(Yes, of course I know that’s not the Enterprise-D and that TNG came out in 1986, but you try making a better debunking joke.)
Faking the moon landing would have been a massive coverup requiring the cooperation of at least one foreign nation. (Australia, because of Parkes)
During the Nixon administration. Nixon couldn’t even cover up one little burglary.
This is the one thing that kills me with one of my favorite space movies, interstellar… they have that one scene at the school saying the landings were faked to bankrupt the soviets…like how the fuck did that make it into the movie.
It’s not there as some commentary by Christopher Nolan that the moon landings didn’t happen. It’s there to show that schools are willing to teach a lie as long as it serves the narrative of “past oppulence is what destroyed our world, so get out there and be a farmer!”
O damn never thought of it that way. I went and looked it up further and you’re spot on, it seems it was put into the movie to make people become farmers and not look to space. Basically try and solve the problems on earth.
That was making fun of people who believed things like that. It’s very obvious if you’ve watched the movie.
I mean it’s not because there are a lot of people asking about it online.
Asking about that scene in Interstellar? The entire movie is a love letter to NASA and science. What do you mean?
I understand it is. It’s one of my favorite sci-fi movies, but like myself and others we were confused with the scene, but others have explained it.
It would have required so much work it’d be easier just to land on the moon.
Nixon’s downfall was created by the CIA because they did not get along.
Also keep in mind that the astronauts communicated with Earth by radio. Anyone with even 1920s radio technology would have figured out that the astronauts weren’t broadcasting from the Moon.
We were in the middle of a cold war with the soviets back in the 1960s. Proving the moon landing was fake would have been the propaganda coup of the century for them. What possible reason would they have to stay quiet about that?
If we could fake the moon landings, we also could have faked the Soviet Union.
We were in the middle of a cold war with the soviets back in the 1960s. Proving the moon landing was fake would have been the propaganda coup of the century for them. What possible reason would they have to stay quiet about that?
That’s always been my number one reason why the moon landing was definitely not faked. The Soviets never caught wind of it between 1969 and 1992? Come on.
Plus we left retroreflectors on the moon, that we can shoot laser beams at and get a return bean back.
its used to measure the drift of the moon away from earth.
the lunar reoglith is not reflective enough to bounce a signal back (and its been tested to death)
We know it reflects light, so that just tells me we haven’t used a big enough laser yet :p
Wasn’t 2001 also made at that time? As I recall, that was incredibly realistic (mostly), far more so than a cheap TV show
(Not saying that 2001 is proof, just that ToS isn’t a great comparison)
2001 came out in 1968, so a year before the actual moon landing. As long as you were economical with your shots, you could definitely do some realistic-looking microgravity and spaceships with 60s tech - what you couldn’t do with 60s tech, as a commenter above pointed out, was a long flat shot of people moving convincingly on the lunar surface, which is what the Apollo films show.
2001 came out in 1968, so a year before the actual moon landing
Haha! So it was the test for how realistic they’d get it. I knew it!
The problem with moon landings isn’t that they can’t be done, it’s that they are dangerous as shit, with little reward. You’d get a better deal out of being sent to a remote desert island.
To orbit the moon, a space craft needs to move at about 1.5 km/s, or 3300 miles per hour.
So any landing starts with you going at 1.5 km/s and needs to end at the moons surface when you reach about 0 meters per second.
If anything goes wrong with your engines while you slow down, you smack into the moon at either near orbital speeds, or at fighter jet speeds. The window for having an engine failure and being slow enough to survive is so narrow that it might as well not exist.
That’s why Apollo used pressure fed, self igniting engines. As long as 2 valves opened, you had an engine. And Apollo landers had a totally separate ascent engine that worked exactly the same way, so if the landing engine failed, they could just drop the landing stage and return to orbit at practically any time during the descent. They even had a whole procedure of what to do if the ascent engine didn’t light when they were supposed to leave. Everything from jump starting the engine like a car with a dead battery, to physically getting access to the valves and manually opening them.
I hate the current plan for Artemis. I hate that in 55 years, we’ve only managed to make shit more complicated. The current plan is for a vehicle with no abort capability to ignite its 3 turbo pumped, liquid methane fueled engines at least 4 times to get from low earth orbit to the moons surface, with days between ignitions.
