Slashdot Mirror
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.)"
Damn, can you spell "bias"? I know that most /. write-ups have a bit of spin, but sheesh! At least give people the chance to think differently before you label them extremists.
/.er, I still choose to think instead of believe. Why don't you?
And yes, I have my doubts (uh oh, just earned -1 Troll for that), but they don't have anything to do with waving flags or radiation. They revolve more around the doctored photos (where the crosshatches are covered by the image, when the crosshatches were etched on the lens), the obvious multiple light sources (when you look at the shadows, you can clearly see several different angles of shadows, suggesting more than one light source0 [and no, stars are not bright enough to cast shadows, even in space], and also the shadow effect (wherein objects and people standing in complete shadow were completely visible, even though technically, with only one light source and little to no reflective surface, they should have been completely dark).
Now, I'm not saying I firmly believe in the hoax, but I do find it odd that questions like these are never answered, while the easy ones are, and the rest put down to "conspiracy nuts". While I'm as much of a space nut as the next
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
I mean these people just don't want to listen to scientific evidence, it doesn't help because no amout of evidence will be sufficent. It's like the story with the paranoid.
You can not prove to a paranoid person that nobody is actually out to get him, because he will assume that it's all an elaborate trick to make him believe that. If people appear to be ignoring him it's just a trick while observing him in secret, and if they're not doing anything suspicious at the moment they're just waiting for the right opportunity.
Weather a theory is scientific is not a matter of how much evidence speaks for it, but rather under which conditions it is false. Formulated by Popper, it is not a method to separate true from false, but to separate scientific from non-scientific statements.
And on an off-topic note, just a pet peeve of mine:
Evolution would be false if completely new species kept suddenly appearing with no relations to other species.
Creationism would be false if...? If all species had no evolution, no connection? No, that would be God having made them exactly as they are. If completely new species appeared? No, that would be a miracle, and that would have to be Gods work.
I have no problem with Creation as faith. Be it by God creating big bang, or God creating the world in 4004 BC exactly by the words of the bible, or yesterday, giving me the memory of the life I believe to have lived. But it is not, and will never be, scientific. And I truly hate people trying to sell it as such.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The moon mission was a political one, not a scientific one. When the americans realised they'd never beat the Russians, they faked it to save face. I saw a documentary on it a while ago. Very interesting. It included facts like:
- The americans didn't realise that there was so much radiation in space that if they had actually attempted to get to the moon they would have been fried a million times over. They still haven't been able to deal fully with the radiation problem.
- The guy in charge of analysing the moon rocks went on a holiday to the south pole to collect meteors just prior to the moon mission's completion.
- The Russians were FAR ahead of the americans and many Russian scientists have stated that they never understood where the incredible jump in technology came from that allowed them to overtake Russian space technology so much.
There were a lot of other attacks on the US moon mission hoax. I can't remember all of them now, but it was an impressive list - in its size and accuracy.
Over the years the many conspiracy shows etc. have pointed to things like flags blowing in a 'breeze' on the moon, shadows not appearing to originate from the sun among many similar anomalies. Although I don't think this means they were hoaxed, it would be good to hear NASA come up with a response other than "Thats ridiculous" and actually supply some source of definitive proof that man has been to the moon.