No subject

loaded with bad thinking, ridiculous suppositions and utterly wrong
science. I was able to get
a copy of the show in advance, and although I was expecting it to be
bad, I was still surprised and how awful it was. I took
<i>four pages</i> of notes. I won't subject you to all of that
here; it would take hours to write. I'll only go over
some of the major points of the show, and explain briefly why
they are wrong. In the near future, hopefully by the end of the summer,
I will have a much more detailed series of pages taking on each of the
points made by the Hoax Believers (whom I will call HBs).
<p>So let's take a look at the ``evidence'' brought out by the show.
To make this easier, below is a table with links to the specific
arguments.
</p>
<p></p>
<center>
<table border="1" cellpadding="2">
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#disclaimer">Disclaimer</a></td>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#poll">20%
believe in the hoax?</a></td>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#capricorn1">The
Capricorn 1 tie-in</a></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#stars">No
stars in pictures</a></td>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#crater">No
blast crater</a></td>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#dust">Dust
around the lander</a></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#shadow">Deep,
dark shadows</a></td>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#parallel">Non-parallel
shadows</a></td>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#backgrounds">Identical
backgrounds</a></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#backgrounds2">More
identical backgrounds</a></td>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#gyro">Lander
unable to balance itself</a></td>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#flame">No
flames from lunar launch</a></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#doubletime">Astronauts
footage shot in slow-motion</a></td>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#flag">The
waving flag</a></td>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#perfectpix">Why
was every picture perfect?</a></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#crosshairs">Missing
crosshairs in photos</a></td>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#radiation">The
deadly radiation of space</a></td>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#murder">Did
NASA murder its astronauts?</a></td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#conclusion">CONCLUSION</a></td>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#links">LINKS</a></td>
      <td><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#fallout">FALLOUT</a></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>
</center>
<p>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a name="disclaimer">
<b>Bad:</b>
Right at the beginning, they have a disclaimer: </a></p>
<blockquote><a name="disclaimer"> The following program deals with a
controversial subject. The theories expressed are not the only possible
explanation. Viewers are invited to make a judgment based on all
available information. </a></blockquote>
<p>
<a name="disclaimer"><b>Good:</b> The last thing the writers of this
program want the viewers to do is make an informed
decision. If they did, they would have given equal time to both sides
of this controversy. Instead, the vast majority of the time is given
to the HBs, with only scattered (and very vague) dismissive statements
by skeptics. So the available information is really only what they tell
you.
Of course, there are a lot of websites talking about this. I have a
list
of them </a><a
 href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/apollohoax.html">
on my own site</a>.
<a name="poll"></a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="poll"><b>Bad:</b>
The show claims that 20% of Americans have doubts that we went to the
Moon.
</a></p>
<p><a name="poll"><b>Good:</b>
That number is a bit misleading. </a><a
 href="http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?ci=1993&amp;pg=1" target="_blank">
A 1999 Gallup poll</a> showed it was more like 6%, a number which
agrees with a poll taken in 1995 by Time/CNN.
The Gallup website <i>[note added Feb. 19, 2007: The Gallup site has
been rearranged, and though I can no longer find this quotation, it
still
jibes with what is on the site now]</i> also says:
</p>
<blockquote>Although, if taken literally, 6% translates into millions
of individuals, it is not unusual to find about that many people in the
typical poll agreeing with almost any question that is asked of them --
so the best interpretation is that this particular conspiracy theory is
not widespread. </blockquote>
It also depends on what you mean by ``doubts''. Does that mean someone
who
truly doesn't believe man ever went to the Moon, or just that it's
remotely possible that NASA faked it? Those are very different things.
Not only does the program not say, but they don't say where they found
the
statistic they quote either.
<a name="capricorn1"></a>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="capricorn1"><b>Bad:</b>
The program talks about the movie ``Capricorn 1'', an entertaining if
ultimately silly movie about how NASA must fake a manned Mars
expedition. The program says ``The Apollo footage [from the surface of
the Moon]
is strikingly similar to the scenes in ``Capricorn 1''.
</a></p>
<p><a name="capricorn1"><b>Good:</b>
Is it just an amazing coincidence that the actual Moon images look like
the movie, or is it evidence of conspiracy? <i>Neither</i>! The movie
was
filmed in <b>1978</b>, many years after the last man walked on the
Moon.
The movie was <i>made</i> to look like the real thing! This statement
by
the program is particularly ludicrous, and indicates just how far the
producers were willing to go to make a sensational program.
</a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="stars">
<b>Bad:</b>
The first bit of actual evidence brought up is the lack of stars in the
pictures taken by the Apollo astronauts from the surface of the Moon.
Without air, the sky is black, so where are the stars? </a></p>
<p><a name="stars"><b>Good:</b>
The stars are there! They're just too faint to be seen.
</a></p>
<p><a name="stars">This is usually the first thing HBs talk about when
discussing the Hoax. That
amazes me, as it's the silliest assertion they make. However, it
appeals to our
common sense: when the sky is black here on Earth, we see stars.
Therefore we
should see them from the Moon as well.
</a></p>
<p><a name="stars">I'll say this here now, and return to it many times:
the Moon is not the Earth.
Conditions there are weird, and our common sense is likely to fail us. </a></p>
<p><a name="stars">The Moon's surface is airless. On Earth, our thick
atmosphere scatters sunlight,
spreading it out over the whole sky. That's why the sky is bright
during the
day. Without sunlight, the air is dark at night, allowing us to see
stars.
