Moon Hoax? - NASA built huge hard vacuum chamber just before Apollo 11 and decommissioned it 1975

I was just researching moon landing conspiracies when I noticed the dust in the NASA videos ‘from the moon.’

The dust does not behave like it is in an atmosphere. This one had me for a while, and I began to consider that perhaps all the anomalies with the footage can just be ruled out based on the fact that the only vacuum hard enough and large enough to allow for fine dust to act that way would be the moon.

Then I found this:

The Space Power Facility (SPF) is a vacuum chamber built by NASA in 1969. It stands 122 feet high and 100 feet in diameter, enclosing a bullet-shaped space. When completed, it was the world's largest vacuum chamber. It was originally commissioned for nuclear-electric power studies under vacuum conditions, but was later decommissioned. Recently, it was recommissioned for use in testing spacecraft propulsion systems. Recent uses include testing the airbag landing systems for the Mars Pathfinder and the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, under simulated Mars atmospheric conditions.

Would you believe they actually built a 30 meter diameter circular dome room between 1964 and 1969!? When their whole budget was supposed to be being spent on getting to the moon, here they are building huge vacuum rooms for “nuclear electric power studies under vacuum conditions.” And as if that weren’t enough: they decommissioned it in 1975! Just three years after the final Apollo mission, Apollo 17.

Now lets consider most of the footage you see. For any given scene the subjects walk around in a space approximately 20 meters by 20 meters. The jumps aren’t very high, as though just earth gravity slowed down to half speed. Obvious artificial lighting is used and the shadows aren’t sharp like they should be in hard sunlight.

Everything adds up now, for me. I am quite convinced that much, if not all, of the footage from the Apollo missions was faked. For what purpose, I know not. But as they say: It is what it is.

Thats a cool find. I kinda dig your theory also, gonna start watching footage for distance now. Quick question about the moon buggy, how far was it shown driving? Seems like it went farther.

Originally posted by earth2
Thats a cool find. I kinda dig your theory also, gonna start watching footage for distance now. Quick question about the moon buggy, how far was it shown driving? Seems like it went farther.

Yeah that occurred to me as well. Can someone dig up the footage of it?

It is possible if they needed more space they could have gone outside and used heavy particle sand - which would give approximately the correct look. If I remember correctly the dust thrown up from the wheels does not follow a parabola, as it should. So the buggy scenes may well have been filmed in atmosphere.

Originally posted by Yandros
Would you believe they actually built a 30 meter diameter circular dome room between 1964 and 1969!? When their whole budget was supposed to be being spent on getting to the moon, here they are building huge vacuum rooms for “nuclear electric power studies under vacuum conditions.” And as if that weren’t enough: they decommissioned it in 1975! Just three years after the final Apollo mission, Apollo 17.

And in order to get to the Moon, you need to develop things for testing that help to achieve your main goal. The Mercury and Gemini programs never went to the Moon, but they helped our understanding about living and working in space.

As for it being decommissioned, it has since been recommissioned. This is only a guess, but it was probably originally decommissioned due to NASA's budget dropping substantially after the Apollo missions.

Now lets consider most of the footage you see. For any given scene the subjects walk around in a space approximately 20 meters by 20 meters.

Maybe if all you do is watch 1 min long clips on youtube, but the EVA's lasted for hours, with continuous live footage being broadcast. With Apollo's 15 - 17 when they had the rover, they traversed several km worth of the lunar surface. You can't do that in anything like that on a film set.

The jumps aren’t very high, as though just earth gravity slowed down to half speed. Obvious artificial lighting is used and the shadows aren’t sharp like they should be in hard sunlight.

I've seen clips of the astronauts jumping high. There is one of Armstrong or Aldrin (I forget which one at the moment) jumping about 5 ft onto the ladder of the LM. There is footage from one of the other missions where one of the astronauts cautiously tries to jump up higher than normal. I think he got up to about 4 ft or so, but fell over backwards onto his PLSS. It's too dangerous to try and jump as high as you can, because 1) your center of mass is off, due to the heavy space suit and the PLSS on ones back, so your bound to tip over backwards. 2) You damage your suit or PLSS and you could die.

