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Nvidia Sinks Moon Landing Hoax Using Virtual Light
schwit1 writes Using its new top-shelf graphics processing unit, Nvidia tackles one of the most persistent conspiracy theories in American history: the veracity of the 1969 to 1972 Apollo moon landings. From the article: "'Global illumination is the hardest task to solve as a game company,' Scott Herkelman, Nvidia's GeForce general manager, said in an interview. 'Virtual point lights don't do a bad job when the environment stays the same, but a game developer has to fake shadows, fake reflections...it's a labor-intensive process.' So when a Nvidia research engineer used the company's new dynamic lighting techniques to show off a side-by-side comparison between an Apollo 11 photo and a GeForce-powered re-creation, the company knew it had a novel demo on its hands. 'We're going to debunk one of the biggest conspiracies in the world,' Herkelman said."
nVidia technology fell into the past through a wormhole.
Luckily it was properly static-bagged, because it actually went back to 1912 and had to be stored until a computer could be developed to interface to it
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
That Nvidia is in on the hoax!!!1!!one!!!!
as any TRUE audiophile will tell you, the highest-quality fake historic events from the 1960s were done with vacuum tube technology.
high-end graphics card swill lacks the warmth and nuance of a true conspiracy.
Conspiracy theorists won't care. They will always believe that there is a conspiracy. Debunk one, and they will merely find another. For this, even if you were to fly them up there, they would find some way to disbelieve it.
Aren't there still those mirrors on the moon they set up that are reflecting laser light?
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
It will just create a new hoax, where the Moon Landing was faked using NVidia GPUs.
"But what about the..." is a never-ending argument between conspiracy theorists and debunkers.
Unfortunately, each one that gets knocked down on its face means it's statistically more likely that the debunkers are right and the theorists wrong. We can go to infinity, but after ten or even 5 assertions wiped out with only basic experimentation, the chances of you having been right in the first place go beyond minuscule.
Scientific principle starts with "here's a hypothesis, does it fit the facts?" and goes BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD whenever any element of it is wrong. Conspiracy theorists just keep on pounding ignoring all their previous incorrect assertions until people get bored dealing with them and then "Ah ha! They won't answer!".
If you were wrong about the shadows, and the film, and the radioactivity, and this, that and the other? Chances are you're wrong about all the other minor crap too. And to prove otherwise requires more than just "it's obvious" or flaws are "too numerous to list".
The Mythbusters beat you to it years ago...
And they don't even have a graphics card for sale!
(perhaps a t-shirt though)
You can point a strong telescope at the moon and see the tracks, footprints, and leftover hardware. It would have been more expensive at the time to send machines to false-place those articles of evidence on the surface. See for yourself, they are on the earth-facing side. Something NASA colt have saved money on if it was a conspiracy by claiming the landing was on the far side.
That is what the conspiracy buffs would say. So would you, if your meal ticket is selling conspiracy theories to credulous folks. They are not bound by rhyme nor logic, and they don't even care all the conspiracy theories are mutually exclusive and self contradicting. To think some argument about global light source is going to sway them is ridiculous.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
People such as moon landing hoaxers, 9/11 truthers etc. are so far gone that you could methodically tear down each and every one of their assertions, employing evidence, science, logic to beat it to a pulp and they'd still start right up with the first one again.
These moon-hoax wackjobs are so off the charts that they'll probably come up with some lame excuse to explain how Nvidia 'gamed' the system. . .
*sigh*
"But what about the..." is a never-ending argument between conspiracy theorists and debunkers.
Exactly. It's essentially whack-a-mole but with paranoid and stupid people.
Flags still "fly" in a vacuum.
NT
Wow, this old idiocy? Even during the first moon landing when I was only 5 I heard Walter Cronkite explain about the stiff wires holding the flag out.
Dude, you are dumber than a 5 year old.
No, the only thing it is evidence of is your stupidity.
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#flag
And there is tension and torsion in the metal frame that holds up the flag, because with (as you mention) no breeze, they needed something else to hold it out. Because of the tension and torsion, the supporting arm vibrated a little at first, like a spring, and that makes waves in the flag material. They'll fade out eventually from friction, but if you already have the shot, well, there they are.
The conspiracy pretty much ended when Buzz Aldrin punched Bart Sibrel in the face on camera.
What's amazing to me is that you believe an indoor breeze can fly a flag.
Unfortunately moving the goal posts is not unusual for the conspiracists. One of the evidence that counters the hoaxers' claims is that the lunar sites and equipment still exist on the moon and can be seen with probes and telescopes and a laser. To which the hoaxers then claim unmanned spacecraft could have placed them there. So therefore hoaxers claim that NASA created a massive conspiracy in faking manned missions but also maintained a secret side project to place objects using unmanned spacecraft. Of course when confronted with basic logistical quandaries like how NASA would have to build craft massive enough to place a lunar rover as well as place tracks, they have no real answers. To every answer they come up with any possible but unlikely scenario. Occam's Razor does not seem to be a favorite of this group.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Actually no, you can't do this. There is no telescope on Earth with the necessary resolution for that, nor can Hubble do it.
But IIRC a few years back they got such pictures from a Moon orbiter.
And of course there are the reflectors...
uh... no you couldn't, the angular resolution of even the largest telescopes coupled with elementary physics would prove that.
The best you could ever hope for is catching a shadow on the terminator straight across the centreline of a pixel.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I've almost given up on debunking conspiracy theories. Those who believe in them, BELIEVE in them. It's like trying to debunk somebody's religion.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The idea that you can topple the prima causa by attacking the conclusions is naive. The premise is all that's about it. The Moon landings have to be fake. Everything else is just a corollary.
Myself, I don't believe that WWII ever happened. I mean seriously, I'm supposed to believe radar, jet aircraft, computers, encryption, proximity fuzes, voice encryption and nuclear bombs were all invented in less than a decade?
when your opponent (Soviet Union) agrees, then you did it.
Graphics card maker admits to faking moon landing. Film at 11.
Unfortunately, each one that gets knocked down on its face means it's statistically more likely that the debunkers are right and the theorists wrong. We can go to infinity, but after ten or even 5 assertions wiped out with only basic experimentation, the chances of you having been right in the first place go beyond minuscule.
The problem is that conspiracy nuts don't understand statistics, or science. They are always asking for "proof" or "certainty" and in the the face of its lack they default to their own crazy idea.
But knowledge is not certain: it can always be updated in the face of new (possibly currently-unimaginable) evidence. So science, which creates knowledge, cannot create certainty of any kind. Not even falsification is certain, and people who ask for certainty are like alchemists of old, who rejected mere chemistry because it didn't give them the impossible capability of turning base metals into gold.
