I had mentioned in another post something about this moon landing thing that has plagued devotees for so many decades. I normally don't discuss it in public because the reactions are usually rather predictably unpleasant. Perhaps this is a better forum to create some deeper awareness for those who always wondered. If not, moderators, feel free to (re)move these posts. Also, I find it in place on this forum because over the years many, many devotees have left ISKCON as a result of inadequate answers in this regard.

Another reason why I'd like to bring it up here is that I have not found many other topics that meet with more vicious ridicule and dogmatism in ISKCON than this one. Sure, there are loaded spiritual issues as to the origin of the soul or the system of disciplic succession, but these can be debated on the basis of sastra. What is really remarkable about the moon landings topic is that most proof offered by devotees that they didn’t happen is purely non-sastric, or simply the statement that “Prabhupada said…” Virtually all so-called proof comes from pseudo-scientific sources and is accepted whimsically as conclusive without any scrutiny. I have also noticed that many devotees do not know that Srila Prabhupada said many different things about it.

My next post will highlight the most obvious references to the moon landings from the Vedabase in chronological order. What becomes clear immediately is that Srila Prabhupada appears to be somewhat ambivalent. Sometimes he is adamant that the landings were faked, sometimes he makes a concession for the possibility that they could have happened. Some gray areas with references that the landings may have taken place elsewhere can be found, too. All in all, it also shows a bunch of insecure and confused disciples trying to deal with an obviously difficult issue.

Interview with LA Times Reporter About Moon Trip, Los Angeles, 12/26/1968
Reporter: If the space program, either the Russian or the American program, which have plans to try to land on the moon and return safely, if this is successful, do you think this accomplishment would hurt the Krishna movement in the United States? It would contradict Vedic...
Prabhupada: Why? First thing is even they are successful, according to our principle, it is simply waste of time. Because we are not concerned even with the moon planet. We are trying to go to the planet of Krishna from where nobody returns back to this wretched condition of life. So the wretched condition of life is as good in moon planet as it is in this earth planet. And do you know what is the wretched condition of life? Yes. The birth, death, old age and disease. This is the wretched condition of life. So you cannot avoid this wretched condition of life in the moon planet also. There is birth, death, old age and disease. But where we are trying to go by Krishna consciousness, there is no birth, death, old age and disease. So even there are, people are successful to go to the moon planet, what connection we have got there? We are not at all concerned with any planet where there is birth, death and old age and disease. Even in the highest planet of this universe.
Reporter: Well, what I’m getting at is that if for instance you say that first this conviction that they would not be able to land, and secondly that whatever earth people would go there would be opposed and would not be able to safely return, if you say this, based on Vedic literature, and other members of the Krishna movement heard this, and then if the feat were accomplished, would this not seem a contradiction or something that had been said would be the case and then the opposite was proved true? Would this...
Prabhupada: What is that contradiction? There is nothing contradiction. We say that if you get a suitable body you can enter there. So if by your scientific process you can equip yourself with suitable body you can enter there. Where is the contradiction?
Reporter: Well, you said that spacesuit was not a suitable...
Prabhupada: That is a fact. That is a fact. That is not suitable.
Reporter: That’s the way they intend to go.
Prabhupada: That is, that is not, that we can safely say that with this suit you cannot go there. You have to make a different suit. Perhaps you do not know that.
Reporter: Okay, then let’s say that if with that suit they do go there and do return, would that be a contradiction?
Prabhupada: Why contradiction? We say that if you get a suitable suit you can go there. Where is the contradiction?
Reporter: Well I thought you said the spacesuit was not suitable.
Prabhupada: Yes. Spacesuit is not suitable. But if you can go with the spacesuit that may be contradiction, but that I am certain you cannot go.
Reporter: I’m confused.
Prabhupada: I say... Just try to understand me, that if you can prepare a suitable body, you can go there. But this spacesuit is not the suitable body. Is that all right? Now if you actually go there by this spacesuit, that will be contradiction to my statement, but I am certain you cannot do that.
Reporter: I see.
Prabhupada: Yes. So there will be no contradiction. Just clearly try to understand.
Reporter: Okay. Then I’ll try to repeat what you said and see if I am correct.
Prabhupada: I’ll repeat. I’ll repeat. First thing is that to enter into the moon planet you have to prepare yourself for a different body. If that body, you think that it is already made by the spacesuit, spacesuit is that different body, then it will be contradiction to my statement. But I say that with the spacesuit that you have manufactured, that is not fit to enter there. Now it is clear? The spacesuit is not fit for entering there. Is that clear?
Reporter: Yes.
Prabhupada: Now if by chance with this spacesuit you enter there, that will be contradiction, that nobody can enter. But I say you can enter there with a suitable body. If you think that the spacesuit is that suitable body then you can enter there. But I think this spacesuit is not that suitable body.
Reporter: If I think the spacesuit is suitable...
Prabhupada: For entering that moon planet... That is your statement, but I say that spacesuit is not suitable for entering into the...
Reporter: If I think the spacesuit is suitable and, say, if I am an astronaut and I land there, I can land there?
Prabhupada: If it is suitable. First thing that if it is suitable you can land. But to my opinion it is not suitable. Therefore you cannot land.
Reporter: Well... So then you are not saying then that it would be impossible for...
Prabhupada: That I never say. I say in the beginning that in order to enter moon planet you have to get a suitable type of body. That suitable type of body is not that spacesuit. Therefore the conclusion is that you cannot enter with this spacesuit. Is it clear?
Reporter: That part is clear, but not if other questions are asked.

Srimad-Bhagavatam 6.1.6, Bombay, 11/06/1970
Just like modern scientists, they are finding difference between this planet and the moon planet. They say that there is no living entity. That is not fact. They... Even though they have reached the moon planet, it is not a fact that there is no living entity. Accepting they reached the moon planet, they might have gone to the part where it is desert or barren land, because in each and every planet there is such possibility. In our, this planet also, when I was passing through the Suez Canal, it is horrible desert. So if somebody drops in that Arabian desert and concludes that there is no living entity in this planet, it is simply foolish. Similarly, these people are going, maybe going... First of all, I don’t believe they have gone, frankly speaking. Even they have gone, they are landing in some part of the moon planet where there is no inhabitation.

Room Conversation, Sydney, 04/01/1972
Prabhupada: At once. Yes. The newspaper said that “Mr. such and such went to moon planet.” Oh, immediately believe. See? A newspaper, ten cent worth newspaper. And in the Bhagavad-gita Krishna says, yanti deva vrata devan: [Bg. 9.25] “One who can... One can go to the demigods planets by worshiping them. You can go, yanti deva vrata devan, as others. Similarly, one can come to Me by worshiping Me.” Mad yajino ’pi yanti mam. So they never worshiped Chandra, and how they can go to the Chandra planet, or moon planet? Then Krishna is false. Krishna is imperfect. They become perfect. They are defying Krishna’s instruction. They have gone to moon planet. Then our whole propaganda, Krishna consciousness, becomes bogus. Therefore I always protest.
Sudama: They have not gone.
Prabhupada: They have not gone. We have got our tests. I am speaking from the very beginning, “They have not gone.” And practically you see, even if you have gone, what utility you have made? They are simply planning, again planning. “We shall get petrol from there. We shall have defense from there.” Simply bluffing, simply bluffing. The Americans will go to the moon planet to defend his country from the Russians. Just see. And we have to believe all these nonsense proposals. What defense they will do from there? Is it not the proposal? Yes.

Morning Walk, Cheviot Hills Golf Course, Los Angeles, 05/17/1973
Prabhupada: No, no. Not 67, 57. Sixteen years before. They are all childish. I am a layman. It will never be successful. It is already written there in my Easy Journey to Other Planets. Here also, that, some press reporter asked me in San Francisco, when I landed, “What is your position about this moon planet?” “It is simply a waste of time and energy. That’s all. You cannot go there.”

Bhagavad-Gita 4.12, Vrindavan, 08/04/1974
I say therefore, these Americans, that “You are born of this rich nation. That is also a result of pious activities.” Because janma... Janmaisvarya-sruta-sri. And wealth also. The Americans have got immense wealth. That is also a result of pious activities. And janmaisvarya-sruta, education. They have got the highest education. Now they are going, trying to go to the moon planet. Or they have gone. That is education, scientific education. And sri, they’re beautiful also. All Americans... We have seen so many boys and girls here. They’re beautiful also. This is not ordinary thing. This is due to pious activities. Janmaisvarya-sruta-sri.

