Nvidia Debunks Apollo Conspiracy

[Don Hills]

... You can get the same effect if you stand on a white, highly reflective floor (eg moons surface!)

The moon's surface is dark grey. What Nvidia did show is that it is significantly retroreflective. I did not know that.

[Brumby]

I was disappointed with the video.

I was expecting an accurate physics model recreating the module landing phase and addressing the "no crater" myth, showing dust particle trajectories and accounting for the lower gravity and lack of atmosphere.

... and how would that promote the Nvidia technology?

I doubt they would have had the information to try for a Physx model - and the result would not have been particularly persuasive unless the audience was well versed with the physics involved.  Also, comparison to the actual event would have required a camera monitoring the descent of the actual LEM at a useful angle - otherwise, it would just be an animated clip.  A fantasy.

What Nvidia did is exactly what I would have expected .... except, perhaps, in their choice of presenter.

[akos_nemeth]

Since nobody mentioned the "Moon landing hoax" episode from the Mythbusters tv show, I take the opportunity. I found the episode on Dailymotion:
They talk about the retroreflector from 42:00.
A visit is made to the Apache point observatory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Point_Observatory, which is the home of the "APOLLO" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Point_Observatory_Lunar_Laser-ranging_Operation
"The APOLLO laser has been operational since October 2005, and routinely accomplishes millimeter level range accuracy between the Earth and the Moon."

Ákos

[AG6QR]

OK, first the disclaimer, I am not a conspiracy nutcase, however something is bothering me.

The pictures.

Take a look at the pictures brought back from the moon, every one of them is perfectly framed and exposed, and this is done using a chest mounted camera that has (I think) manual exposure. Granted, these were highly trained guys, but where are all the bad photographs that just show Buzz Aldrin's knees?

Then there's the film. In direct sunlight in space it gets to about 200 degrees F or 93 degrees C then in shadow it goes down to -200F or  -129C (I'm willing to be corrected with these figures). Film exposed to these conditions would not produce good pictures.

However, when considering all the other evidence I still think that they went to the moon.

The film was never left in direct sunlight nor was it left out in open space exposed directly to the cold.  It was kept inside a camera, covered by insulation.

As for exposure settings, yes, the Hasselblads used manual settings, but since all the photos were taken in direct sunlight, with no clouds, that doesn't present a problem.   Set the aperture to f 16 and the shutter speed to the reciprocal of the film speed.  I've shot hundreds of rolls of film in non-metered manual cameras using that setting, and it works very well and very consistently in direct sunlight.

The Hasselblads had fairly wide-angle lenses, and the negatives were fairly large, making it easy to crop the photos to nice compositions.

[george graves]

I have a "friend" - well old high school friend that loves to say the moon landing was a hoax.  He a dirty hipster that just says it for attention.   

[FrankBuss]

Graduate student in Astro-physics with access to equipment doing it for fun (ie, amateur), easy.  Run of the mill amateur, no chance.

(Assuming  lab grade highly focused powerful laser can be purchased by amateur...  which I don't know is or is not the case...)

First I thought, couldn't be that difficult. But the site http://www.csr.utexas.edu/mlrs/ links to the configuration here: https://ilrs.cddis.eosdis.nasa.gov/network/stations/active/MDOL_sitelog.html
The laser has just an output of 1500 mJ. But pulse width is just 200 ps, so this would be equivalent to a 7.5 gigawatt laser. Don't know, might be difficult to buy this from eBay. And good optics for a highly focused beam would be expensive, too.

The telescope has a 0.75 m aperture. Searching the internet for 30 inch telescopes, looks like you can buy one for like $20,000. The receiver is one of those single photon detectors (model F4129F, from Tennelec). Can't find a price for it, but if you have to ask for it, you usually can't afford it IIRC Dave has one of these photon detectors, from a mailbag? An EEVblog episode where he builds such a moon-earth distance measurement machine would be cool.

Maybe if you don't want cm resolution it could be built cheaper? The laser pulse could be much longer, and the light could be modulated, so that a less sensitive telescope / detector combination could amplify it easier, with a narrow filter and AC coupled (like a AM radio). All the parameters are known, and the earth-moon (and back) way could be simulated with sufficient attenuation (a few ND 1000 filters) to test it on earth first.

[EEVblog]

I was disappointed with the video.

I was expecting an accurate physics model recreating the module landing phase and addressing the "no crater" myth, showing dust particle trajectories and accounting for the lower gravity and lack of atmosphere.