All that said, I have found it useful to ask Moon-landing-deniers who say, "The only source of light is the sun", "Then how can I see the ground?" If they acknowledge they can see the ground in the photos, they are pretty much forced to admit there is reflected light from the ground so they start looking pretty foolish when they repeat (as they often do) "The only source of light is the sun". It doesn't convince them of anything, but it does shut them up and make them go away.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
uh...they say "alleged" if the person has not been convicted yet, because if they were to say otherwise before the person was actually convicted, they could be sued up the ass. Who doesnt know this?
How does a flag "flutter" in a photograph?
uh... no you couldn't, the angular resolution of even the largest telescopes coupled with elementary physics would prove that.
And even if we could, say via a flyby with a satellite or some futuristic hubble 2.0... the only people who could afford such a 'telescope' would clearly be in on the hoax, so you can't trust them.
The only solution is to take the hoaxers and send them to the moon to see it first hand with their own eyes. Something I am entirely in favor of.
If that doesn't convince them, fine, this wasn't really for them, it was for me. And I was satisfied the minute they were out of earths orbit and don't see any reason why we should bring them back.
In addition to all the above, how does "a photograph" show fluttering?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Actually Neil Armstrong never punched anybody he was always known to be a real gentleman and always seemed to live to a very high standard.
Buzz Aldrin is the one that punched the idiot Lunar Loon.
Frankly I am really torn over who, out of the two I admire most.
BTW Adam Curry should never been seen or heard from again in the tech community IMHO.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
What is every idiots answer? "You never know."
Yea they will never know anything of worth.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Pitch it as a reality show ("Utopia: Moon") and you can probably get funding :)
Armstrong was so cool that he had people to punch other people for him! His best pal Buzz, for example. :-D
Ezekiel 23:20
nVidia clearly wants to distract attention from the true flaw - shadows. Everyone knows there are no shadows in a vacuum.
Maybe this should be posted in alt.folklore.urban?
After all, trolling /. is only slightly harder than rec.org.mensa
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I'm just wondering if when a society has conspiracy theorists speaking out freely, the 'tin hat' crowd, is that the sign of a healthy society or not.
It's bad I suppose when conspiracy theorists are flat out wrong, but would a repressive government try to silence them or do repressive governments only bother suppressing people who are telling the Truth?
Does it do harm in that when somebody really finds something bad going on people will tend to disbelieve them because of all the flakos (sort of like crying wolf too many times)?
Is there some sort of bell shaped curve of attitude towards what the establishment tells us in that a few people on one end of the curve will believe everything and bury their heads in the sand over any problem (like maybe global warming), and a few on the other end of the curve will leap at anything as a plot, while most people are somewhere in the middle? If there is such a curve, maybe it's characteristics (skew, standard deviation, etc) are what determine the 'health' of the society.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Go ahead. List them. I guarantee you there is an answer to every single one of them that doesn't involve a worldwide conspiracy.
Conspiracies do happen. But if you want to prove one happened, you need to a) identify all the conspirators, and b) identify their goal. If you just handwave the former as "oh, it was the government" or invent or co-opt some secret society that ran it, you're not doing an investigation, you're creating a cult. If you just handwave the latter as "oh, it was to prove that they had control of the planet" or some other vague goal, your rantings have no more weight than the average paranoid schizophrenics. Specific members. Specific goals. Can you do that?
Conspiracies that actually happened can easily meet those. The Gunpowder Plot? We know every member of the conspiracy, and their goals, while unlikely to be achieved, were realistic and real. Same for dozens, even hundreds of other actual conspiracies, from the Reichstag Burning to everyday criminal plots.
If you agree that those two conditions must be met to even consider a conspiracy theory plausible, I can disprove the Moon Hoax Theories right here, right now. Two words: Soviet Union.
They had the tech to put stuff into space (we're still using it). They launched probe after probe to the Moon. They had the means to monitor our launches and our communications (during Apollo 13, they made a gesture of ordering their people off any frequencies near the NASA ones, to prevent any interference). In short, if it were faked, the Soviets would have known. Why, then, would they have remained silent? Unless they were "in" on the conspiracy, they would not have.
What possible conspiracy could have counted both sides of the Cold War among their conspirators? What possible goal could they have had that would have justified it not just to the Americans, but to their mortal enemies? The purpose of the conspiracy, as most tell it, was to cheat at the space race and win it for America. Why would the USSR go along with it? What did they gain from it that was worth so much of a loss?
I can come up with nothing that can explain Soviet participation in this conspiracy. And so I am forced to conclude that the initial premise was wrong - the moon landings happened, as supported by literal tons of evidence.
Interestingly, if you theorize that Soviets started to spread lies and misinformation that the Apollo landings were faked, to reduce American prestige and regain their own, you can easily meet both the two conditions I had for a plausible conspiracy theory. They had the means - it's simple propaganda, through word-of-mouth. Get it started and the paranoid will parrot it for you. They had the motivation, obviously enough. This isn't proof that it did happen that way, of course, but it's a much more plausible theory than the one you subscribe to.
The reflectors aren't proof of anything. There could be naturally occurring retro-reflective crystals on the moon, and NASA's just claiming they landed there. Now, if you had evidence that there was nothing retro-reflecting BEFORE the Apollo missions, then you might have something.
Note: just pointing out the flaw in the argument, not participating in the hoaxer camp.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
You photoshop it, of course.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
prove that a building can collapse at free-fall speed!
According to usually reliable sources, Nvida was just awarded a secret NASA/NSA contract worth more than $750M to develop custom hardware for the upcoming Mars landing hoax and future homeland security scenarios . So, of course they want to convince us that the moon landing was real!
I mean, come on, his generation had octogenarian astronauts that punch annoying moon landing conspiracy theorists in the nose.
After that we had to settle for crazy stalker ex-girlfriends driving 17 hours cross-country in a diaper to ambush, kidnap and murder their rival.
I'm tellin' ya son, ol' Elon better be lining up a much more entertaining caliber of astronaut for us.
The bigger question with the waving flag is why is the top on the flag dead straight but the bottom is waving. honestly how is that no so obviously held up by a wire that a child could spot that. what is the gain of faking the moon landing vs the gain that came from technology advancements that came from actually flying to the moon and back.
All we need is a really big hammer.
Conspiracy theorist don't care if it was actually faked or not they just enjoy arguing with people. If the majority of people believed it was fake conspiracy theorist would tell you it's real.
gr8 b8 m8! Caught some fish with that one!
Let's all be honest Armstrong should be the ultimate tech poster boy. After walking on the Moon he became a college professor.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Anyone who takes this seriously is too stupid to take seriously.
To me, the real lede is buried pretty deeply in the article. The light on that particular photo IS anomalous. It sounds as if the conspiracy theorists were right about that, and that's kind of astute.
What's interesting is the resolution of the anomaly: it's light reflected off Neil Armstrong himself. Or rather, his large, bright-white suit. The NVidia guys showed that it reflects enough light to account for the lighting in the picture. If you don't include it, the lighting is off. I think that's pretty cool.
