Slashdot Mirror
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?"
doh!
An important question to ask is... how do the doubters benefit from these doubts? There is certainly a few nickels to be made.
What's funny is... these doubters must wake up everyday doubting even the most basic things. I imagine they take tests like these all day:
Without these tests... they never know what is real. They have to constantly prove (or in this case, disprove) everything.
Sex - Find It
First, conspiracy theorists are motivated by a profound mistrust of the government. This is understandable given the vast over-extension of Federal powers that has taken place throughout the last 30 years. Intrusive Fedderal agencies like the FBi, ATF, EPA, and OSHA, among others, should have their powers curtailed. The Bush administration has made some good strides in this area, though it has clearly failed in others (e. g. the dangerous and hyterical PATRIOT act).
Second, the miserable failure of our public education system needs to be addressed. A lot of public ambivalence toward scientific breakthroughs like computers, genetic engineering, and space travel stems from ignorance. It is time to admit that our public education system as it stands is simply not getting the job done. Alternative libertarian measures such as the voucher system to allow families to send their children to private schools, and more support (tax breaks, etc) for home-schooling efforts have to be encouraged.
If proper measures are taken to root out and eliminate the social causes of conspiracy nuttiness, we will see far fewer people blindly accepting the crackpot theories of the "no-moon-landing" crowd.
In the very long run, this gives some hope for an almost pristine Earth, with all the benifits of industry.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
I doubt it. Simply because the conspiracy theory isn't whether or not spaceships are on the moon but whether, to paraphrase JFK, man was sent to the moon and bought back alive (during the Apollo missions). Conspiracy theorists generally accept the existence of moon rocks and so forth because they consider it entirely plausible that unmanned spacecraft can help fulfill the various missions -- and indeed they did, for many years, before and after the Apollo missions and by several nations.
To repeat myself, the conspiracy theory hinges on whether or not it was/is impossible to send man to the moon and to bring him back alive. I should also add that I have no conspiritorial beliefs of my own on this subject.
Its been said before, I will say it again, Hubble does not have the resolution to take those sorts of pictures. Also the moon reflects so much light that it would dazzle hubbles collectors anyway. IIRC Nasa did release a rather grainy shot of one of the Apollo landing units still on the moon.
While this may not end the conspiracy theories, detecting the Apollo lunar landers on the Moon would be a spectacular demonstration of the VLTs' superb performance. The VLT can achieve a resolution as good as the Hubble Space Telescope (and far better, once the interferometer is installed). Unfortunately, it has neither the staff nor the money of the HST public relation office, so pretty much nobody outside the scientific community knows that.
Last month I saw a fantastic documentary on Arte, the French-German culture TV channel. The point of the documentary was that although the moon landing was real, Nixon had been so scared that it would fail, that he ordered to make a fake film about it. As this was decided pretty unexpectedly, they negotiated to use the London based film set for Kubrick's "2001".
They went on explaining that Kubrick as a perfectionist decided to shoot it himself, how the CIA got rid of the witnesses one by one in the seventies, and how eventually Kubrick died "unexpectedly" in 1999, just before he could make some revelations.
The whole documentary was backed with interviews with Henry Kissinger, Donald Rumsfeld, and TV footage from Nixon's White House. None of these interviews were dubbed. They only cut it the right way.
As a critical person, I sat on my chair all the time thinking : "This can't be true ! That'a amazing !". The great thing is they didn't deny the moon landing at all so it made all the rest seem plausible. Then after half an hour they revealed it was all manipulation. The moon hoax theory was a hoax itself. Really a great documentary.
I disagree, some photos of the moon lander taken from earth would be really cool IMHO.
Even if there were no doubters I think it would be a cool thing to do.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I do not ascribe to the belief that the moon mission was faked
But in a sense, mankind has never been to the moon. So ok, we may have sent 12 individuals to the moon, that's hardly mankind is it? And that was 30 years ago.
12 individuals don't really count as mankind, so we havn't REALLY been to the moon. We just visited it, very briefly, then decided it was too expensive.