Instead they wasted all that effort on the shadow thing, which is easily reproduced on earth. Even amateur photographers know about reflectors and how they are used to reduce shadows. You can get the same effect if you stand on a white, highly reflective floor (eg moons surface!)

No you can't.
The point is that the simulation matched the photograph perfectly. Not kinda-sorta, not making assumptions or fudging things, they did the modeling to such detail that it popped out the perfect result. It is a triumph of science IMO.
Let's see you prove it...

[FrankBuss]

The point is that the simulation matched the photograph perfectly. Not kinda-sorta, not making assumptions or fudging things, they did the modeling to such detail that it popped out the perfect result. It is a triumph of science IMO.

It is mainly a marketing video for their graphic cards and VXGI technology. For all what we know they could have modeled the scene (which is impressive), and then tweaked the reflection, ambient light etc. parameters until it matches the photograph (still impressive). I couldn't find scientific details how it was programmed. Should be based on the physical properties of the objects and light sources only. A realtime rendering with the imperfect VXGI technology couldn't do that and I'm sure there are shortcuts to make it look real. You need raytracing for a physically correct rendering. Might be possible to do it with POV-Ray, which has very advanced physical correct raytracing capabilities.

[VK5RC]

Re the return loss path of Earth Moon Earth,  I recall a figure of 10e-24 or so in the radio part of electromagnetic radiation spectrum.  The moon is a rubbish RF reflector,  don't hold me to it but I thought the loss at the surface was about 10e-6 or so.
As RF EME is possible for an enthusiast,  I would be pretty sure,  optical EME would be as well.  Pulsed laser transmitter,  a great reflector on the moon,  and optics with very sensitive photo detectors would have to be as good or better than RF. 
I thought the moon TV pictures were really bad,  (I can recall seeing them live) so for a 'fake'  they could have done a bit better!
Re the 'sceptics' ,  I think it is an extension of natural suspiciousness (can be part of a healthy scepticism)  ,  an extreme version is paranoia.
Re those old NASA LEM blue prints -  look after them -  that is so cool.

[james_s]

IIRC the TV pictures from the moon were shot with a special camera that did sequential color, it was not standard NTSC, so the video that was broadcast to the world on TV was created by pointing a TV camera at a monitor that displayed the live image. Obviously that's going to result in something less than spectacular picture quality. This was well before it was possible to digitally convert various video formats.

[Dubbie]

The hardest part of making physically accurate renders is getting the shaders right. There are many phenomenon that are quite difficult to model with shader code and have a reasonably large effect on the final image. At least on the moon you don't have an atmosphere to make your lighting more difficult (no absorption, scattering etc) To do truly scientifically accurate shading, you probably have to do spectral rendering as well instead of simplifying colors to RGB blends.

This area of rendering photorealism is my specialty and it's fascinating how even the most realistic of renders is full of "fudges" to account for phenomenon that aren't modeled in the shader.

The point is that the simulation matched the photograph perfectly. Not kinda-sorta, not making assumptions or fudging things, they did the modeling to such detail that it popped out the perfect result. It is a triumph of science IMO.

It is mainly a marketing video for their graphic cards and VXGI technology. For all what we know they could have modeled the scene (which is impressive), and then tweaked the reflection, ambient light etc. parameters until it matches the photograph (still impressive). I couldn't find scientific details how it was programmed. Should be based on the physical properties of the objects and light sources only. A realtime rendering with the imperfect VXGI technology couldn't do that and I'm sure there are shortcuts to make it look real. You need raytracing for a physically correct rendering. Might be possible to do it with POV-Ray, which has very advanced physical correct raytracing capabilities.

[WZOLL]

IIRC the TV pictures from the moon were shot with a special camera that did sequential color, it was not standard NTSC, so the video that was broadcast to the world on TV was created by pointing a TV camera at a monitor that displayed the live image. Obviously that's going to result in something less than spectacular picture quality. This was well before it was possible to digitally convert various video formats.

And then the original hi-res video tape recordings were written over with satellite data  (look it up)

[Bud]

The point is that the simulation matched the photograph perfectly. Not kinda-sorta, not making assumptions or fudging things

I can't see how's that a proof of any specific location the photo was taken at. It only replicated specific lighting conditions, but It could have been Buzz grandma's garage.

[raptor1956]

OK, first the disclaimer, I am not a conspiracy nutcase, however something is bothering me.