This doesn't, of course, settle anything for the conspiracy nuts, and I fully expect this to prove only that the NASA guys were wily bastards. And that sucks, because it sounds as if the brain power they're applying might well have turned up something more interesting if it weren't fixated on achieving a delusional result.
An animated GIF?
As far as getting conspiracy loonies to change their minds. Their idiotic notions, mostly underpinned by a profound ignorance and an evident lack of basic competence to understand that, have been thoroughly debunked over and over and over again. It does not matter.
Pretty much all the lighting aspects can explained by someone who has a background in photography. Some of them are just basic sense. For example, you can't see stars in the photos because of light exposure. It's why you can't see stars in the daylight here on Earth. It's why visible light telescopes are located away from cities. Other aspects can be explained away with someone with knowledge about the subject.
Hoaxers also seem to disregards factors like budget and logistics and like to twist things. Today NASA will not recreate the technology that was used in the 1960s. Now the important words there are "will not" not "cannot". NASA has a much smaller budget than in the 60s to achieve the same goal. Since NASA has not done a manned lunar mission since then it is easier for NASA to do it from scratch than to recreate things.
For example, to launch such a vehicle NASA will need a big rocket on par with the Saturn V. Why not simply use a Saturn V? There are no working ones available (there are museum pieces) and the manufacturing facilities were decommissioned decades ago. NASA could recreate the facilities and the rockets but that what would be the point? That would be using technology from 50 years ago instead of using newer technology.
That would be like if someone decided to resurrect the Studebaker automotive company. Would you expect the new company to use plans from the 1960s to make new cars. Barring the fact that regulations have changed, car technology has changed. The engine would be fuel injected not a carburetor system. Anti-lock braking, electronic control, entertainment centers are much different than 50 years.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I see conspiracy theorists as an example of believing in a very unlikely scenario to boost your ego.
Suppose for a second that the Moon landing was faked. The level of conspiracy needed to do this and fool most of the people (including the Russians who would have called us out on it had we obviously been filming on a sound stage) would have been massive. You'd need engineers, scientists, government workers, astronauts, etc. All of them dedicated to pretending that we went to the Moon when we didn't. This would have to be a VERY well organized conspiracy. (Which alone should debunk this theory. Government is too inept to pull something like this off.)
Now, your normal person buys into the "faked Moon landing", but you are special. You are more intelligent and perceptive than they are. You see through the conspiracy and spot the flaws. In fact, you are so brilliant that the flaws seem stupidly obvious to you - which only elevates you more above the sheeple who buy the official story.
Of course, this also makes it nearly impossible to have a conspiracy theorist admit that he's been debunked. To admit this, the conspiracy theorist must lower his mental image of himself from "stands tall above all those stupid masses" to "actually a bit below those masses." This is unacceptable so any proof that the conspiracy theorist is wrong is rationalized away as being a) planted by the conspiracy to trick the foolish, b) irrelevant enough to ignore completely, or c) not proof debunking $MOVED_GOAL_POST.
You could load the conspiracy theorists into a rocket, send them to the moon, and they would still claim it was all faked just to preserve their mental image of themselves.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
What about Facebook? That can't be real. I mean people wouldn't be stupid enough to use such a service, right?
You get the same thing with the anti-vaccine folks who either move their goal posts constantly as to why "vaccines cause autism" (mercury, # of shots, mysterious unnamed "toxins") despite tons of studies proving that this isn't true. They've taken to claiming that they are pro-vaccine but simply want all vaccines removed from the market until they are 100% safe with no side effects. If we required this of all medicine, we would need to recall every single medical treatment there is. They don't seem to understand the difference between a vaccine with a tiny risk of minor side effects and a disease (rare only because of herd immunity) with a very large risk of moderate to severe side effects.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Pitch it as a reality show ("Utopia: Moon") and you can probably get funding :)
That show is great in the same way that the Real World/Road Rules challenges were/(are?) great. The casting is done to create conflict. The whole "They get to rent the place out to tourists and US infrastructure supplied water, electrical power, medical support and police access all make it a crock as a social experiment. Those people would all be dead in two month. Except Red, who'd scout, then realize he needs to bring a bunch of water and travel by night to get out of the desert they built that place in.
Red may not be city smart, but he ain't country stupid either.
My answer to these conspiracy idiots, aside from ignoring them, is to look at the numbers. The moon landings required INTERNATIONAL cooperation of thousands of people, if not tens of thousands, from around the world. So what you're saying is that all of these people agreed to tell the same story for five decades, and no documentary evidence has been uncovered in that time that shows this conspiracy being set up. Look at Snowden, the Pentagon Papers, Manning, etc.: governments CANNOT KEEP SECRETS.
Obligatory plug: my wife was the final segment of the 2008 Mythbusters episode that explored that myth, she bounces a laser off the moon shot through a 3.5 meter telescope at Apache Point Observatory. There are five retroreflectors on the moon, three from Apollo and two on Russian Lunokhod rovers, and there's a clear signal difference between hitting a reflector and bouncing off the bare lunar surface. I also did a ten minute video on this program at waynewestphotography dot com.
Of course, this just means that some incredible hackers were able to fool the software that my wife uses to show different results while the laser is shining, depending upon where the laser is pointed. The Apollo laser reflectors were aimed specifically at the Earth, the Russian ones are quasi-random as there was no way to know where the rovers' batteries would fail, so their final orientation is not known and produces a noticeably weaker signal.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
The Moon Landing deniers will be forced to live on a crashed rocket on the Moon. Naturally, they will deny that they are on the Moon. As they accept that they are actually on the Moon, they'll be kicked off of Utopia: Moon (sent via rocket back to Earth). The last one to deny he/she is on the Moon wins!*
* First prize is absolute proof that you are on the Moon via the opening of an air lock.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
“I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace and propelled by compressible flow.” Neil Armstrong
Good-bye
Excellent documentary (free with Amazon Prime), shows why they went so many times. Also leaves no trace of doubt how it was done.
And there is tension and torsion in the metal frame that holds up the flag, because with (as you mention) no breeze, they needed something else to hold it out. Because of the tension and torsion, the supporting arm vibrated a little at first, like a spring, and that makes waves in the flag material.
In fact, if you've ever done the high-school physics experiment where you generate a standing wave in a tray of water... If you compare the motion of the flag in the video to a flag fluttering in the breeze vs a standing wave, it's blindingly obvious that what you're watching in the video of the flag on the moon is a standing wave. The two motions are quite different and easy to tell apart.
Look, all you have to do is look at the stills from the recent lunar orbters when taken over several orbits in differing light. You can *clearly* see the remains of the sound stage rigging they left there when they lifted off. None of that stuff was necessary for the landing - they just shot the video with faked effects right there and came back leaving all the video gear. You can't argue with that.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
That "doubt" is close to non existing outside the US, so much for "world".
