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.)"

Comments

FOX Network

[DrLudicrous]

The worst of this whole debacle is when Fox had the "special" on TV about a year ago about whether the moon landing really was a hoax or not. Just adding fuel to a fire that should have burned itself out years ago.

Then again, since when our network executives concerned about what is good or bad TV, let alone good or bad science?

Re:FOX Network

[SirSlud]

Or you could start with the approach that would have avoided everything you went through:

The chances that you will be subjected to useful, intelligent, exposes on the same network that created "Who wants to marry a millionaire?" are -1 to 0. Seriously, didn't it occurr to you that if the argment was really that compelling, other stations would be jumping on the bandwagon too? I thought FOX should start advertising a "Tinfoil Tuesday" lineup after that special (which was amusing if you watched it in a "how would *I* try to convince gullible people" light.)

I think you shouldn't have admitted it man. I mean, come _on_! FOX practically makes all its money exploiting Blue Collar's distrust of academia and his eagerness to disassociate himself from anything remotely 'artsy' (read: original.)

Useful for educators

[StefanJ]

Of course this won't satisfy die-hard cranks. That's not the point.

This booklet is for educators, to help them address concerns brought up by students who might have stumbled on a True Disbeliever's website or seen that atrocious Fox program!

That's not a waste of time nor money.

Stefan Jones

Re:Useful for educators

[fermion]

As I have mentioned in a previous post, engaging these people is never useful. People who deny the moon landing, evolution, or the Nazi generated holocaust are asserting an opinion in an effort to save a personal belief, and are not engaging in meaningful dialog. By engaging these people directly, you invalidate the scientific process and enter an argument that cannot be won.

The problem is that science starts with an acknowledgment that we may be wrong. Nothing in science can be proven exactly. Nothing in science can be taken as truth. We have no reason to believe that the moon landing did not happen, but, scientifically, we can not say it absolutely did happen. There is nothing wrong with this bacause the level of doubt is so trivial as to have no practical effect. This doubt is then used by people who wish to disprove the moon landing. This is generally done by mangling facts to fits a predetermined reality. Because the anti-science side is fighting from a deeply held personal belief, and the pro-science side is fighting from a spirit of discovery, science loses.

The second problem is assumptions. Science assumes that a certain level of proof is good enough. Science assumes that the ultimate truth is not necessary; all we need is a theory that fits the available fact well enough and can be applied to a known domain. Science accepts the possibility that theories may be modified in the fullness of time. These assumptions not only form an achilles heal that can easily be exploited, but also form a basis to make scientist sound foolish. For example, lets take a person who believes the earth is flat. This person points to building, and notes that when the design is drawn up, the assumption is indeed made that they earth is in fact flat. The reasonable person notes that locally, over a small distance, the Earth is taken to be flat. The flat-Earth proponent then asks, is the earth flat, or is it not! This person uses the assumptions of science, that theory need only hold to a known domain, to make the scientists look like a fool.

So by engaging these nuts directly, we teach kids that this is useful. What might be good is a curriculla that explains what science does, what it does not do, and why science must concede all arguments to religious zealots. It really does no one any good to argue with these people. Anyone hypocritical enough to deny the moon landing but use a microwave or watch tv pretty much deserves what they get. The best we can do is make sure our kids are smart enough to know the difference between science theory and personal belief.

NASA

[Camel Pilot]

It is too bad one of the astronauts did not trudge a gigantic NASA WAS HERE into the moon dust so that the image could be seen from a large telescope. That should silence the idiots.

On another note it always amazes me that a significant segment of a human population will believe the unbelievable and doubt the obvious.

The Soviet Factor.

[Robber Baron]

I would think that given that the moon landings happened during the height of the cold war, the Soviets would have been watching them very closely and would've been all over them like a bad stink if they could've even come close to demonstrating that the moon landings were faked. By the same token, if you were NASA, would you put your and your country's "face" on the line by staging such a stunt and risking discovery?

Re:THis wil be moot soon

[rgmoore]

Sadly that's not the case. You just can't convince somebody who truly wants to believe that it's all a conspiracy. They'll point out that this supposedly independent private company had to get government approval to do so, and that's proof that NASA got to themm and forced them to take part in the deception. It took me all of about 2 seconds to come up with that explanation. These are people who wouldn't believe that it was possible to go to the moon if you blasted them into space and landed them there. They'd still come up with some elaborate explanation about how it was all faked.

There are none so blind as those who will not see. Sadly this applies as much to physical proof as anything.

Re:God?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Maybe they can get someone to prove / disprove the existance of God for us too!

Heh. That's funny, but it brings up an important point. I'd love it if the NIH or the CDC or some other government agency concerned mainly with biology would spend $15,000 -- or $150,000, or $1.5 million; in any case I'd consider it money well spent -- to come up with a point-by-point refutation of creationism, and publicize the hell out of it. Creationists (including the "intelligent design" crowd) belong in exactly the same camp as the "moon landing was a hoax" people, Holocaust-deniers, flat-Earthers, etc. IMO this would be a much better expenditure of my tax dollars than just about any current government program.

Unfortunately, with the current administration, we're a lot more likely to see our tax dollars going to religious schools that teach the reverse ...

Waste?

[Alomex]

Money spent educating people is never a waste.

Exactly!!!

[s20451]

This is EXACTLY RIGHT. Anyone who believes that the moon landings were fake to "win" the space race clearly believes that the Soviets, in spite of launching the first artificial satellite and first man into space, were too stupid to notice that:

• American companies that were supposedly producing lunar landing hardware were actually producing nothing, or producing equipment that could not reasonably land on the moon (what's the point of faking it if you build the real hardware?).
• The Saturn rockets, once launched, did not follow a lunar trajectory. (Easy to track by telemetry.) In fact the entire path of the rocket could be easily tracked by anyone on Earth with a directional radio antenna -- including whether or not something landed on the moon (if it didn't, the signal would keep disappearing behind the moon with each orbit).
• The hundreds of pounds of moon rocks, released to the scientific community for study, were of obviously terrestrial origin.

No conspiracy theory concerning the lunar landing stands up to even five minutes of skeptical thought.

Re:Exactly!!!

[susano_otter]

Maybe they yelled and screamed for years and no one told us.

But do you see what you've done? In order to explain the conspiracy you already have (NASA lied to the media about the landing), you've suddenly extended the conspiracy by several orders of magnitude. I might be willing to believe that all of NASA could keep the lid on the hoax, if the evidence was sufficiently compelling, but to believe that the entire world media system managed to keep quiet for the past 30+ years is pretty far-fetched. To accept this much larger conspiracy theory in the place of evidence to support the original, much more limited conspiracy theory would be lunacy.

It would, in fact, fly blatantly in the face of Occam's Razor.

Re:God?

[Yunzil]

Too bad the evidence for evolution as we know it isn't enough to bring it out of the 'theory' stage. Never mind the fact that a growing majority of schools teach the concept as fact.

Grumble. Nothing in science ever gets beyond the 'theory' stage. We still have the Germ Theory of disease and the General Theory of relativity don't we?

Theories are science's attempt to explain facts.

Fact: Things are attracted to other things.
Theory: Mass distorts spacetime and objects follow the shortest path in curved space.

Fact: Species change over time.
Theory: Traits are inherited from parents with occasional mutations. Environmental pressures cause certain traits to be more successful than others.

one of the reasons I prefer creationism (and the beliefs one can have with faith in God) is that evolution doesn't offer me much comfort in the face of depression, loss, hurt, uncertainty, death, etc.

What does evolution have to do with any of that? The truth of evolution doesn't preclude the existence of God.