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Images of Apollo Landing Sites Soon Available

eric.brasseur writes "The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has entered lunar orbit in perfect shape. From a height of 50 km, it will image the Moon in high resolution. The hardware left by the Apollo missions will be clearly visible. The Soviet automatic probes will also be photographed. Previous best images were made by the Japanese probe Kaguya and showed a white patch where the dust had been blown away by the blast of the LM engine."

24 of 263 comments (clear)

  1. God dammit by Niris · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Just reading the summery makes me worried about the slew of "Moon landing never happened!" posts that are on the way

    1. Re:God dammit by Alsee · · Score: 5, Insightful

      One way or the other, we will finally have proof.

      Either the photos will come back showing no hardware on the moon and we'll finally have proof it never happened, or they will release photos showing landing hardware on the moon and we'll finally have proof of an on going NASA conspiracy to manufacture a moon landing fraud.

      Yes, one way or the other we will finally have proof.

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      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    2. Re:God dammit by sexconker · · Score: 3, Funny

      Do they run Linux?
      If so, imagine a Beowulf cluster of those.

      Someone else will have to throw in the bad car analogy.

    3. Re:God dammit by Fred+Ferrigno · · Score: 5, Informative

      We've had proof for a long time. The nutjobs just don't want to believe it. For one thing, they left reflectors on the moon that can bounce back laser signals. Mythbusters even did it.

      I'm sure the nutjobs will find some excuse not to believe this too.

    4. Re:God dammit by RiotingPacifist · · Score: 3, Funny

      sure, because nobody could edit wikipedia to cover for the fake moon landings!

      --
      IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
    5. Re:God dammit by profplump · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Was it possible to fake a moon mission -- probably. But you're missing the hard part of conspiracies: getting everyone involved to keep quiet for 50 years. Even if you assume that most of the NASA staff an contractors really believed they were launching people, there's still a lot of people involved -- the actual astronauts, the radio relay operators, the guys who sealed no-one into the capsule, the guys who recovered no-one from the capsule, not to mention the staff involved in running the filming location(s). At the very least I'm guessing you'd need 20+ people who *know* the moon landing was faked, and probably 2-3 times as many who could reasonably guess based on things they personally witnessed. How would you keep that many people quiet for so long? I'm also not sure what you gain by not sending people to the moon. You've already built a giant rocket than can lift a space craft to the moon. You've already built and used human-capable space capsule technology. You're actually going to land some relatively large spacecraft on the moon. You're already going to transmit radio from the moon from several days. You're already going to land your space capsule back on Earth. Why not just put people in your space capsule and forgo the faking bit?

    6. Re:God dammit by Alsee · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This just in: 4 out of 5 Slashdot posters lack reading comprehension skills

      Yeah, that's why I come here. The Slashdot community comprehension level is about 20% above that of the general population. ;)

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      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  2. pics and it still didn't happen by RoverDaddy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    [sarcasm off] For the record, I believe 100% that the landings were real, but I also believe that nothing short of dragging the conspiracy nuts up to the moon themselves will convince them of the fact. Maybe not even that.

    --
    RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
    1. Re:pics and it still didn't happen by allawalla · · Score: 5, Funny

      Not a bad idea - dragging the conspiracy nuts to the moon...

    2. Re:pics and it still didn't happen by Bazman · · Score: 5, Funny

      Preferably without suits. They won't mind, because they think they're just heading to a big warehouse in Arizona.

    3. Re:pics and it still didn't happen by AliasMarlowe · · Score: 4, Funny

      Not a bad idea - dragging the conspiracy nuts to the moon...

      Better: send them to the landing site for the first manned mission to the sun (but don't tell them they'll be the first ones to land there).

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    4. Re:pics and it still didn't happen by timeOday · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I also believe that nothing short of dragging the conspiracy nuts up to the moon themselves will convince them of the fact. Maybe not even that.

      How many such people actually exist? With every slashdot article mentioning the moon landings, there is a great uproar about these heretics. I'm sure they exist, but I've never met one, nor do I recall even reading a post from one on slashdot. It makes me wonder why these people (whoever they are) get under people's skin so much.

    5. Re:pics and it still didn't happen by gujo-odori · · Score: 5, Interesting

      More than you might think. I lived for a period of time in a communist country in Asia, and not only did I find there were a number of people who thought that the United States did not land people on the moon, but that those people also typically believed that the Soviet Union had.

      Why did they think so? They "learned" it in school :p

    6. Re:pics and it still didn't happen by Ecuador · · Score: 4, Funny

      Suits won't make a difference. Even in expensive cashmere suits they will still look like a bunch of nuts suffocating on the lunar surface.

      --
      Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
    7. Re:pics and it still didn't happen by Griim · · Score: 5, Funny

      Bah. This is easily remedied by going at night.

