Noob With A Question [HB's with legitimate credentials?]

[Noldi400]

I'm new to this board, so Hello, all!

I newly disabled/retired, so I have a lot of time on my hands and I've recently developed an interest in conspiracy theories of various sorts. Please note that I'm not especially interested in *subscribing* to any of the theories I've heard - none I've heard so far seem very rational. I realize I'm a little late to the party, but I still find the whole "moon hoax" theory interesting. I've actually heard the fakery notion since 1969, but that was mostly from older folks who didn't believe a rocket could work in outer space, with "nothing to push against".

At any rate, I have a question for other posters:

Has there been anyone who actually has legitimate credentials in this area who has come out supporting the Apollo hoax theory? Living and dead, it seems the primary advocates have been a kid with some training in film making, an English major/corporate librarian, and a "self-taught" physicist and engineer (when my daughter, who has a Master's in Engineering Physics, heard about that she was quite put out at the thought of all the time she wasted in school).

But have any actual aerospace engineers, professional astronomers, etc been supportive of the hoax theory? In any profession, there are usually at least a few "nut cases", but I don't think I know of any in this case and was wondering if there's just something I missed.

Any replies are appreciated. Thanks, all!

[gwiz]

I've been following the Apollo hoax theory for over a decade, and I haven't come across anyone in your categories who support it. However, there are a few hoax supporters with academic qualifications in other fields.

[Glom]

None of them have any paper qualifications relevant to the topic. There have been occasions where they will invoke the work of someone who does, but this is usually either flat out misrepresentation or work that was not relevant.

Funnily enough, we've had a weird encounter these last few weeks with a conspiracist at the Apollohoax forum, who specifically said that qualifications in the relevant fields make the holders less qualified to pass judgement because it impairs their common sense. By contrast, the conspiracist was a high school dropout, so was loaded with oodles of common sense and could therefore state conclusions with authority.

[mutleyeng]

i cant think of any.
Aliens conspiracy is different - Edgar Mitchell springs to mind - at least that has a moon connection for you!

[Paul Beardsley]

Welcome to the board, Noldi400. Sorry to hear about your changed personal circumstances, I hope things work out for you.

Your question is a good one. Certainly, the people I've heard supporting the hoax version of events* have, without exception, been either shockingly ignorant of the facts as presented, or have clearly had a financial interest in promoting the idea.

The latter sort tend to play up their credentials, as you have already described, or claim to be insiders when they're not. They also use the term "whistleblower" to refer to people who were not insiders and therefore don't qualify.

Many of the former sort have heard that there was "a documentary" that "showed" the moon landings didn't happen, and have bought into the idea simply because they equate cynicism (in the sense of assuming the worst of someone) with sophistication. Those with a more active interest in the idea of it being a hoax tend to be evangelical about it. They will call you "gullible" for swallowing everything "the government" feeds you. They will seek out, and accept, any and every bit of information that appears to support the hoax idea (e.g. the concern that flying through the Van Allen belts might give astronauts lethal doses of radiation; the flag appears to move despite there being no wind on the moon; no stars are visible in the moon's sky), they will ignore all counter-evidence (Van Allen himself stated that the radiation levels are not dangerous for the period it took the Apollo astronauts to fly through them; the reasons for the waving flag and no stars are well understood). When their hoax evidence is refuted, they will not acknowledge the refutation, they will move on to some other hoax evidence, and when every item has been successfully refuted they will present the first one again, as if the conversation never took place.

Some hoax believers do not even know that there were moon landings after Apollo 11. Some think everything to do with space originates with NASA and/or the US government - and I don't just mean space flight, I include observing Venus. Some make amusing mistakes such as referring to the Van Halen belts, then accuse people of pedantry when they laugh.

Honestly, I can't see how anybody could become a qualified astronomer or aerospace engineer if they did believe the moon landings were faked - actually I can think of a way, it involves bribery. It would be like somebody who confuses golf and tennis becoming an umpire at Wimbledon.

*I prefer not to use the word "theory" here!

[Paul Beardsley]

By contrast, the conspiracist was a high school dropout, so was loaded with oodles of common sense and could therefore state conclusions with authority.

Ah, the hallowed University of Life. The trouble is, you have to attend the lessons there too.

[Noldi400]

Thanks for the welcome and the prompt replies. That matches with my impression that education in the relevant subjects tends to cure the HB delusion.

I've heard a few "debates" between HB-ers and educated folks (Plait and Rogan, for example) and the problem always seems to come down to the fact that it takes much longer to answer a fallacy-based question than it does to ask it. Then come the wildly inaccurate claims ("von Braun brought back hundreds of pounds of meteorites from Antarctica"), and with what seems like a great number of people, the idea that you can't trust anything NASA says (in which case debate is pretty much moot).

