Could NASA create a moon hoax even today?

[pvtpylot]

OK, you've got all of today's technology available to you. Could the experts in this group create a hoax even today that would be convincing enough to fool people as knowledgeable as you?

[Wiley]

Well, they did it 1969. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

*Just kidding, folks. Really. No, please put down the tomatoes. And that head of cabbage... Eek!*

[Donnie B.]

I think we've come pretty close to being able to produce convincing photos, film, and video of a lunar mission, including the landing and EVAs.

But the problem of creating a convincing simulation of a spacecraft in a translunar trajectory -- both the telemetry and visual sightings -- is not solvable without resort to a real spacecraft of about the right size flying to the Moon. If you're willing to go that far for the sake of a hoax, you might as well just make the s/c manned and go.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Donnie B. on 2002-06-06 19:00 ]</font>

[Silas]

On 2002-06-06 18:49, pvtpylot wrote:
OK, you've got all of today's technology available to you. Could the experts in this group create a hoax even today that would be convincing enough to fool people as knowledgeable as you?

Without someone blowing the whistle? I doubt it...

The very, very most I could conceive of is a plan to add a small secret component to a Space Shuttle Scientific Experiment. Now, this is getting far out, but suppose...

One of the space shuttle scientific experiment boxes is available, and my group puts in a bid to perform a search for high-energy cosmic rays, with a small detector array. The boffins like the idea, and the grant money comes through. Then, with the knowledge only of me and maybe two other people, we secretly add a new circuit board to the assembly, that beeps out "Things Go Better with Coke" on some little-used radio frequency.

Something like that *could* happen. It's within the realm of possibility.

Faking an entire manned lunar landing? No way.

Silas

[Jigsaw]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1917826.stm

Monday, 8 April, 2002, 22:41 GMT 23:41 UK
Space shuttle lifts off

...As part of a new safety policy, the US space agency kept the new launch time secret until Sunday.

Yeah? Remember how "secret" that was? We were discussing it here, IIRC. You could look it up on the Internet, where various Astronomy Geeks had done all the math on their pocket calculators and would be happy to tell you when the shuttle liftoff time would be.

So, if NASA couldn't even keep THAT a secret, how they gonna keep a fake moon landing a secret?

Also found this, from 1987.
http://www.chron.com/content/interac...87/871023.html

The 19 shuttle flights planned through 1990 include six secret Defense Department flights, the launch of two Global Positioning Satellites that are part of a new military precise navigation system, and a Starlab mission for secret Defense Department experiments.

Now, maybe back during the Cold War the Powers That Be could get away with "We don't have to tell you what's going on because of National Security" secret space experiments, but I doubt whether that would go over with the American public today. Today everything that goes on at NASA is on somebody's web page somewhere. They'd have to at least send up a rocket, and folks would be looking for it from Earth, with their Webcams running. Then what? Pretend to have a moon lander go off to the moon, while really leaving the astronauts in Earth orbit? Shut down the Earth orbiter camera feed, and start up a fake Moon orbiter camera feed? It's feasible, I suppose, but again--how in the world would they keep the fact that the entire moon landing was just CGI a secret?

[David Hall]

A lot of good points here.

First, the technical ability to create such a hoax has improved. Digital editing techniques and such could create media such as photos and video that were nearly flawless in my opinion, if it was kept to a small enough scope (one mission, not seven, and limited in public exposure). Other aspects of a hoax, such as fake hardware, could be created easily too.

But second, it is also easier to expose such a hoax. the same technology that can create a hoax, can also undo it. For example, the paper trail of such a scam would be easier to track, and more people could examine the 'evidence' and spot the fakery. A single skilled hacker could pull up damning evidence. And there are some things that just can't be faked. Orbital trajectories are one. Any "moon rocks" brought back would be another.

