How many people do you think it takes to make a Moon Hoax?

[jrkeller]

One of the things that has always bothered me about the whole moon hoax claim is that I feel that it would take thousands, probably ten thousand to pull of something as big as the moon hoax. Of course no one from NASA has come out and said I was part of the hoax.

Here's my rough cut at the numbers.

First, all the astronauts would have to lie. Don't forget their wives and families too. Hiding something like a moon cover-up and all the disappointment that must go with that would be impossible to keep from one's spouse and family. So now instead of 30-40 people, there are 100-150 people. What about the divorced wifes and seperated families who probably don't have a lot loyalty to NASA. Now you've got to add all the people who had to come up with the hoax. Upper NASA management, some engineers, some flight controllers, their counterparts in industry, and the whole team that developed the hoax all have to hide this cover-up. They also have do their day jobs. Now at a minimum you've got a seven to eight hundred people hiding things. One thing that always seems to be left out of this equation is that several countries also helped us track Apollo to the moon. Austrailia contributed about 100 people. If Apollo didn't fly to the moon it would be obvious to these people and these are people with no loyalty of any sorts to the US. At a minimum you've got about a thousand people and if you include their families it's into the several thousands.

Not being in film or TV, I have no clue as to how many people it would take to stage such an event. Most big ticket movies have several hundred people on them, but I would think that for a big US government production, it would be a lot more.

Now using my own personal insight into working on large engineering projects, here's something that I never seen in any moon conspiracy theory. The LM (and the CM) contained many different subsystems, like the descent engine, environmental control, electrical power, batteries, etc. Each person that worked on these subsystems were expecting data (pressure, temperature, voltage) back from the LM, to see how their systems worked so that they came verify their designs, assumptions, etc. That's the engineering method. There is no way to fake these data. If everyone got back perfect data, then it's obviously faked. If you add anomolies to the data, the designers are also going to know it's faked. So these people had to be in on it as well. Now we have ten thousand people.

Any guesses out there?

[Conrad]

You also have to add all the intelligence agencies of foreign power's who were spying on the USA and who would also know Apollo to be a fake, not to mention the friendly intelligence agencies who would also discover the facts. Plus people like radio hams, geologists and astronomers. That takes it into the many tens of thousands ... [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]
Like one of the astronauts said, it would be more difficult to fake it than to really do it!

[ToSeek]

On 2002-04-09 21:47, jrkeller wrote:
Not being in film or TV, I have no clue as to how many people it would take to stage such an event. Most big ticket movies have several hundred people on them, but I would think that for a big US government production, it would be a lot more.

Rent Apollo 13 and count the number of people in the credits. (Since the credit roll goes for about 7 minutes, I think it's a lot.)

[Space Bandito]

I figure the issue with creating a hoax is the upper limit of how many people can be involved before somebody spills the beans.

I would estimate (don’t quote me as this is only based on my own personal experience) that the limit is around 3, possibly as low as 2. After that, anyone involved in the Hoax has to believe that the hoax is true in order for the hoax to persist. But even this has its limit. At some point, one of these guys is going to question the hoax, and the probability of this happening only increases as the number of "dupes" increases.

Then the number of people involved in the hoax itself has no bearing on how will the hoax will do once its exposed to investigation by the general public. For example, since this forum is about Lunar Conspiracies, I will use the "Apollo Landing Hoax" as an example. Assuming that all the thousands of Engineers, Scientists, Workers, and even the Politicians involved in the Apollo missions were duped into believing the hoax, the hoax would not survive public scrutiny by people such as the BA.

But these are just my thoughts on the topic. Does anyone know of any studies involving my ideas? It would be interesting to know approximately how many people can know a secret and keep it. I would guess that the magnitude of the secret would also effect how well a person would be able to keep it to themselves. Is it easier to keep a white lie a secret? Or to keep the identity of a murderer a secret?

[JayUtah]

The rule of thumb in the intelligence community is that the probability of a secret's being revealed increases according to the square of the number of people who know about it.

[DaveC]

I can't recall who it was in the intelligence community - may have been G Gordon Liddy? - who said "If three people know a secret, the only way to keep the secret is to kill two of the people"

[Silas]

Just to play devil's advocate... How many people knew about Enigma/Ultra after WWII, and yet the story doesn't appear in any WWII history I've read until the 1980's, at which point it became headline news and the subject of innumerable "The History Channel" documentaries. Not only did the victorious Allies keep the secret, but no one on the defeated Axis side spilled the beans publicly, even though it might have mollified their pride.