My personal favorite: On one of the YT postings showing Armstrong's famous crash in an LLRV, claiming to show how "inherently unstable" the "prototype lander" was, and that the crash happened "on its very first flight", I pointed out that the LLRV/LLTV was a trainer, not a prototype and that it made hundreds of safe flights.

Well, I was called a "brainwashed shill" and was pointedly informed that if it was true that it made many safe flights the videos would be all over the internet... I guess that's the current version of "it has to be true, I read it in a book".

*I prefer not to use the word "theory" here!

[Axof23]

Many years ago I actually participated in some Moon Hoax conversations and to be honest I love a good conspiracy theory in the same way I love a good sic-fi book. It is that "what if" scenario, a sort of parallel universe mind trip.
Sadly there is actually no longer any real discussion from that very little that was as the pro MH folks are really of the fly-by info nature and even that little got diluted tenfold over time. Now people not even bother to read any conspiracy books, just watching youtube video would be maximum of the topic study.
This makes the MH completely boring and dead. In fact by talking with my friends the whole moon landing is now pushed into a memory hole of common folks, it is not only that people don't realize there was more than one moon landing, it is the fact that they don't even care if you correct them. I firmly believe that even if the whole NASA itself would now give credit to any part of the MH theory, nobody would care and it won't even make news.

It is sad, because from all the trip to unknown and exciting, sending humans to moon was truly the high point of popular world space program. Now even that short trip seems real today.
Where are the moon and mars colonies and trips to distant solar systems we were told to "follow soon" half century ago? Darn not even any good conspiracy theories exists.

[gwiz]

...the idea that you can't trust anything NASA says (in which case debate is pretty much moot).

Actually, you can do a pretty good refute of the hoax without using any NASA evidence at all, as shown by this Wiki entry:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-p..._Moon_landings

[NGCHunter]

Well, I was called a "brainwashed shill" and was pointedly informed that if it was true that it made many safe flights the videos would be all over the internet... I guess that's the current version of "it has to be true, I read it in a book".

Oh yes, I'm quite familiar with that mentality. I call it "if it's not on the internet, it doesn't exist/didn't happen." I had one HB insist that the trainer at the LLRF (the simulator that used a large gantry and cables to simulate 1/6th earth's gravity while piloted using hydrogen peroxide thrusters) was fake. The reason being, video of it operating did not exist on the internet and that it's "impossible to land anything with thrusters." Well I found some footage and uploaded it, at which time the HB made some kind of vitriolic, and probably profanity laced, reply which got them instantly banned from ATS. I never even got to read the reply because the banning was too swift, but in order to get banned as a conspiracy theorist from a conspiracy playground like that you really have to cross the line quite a bit.

Incidentally, there are a number of videos online showing the LLTV/LLRV safely flying around.
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/movie/LLRV/index.html
I know I've seen some online showing safe landing as well, but I can't remember where I found that.

[slang]

Has there been anyone who actually has legitimate credentials in this area who has come out supporting the Apollo hoax theory?

I think there was a thread on the ApolloHoax forum one or two years ago about an English math professor who tried his hand at photo analysis (IIRC Apollo 17 images).. but he was quickly shown to be wrong. So, credentials yes, in the actual field: nope. And it showed. I don't remember if he ever formally retracted his article.

[JayUtah]

Thanks for the welcome and the prompt replies. That matches with my impression that education in the relevant subjects tends to cure the HB delusion.

Very much so. I'm in my twelfth year as webmaster of www.clavius.org, and in those many years of debate I've never run across anyone who had the proper qualifications and experience. In the aerospace industry (my field) there is simply no question whatsoever that the Apollo missions were real, and the view among the professional practitioners of that industry and in the relevant supporting sciences is that Apollo hoax claimants are roughly in the same category as people who think crystals cure cancer and that the Earth is flat.

...the problem always seems to come down to the fact that it takes much longer to answer a fallacy-based question than it does to ask it.

This is why I don't do sound-bite oriented encounters with conspiracy theorists. It takes little time and no brains to create a misconception, but considerable time and effort to correct one. "The LM looks like it was held together with tape!" Yeah, that's right -- because it was. That's the best way to secure film blankets and thin plates that would be damaged by piercing fasteners, and that's what's on the visible outer surface of the LM. You don't see the inner structure with its painstaking precision weldments, robustly milled bulkheads, and rigid shapers and longerons. That takes a while to explain, and it still violates the listener's common sense which has been primed with years of considering pressure-sensitive adhesive tape as a flimsy temporary solution. Here the conspiracist achieves a subtle shift in the burden of proof where we professional engineers have to justify our long-earned expertise and long-tested practical experience against someone who simply doesn't know any better. That's not the way the world is supposed to work.

I guess that's the current version of "it has to be true, I read it in a book".

Indeed. Among those who believe the world only exists through a video codec you will find some of the strangest beliefs.

