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Conspiracy Theorists, Meet The Moon
Spock the Baptist writes "You can read about an article entitled: "Telescope to challenge moon doubters" in the online edition of Sydney Morning Herald. The SMH reports that, "European scientists are to use the world's newest and largest telescope to see whether the spacecraft are still on the lunar surface." Does anyone really think that this will change the alleged minds of doubters?"
Does anyone really think that this will change the alleged minds of doubters?
No, these people just want attention, they don't care if they're wrong or not.
http://almostsmart.com
instead of doubting the moon landing, they will now be convinced that it's fake.
Why else would somone try to show them otherwise?
Will see these photographs and say "Wow, those are excellent fakes."
Then there will be tons of websites that crop up showing how the images were doctored, photoshopped, impossible, etc.
Some people just can't be convinced, and I'm not sure how much tax money should be spent on such a pursuit.
If you think about it the conspiracy theorists are just going to say we launched these things at the moon but no one ever actually set foot, its all just some plot to make them believe... yadda yadda.
Just commercialize space travel for a low cost, and let them go see the sites for themselves.
I think the majority of "moon-landing-doubters" are naive people that watched that socially irresponsible Fox TV show, and a few pictures of the landing site may be enough to sway them. There is, however, no use even talking to the true "conspiracy theorist".
Does anyone really think that this will change the alleged minds of doubters?
What if it shows them to be right?
Note: Although I'm beginning to see signs of conspiracy theorist (General paranoia, distrust of my own government, a sinking feeling that all my civil liberties are disappearing quickly, a belief that my government values the greed of corporations over the needs of its people, etc) in myself, I do not ascribe to the belief that the moon mission was faked.
Information doesn't want to be anthropomorphized anymore.
assuming they even believe the private or government department that releases images of a rover or flag (!), they would simply say that that stuff was planted on later missions and that the original mission had to be faked to win the space race for the propaganda value.
That, "I want to believe" slogan/whatever is indicative of the minds and attitudes one is dealing with when dealing with people who think they are agent Mulder and that they are the only ones who realize the truth.
why run from Vincenzo?
Why do people care so much about what lunar denial folk think?
Lunar deniers are an extreme minority (in both senses), they do no harm to anyone; the way astronmers obsess about proving that man went to the moon is just as insane as saying that man never went.
Honestly, people who believe man never went to the moon will change nothing. Progress will continue. New projects will be financed, launched and will return spectacular results. The manned space station is in orbit right now, if you needed any proof of this.
There will always be people like the lunar deniers.
Get over it, and ignore them.
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"The images from the telescope are actually made with subliminal images of the Coca Cola logo. If you turn the image upsides down, draw a square around the ship and read the horizon as a waveform you get the sound of John Lennon saying "JFK is not dead" backwards 3 times.
The "telescope" was actually a UFO that crashed on the moon and was hidden by the FBI and CIA for all these years. We have leaked documents to prove it!"
There is NO point trying to disprove conspiracy theories, that merely validates them, and gives the impression that these theories were taken seriously. Anyone can come up with a conspiracy theory about anything.
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
You show them the moon through the telescope, they'll say the telescope has been tampered with.
You show them pictures, they say they've been doctored and are fakes.
You show them footage, they say it was staged and point out supposed inconsistancies.
You take them to the moon and show them the lander, they say it was planted there.
There is no end to it, just dont even bother.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
Consider the following: the telescope can see a human hair from 16km away. A human hair is about .1mm. The moon is 384400km away from earth.
(384400km/16km)*.0001m = 2.4025m, which is to say that the telescope can see objects as small as 2.4 meters on the surface of the moon. That means the lander wouldn't be bigger than 2 pixels square.
"What's that little black dot?"
"That's the lander, duh."
"Still don't believe you"
You can never absolutely positively convince a person of the existance of a historical event. For all I know, the United States didn't even exist in 1950. Hell, I don't even believe in France, since I've never been there. I mean come on, you want me to believe that that silly French accent comes from a real language?!! Proposterous!