  3. That's cool and all by Idiot+with+a+gun · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But let's not pretend for a second that it'll stop the theorists. They want to disbelieve, so nothing will prevent them. As was mentioned on the Conspiracy Theories episode of Penn and Teller's Bullshit, when someone says "You can't convince me," those aren't the words of a skeptic, merely of a jerk. That being said, they should be some neat photos.

  4. Re:eh by Ethanol-fueled · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...freshly shaved Asian...pussy...

    You haven't seen very much Asian porn, have you? You're in for a big surprise once Mommy and Daddy uninstall NetNanny.

  5. If you look closely at the picture of the orbiter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    You can plainly see that only a few feet of the orbiter are devoted to the camera, with the rest being a perfect-size capsule for a single astronaut with a copy of photoshop.

    Explain that.

  6. Obligatory Cheese Reference by spireite · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's Wensleydale, Grommit!!

  7. Lunakhod 1 by mbone · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Lunakhod 1 carried a French retroreflector array for Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) but unfortunately, contact was lost and no one knows where it is. There are good returns for Lunakhod 2, so I (and others) want Lunakhod 1 back !

    Finding this would be a great help for Lunar science (assuming it didn't get crushed in a landslide or something). I know that this is on their list, so good luck !

  8. It's amazing by Bromskloss · · Score: 5, Funny

    What a long way we've come since the sixties and seventies. Now we can even photograph the landing sites they used back then. :-/

    --
    Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
  9. The "moon" - a ridiculous liberal myth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    It amazes me that so many allegedly "educated" people have fallen so quickly and so hard for a fraudulent fabrication of such laughable proportions. The very idea that a gigantic ball of rock happens to orbit our planet, showing itself in neat, four-week cycles -- with the same side facing us all the time -- is ludicrous. Furthermore, it is an insult to common sense and a damnable affront to intellectual honesty and integrity. That people actually believe it is evidence that the liberals have wrested the last vestiges of control of our public school system from decent, God-fearing Americans (as if any further evidence was needed! Daddy's Roommate? God Almighty!)

    Documentaries such as Enemy of the State have accurately portrayed the elaborate, byzantine network of surveillance satellites that the liberals have sent into space to spy on law-abiding Americans. Equipped with technology developed by Handgun Control, Inc., these satellites have the ability to detect firearms from hundreds of kilometers up. That's right, neighbors .. the next time you're out in the backyard exercising your Second Amendment rights, the liberals will see it! These satellites are sensitive enough to tell the difference between a Colt .45 and a .38 Special! And when they detect you with a firearm, their computers cross-reference the address to figure out your name, and then an enormous database housed at Berkeley is updated with information about you.

    Of course, this all works fine during the day, but what about at night? Even the liberals can't control the rotation of the Earth to prevent nightfall from setting in (only Joshua was able to ask for that particular favor!) That's where the "moon" comes in. Powered by nuclear reactors, the "moon" is nothing more than an enormous balloon, emitting trillions of candlepower of gun-revealing light. Piloted by key members of the liberal community, the "moon" is strategically moved across the country, pointing out those who dare to make use of their God-given rights at night!

    Yes, I know this probably sounds paranoid and preposterous, but consider this. Despite what the revisionist historians tell you, there is no mention of the "moon" anywhere in literature or historical documents -- anywhere -- before 1950. That is when it was initially launched. When President Josef Kennedy, at the State of the Union address, proclaimed "We choose to go to the moon", he may as well have said "We choose to go to the weather balloon." The subsequent faking of a "moon" landing on national TV was the first step in a long history of the erosion of our constitutional rights by leftists in this country. No longer can we hide from our government when the sun goes down.

  10. By 2080, nobody alive will have witnessed it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    BY 2080, nobody alive will have seen first-hand the media coverage of the Apollo landings. Heck, I was born in 1970 and I don't remember them even though they happened when I was alive.

    Anyway, there will come a time when nobody will have first hand memories of the event. The only memories will be those gleaned from videos, reading about it, etc. At some point, the fact that it happened will change from a fact into just something people have read about or heard about.

    Eventually many of the people alive will doubt it ever happened at all because the story of the moon landings will have become indistinguishable from a fable.

    Think about the war of 1812, or Columbus "discovering" America. We have a pretty good idea these things happened. But all we know about them is stuff we have read or heard. We have also heard many works of fiction from those same times. At some level, it's all similar.

    This ignores the concept of revisiting the moon, which may or may not ever happen. I have my doubts about NASA on this. But if we ever do go back and build a city, then those people will doubt it was ever such a big deal.

  11. Interesting observaton. by Paul+server+guy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What I find interesting is that most of the comments are about the "hoax" hoax, a few about how long it took, and not many about how very cool this tech is? Are we really that jaded?

    I for one think it's very cool. And I am looking forward to seeing the hardware.

    I'm also looking forward to using the date to help plan our mission.

    --
    Your Moon, Your Mission, Get involved! http://www.openluna.org