In addition to all the above, how does "a photograph" show fluttering?
Well, there's actually video; the conspiracy dumbass either misspoke when he called it a photograph, or he's actually seen a still photo with wrinkles in the flag and assumed it was fluttering. Either way, there's video, and the flag is obviously not "fluttering in the breeze" in any normal way--in fact, if you know what a standing wave looks like, that's exactly what it's doing in the video...
...but I agree that there are numerous other bizarre factors that may point to conspiracy...
No, there are not. None whatsoever. All of the "other bizarre factors" are equally as ridiculous.
If you're talking about the Moon landing conspiracy theorists, it doesn't do much harm. Other conspiracy theorists, though can cause harm. For example, the "vaccines cause autism" folks have convinces a lot of people to skip vaccinations for fear of giving their child autism. Enough people are skipping the vaccinations that herd immunity is breaking down and we're seeing outbreaks of disease. These diseases are hurting and even killing people.* So, yes, some conspiracy theorists are harmless but others (especially in large enough numbers) CAN cause harm.
* My son actually has autism (diagnosed Asperger's Syndrome / High Functioning Autism). Even if, despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary, vaccines gave him autism, I'd rather he be autistic and alive than non-autistic and dead of measles/whooping cough/etc.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I'm not trolling... actually curious. Weren't mirrors placed on the face of the moon by the Apollo astronauts that reflect light pointed from the earth? Doesn't this prove astronauts were up there? I'm curious how the deniers account for the mirrors.
This not so hard to understand why people believe this when you take a fleeting glance at the other idiocy's people believe like any religion especially the king of all religion Scientology (sorry Mormons you get second place )what a great example of the bigger the lie the easier the sell. one question for lunar loons what where all the rockets for just to convince all the idiots who believe they went to the moon for what gain?
If you want to help fight the conspirationists, it would help if you could stop using bullshit arguments.
http://curious.astro.cornell.e...
You'd need a 25m telescope to see the lander base being represented by 1 pixel.
It's obviously those were planted there to support the hoax..... duh.
Seems ridiculously easy to disprove your flaw, just point the laser elsewhere on the Moon.
All that will prove is that that portion of the moon is not retro-reflective.
Like the aliens that Armstrong saw?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
well yeah, it's been 50 years. With today's technology we can easily go back and fake the landing sites on the moon directly. Since we won the spacerace by faking out the russians.
Please, provide a few of those "bizarre factors". Your own listing, and not a link to a time cube site, please. It would be interesting to see what it takes to convince you.
Whatever the issue - moon landing, anti-vaxers, Kenyan President. climate change... the deniers will deny.
Science will not change their minds. Evidence will not change their minds. Nothing will.
Ignore them and move on.
This reminds me of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Identity Crisis (4x18) in which Geordi La Forge uses the computer to simulate a scene using light to discover a shadow created by an unknown entity. http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Identity_Crisis_(episode)
The moon landing were real.
But the actual landscape was terrible and cameras didn't work well.
So, they used Kubrik's fake shoots. ;-)
Moon landing take 2: Ok Neil, but this time you need to say, "One step for A man... one giant leap for mankind." Don't flub your line or "One small step fur man" will be in the history books.
911 Conspiracy take 2: The first take was Ok but we need to swap out the Saudis and Egyptian hijackers. You guys are supposed to be our allies. Can we get at least one Iranian, Iraqi or Afghani hijackers? How the heck are we gonna start a war? How about a North Korean?
Can we please stop the use of logic, deductive reasoning and empirical evidence when debunking conspiracy theories? It is a complete waste of time due to the first rule of conspiracy theories:
Rule #1 of Conspiracy Theories: Any and all evidence debunking a conspiracy is part of the conspiracy.
The typical response will be that NVidia is part of the conspiracy, therefore all results from Nvidia are completely and utterly wrong in every possible way.
Trying to convince a conspiracy theorist that he/she is wrong is akin to trying to convince the Pope that god indeed does not exist. You are wasting your time no matter how right you are.
Yes, NASA put a lot of effort into making the details perfect enough to remain convincing over four decades later. Maybe it would have been easier to put a man on the moon!
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Does it? Does it really?
Because I'm pretty sure a HARDWARE based GI render of a simulated moon isn't going to be that accurate. Hardware rendering is terrible, you can literally ask every person who does 3D rendering.
Not to mention, it doesn't explain why there was wind on the moon in the moon landing videos. You aren't going to debunk anything. Ignoring also that even with GI, it's VERY easy - if you know what you're doing - to still control the lightning conditions by using diffusers, light blockers, and other tools.
It's why you can't see stars in the daylight here on Earth.
Is it? I thought it was because the daylight completely drowns out the miniscule amount of light from the stars, not that the exposure is way off.
You could have opened the shutter or extended the exposure on the Moon and seen some stars, but you couldn't do that during daytime on Earth.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I'm not sure conspiracy theorists ever got that far in their reasoning. It's always seemed to be enough for them that Aldrin is lit at all, because as we all know, light doesn't reflect in a vacuum. Or it only reflects once. Or something.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
> Government is too inept to pull something like this off.
So, the government is too inept to pull off a hoax of this magnitude, but actually performing the real feat was within its scope of capabilities? I think the conspiracy theorists have more well-thought out arguments...
Neil Armstrong was a 100% class act.
BarbHudson = AC "Count Stalkula" (or are you quoted doing so not truth) http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ? Doesn't look like a conspiracy there "Barb" or "Tom" (whatever) with you telling others to harass others here, now does it? Too bad your psycho journal only backfired on you when you called apk a hater and you tried telling us adblock is better than hosts when apk shot you down 15 to nothing there, lol http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
BTW Adam Curry should never been seen or heard from again in the tech community IMHO.
He's a radio personality and an MTV VJ. What do you expect?
He is, especially with his latest partner John C., far too entertaining to be banned from the "tech community" - even when there are no new phones (and, thus, no "tech news").
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
BarbHudson = AC "Count Stalkula" (or are you quoted doing so not truth) http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ? Doesn't look like a conspiracy there "Barb" or "Tom" (whatever) with you telling others to harass others here, now does it? Too bad your psycho journal only backfired on you when you called apk a hater and you tried telling us adblock is better than hosts when apk shot you down 15 to nothing there, lol http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
(including the Russians who would have called us out on it had we obviously been filming on a sound stage
FWIW, most Moon landing conspiracy theories claim that Soviets were in on the scam, either because they were bribed (a common theme claims food shipments were the bribe, thereby "explaining" why the USSR didn't have any more devastating famines),
>There are many other flaws that are obvious to the skeptical observer, too numerous to list here.
you mean paranoid, and seeing what they want to see. Most moon hoax'ers have a very obvious political agenda, to the point they've sold themselves on the concept of a moon landing hoax, then looked for proof, which at best is circumstanial evidence, but generally, misintepreting data.