Finally, as mentioned before, there's almost no way in which a conspiracy of such magnitude could be kept secret. Not for long in any case. Someone or something would probably give it away before the first "launch" was even undertaken. There are just too many ways for it to go wrong. And that's if you keep it an inside job. Try to bring in outside contractors and it goes from ridiculous to impossible.

But in the end, none of this really matters. If NASA or someone were to create a hoax, do you know what would happen? In order to fool the scientific community, they'd have to deliberately create the same "anomalies" that HB's claim exist now. A true hoax would have to look exactly like what we see in the Apollo missions to be believeable. Which would mean that it would be unbelievable to the HB's.

So, if they create a hoax that doesn't have all these "anomolies", then it would be so fake-looking as to be laughable. But if they created a hoax according to true scientific understanding, the HB's would claim it wasn't real anyway. So there's just no way to win.

[M_Welander]

No, I certainly don't think we can produce convincing fake pictures or video of a lunar mission even today. The very best CG combined vith the very best special effects used today in movies might fool an amateur, but I think everyone who's part of the CG/SFX community can still spot the fake quickly.

Basically, we can't fake a lunar mission even today.

[cosmicdave]

I firmly believe that Hollywood could recreate any of the Apollo missions easily. Anyone catch 'Final Fantasy The Movie'? That whole film was created without using any actors.

'Finally, as mentioned before, there's almost no way in which a conspiracy of such magnitude could be kept secret.'

Don't kid yourselves that information could not be kept under wraps by our Governments. A good point is Laika, the Soviet Dog sent out into space. For 30 years the Soviets kept it secret that the craft she was travelling in was actually designed so that the nose cone tore off and she would bake to death. They told everyone that she died because of a lack of oxygen. Also, perhaps you could remind yourself about Kennedy's assasination!

[M_Welander]

Yes, cosmicdave, Final Fantasy is a very good example of why we can *not* create a CG moon landing or anything similar even today. Final Fantasy looks *extremely* CG!

[SpacedOut]

On 2002-06-08 10:35, cosmicdave wrote:
I firmly believe that Hollywood could recreate any of the Apollo missions easily. Anyone catch 'Final Fantasy The Movie'? That whole film was created without using any actors.

No but I’ve seen a trailer and stills, to me it is painfully obvious!

[M_Welander]

Also note that it is much easier to create photorealistic CG stills than movies, and when even the stills from FF look CG, then you can figure out on your own how unrealistic the movie looks.

The truth is, FF is not as state-of-the-art as it was claimed to be (for obvious reasons), and as such is not a very good example of photorealistic rendering at all. However, even today, whenever you put a shot into motion, you will inevitably end up with CG artifacts that can easily be spotted by anyone who knows what to look for.

To make things worse for faking a lunar mission, the lighting properties of the lunar surface are quite a bit different from other surfaces usually used in CG, as has been pointed out on this board. My guess is that it'll take at least five more years, perhaps ten, before CG technology is at a level where it is possible to fake a lunar landing, if money is no objective.

[Firefox]

Don't kid yourselves that information could not be kept under wraps by our Governments. A good point is Laika, the Soviet Dog sent out into space.

We didn't necessarily have the motivation the Soviets would have had to uncover that. Yes, we'd spend a lengthy investigation into how a dog died...

Also, it wasn't planned for Laika to die from oxygen deprivation, but was injected with a poison, IIRC.


Adam

[SpacedOut]

Actually, the most realistic “up close” CG I’ve seen in theatrical release is Sully’s fur in Monsters, Inc., and even that is obviously CG.

[M_Welander]

The best CG I've seen in a movie is Spiderman, but that's so remote from faking a lunar landing that it doesn't apply. And even in Spiderman you can see it's CG if you know what to look for.

[SpacedOut]

On 2002-06-08 11:19, M_Welander wrote:
The best CG I've seen in a movie is Spiderman, but that's so remote from faking a lunar landing that it doesn't apply. And even in Spiderman you can see it's CG if you know what to look for.

I'll take that as a recommendation to see the movie, if only for the effects!