Morning Walk, Perth, 05/18/1975
Prabhupada: By argument, by teaching. [break] Just see how nice flower is coming from the sand. And they say there is no vegetation. What is the difference between this sand and that sand? Sand is sand. Huh? How they are coming? Wherefrom they are getting nourishment? If there no possibility of living being, who is coming to water it? Nobody is coming. In this place, flower, it is a good as the flower growing on the land. But they are growing in the sand, you see. You see actually in the sand things are coming out, and one rascal will say, “No, there is no life.” We have to believe it? Even it is full of sand and dust. Here we see dust and sand produce life, so why shall I believe these rascals about sand? What is the difference between that sand and this sand?
Amogha: Some scientists admit there is life there, there may be life...
Prabhupada: No, no, these scientists are all rascals; first of all take it, don’t believe it. “Some scientists say”; then who is real scientist? This scientist says there is no life, another scientist says there may be, then who is right, hm?
Amogha: They have to go and see. (laughs) But they don’t see any signs of civilization or buildings, so they say it may be plant life, but they don’t see anything...
Prabhupada: First of all whether you have gone there. That is our charge, “You have not gone there.”
Amogha: That’s what we are trying to do. In a few years we will find out.
Prabhupada: Yes. They might have gone to some hellish planet, where there is only sand, only, and very hot, and the culprit is pushed through that deserted place to the Yamaraja. And before going to Yamaraja he has to suffer so much. There are places, copperlike, you see. (aside:) Hare Krishna. So hot, and the criminal has to go on that copper land. There are mentioned for many millions of miles simply copper, and one has to pass through that to Yamaraja. So, they might have gone to some such place, not to the moon planet, who is the source of vegetation even throughout the whole universe—and in his own planet there is no vegetation. Now I am sure they have not gone to moon planet. How they will go? It is beyond the sun. I was protesting that they have not gone; now I am convinced that they have not gone. The Russian scientists and the American scientists joined on the platform, “Don’t expose me, I don’t expose you.” (laughter) (Bengali) “You have to do your business and same I have to do my business. Let us support one another.” In all other case, they are inimical, and the scientific field they are friends. That means that if a scientist, another scientist, opposes me, then my attempt will be futile, so let us don’t do it.
Srutakirti: You don’t expose me, and I won’t expose you.
Prabhupada: Because we are doing business, we are getting money from these rascal government, so if you expose me, then I will not get money, and if I expose you, you will not get money. Let us remain together and let them remain fools. That’s all. This is it. If a common man like me can understand the whole policy, how the scientist will not understand? But they have made a compromise that “Don’t expose me, I’ll not expose you, and let us take money from the government.” This is going on.


Morning Walk, Melbourne, 05/21/1975
Devotee: The first moon landing was 1961.

[Actually, the first Moon landing was Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969.]

Prabhupada: That is beginning. First of all they sent dog. (laughter)
Madhudvisa: Space dog. Space mouse.
Prabhupada: Huh? Space mouse.
Devotee: Space monkey also.
Prabhupada: So since 1955 even. So twenty years, what they have done?
Devotee: Spent billions of dollars.
Prabhupada: Yes, simply they have brought little dust, that’s all.
Madhudvisa: Now they have found that that same dust is here on the earth.

[As mentioned elsewhere, the dust is not like anything found here on Earth. This is an unfounded argument by Moon-hoax advocate Bill Kaysing that he has never been able to back-up.]

Prabhupada: Yes. Simply propaganda. They are not going. Now the Russian scientist and American scientist are combined. Because both of them thieves, so one thief is asking, “Don’t expose me. I will not expose you, so that our business will go on.” This is the way. “Let us combine together and cheat these rascals, and otherwise, if you expose me, then I will expose you. Then our business will stop.”

Morning Walk, Honolulu, 06/02/1975
Prabhupada: [break] ...are going to Venus, Americans and Russians combined together?
Ambarisa: This summer.
Prabhupada: Oh, in the summer. Venus is very cold? Why they have selected summer season? (laughter) [break] ...could not go to the moon, and Venus is far above moon. How they will go?
Bali-mardana: They’re not going to Venus, are they?
Paramahamsa: Are they going to Mars?
Bali-mardana: No, they’re just going around the earth, right?
Ambarisa: Yeah, they’re linking up in space.
Devotee (3): Prabhupada, when they said they went to the moon and they showed films of them landing and walking on the moon, was this all a bluff?
Prabhupada: Yes, here they... All laboratory work, that’s all.
Devotee (3): They all made it up?
Prabhupada: Yes.

[These are absolute statements by Srila Prabhupada, yet there is absolutely no proof whatsover that the Moon landings were faked. Rather the opposite.]

Morning Walk, Los Angeles, 07/24/1975
Prabhupada: No, no, in the sand. You’ll find so many lives, many millions. How there is life in the water? There is life in the water, there is life on the land, there is life in the air, so where is there no life? How you can say there is no life? That is foolishness. And they say that the dust brought from the moon planet is the same. It can be found here. So why there should not be life?
Paramahamsa: If there is life on other planets then they assume it’s in a plant form or very, very low, like plants, bushes at the most.
Prabhupada: That is their opinion.
Tamala Krishna: Srila Prabhupada? If these scientists, they landed on the Rahu planet, that means that...
Prabhupada: That could be, but some... Just like somebody was saying that there are many planets unknown. They might have gone to some... Just like there are many parts of the world you have never seen. Even on this planet, you cannot say that you have seen all the parts of the world. That is not possible. [break]

Room Conversation with Reporter, Los Angeles, 06/04/1976
Reporter: When I interviewed you perhaps five or six years ago, it was before there were reports of the astronauts landing on the moon, and I asked you at that time if you thought, what you thought about it, and you said that, as I recall, that they would not be able to land or explore, because spirits or creatures that lived on the moon would not allow it. The reports of course said that indeed people did land and explore and return safely. I understand you have further thoughts about that (laughter) and you’ve even written a lot about it. I wonder if you could tell me, not at great length perhaps, but what your belief about those events is.
Prabhupada: Yes. From the.... That question I was discussing the other day. In the common sense, gross sense, that all over the world, they accept Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, in this way Saturday last. So why these arrangement? Sunday first and Monday second, and nobody could reply it. But as a layman I can conclude that Sun planet is first and the moon planet is next. So if you cannot go to the sun planet, which is ninety-three million miles away, how you can go to the moon planet within four days? Nobody could answer me. Can you answer?

[I never understood this reasoning. In many European countries the week starts on Monday, not Sunday. There is no world wide conclusion as to how exactly the names of weekdays have come about. Ancient Celtic and Germanic cultures linked their weekdays to names of gods. There are theories that indicate that the weekdays are named in relation to the brightness of the planets as visible from earth with naked eyes and clear night skies, rather than their distance from the Earth. Other theories link the appearance of planets to hours of the day and extrapolate the sequence of weekdays from the planet that occupies the first hour of the day. Again, there is no conclusive correlation between the order of weekday names and the distance of the planets from the Earth.]

