Did US Astronaut land on the moon for real?

[GeoffreyF]

There are a lot of reasons to believe that people really walked on the moon *IF* you make an effort to verify it.  There are NONE to bother thoughtful people with your self absorbed musings. This is an engineering blog.  It's not an aimless musing blog.

[Howardlong]

Here are some links documenting some independent Apollo observations.

http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/UoFSTS/UoFSTSx.htm
http://www.arrl.org/eavesdropping-on-apollo-11

and my favourite link, which shows Doppler calculations during Apollo 17:

http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/Apollo17/APOLLO17.htm

[Simon]

i think we have established that man did land on the moon As for locking the thread it's too hilarious.. at the moment.

[bsfeechannel]

At 02:56 UTC July 21, 1969.

After watching First Man:

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1213641/

I was disappointed to see some lack of enginnering details and a lot romance in it. I was expectiong something like the Martian with much more "realistic" technical discussions.
Anyway I started to think about the technical problems they needed to solve/manage, and the more I think the more I got pushed in the "never happened" bucket.

Lots of people got out of that movie with that impression. Even those not involved with engineering at all. Since technology is pervasive these days, everyone can quickly assess how improbable, though not impossible, that endeavor would be back then. So you're not alone.

When an Italian like me, with spanish money, discovered America we returned to that land more and more.

And now we have a pizzeria on every corner of the continent. Grazie tante.

[tggzzz]

Plus the Soviet Union would have loved to prove it fake.

I have some distant relatives (met some of them today at a funeral).

The kid's grandmother worked with Putin, and apparently the mother and grandmother continue to believe the moon landings are only US propaganda.

[coppercone2]

hard to believe the russian space program is real, sputnik looks like something out of a distillery that got into orbit through industrial accident

[cdev]

Yes, they did and they collected a hell of a lot of information while they were there, much of which people haven't even sifted through yet. (Literally)

(People could probably help with that if they really want to, BTW.)

(Nobody) could possibly have made it all up.

[GreyWoolfe]

So, that's why polar bears don't eat penguins. They can't find them in the dark. 

I hear that penguins taste like crap, too oily.  Probably gives the polar bears the craps.

Absolutely unlikely.
Work out the reason for yourself.

On the first part of the statement, I read that somewhere about their flesh being very oily.

A particularly unflattering description of penguin meat composed by a Belgian seaman in 1898 suggests that it won’t be replacing chicken anytime soon: “If it’s possible to imagine a piece of beef, odiferous cod fish, and a canvas-backed duck roasted together in a pot, with blood and cod-liver oil for sauce, the illustration would be complete.”


 On the second statement, I was being facetious.  If a joke needs to be explained, obviously it was either too obscure or not funny.  Mea culpa.

[bsfeechannel]

Here it is, nearly 50 years later, and no country has come close to recreating it.

Since no country, not even the US, came close to recreating it, conspiracy theorists are partying.

And if the US manages to do it again, people will say that they planted the evidence.

The fact is that conquering the outer space is difficult, dangerous and expensive.

[rstofer]

The fact is that conquering the outer space is difficult, dangerous and expensive.

The Cold War provided us with the 'will' to land on the moon.  Kennedy did the speech, Congress provided the money and some of the smartest people in the world made it happen.

It's nice when the country pulls together toward a common goal.

[GeoffreyF]

Hmm. So you CAN learn? So all is not lost!
I think Antarctica is fake. How can it be cold there if the sun shines during the day? It's warm here at the same time!

I always try to be polite and respectful, it gives a good feeling...

Your post was picking a fight!  It was completely off the topic of this entire forum!   You were not polite, you were not respectful. You were not thoughtful at all.  You deserve the responses you have gotten.   Now - do you have a single thought about electrical engineering?  THAT IS WHAT THIS FORUM IS ABOUT - not your silly fight picking speculations.  I think this entire thread should be deleted.

[chris_leyson]

I used to chat with an electronics enthusiast about 45 years ago and he told me about the rush to get a 20MHz receiver put together so he could listen to Sputnik 1's beacon. Then there was Sputnik 2 that took the first dog, Laika, into orbit but she only survived a few hours because the cabin temperature reached 43C. Then Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1. Valentina Tereshkova first woman cosmanaut on Vostok 6. Luna 9 first soft landing on the moon three years before Apollo 11. Venera 7, first probe to land on Venus. Salyut 1, first manned space station. The Russian space program was way ahead of the US for a long time, however, they never put a cosmanaut on the moon because of the failed N1 rocket program, the 1st stage of the N1 is still the most powerful rocket stage ever built.

[bsfeechannel]

The Cold War provided us with the 'will' to land on the moon.  Kennedy did the speech, Congress provided the money and some of the smartest people in the world made it happen.

The question is: did it happen? A speech, tons of money and the smartest people were enough to get people there? That's what the film First Man makes you ask.

It's nice when the country pulls together toward a common goal.

The Cold War is over.

[SkyMaster]

The fact is that conquering the outer space is difficult, dangerous and expensive.

The Cold War provided us with the 'will' to land on the moon.  Kennedy did the speech, Congress provided the money and some of the smartest people in the world made it happen.

It's nice when the country pulls together toward a common goal.