</a></p>
<p><a name="stars">On the Moon, the lack of air means that the sky is
dark. Even when the Sun is
high off the horizon during full day, the sky near it will be black. If
you
were standing on the Moon, you would indeed see stars, even during the
day.
</a></p>
<p><a name="stars">So why aren't they in the Apollo pictures? Pretend
for a moment you are an
astronaut on the surface of the Moon. You want to take a picture of
your
fellow space traveler. The Sun is low off the horizon, since
all the lunar landings were done at local morning. How do you set your
camera? The lunar landscape is brightly lit by the Sun, of course, and
your friend is wearing a white spacesuit also brilliantly lit by the
Sun.
To take a picture of a bright object with a bright background, you need
to
set the exposure time to be fast, and close down the aperture setting
too;
that's like the pupil in your eye constricting to let less light in
when you walk outside on a sunny day.
</a></p>
<p><a name="stars">So the picture you take is set for bright objects.
Stars are <i>faint</i> objects!
In the fast exposure, they simply do not have time to register on the
film. It has nothing to do with the sky being black or the
lack of air, it's just a matter of exposure time. If you were to go
outside
here on Earth on the darkest night imaginable and take a picture <i>with
the exact same camera settings the astronauts used</i>, you won't see
any
stars!
</a></p>
<p><a name="stars">It's that simple. Remember, this the usually the
first and strongest
argument the HBs use, and it was that easy to show wrong. Their
arguments
get worse from here.
</a><a name="crater"></a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="crater"><b>Bad:</b>
In the pictures taken of the lunar lander by the astronauts, the TV
show
continues, there is no blast crater. A rocket capable of landing on the
Moon should have burned out a huge crater on the surface, yet there is
nothing there.
</a></p>
<p><a name="crater"><b>Good:</b>
When someone driving a car pulls into a parking spot, do they do it at
100 kilometers per hour? Of course not. They slow down first, easing
off
the accelerator. The astronauts did the same thing. Sure, the rocket on
the lander was capable of 10,000 pounds of thrust, but <i>they had a
throttle</i>. They fired the rocket hard to deorbit and slow enough to
land on the Moon, but they didn't need to thrust that hard as they
approached the lunar surface; they throttled down to about 3000 pounds
of thrust. </a></p>
<p><a name="crater"> Now here comes a little bit of math: the engine
nozzle was
about 54 inches across (from </a><a
 href="http://www.friends-partners.org/mwade/craft/lmdlsion.htm"
 target="_blank">the Encyclopaedia Astronautica</a>), which means it
had
an area of 2300 square inches. That in turn means that the thrust
generated a pressure of only about 1.5 pounds per square inch! That's
not a lot of pressure. Moreover, in a vacuum, the exhaust from a
rocket spreads out very rapidly. On Earth, the air in our atmosphere
constrains the thrust of a rocket into a narrow column, which is why
you get long flames and columns of smoke from the back of a rocket.
In a vacuum, no air means the exhaust spreads out even more, lowering
the pressure. That's why there's no blast crater! Three thousand pounds
of thrust sounds like a lot, but it was so spread out it was actually
rather gentle.
</p>
<p><!--
Two last bits: the engines were designed to cut off a couple of meters above
the surface of the Moon to prevent too much dust from kicking up and
obscuring the vision of the astronauts. So they actually fell the last
little way; that's yet another reason there is no blast crater. I will note
that after reading Armstrong and Aldrin's account of the landing, 
the engine may have actually cut off <i>after</i> they landed; 
<a href="http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.landing.html" target=_blank>
read the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal account</a> for more; scroll
down to 102:45:32.
<p>
I have been told by one Dieter Zube, a project engineer for
General Dynamics Space Propulsion Systems, that
&quot; The Viking landers had three individual
thruster that were fired during the landing to provide attitude control
during landing, but also to reduce the amount of dust that would be kicked
up while landing.  In addition, each thruster was a cluster of twenty
individual small nozz
les, that made it look like an udder.  Again, the
reason for this to avoid a high pressure exhaust plume, to avoid stirring
up the ground.  Main reason for this design was to avoid a big cloud of
dust, which would settle on the delicate sensor surfaces and camera lenses
as well as the microbiological sensors trying to look for life on Mars.&quot
So I would guess was aware of the dust problem both in and out
of an atmosphere.
-->
[Note added December 6, 2001: Originally in this section I said that
the engines also cut off early, before the moment of touchdown, to
prevent dust from getting blown around and disturbing the astronauts'
view of the surface. This was an incorrect assertion; it was known
that dust would blow around before the missions were launched, and
steps were taken to make sure the astronauts knew their height above
the surface. Anyway, the incorrect section has been removed.]
<a name="dust"></a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="dust"><b>Bad:</b>
The next argument presented on the show deals with the lunar dust. As
the
lander descended, we clearly see dust getting blown away by the rocket.
The exhaust should have blown all the dust away, yet we can clearly see
the
astronauts' footprints in the dust mere meters from the lander.
Obviously,
when NASA faked this they messed it up.
</a></p>
<p><a name="dust"><b>Good:</b>
Once again, the weird alien environment of the Moon comes to play.
