Moon Landing. Fact or Fiction.

Of course they landed on the moon, where do you think that sudden delivery of 100,000 tons of cheese came from?

Beano
fabulous post illustrating the tiny technology timeline within which space cultures have to communicate. Even here on earth people are now saying what's a vinyl record?

quote:

Originally posted by TomK:

I'd love to see where all these figures actually come from. Having lived and worked in the US for 3 years I found the people to be largely polite, well educated (if a bit on the insular side but that's not too surprising in a country of that size) and no more prone to extreme beliefs than anywhere else.

I agree - it's just that the USA has a lot of people, so 20% of them is a large number. I know and have have met a lot of people from the USA and to a person they have been absolutely wonderful. Having said that, they've all been visitors to the UK or in NY or LA!

Go USA

Regards

Stephen

quote:

Try telling the residents of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Exactly, BigH.
So many people worked on the Lunar program that it would be impossible to have them all keep silent if it were a fake.
I personally knew a gentleman that was the chief communications engineer in the early days of Apollo. He knew Chaffee, White and Grissom (those that died in the Apollo 1 fire). What a great collection of stories he had!
Additionally, Armstrong lives not far from my home. I've never met him but I have a friend that is close to his family. Armstrong is intensly private but will not give any room for those that think this was all a fake.
I really think this is all an effort to discredit the amazing work done by the scientests and engineers as well as to poke a finger in the eye of Western governments. What a load of crap and waste of time.
What if the Soviets had made it to the moon and the West didn't?
Saying that, I'm back on with my day...

One more thing: I was working with a musician the other night preparing to play a special, surprise piece at a friend's wedding. This guy is not a technologist by any means. We were discussing how easy it is to use Mac's Garage Band or (in my case) ProTools to record music and burn CDs these days.
His assertion was that this technology has been available for 20+ years and "they" are just now letting "us" have it.
What an interesting entitlement attitude. He had no appreciation for the advancement of technology or the incredible amount of work required to bring such technology out of the minds of visionaries, through the development labs, into shakey and expensive production and ultimately to the point that a starving musician can personally afford to have 100x the studio power than was available for, say, Abby Road or Dark Side of the Moon.

Now I've really got to get back to work to bring more technology to those that actively refuse to appreciate it...

David

on the Buzz clip, good to see an honest response! I watched the next clip - 1.5 mins of that dweeb harassing former astronauts. If someone got in my face suggesting I swear on a bible and all would be accepted, I'd likely slug em as well.

I don't profess to know much about the moon landings, and the science around it. I've a laymans question some of you guys might be able to answer. With the mega-powerful telescopes we have nowadays, can we see the lunar rover on the moon's surface? I can capture enough of the moon's surface with a mere 210mm lens to see mountains... surely someone could pick out the vehicle up there?



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quote:

Originally posted by Beano:
...
"In the upper left-hand corner is an easily recognized drawing of the phonograph record and the stylus carried with it. ...
Beano

People spent most of their career working on that record and then they forget to punch a hole in the middle. It's tragic.

PMSL Alexander,
Just think if it is ever found, ET would probably put a post on here asking what power supply to use and could anyone recommend a suitable support for the turntable!

Proof positive



Stephen

Beano, I happen to know a tiny planet far far away that has spacecraft like the pioneer come crashing in almost daily.
They've got warehouses full with the plaques and records.
When such a record arrives without a hole in the middle they 'll just ask to send a new one over and to please get it right this time.

Rico, The hubble resolves details up to about 1/100.000 degree, that's a detail 2m wide at 10.000.000 distance, or objects 80m wide on the moon.

quote:

Originally posted by PJT:

quote:

Originally posted by Simon Matthews:
Ozren

So you believe more in the idea of a global conspiracy run and coordinated by large lizards as opposed to believing the combined efforts of over 1 million people over the period of a decade in creating the apollo space program?

Man oh man where did we go wrong?

No it's not Lizards, but the DOLPHINS who rule Earth

Nope it's whales. Thought that is what the Star Trek movie was about (can't remember for certain).

quote:

Originally posted by Rico:
I've a laymans question some of you guys might be able to answer. With the mega-powerful telescopes we have nowadays, can we see the lunar rover on the moon's surface? I can capture enough of the moon's surface with a mere 210mm lens to see mountains... surely someone could pick out the vehicle up there?
image hosting by flickr.com

Earth-bound telescopes cannot resolve an object the size of a lunar rover on the moon. I really would suggest you visit this site which saves us all the bother of having this discussion every so often.

