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NASA's LRO Captures High-Res Pics of Apollo Landing Sites
The Bad Astronomer is one of many readers who wrote to tell us about NASA's release of high-res photos showing the Apollo landing sites. The photos were taken from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and show the traces of earlier visits to the Moon. "The satellite reached lunar orbit June 23 and captured the Apollo sites between July 11 and 15. Though it had been expected that LRO would be able to resolve the remnants of the Apollo mission, these first images came before the spacecraft reached its final mapping orbit. Future LROC images from these sites will have two to three times greater resolution."
I'm sure at least once, somebody in the team asked "Now, you guys do know that this will show the landing sight. We really didn't fake the landing, right?"
Gentoo Sucks
CNN just had a front page article where they stated that around 25% of 18-25 year olds doubted the truth of the landing. That is utterly depressing, showing the current level of science education.
They must have done the survey south of the mason-dixon line, because up here in Minnesota, I have yet to meet anyone who believes that garbage. I still remember when Fox News aired their little "moon hoax" series what NASA's response was. It was, in my opinion, the best headline I will ever read in my life. It read, in giant lettering across its homepage;
Yes, We Did.
Don't think that just because we have slathering idiots in the streets that America as a whole has become uneducated. I assure you, idiots breed in larger numbers than smart people in every country.
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Honestly, I think the best argument is that the Soviets would definitely have called us out on not landing.
The top tiers of the Soviet machine were in on the hoax. It was excellent propaganda. It generated fear in their people, and fearful people are more easily herded.
Instead of "Iraq has WMDs" it was "America has moon rockets".
Actually, no.
The moon is lumpy and thus doesn't have a uniform gravity field. Objects in low orbits are slightly perturbed and don't take very long to hit the surface.
An object high enough to make the Mascons not matter is also high enough that Earth perturbs its orbit, and again, takes a short time (months, usually) to either get pulled completely out of orbit or hit the surface.
There are no stable orbits around the moon.