Where's all these moon colonies we were promised?
I think if you're American, you'd be nuts not to be a conspiracy theorist! Bear with me...
I'll leave Bush aside... But have you read up on your Vice President Dick Cheney (exCEO of Halliburton Industried, and oil services company with dealings with Iraq), Secretary of Commerce Don Evans (ex chairman and CEO of Tom Brown Inc, an oil and gas company), Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld (ex board member of the Tribune Company which publishes the Los Angelese Times, Chicago Tribune, NY's Channel 11), Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham (received more from the automotive industry than any other candidate, voted in 2000 to abolish the department he now leads), Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson (received paid for trips abroad to promote free trade and $72,000 in campaign contributions from Philip Morris, the tobacco giant), Secretary to the Interior Gale Norton (ex national chairwoman of an "environmental group" funded by Ford Motor Company and BP Amoco, White House Chief of Staff Andrew H Card Jr (ex General Motor's chief lobbyist), National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice (served on Chevron's board of directors, has an oil tanker named after her!), Secretary to the Treasury Paul O'Neill (ex. president and CEO of Alcoa - one of the biggest polluters in Texas), Shadow Adviser to the President Kenneth L. Lay (ex Head of Enron...)...
Maybe things were better in 1969. But I don't believe much your Government says these days. Especially about the "war on Iraq" not having anything to do with oil. Does that make me a crazy conspiracy theorist?
I might be willing to swallow the concept of NASA doctoring photographs because the actual material from the moon was too lousy for grade-A propaganda. That might explain some of the admittedly very strange flaws in official NASA photos that people have pointed out.
But the idea of moon landings not taking place is pretty idiotic. The US govt/NASA would have had to have been pretty stupid to fake the moon landings. After all they had to expect the Russians, or somebody else, would either go there sooner or later or send probesx to verify or just out of pure curiosity and they would look to be huge fools if no traces of landings were found.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
It isn't an 18 meter telescope. It is actually an array of four 8-meter telescopes. With three 1.8-meter telescopes for interferometry, and a 2.5-meter auxillary telescope. All of this should provide for relatively wide-field optical imaging.
Here is a great diagram and description of the VLT
As for being able to see the lander, it should be able to see objects of about 1.3 meters in diameter.
The supporting math:
(5e-5 m) / (1.6e4 m) * (3.85e8 m) = (1.2m)
Human hair: ~5 x 10^-5 meters
Maximim Distance human hair can be seen by telescope: 1.6 x 10^4m (according to story)
Distance to moon: 3.85 x 10^7m
Sig Nazi- "No Sig for you, come back 1 year."
And I could only stand the drivel for around 10 minutes before I switched it to something else.
To all the doubters, let's put the issue to rest like this:
The US and USSR were competing neck and neck to get both astronauts into space and then to the moon. Like adolescent schoolboys, they took every opportunity to embarrass their opponent in the space race.
So...
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.
If the US had faked it, you can be sure that while they probably could've got away with fooling the general US public, there's absolutely NO way they could ever fool all of the scientists and analysts of the USSR doing the monitoring.
When the astronauts were transmitting from the moon, it would've been simplicity itself to check the signal source. If the signals were coming from anywhere other than the moon, the USSR would've had it in the press so fast that the ink wouldn't be dry on the page before the western media picked-up on it.
Not to mention every other country on the planet with radio antennas, telescopes, etc...
I'm sure some mental deficients would try and argue that a relay station was set up on the moon... Oh, but wait, that would require "going to the moon to set it up"... Time to just call it quits guys. How about working on conspiracy theories about aliens in area 57 instead? It'll sell better too...
N.