Why, o why must the sky fall when I've learned to fly?
Which just goes to show you that it sometimes pays to cater to deluded nutcases as interesting stuff can show up along the way.
I read this exact comment the last time a moon story was posted. If someone could dig up a link, we could mod this troll back down to hell.
If people really want to worry about govenment conspiracy they should look into the continued broadcasts of Barney The Dinosaur on TV
"When the US went to the moon, the USSR would've been watching with EVERY intelligence instrument in their posession. Every radio receiver, every telescope, every single spy would've been trained on the mission."
Your statement is pretty cool. But you're wrong in your assumptions. Conspiracy theorists may tell you that US and USSR made a whole super-conspiracy outta the Space Conquer to convince their dumb citizens that they were pretty cool. They may say that they did this in accordance, no matter the divisions and disagreements. Or they may tell you that US sent retransmitters to Space so that everyone would think they were walking on the Moon.
However these things are just corn seeds in the field The true problem here is not if we have been or not in the Moon. The problem is that we have had a huge debacle from Space Conquer since the 70s. Today, things are so histoircally far from us that we start to doubt if they really have taken place. How many expeditions have happened since then? How many events related to the Moon have happened since the last man quitted it? When the last seismic station turned off in the Moon?
The Moon Conquer was for many people something very SF, even when it was really happening. Now, 30 years later, it goes more than SF. It's mythology, sometimes of the very worst taste. Appolo XIII Holywood mega-picture showed it in all colours. We see there a raw patriotism where astronauts are good husbands and fathers and take a walk to the Moon like into the countryside. The dramatism of the film is artificial and quite theatrical. The whole story goes around on "how good is Earth, home sweet, home and dear bloody family", and doesn't touch a little neither the technicities of the mission nor the real drama of bringing back the station. The film is pure BS. And this and other similar things about Space is what we feed to new generations. That's the Cosmos they see. No wonder that they start to doubt we have been there...
Once I managed to hear something that one guy told me was a fragment from a conversation inside Appolo XIII. It was noisy, scrapped but some moments were clear. It was a cold blooded voice. It was clear that the guy was under extreme stress but he was fighting every second and every detail. No cries, no yellings, no discussions in maximas of Life and Values. Just good English full of technical details and sending Gods and Devils to Hell. That guy knew that he went into a place were frequently one gets one-way tickets. And he was really good on fighting back his return ticket. However, many people don't ever will know what was the real Appolo XIII.
One thing that might convince some doubters would be to set up another telescope nearby with plain optics and an eyepiece, then use a visible-light laser to bounce pulses off the laser ranging retroflector that Apollo 11 left behind on the surface - I have a picture of it here in a book called Eagle On The Moon (The incredible space journey of Apollo 11). Comparing it to a footprint it seems to be about 15" square, and maybe 15 yards from the lander.
t ur es/borra/hgmirror.html
You'd want to invite a half dozen well-known skeptics and let them peer through the eyepiece while they press a button to fire a laser pulse at the retroflector and wait the 2 and a bit seconds for the reflection to come back and appear in both the plain optical scope and the big electronically controlled scope with the digitally processed images. Then you'd want to be able to convince them that the two scopes are pointing at the same place, probably by taking a few photos of prominent features and matching images from the two scopes, and proving that that the features are in fact in the appropriate region of the Sea of Tranquility, as advertised.
Since there may be no other optical telescope nearby, they might want to use a tilting liquid mirror telescope, which should be cheap enough and portable enough to relocate next to the big new scope. These are under development:
http://www.casca.ca/ecass/issues/winter2000/fea
I know this will only prove the existence of a retroflective feature on the lunar surface near another feature that might or might not be the bottom half of a lunar lander, but maybe it's worth a try. If all of the lunar landers left similar retroflectors, it should be possible to account for all the Apollo missions this way, assuming they all landed on this side of the moon.
Regards, RDD
I want to live as an honest man, to get all I deserve and give all I can, to love a young woman who I don't understand.
But I don't believe much your Government says these days. Especially about the "war on Iraq" not having anything to do with oil.