Imagine
taking a bag of flour and dumping it onto your kitchen floor (kids: ask
your folks first!). Now bend over the pile, take a deep breath, and
blow
into it as hard as you can. Poof! Flour goes everywhere. Why? Because
the
momentum of your breath goes into the flour, which makes it move. But
note that
the flour goes up, and sideways, and aloft into the air. If you blow
hard
enough, you might see little curlicues of air lifting the flour farther
than
your breath alone could have, and doing so to dust well outside of
where your breath actually blew.
</a></p>
<p><a name="dust">That's the heart of this problem. We are used to air
helping us blow things
around. The air itself is displaced by your breath, which pushed on
more
air, and so on. On the Earth, your breath might blow flour that was
dozens
of centimeters away, even though your actual breath didn't reach that
far.
On the Moon, there is no air. The only dust that gets blown around by
the exhaust of the rocket (which, remember, isn't nearly as strong as
the HBs claim) is the dust <i>physically touched by the exhaust</i>,
or dust hit
by other bits of flying dust. In the end, only the dust directly under
or a bit around the rocket was blown out by the exhaust. The rest was
left where it was. Ironically, the dust around the landing site was
probably
a bit <i>thicker</i> than before, since the dust blown out would have
piled
up there.
</a></p>
<p><a name="dust">I can't resist: another Hoax Believer argument bites
the dust.
</a><a name="shadow"></a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="shadow"><b>Bad:</b>
The next evidence also involves pictures. In all the pictures taken by
the
astronauts, the shadows are not black. Objects in shadow can be seen,
sometimes fairly clearly, including a plaque on the side of the lander
that can be read easily. If the Sun is the only source of light on the
Moon, the HBs say, and there is no air to scatter that light, shadows
should
be utterly black.
</a></p>
<p><a name="shadow"><b>Good:</b>
This is one of my favorite HB claims. They give you the answer in the
claim itself: "...if the Sun is the only source of light..."
<i>It isn't</i>. Initially, I thought the Earth was bright enough to
fill in the shadows, but subsequently realized that cannot be the case.
The Earth is a fraction of the brightness of the Sun, not nearly
enough to fill in the shadows. So then what <i>is</i> that other light
source?
</a></p>
<p><a name="shadow">The answer is: The Moon itself. Surprise! The lunar
dust has a peculiar property: it
tends to reflect light back in the direction from where it came. So if
you were to stand on the Moon and shine a flashlight at the surface,
you
would see a very bright spot where the light hits the ground, but,
oddly,
someone standing a bit to the side would hardly see it at all. The
light
is preferentially reflected back toward the flashlight (and therefore
you),
and not the person on the side.
</a></p>
<p><a name="shadow">Now think about the sunlight. Let's say the sun is
off to the right in a picture. It is illuminating the right side of the
lander, and the left is in shadow. However, the sunlight falling beyond
the lander on the left is being
reflected back toward the Sun. That light hits the surface and reflects
to the right and up, <i>directly onto the shadowed part of the lander</i>.
In other words, the lunar surface is so bright that it easily lights
up the shadows of vertical surfaces.
</a></p>
<p><a name="shadow">This effect is called heiligenschein (the German
word for halo). You
can find some neat images of it at
</a><a
 href="http://www.weather-photography.com/Photos/gallery.php?cat=optics&amp;subcat=heiligenschein"
 target="_blank">here, for example</a>. This also explains another HB
claim,
that many times the astronauts appear to be standing in a spotlight.
This
is a natural effect of heiligenschein. You can reproduce this effect
yourself; wet grass on a cool morning will do it. Face away from the
Sun
and look at the shadow of your head. There will be a halo around it.
The effect is also very strong in fine, disturbed dust like that in a
baseball
diamond infield. Or, of course, on the Moon.
</p>
<p>[<b>Note added June 29, 2001</b>: A nifty demonstration of the
shadow filling
was done by Ian Goddard
<a href="http://www.iangoddard.net/moon01.htm" target="_blank">and can
be found here</a>. His demos are great, and really drive the point
home.
<a name="parallel"></a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="parallel"><b>Bad:</b>
Another argument by the HBs deals with shadows.
Several photos from the Moon are shown where objects on the lunar
landscape have long shadows. If the Sun were the only light source, the
program claims, the shadows should be parallel. The shadows are not
parallel, and therefore the images are fake.
</a></p>
<p><a name="parallel"><b>Good:</b>
This is an interesting claim on the part of the HBs, because on the
surface (haha) it seems to make sense. However, let's assume the
shadows are not parallel. One explanation is that there are (at least)
two light sources, and that is certainly what many HBs are trying to
imply. So if there are multiple light sources, <i>where are the
multiple shadows</i>? Each object casts one shadow, so there can only
be one light source.
</a></p>
<p><a name="parallel">Another explanation is that the light source is
close to the objects; then it would also cast non-parallel shadows.
However, a distant source can as well! In this case, the Sun really is
the only source of light. The shadows are not parallel in the images
because of perspective. Remember, you are looking at a
three-dimensional scene, projected on a two-dimensional photograph.
That causes distortions. When the Sun is low and shadows are long,
objects at different distance do indeed appear to cast non-parallel
shadows, even here on Earth. An example of that </a><a
 href="http://www.apollo-hoax.me.uk/strangeshadows.html" target="_blank">
can be found at another debunking site</a>. The scene (near the bottom
of the above-linked page) shows objects with non-parallel shadows,
distorted by perspective. If seen from above, all the shadows in the
Apollo images would indeed look parallel. You can experience this for
yourself; go outside on a clear day when the Sun is low in the sky and
compare the direction of the shadows of near and far objects. You'll
see that they appear to diverge. Here is a major claim of the HBs that
you can disprove all by yourself! Don't take my word for it, go out and
try!
