Man on the moon

Are you asking a serious question? Do you sincerely doubt this? If so, PM me, I might have some suggestions. However, in general, conspiracy theories do not adequately explain history.

Except for Watergate. That was a conspiracy at the highest levels, and we have bizarrely extensive evidence to support the theory.

there was a very convincing documentary about the moon landings about a year or so ago stupidnickname. its been a true hot topic for some time now whether or not the landings were staged.

whether or not you buy into it, i believe the documentary ended by stating that the japanese are going to send a camera-equipped probe around the moon to take pictures of all the stuff we left behind to see if it really happened in 2009, or something to that effect.

Being a hot topic doesn't make it any more true than if it were on the backburner.

I could probably make a documentary about how you didn't actually get out of your bed this morning and slant it the way I wanted and make it convincing.  Doesn't make it true.

I can't believe I'm even talking about this.....

I assume you are referring to the short film, Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? aired on Fox a short while ago?

That is not a "convincing documentary". It is a ridiculuous, ill-conceived, tendentious, and patently false collection of poorly-sourced conspiracy theories. If you for one second argue to me that the moon landings were staged, I will cease to hold any respect for you as a thinking adult, and will instead begin to refer to you as "the idiot turqy" from now on.

If you insist, I can lay out my evidence for the veracity of the moon landings. If need be, I'll meet you in College Park, Maryland, and walk you step by step through the hundreds of thousands of linear feet of documents produced by NASA in the years before and during the Apollo program. Furthermore, I'll recruit a colleague of mine, the author of multiple historical works on the Apollo program, to meet with us and discuss his painstaking reconstruction of internal NASA documents.

On my side of the evidence, I have hundreds of thousands if not millions of linear feet of documents at multiple locations, tens of thousands of former and current employees of NASA and affiliated private contractors, extensive audio and video recordings, radar tracks, laser beacons, spacecraft still visible on the lunar surface by telescope, retreived moon rocks, and the analytical weight of entire disciplines of science including geology, seismography, astrophysics, engineering, communications, and rocketry. Furthermore, I am fairly well versed in the history of the space program, written by and large by private individuals not employeed by the government whose careers and reputations hinge upon not misinterpreting the evidence that they can gather. Finally, I am particularly well suited to analyze the political history of the period, with extensive experience reading and analyzing the primary historical documents of postwar America, and some professional credentials. In fact, my career and livelihood also depends upon those abilities, and the necessity that I get my interpretation right, and continually double-check my findings against new sources and new interpretations.

On your side of the evidence, you have a faux-historical documentary shown in prime time on a popular entertainment network.

The willingness to believe in conspiracy theories is, I believe, a quite human and understandable attempt to deal with the complexities of modern life. However, conspiracy theories are reflective of a pre-Enlightenment understanding of the world, based upon superstition, a healthy distrust of power, and paranoia. Here, in the post-enlightenment world, we prefer to base our understanding of the world on at least some form of the scientific principle. The best reference here would be:

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

I have made an extraordinary claim: Men landed on the moon. I have extraordinary evidence: see above. You have made an extraordinary claim: Men did not land on the moon, it was a vast conspiracy. You have negligible evidence: some of the photos from the moon were weird, and the whole thing seems unlikely, and the government is evil.

Come, turqy. Join me in the post-Enlightenment, rational world. You'll like it here.


Edited by stupidnickname 2005-12-14 12:09 PM

BWA-hahahhahahahaha! Oh, that's funny.

Thanks for lightening the mood, Jim. Sorry folks; I take this stuff very seriously.

No... we put twelve men on the moon...

Bonus points:

1. Who was the second man on the moon?
2. Who was the first man to fall on the moon?
3. Who was the first man to hit a golf ball on the moon?
4. Who was the first man to drive a car on the moon?
5. Who was the last man on the moon?

I'm holding back on my urge to google #4 and #5.  Don't remember who they were.  Anybody know?

I think the only one I might be able to answer is #1 Buzz Aldren.

And if I'm wrong, I'll stick to Giro d'Italia trivia!

1. Buzz Aldrin
2. ?
3. Alan Shephard
4. Dave Scott
5. Gene Cernan

Number 5 is a SWAG; Cernan was commander of the last mission, and I'm guessing he would be first out, last in. Don't know 2 . . .

Wow, very good!!!

Dave Scott, I don't even remember him.  You're probably right about Cernan, but I'm still holding off on googleing it.