Reporter: Well, I don’t think it’s worth the answer now, but I’m wondering what your response is.
Prabhupada: But this is the arrangement all over the world. Sunday first, Monday second, then Tuesday. So Sun, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, in this way. Last Saturn. This is the arrangement of the planets. So if this is the arrangement of the planets, moonday next to..., moon next to sun, and if you cannot go to the sun, how can you go to the moon?
Reporter: Do you, in other words, do you believe that astronauts landed somewhere?
Prabhupada: That is next question. First of all, whether you actually went to the moon, that is the first question. You have to conclude that you did not, because the sun planet is first, the moon planet is second. You cannot go to the sun planet, ninety-three millions of miles, how can you go to the moon planet?
Reporter: Well, except that...
Prabhupada: According to our sastra, the moon planet is above the sun planet, and the distance is 1,600,000 miles. So accepting that the sun is 93,000,000 miles away, then you add another 1,600,000, almost 2,000,000, it becomes 15,000,000 miles away. So if you go at the speed of 18,000 miles per hour, it takes more than 6 months. So how you go there in 4 days? And you advertise in the paper: “Now, they have reached.” After 4 days.
Ramesvara: They don’t accept that the moon is further away.
Prabhupada: They don’t accept, that is another thing, but we have got this information. How we can accept it?
Reporter: I didn’t understand that last.
Ramesvara: I said to Prabhupada that the modern man believes that the moon is closer, but Prabhupada said, “But our ancient literatures teach that the moon is further away.” So since we have that information, how can we accept the version of the modern scientists?
Reporter: Hm hm.
Ramesvara: We’ve got...
Prabhupada: Not only that. Why this arrangement that Monday and, Sunday first, Monday second?
Reporter: Well, that doesn’t necessarily speak of distance.
Prabhupada: Hm?
Reporter: It doesn’t necessarily speak of distance.
Prabhupada: That.... Distance may not be, but you have to accept the sun planet first, moon planet next.
Reporter: Er...
Prabhupada: Distance is not the question.
Reporter: OK.
Prabhupada: Why this arrangement: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday? There is some system. The system is, just like first, second, third, fourth. So it is naturally concluded the moon planet is next to the sun planet.
Reporter: Do you feel—maybe you answered this, but I didn’t understand the answer—do you feel that astronauts did land somewhere, but it was some other planet?
Prabhupada: That may be. Or it may not be also.
Tamala Krishna: What about that sometimes people ask us what about the pictures of man on the moon?
Ramesvara: They show man in a spacesuit walking on some other planet.
Prabhupada: That is also, what is called, argumentative. Somebody says it is arbitrary arrangement.
Reporter: Hm. Laboratory.
Prabhupada: Of course, we do not go into the details of this. My question is that why Sunday first and Monday second? Nobody can apli..., replies.

Morning Walk, San Francisco 07/21/1975
Paramahamsa: In Stockholm, Prabhupada, in the museum, they have a whole room, and in the room there is all these... There’s American flag and Swedish flag, and there’s a whole exhibit with one teeny little rock about as big as my finger nail that the Americans gave the Swedes. It’s supposed to be a rock from the moon. And they said in it that it’s exactly as any kind of rock that you’ll find on earth. (laughter)
Prabhupada: They say? It is simply cheating. They found this in Arizona, somebody... (laughter) And laboratory work.

[Of course, “they said” is not clarified, nor where in Arizona the rocks came from, or even where this information came from (other than the mention of an ambiguous “somebody”). Between 1969 and 1972 Apollo missions brought back 842 pounds of lunar rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand and dust from the lunar surface. The six space flights returned 2,196 individual specimens from six sites on the Moon. These specimens have been processed into more than 97,000 individually cataloged samples. The lunar sample laboratory at Johnson Space Center is the chief repository for the Apollo samples where pristine lunar samples are prepared for shipment to scientists and educators. More than 60 laboratories worldwide actively pursue sample studies; some 1,100 samples are sent out to researchers annually. Over the last 30 years thousands of geologists from all over the world have analyzed these samples and found that they are like nothing else on Earth. There has never been presented any proof of any rocks from Arizona being identical to any of the specimens of Moon rocks. It has been suggested that researchers could not to tell the difference between fake and authentic rocks since no one had ever examined a Moon rock before. This claim is utter nonsense. In addition to the rocks returned by Apollo, there are samples of lunar rocks that have fallen to Earth as meteorites (which are very rare, with only about 30 known samples). Tests have shown the Apollo Moon rocks and the meteorites are of identical origin; however, the Apollo samples lack other features that would distinguish them as meteorites, such as scorching and oxidation. Also, the Moon rocks have characteristics that are not found in terrestrial or artificial rocks, such as evidence of meteoroid bombardment and exposure to cosmic rays. Likewise, terrestrial rocks have unique characteristics not found in the Moon rocks, such as weathering and exposure to water. Finally, the Moon rocks returned by Apollo have been determined to be between 3.1 and 4.4 billion years old.]

Bahulasva: I have been trying to arrange a meeting between Your Divine Grace and that astronaut. He was going to come to Rathayatra, but he had to go to Florida for some space project.
Prabhupada: What does he say, astronaut?
Bahulasva: He says that... His name is Edgar Mitchell, and he was one of the men who went to the moon. But we talked, and he said... He thinks he has gone to the moon. But he said that when he was there, he had a religious experience, and he felt that there was a God. When he went to the moon, he had this experience. So when he came back, he was telling all his scientist friends what his experience was. So they became very afraid, and they kicked him out of the space project. They thought he had become a fanatic, religious sentimentalist, so they kicked him out. So now he has opened up an institute for noetic sciences or... It is some Greek word. It means like spiritual sciences. He wants to prove to the scientific world that there is God.

[Navy Captain Dr. Edgar Mitchell was never kicked out of any program. He partook in the Apollo 14 mission from January 31st until February 9th, 1971, and was the 6th man to walk on the Moon. He retired from the Navy in 1972 and founded the Institute for Neotic Sciences. They make it emphatically clear that they are “not a spiritual association, political-action group, or a single-cause institute.” He never spoke of God during his experience in outer space, but rather of "a sense of universal connectedness" and that the cosmos itself was somehow conscious.]

Prabhupada: That’s nice. He is good.
Bahulasva: So we gave him a copy of Easy Journey to Other Planets and Srimad-Bhagavatam, and he’s been reading that. He is friends with that other scientist, Wernher Von Braun, who gave that speech also saying that he feels that there is definitely God by his scientific studies. We also wrote him a letter, but we haven’t gotten any response. Svarupa Damodara prabhu wrote him also.

[In September of 1975, Wernher von Braun was already 62 years old and in bad health. He died June 15th, 1977.]

Morning Walk, Bombay, 11/03/1975
Dr. Patel: I have heard that the man could have first landed on moon and then...
Prabhupada: Nobody landed. This is all bogus.

Morning Walk, Bombay, 11/13/1975
[break]...strength of sastra we are challenging that “You have never gone to the moon planet.” Who can do so? The whole world is accepting they have gone to moon planet, and we are challenging, “You have never gone to moon.” Hare Krishna. Thank you very much.

Morning Walk, Los Angeles, 06/04/1976
Tamala Krishna: But what about the people, like the men on the ship who say they have jumped on the moon? Are they lying and being paid off, or are they just.... What, I mean what is the actual position? Some men are getting on a television saying, “We landed there, it was like this, it was like that.”
Prabhupada: No, I saw that television, at that time, the whole thing broke wrong. There was a press representative. He protested. I was protesting from the beginning, but they could not show how they jumped, at the last. Going, going, going, but at the time of jumping, melancholy. Ceylon jumping melancholy.
Tamala Krishna: But I mean they do, these men who are space travelers, they say “We did land on the moon.” Now are they lying?
Prabhupada: No, they, but the television was showing. They could not show this.
Tamala Krishna: Jumping on the moon?
Prabhupada: That was not shown.
Candanacarya: They may be hypnotized also.
Hrdayananda: Prabhupada said they’d gone to Rahu.
Ramesvara: They have got that dust. They say they got that from another planet.
Prabhupada: Dust you can take it from here, from this beach.
Ramesvara: So then they’re lying.
Prabhupada: Yes.

Room Conversation, New Vrindaban, 07/02/1976
Pusta Krishna: Their theory is that there’s a dark side of the moon that we’ve never seen.
Prabhupada: Huh?
Pusta Krishna: Their theory is that there’s a dark..., that actually the moon is reflecting the sun’s light. So there’s a dark side of the moon.

[This shows how badly informed some devotees were who dabbled in this topic. First of all, “dark side” is a misnomer. More about that later. Second, already in 1959, Russia's spacecraft Luna 3 returned the first picture of the dark side. Then in 1968, astronauts Borman, Lovell, and Anders saw the far side of the moon with their own eyes as their Apollo 8 spacecraft circumnavigated the Moon.]

Prabhupada: So far the world is, where is the dark side and the bright side? If you compare like that, then so far this globe is concerned, which one is dark side, which one is bright side?
Hari-sauri: No, they say the earth is spinning on its own axis, so all parts of the earth at one time or another receive sunlight.
Prabhupada: The moon does not do that?
Hari-sauri: The moon does not revolve on its own axis.
Prabhupada: Another foolishness.
Pusta Krishna: Just to fit their speculation.