The Lunar Module landing gear (Lander Legs) were Made in Canada 

 

[wasyoungonce]

Did they land on the moon....2 words: Kaguya and LRO

Well not 2 words maybe 3 but 2 are acronyms that says it all

[EEVblog]

I've done my own independent research and found new evidence. You're welcome.

[fsr]

If they didn't, from where did all the freely-available photo and video material from the several lunar missions came?

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/index.html
http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo_gallery.html?lang=la
https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/albums

You can see very interesting stuff, like videos of a hammer falling at the same speed than a plume, people going down ladders in "impossible" positions, the "moon car" throwing dust that falls down to the ground unsuspended by air. All sorts of crazy stuff.

They did "abandon" the moon afterwards, because manned missions to the moon are risky, very expensive, and there isn't much of interest there.

By the way: they left a mirror on the surface of the moon, that can be used to bounce a laser and measure the distance to the moon with great precision.

Why would the scientific community worldwide (including the russians) be a part of some crazy conspiracy to make us believe that the NASA landed on the moon, if it were false? The russians would had been very interested in uncovering such a scam.

[EEVblog]

They did "abandon" the moon afterwards, because manned missions to the moon are risky, very expensive, and there isn't much of interest there.

Yep, wasn't much left to learn at that point, and the political goals were achieved, only political downside was left (i.e. astronauts dying)
I'm surprised they maintained the funding to do as many trips as they did.

[EEVblog]

hard to believe the russian space program is real, sputnik looks like something out of a distillery that got into orbit through industrial accident

I've sat inside the cockpit of the Buran space shuttle, it's pretty "how ya'doing"

[NiHaoMike]

[vk6zgo]

Perhaps you are very stupid?

You can't imagine how many mistakes I did in the past. Opening a therad like this was the last one. 

Hmm. So you CAN learn? So all is not lost!

I think Antarctica is fake. How can it be cold there if the sun shines during the day? It's warm here at the same time!

Actually most of Antarctica is in darkness for 24 hours per day, when it's warm in Canada.

So, that's why polar bears don't eat penguins. They can't find them in the dark. 

Nope, they can't afford the airfares!

[coppercone2]

I used to chat with an electronics enthusiast about 45 years ago and he told me about the rush to get a 20MHz receiver put together so he could listen to Sputnik 1's beacon. Then there was Sputnik 2 that took the first dog, Laika, into orbit but she only survived a few hours because the cabin temperature reached 43C. Then Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1. Valentina Tereshkova first woman cosmanaut on Vostok 6. Luna 9 first soft landing on the moon three years before Apollo 11. Venera 7, first probe to land on Venus. Salyut 1, first manned space station. The Russian space program was way ahead of the US for a long time, however, they never put a cosmanaut on the moon because of the failed N1 rocket program, the 1st stage of the N1 is still the most powerful rocket stage ever built.

yes cook a lovable dog in orbit while the whole world is watching. An example of how much the soviet union cares about the individual.

perhaps it was a pact, to land the probe in north korea after wards? Great explanation too, too fucking stupid to figure out a heat sink solution. Or to give it the benefit of the doubt of being habitable and recoverable, rather then deciding not to waste money in case the radiation is too strong.

I always saw the space animals as sad reflection of human nature, dignity and cost because no one bothered to try to make it survivable. Even theoretically it was like 'yea bitch your gonna die doing some cost evaluation for us in space'......

you can't blame engineers or physicists or anything like that, it was just a value decision...

[james_s]

Here it is, nearly 50 years later, and no country has come close to recreating it.

Since no country, not even the US, came close to recreating it, conspiracy theorists are partying.

And if the US manages to do it again, people will say that they planted the evidence.

The fact is that conquering the outer space is difficult, dangerous and expensive.

Is it worth billions of dollars to placate a handful of nut jobs who wouldn't be convinced if you physically took them to the moon? I don't think so, they'd come up with some new conspiracy. Let the conspiracy theorists party away, they're not really hurting anything. That sort of person will *always* latch onto a conspiracy theory about something. I suspect it's similar to a religious belief, you can't change the mind of a person who believes by using evidence and facts.

[coppercone2]

Here it is, nearly 50 years later, and no country has come close to recreating it.

Since no country, not even the US, came close to recreating it, conspiracy theorists are partying.

And if the US manages to do it again, people will say that they planted the evidence.

The fact is that conquering the outer space is difficult, dangerous and expensive.

Is it worth billions of dollars to placate a handful of nut jobs who wouldn't be convinced if you physically took them to the moon? I don't think so, they'd come up with some new conspiracy. Let the conspiracy theorists party away, they're not really hurting anything. That sort of person will *always* latch onto a conspiracy theory about something. I suspect it's similar to a religious belief, you can't change the mind of a person who believes by using evidence and facts.

i think space travel is pretty extreme so it brings to mind weird thoughts compared to other issues. i am not sure this is entirely fair.

[VK5RC]

I think zucca was looking for a bit more technical information than the movie First Man provided. I can highly recommend the semi-autobiography of the same name. Armstrong was a very impressive character.
I can also recommend the Haynes book (the car service manual guys) How to service your Apollo 11. Provides moderately technical background eg how did the spacesuits actually work.