The pictures.

Take a look at the pictures brought back from the moon, every one of them is perfectly framed and exposed, and this is done using a chest mounted camera that has (I think) manual exposure. Granted, these were highly trained guys, but where are all the bad photographs that just show Buzz Aldrin's knees?

Then there's the film. In direct sunlight in space it gets to about 200 degrees F or 93 degrees C then in shadow it goes down to -200F or  -129C (I'm willing to be corrected with these figures). Film exposed to these conditions would not produce good pictures.

However, when considering all the other evidence I still think that they went to the moon.

The film was never left in direct sunlight nor was it left out in open space exposed directly to the cold.  It was kept inside a camera, covered by insulation.

As for exposure settings, yes, the Hasselblads used manual settings, but since all the photos were taken in direct sunlight, with no clouds, that doesn't present a problem.   Set the aperture to f 16 and the shutter speed to the reciprocal of the film speed.  I've shot hundreds of rolls of film in non-metered manual cameras using that setting, and it works very well and very consistently in direct sunlight.

The Hasselblads had fairly wide-angle lenses, and the negatives were fairly large, making it easy to crop the photos to nice compositions.

You'd only use f/16 with a large format camera owing to diffraction limiting, but the camera they used, the Hasselblad 500el, was larger than 35mm (Wiki says 56mmx56mm).  With a modern high grade DSLR the resolution is much higher than the finest grain film NASA would have used and with a DSLR you'd probably want to keep the aperture more open than f/8 when possible.  Hand held you want shutter speed so there's no particular need to stop down above f/8.  But,  with larger format you can go higher in f/# before diffraction kicks in.


Brian

[AG6QR]

You'd only use f/16 with a large format camera owing to diffraction limiting, but the camera they used, the Hasselblad 500el, was larger than 35mm (Wiki says 56mmx56mm).  With a modern high grade DSLR the resolution is much higher than the finest grain film NASA would have used and with a DSLR you'd probably want to keep the aperture more open than f/8 when possible.  Hand held you want shutter speed so there's no particular need to stop down above f/8.  But,  with larger format you can go higher in f/# before diffraction kicks in.


Brian

This is drifting into photography technique, but I'll just point out that the 60mm Biogon they used on the lunar surface had a maximum aperture of f/5.6, so you couldn't open up much beyond f/8 if they wanted to, as they only had one more stop to play with.  Also, there's a bit of trade-off to get the sharpest pictures, between diffraction, depth-of-field, and desirability of a fast shutter speed to freeze motion blur.  Depth of field would have been an important constraint, because the lens was manually focused, and incompatible with a reflex finder.  That means the astronaut had to estimate distance, and manually turn the focusing ring to the proper distance, without any feedback of seeing how well-focused the image was in a viewfinder.  I suspect they mostly just set the lens to the hyperfocal distance for the aperture, but that technique works better at smaller apertures.  The lens had available stops of 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32, and 45, so f/16 was right in the middle of the scale.  I don't know what actual shutter speeds and apertures were used.

But anyway, the "sunny 16" rule, which all photographers knew in the days when cameras without built-in light meters were common, is just a starting point.  It's convenient to remember, because it's the aperture that works when the shutter speed is set to the reciprocal of the film speed.  Of course you can open up the aperture while speeding up the shutter, or you can close down the aperture while slowing down the shutter, while maintaining the same exposure.

My point in mentioning that rule was just to show that consistently good exposures aren't hard to achieve with manual cameras that don't have light meters, as long as you know what the lighting conditions are going to be.

[AG6QR]

The point is that the simulation matched the photograph perfectly. Not kinda-sorta, not making assumptions or fudging things

I can't see how's that a proof of any specific location the photo was taken at. It only replicated specific lighting conditions, but It could have been Buzz grandma's garage.

Of course the exercise they went through, by itself, didn't prove that the astronauts went to the moon.  It wasn't intended to be a comprehensive proof of exactly where the photos were taken.  It was intended to debunk the theory that the photos couldn't have been shot on the moon because things wouldn't have looked that way.  And it achieved that pretty well.  It shows that those photos were consistent with what would be expected under the conditions claimed.

That won't convince the conspiracy theorists, of course.  Any time one of their pet ideas is debunked, they'll go on to another one.  And it'll be debunked, and they'll go on to another, and another, etc.  I haven't yet seen any supposed evidence of a fake trip that hasn't already been debunked many times over. 