[The real foolishness is the statement that the Moon does not revolve around its axis. It does, but the rotation of the Moon about its axis is synchronized with its orbital period. Thus it always shows the same face to the Earth. As it rotates, all of its sides receive light of the sun, hence there is no “dark” side. What we call the far side is illuminated by the sun during the new Moon phase.]

Prabhupada: Just see. Simply speculation and misleading people.
Hari-sauri: There’s no basis for it, there’s no truth to it at all. (laughs)
Prabhupada: And you people believed that? I’m surprised. (laughter) You are also fools and rascals.
Hari-sauri: This is what they teach in all the schools.
Pusta Krishna: They have little models, Srila Prabhupada, made out of plastic.
Prabhupada: Ah, they are... Let them, we take them as rascals, that’s all. Mudha.
Hari-sauri: That other argument that you use about how the moon rays give life to the vegetables... So how is it that there’s no life on the moon? If the rays from the moon give life, then how is it there’s no life where the rays come from?
Prabhupada: They have never gone to moon. (laughs) All bogus. And this Mars expedition will be a failure. Let them spend millions of dollars. I told about moon planet ten years ago. It is childish, simply a waste of money and energy. I told this. Now it has proved.

[What Mars expedition is being referred to here, or whether they constitute a waste of money and energy, is besides the point; what needs to be observed is that over the last couple of decades there have been several very successful unmanned Mars expeditions – notably the Mars Pathfinder Project and the recent Twin Mars Rovers.]

Hari-sauri: There’s no more interest in the moon at all.
Prabhupada: No? Kirtanananda said “It is inhabitable.” Ten years ago I said there’s no use going there. It is childish, waste of money. But who hears about us? We know moon planet is inhabited by high-class living entities. (laughs) (sarcastically:) And they will allow these rascals to go by their machine.
Hari-sauri: When they originally started sending sputniks to the moon, they couldn’t even land them properly. They would crash, they said that they were crash-landing spaceships into the moon’s surface.
Prabhupada: Crashed?
Hari-sauri: Crash-landing. The spaceship was supposed to just smash into the surface of the moon, like that.
Prabhupada: They have never gone. Simply propaganda. Even they have gone, what is the result? Simply with big report that it is inhabitable.

Evening Conversation, Tehran, 08/08/1976
Just like this moon excursion. Ten years ago in one small book, Easy Journey to Other Planets, we predicted that this moon-going attempt is childish and waste of time. We are not expert scientist, but from the sastra we can understand. Now such a brilliant planet, pleasing, and they have discovered there rocks and sand. Just see their intelligence. Do you think rocks and sand are so brilliant? What do you think?

[One of the most obvious characteristics of lunar soil, or regolith, is that it is extremely reflective. It consists mostly of fine dust particles and tiny glass spheres that tend to reflect light straight back to its source. Combined with the fact that there is no atmosphere to scatter light, the surface of the Moon acts as a very effective reflector of light.]

This bluff is going on. People are feeling under the moonshine is so pleasing, and it is full of rocks and sand. We have to accept that. Rocks and sand, throughout the whole day by scorching heat, they also become heated. So at night it is suffering. So if it is rocks and sand, so whole day it was heated by the sunshine, how it is pleasing?

Srimad-Bhagavatam 5.5.10-13, Vrindavana, 11/01/1976
Of course, these rascals, they are finding only stones and rocks in other planets. They have got everything only in this planet. And you have to believe them. Wherever they are going, in the moon planet or in the Mars planet, what do they see? Simply rocks and sands. But that is not the fact. Each and every planet is full of living entities, janata(?).

Bhagavad-Gita 16.8, Hyderabad, 12/16/1976
Big, big asuras like Ravana, he also wanted to be happy himself and others by material adjustment. He proposed that “There is no need of acting piously to go to the heavenly planet. I shall construct a staircase so anyone can go.” Ravanera svargesvari. So that was failure. Just like we are now trying, the modern scientists. We are trying to go to the moon planet. It is failure. They will never be able to go there. I have discussed this point. We are conditioned. We cannot live one place to another without being proficient or without being eligible. Just like even in this planet you cannot go to the other country. Suppose from India if we want to go to America, it requires arrangement, not that all of a sudden you can go to America or the Americans come here. There is international arrangement, visa, passport, immigration, so many things. So many obstacles are there even in this planet, and what to speak of going to other planet. It is not possible. You must be efficient; then you can go.

Bhu-mandala Diagram Discussion, Vrindavana, 07/02/1977
Tamala Krishna: It says here, “There is thick dust covering and no evidence to suggest that the moon has ever supported life.” In that newspaper article the man who is exposing them said—because they say it is covered by dust—“How is it that no dust is shown on the astronauts’ suits when they walked around?” He says, “If there’s such a thick dust, then, when the rocket landed, it would have made a pocket within that dust.” He says, “But there’s no crater around the rocket. Then how it is possible that these things are like that?” ’Cause actually they forgot. When they were making the stage setting in Arizona, they forgot these things.

[This refers to Bill Kaysing’s Moon-hoax arguments, which are apparently readily accepted without further scrutiny as if Kaysing is some kind of guru with better credentials and qualifications than NASA and other world scientists.]

Yasoda-nandana: One argument Your Divine Grace gave in 1971 was that if they went to the moon and they found it was rock, how do they explain the moon is so shiny and gives such a cooling effect? They cannot explain that.

[There are very detailed expanations of why the Moon is shiny. As to the cooling effect, the Moon is mostly visible at night, when temperatures are already dropping naturally. Incidentally, the coolest nights are new Moon nights (when the Moon is not visible) and cloudless nights.]

Tamala Krishna: Look at the earth. Now, this is a real question that we still have to answer. They picture the earth round, and we say, no. Bhu-mandala is like a lotus, like this, and the earth is only one part of one island in Bhu-mandala, and it’s not, you know, it’s not round(?). It doesn’t look like that. And all the pictures they take of the earth when they go up in their satellites show round. And we’re going to tell them that it’s not. This is a very tricky question. In other words, if this is the picture of the world, like this, and we say that... If we take an airplane from here, from Los Angeles. Now, supposing we go to India, which is here. So there’s two ways to go. One way, you can go like this, and the other way, you can go like that. But if the earth is not a round globe, then how is it sometimes people go from Los Angeles via Hawaii to Japan and then India? So we can’t figure this out. We have experience, those of us who have flown, that actually the plane went from Los Angeles to Hawaii to Tokyo to Hong Kong and then to India. So it doesn’t work out in our maps so far, right? We can’t figure it out. This thing has to be very complete in its answers. Otherwise everyone will laugh at us. We can’t leave any loopholes.

Letter to Tirthanga dasa, 09/??/1977
If you believe whatever the material so-called scientists are saying, that is your business, but I do not believe any of their so-called observations in outer space by the blunt material senses can be true without any doubt... They have spent simply millions of dollars to make a show of their so-called learning and the resul is a handful of dust, that's all... Even it is true that they have landed on the moon, so what is their accomplishment? If I come to Earth planet and land in the Sahara desert, then I say, "Oh, this planet is a barren desert, no one lives here?" The moon may be like that or like this, so what does that help to our Krsna consciousness movement. We have nothing to do with moon planet or this planet and that planet in Krsna consciousness. We simply want to serve to Krsna, that's all.

Next, I'd like to actually post the most common arguments that have been thrown around to disproof the reality of the moon landings. These are (usually) standard arguments that I have devotees heard bringing up over and over again -- even in seminars and Bhagavatam lectures.

Sadly, to anyone who has taken the trouble to delve into the matter a bit deeper it makes these devotees look really foolish and devoid of critical thinking. Not even so much because they don't speak from a level of conviction, faith or understanding of sastra, but because they use really, really bad science to refute good science in a field they often know nothing about. The arguments aren't scientific, sastric, or even emperic.

