As recently as yesterday, that too after attending a technical talk on the Chandrayans, somebody raised a doubt, about whether The Apollo Missions were true or fakes? Someone else clarified that such information has to be accepted mostly on FAITH only.
This led me to read up, once again, on the Apollo Missions, the facts as they stand, the conspiracy theories surrounding these missions and the counter arguments.
First the Facts as presented…
First Landing of Man on the Moon – Apollo 11
The primary objective of Apollo 11 was to complete a national goal set by President John F. Kennedy on May 25, 1961: perform a crewed lunar landing and return to Earth.
Additional flight objectives included scientific exploration by the lunar module (LM) crew; deployment of a television camera to transmit signals to Earth; and deployment of a solar wind composition experiment, seismic experiment package and a Laser Ranging Retroreflector.
During the exploration, the two astronauts were to gather samples of lunar-surface materials for return to Earth. They also were to extensively photograph the lunar terrain, the deployed scientific equipment, the LM spacecraft, and each other, both with still and motion picture cameras.
This was to be the last Apollo mission to fly a "free-return" trajectory, which would enable a return to Earth with no engine firing, providing a ready abort of the mission at any time prior to lunar orbit insertion.
Apollo 11 launched from Cape Kennedy on July 16, 1969, carrying Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin into an initial Earth-orbit of 114 by 116 miles. An estimated 650 million people watched Armstrong's televised image and heard his voice describe the event as he took "...one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind" on July 20, 1969.
The
Mission was made up of a command and service module, or CSM, Columbia, piloted
by Collins which included the spacecraft-lunar module adapter, or SLA,
containing the lunar module, or LM, Eagle.
The first EVA began
when Armstrong emerged from the Eagle and deployed the TV camera for the
transmission of the event to Earth. At about 109 hours, 42 minutes after
launch, Armstrong stepped onto the moon. About 20 minutes later, Aldrin
followed him. The camera was then positioned on a tripod about 30 feet from the
LM. Half an hour later, President Nixon spoke by telephone link with the astronauts.
Commemorative
medallions bearing the names of the three Apollo 1 astronauts who lost their
lives in a launch pad fire, and two cosmonauts who also died in accidents, were
left on the moon's surface. A one-and-a-half inch silicon disk, containing
micro miniaturized goodwill messages from 73 countries, and the names of
congressional and NASA leaders, also stayed behind.
During the EVA,
in which they both ranged up to 300 feet from the Eagle, Aldrin deployed the
Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package (EASEP) and
Armstrong and Aldrin gathered and verbally reported on the lunar surface
samples. After Aldrin had spent one hour, 33 minutes on the surface, he
re-entered the LM, followed 41 minutes later by Armstrong. The entire EVA phase
lasted more than two-and-a-half hours, ending at 111 hours, 39 minutes into the
mission.
Armstrong and Aldrin spent 21 hours, 36 minutes on the moon's surface.
EVA refers to Extravehicular activity - Any activity done by an astronaut in outer space outside a spacecraft.
Trans-Earth injection of the CSM began on July 21. Two Television Transmissions each were made during the trans-moon and trans-earth courses.
Re-entry
procedures were initiated on July 24, 44 hours after leaving lunar orbit. The SM
separated from the CM, which was re-oriented to a heat-shield-forward position.
Parachute deployment occurred and after a flight of 195 hours, 18 minutes, 35
seconds - about 36 minutes longer than planned - Apollo 11 splashed down in the
Pacific Ocean, 13 miles from the recovery ship USS Hornet on July 24, 1969.
Subsequent Apollo Missions carrying Men – Apollo 12–17
Apollo 11 was followed by six further trips to the Moon, five of which landed successfully. 12 men walked on the lunar surface in total. But in 1970 future Apollo missions were cancelled. Apollo 17 became the last crewed mission to the Moon, for an indefinite amount of time. Taking place between 7 and 19 December 1972, it was a 12-day mission and broke many records, the longest space walk, the longest lunar landing and the largest lunar samples brought back to Earth.
Harrison H. Schmitt was the lunar module pilot, as
well as being a geologist. He was joined by Ronald E. Evans as command module
pilot and Eugene Cernan as Mission Commander.
Apollo 17 was the only Apollo mission to not carry any astronauts who had previously been test pilots. After the cancellation of Apollo 18, the Apollo mission Schmitt had originally intended to go on, the scientific community lobbied that he be put onto Apollo 17.
