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NASA Wasting Time and Money on Moon Landing Doubters
Rob Miles writes "Yahoo! News has this article about how NASA is paying aeronautics engineer James Oberg $15,000 to write a monograph gathering up materials answering the skeptics of the 1969 Apollo Moon Landing, point by point. It's a shame that even $1 has to be spent to debunk these conspiracy theorists with too much time on their hands. And it's unfortunate that the nutters will see this as validation of their ridiculous claims ('if our charges weren't true, NASA wouldn't bother answering them' they'll snivel.)"
Yeah, or they can give the the naysayers (h04X0rz?) a telescope and they can watch the Chinese building a colony there.
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
Actually, there are defacto "NASA Was Here" signs on the moon. The astronauts left several special reflectors (I forget the name) that reflect light straight back at the target, regardless of the angle from which the beam (in the form of a laser) originates. These have been used for years to calculate the distance the moon has been receeding from the Earth year to year. Also, there are beacons that ham radio operators have been using for years to bounce signals off of.... Why is it these conspiracy theorists always ignore this tiny point?
-jokerghost
There was also a recent article in Discovery magazine mentioning this bad-science-blundering. They provided the link to bad astronomy and mentioned some of the other urban-legends-of-science like being able to balance an egg during the equinox. One of the points they presented was how scientists do some experiments with bouncing laser beams off a mirror on the moon which the Apollo astronauts placed there. How's that for not landing on the moon?! Check it out some details here