Here is a quick overview. After some more introductory stuff about the hoax advocates and very common reasons for hoaxing, I will post the comments to each argument in little chunks (with the photo and movie references linking):

Assumptions and Presumptions
• Even 20% of Americans themselves doubt that they ever landed on the Moon.
• There are calculations that proof that the chance of success is so small that it is impossible to land on the Moon.
• Every mission before Apollo 11 suffered from about 20,000 defects each. Yet, with the exception of Apollo 13, NASA claims there wasn't one major technical problem on any of their Moon missions.
• The Earth never shows up in pictures taken from the Moon.
• Astronauts allegedly left mirrors on the Moon, but nobody has ever managed to get a reflection from those mirrors.
• The biggest telescope on Earth should be able to see evidence of the Moon landings, but nothing was ever found.
• The Hubble space telescope, which is situated beyond atmospheric disturbances, should be able to see evidence of the Moon landings.
• Military spy satellites, which can see a golf ball on a lawn from orbit, should be able to see evidence of the Moon landings.
• The Clementine Lunar Orbiter is in orbit around the Moon and has taken photographs of the entire surface, but no evidence of the Moon landings has been found.
• The video quality of the first Moon landings was deliberately poor to prevent close examination.
• NASA was able to fake the Moon landings because the conspiracy required only a small number of core people.
• The anomalies in the photographs were purposefully put there by whistle blowers in order to expose NASA.
• The death of the Apollo 1 astronauts was intentional, meant to prevent Gus Grissom from exposing the hoax.
• NASA faked the Moon landings to beat the Soviets, who were far ahead in the race to the Moon.
• NASA faked the Moon landings to distract Americans from the war in Vietnam.
• Apollo 13 was a failure because it was the last time that NASA really tried to go to the Moon.
• The Soviet Union never attempted to land on the Moon because they knew it was impossible.
• The Soviet Union was also planning a fake Moon landing and, to avoid exposure, would therefore not question NASA’s achievements.
• If it was really possible to land on the Moon in the sixties, the Russians or Chinese would also definitely have gone there in the last 40 years, but they didn’t.
• Neil Armstrong’s refusal to appear in public or give interviews proves that he has something to hide.
• The blueprints for the Saturn V rocket were purposefully destroyed or lost.
• Plans for the Lunar Module and Lunar Rover were purposefully destroyed or lost.

Moon Environment, Surface, Dust and Rocks
• If the Moon has one sixth the gravity of the Earth, dust should float around in the air much longer.
• Apollo 11 photographs AS11405850, AS11405917, AS11405918, AS11405920, AS11405925, and many of the other missions, show the feet of the Moon lander without any dust on them, which should have been there as it was thrown about by the rocket engine on descent.
• There is no water on the Moon, yet the dust clumps together like wet sand in the astronauts' footprints. These footprints should have disappeared like footprints in dry sand dunes.
• The powerful rocket engine on the lander should have created a crater beneath the lander, yet none of the photographs of the successful Apollo Moon landings show one.
• The Moon rocks allegedly collected and returned to Earth by Apollo astronauts are identical to rocks found here on Earth, in Arizona.
• The Moon rocks allegedly collected and returned to Earth by Apollo astronauts were actually manufactured by NASA in a laboratory on Earth.
• The Moon rocks allegedly collected and returned to Earth by Apollo astronauts were actually collected and returned to Earth by robotic spacecraft.
• Apollo 16 photograph AS1610717446 shows a rock with a clearly defined "C" marking on it, which is a studio prop identification marking that proves that the photographs were made on a fake lunar landscape in a studio.
• The lunar rover’s tires should have burst in the vacuum atmosphere of the Moon.
• The Apollo astronauts should have been pierced by thousands of micro-meteoroids.
• The astronauts’ footprints are deeper than the footpad imprints of the lander, which weighed 17 tons.
• The pressure inside the astronauts’ spacesuits was greater than inside a football, which should have made them puff up like the Michelin Man and restricted the movements of their joints.

Shadows and Lighting
• In many photographs the shadow side of the astronauts is illuminated, while the shadow side of nearby rocks is totally black.
• In many photographs there are lighting hot spots and a darkening of the surface toward the horizon, while Sunlight should not produce hot spots and in an airless environment the surface should not fade.
• In Apollo 11 photograph AS11405903 the horizon is located at eye level, but should have been at chest level because the camera was mounted to Neil Armstrong's chest.
• In Apollo 16 photograph AS1611318339 an astronaut stands on the surface of the Moon in direct sunlight without casting a shadow.
• The astronaut in Apollo 11 photographs AS11405866-AS11405869 should be in the dark, as he is located in the shadow of the lander.
• If the Sun is the only source of light on the Moon, all shadows should run parallel, instead of going in different directions as in Apollo 16 photograph AS1611318342 and many others.

Hot and Cold
• The temperatures on the Moon reach 280 degrees Fahrenheit and should have destroyed the films in the cameras of the astronauts.
• The astronauts could not have survived in the heat on the Moon, because the vacuum of space cannot cool heated objects.

Video and Photography
• Like many other Apollo photographs, Apollo 11 photograph AS11405872 shows strange blobs in the sky that should not have been there.
• The cross hairs on Apollo 16 photograph AS1610717446 go behind the objects, which proofs that it is a fake, pasted-together image.
• In Apollo 11 photograph AS11405942 Buzz Aldrin is carrying the EASEP experiments toward the deployment site. There is no antenna on top of his PLSS. In Apollo 11 photograph AS11405943, supposedly taken only a few seconds later, an antenna is clearly visible.
• Photographs and video footage of the American flag on the Moon shows it fluttering, although there is no atmosphere or wind on the Moon.
• On some video footage of the Apollo landings you can see right through the astronauts, like they're ghosts, which proves that the footage was faked.
• Some photographs have strange, smudged areas and lines on them, which prove that they were faked.
• Since the Moon has no atmosphere, there should be thousands of stars visible on the photographs, but there are no stars at all.
• Some of the photographs show the cross hairs at a strange angle, instead of straight as they should be, which proves that the photographs were tampered with.
• There was nobody to film the lander taking off from the Moon's surface, yet footage of it exists for all landings and it appears to have been done with models and wires. With Apollo 16 and 17 the camera even follows the ascent.
• The photographs taken on the Moon were taken by amateur photographers under allegedly very difficult conditions, yet they all came out perfect.
• Everything looks normal when you double the speed of the Apollo landing video footage, because it was simply filmed on Earth and slowed down to look like it was on the Moon.
• Neil Armstrong was the first man on the Moon, yet there is video footage of him descending the ladder and taking his initial steps on the lunar surface taken from outside the lander.
• The hills in the background of many of the photos keep reappearing in other photos, but with different foregrounds, which proves that the scenes are artificial backdrops.
• Two video clips that NASA claims were taken at different locations many miles apart show an identical hill.

Technology of the Sixties
• In the sixties and seventies the computer technology simply did not exist to build de guidance systems and other sophisticated hardware required to go to the Moon.

From Earth to the Moon, and Back
• The astronauts should have died due to the extreme radiation coming from the Van Allen belt, because their spacecrafts lacked the required 12 inches of lead shielding as protection.
• You can hear Neil Armstrong talking during the landing of Apollo 11, yet you can’t hear the roaring of the rocket engine.
• There's no delay in the conversations between the Astronauts and Mission Control on Earth. There should be a lag just like with satellite connections.
• The Apollo Saturn rockets were not big enough to carry the fuel needed to reach the Moon.
• There are no flames or smoke plumes visible coming from the rocket during the take-off of the Moon lander, which looks strange to begin with.
• The rover was too big to be carried in the lunar lander.
• The tracks of the rover in Apollo 16 photograph AS1610717446 turn at almost right angles behind it, which is impossible.
• The Apollo crews were launched into space but never left Earth orbit.
• NASA used its TETR-A training satellite to transmit data to Earth to simulate transmissions from the Apollo spacecraft to fool ground controllers into believing they were receiving real data.
• The astronauts’ movement inside the Lunar Module would change the center of mass, making it impossible to control.
• The untested Lunar Module landed on the Moon six times flawlessly, although its prototype crashed on Earth during training.
• The astronauts could not pass through the tunnel connecting the Command Module and the Lunar Module with their spacesuits and backpacks on.
• The astronauts could not have left the Lunar Module because they could not fit through the hatch and there was no room to even open the hatch, which opened to the inside.
• The fuel tanks of the Lunar Module were nowhere near even a sixth the size of those on the space shuttle, as one would expect to achieve lunar orbit.