[jrkeller]

I think it would be a lot harder now to fake a moon landing than it would be in the sixties. With the hugh advances in computers, such as storage ability, overall size, speed and the miniturization of sensors, massive amounts of data about vehicle performance could be collected and evaluated. The people who spend years designing and analyzing all that equipement would have have all sorts of data to evaluate their systems performance. It would be extremely difficult fool these people who have an intimate knowledge of hardware performance.

I've said this before, you might be able to fool the people who worked on the operations side of things, but there is no way that anyone could fool all those engineers and scientists who designed, built, analyzed, tested, retested, and eventually evaluated flight data on all the components that are on a Apollo Flight to the Moon.

[johnwitts]

If we were to try to fake a landing today, it may fool 1960's folks, but not todays. HBs say how they can now fake, using CGI, various bits of the Apollo record, the hammer and feather experiment is one. What we don't ask in whether the equipment and techniques used to reproduce this effect today were available in 1969.

Imagine if NASA went to the Moon today. No more fuzzy TV pictures. No more waiting for the snaps to be released after processing. We'd have 24/7 coverage, via the internet and NASA TV. We'd have multiple camera angles, multiple sound tracks, helmet cams, leg cams, MCC cams, toilet cams, etc. Almost as it happens. New photos would be downloadable straight away. There would be absolutely no margin for error. No way would all that be faked.

[James]

Now that we've discussed NASA faking a mission to the moon nowadays, I have a question for everyone: Would it be possible for NASA to fake a mission to Mars or another planet in our system? Or, like M_Welander said, is it still five-ten years down the road?

[M_Welander]

From a CG point of view, Mars is even more difficult to fake than the moon. There are all sorts of CG/live action integration issues there that does not arrise on the moon. Also, the rendering models are significantly more complicated for Mars. Look at the surface sequences from "Mission to Mars" or "Red Planet" - the images doesn't even remotely look like the real place!

On Spiderman... the CG effects aren't *that* spectacular from an SFX point of view, simply because you probably won't notice most of them. From a CG point of view, they are breathtaking, for the very same reason.

[David Hall]

On 2002-06-08 15:34, johnwitts wrote:

We'd have 24/7 coverage, via the internet and NASA TV. We'd have multiple camera angles, multiple sound tracks, helmet cams, leg cams, MCC cams, toilet cams, etc. Almost as it happens. New photos would be downloadable straight away. There would be absolutely no margin for error. No way would all that be faked.

That's why I said it would have to be a limited coverage event. The more you put out, the less likely you will be to hide manipulation.

And one point that seems to be missing here regarding CG is that it wouldn't necessarily be used everywhere. I think most of the scenes would still be filmed with normal techniques and the CG only used to touch up, cover up, or depict things that couldn't be done any other way. If done right, I think it could look pretty realistic. Though I also agree that it would be very difficult to hide such things from the real experts.

[M_Welander]

I think it would be perfectly possible to make it look good. I also think it would be impossible to make it look realistic. Those things are very different. Almost all research into SFX/CG focus on making movies look good, not realistic. We have a lot of good, proven technology for making good looking movies. We have virtually none for creating realistic movies.

[M_Welander]

Actually, I don't think anyone here seriously meant that all footage should be faked using CG. That was just cosmicdave's Final Fantasy related idea.

I would fake the footage in three steps (I'm sure other people would do it differently):

First, a background plate consisting of a digital matte painting created from real photographs of the lunar surface. This layer should be pretty convincing.

Second, a middle layer consisting of a 3D digital matte painting of the lunar surface. The problem here is to come up with a shading model that looks like the real lunar surface, so while the lighting should be acceptable, the surface shader might not be as realistic as we would like.

Third, a close range physical layer, consisting of a stage filled with something that looks like lunar soil. Here, animatronic actors would run around.

The purpose of using animatronic actors is this: You use motion capture on real actors, feed that into a computer that simulates the impact of lunar gravity on the motion, and feed the recomputed motions out to the animatronic astronauts.