As for the shadows, they look sharp to me.

Great find Yandros....
You asked why they would fake the landing....
My guess is.......We were in a space race with Russia, it seems totally logical that the USA ego was striving to be the best, and if that meant fooling millions with a staged moon landing then so be it. All I have to say is Van Allen Radiation Belt, the truth lies in the belt.

I think that the USSR and the US had a secret agreement to keep the coldwar going as an excuse to waste money on weaponising space. Is it a war if neither side is reckless enough or war crazed enough to do something stupid? No, seems more like an agreement.

The reason for faking video may have been out of sheer desperation.

Consider yourself in NASA's shoes:
Here’s a government that’s publicly committed itself to getting to the moon before the end of the decade. You've already blown most of your huge budget on Apollo 1 - 10 which were all complete disasters. With less than a year to go why wouldn't NASA simply film it on earth?

They had the means, the motive and the method.

Send up your rocket for a few days orbit around the earth, earlier having sent up a video reflector/relayer to the 'landing site' and relay the prerecorded video off the moon. Who would be the wiser? Its certainly much easier than sending people there – something I suspect they would have trouble doing even with today’s technology.

Certainly all the evidence of artificial lighting cannot be ignored. The number of anomalies NASA refuse to explain is just amazing. Right angle shadows, no blast crater, spotlight reflections in visors simply too large... the list goes on.

As for the Van Allen belts. Well apparently Van Allen himself states on the record that the astronauts could have survived the trip. But perhaps he forgets all those rainbow bomb tests the US government did; exploding nuclear bombs in the high upper atmosphere. It is said they made the belts many times more deadly than they naturally were by trapping a lot more radiation in them.

It begs the question: why not simply blast off from the south pole where the belts are basically negligible?

NASA wouldn't lie to us. They love us and all of their findings they openly share with the people because we fund their programs and they want to thank us for the support.

We will never know if nasa has faked the moon landings, I would imagine they had a backup.

Just imagine the amount of problems they had to overcome, I suppose in a way it would be far easier to fake the whole thing than to send a man to the moon.

Still, begs the question why have they not built a moon base instead of spending up to 100 billion on a space station which creates very little new science!!!

Also, it’s going to be interesting when you get china sending a man to the moon!!!
IF it was real, Just imagine it, what would happen IF they take the USA flag from out the ground and put their own flag in the moon!!!

This could very well spark a new cold war!!!!

For the guy asking about the fuzzy images.

Now if I remember my physics correctly there is to be expected some slight interference to be observed around the edges of even the most well defined object, but generally any sort of general fuzz is reserved for photos taken in atmosphere or in artificial non polarized light.

I could be wrong. I could be wrong. But this looks pretty fuzzy to me. One would expect well defined shadows on the moon.

And to maple:
Yes we will know eventually, when man returns (or goes for the first time) to the moon and looks for the remains of the LM and the flags.

I just find it amazing that we still haven't been able to spot the flag and other remains here from Earth yet. I mean, we have huge telescopes in observatories all over the world, offering many different viewing angles. Why hasn't someone pointed one of these bad boys at the moon yet? The moon does not rotate (as it appears from Earth) so it should be easy to orient yourself to the lunar surface and look for things. These 'scopes are capable of imaging distant planets, so why cant we zoom in on the surface? Are we really that far behind in ground based observation?

And what about Hubble? Couldn't it be pointed at the moon to zoom in on that flag?

I also find it interesting how quickly NASA made it to the moon way back then. They started from scratch, and made it to the moon in a matter of a couple years. Not to mention the telemetry computer on-board the capsule was about as powerful as the wrist watch on my arm. At the time, all of NASA's computing power was equal to a modern day laptop. If they did it back then so quick with limited technology, why has it taken us so many decades to fly back to the moon? Think about where our technology is now. In the US, most households have a personal computer that is just as powerful as ALL of NASA in the 1960's. NASA's current computing power is exponential to what they used to have. Plus, they have the added experience of the past few decades of space flight.