On the other hand, I've heard it said that the Manhattan Project was relatively "leaky," and that it succeeded, not because it was tippy-top secret, but simply because there was nothing any enemy could possibly do to interfere with it.

I can work out a couple of
"Lunar Hoax" scenarios that keep the inside committee down to a few hundred people...but that's reverse-engineering: it presumes a successful hoax and tries to construct a scenario to support it. Real conspiracies don't work that way.

Silas

[Jim]

"Three people may keep a secret if two of them are dead."
Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard's Almanac

(Although Liddy probably did try to claim credit for it.)

[Space Bandito]

Silas:

Clavius has a good eplaination on why those types of conspiracys (at least the Moon Hoax conpiracy) would not be possable.

http://www.clavius.org/scale.html

"THE ABSOLUTE MINIMUM SCENARIO"

I remember seeing in a TV show (probly on the History Channel) that there was a few people in the US who duduced that the US was making an Atomic bomb and even were the development was taking place. But they senosored themselfs as they relised the importance of the project. Any sources on this?

As far as the numbers of people who kept the Enigma secret...

I was under the impression that millitary personal take any oaths to secretcy very seriously, and that even after all apparnt reason for the secret to be secret is gone, they will not reveal their knowlege unless the information is frist declassifyed.

Also, i would be willing to bet that the numbers of people involved with the Manhatten project and the Engima project (that knew anything substantial) total far less than the amount of people involved in the Apollo Missions that would be in a position to reveal any hoax.

[ToSeek]

On 2002-04-10 10:56, Space Bandito wrote:
Silas:

Clavius has a good eplaination on why those types of conspiracys (at least the Moon Hoax conpiracy) would not be possable.

http://www.clavius.org/scale.html

"THE ABSOLUTE MINIMUM SCENARIO"

This is a good page, but the minimum scenario sidesteps the claim that there were environmental reasons that the Moon landings could not happen, such as the radiation in the Van Allen belts, the heat and cold on the lunar surface, etc. Perhaps all the engineering could work, but the astronauts would still die in the process. [/Devil's advocate]

_________________
"... to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." - Tennyson, Ulysses

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: ToSeek on 2002-04-10 11:06 ]</font>

[DaveC]

"How many people knew about Enigma/Ultra after WWII, and yet the story doesn't appear in any WWII history I've read until the 1980's, at which point it became headline news and the subject of innumerable "The History Channel" documentaries."

We don't know how many people knew about it during the war when keeping the secret was important. I do know that when I was a kid, in the fifties or maybe the early 60s, it was common knowledge that the allies had cracked the German code during the war. Just may not have known it by the name Enigma/Ultra. I think it is misleading to suggest that the first public knowledge of the secret came out in 1980.

There's a good reason why those who knew would keep the secret during wartime - leaking it would be treason and grounds for execution. That tactic couln't be applied to a bunch of civilians involved in the Apollo missions.

[Jim]

Comparing Ultra to an Apollo Hoax is a poor analogy. Consider:

1) At its peak in 1944, Ultra employed some 9,000 people, not all of whom knew the full scope of Ultra. Many were support personnel who were not told even the general purpose of the work being conducted. (Winston Churchill's confidential secretary delivered Ultra communications, but was never privy to the secret.)

By contrast, NASA employed about ten times that number worldwide, all of whom knew what their mission was (publicly), and (as jrkeller points out) most of whom would have had to know the true nature of their work if it were a hoax.

2) Ultra was a positive program, intended to end or at least shorten the war, defeat an evil enemy, and save lives. As a result, people who knew about it kept its secret during the war; afterward, most couldn't brag because they didn't know the extent of what they'd been working on, and those who did were restricted from speaking by British law (much stricter than US law, it imposes a 30 years blackout).

An Apollo Hoax would have been an attempt to perpetrate the greatest con game in history with no positive benefits beyond continued employment. Few people like doing a job that makes them feel dirty, and such a hoax would do just that, especially among a scientific, technological employee base... a group that prides itself on ethical behaviour and open communications.

