Moon Hoax NOT

[deucemagnet]

Most of this video is probably most suited for the skeptics board, but I think that his indictment of magical thinking near the end of the video make it a worthwhile watch for those on the A&A board as well. It's rather long at about 13 minutes, but well worth the watch, if you have the time. Also, this guy is wicked smart with a bone-dry sense of humor that I found very entertaining. Enjoy!

[Warpy]

1. Excellent! Two thumbs up!

Mythbusters did the whole thing, too, but from an engineering/scientific approach. They destroyed every silly piece of "evidence" using dust, a vacuum chamber, lighting, and a rig that would duplicate the lower gravity on the lunar surface.

Pointing out what technology was available and the limits of it is another great approach. Doc Edgerton had developed a super high speed camera with each frame synchronized with a strobe light, but it ate tens of feet per second, unlikely to be of much use in faking a moon landing. Video tape was reel to reel, helical tape head, and could barely keep up with action in real time.

The problem with all the conspiracy kiddies is that they have no clue what was available at the time. There really wasn't that much for Hollywood to work with. CGI wasn't even a dream yet.

They won't be convinced, of course, any more than the AIDS theorists won't be convinced that gene splicing by mad scientists is still pretty much beyond us. We get lucky just often enough to keep it going, producing things like human analog insulin. Besides, the species jump keeps getting pushed back, I believe it's at the end of the nineteenth century, give or take a decade these days, hardly a time of flourishing genetics labs.

[awoke_in_2003]

3. And you cannot convince them...

that the Soviets tracked our progress, and had we faked it they would have been screaming blue bloody murder that we did.

[FiveGoodMen]

2. "If the government hasn't lied to you today ... maybe they haven't had coffee"