Some Words about the Main Hoax Advocates

If one considers the Moon hoax theory an isolated phenomenon, it originated in earnest with Bill Kaysing's 1974 book, We Never Went To The Moon. There is also William Brian's Moongate: Suppressed Findings of the U.S. Space Program from 1982, which, in addition to the standard pseudo-scientific arguments regarding stars and fluttering flags, makes the interesting proposal that the Moon is far more massive than NASA claims. Ralph Rene's 1992 book NASA Mooned America is essentially a rehash of Kaysing with a greater attempt at scientific rigor. Rene is the chief proponent of the claim that passage through the Van Allen belts is unavoidably fatal. Mary Bennet and David Percy's book Dark Moon from 1999 rehashes all these points, discusses what Percy believes to be impossible lighting in Apollo photographs, and then argues about alleged structures on Mars. In the video market there is Bart Sibrel's A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Moon, produced in 2001, which purports to expose “behind the scenes” footage that Sibrel claims proves the astronauts knew they were faking it. There is Percy's What Happened on the Moon? from 2000 – a four-hour exercise in tedium rehashing of his book. James Collier produced Was It Only a Paper Moon? in 1998, in which he argues that the dimensions of the spacecraft did not allow astronauts in space suits to do what they did. Most of these offerings spend about 70% rehashing Bill Kaysing, whose arguments have been refuted for decades, and 30% presenting some unique arguments, which have also been refuted for years. Virtually all known existing web sites on the Internet that propagate the Moon hoax theory draw their material from the above sources.

Bill Kaysing
Bill Kaysing is considered by many to be the father of the Moon hoax theory. He worked at Rocketdyne, a major aerospace contractor, from 1957 until 1963 (a year before the Apollo project took shape and six years before the first Moon landing) as the head of technical publications. In his book We Never Went to the Moon Kaysing introduces some of the classic conspiracy arguments such as the absence of stars in lunar surface photographs. He also claims that the Apollo 1 fire, and later on the 1985 space shuttle Challenger accident, were staged to silence the participants who were about to expose NASA.

Kaysing is rather shy of explaining his somewhat unscientific job and tenuous link with NASA, yet doesn't mind representing himself as some kind of expert in a field he has absolutely no qualifications or experience in. In fact, he received his Bachelor of Arts in English in 1949 from the University of Southern California. Those are his only academic credentials. He worked for Rocketdyne not as an engineer, but as a cataloger of their technical publications. Technical writers employed by most technical companies don't need the degree of technical expertise that the engineers and designers would require. Kaysing himself said that Ralph Rene, who calls himself a “self-taught engineer,” had more engineering knowledge than he did. Further, Rocketdyne manufactured only the main engines for the spacecraft, not the electronics, computers, or structures.

That Kaysing may have had a security clearance doesn’t say much either. Security clearances were routinely required for anyone working on rocket booster technology, because that technology was being developed chiefly as a weapon. Clearance would have been required of anyone who had access to the printed material circulating through Rocketdyne. But having access to it doesn't mean Kaysing read or understood it.

Kaysing, now in his eighties, attempted to sue astronaut Jim Lovell for slander in 1997 when he called Kaysing's theories “wacky.” The case was thrown out of court in 1999. Kaysing has, for the most part, made his living from perpetuating the Moon hoax theory.

Ralph Rene
Rene also has a book he'd like you to purchase. Content wise you won't find anything original, but plenty of material from Bill Kaysing, guess work and poor science. Rene’s qualifications amount to being a “self-taught engineer” lacking any credentials. You'll not be surprised to hear that Rene's book is self-published.

Bart Sibrel
Sibrel is relatively new to the Moon hoax game, but he's making up for it by being the most voluble. He eagerly promotes his web site and really wants you to buy his videos and DVDs. Suffice to say, Sibrel has no scientific or academic qualifications or experience that lend any credibility to his opinions. He's an “investigative journalist” who makes a living out of making videos. Sibrel makes a big deal about having discovered “rare footage” and “uncirculated photographs” although everything he cites, except for a few clips in his video, has been a part of the public record for over thirty years. If you really want to see the “rare footage” you don’t have to buy Sibrel’s video. What Sibrel supplies is footage of the astronauts practicing for an upcoming telecast. Because television was added at the last minute, they hadn't had time to practice much with the equipment. So they were experimenting with different camera positions and exposure settings. Someone on the ground recorded it. Sibrel notes several observations which he can't explain in terms of his expectations and therefore he concludes the astronauts must have been faking it. Sibrel allows you to see only bits and pieces of this evidence which he considers so important, but the footage is available – complete, unedited and without Sibrel’s interpretive voice-over – on the Apollo 11 DVD set from Spacecraft Films.

Sibrel has been harassing astronauts in person for years and got punched out by Buzz Aldrin in 2002 after calling him a coward and a liar. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office has declined to file charges.

David Percy
David Percy is a photographer and a paid up fellow of the Royal Photography Society. Unfortunately, this doesn't make him an official spokesperson of the Royal Photography Society, although this is how he is often presented. Percy may be a talented photographer but he is sadly lacking any skill in interpreting images. He's the one responsible for most of the later shadow and photography theories. He is also extremely taken by the “whistle blower” notion discussed further on in this document.

Some Often Quoted Reasons for the Hoax

Money
Argument example: NASA gathered about 30 billion dollars pretending to go to the Moon. That means that someone is getting a lot of money in their pockets.

That someone would be all of the aerospace companies and their hundreds of thousands of workers who built the rockets, spacecraft, rovers, spacesuits, launch pads, etc. as well as those who supplied them with the raw materials they needed. It's been said that for every penny invested, something like 7 cents came back in spin-offs, including jumpstarts on integrated circuit technology (and ultimately therefore, the computers we are so familiar with), component miniaturization, materials science, medical science, and a long list of other items. These things would most likely have been developed anyway, but their use in the Apollo program sped up their development a great deal.

Diversion of Attention
Argument example: In the movie “Wag the Dog” the president has indecent relations with a 12 year old. This information goes out to the media one week before elections. To get the public’s mind off of the little girl, the president stages a war with Albania. The Moon landings were the same concept. People did not like what was going on in Vietnam, so to get the public’s mind off of all the bad things going on in Vietnam, the US faked the Moon landings. If you check your dates, we abruptly stopped going to the Moon around the same time the war in Vietnam ended.

Check the dates and facts again. Plans to end the Apollo Moon landings were already in the works by the time of the first landing in 1969 – years before the end of the war in Vietnam was even in sight. The first lunar exploration ended far from abruptly. It was planned well in advance. There were originally 10 landings planned, Apollo 11 through 20, but first Apollo 19 and 20 were cut, then Apollo 18, making Apollo 17 the last lunar landing of the 20th Century. The Apollo program was initiated before the US was substantially involved in Vietnam, and more than 4 years before it could be considered a war. Apollo grew out of a cold war conflict over the minds and opinions of the US’ technological prowess in the world and its eventual success was due to the hard work and sacrifice of the literally hundreds of thousands of people who built the Saturn V rocket and the Apollo spacecraft over the span of more than a decade. Tell them that their work was some elaborate hoax.

To Win the Space Race
Argument example: Back in the late sixties and early seventies, the USSR and the US were in a heated battle to see who was better. Once the US realized that they couldn't send a man to the Moon, they couldn't just say, “OK Russia, we give up.”

And the Russians were going to roll over and go along with the hoax? It would have been fairly easy to discredit the Apollo missions in real-time if they were truly being faked so that an embarrassed Soviet government would be able to expose it rather than decide to cover up their own failed attempts to get to the Moon. They claimed at the time to not have been trying to land men on the Moon, but we now know that they in fact had a very aggressive manned lunar program, which will be discussed later on.

I think the relevance for Krsna's devotees is that opinions on material issues are just that - opinions. Thy don't constitute the absolute truth and as they are based on limited information on topics which are relative the opinions are bound to change over time. The problem is that many sadhakas were fanatical and thought that everything that Prabhupada said was absolutely true.

Scientists often differ in their opinions and in how they interpret data, but they don't hold onto their opinions doggedly in the face of conclusive truth or when data is available that re-informs their opinion. Devotees who buy into this conspiracy theory would do well to inform themselves better. I agree that it makes the devotional community look rather backward and superstitious as well as fanatical and hopelessly uninformed when 'devotees' are still talking about the lunar landings as conspiracy.