3) Ultra was only somewhat suspected by the Germans and Italians; the Germans dismissed the possibility because they believed their mechanical cyphers were "unbreakable"; talking about Ultra after the war (even had they known) may have made the Germans look better as soldiers (which was never disputed; the Germans were usually victorious in an even battle) but would have made them look pretty dumb about using "unbreakable" codes. The Soviets learned of Ultra (they had a spy at Bletchley Park) but kept quiet in their own best interests; they didn't even tell the British and US they knew.

It would have served the best interests of the Soviets to trumpet an American hoax to the world. Their failure to beat the US to the moon would have been explained; they would even have had a good explanation for their own failure and for quitting.

Manhattan, of course, did have secrecy problems (including Soviet spies again) and became public knowledge rather demonstrably in August 1945.

[Space Bandito]

You still have the same problem.

Those "in the know" have to create convinceing reasons and technology that would convince the others that landing on the moon is possable.

You quite literaly have to sit down and figure out what devices you would need, and how these devices would work, and land on the Moon, in order to fake a Moon Landing.

But im paraphrasing the information in the link. you should re-read the link (ToSeek, im playing along).

[David Hall]

Another reason such a thing could be kept secret was that it was a strictly military thing. When it's all under one umbrella, it's much easier to keep a handle on. Also, once it's purpose was achieved, there was no need to keep it secret any longer. At the very least it was probably declassified, even if the public at large hadn't heard of it.

Apollo, on the other hand, was handled by a relatively open organization, and had dozens of outside companies, organizations, and people involved in one way or another. And there's no end to it. If it was hoaxed, then they must be continuing to maintain that hoax to this day. How such a thing could have been hoaxed is beyond my ability to fathom.

_________________
David Hall
"Dave... my mind is going... I can feel it... I can feel it."

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: David Hall on 2002-04-10 11:29 ]</font>

[DaveC]

"How such a thing could have been hoaxed is beyond my ability to fathom."

In order to understand how it could be hoaxed, follow these simple steps:

Suspend rational thinking;
Suspend logical thinking (i.e. don't use Occam's razor or parsimony in any analysis of Apollo);
Develop a firm belief in magic.

Alternatively, you could donate the left half of your brain to science.

[JayUtah]

Computer cryptography developed in the late 1960s was based on the Enigma cryptographic model.

[ToSeek]

How many HBers does it take to change a light bulb?

[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

[Silas]

On 2002-04-10 15:29, JayUtah wrote:
Computer cryptography developed in the late 1960s was based on the Enigma cryptographic model.

All I was tryin' to say was that "Big Secrets" *have*, in fact, been kept. But, man, see if I ever advocate for the Devil again! (Grin!)

Besides, even if 1960's computer cryptography was based on Enigma/Ultra... how many people in the field *knew* about Enigma/Ultra? I mean, you could have some high-level NSA dudes doling out ideas without ever talking about war history...

Anyway, nobody's leaked the formula to Coca Cola; is that a better analogy?

Silas

[Roy Batty]

Maybe not leaked.. but probably known [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]
http://www.snopes2.com/cokelore/formula.htm

[Jim]

On 2002-04-10 17:17, Silas wrote:
Besides, even if 1960's computer cryptography was based on Enigma/Ultra... how many people in the field *knew* about Enigma/Ultra?

FYI, the computer used for Ultra - Colossus - was built from electronic components borrowed from the British postal service. Colossus used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) and was the world's first programmable electronic computer.

After the war, Colossus was dismantled and the parts returned.

[jrkeller]

Thanks for all the inputs. I had totally forgotten about the geologists, which has got to be in the thousands. I guess too there would also be a lot of photo analysts too.

The friendly intellegence angle is one that I hadn't thought of too. That one I could sort of dismiss, but the non-friendly intellegence agencies, like the Russians and the Chinese, we shouldn't overlook. So that's got to add thousands more.

BTW, the first mention of the Ultra work that I can remember is from 1977, from the book The Ultra Secret.

[DaveC]

So, we can conclude that there would have to have been hundreds of thousands of people who knew of the hoax and tens of thousands who had a direct role in pulling it off. And not a single person has come forward in 33 years, even on their deathbed, to say it was all a scam? HB reality check time!