> I'm guessing there are a governmental 'suggestion' to nVidia that influenced the way this analysis went.
guessing. No you just pulled it out of your ass, because it didn't agree with the conclusion you wanted to see.
to bigger and brighter things.... ghosts and bigfoots
Per Wikipedia:
In a 1994 poll by The Washington Post, 9% of the respondents said that it was possible that astronauts did not go to the Moon and another 5% were unsure.[192] A 1999 Gallup Poll found that 6% of the Americans surveyed doubted that the Moon landings happened and that 5% of those surveyed had no opinion,[193][194][195][196] which roughly matches the findings of a similar 1995 Time/CNN poll.[193]
A 2000 poll conducted by the Public Opinion Foundation (ru) () in Russia found that 28% of those surveyed did not believe that American astronauts landed on the Moon, and this percentage is roughly equal in all social-demographic groups.[199][200][201] In 2009, a poll held by the United Kingdom's Engineering & Technology magazine found that 25% of those surveyed did not believe that men landed on the Moon.[202] Another poll gives that 25% of 18–25-year-olds surveyed were unsure that the landings happened.[203]
I would be fascinated to see a breakdown by country, but as far as I can tell no international poll has been done. The limited polling that has been done in other countries suggests they are much more likely to believe that the moon landing was a hoax. Sorry to burst your anti-American bubble.
Buzz, hands down.
at least for being an 80 year old man still capable of knocking out fucking retard still in what should have been his prime if his brain wasn't rotten.
And he did an AMA on reddit, and has otherwise adapted to net culture quite well.
There was a nice pic of him with his stingray 'vette right before he shot up in space.
You might be cool, but you'll never be Buzz Aldrin cool.
obligatory. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
This makes me sick and typifies why I don't bother logging in to slashdot or giving much of a fuck about these comments.
Generally, people are lumping in all conspiracy theories under one giant ass-hat idiot category. Yes, there's a lot of idiots out there who see conspiracy in anything and much of what you say applies to them. But to make the leap to every single conspiracy theory is outright false, that all of the mainstream narratives and government claims are true... All that says to me is that you haven't done enough research and read enough history. History is full of real conspiracies. There are dozens that have occurred in the US in the past century that are verified 100% real conspiracies. Am I talking about 9/11 or the moon landings? No. But is there plenty of seriously fishy facts surrounding 9/11? Hell yes. Or the JFK assassination.
Hell, Enron was a conspiracy. The Libor rate fixing was a conspiracy. The financial crash a few years back: another conspiracy.
You have the same mindset and are probably in the same part of the Venn diagram as staunch athiests who will absolutely refuse to believe any evidence of psi effects in the face of thousands of experiments with real statistically valid results that show that there is something going on there. Another part of that Venn diagram being the religious idiots who will staunchly ignore any and all evidence that their religion is wrong/made-up long ago.
The thing is, science, just to use an example, is advanced by people who question the dominant narrative, who find evidence conflicting with it, and work very hard to overcome the immense resistance that the broader community exhibits against these novel theories. It's always been the case. It took decades for science to accept that hearts pump blood, for example. This kind of thing happens every time, and good scientists know it, and you all act like this same basic rule doesn't apply to real world events and history. You gotta do the research. And yes, there are nutjobs who will construe the facts to fit their theory, but this same dynamic goes for athiesm, religion, materialism, etc.
So I AM NOT SAYING THE APOLLO LANDINGS WERE A HOAX. I'm saying it's repugnant to watch people pile onto the camp of EVERY SINGLE DAMN CONSPIRACY THEORY IS PATENTLY AND OBVIOUSLY WRONG. And I would bet that none of you that say that will ever make a truly novel scientific discovery. Or experience actual ESP. It's amazing what the mind can block out because of belief. And this DOES NOT JUST APPLY TO THE RELIGIOUS.
Point of note, a retroreflector does not have to be oriented at the earth. Any incident light is reflected back down the path it came. The Soviet reflectors have a noticeably weaker signal because they are physically smaller. This is important because the laser beam by the time it gets to the moons surface is no longer a thin pencil beam, so the physically smaller retoreflectors of the Soviet Lunokhod rovers reflect less light than the Apollo ones. It is also possible that the Apollo retroreflectors are better than the Soviet ones, aka they reflect more of the incident radiation, but I am speculating on the that point.
Dodging the question, I see. List your "obvious flaws", or I will be forced to conclude you were making them up.
Really dude? Yes, I get the point, but a gratuitously homophobic slur was the hypothetical that you decided to go with there?
You've got issues.
My brother-in-law is a Apollo hoax believer. He challenged me once to debate the arguments for and against. I replied (quoted someone) 'You can't have a rational argument with an irrational person".
By the way, he's also into water divining... but that doesn't always work, for some reason. Now, there's a thing...
(Americans - the moon landings were among your finest achievements. In my opinion, history and the human race in general owes you a debt).
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj5r3jXhV2Q
and can be seen with probes and telescopes and a laser
I thought the argument from the idiots was not that the unmanned gear was launched up there, but rather that the pictures from the probes had been doctored.
Of course, this just means that some incredible hackers were able to fool the software that my wife uses to show different results while the laser is shining
The conspiracy nutbars don't argue that the reflectors aren't there - They argue that they weren't placed there by humans BECAUSE RADIATION.
Yes. It only takes one insider to admit it was a giant conspiracy, no matter how organised the scheme is.
Perhaps, but unless they were faking some of their achievements as well, they would still have nothing to lose by revealing the American landings as a hoax. Coupled with a rational explanation of "it's not possible with current technology", that would suffice to let them bow out gracefully while still humiliating their enemies. They might not even need to explain why they hadn't succeeded - they could still say they were working on it, and just keep running the probe series and space stations they were working on.
And if the Soviets *were* faking some of their missions, that again raises the question of why the Americans didn't call them out on it, with all the same reasons I listed above, just swap "Soviets" for "Americans".
This would have to be a VERY well organized conspiracy. (Which alone should debunk this theory. Government is too inept to pull something like this off.)
Two words: Manhattan Project. Government was able to keep that under wraps for as long as was needed.
But yes, we most definitely went to the moon.
There's already a well organized and massive conspiracy around Santa Clause. Even the US post office, a government agency, is in on it. When there's one...
Unfortunately this is human nature - the desire to not be humiliated when proven wrong. The phenomenon is called "Social Proof" and is, effectively, the evangelization of a particular point of view or assertion in absence of evidence. Social Proof is responsible for many human failures, the Jonestown massacre being one example.
The issue with Social Proof is that when presented with evidence contrary to the belief system the beliefs become *more* entrenched. Nvidia's simulation will in fact cause the moon hoaxers to be *more* convinced that the landing were a hoax. Watch for the new "arguments" like finally we know how the pictures were generated in the first place.