".. I'm on the surface; and, as I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come - but we believe not too long into the future - I'd like to just [say] what I believe history will record. That America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17."
At that time, it was known that no further crewed
missions will be sent to moon for sometime.
Beginning of the Fake Controversy
It took 400,000 Nasa employees and contractors to put Neil Armstrong and
Buzz Aldrin on the moon in 1969 – but only one man to spread the idea that it
was all a hoax. His name was Bill Kaysing.
Kaysing said it started as “a hunch, an intuition”, before turning into “a true conviction” – that the US lacked the technical prowess to make it to the moon (or, at least, to the moon and back). Kaysing had actually contributed to the US space programme. Between 1956 and 1963, he was an employee of Rocketdyne, a company that helped to design the Saturn V rocket engines. In 1976, he self-published a pamphlet called 'We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle', which sought evidence for his conviction by means of grainy photocopies and various theories. He managed to establish a few perennial doubts, that are kept alive to this day in Hollywood movies and Fox News documentaries, Reddit forums and YouTube channels.
Despite the extraordinary volume of evidence (including 382kg of moon rock collected across six missions; corroboration from Russia, Japan and China; and images from the Nasa Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter showing the tracks made by the astronauts in the moon dust), belief in the moon-hoax conspiracy has blossomed since 1969.
According
to Guardian - Among 9/11 truthers, anti-vaxxers, chemtrailers, flat-Earthers,
Holocaust deniers and Sandy Hook conspiracists, the idea that the moon landings
were faked isn’t even a source of anger any more – it is just a given fact.
Until his death in 2005, Kaysing maintained that the whole thing was a fraud, filmed in a TV studio. “It’s well documented that Nasa was often badly managed and had poor quality control,” he told Wired in 1994. “But as of 1969, we could suddenly perform manned flight upon manned flight? With complete success? It’s just against all statistical odds.”
In a way, he was
right. When the Soviets launched Sputnik 1 in October 1957 (followed one month
later by Sputnik 2, containing Laika the dog), the US space programme was all
but non-existent. Nasa was founded in 1958 and managed to launch Alan Shepard
into space in May 1961 – but when John F Kennedy announced that the US “should
commit itself to achieve the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man
on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth”, it seemed a stretch. By the
mid-60s, Nasa was consuming more than 4% of the US federal budget, but while
the Soviets were achieving more firsts – the first woman in space (1963), the
first extra-vehicular activity, ie spacewalk (1965) – the Americans experienced
various setbacks, including a launchpad fire that killed all three Apollo 1
astronauts.
This, however, can not be the basis for doubting a mission (a series of missions), witnessed by people all over the world, analysed, vetted and endorsed by an entire community of scientists, technocrats and astronauts from all over the world.
The supposed Anomalies and counter Arguments
The moon-hoax theory entered the modern era in 2001, when Fox News broadcast a documentary called Did We Land on the Moon? Hosted by the X-Files actor Mitch Pileggi, it repackaged Kaysing’s arguments for a new audience. So widespread was its popularity, that parents and school teachers started asking NASA for their version of justifications.
The 4 major questions/ theories proposed by Kaysing and developed further by others include
The waving flag
Conspiracy theorists say:
In the footage, the US flag
that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin rammed into the moon's regolith blows in
the wind. But that is not possible, because there is no atmosphere on the moon.
Science says:
The flag did not flap. It
only moved when the two astronauts touched it and rammed it into the ground. On
Earth, the atmosphere quickly slows down such light oscillations. But on the
moon - without atmosphere - the oscillations keep going for much longer. In
addition, a cross strut was braced in the flag to give the impression it was
blowing.
No stars in the Photos
Conspiracy theorists say:
On the moon pictures, no
stars are to be seen. So they were created in a studio.
Science says:
It's true that on the moon —
without an atmosphere to disturb things — one should have a fantastic view of the
starry cosmos. But when the astronauts were on the moon, it was always daytime. In fact the moon's surface, the lander and the astronauts were
so brightly illuminated by the sun that the weak light of the stars would be impossible to
be seen.
The Photos were too perfect
Conspiracy theorists say:
The Hasselblad cameras
carried by the astronauts at chest height had no viewfinder. How could the
astronauts take so many perfect photos with them?