[JayUtah]

Besides, even if 1960's computer cryptography was based on Enigma/Ultra... how many people in the field *knew* about Enigma/Ultra?

The algorithms were widely published and studied in college classes. Enigma cryptography was common knowledge in schools in the late 1960s.

The Enigma secret was kept no longer than twenty years, and likely much shorter. It took twenty years for its inner workings to be available to anybody simply by sitting in a class or two at your local college.

[DaveC]

"It took twenty years for its inner workings to be available to anybody simply by sitting in a class or two at your local college."

I must have been out drinking beer that day. My father, who was in the Signal Corps of the Canadian Army during WWII first told me in the 50's or 60's that he knew right after the war that the German code had been broken, and said he suspected it when he was a dispatch rider in the UK delivering military messages. He may have fantasized that second part (he's gone now, so I can't ask) but he had some pretty accurate information about the deciphering - as later publications bore out. I doubt the "secret" was kept very long at all - it was the detailed info that didn't come out until 15-20 years later.

[JayUtah]

Perhaps all the engineering could work, but the astronauts would still die in the process.

Only if you assert that the truth about the environment was being kept from the engineers and they were given false information as design criteria. First, this violates the expertise premise of the argument. Second, we know what information they were given and it's the same information given to engineers today. It works for us today.

Enduring the environment is a big part of what the engineering was all about, so if you say the "engineering worked", but somehow failed to account for the environment and thus caused the astronauts to perish, that's a contradiction. If the astronauts succumbed to the environment then the engineering didn't work.

[JayUtah]

I must have been out drinking beer that day.

The original Unix crypt program, whose source code was part of the curriculum, derives from the Enigma, and its supporting academic papers gave a detailed discription of the Enigma machine and its theory.

Nowadays the algorithm is considered too weak for practical use. It's ironic that in sixty years it has gone from top secret to useless.

[DaveC]

"The original Unix crypt program, whose source code was part of the curriculum, derives from the Enigma, and its supporting academic papers gave a detailed discription of the Enigma machine and its theory."

OK - I was out drinking beer for several days.

It's not unusual for things to have gone from state of the art to useless pretty quickly over the past century. I have a Kodak disc camera, a collection of 8-track tapes, and a 1950's vintage Encyclopedia Brittanica. Today's computer encryption algorithms make yesterday's "ciphering" look ridiculously simplistic.

[Donnie B.]

I believe that what took the longest to become public was not the Enigma technology, nor the fact that the Allies successfully broke their enemies' codes (let's not forget Midway and the JN-6 code).

What was not revealed until the late 70's was what the Allies did with the knowledge gained from breaking the codes. For example, it was not until then that we learned that Churchill allowed the bombing of Coventry to go unopposed, even though he knew it was going to happen; and that he did so precisely to protect the secret that the codes were broken.

[DaveC]

And quite unlike the magnitude of the moon hoax theory, the Coventry situation was known to an incredibly small contingent of people - the key member of which, Churchill, died in 1965. War requires that leaders make decisions for the long-term good. I don't know if "allowing" the attack on Coventry was the right decision or not, even with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. When you are dealing with an enemy that has rockets and appears to be developing nuclear weapons technology, protection of the one slim advantage you may have could - and did - carry a high cost.

[MaxPerth]

Firstly: this is an interesting web site that I've just discovered. Good to see people talking besides playing games.

One thing that I found in my experiences with people is that it is easy to believe a hoax.

When you think about the possibility of never actually going to the moon, you can either go two ways. The first is to adopt the conspiracy as legitimate, believe most if not all of what other people say is the truth and then elaborate a bit and pass it along. The second option is the most difficult all. You have to learn the science, mathematics and understand the level of commitment in accomplishing such a task.

I look at it a little bit like religion, the ones who stand on a soapbox preaching to the world in my view are just trying to reinforce their belief in their own mind. Truly religious people just seem to get on with their lives and their beliefs because it's in their heart. Out of these two types of people, who do you think you hear the most of?

When you break these two options down, one is really quite easy and the other requires a high level of commitment.

These days I am finding that the numbers of people who have subscribed to the conspiracy theory are on the increase. I think this might say something about the population in general. I can't blame them though. We're always looking for the easy answers because everything else seems to be getting much more difficult.