NASA's Van Allen explanation

I am 50/50 regarding the moon landings,I do think it's possible it was faked for the reason that Russia never bothered to go.They were possibly laughing at the Americans for pulling Hollywood illusions to fool it's people and the world.Both sides knew it should be done with Robots going there to take pictures and possibly drop a flag in case another country ever did go to check.Robots could drop instruments and possibly land to take rocks.After all ,that's what they continue to do still today on all the planets.

Originally posted by mistr_b2
I do think it's possible it was faked for the reason that Russia never bothered to go.

What do you mean "never bothered"? They were trying, but their N1 rocket wasn't working as planned. They had very ambitious plans for a lunar base that would have dwarfed the accomplishments of the Apollo program.

They were possibly laughing at the Americans for pulling Hollywood illusions to fool it's people and the world.

Hollywood special effects were not that good at the time. In fact there were some Russian sci-fi films in the 50's that looked better than the US ones of that time. So why wouldn't the USSR fake them too if the US did like you so claim to believe? Regardless of that. The special effects done at that time wouldn't hold up at all today.

The fact is, the USSR monitored the Apollo spacecrafts, as did amature astronomers and amature radio operators who tracked the missions. It's kind of hard to fake radio signals coming from the Moon. Also the amature astronomers took photos and I believe were able to measure the Doppler redshift of the spacecraft as well.

Both sides knew it should be done with Robots going there to take pictures and possibly drop a flag in case another country ever did go to check.Robots could drop instruments and possibly land to take rocks.After all ,that's what they continue to do still today on all the planets.

If you look at the history of the Moon program for both the US and USSR. You'll see that a lot of the unmanned probes had a hard time landing on the Moon. Manny USSR probes missed and or crashed onto the surface. Some did make it and took photos.

The thing about sample return missions is that they cannot bring back much. The USSR only had 3 sample return missions from the Moon and all they got was 326 g (0.66 lb). Compare that to the Manned Apollo missions that were able to bring back a total of 382 kg (842 lb). No unmanned probes could bring back that much. You'd have to launch a lot of them and people would have noticed. Also no other robotic missions these days ever come back. It's always a one way trip.

[edit on 17-12-2006 by jra]

just something to bear in mind , but it seems to have escaped the hoax believers .

it does not matter how many flares there are in a given period - it is only the ones that are aligned straight at the moon that can pose any threat what so ever

a solar flare is highly directional , its effects fall off sharply even a few degrees away from its axis

" Manned Apollo missions that were able to bring back a total of 382 kg (842 lb). No unmanned probes could bring back that much. You'd have to launch a lot of them and people would have noticed. Also no other robotic missions these days ever come back. It's always a one way trip."

What about all the secret shuttle missions,many probes could have launched.Anyway I'm still on the fence,I got arguments for both sides

Originally posted by mistr_b2
What about all the secret shuttle missions,many probes could have launched.

Sure, except that the Shuttle started operating in 1981 (STS-1), while all the lunar rocks were collected by 1972 (Apollo 17).

[edit on 17-12-2006 by cdrn]

Originally posted by cdrn

Originally posted by mistr_b2
What about all the secret shuttle missions,many probes could have launched.

Sure, except that the Shuttle started operating in 1981 (STS-1), while all the lunar rocks were collected by 1972 (Apollo 17).

Excellent point and I'd also like to add that the Shuttle can't leave Earth orbit nor send it's payload to the Moon. And there's only been one Shuttle launch with classified cargo.

I also don't believe there are enough classified rocket launches that could accommodate the amount of unmanned sample return probes needed to collect that much of samples. Plus it would be impossible for those unmanned probes to have retrieved the larger rocks and the 2 meter deep core samples.

[edit on 17-12-2006 by jra]

Originally posted by jra


Excellent point and I'd also like to add that the Shuttle can't leave Earth orbit nor send it's payload to the Moon. And there's only been one Shuttle launch with classified cargo.

On a purely argumentative standpoint, I'll have to disagree: Shuttle cargo is quite capable of going places. The Magellan and Galileo probes (STS-30 and STS-34 respectively) were both launched towards Venus, while Ulysses (STS-41) was launched directly at Jupiter. I'm pretty sure that a lunar sample return mission wouldn't require as much delta-V as Ulysses did.

Originally posted by cdrn
On a purely argumentative standpoint, I'll have to disagree: Shuttle cargo is quite capable of going places. The Magellan and Galileo probes (STS-30 and STS-34 respectively) were both launched towards Venus, while Ulysses (STS-41) was launched directly at Jupiter. I'm pretty sure that a lunar sample return mission wouldn't require as much delta-V as Ulysses did.

Ok that's true, you got me there. I don't know why I forgot about that.