</p>
<p>Incidentally, the bright Earth in the sky will also cast shadows,
but those would be very faint compared to the ones made by the Sun.
So in a sense there are multiple shadows, but like not being
able to see stars, the shadows are too faint to be seen against the
very bright lunar surface. Again, you can test this yourself: go
outside during full Moon and you'll see your shadow. Then walk
over to a streetlamp. The light from the streetlamp will wash out
the shadow cast by the Moon. You might still be able to see it faintly,
but it would difficult against the much brighter landscape.
</p>
<p>[<b>Note added June 29, 2001</b>: Again, check out <a
 href="http://www.iangoddard.net/moon01.htm" target="_blank">
Ian Goddard's work</a> for more about this.
<a name="backgrounds"></a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="backgrounds"><b>Bad:</b>
The program has two segments dealing with what they call ``identical
backgrounds''. In one, they show the lunar lander with a mountain in
the background. They then show another picture of the same mountain,
but no lander in the foreground at all. The astronauts could not have
taken either picture before landing, of course, and after it lifts off
the lander leaves the bottom section behind. Therefore, there would
have been <i>something</i> in the second image no matter what, and the
foreground could not be empty. Obviously, the mountain background is a
fake set, and was reused by NASA for another shot.
</a></p>
<p><a name="backgrounds"><b>Good:</b>
Actually, the pictures are real, of course. As always, repeat after me:
the Moon is not the Earth. On the Earth, distant objects are obscured
a bit by haze in the air, and we use that to mentally gauge distances.
However, with no air, an object can be very far away on the Moon and
still be crisp and sharp to the eye. You can't tell if a boulder is a
meter across and 100 meters away, or 100 meters across and 10
kilometers away! </a></p>
<p><a name="backgrounds">That's what's going on here. The lander is
close to the astronaut in the first picture, perhaps a 20 or 30 meters
away. The mountain is kilometers away. For the second picture, the
astronaut merely moved
a few hundred meters to the side. The lander was then out of the
picture, but the mountain hardly moved at all! If you look at the scene
carefully, you'll see that all the rocks and craters in the foreground
changes between the two pictures, just as you'd expect if the astronaut
had moved to the side a ways between the two shots. It's not fraud,
it's </a><a href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bitesize/parallax.html">parallax</a>!
<!--
<p>
You can see this for yourself. Yuri Krasilnikov put together an animated
gif of the two images
<a href="http://ostashkov.codis.ru/moonhoax/moon_pic/hills12.gif" target=_blank>
which you can see here</a>. The human brain is pretty good at putting
the two images together to show how they appear to rotate. That's pretty good
proof the images show distant mountains and not a nearby stage prop.
-->
</p>
<p>Another example of the difficulty in estimating distance is due
to the shapes of the rocks on the Moon. A rock small enough to sit down
on doesn't
look fundamentally different from one bigger than your house. Humans
also judge distance by using the relative sizes of objects. We know how
big
a person is, or a tree, so the <i>apparent</i> size of the object can
be
used to estimate the distance. If we don't know how big the object is,
we can be fooled about its distance.
</p>
<p>For an outstanding example of this, take a look at
<a
 href="http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a16/a16v.1673855.ram">video
taken during Apollo 16</a>. There is a boulder in the background
that looks to be about 3 or 4 meters (10-13 feet) high. About 3/4 of
the way through the segment the astronauts walk over to it. Amazingly,
that
boulder is the size of a large house! Without knowing
how big the rock was when we first see it, we have no way to judge
distances. That huge rock looks like a medium sized one until we
have some way to directly judge its size; in this case, by looking at
the tiny astronauts next to it. <small>[My thanks to Bad Reader
Martin Michalak for bringing this video to my attention. My
<b>very special</b> thanks goes to Charlie Duke (yes, <i>the</i>
Charlie
Duke, Apollo astronaut and lunar lander pilot) who emailed me (!) about
the difficulty in judging distances due to not knowing the sizes
of rocks.]</small>
</p>
<p>I will admit the Fox program had me for a while on this one; I
couldn't figure it out. But then I got a note from Bad Reader David
Bailey, who set me straight. However, the producers of the show should
have talked to some <i>real</i> experts before saying such a silly
thing as this. If they had checked with the folks who run the <a
 href="http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/frame.html" target="_blank">
Apollo Lunar Surface Journal</a>, for example, they would have been set
straight too.
</p>
<p><a name="mt_anim">
<b>NEW! (February 19, 2001): </b>
</a><a href="http://www.hypnoide.com/moon/" target="_blank">I found a
site that has an animation where
the two images of the mountain are superimposed.</a> You need Flash for
it,
but it's a great animation. The beauty of it is that <b>you can see
changes in the mountain range due to parallax!</b>. In other words,
this
animation is support that the images are real and are not using a fake
backdrop. The real beauty of this animation is that the person who put
it together is an HB. I like the irony of linking to that animation and
using it to show
that it is indeed evidence that Apollo did go to the Moon. I love
the web! <a name="backgrounds2">
</a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="backgrounds2"><b>Bad:</b>
The other ``identical background'' segment shows an astronaut on a
hilltop. A second video shows two astronauts on the same hill (and this
time it really is the same hill), and claims that NASA itself says
these two videos were taken on two different hills separated by many
kilometers. How can this be? They are obviously the same hill, so NASA
must be lying!