I'd be curious to know how specifically the US government benefits from the oil in Iraq after a war. Keep in mind that Saddam (is that his surname?) could very well destroy all of his oil facilities and set all his wells alight if he senses the end is nigh.
I'd be curious to know how specifically the US government benefits from the oil in Iraq after a war.
Iraq has the second largest proven reserves of oil in the world after Saudi Arabia. American oil companies have not had access to this since the late 1980s. They stand to profit enormously from a post-Hussein government friendly to the United States. It would also allow the scuttling of oil deals between Iraq and other countries and reshuffling world petroleum markets in favor of US oil firms.
There is a lot for US oil companies to gain from getting a US friendly regieme into Iraq, and that is exactly what Bush wants to do. They have also been trying to put in place a regieme that will cancel oil agreements Iraq currently has with China, Russia and France. I shouldn't need to point out the links between Bush and his cronies and the oil companies.
You don't have to take my word for it. Spend a few hours reading what the better international press has said about this over the last few months.
If it is seriously intended to change anyone's mind, there needs to be a "chain of evidence" that involves the participation of the doubters.
Otherwise, it's just like a UFO photo. Someone pops up and says "Here's photographic proof! This picture of [a UFO][spacecraft on the surface of the Moon] was taken by [a Boy Scout leader][European scientists] on [precise time and date] and [experts] say it's authentic." To which I'd say "how do I really know where and how it was taken? Why couldn't this be a picture of [a garbage can lid tossed in the air and deliberately taken out of focus][a cleverly Photoshopped fake?]"
It all depends on whether you believe the [Boy Scout leader][European scientists].
No, it goes further than that. Unless you personally have INTERVIEWED the [Boy Scout leader][European scientists] it depends on whether you believe the REPORTERS...
There are things you know because you've seen them yourself, and there are things you know because you are told them by people you trust. There has to be a chain of trust. If the don't invite representatives of the doubters to eyewitness the procedures used, the final photograph doesn't mean a thing.
One of the aspects of scientific research that deserves to be taught better in the schools involves, not the use of the scientific method, but of the role played by citation and attribution and, in general, scholarship. That's the big difference between a journal article and an article in the popular press.
EVERY statement in the scientific literature can, in principle, be traced back to a specific person with a name and institutional affiliation (which constitutes a usable address), who says "This is what I did and this is what I saw." And you can ask them about it if you doubt it.
It will be very cool to see the pictures when they get them. But unless the doubters are closely involved in the process, there's no reason why it should change their minds.
(Actually, it will be even cooler if they CAN'T get them--which I think is quite possible, the Moon is a big place and the spacecraft are awfully small. Let's say it turns out that they can't. What do you think they will do?)
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The people who push the hoax are trying to sell books and videos. Their followers are mentally ill. Simple facts will affect neither.
The hoax pushers are no better than preachers, imams and other drug dealers.
--- Ban humanity.
When Gallileo ffirst started using the telescope, most people thought that what he was seeing through them was some sort of optical illusion, like a funhouse mirror. No doubt conspiracy theorists will latcch on to that "Its only an optical illusion caused by natural processes on the moons surface" If somone doesnt want to believe something, no amount of factual evidence is satisfactory. Even if you shot somone to the moons surface, they would still say "well im only in some nasa sound stage" or "this is some sort of hypnotically induced suggestion" People have an amazing capacity to believe things in spite of overwhelming evidence to the opposite, or lack of evidence whatsoever, despite the extremity of implausibility (see scientology)
Those that will believe nothing.
Those that will believe anything.
Skeptics and the suckers. Jaded and the gullible. Those who refuse to be fooled, and those who will buy anything, no matter how outrageous. I get them on my site all the time. A small group of people, despite the modern technology necessary to even access my website, refuse to believe its possible to control appliances via the computer. And then there are those who try to talk to a slideshow. You can't win.