In fact the best way to challenge Social Proof is to agree and go deeper than they do. I like pointing out that despite this and that evidence, this study, those artifacts it is a great pity that they are right and that such an achievement is in fact a fake and terrible lie. Letting them experience and explore the depths of their disappointment at being right about the "moon hoax" all along is, I've found, the best way to leave them feeling defeated and deflated. It consumes less of my energy and marvel at such an event while they entertain me at the same time. Planet Xers are also great fun to play with, chemtrailers the list goes on.
Perhaps it's arrogant but it's obvious to me that we went to the moon because that's where the transmission signals came from, "moon hoaxers" can believe what they will and so will I.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
"But what about the..." is a never-ending argument between conspiracy theorists and debunkers.
Exactly. It's essentially whack-a-mole but with paranoid and stupid people.
Absolutely! It's obvious that we went to the moon because that is where we met Aliens for the first time!!!
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
If anyone around here sounds arrogant, full of themselves, and on a high horse, it's you.
The problem is explaining how the moon lander was able to lift off and leave the moon's surface when it had never been flown before. The paraphernalia necessary to launch a spacecraft from earth was not available on the moon.
People with narcissistic personality + paranoia explains most conspiracy theories.
Actually, that's not true at all.
Let's use an analogy. Take Enron, for example. Here's a complete, large company with tens of thousands of employees. And it was a scam. Who knew? Arguably, less than 5 people. The point is this: as long as you split up the job functions and keep your friends close, you can keep some massive secrets with a small group.
Whenever people talk about "the fake moon landing", I like to point them to one of the many youtube videos which explain how DIFFICULT it would have been to fake the moon landing, like this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v... It actually would have been easier to just send people to the moon instead of faking it.
Buzz never punched anybody! The tape was faked! You can see that the shadows are all wrong!
I see conspiracy theorists as an example of believing in a very unlikely scenario to boost your ego.
I recently saw an article (here?) about a study that found that subscribing to conspiracy theories correlates strongly with a low self-image.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
5 guys in white hooded suits show up and burn your house to the ground?
Some big conspiracy against you?
Who are these conspirators?
"Guys in hooded suits" isn't good enough.
Specific identities please.
Pics or it didn't happen!
Your wife, like all other scientists and amateurs with sufficiently powerful telescopes, is in on the conspiracy.
(Is she evil, or did they threaten to kill her cat if she didn't cooperate?)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Moon landing take 2: Ok Neil, but this time you need to say, "One step for A man... one giant leap for mankind." Don't flub your line or "One small step fur man" will be in the history books.
Producer: No! Leave it in - a minor human slip will make it more believable.
911 Conspiracy take 2: The first take was Ok but we need to swap out the Saudis and Egyptian hijackers. You guys are supposed to be our allies. Can we get at least one Iranian, Iraqi or Afghani hijackers? How the heck are we gonna start a war? How about a North Korean?
Turns out that the demographics didn't have much effect on where the war was started.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There's a subtle distinction here that gets lost in our modern society (mainly by the media) which tends to look only at results while ignoring the process to get those results.
Skepticism is healthy. If you're skeptical that NASA landed on the moon, then by all means you should be free to ask questions, do tests and experiments to determine the truth of the matter to your satisfaction. Implicit in this is keeping an open mind that your skepticism may be wrong.
Where it crosses the line into conspiracy theory is when you assume a certain conclusion, and only accept supporting evidence, while ignoring evidence to the contrary, That's unhealthy.
Unfortunately, pure skepticism is impractical and an evolutionary dead-end. If you were skeptical about everything, you wouldn't be able to function. You'd second-guess every decision you made, every thing you thought you saw, anything you were told. Is the news really broadcasting the Presidential debate, or are they slyly editing it to make their preferred candidate sound better? Is it really safe to change lanes, or did you miss a car in the other lane somehow? Did you read what I just wrote accurately, or did you misread and so you should go back and re-read it to make sure? At some point you have to make the leap from 90%-99% certainty to assuming it's 100% just so you can make a decision and choose an action. That's why engineers tend to be more religious than scientists - engineers are forced to make design decisions in the face of incomplete data all the time, while scientists by the nature of their work are expressly forbidden from doing so. So engineers are more comfortable making that "leap of faith." But as long as you understand you're making that "leap of faith" for the purpose of making a timely decision, you're not into conspiracy theory territory yet. You only cross that line when you refuse to revisit your conclusion in the face of contrary evidence.
And no, conspiracy theorists are not always wrong. They were right about global warming. I'd estimate that probably a third to half the people who believe in global warming do so because they want it to be true for environmental protection reasons. The data had nothing to do with it aside from affirming a conclusion that they'd already reached and were going to stick to no matter what the data said. i.e. They are conspiracy theorists. In that respect I don't consider many global warming proponents to be any different from global warming deniers. The time just happened to match up with the hands of their broken clock. If it had turned out that the Earth was cooling and we needed to pump industrial quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere to forestall another ice age, they would've been the deniers, not the other way around.
tl;dr - Skepticism is better, but you need some conspiracy theory-like tendencies in order to function.
By producing sequential photograms of different points in time.
Telegraph = machine that writes telegrams.
Photograph = machine that writes photograms.
Etc.
I saw one episode of that show, and that Red guy is clearly the smartest and most decent among them. I particularly liked his comments on the other guy's letter to home.
CGI does not use the same technology as games.
Games should render fast a d uses cheap tricks to implement lighting, for CGI there is no such requirement.
but how does it actually debunkt the conspiracy theory?
There is no question that humans were on the moon. But this is just a clever marketing ploy, and is not the least bit convincing or scientific to me.
+1 funny
some facts about all debunkers in the same vein that anyone who challenges status quo is a conspiracy nut ...
1) debunkers think they are smart, like the emotionally frail child like mentality they have, they need to exert their ideas regardless of how they are generally not educated enough.
2) debkunkers blindly follow status quo, coz it is easier to fit in and laugh along with the rest of the idiots than be singled out as the stupidest by themselves.
3) no all conspiracy theorists believe in all the same conspiracies, ie some believe in fake moon landings (just like debunkers believes that money can magic technology) but others don't.
4) the reason ALL debukers are wrong is that they think they are right but can not prove it, otherwise they would. their understanding of "the simplest answer is right" is flawed as it the misinformation they believe.
5) when a conspiracy is proven, ie nsa spying on people, they move the goal posts and say "well it was obvious".
read the posts above and see the inflammatory language and mixing of moon landing with 911 and you'll see how debunkers are just religious fanatics who do not want their world view to change as it scares them.
So, the government is too inept to pull off a hoax of this magnitude, but actually performing the real feat was within its scope of capabilities?