</a></p>
<p><a name="backgrounds2"><b>Good:</b>
Never attribute to malice what you can attribute to a mistake. A
videotape about Apollo 16 ironically titled ``Nothing So Hidden...''
released by NASA does indeed make that claim, but in this case it looks
to me
to be a simple error. I asked Eric Jones, who is the editor of the
Apollo
Lunar Surface Journal, and he told me those two clips were taken about
three minutes apart.
Eric's assistant, Ken Glover, uncovered this problem. He sent me this
transcript (which I edited a bit to make links to the video clips) of
the Fox show with his comments, which I will highlight in red: </a></p>
<p></p>
<blockquote><a name="backgrounds2">Narrator: Background discrepancies
are also apparent in
the lunar video. </a>
  <p><a name="backgrounds2">[...]
  </a></p>
  <p><a name="backgrounds2"><font color="red">
[Video showing John Young at Station 4 on EVA-2, with Fox
caption "Day One".
Click </font></a><font color="red"><a
 href="http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a16/a16.sta4.html" target="_blank">
here</a> for the transcript and <a
 href="http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a16/a16v.1444638.ram">here for the
RealVideo clip</a>.]
  </font></p>
  <p>Narrator: This shot was taped in what was purported to be the
first of
Apollo 16's lunar excursions.
  </p>
  <p><font color="red">
[Audio of John Young dubbed over clip: "Well, I couldn't pick a better
spot", actual MET of 123:58:46]
  </font></p>
  <p><font color="red">[Next, video of John Young and Charlie Duke at
Station 4,
EVA-2. In reality, about three minutes after the first clip. Fox
caption "Day Two".
Click <a href="http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a16/a16.sta4.html"
 target="_blank">
here</a> for the transcript and
  <a href="http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a16/a16v.1445240.ram">here for
the
RealVideo clip</a>.]
  </font></p>
  <p>Narrator: And this video was from the next day, at a
different location.
  </p>
  <p><font color="red">
[Audio of Charlie Duke dubbed over clip: "That is the most beautiful
sight!", actual MET of 124:03:01]
  </font></p>
  <p>Narrator: NASA claims the second location was two-and-a-half miles
away, but when one video was superimposed over the other the locations
appear identical.
  </p>
  <p><font color="red">
[Audio of John Young dubbed over "Day Two" video: "
It's absolutely unreal!", actual MET 144:16:30]
  </font></p>
  <p>Narrator: Conspiracy theorists claim that even closer examination
of the photos suggest evidence of doctoring.
  </p>
</blockquote>
<p>
That last line is pretty funny. The audio you hear of the astronauts in
those clips was actually all from different times than the video! </p>
<p>So that's why the hill looks the same. It's the same hill, and the
two clips were not taken a day apart, but from three minutes apart or
so. Again, had the program producers bothered to check their sources,
they would have received a prompt answer. That's all I did: I emailed
the editor of the ALSJ. It was pretty easy to do, and he answered me in
minutes.
<a name="gyro"></a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="gyro"><b>Bad:</b>
Ralph Rene, a self-proclaimed physicist, claims that the astronauts
shifting in the cabin
would change the center of mass, throwing the lunar lander off balance.
They
couldn't compensate for this, which would have crashed the lander.
Thus,
the landing was faked.
</a></p>
<p><a name="gyro"><b>Good:</b>
Rene is wrong. Evidently he doesn't know how the internet works either,
because there is a website which describes
how the attitude control was maintained on the lander during descent
and ascent;
it's the </a><a href="http://www.apollosaturn.com/Lmnr/gn.htm"
 target="_blank">
Apollo Saturn Reference page</a>. There was a feedback control system
on board the lander which determined if the axis were shifting. During
descent, the engine nozzle could shift direction slightly to compensate
for changes in the center
of gravity of the lander (the technical term for this is <i>gimbaling</i>
the nozzle). During ascent, the engine nozzle was fixed
in position, so there was a series of smaller rockets which was
used to maintain the proper attitude. Incidentally, every rocket needs
to do this
since fuel shifts the center of gravity as it is burned up by the
rocket,
yet Rene and the other HBs don't seem to doubt that rockets themselves
work! So we have a case of selective thinking on the part of the HBs.
</p>
<p>[<b>Note (July 20, 2001):</b> My thanks again to Apollo astronaut
Charlie Duke for correcting a technical error in a previous version of
this section. After describing the above scenario
to me, he said the ascent stage of the lander was
"a sporty ride".]
</p>
<p><a name="flame">
</a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="flame"><b>Bad:</b>
The program claims that when the top half of the lander took off from
the Moon
to bring the astronauts back into orbit, there was no flame from the
rocket. Obviously, every rocket has a visible flame, so the takeoff was
faked.
</a></p>
<p><a name="flame"><b>Good:</b>
There is actually a simple reason why you cannot see the flame from the
lander when it
took off. The fuels they used produced no visible flame! The lander
used a mix of hydrazine and dinitrogen tetroxide (an oxidizer). These
two chemicals ignite upon contact and produce a product that is
transparent. That's why
you cannot see the flame. We expect to see a flame because of the usual
drama of liftoff from the Earth; the flame and smoke we see from the
Shuttle,
for example, is because the solid rocket boosters do actually produce
them,
while the lunar lander did not. </a><a
 href="http://www.abc.net.au/science/moon/rocket.htm" target="_blank">
Here is a brief webpage</a> describing this. Note too that fuels like
this
are still used today, and indeed rockets in space produce little or no
visible flame.