Thank you, Maryada, for this extensive and excellent material you posted here. I find these things definitely an interesting matter, as such pieces of "bad science" were a great incentive in my leaving of ISKCON too - although rather because of cosmological and biological matters. What I always found surprising was that despite repeatedly speaking about "mundane" scienteists as "rascals, Dr. Frogs, foolish", whenever someone claiming the title of a scientist came about which seemed to support a most tiny part of the Vedic literature, devotees began to preach things like "even great scientists support our claim that... (insert "Vedic" claim here)". Prabhupada and the devotees seemed to despise those scientists who preferred the empirical research over accepting shastra literally, they also used scientists' prestige in the society to preach (and maybe to reinforce themselves too). The Easy Journey... contains for example a reference to the theoretical discovery of antimatter. Another example is the backing of the cleaning ability of cow dung by a scientist's word, and yet another is backing the claim of supposed inferiority of the feminine brain with Urquart.

The problem is that Vedic shastras have many "opinions" on many material issues - the type of lifeforms on the Moon, the Moon's relation to the Earth and Sun, the cause of solar and lunar eclipses are just very few of them. And these opinions are also interlinked with each other, and, ultimately, with Krishna's pastimes . They are also regarded as Krishna's supreme opinion and revelation.

To not accept that the Moon is farther from the Earth than the Sun meant to question the credibility of the shastras' description on the form and working of the Universe, therefore the credibility of other shastric advises, like chanting the Names, accepting a spiritual master etc. - ultimately, to question Krishna's credibility. Accepting the moon landings as facts - which seem to show that Moon is a dry, dusty, dead planet - question the existence of an advanced, demigodly civilization headed by Chandra, the moon-god. And if there is no moon-god, then also there is not a Moon dinasty - and how did then Krishna born into the humankind at Vraja? (Provided I'm not mistaken it with the Sun dinasty... )

By the way, the theory which tries to trace the order of planets in the week to thier brightness order is most probably not true.

The days of the week go like this: Sun-Moon-Mars-Mercury-Jupiter-Venus-Saturn (if we take the American and not the European system where Monday is the first day, and which seems to predate the American one ). Now, Sun (mag. -26.8) and Moon (-12.7) are followed in brightness not by Mars (-2,8), but by Jupiter (-4,7) and Venus (-2,9), in this order.

Joseph Smith, the self-named prophet who founded the LDS church (Mormon), taught that the Moon is inhabited by Quaker-like people who live for 1,000 years. Supposedly they now live inside the Moon since nothing was found on the outside. Initially he taught that they lived on the side of the Moon that you cannot see - because the side that faces us is barren.

I don't know if it was Maryada's intention to also post something that addresses the issues that were raised in the initial list of hoaxy points. The post following those points was nothing but a declaration of why the people who raised the points aren't qualified to comment the issue because and why some of the points are invalid because. I'd be interested to read actual explanations of why the points aren't valid. I'm sure we've all had our experiences with the he's in maya, therefore who cares what he says rhetoric.

Maryada - Is that original text or copy-paste? The first paragraph is from Bad Astronomy BBS, the rest I couldn't locate. Please credit sources.

I fell for the moon hoax thing, too, initially -- happily proclaiming all this wonderful advanced "knowledge" about conspiracies and what not. But at one point I figured that the other side needed to be heard as well, especially because there were parts in the devotee "logic" that made no sense.

What I did not understand is that even devotees accept that the sun is blazing hot. You can feel the heat down here. It's all fire. If we would travel to the sun in these bodies we'd burn to a crisp. What to speak of experiencing the wonderful Surya culture there -- these are demigods and we have no qualifications in this sphere to perceive demigods unless they want to show themselves. They exist on a completely different level. It seems to be the norm that beings on higher levels can interact with those on lower levels if they choose so, but not the other way around.

Why would the moon be an exception? If we have no qualifications to perceive demigods, why would we expect to perceive them if we travel there? Does our level of qualification change according to the location? I don't think so.

And a matter of location is all it is, in my opinion. Ghosts live on a different level, although the location of Bhutaloka is supposedly in the exact same spot as Earth (it just extends 300 miles further out into space). The location overlaps, but the experience generally doesn't, although it appears that they are much more aware of us than we are of them. Likewise, we experience the moon as a desolate place. Candralokans may not. On their level of existence there may be a whole different world to be experienced.

That's why I have no problem accepting that Earth humans may travel to other planets or send gizmos there and not experience what the local inhabitants do.

It was definitely my intention to post material for each and every point. It takes some time, though, as it is a large volume and takes a while to convert to forum format.

As to original versus copy-paste, over the years I have contributed to many sources online dealing with this issue, so some of the material you will find on these various sites is mine. What I am posting here is a comprehensive collection of all possible arguments and counter arguments I have found and/or been involved in. Some of it are compilations of personal correspondence, parts of which also appear on various websites.

So all in all it is quite a mixture in which it is nearly impossible to affix individual credits. Many of the hoax arguments have been countered by many sources, not just one, all valid and not seldom overlapping in details and outcome. I guess the best I can do is give a blanket credit to all those who have taken the trouble to address the hoax arguments from a professional standpoint and those who have corresponded with me, including the people from NASA, Moonbase Clavius, Project Apollo Archive, the International Laser Ranging Service, the Russian Space Web, and many more.

Attention modem users: most image links link to high-resolution images that are often around a megabyte in size.

Assumption and Presumptions

Even 20% of Americans themselves doubt that they ever landed on the Moon.

Since supporters of the hoax theory never explain where this 20% figure they quote comes from, it is very hard to substantiate. A certain percentage of the American people indeed doubt that the Moon landings ever took place, but it is not even near 20%. The Gallup Organization, which has studied human behavior through polling over the last 70 years, concluded from its July 1999 poll on this matter that the overwhelming majority of Americans (89%) did not believe the U.S. government staged or faked the Apollo Moon landings. Only 6% of the public believed the landing was faked and another 5% had no opinion. Furthermore, on their website Gallup clarifies:

"Although, if taken literally, 6% translates into millions of individuals, it is not unusual to find about that many people in the typical poll agreeing with almost any question that is asked of them -- so the best interpretation is that this particular conspiracy theory is not widespread."

There are calculations that proof that the chance of success is so small that it is impossible to land on the Moon.

Hoax advocate Bill Kaysing has claimed that the chance of a successful landing on the Moon was calculated to be 0.017% (1 in 6,000). The source of this calculation is unknown. Of course, if the odds were indeed that slim, NASA would most likely never have proposed a Moon landing to begin with. But they weren’t. In reality, during the mid-1960s the Apollo Support Department of the General Electric Company in Florida conducted extensive mission reliability studies for NASA. These studies were based on very elaborate reliability models of all of the systems. A reliability profile over the course of a mission was generated by computer simulation, and a large number of such simulations were carried out for different scenarios. Based on those studies, the probability of landing on the Moon and returning safely to earth never dropped below 90%.

Every mission before Apollo 11 suffered from about 20,000 defects each. Yet, with the exception of Apollo 13, NASA claims there wasn't one major technical problem on any of their Moon missions.

This is a claim of hoax advocate Ralph Rene. Here, too, the source of the information is unknown, but the gist is clear: the early missions had so many insurmountable problems that NASA decided to abandon the Moon landings and fake it. Even if the data is accurate, there is a big difference between a defect and a major technical problem. None of the Apollo missions, with the exception of number 13, experienced a major technical problem that prohibited the crews from successfully completing their missions. Also, the early Apollo flights were test missions designed specifically to shake out bugs in the hardware and procedures. Finally, the Moon landings were far from flawless. There were numerous technical problems, but, thanks to the skill of the flight controllers, engineers and astronauts, the problems were either corrected or circumvented such that the crews were able to complete their missions successfully.

The Earth never shows up in pictures taken from the Moon.

