up?
2. In 1967 three astronauts were burned alive on the launch pad. The upshot of the congressional inquiry was that the entire Apollo program was in shambles and it was a miracle no one was killed sooner. All of the problems were supposedly fixed by 1969, just two years later. How could they have made such a large improvement in "quality control" in such a short period of time.
1. All Apollo missions stayed in low-earth orbit for the duration of the trip. We uncovered some mislabeled, unedited, behind-the-scenes footage from NASA that shows the crew of Apollo 11 clearly staging a shot of being half-way to the moon.