</p>
<p>I heard an account (sorry, no citation; the link has since gone
dead) that
the cameras used for the ascent of the lander were fairly primitive,
even
for that era (this is usually the case in space travel, where it takes
extensive
testing to make sure things work properly; during that time the state
of the
art advances). Even if it <i>were</i> visible, the flash of the
exhaust
may have easily been missed by those cameras.
</p>
<p>[<b>Note added April 9, 2001:</b> My original assertion about not
seeing the flame was because the Moon has no air, and we see flame from
rockets on
Earth because we have an atmosphere. This does have some effect (the
pressure
of air constrains the rocket exhaust and helps produce the effect we
see)
but the larger reason the flame is invisible is due to the fuel used. I
gratefully thank the dozens of people who sent me email about this.]
<a name="doubletime"></a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="doubletime"><b>Bad:</b>
When the movies of the astronauts walking and driving the lunar rover
are doubled in speed, they look just like they were filmed on Earth
and slowed down. This is clearly how the movies were faked.
</a></p>
<p><a name="doubletime"><b>Good:</b>
This was the first new bit I have seen from the HBs, and it's funny. To
me
even when sped up, the images didn't look like they were filmed in
Earth's
gravity. The astronauts were sidling down a slope, and they looked
weird
to me, not at all like they would on Earth. I will admit that if wires
were
used, the astronauts' gait could be simulated. </a></p>
<p><a name="doubletime">However, not the rover! If you watch the clip,
you will see dust thrown
up by the wheels of the rover. The dust goes up in a perfect parabolic
arc and falls back down to the surface. Again, the Moon isn't the
Earth! If this
were filmed on the Earth, which has air, the dust would have billowed
up
around the wheel and floated over the surface. This clearly does not
happen
in the video clips; the dust goes up and right back down. It's actually
a beautiful demonstration of ballistic flight in a vacuum. Had NASA
faked
this shot, they would have had to have a whole set (which would have
been
<i>very</i> large) with all the air removed. We don't have this
technology
today! </a></p>
<p><a name="doubletime">This is another case of selective vision on the
part of the HBs. </a><a name="flag">
</a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="flag"><b>Bad:</b>
When the astronauts are assembling the American flag, the flag waves.
Kaysing says this must have been from an errant breeze on the set. A
flag wouldn't
wave in a vacuum.
</a></p>
<p><a name="flag"><b>Good:</b>
Of <i>course</i> a flag can wave in a vacuum. In the shot of the
astronaut
and the flag, the astronaut is rotating the pole on which the flag is
mounted,
trying to get it to stay up. The flag is mounted on one side on the
pole, and
along the top by another pole that sticks out to the side. In a vacuum
or not,
when you whip around the vertical pole, the flag will ``wave'', since
it is attached at the top. The top will move first, then the cloth will
follow along in a wave that moves down. This isn't air that is moving
the flag, it's
the cloth itself. </a></p>
<p><a name="flag"> <b>New stuff added March 1, 2001:</b> Many HBs show
a picture of an astronaut standing to one side of the flag, which still
has a ripple in it
(for example,
</a><a
 href="http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/apollo/apollo11/html/as11_40_5874.html"
 target="_blank">see this famous image</a>). The astronaut is not
touching the flag, so how
can it wave? </p>
<p>The answer is, it <i>isn't</i> waving. It looks like that because
of the way the flag was deployed. The flag hangs from a horizontal
rod which telescopes out from the vertical one. In Apollo 11, they
couldn't
get the rod to extend completely, so the flag didn't get stretched
fully. It has a ripple in it, like a curtain that is not fully closed.
In later flights, the astronauts didn't fully deploy it <i>on purpose</i>
because they liked the way it looked. In other words, <b>the flag
looks
like it is waving because the astronauts wanted it to look that way</b>.
Ironically, they did their job too well. It appears to have fooled a
lot
of people into thinking it waved.
</p>
<p>This explanation comes from NASA's wonderful
<a href="http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/history/flag/flag.htm" target="_blank">spaceflight
web page</a>. For those of you who are conspiracy
minded, of course, this doesn't help because it comes from a NASA site.
But it does explain why the flag looks as it does, and you will
be hard pressed to find a video of the flag waving. And if it was
a mistake caused by a breeze on the set where they faked this whole
thing,
don't you think the director would have tried for a second take?
With all the money going to the hoax, they could afford the film!
</p>
<p><b>Note added March 28, 2001:</b> One more thing. Several readers
have pointed out that
if the flag is blowing in a breeze, why don't we see dust blowing
around too? Somehow, the HBs' argument gets weaker the more you think
about it.
<a name="perfectpix"></a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="perfectpix"><b>Bad:</b>
The program makes a big deal out of how well the pictures taken from
the Moon
were exposed and set. Every picture we see is just right, with the
scene always
centered perfectly. However, the cameras were mounted on the front of
the
astronauts' spacesuit, and there was no finder. They couldn't have
taken
perfect pictures every time!