I love the idea that NASA went to the moon to get some rocks to authenticate their " spoof" moon landing. Priceless. Right on FOX, as the man said stick to making the Simpsons.

quote:

Originally posted by ewemon:

quote:

Originally posted by PJT:

quote:

Originally posted by Simon Matthews:
Ozren

So you believe more in the idea of a global conspiracy run and coordinated by large lizards as opposed to believing the combined efforts of over 1 million people over the period of a decade in creating the apollo space program?

Man oh man where did we go wrong?

No it's not Lizards, but the DOLPHINS who rule Earth

Nope it's whales. Thought that is what the Star Trek movie was about (can't remember for certain).

Ah, but according to the Hitch Hikers guide, is is the dolphins

thanks for the answers to the very simple question, and especially for the link. I did note that this is a laymans question! With my mind now at rest, I can get on with what I was doing before I posted the question.

TomK, if it was indeed such a bother having that particular discussion - well, you wouldn't be having it again, would you? You'd be talking instead about how to save the planet from stupidity/SUV's/space junk/war/famine etc etc, or the football scores from the weekend. but no, you're destined to repeat it like groundhog day.

quote:

Rico, The hubble resolves details up to about 1/100.000 degree, that's a detail 2m wide at 10.000.000 distance, or objects 80m wide on the moon.

Thanks, that made good sense to me.

Now forgive me: hmmm - time we got a 'bird' sent over the lunar surface then, like they do in the movies. maybe the data will be useful - we could check it out on "google moon", sometime soon. People in second life will be scrambling to buy lunar postcodes before you know it, they'll find looking at satellite pictures really useful before committing funds to a virtual Realtor...

quote:

it's just that the USA has a lot of people, so 20% of them is a large number.

This is kinda missing the point of a percentage as a ratio rather than an absolute number.

The thing I love about conspiracy theories is the suggestion that normally incompetent government bureaucracies can suddenly pull off devastatingly complex scams.

Anyway, there were quite a number of sub-contractors involved in fabricating equipment for the Apollo program - to suugest that this was part of the hoax...well, doesn't sound like it would save much to make all the equipment in order to fake using it...

quote:

Originally posted by PJT:
Ah, but according to the Hitch Hikers guide, is is the dolphins

No, they are more clever than humans but it's mice that rule the world.

Regards

Stephen

quote:

Originally posted by Malky:

quote:

it's just that the USA has a lot of people, so 20% of them is a large number.

This is kinda missing the point of a percentage as a ratio rather than an absolute number.

I'd rather be sat on by 20% of the mice in my garden than 20% of the poplulation of the USA.

Stephen

quote:

No, they are more clever than humans but it's mice that rule the world.

Technically the mice (really intergalactic pan-dimensional beings) are just the scientists running the experiment. They don't rule it so much as let the earth get on with a form of self government ('intelligence') so as to formulate the question to the answer of life the universe and everything (What do you get if you multiply six by nine? A = forty two).

What do you get if you multiply six by nine wasn't the ultimate question. The computer programme was disrupted by the arrival of the Golgafrincham ark ship, leading to the wrong question being arrived at.

As was later discovered anyway, the question and answer are mutually exclusive so knowledge of one logically precludes knowledge of the other.

Now, where did I put my coat....

regards, Tam

It's covering up your life.
Ken

Yes but that was the question. The fact that the experiment apparently went tits up leading to a question which did not seem to fit the answer does not mean it did go tits up and supplied the wrong question.

I hope you are all listening to Dirk Gently on Radio 4......

Stephen

Actually, I missed this week's (thanks for reminding me). But, to be honest, I found the first episode rather disappointing. It's from the team behind the recent adaptations for R4 of the last 3 Hitchhiker's books and, for my money, they rather missed the point. Instead of playing to strengths of the medium, as Douglas Adams always did, they just straight transposed it. The result wasn't as funny as it should have been and meant for an awful lot of very clunky expository dialogue that had simply been lifted from descriptive passages in the books.

That and the fact that Harry Enfield is not good casting.

regards, Tam

p.s. Ken,