The third layer would have to be lit very carefully, with a very strong, very distant and very uniform light. If we can't use the real sun for this, we'd have to construct some kind of extreme equipment to do this, and then run the film through an additinal CG step using a digital model of the third layer and a simulated sun, to fill in incorrect shadows.

This is how I would do it. I don't know if it would work, since I haven't tried. All I know is that it is extremely difficult, extremely expensive, and will still not fool a trained eye.

[JimB]

You've forgotten the "hard" evidence.
We can't fake hundreds of pounds of moon rocks.
Baking doesn't get rid of water bound in the minerals, meteorite sources are too limited and don't have the correct surfaces, melting and recrystalizing doesn't give the right mineral ages, and the solar wind doesn't reach the earth's surface.

[jrkeller]

While I agree that faking hundreds of pounds of moon rocks would be hard, I think the hardest part about faking the moon rocks would be faking the very small rocks.

Like the one shown here.

http://web.utk.edu/~pgi/lunar/page4.html

The whole article is great. A bit over my head in places. There is a great part about elemental iron which is produced by the solar wind. On Earth this exists as iron oxide. Another hoax arguement shot apart.

http://web.utk.edu/~pgi/lunar/page1.html

[AstroMike]

Also:

Top Ten Scientific Discoveries Made During Apollo Exploration of the Moon.

[cosmicdave]

'You've forgotten the "hard" evidence.
We can't fake hundreds of pounds of moon rocks.'

Whats stopping anyone from going to Antartica to retrieve some, perhaps thats why Von Braun went there two years before the Apollo missions?

[M_Welander]

A) The total mass of collected moon rocks compared to the total mass of lunar meteorites.

B) Lunar meteorites aren't moon rocks just becase they come from the moon. Lunar meteorites are lunar meteorites. Moon rocks are moon rocks. While the chemical composition might be similar, the structure is entirely different.

I'm sure there are C) to Z) as well, but I'll leave that up the the rest of you.

Also, I've been thinking, when did we become sure that the lunar meteorites really are from the moon? I mean, if NASA *did* indeed use them for a fake mission, they could not have done so before we knew without a doubt that they were from the moon. Otherwise, it would have been quite embarrasing when scientist later might have found out that the so called moon rocks were actually from the asteroid belt or Mars or wherever.
Does anyone here know?

[Andrew]

"Whats stopping anyone from going to Antartica to retrieve some, perhaps thats why Von Braun went there two years before the Apollo missions?"

Not alot is stopping people from going to Antarctica to get some moon rocks.
There's quite alot preventing people from going to Antarctica and collecting eight hundred and fifty pounds worth though. Perhaps most significantly the fact that 850lbs worth of lunar material probably doesn't exist in Antarctica.

Why the heck would Von Braun go to get moon rocks? He's a rocket scientist not a geologist.

Dense^6th ?

[jrkeller]

HUb well said.

More lunar rock stuff.

C) The outer surfaces of the rocks are not melted due to friction forces from the atmosphere.

D) Small particles and rocks would vaporize before they hit the ground. Yet we have many of these rocks.

E) For those rocks that reached the surface, the heating and subsequent vaporization of their outer surfaces would remove their micro-craters ("zip-pits"), yet all the rocks have these features, even the very small ones

F) The solar winds particles which are imbedded on the surfaces of these rocks would be cooked out during entry into Earth's atmosphere.

G) Since the surfaces of the rocks are not melted that would mean that they would have had to have these surfaces removed. They remaining surfaces would be pristine. Microscopic evaluation of the rocks shows this not to be the case. FYI, some of Eric Von Daniken's (SP?) claims were shown to be a hoax using this method. (He produced some rock cravings of medical operations which he claimed to be hundreds of years old. Upon microscopic examination of the cravings, the edges were extremely sharp indicating that craving was newly manufactured.

More later.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: jrkeller on 2002-06-10 09:58 ]</font>