</a></p>
<p><a name="perfectpix"><b>Good</b>
... and of course, no one claims they did. Thousands of pictures
were taken on the Moon, and the ones you see will tend to be the good
ones. If
Buzz Aldrin accidentally cut off Neil Armstrong's head, you probably
won't
see that image in a magazine. Also, <i>everything</i> done on the Moon
was practiced endlessly by the astronauts. The people working on the
mission
knew that these pictures would be some of the most important images
ever taken, so they would have taken particular care in making sure the
astronauts could do it cold. When fabled astronaut Story Musgrave
replaced
a camera on board the Hubble Space Telescope in 1993, someone commented
that he made it look easy. "Sure," he replied, "I had practiced it
thousands of times!"
</a></p>
<p><a name="perfectpix">The program goes farther than this, though:
they actually contacted the
man who designed the cameras for the astronauts. When they asked him
why the pictures were always perfect, he hemmed and hawed, and finally
admitted he had no answer for that. This is hardly evidence that NASA
must have faked the missions. All it means is that he couldn't think of
anything
while sitting on camera! I think this is pretty evil of the program
producers
to do this; a bit of editing on their part makes it looks like they
completely baffled an expert.
</a><a name="crosshairs"></a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="crosshairs"><b>Bad:</b>
Crosshairs were etched in the astronauts' cameras to better help
measure objects
in the pictures. However, in several images, it looks like the objects
are actually
in front of the crosshairs, which is impossible if the crosshairs were
inside the
camera! Therefore, the images were faked.
</a></p>
<p><a name="crosshairs"><b>Good:</b>
This argument is pretty silly. Do the HBs think that NASA had painted
crosshairs
on the set behind the astronauts? I heard one HB claim the crosshairs
were
added later on, and NASA had messed up some of the imaging. That's
ridiculous!
Why add in crosshairs later? Cameras equipped with crosshairs have been
used for
a long time, and it would have been easy to simply use some to take
pictures
on the faked set. Clearly, the HBs are wrong here, but the images do
look funny.
What happened?
</a></p>
<p><a name="crosshairs">What happened becomes clearer when you look
more closely at the images. The
times it looks like an object is in front of the crosshair (because the
crosshair looks blocked by the object) is when the object photographed
is white. The crosshair is black. Have you ever taken an image that is
overexposed? White parts bleed into the film around them, making them
look white too. That's all that happened here; the white object in the
image ``fills in'' the black crosshair. It's a matter of contrast: the
crosshair becomes invisible because the white part overwhelms the film.
This is basic photography.
</a></p>
<p><a name="crosshairs">[<b>Note (added February 18, 2001):</b> I have
been informed
by David Percy, a photographer quoted in the Fox show, that he does
indeed believe that man went to the Moon, but he believes there
are anomalies in the imagery taken which ``put into question many
aspects of the missions'', which is a different matter. While I
disagree
that there are anomalies, I have edited out what is essentially
a personal attack on Mr. Percy that I had here originally. It is an
easy matter to let one's emotions get carried away when writing these
essays, and I apologize to him and my readers for letting that get in.
I make it a policy to correct Bad Astronomy based on facts, not
personalities.]
</a></p>
<p><a name="crosshairs">[<b>Note added June 29, 2001</b>: Again,
</a><a href="http://www.iangoddard.net/moon01.htm" target="_blank">Ian
Goddard's work</a> has more about this, including images
that show how crosshairs can fade out in a bright background.
<a name="radiation"></a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="radiation"><b>Bad:</b>
A big staple of the HBs is the claim that radiation in the van Allen
Belts and
in deep space would have killed the astronauts in minutes. They
interview a Russian cosmonaut involved in the USSR Moon program, who
says that they were worried
about going in to the unknowns of space, and suspected that radiation
would have
penetrated the hull of the spacecraft.
</a></p>
<p><a name="radiation"><b>Good:</b>
Kaysing's exact words in the program are ``Any human being traveling
through the
van Allen belt would have been rendered either extremely ill or
actually killed
by the radiation within a short time thereof.''
</a></p>
<p><a name="radiation">This is complete and utter nonsense. The van
Allen belts are regions above the
Earth's surface where the Earth's magnetic field has trapped particles
of
the solar wind. An unprotected man would indeed get a lethal dose of
radiation, <i>if he stayed there long enough</i>. Actually, the
spaceship
traveled through the belts pretty quickly, getting past them in an hour
or so.
There simply wasn't enough time to get a lethal dose, and, as a matter
of
fact, the metal hull of the spaceship did indeed block most of the
radiation. For a detailed explanation of all this, my fellow
Mad Scientist </a><a
 href="http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/waw/mad/mad19.html"
 target="_blank">
William Wheaton has a page with the technical data about the doses
received by the astronauts</a>. Another excellent page about this, that
also gives a history of NASA radiation testing, is from the <a
 href="http://lsda.jsc.nasa.gov/books/apollo/S2ch3.htm" target="_blank">
Biomedical Results of Apollo</a> site. An interesting read!
</p>
<p>It was also disingenuous of the program to quote the Russian
cosmonaut as well.
Of course they were worried about radiation before men had gone into
the
van Allen belts! But tests done by NASA showed that it was possible to
not
only survive such a passage, but to not even get harmed much by it. It
looks to me like another case of convenient editing by the producers of
the program.