[JayUtah]

Incidentally, there are a number of videos online showing the LLTV/LLRV safely flying around.
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/movie/LLRV/index.html
I know I've seen some online showing safe landing as well, but I can't remember where I found that.

You don't see video of the several thousand daily commercial flights that reach their destinations safely. You see a few, but mostly what you see are horrible crashes because that's what rises above the ordinary.

The LLTV and LLRV flights that people want to see most are the ones that fail. A dramatic ejection followed by a crash is compelling video. A guy tooling around in a glorified hovercraft is less compelling. So it takes a while for those ordinary flights to make it to the same level of access. Your typical air show video on YouTube has 5,000 or so views. The "air show crash" videos have hundreds of thousands of views. It's simply a matter of demand. We're morbid as a species; get used to it.

[moog]

I know I've seen some online showing safe landing as well, but I can't remember where I found that.

This one does:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMfNkbEz8ZA

[postbaguk]

I think there was a thread on the ApolloHoax forum one or two years ago about an English math professor who tried his hand at photo analysis (IIRC Apollo 17 images).. but he was quickly shown to be wrong. So, credentials yes, in the actual field: nope. And it showed. I don't remember if he ever formally retracted his article.

Colin Rourke, of Warwick University. A maths professor specialising in topology.

He used to have links to two studies he did of photographs of Apollo 15 which he claimed showed they must have been faked. The links are no longer on his home page, but you can see them at archive.org, links below. Why he removed them, I can only speculate.

In the first one, he claims that by taking three photographs of Hadley Rille, from different locations, and applying a scaling factor, the skyline of each image can be shown to match exactly. (He claims this is only possible with a faked backdrop). He did this by cutting round one outline and laying it onto the other two. I did the same thing a couple of years back using high resolution versions of the images, scaled and overlaid in a graphics application (Paint.net), and found the overlap was for nothing more than a few pixels. Hardly Earth-shattering stuff when you are looking at the same flattish skyline from slightly different angles.

http://web.archive.org/web/200901160...cpr/hadley.pdf

The second one is quite easy to debunk if you examine the timeline, and the relevant photographic record.

http://liveweb.archive.org/http://ms...~cpr/spot2.pdf

[slang]

Colin Rourke, of Warwick University. A maths professor specialising in topology.

Thanks, that's the one! Here's the ApolloHoax forum thread. This the old ApolloHoax forum (read-only now) as it was on proboards.com. There is a shiny much better brand new (batteries not included) ApolloHoax forum.

[gwiz]

The second one is quite easy to debunk if you examine the timeline, and the relevant photographic record.

http://liveweb.archive.org/http://ms...~cpr/spot2.pdf

To put it another way, you can walk a few paces sideways between photos and see great differences in the foreground and not much change in the background.

Anyone surprised by this obviously doesn't get out much.

[postbaguk]

To put it another way, you can walk a few paces sideways between photos and see great differences in the foreground and not much change in the background.

Anyone surprised by this obviously doesn't get out much.

You make a very valid point. I think in those photos they were taken during different EVAs, and the rover tracks visible in one had simply been pretty much obscured by scuffed up dust from walking in the other.

[Paul Beardsley]

To put it another way, you can walk a few paces sideways between photos and see great differences in the foreground and not much change in the background.

Anyone surprised by this obviously doesn't get out much.

Indeed. I said to my father, "Pa, relax!"

[Clanger]

Colin Rourke, of Warwick University. A maths professor specialising in topology.

He used to have links to two studies he did of photographs of Apollo 15 which he claimed showed they must have been faked. The links are no longer on his home page, but you can see them at archive.org, links below. Why he removed them, I can only speculate.

In the first one, he claims that by taking three photographs of Hadley Rille, from different locations, and applying a scaling factor, the skyline of each image can be shown to match exactly. (He claims this is only possible with a faked backdrop). He did this by cutting round one outline and laying it onto the other two. I did the same thing a couple of years back using high resolution versions of the images, scaled and overlaid in a graphics application (Paint.net), and found the overlap was for nothing more than a few pixels. Hardly Earth-shattering stuff when you are looking at the same flattish skyline from slightly different angles.

http://web.archive.org/web/200901160...cpr/hadley.pdf

The second one is quite easy to debunk if you examine the timeline, and the relevant photographic record.

http://liveweb.archive.org/http://ms...~cpr/spot2.pdf

To really see this professor of maths torn apart, visit Gonetoplaid's channel on youtube...

http://www.youtube.com/user/GoneToPlaid/videos

There are 5 debunks of his Hadley Rille nonsense and one of his inept picture analysis.

[Noldi400]

Ah, yes, I do love the "self-taught experts". I remember a YT poster who, with apparently total sincerity, put up a video of a certain government official talking about a certain major event (who and what irrelevant here). The poster proceeded to point out multiple indicators that the speaker was lying, claiming to be an expert on the subject because he had watched a two-hour video on the subject. I [language] you not.