I'm old enough to remember watching Neil and Buzz walking around on live TV, and I also remember the Soviets.  They were watching the mission closely, using their radio equipment, telescopes, and radar.  If the Soviets had had evidence that it was faked, they would have called us on it.  Anyone who claims the Soviets were in on the NASA conspiracy has a very distorted view of what world politics were like in the 1960s.

[jpc]

And your still ignoring the difference between ethyl and methyl mercury. Ethyl mercury, previously used commonly in vaccines, now in only in certain Flu ones IIRC, is cleared quickly and safely by the body. Methyl mercury on the other hand, is not and is the dangerous one that accumulates in the body causing long term problems. So again, learn the difference between them before you quote from irrelevant sources.

BTW, even ignoring the fact that the ethyl mercury in vaccines was nothing to worry about, anybody living downwind of a coal powered power station would accumulate orders of magnitude more actual harmful mercury from the output of the stations than the amount anyone would have received from vaccine doses orders of magnitude larger than anybody ever received. Coal through its use as a fuel, though primarily in power stations only nowadays, is one of the biggest contributors of mercury to the environment.

[jpc]

...
I'm old enough to remember watching Neil and Buzz walking around on live TV, and I also remember the Soviets.  They were watching the mission closely, using their radio equipment, telescopes, and radar.  If the Soviets had had evidence that it was faked, they would have called us on it.  Anyone who claims the Soviets were in on the NASA conspiracy has a very distorted view of what world politics were like in the 1960s.

Especially considering that the Soviets were likely only months away form their own attempt as, IIRC, only weeks before the actual moon landing, the Soviets put another lander on the moon as part of their preparation. What better for their ideology than to prove the US not only couldn't do it but were lying to you and then months later actually do it, even if they failed in the attempt.

[MrW0lf]

Has anyone watched this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/user/hunchbacked/videos

He has lots of videos pointing out strictly technical issues related to module systems, for example:



I watched some of these long time ago - remember that overall his point was that documentation related to main rocket was looking like real deal, but for module itself seemed more like mockup. Interesting what hardware gurus here think.

[rrinker]

 Assuming he has accurate block diagrams - I think he is equating contemporary low power equipment with 50 year old stuff. Things he questions like pauses, and limiting bus sizes to bare minimums - it's because that's how they HAD to do it using 1960's technology to make something low powered enough, light weight enough to carry along, and robust enough to last in harsh conditions. Sure - TODAY you can find any number of off the shelf microcontrollers that would run rings around anything they landed on the moon AND draw an order of magnitude (maybe - but definitely a LOT less) current. 50 years from now the'll probably be some designer thinking what fools we were for using a micro that had a sleep current of 1 microamp.
 All this complex crap to try and 'prove' that it was all faked - there's too much PHYSICAL evidence which says otherwise and sometimes when I watch some of the more extreme of these videos I feel like Buzz Aldrin and want to just smack the presenter for being such a moron. Same with these "flat earth" types.

 

[MrW0lf]

I would not put it all in one bucket. Pathological conspiracy theorist is no worse or better than pathological believer in current (!) official standpoint. There are several global/local "interest groups" wanting to create "virtual reality" biased in one or other way. In current type of society fundamental way to gain and keep control is lie and manipulate "reality" of target group.
Best we can do in this system is analyze facts in harsh scientific manner while not attached to any belief system offering false sense of security...

[jpc]

But the scientific method means looking at ALL the evidence, not just the evidence that supports your belief. Unfortunately, all the real CT types I have met practice only the latter method, not the former one, i.e. they only look for evidence that supports their beliefs while ignoring anything that contradicts them. For the minute you show why one piece of their 'evidence' is not what they think it is, they move the goalposts and move on to the next on their list until in the end they are back at the beginning and starting all over again, and here I speak from experience from past dealings with a few obsessed ex-friends who haven't seen a CT they dislike.

That is not to deny that conspiracies exist, e.g. Nixon and the VC Paris peace talks pre-1968 election, Watergate/Nixon, Reagan and the Iranian Hostage Crisis pre-1988 election, Reagan again and Iran/Contra, to name but four actual conspiracies that I can think of off the top of my head over the last 50 years. I'm not picking on the US as other countries have had their fair share as well but those were particularly big ones when they became known fairly soon after the event in most cases. But what they do show is that as soon as you have anything but the originator/s of the conspiracy involved, it is only a matter of time before it becomes public.