<a name="murder"></a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="murder"><b>Very, very Bad:</b>
Kaysing says that the Apollo 1 fire that killed Roger Chaffee, Ed White
and Gus Grissom
was no accident. Grissom was ready to talk to the press about the Moon
hoax,
so NASA killed him. Kaysing says NASA also killed other people who were
about to blow the whistle as well.
</a></p>
<p><a name="murder">This is so disgusting I have a hard time writing a
coherent reply. Kaysing
has no grasp of basic physics, photography or even common sense, but he
accuses
NASA of killing people to shut them up. That is a particularly
loathsome
accusation.
</a><a name="conclusion"></a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p><a name="conclusion">The utter bilge pumped out in this program goes
on and on, and indeed, if you go to the HBs websites you can read more
than any brain can handle.
I have read literally dozens of things that ``prove'' the landings were
faked, and each one is rather easily shown to be wrong by anyone with
experience in such things. I think the problem here is twofold: we tend
to want to believe (or at least listen to) conspiracy theories, and
this one
is a whopper. Also, the evidence is presented in such a way that, if
you are unfamiliar with the odd nature of the vacuum of space and of
space travel, it sounds reasonable. </a></p>
<p><a name="conclusion">But it isn't reasonable. Their evidence is
actually as tenuous as the vacuum of space itself. I find it amazing
that they are so willing
to scrutinize every available frame of data from the astronauts, yet
miss the most obvious thing right in front of them. Fox television and
the producers of this program should be ashamed of themselves. Even
worse,
the Fox Family Channel broadcast a show just last year that was
skeptical
and even handed about the Moon Hoax! Amazingly, Mitch Pileggi hosted
that
program as well.
</a></p>
<p><a name="conclusion">I'll end this on one more bit the HBs don't
talk about. When Jim Lovell,
two time Apollo astronaut and commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13
mission, was told about Kaysing's claims, Lovell called him a kook.
Kaysing, ever the rational thinker, sued Lovell for slander. Imagine:
Kaysing, who says that NASA murdered three men outright and arranged
for the murders of others, sued Commander James Lovell for slander!
After some time, a judge wisely threw the case out of court.
</a></p>
<p><a name="conclusion">There's still hope.
</a><a name="links"></a></p>
<p></p>
<hr>
<p></p>
<h4><a name="links">Links</a></h4>
<p>
</p>
<ul>
  <li><a name="links">There are many websites about the Moon Hoax where
you can
read both the theories by the HBs themselves or what reality
is like as told by people debunking the theory. I have a list of them
    </a><a href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/apollohoax.html">on
my Bad Misconceptions page</a>.
    <p></p>
  </li>
  <li>[<b>Note added February 23, 2001</b>: the link for the USA Today
article
is now gone, so I have removed it.]
Dan Vergano of USA Today had an article (with an interview of me) about
the TV show on the
USA Today website. The print version was in the Friday, February 16th
2001
edition.
    <p><a name="fallout">
    </a></p>
    <p></p>
    <hr>
    <p></p>
    <p></p>
    <h4><a name="fallout">FALLOUT FROM THE SHOW</a></h4>
    <a name="fallout"><b>February 17, 2001:</b><br>
Well, the Fox Apollo show has struck a chord, it appears. I am
receiving a lot of email from people, both for and against.
The most noteworthy support was quite a
surprise:
    </a><a href="http://www.nasa.gov" target="_blank">NASA itself!</a>
That explains why I am getting tens of thousands of hits
to this site. Another site linking here is
    <a href="http://www.clydelewis.com/" target="_blank">Ground Zero</a>,
a rather typical hoax and conspiracy site that calls me
``an annoyed scientist'' (true enough) and says that people
call me a ``weapon for science''. I kinda like the sound of that one!
    <p>What's funny though is how that site pulls out the same tired
arguments
that are easy to show wrong, yet stands by them dogmatically.
For example, Clyde Lewis, the webmaster of the site, shows a photo of
the flag waving and asks how it can be waving; I already showed how it
can appear to wave on this page earlier. In his image, the bottom
corner of the flag is not flat, which is most likely simply residual
rippling from the
astronaut's twisting the pole. Remember, <b>without air</b>, there is
nothing to dampen the rippling, so the flag actually can
appear to wave as if from a breeze for a few moments. </p>
    <p>This is hardly evidence of a hoax. Lewis
goes on and on, bringing out the radiation arguments, the no stars
arguments, on and on, like these are
either new or damning, when they are neither. </p>
    <p>Of course, I <i>am</i> trying to debunk the conspiracy
theorists,
but unlike them, I want people to look at their evidence rationally
and critically, and not swallow it whole. It'll choke you if you do.
    </p>
    <p>Finally, one last note:
If I weren't a hard-headed scientist, I'd wonder if some cosmic force
were
at work sometimes. I went to a website that
    <a href="http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/advanced.html"
 target="_blank&lt;/a">creates anagrams</a>, that is, rearranges letters
in a word to spell other
words. I put in "The Bad Astronomer", and one of the anagrams was
    <font size="+1"><b>MOON TRASH DEBATER</b></font>. I think that's
pretty
cool.
    <br>
    <b>Note added June 17, 2004</b>: a Bad Reader informed me that
another anagram would be <b>NOTED SHAM ABORTER</b>. I think that's
appropriate too. </p>
    <center><font size="1">
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Sunday, 28-Dec-2008 11:02:46 CST
    </font></center>
  </li>
</ul>
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