No matter what you do, no matter how much proof is available, there will always be idiots that believe the moon landings were faked. I call them idiots because their "proof" is based on scientific evidence that is actually proof against them, false implications, or outright lies. And for the most part, they fail to listen to any reason. They're not looking for a debate, they're looking to impose their view on the world, and refuse to accept that others would actually believe that the obvious happened. There are actually people in this world that still believe the Earth is flat. You can try to convince these people, but you're wasting your breath. Just let them enjoy their ignorance. It IS bliss afterall.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
This wouldn't work. Not only would the local atmospheric disturbance make it impossible to focus on the landing site, but there was evidence that the lower modules were destroyed during take-off. The entire landing sites are now buried in dust, leaving no trace of the landings.
Besides that, the article clearly states that all conspiracy theorists believe that robots were sent instead, because humans could never withstand the radiation and intense vacuum of space. Even if a telescope could be trained on some pile of trash and junk on the moon, it would still be impossible to prove that it was the result of human activity.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
Everyone is missing the whole point of this discussion/event/conspiracy theory.
...Says who?
By majority of comments posted here are merely to malign or otherwise insult the people who think the event was faked. I begin to wonder if anyone here even HAS an open mind anymore, or if they've all turned to mindless sheep (obligatory Dilbert reference). Why would you accept something as rote simply because your self-biased government said so? I personally think a healthy dose of skepticism is needed today. It always strikes me as funny how so many people subscribe fully to the moon landing, then turn around and refuse to believe that the Bible is God's Word (or something else that is based wholly on belief).
I think it goes hand-in-hand with university level education today. Today's system teaches vocational trades. It no longer teaches people how to think for themselves. Did you know that all doctorates used to be in Philosophy or the art of thinking clearly? It is still called a PhD to this day. Hence, very few people know how to think logically. I am not saying that I know how to think properly either, but at least I know the problem is there.
Do you think it's beyond our government to deceive you? Do you think the goverment has nothing to hide? The point of this post, this discussion, this conspiracy theory, is to get you to logically and scientifically deduce the truth from the chaff. It is an exercise in skepticism. Don't get angry that someone debates your postion and resort to name-calling, defend it. Debate is a wonderfull tool for being able to see an issue from all sides, sharpening your mind, and learning something you didn't fully understand before. I am merely asking that you accept the possibilities, and not damn them because they are not what you believe.
- OrbNobz
Question Authority!
They are just another stripe of ideologue, and you cannot discuss things with ideologues. You cannot reason with them. They are immune to facts. They have abdicated critical thinking in favor of the comfortable easy fog of unthink.
It's a reaction to something, but I have not yet decided what. Perhaps the complexity of the modern world, or the dismalness of human condition.
The sad, pathetic thing is that about 9 out of 10 people you meet these days are ideologues. I don't even discuss current events with people in the real world anymore. There's no point. People cannot discuss a topic in detail. They have to plug you into some simplisitc ideological slot, and then trot out the standard mantras, and that's the full and complete extent of most poeple powers of debate.
--- Ban humanity.
This will not be proof that NASA went to the moon. Photographic evidence isn't proof anymore. Anything can be faked. Otherwise, we'd have to believe that Burt did, in fact, meet with Osama bin Laden.
The irrefrickinfutable evidence of the moon landings is the rock samples. They don't have evidence of re-entry, so they aren't meteorites. Chemically, these things just didn't come from earth. They don't have enough water in them. Everything on earth, no matter how dry an environment it comes from, contains a fair amount of water. Even the rocks of the Antarctic Dry Valleys, where there's been no precipitation have some water in hydrated compounds in the rocks. Same for deep-crustal and even mantle rocks brought to the surface by vulcanism.
Fact is, the moon rocks may or may not have come from the moon, but they sure as hell came from somewhere and they didn't enter the earth's atmosphere on their own.
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
Whats the phenomenon that needs explaining? That we can't get to the moon now? Heres an explanation for ya - The powers that be lost their bottle thats what happened. Just as we were about to start a real space age, the bean counters stepped in and pushed us backwards so that we now have the worlds most expensive satellite launch vehicle.
Never attribute to conspiracy what can easily be attributed to shear laziness.