They still had to build the giant rocket and land something on the moon in order for the telemetry to work. So they had all the complexity of building Saturn V and the Apollo stack but in addition they had to seamlessly pull off the greatest hoax in history with the greatest concentration of pedantic nerd geniuses in the world watching.
Apollo succeeded in spite of its failures. The Apollo 1 fire, the Apollo 13 explosion. Apollo 12's repeated lightning strikes and then the astronauts destroying their only video camera, etc etc. All with thousands of experts watching over them. Going back to the various cluster-fucks during Mercury and Gemini when they were trying to learn EVAs and later docking; but they could keep trying until they got it right. And once it was done, it was done. It didn't matter if new people came in and went through the archives, didn't matter if people looked at the hardware. There was nothing to hide.
A giant conspiracy to fake the moon landings had to get everything right the first time, with a skeleton crew, and it was not only vulnerable to a single major leak or screw-up at the time, it has continued to be vulnerable for 50 years. The hoaxers can never stop the cover-up.
For example, the LRO imaged the Apollo landing sites, showing tracks and vehicles. Was that faked? A brand new cover-up during the LRO program, adding a whole new conspiracy they had to seamlessly pull of under the noses of the LRO science team, and then keep secret forever.
And each layer of cover-up adds more things to go wrong, more people able to leak now or in the future. With every single person involved, every astronaut and technician, knowing that they are sitting on the greatest secret in history. It just needs one person, diagnosed with terminal cancer, conscience, or greed, to say, "Fuck it..."
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Two words: Manhattan Project. Government was able to keep that under wraps for as long as was needed.
For about three years? With the program itself being hidden at remote locations, out of public view, during a war. With every American, every journalist, who accidentally stumbled onto the program being easily convinced to keep the secret "from those sneaky Krauts."
And a program which was for the country, for the common defence, doing something that they believed in. (Either out of loyalty to the US, fear of Nazis, or just because they were giant nerds playing with nuclear fire.) And since then, many of those scientists changed their loyalties and joined the anti-nuclear movement. (And pretty much everything that could leak, in the 60 years since then, has leaked.)
A moon landing hoax would have been the opposite. It would betray their own people, betray their friends at NASA, betray their own beliefs and morality, and they didn't get to go to the moon. For what? Why keep that secret for decade after decade after decade...?
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Pretty sure that article was a hoax.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
The moon is a hoax!
I expect better from the tech community. If the tech world can rally around the destruction anyone that says anything homophobic why do they tolerate someone that called Neil Armstrong a liar less than a week after his death?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
As Benjamin Franklin said, "two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead."
The Ku Klux Klan faked the moon landings?
Curiouser and curiouser.
How does showing how to fake the lunar landing images show that they weren't faked? Articles like this, that take the Apollo deniers seriously, are much more of a problem than the deniers themselves. Also, nice ad for Nvidia, Slashdot.
The government was not able to keep it secret from the Russians. Stalin knew about the program.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
My point is when you are trying to see the a dimly lit source you cannot have another light source that is brighter in the same exposure. With the moon pictures, it might have been possible to see some stars in the background; however, the foreground exposure would have been so high as to wash out everything. You couldn't take a picture of an astronaut and the stars at the same time and see both clearly.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
That would be like if someone decided to resurrect the Studebaker automotive company. Would you expect the new company to use plans from the 1960s to make new cars.
Why not, Morgan does that.
Time to offend someone
And how long did the Enron scam last? Maybe 5 years. Even then people on Wall Street who knew finance were beginning to question how Enron earned their money. This supposed moon conspiracy is going on for 50 years. The only people that are proclaiming hoax are people who don't seem to know photography or science.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'd mod you up, but you already are at max. A lot of the flaws people point out are pretty easy to debunk when you think about it. Even someone in grade school could probably figure them out if they are smart enough. The best one I know is how people point out you cannot see the stars. Well of course you can't see them because the sun is out and the light from it is drowning out their light. Also people try to argue about the dust not flying up into the air and just falling straight to the ground. Well that’s because there is not atmosphere on the moon so obviously the dust has nothing to float around in before it finally settles. Which explains why it falls straight to the ground. I could say more, but like you said the evidence to support that the moon landing is real is pretty strong. Especially when some of the so called flaws is actually evidence that helps to show that they were actually in space on the moon.
I don't think they should have done this. The moon landing conspiracy was a very important thing in society. It lets me know which of my friends and associates are complete and utter morons. Like almost too stupid to function in society. It's like the mother of all litmus tests for stupidity and now they damaged it.
+1 funny; clever to boot.
The contents of this message have been doubly encrypted by ROT13
They become so invested in their delusions that their delusions are what make up a significant portion of their identity. When they think about themselves, they think about their stance on the conspiracy first and foremost. For them to recant is to recant a portion of their identity. This same behavior happens with severe addiciton and in some cases depression where they grow to embrace their dark/morbid personalities. Its also why its practically impossible to discuss religion with the religious.
The further you go down the rabbit hole, the harder the walls of the echo chamber become.
Does todays Morgan use the exact same engine as the 1960s version? Also other parts of the car have not been updated for safety regulations? No. The Morgan has not updated their styling, but the components have been upgraded to modern times.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
This would have to be a VERY well organized conspiracy. (Which alone should debunk this theory. Government is too inept to pull something like this off.)
Knocking "the government" without evidence is itself a fairly paranoid thing to do.
I would say that governments were actually pretty good at covering things up, so your argument is not a strong one.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
So on that basis, there are no secrets whatsoever in the world?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I see conspiracy theorists as an example of believing in a very unlikely scenario to boost your ego.
I recently saw an article (here?) about a study that found that subscribing to conspiracy theories correlates strongly with a low self-image.
Well, I love a good conspiracy theory, but I also think I'm fucking wonderful, so that's your theory blown out the water.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
To some degree governments are good at keeping secrets (example: anything that is Classified), but these secrets tend to either leak out over time (whether via a Snowden-style leak, via someone writing their memoirs thirty years later, or via de-classification). The size and scope that a Moon Landing Hoax would have required, all of the separate people and institutions contributing to it with full knowledge of the hoax and yet never revealing it, combined with the longevity of maintaining the hoax would have been enormous. I don't believe that the US Government would have been able to pull that off. Actually going to the Moon would be simpler.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I was going for one of the many long running British car jokes but it fell flat. Although the new Morgan 3 wheeler is probably very similar to the original Morgan 3 wheelers since they are classified as a motor cycle and don't have to comply with modern safety and emissions requirements.
Time to offend someone
No, but there are probably few if any MASSIVE secrets, such as the moon landing hoax would require. Hundreds of people were involved.
Is part of the CABAL!
Just kidding!
I really wanted Buzz Aldrin to slug that guy twice.
NOT KIDDING about that.