They should be moon PRO's by now. Why is it that even now, when NASA announces that it is headed back for the moon, that they say it will take them till 2020 to do it? Seriously? I mean, they are even having trouble just getting to and staying in orbit. It's 2007 and NASA can barely maintain consistent operational status just a few hundred thousand feet off the ground. Yet, they made it to the moon back in the 60's with experimental craft with the computational power equal to a fraction of a black & white Gameboy?

I dunno - I love this stuff, but my level of expertise on the subject is not as high as many people here at ATS. To me, a lot of this sounds fishy. I haven't yet 100% decided that we faked the entire moon landing, but I certainly have a skeptical view of the whole thing. Don't even get me started on Mars...

.::END RANT::.

damajikninja:
There is only a limited resolution you can pull from a lens and a CCD just as there is only a limited resolution you can get using an optical microscope.

This is why satellite imagery of the earth always sucks, not enough light information. Radar imagery is even worse because the wavelength is longer which means even less information. Aerial photographs make up the detailed images of the ground we look at in Google earth because the satellites cannot return a high enough resolution. This is due to a physical limitation: the amount of information an electromagnetic wavelength can carry.

The Hubble could quite possibly take a photograph from 50 – 10 meters above the Apollo 11 landing site, but it is in NASA control, and they won’t hear a word of it.

Photographs taken from earth also have the problem of atmospheric distortion. When looking through 80km of atmosphere you get a wavy effect as though you are looking through a pool of water at something. So even if there were enough light information it would probably be hard to photograph.

Better luck next time.


[edit on 21-6-2007 by Yandros]

Originally posted by Yandros

Now lets consider most of the footage you see. For any given scene the subjects walk around in a space approximately 20 meters by 20 meters. The jumps aren’t very high, as though just earth gravity slowed down to half speed. Obvious artificial lighting is used and the shadows aren’t sharp like they should be in hard sunlight.

Really? - www.msss.com... and www.apolloarchive.com...

Also have a look at the photographs published in this book - www.michaellight.net...

Obvious artificial lighting is used

In what way is it obvious?

www.badastronomy.com...


[edit on 21-6-2007 by Skunky]

[edit on 21-6-2007 by Skunky]

Originally posted by Yandros
damajikninja:
There is only a limited resolution you can pull from a lens and a CCD just as there is only a limited resolution you can get using an optical microscope.

*snip*

The Hubble could quite possibly take a photograph from 50 – 10 meters above the Apollo 11 landing site, but it is in NASA control, and they won’t hear a word of it.

*snip*

Better luck next time.

Valid points. I figured there had to be a reason private and academic 'scopes hadn't seen it yet. And I figured NASA was selfish with Hubble.

What about the other stuff I said? The "fact" that NASA went to the moon in record time with inadequate experience or technology - yet decades later, its still going to take them almost 15 years to get back to the moon?

[edit on 6/21/2007 by damajikninja]

Originally posted by damajikninja

What about the other stuff I said? The "fact" that NASA went to the moon in record time with inadequate experience or technology - yet decades later, its still going to take them almost 15 years to get back to the moon?

[edit on 6/21/2007 by damajikninja]

"with inadequate experience..." - Mercury (www1.nasa.gov...), Gemini (www1.nasa.gov...), Apollo (www1.nasa.gov...)



"...or technology" - www.sti.nasa.gov...
www.braeunig.us... - read the section called 'The Apollo guidance computer had the equivalent computing power of today's kitchen appliances, far less than that required to go to the Moon.' and 'The computer technology did not exist in the 1960's to build the Apollo guidance computer.'

"15 years to get back to the moon" This gives a good breakdown of why a moon-return has been debated for so long - www.nasa.gov... - in brief: the involvement of other nations' space programmes, the possibility of building a base, the development of new spacecraft technology/designs, the cost offset against the scientific goals etc. etc.