A capability that has never been shown to work or even exist in any capacity. Turbo pumps are finally machined pieces of engineering that need to behave exactly right, or they turn a rocket into either a bomb, or a giant tube that can’t move. And the current plan for Artemis calls for these finely crafted pieces of machinery to be subjected to the harsh environment of both space where they’ll sit for at least a week, and multiple ignitions, where they’re subjected to ridiculous temperatures and pressures.
Absolutely ridiculous. We never left an astronaut on the moon in the 60s and 70s, but by god are they trying to open the first graveyard on the moon these days.
So your saying the return to the moon should not be for science but instead be a reality tv show?
I like how you think kid.
Temptation Moon 9pm/8central
With Elon Musk already having as much influence as he does in space exploration, it probably will be.
I saw a rebuttal that said the special effects at the time couldn’t have faked it.
What, Star Trek?
As a mod on both the Ten Forward and Star Trek communities, I can tell you that Star Trek TOS is 100% true and accurate.
Especially this part:
Ahh yes, the famous 23rd century boy band “NCC-1701-SYNC”
Scotty O’Fatone never got respect
Yeah but look at how the shadow on the wall in the back isn’t in sync with the dancing. Checkmate atheists.
The hat doesnt match the shadow!
The reason the conspiracy exists is because the video footage is staged to match the audio. Obviously there wasn’t a camera crew on the moon.
Decades since 1969 and not a single one of the thousands of people who would have had to be involved to make this hoax happen has talked. The Soviets also either never caught wind of it or decided not to embarrass their biggest rival who they were constantly trying to embarrass.
This is the best-kept and worst-kept secret at the exact same time. Do you really buy that?
You’re misinterpreting what I’m saying due to my poor word choices haha. I’m not saying it’s fake. The camera is mounted to the lander and there is a delay in the footage because they had to do some kind of conversion in the video to be able to watch on tv. That’s where many of the conspiracy theories come from. Most people don’t know that.
Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying.
Why was that kept a secret for so long?
Because everything at the time was about tricking the Russians.
Looks legit, what’s the point here?
But that’s a low-budget show. The Apollo Program had billions to invest in VFX.
It would have been cheaper if Kubrick hadn’t insisted on filming on location
I thought Kubrick filmed it in a movie studio… on Mars.
I’ve been to the NASA space center and they’ve got a very vivid recreation of the moon landing in a museum. I have no doubt you could have faked the video. But how they got a moon lander and a flag up there remains a mystery.
Also, we landed on the moon six different times. Even if you’re skeptical of Neil and Buzz, it kept happening through Cernan. By Apollo 17, it was barely newsworthy.
And the old saying “three people can keep a secret, if 2 are dead” comes to mind. The number of people who would know, just in astronauts, tells me someone would’ve squealed.
There was a movie in the 1980’s that used this premise, but the astronauts weren’t supposed to know (I think), or were only told pretty late. Capricorn One (with OJ Simpson if memory serves). Not a great movie, hell, not even good, just an interesting concept.
The number of people who would know, just in astronauts, tells me someone would’ve squealed.
There are definitely conspiracies that have happened in the US that have stayed (officially) sealed for decades at a time. There’s also no shortage of (unofficial) leaks and Deep-Throat style informants willing to sell you a story about the moon landing being a hoax.
I wouldn’t say the problem is that nobody squealed. I’d say the problem is that folks who claim they were in the room when Kubrick shot the B-roll for the moon landing from a Hollywood sound stage are not sources that stand up to prolonged interrogation.
Capricorn One (with OJ Simpson if memory serves).
I’ve heard of it. Mars instead of the Moon. An interesting premise.
I’m also partial to For All Mankind as a “What If” of the US and Soviets continuing the space race for another forty years. Both explore interesting concepts about the intersection of politics and space exploration.
For sure.
Stuff can be kept secret, it’s just difficult, and is usually accomplished via all sorts of obfuscation.
Like doing something layered deep within something else, making it appear to be a day-to-event (hiding materiel in containers labeled as something else, making it weigh and move normally, then having military deliver it as usual, because who would think these drums of fuel are actually heavy water, or something like that).
The moon landings were live. Quite a bit harder, I’d think.
The moon landings were live.
That is, again, a thing skeptics will dispute for this or that reason.
But that’s the thing with conspiracy theorists and skeptics. Ask a flat earther how you get live images from space and they’ll just tell you “We don’t, its fake”.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11354908/?ref_=ttep_ep8
I guess the VFX reference isn’t widely known, nor it’s direct enough.
I didn’t get that it was a reference to that. I would have started it with “I work in VFX.”
Yep, I wrote it badly.