Leaving aside the moon landing stuff it does seem to me the soviets faked the first EVA film. Being a paranoid i suspect they did the EVA but faked the film. But this story immediately died. With That In Mind I Think CItIng To the russians is weak. Try observing the the Chinese and know there is your best proof that we did do SOMETHING with Apollo. Was it more than just having world tech domination for a generation? I think so.
At last, someone with an interesting question concerning "The Theory of Conspiracy".
I think the answer is that only a very stupid repressive government would bother suppressing conspiranoids, a slicker operation would like having conspiranoids around because no one takes them seriously and they can easily be used to discredit belief in the actual conspiracies that the powers-that-be are engaged in.
I only believe in the best conspiracy theories, myself.
An excellent opportunity to share my favorite video on all of YouTube: "moon hoax not"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGXTF6bs1IU
While I suppose it's not impossible that there's a second group that uses that disguise, uses those methods and hates anyone who isn't a white protestant, Occam's Razor suggests that those five were most likely the KKK. While we would of course want to identify those five specifically when pursuing legal action, "5 as-yet-unidentified klansmen" would suffice for my criteria of a plausible conspiracy. Remember, *you're* the one who said that wouldn't be good enough, not I.
As an aside, you really need to work on your debate skills. A word of advice, if I may?
If you're going to fight by using reductio ad absurdum, you might as well go all the way. How can I prove that there were only five of them? How can I prove that five is a number? How can I prove that they were people? How can I prove that *I* am a person?
If you want to ignore every precept of reality, go all the way! Argue that reality doesn't exist! Question whether or not truth is true! Prove basic logic fundamentally inconsistent! Everything else you believe is completely detached from reality anyways - arguing that the moon landings could not have happened because we're all just minds with unprovable senses that may or may not be lying to us, is just as plausible as arguing that they could not have happened because the lighting is wrong.
"Today NASA will not recreate the technology that was used in the 1960s"
Unfortunately the case is more cannot than will not. Due to insane schedule at the time, "getting things done" was the focus, while documentation was of no importance. NASA probably couldn't find half the documentation today if they tried to, let alone all the specific production know-how that by now has ended up in graves or retirement homes.
Who punched Buzz Aldrin? Hoooo, that guy is going to get a battering when the nerds catch up with him.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
My point is on the why would NASA use technology from the 1960s at all. For example, the Apollo navigation computers were quite primitive and analog. Why would NASA recreate them to use in any new missions?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
a) NASA and the Air Force
b) Scare the Russkies
There were well known 'scams' run by the Air Force to play up to UFO guys, making them think that their evidence of black projects (stealth technology) was actually UFOs. They did this because they wanted to own the UFO researchers, in case the russians were using them to spy on their black projects.
In WWII, the Allied ground assault was helped by disinformation campaigns, which included inflatable tanks and trucks. They had fake transmitters, broadcasting as if they were particular command centers, so the NAZIs could triangulate their (wrong) position. Lying to the enemy is a very cost effective way to win.
On the other hand, NASA landed unmanned vehicles on the moon. Why couldn't they land a radio repeater and a laser reflector?
I don't buy the conspiracy theories for a minute, but they aren't inconsistent. They are just far less likely than the possibility that people landed on the moon.
Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company -- Mark Twain
Now think about it this way:
yes, indeed a retro flector always bounces signal back to the source, no matter it its orientation is perfect.
BUT a better aligned retroflector offers a bigger cross-section: it will occupy a wider spot in the field-of-view of the laser.
A perfectly aligned retroflector will offer 100% of its surface exposed to a laser.
A 45 retroflector, will only offer a fraction ( cos(45) = sqrt(2)/2 ) of its surface.
So orientation *has* an incidence on the quality of the return signal.
But as you mention:
- so does size
- so does quality (lunokhod2 got covered by dust, to the point of the radiator malfunctionning and the isotope thermal generator overheating the rover, some of that dust could cover the retroflector a bit)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
It is hard to doctor the fact that you can bounce a laser from the moon if you aim at the spot where the astronauts left mirrors. But this is how hoaxers' logic works:
Me: There are mirrors on the moon that will bounce back a laser signal.
Hoaxer: That proves nothing. If you use a powerful enough laser, you can bounce a signal from any surface. All you have to do is get a really powerful laser.
Me: No, there is an upper limit to laser power. At some point the laser will burn the surface. Only reflective material will bounce back a signal. Like a mirror.
Hoaxer: That proves nothing. The entire moon surface is reflective enough for any laser.
Me: If that were true then why doesn't the laser bounce back when not pointed to an Apollo mirrors?
Hoaxer: That proves nothing. NASA could have used unmanned spacecraft to put the mirrors there.
And so on . . .
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Two true stories about LRO. First, the Russians dropped two Lunakhod rovers equipped with laser retroreflectors. Along with retroreflectors left by Apollos 11, 14, 15 that makes a total of five on the lunar surface, but for a long time my wife was only able to hit four with the 3.5 meter telescope at Apache Point Observatory. And the landing sites for all five landers was well known -- the thing that wasn't known was where one of the Lunakhod rovers ended its journey. We could ping one of them with the laser, not the other. The popular theories as to what happened to the other rover centered around it either wandering off in an unknown direction or it possibly having had toppled in a crater and the retroreflector was not visible. My personal theory was that the moon men had hijacked the rover to go joy riding and had repositioned the retroreflector to use as a rear view mirror.
When the LRO imagery came out, the location of the lander for the missing rover was identified, but the meters per pixel resolution was high enough to see the path that the rover drove! The rover itself was too small to see, but by studying the path we could see that the rover did not end up where it was expected: it had driven out a certain distance (west, IIRC) and then doubled-back towards the rover! Once we knew that, my wife was able to ping the rover on her first try. Since then, when the laser is cooperating, she can ping all five retroreflectors during one evening run.
Second LRO story. The LRO is equipped with a laser detector and also a small retroreflector. Lots of laser ranging stations on Earth are able to ping the detector, though Apache Point has to dial-down the power of their laser to the point that it's not visible to the naked eye. But my wife hasn't been able to ping the retroreflector. It was a last-minute add-on to the orbiter and it's located under the main communications dish, they have to swing it out of the way for it to be accessible, making the orbiter silent during the attempt, I guess the command for swinging the dish back in to place is on a timer command. The problem is that the orbiter is on a circumpolar orbit and is only visible for about 45 minutes before it swings around to the dark side, and only about half that time is usable. She just hasn't been able to get a bead on it in the limited window and I think they've given up on it.
But I think it's a pretty amazing thing just to hit LRO's detector. You've got the earth's motion, the moon's orbit, and this satellite circling the moon. All from 220,000 miles away and they're able to ping this satellite that's moving at how many thousands of miles an hour?
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
Oh, she's certainly evil, she's also twice the American National Scottish Harp Champion. She's allergic to cats though, we're on our third Standard Poodle. And his name is Dante. We know evil.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.