Science says:
Not all pictures were
perfect. There are numerous blurred images in NASA's archives. Only the most
beautiful ones have been published. In addition, the astronauts had time to
practice with the Hasselblad cameras on Earth. A special wide-angle lens
simplified focusing and allowed larger image sections.
The shadows run diagonally
Conspiracy theorists say:
Some photos show shadows that
do not run parallel to each other. With the sun as the only light source,
however, all shadows should run in parallel. But they don't. That's why
spotlights must have been involved.
Science says:
Parallelism is always a
matter of perspective. Parallel lines on a three-dimensional surface
always appear as if they are converging if they are imaged two-dimensionally.
Think of railway tracks. They seem to converge towards the horizon, although
they are always guaranteed to be parallel. This is true on earth and also on
the moon.
Fried by Radiation
Perhaps the most convincing argument that the landings
were faked has to do with something called the Van Allen belts. These are two giant
doughnut-shaped belts surrounding the Earth. They are made of highly energetic
charged particles from the solar wind. Some people believe humans couldn’t have
passed through these belts without being exposed to lethal doses of radiation.
This was a genuine concern before the Apollo missions.
And it is the reason scientists behind Apollo 11 made sure they protected the
astronauts as best they could. They insulated the spacecraft from radiation
with an Aluminium shell. And they chose a trajectory from the Earth to the Moon
which minimised the amount of time spent in the Van Allen belts.
Readings from the nine Apollo missions that reached
the Moon showed the astronauts’ average radiation exposure was 0.46
radiation-absorbed dose (rad). This proved Nasa was right to shield the
astronauts from radiation. Though it’s less than that experienced by some
nuclear energy workers, 0.46 rad is around 10 times more than the radiation
exposure of medical professionals who routinely work with x-ray and
radiotherapy machines.
However the Moon fact is very clear. As of today, even with a powerful amateur telescope you can see the Apollo landing sites and, if you look at the photos from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, you can spot the remnants of the Apollo missions yourself.
In Conclusion
Of
course, until we return to the Moon there will always be anomalies and oddities
in the records that can spark new claims that the Moon landings were faked. But
it is the sheer size and variety of this record that proves every one of these
claims to be false.
From the Apollo Moon missions, there are 8,400 publicly available photos, thousands of hours of video footage, a mountain of scientific data, and full transcripts and audio recordings of all air-to-ground conversations. We even have 382 kilograms of Moon rock that Apollo astronauts brought back to Earth. These rocks have been independently verified as lunar by laboratories around the world, ruling out a US conspiracy.
If this is not enough,, Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) takes high resolution pictures of the lunar surface from a low orbit, even today. During its mission, it has captured the landing sites and the abandoned descent modules and rovers from the Apollo missions. And its resolution is so good it has picked up the dark squiggly paths that the astronaut’s footprints made. Spacecrafts from China, India and Japan have also spotted these landing sites, providing further independent verification of the landings.
Apart from all the above, is a simple instrument installed 54 years ago by Apollo 11. During their day on the Moon, Armstrong and Aldrin planted a lunar laser ranging retroreflector array on the surface. It’s still operational today, and allows us to reflect lasers off of it and measure the distance to the Moon down to the centimetre. We simply couldn’t do this if we hadn’t visited the Moon.
In Armstrong’s
own words – If walking around on the surface of the moon was difficult (inspite
of the TV cables wrapped around his feet), then correcting course and landing
on the moon was ten times tougher -“far and away the most complex part of the
flight. And we were not sure if we were ready for it till it happened".
That is until you
compare it with the difficulty of maintaining a lie to the entire world for
five decades without a single slip from any Nasa employee. You would also have
to imagine that 2019-era special effects were available to Nasa in 1969 and not
one of the 600 million TV viewers noticed anything amiss. Stanley Kubrick’s
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a decent indication of what Hollywood special
effects could do at the time – and it’s extremely tacky. It genuinely was
simpler to film on location.
Lastly in a homage to science and its achievements it is only fair to
believe that that the 12 astronauts in total who have walked on the Moon and
the 400,000 people involved in the Apollo programme would have neither the will
nor the way to fake one of humanity’s greatest ever achievements.
The above link also offers latest evidence lending absolute credence to the Apollo Missions.
References :
·
One giant … lie? Why so many people still think the
moon landings were faked - The Guardian
·
How do we know that we went to the Moon? –
Institute of Physics
· Did the Moon landing actually happen? – Made for Minds
· Wikepedia and other sites
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