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
http://dwemus.org/archive.php?cid=167 could have done it. It is exaclty this text. (dated 2002-09-02)
thx google.
that wasnt my theory, its what a lot of things in "the matrix" (the movie) relate to, returning to babylon (from the control of the previously mentioned institutions i assume), in the ship named after king nebudchenezza, the coming of 'the one" or 'chosen ones' (prophets of the zionists, from what i have heard), you know? before you start labelling people you should do some reading, even correctly reading my original post would have helped. i dont suppose to know everything, or even much at all. i wish i could help you Soul. viva.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Many people did indeed believe that the world was flat - in the middle ages. But, shortly before the Renaissance, the generally accepted view amoung educated people was that the world was flat - the Catholic church still maintained the Earth was at the centre of the universe, but didn't seriously try to claim it was flat, as often suggested. Perhaps peasants believed that it was flat, but that's irrevelevant.
It was in fact the Queen of Spain who supported Colombus' trip, and it was the King of Portugal, who was searching for a sea route to India, who turned him down. His advisors informed him that Colombus greatly underestimated the circumference of the Earth and that there would be no way of making it all the way to India without landing somewhere, since there wasn't room on the ships to take all the necessary supplies.
As it happens, the continent of America was conviently between Europe and America. Had it not been there, the advisors would have been correct, and Columbus would have most likely died at sea. He had landed in America - an island in the Caribbean to be precise - and believed himself to be in India. His second great mistake, the fact that America was, in fact, America, and not India, was first realised after his death when Magellan circumnavigated the globe.
What were you doing in July 1969? I was an amateur photographer. My Uncle Joe had recently given me his black and white darkroom setup. I took pictures of the moon landing from our TV screen.
In August 1969, when the Apollo astronauts visited their hometowns, I covered Mike Collins' ticker tape parade in New Orleans for our school newspaper. I got to shake his hand! I remember thinking how small his hand was.
In the darkroom, I would enlarge negatives and print photos, and for effect, use techniques called cropping and vignetting. Cropping prints only the interesting portion of the photo. Vignetting was used if there were over or under exposed areas on the negative. I would block the light from the enlarger for a section of the photo that was overexposed, and give more light to underexposed areas (shadows). I used different paper stock which also controlled contrast.
When I saw the color moon photos in LIFE magazine I remember thinking what a great job the NASA photo darkroom staff must have done cropping and vignetting the photos.
I think its human nature to disbelieve things we can't see.
Several years ago at Cape Canaveral, Florida I had the opportunity to tour the full scale relica of the Ducan Hindes. That was the ship that Sir Francis Drake sailed around the world in. Its still hard to believe that a over 100 sailors could carry provision and make such a journey on such a small vessel.
"Yee of little faith" -- Jesus to Thomas
Someone grown up in todays medialandscape just *knows* that about anything can be faked. Strange enough they believe in the faintest hint of something conspirational going on.
:(.
I had yesterday a chat with a person doubting that planes did really fly into the wtc towers! Obviously there is even a book out in the wild now supporting this theory. O.k., so these people in theire hope for a conspiracy will believe the videos (realeased minutes after the crash) are fakes. They do believe no one on the street realised that there were no planes (that's what the book seems to tell). I guess everyone checking afterwards how the buildings crashed was obviously paid by some secret Agency. It's a relative new conspiracy and so u will for sure see it growing in the next months
But the same person had no problem believing the strange facts which were presented in the book (a 5 min. google lookup would've been enough to find out the faults of the book).
Guess now if i was able to change his opinion...
About the moon: Send those idiots to the moon and show them the landing side. They will come back and tell, that they have been abducted by aliens, been put in a Matrix-like Virtual Reality with a fake moonlanding side and start wearing tin-foil-hats.
Of course, Capricorn One is a helluva lot older than the Fox network... so it's just possible she got the idea from that.
(For the unaware, Capricorn One is a novel and a movie that presents a manned Martian expedition as an elaborate hoax by NASA, in a desperate bid for additional funds. The similarities between this story and the Moon conspiracy theorists is striking.)
the russians shot several probes at the moon at around the time we were sending people. in fact, as a last-ditch effort to trump apollo 11, the soviets sent a sample-return probe practically simultaneously. it was even money on who would come back with a sample first. the soviet probe failed (crashed, i believe) and the rest is history.