Hint on #2:  It was during the second mission and may have only been noticed by a nerdy eleven year old space freak watching it on a television that the nuns had set up for us.

Unh, I remember Dave Scott from the HBO series. The show on geology was mega-geeky cool.



Huh. I'm still stumped. Apollo 12 -- Conrad or Bean?

Alan Bean.

I remember watching it live, and Frank McGee, the NBC space correspondent said something like, "Oh, wait a minitue... Bean has... Bean has... I think Bean has fallen... wait... wait... he's ok..." Then Bean made some joke that you could hear over the broadcast. At least that's how I remember it.

And I thought, "wow, he's the first man to fall on the moon". And I haven't thought about it again until yesterday.

You're right about Cernan as well!

OK, who wrote The First Man In The Moon?

I think I know, but I might defer to another answer in a trivial pursuit game.


Edited by dontracy 2005-12-15 9:33 AM

One more:

Neil Armstrong and Buss Aldrin landed on the moon in the LEM The Eagle.

Who was the astrononaut in the command module that continued to orbit the moon, and what was the name of the command module?

Bonus points if you can name the museum that he went on to direct.

And another:

Who was the commander of the first manned mission to orbit the moon?
Who else was on this mission? (hint: think Oppie)
What holiday did it happen on?
What was the mission number?

Bonus points: What airline did this commander go on to be CEO of?




Edited by dontracy 2005-12-15 9:50 AM

Wasn't it Tom, er Michael Collins? No idea about the other two, but it was a bit before my time so I don't feel so bad.

Just on a side note, a few years ago I was able to meet Alan Shepherd. I've met a few famous people and generally I could care less about that kind of thing, but I still remember shaking his hand and thinking to myself "holy crap, this guy stood on the moon!"

Cha Ching! A winner! He went on to direct the Air and Space Museum.

Wow, you met Alan Shepard. That is so cool. I don't remember his first Murcury flight, but his presence was a huge influence on my childhood imagination. I love the way he was portrayed in the movie The Rigth Stuff. I built a working model of his Murcury capsule and Redstone rocket that I never dared launch. Wish I still had it.


Edited by dontracy 2005-12-15 10:12 AM

How is it people figure that the gov't is capable of keeping a secret like fake moon landings for almost 40 years when it can't even keep one tiny break-in or a couple of b***j**s under wraps?

Edited by tim_edwards 2005-12-15 10:15 PM

Frank Borman
Jim Lovell - Commander on Apollo 13
Christmas 1968 - the crew read from Genesis on Christmas Eve while broadcasting images of the Earth rising over the moon.
Apollo 8

Eastern Airlines (ok - had to wiki that one)

I don't remember Apollo 8, but I do remember Apollo 11. It is the earliest memory I can tie a date to. (I was 4)

I spotted an article the other day stating China is aiming to put a man on the moon by 2019.

(Unless it's just a conspiracy)

Cha ching! Tim, you are my BT science trivia hero. (I think max is my art trivia hero with that cezanne thing he did the other day.)

1968 was a horrible year. Martin Luther King was assasinated in April, and Robert Kennedy in June. There were riots in the streets of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention. The war was tearing at the fabric of society.

Personally, my grandmother died in October, she was the only grandparent I ever knew and was the heart of the family.

So to me, as a little boy, it seemed like the whole world was falling apart, at least by American standards.

Then along come these brass balled scientist adventurers who had the audacity to think that they could fly a ship to the moon.

If anyone has seen an Apollo command module, it's like a phone booth. (if you remember phone booths, youngins') The engineers who built it did not have personal computers and did most of the calculations with a slide rule and a pencil and paper. The ship itself probably had less computing power than what an average car has today.

And these guys were going to fly it to the moon!

What breathtaking courage and vision.

Then there was that Christmas Eve broadcast. As I remember it, it was late at night, my parents let me stay up. I remember seeing those images of the earth, a small body hanging there in the middle of black space.

Then they read from Genesis:
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth...

Suddenly, all of the problems of the past year seemed to melt away. There was a palpable sense of hope in the room.

They ended the broadcast by wishing everyone a Merry Christmas!

Now this was back in the day when people knew that science and religion could compliment each other, that one could help inform the other.

The next day, there were no letters to the editory complaining about these government employees using religious language. There were no lawsuits claiming that the seperation between church and state had been violated. Everyone was too in awe of the accomplishments of these science based, faith filled men.

Hmm... come to think of it, maybe it was all a hoax...
 

Edited by dontracy 2005-12-16 8:24 AM