Unless of course we are prepared to credit Nasa as being the biggest propaganda agency of this and the previous century...

[edit on 21-6-2007 by Skunky]

Originally posted by Skunky

Obvious artificial lighting is used

In what way is it obvious?

I refer you to the following clips:
youtube.com...
youtube.com...

I also direct your attention in particular to this photo from Apollo 12:
history.nasa.gov...

Yes, amazingly, that is supposed to be the sun. Haha.

[edit on 21-6-2007 by Yandros]

Originally posted by IMAdamnALIEN
Great find Yandros....
You asked why they would fake the landing....
My guess is.......We were in a space race with Russia, it seems totally logical that the USA ego was striving to be the best, and if that meant fooling millions with a staged moon landing then so be it. All I have to say is Van Allen Radiation Belt, the truth lies in the belt.

If you think about it, it would actually be remiss of them not to develop a 'fall back' plan in case they hit a wall and discovered they could not do the moon landing.

Also recall that when Kennedy announced that there would be a moon landing that NASA was blowing up most of the missiles launched. So the question has to be:

1. did Kennedy confer with anyone before announcing his 'goal' and get their OK that it would be possible to do a moon landing or even a moon orbit?
2. who did he ask?

Given the state of things at the time when he made the announcement, there's no way that anyone would have been able to give Kennedy an informed or definitive answer, in 1960-61, much less an authoritative one.

So, they literally -had- to have a fallback plan (i.e. faking some parts of it), given the huge public relations aspect of it.

In fact one thing that leads me away from the landing being real is that Von Braun actually had plans to construct a space station. People talk about simulations and training. What better method of training could there possibly be than to construct and maintain a space station (and thus a Moon launch platform)?

So can you imagine Kennedy telling Von Braun 'what if you scrapped the space station and went directly to the moon?'.

Von Braun would have been constrained to explain to Kennedy that the space station would be a -required- part of the plan to get to the moon.

The mere fact that they scrapped it, is one of the main things that tells me that Kennedy was mis-informed, or lied to, and that the 'fall back plan' (faking all or part of the landing(s)) became the primary plan.

Originally posted by Yandros
I think that the USSR and the US had a secret agreement to keep the coldwar going as an excuse to waste money on weaponising space. Is it a war if neither side is reckless enough or war crazed enough to do something stupid? No, seems more like an agreement.

Or it could be that the policy makers on both sides looked at the mass of nuclear weapons pointing at them from the other side and decided that the smart thing would be to not push The Button (tm). No conspiracy or 'agreement' needed....mutual self-interest would serve just as well.

The reason for faking video may have been out of sheer desperation.

Consider yourself in NASA's shoes:
Here’s a government that’s publicly committed itself to getting to the moon before the end of the decade. You've already blown most of your huge budget on Apollo 1 - 10 which were all complete disasters. With less than a year to go why wouldn't NASA simply film it on earth?

Apollo 1 (as it was renamed) was a disaster. What makes you think that 2-10 were? I'm a bit confused as to your reasoning.

They had the means, the motive and the method.

Send up your rocket for a few days orbit around the earth, earlier having sent up a video reflector/relayer to the 'landing site' and relay the prerecorded video off the moon. Who would be the wiser? Its certainly much easier than sending people there – something I suspect they would have trouble doing even with today’s technology.

Certainly all the evidence of artificial lighting cannot be ignored. The number of anomalies NASA refuse to explain is just amazing. Right angle shadows, no blast crater, spotlight reflections in visors simply too large... the list goes on.

Oddly enough, I can find explanations for most of your oddities without looking too terribly hard. Looking a bit harder, I can even find explanations that aren't provided by NASA. Google is your friend.

As for the Van Allen belts. Well apparently Van Allen himself states on the record that the astronauts could have survived the trip. But perhaps he forgets all those rainbow bomb tests the US government did; exploding nuclear bombs in the high upper atmosphere. It is said they made the belts many times more deadly than they naturally were by trapping a lot more radiation in them.

Or perhaps Dr. Ban Allen knows enough about the radiation belts to know that the trip was survivable? Naah. Couldn't be that. He must've forgotton something.

Do you happen to have a source for the assertion that we managed to permanantly make the Van Allen belts more deadly with upper-atmosphere nuclear testing? I'm honestly curious about that, for a variety of reasons.

It begs the question: why not simply blast off from the south pole where the belts are basically negligible?

Because the Van Allen belts are about the *only* things that are negligible (in terms of hazard) at the South Pole. You've got extremely low temperature, high winds, low-to-nonexistant visibility for long periods of time, long lines of supply, and absolutely no infrastructure. In short, if there's a worse place on Earth than the South Pole to build a launch complex, it would have to be the North Pole, where you'd have to build the thing on pontoons.

Originally posted by damajikninja

Valid points. I figured there had to be a reason private and academic 'scopes hadn't seen it yet. And I figured NASA was selfish with Hubble.

What about the other stuff I said? The "fact" that NASA went to the moon in record time with inadequate experience or technology - yet decades later, its still going to take them almost 15 years to get back to the moon?

[edit on 6/21/2007 by damajikninja]

The technology obviously wasn't 'inadequate'. Pushed to the limits, perhaps. The best explanation of "How we did it" that I can fit in to a short post is to remind you of the old Combat Engineer line: "Sir, you can have it fast, good, or cheap. Pick two." In the case of the Apollo missions, they weren't cheap, and they weren't necessarily 'good'...just good enough.

Why will it take us 15 years or so to get back there?
For one thing, we aren't in the business of making heavy-lift boosters any more. The assembly line and the tooling to manufacture Saturn-V boosters is long gone. That means that we're back to the drawing board on a number of levels. Since we don't have the big boosters, we can either go back and develop a new one (which takes time, effort, and money), or develop a new mission profile that will accomodate smaller boosters (wich takes time, effort, and money). We still have to develop a man-rated booster (we got out of that business because the Space Shuttle was supposed to be all things to all people, and make messy one-shot rockets obsolete), and guess what? That takes time, effort, and money.

In short, just because our overall technology has improved massively since the 1960s, don't assume that our rocketry has kept pace. We've suffered huge (and in some ways, impossible to replace) chunks of very specialized expertise that we now have to re-learn the hard way.

On top of that, there's been a change of attitude inside NASA. Look at the NASA reaction to the Apollo 1 fire, and to the Apollo 13 tank explosion. Compare it to the reaction to the Challenger explosion and the Columbia breakup. We've replaced the Cold War urgency (we have to beat the Russians) with Accountant's Exactitude (we have to make sure that nothing can ever, possibly go wrong in such a way that I get the blame).

I don't have any real doubt that we can take care of the technical problems involved in a return to the Moon. I don't have a lot of faith that we can take care of the attitude problem.

Originally posted by maple5211

Also, it’s going to be interesting when you get china sending a man to the moon!!!
IF it was real, Just imagine it, what would happen IF they take the USA flag from out the ground and put their own flag in the moon!!!

This could very well spark a new cold war!!!!

Nope. It'll just cause the Moon Landing Hoax Chorus to scream that the footage is faked.

I'm not worried about what the Chinese (or anyone else) does with the flag. I'm more concerned with what they might do with things like the Helium3 deposits, the near-limitless solar power, and the handy source of aluminum oxide to smelt down into building material.

Originally posted by Brother Stormhammer

Nope. It'll just cause the Moon Landing Hoax Chorus to scream that the footage is faked.

This is disingenuous and a blatant ad hominum attack by you, sir.

You imply that everyone who questions the Moon landing is some kind of a collection of kooks. One more post like this and I'll report you to the complaint department.

Please try to debate the issues and refrain from personal or group attacks.


[edit on 21-6-2007 by Badge01]