Hoax advocate James Collier was among the most enthusiastic promoters of this mistaken notion, based on studying only a few press release photographs from NASA. There are actually many photographs taken on or at the Moon that show the Earth, for instance: AS11446547, AS11446549, AS11446551, AS11446553, AS11446559, AS11405924, AS11446642, AS14669228, AS158811988, AS1713420384, AS1713420461, AS1713420471, AS1713720957, and AS1713720960. Since all the non hand-held pictures taken on or at the Moon were using something other than 70mm transparency film, these photos had to have been taken by a human being -- an Apollo astronaut -- physically present either on the surface or in space around the Moon. Noteworthy is that the cloud formations on the Earth in these pictures is consistent with the weather patterns present on Earth during the time the pictures were taken.

Astronauts allegedly left mirrors on the Moon, but nobody has ever managed to get a reflection from those mirrors.

The assumption is that these are big mirrors and bouncing a laser beam off of them can be done by just about anyone, but that is not true. The laser reflectors were specifically meant for measuring the distance between the Moon and the Earth with a laser beam shot through a large telescope.

The first of three US laser ranging retro-reflector was positioned on the Moon in 1969 by the Apollo 11 astronauts. It can be seen in photograph AS11405952. This reflector consists of 100 fused silica half-cubes, called corner cubes, mounted in an 18-inch square aluminum panel. Each corner cube is 1.5 inches in diameter. Corner cubes reflect a beam of light directly back toward the point of origin. The Apollo 11 and 14 laser reflector arrays are identical and are located in the Sea of Tranquility and the Fra Mauro, respectively. The Apollo 15 reflector, located in the Hadley Rille, is a larger array consisting of 300 corner cubes. French built reflectors, consisting of 14 corner cubes, were also left on the Moon by the unmanned Russian Luna 17 and 21 missions. The Luna 17 and 21 arrays are located in the Sea of Rains and the Sea of Serenity, respectively.

Lunar ranging involves sending a powerful laser beam through an optical telescope. The beam enters the telescope where the eye piece would be, and the transmitted beam is expanded to become the diameter of the main mirror. It is then bounced off the surface toward the reflector on the Moon. The reflectors on the Moon are too small to be seen from Earth, so even when the beam is precisely aligned in the telescope, actually hitting a lunar retro-reflector array is technically challenging. At the Moon's surface the laser beam is roughly four miles wide. Once the laser beam hits a reflector, scientists at the ranging observatories use extremely sensitive filtering and amplification equipment to detect the return signal, which is far too weak to be seen with the human eye. Even under good atmospheric viewing conditions, only one photon is received every few seconds.

Many of these measurements have been made by the McDonald Observatory in Texas. From 1969 to 1985, they were made on a part-time basis using the McDonald Observatory 107-inch telescope. Since 1985, these observations have been made using a dedicated 30-inch telescope. Additional measurements have been made by observatories in Hawaii (now closed due to budget constraints), California, France, Australia, and Germany. The International Laser Ranging Service is adding even more stations world wide.

Scientists from all over the world have analyzed the data from the long-term Lunar Laser Ranging experiments, and from it they know that the average distance between the centers of the Earth and the Moon is 239,227 miles, with an accuracy of better than one part in 10 billion. Ranging has also determined that the length of an Earth day has distinct small-scale variations of about one thousandth of a second over the course of a year, caused by the atmosphere, tides, and the Earth's core. In addition, precise positions of the laser ranging observatories on Earth are slowly drifting as the tectonic plates on Earth drift. The observatory on Maui is seen to be drifting away from the observatory in Texas. Data also indicate that ocean tides on Earth have a direct influence on the Moon's orbit. Measurements show that the Moon is receding from Earth at a rate of about 1.5 inches per year. Continued improvements in range determinations and the need for monitoring the details of the Earth's rotation will keep the lunar reflector experiments in service for many years to come. Obviously, if the Moon landings were faked and no laser reflectors exist on the Moon, hundreds of scientists from the four countries that are and have been involved in these experiments have been living a dream for the last 30 years, and the current International Laser Ranging Service must be a hoax, too.

The biggest telescope on Earth should be able to see evidence of the Moon landings, but nothing was ever found.

The theoretical resolving power of a telescope is measured in arc seconds and calculated by dividing the aperture of the telescope (in inches) into 4.56. The largest telescope on Earth at this point is the 10-meter Keck telescope in Hawaii. The theoretical resolving power of this telescope is 0.012"; however, the Earth's atmosphere limits the resolving power of any ground-based telescope to about 0.5"-1.0". At the Earth-Moon distance of 239,000 miles, the smallest object that can be resolved by these telescopes is about 3,000 feet. The largest dimension of any hardware left behind on the Moon is 31 feet, which is the diagonal distance across the Moon lander's footpads.

The Hubble space telescope, which is situated beyond atmospheric disturbances, should be able to see evidence of the Moon landings.

The Hubble Space Telescope does not suffer from atmospheric limitation; thus, with an aperture of 94 inches, its resolving power is 0.05". That would still not be powerful enough. Hubble’s resolution is 800 x 800 pixels, with each pixel being a little less than 46 milliarcseconds. For anything to show up in Hubble’s field as a pixel, it needs to be at least 400 feet in diameter -- roughly the size of a football field.

Military spy satellites, which can see a golf ball on a lawn from orbit, should be able to see evidence of the Moon landings.

The military may well have satellites that do that, but they are in low orbits around the Earth. They are nowhere near the Moon and don't have the power to get out there even if we wanted them to.

The Clementine Lunar Orbiter is in orbit around the Moon and has taken photographs of the entire surface, but no evidence of the Moon landings has been found.

The Clementine Lunar Orbiter has indeed taken photographs of the entire surface of the Moon. These photographs are, however, not detailed enough to see any small features on the surface such as a Lunar Module. The purpose of the Clementine project was multi-spectral imaging of the entire lunar surface for topographical reasons and assessing the surface mineralogy of the Moon, not to make ultra-high resolution images of small objects. Apollo 15 spent 3 days on the Moon's surface, far longer than earlier missions. This gave the astronauts more time to stir up dust in the surrounding area. This, coupled with the disturbance cause by the lander's rockets made enough of a dark mark on the lunar surface to be just visible on one photograph taken by Clementine. Of course, this isn't conclusive proof, but still evidence and the clearest pictures we're going to get besides those made by the astronauts themselves from orbit, which show distinctive shadows cast by the landers.

The SELENE Project is a Japanese space mission that aims to place an orbiter around the Moon in the year 2005. Part of the tasks it will complete is a mapping of the Moon's surface at a resolution that should make it possible to see the Apollo landing sites.

The video quality of the first Moon landings was deliberately poor to prevent close examination.

Television pictures of the Apollo 11 landing were sent directly to Earth from the surface of the Moon using the lander's antenna and power supply. This placed a restriction on the amount of bandwidth that could be transmitted. Apollo 11 was thereby limited to using a black-and-white, slow-scan TV camera with a scan rate of 10 frames-per-second at 320 lines-per-frame. In order to broadcast the images to the world, the pictures had to first be converted to the commercial TV standards. In the US, this was the EIA standard of 30 frames-per-second at 525 lines-per-frame. The pictures transmitted from the Moon were displayed on a 10-inch black-and-white monitor and a Vidicon camera was pointed at the screen and the pictures were scanned at the EIA standard. A number of peculiar image artifacts were seen on the images. One set of artifacts was produced by sunlight reflecting off the astronauts and the lander onto the TV camera's lens. These reflections produced the ghostly effects perceived by the public. Other prominent artifacts were the result of spots burnt into the monitor screens from which the optical conversions were produced. Apollo 11 was only a first step in what was to be increasingly ambitious missions, thus it was lacking in the ability to transmit high-quality TV pictures. Later missions, starting with Apollo 12, had enough time in the schedule to permit the astronauts to erect large freestanding dish antennas. This increased the amount of bandwidth that could be transmitted, thus allowing complex color TV pictures of later missions to be sent directly to Earth.

The anomalies in the photographs were purposefully put there by whistle blowers in order to expose NASA.

Hoax advocate David Percy is the main proponent of the whistle blower theory. One may seriously ask why these whistle blowers inside NASA would have produced these anomalies instead of simply speaking out. It could not have been for safety reasons, as it is documented who handled the images and video footage. On top of that, during the more than 30 years after the landings not one of the other hundreds of thousands of people who worked on Apollo has come forward to admit they were part of a conspiracy. Not even a single deathbed confession. The truth is that there are no whistle blowers because the supposed photographic anomalies are the result of misunderstood phenomenon and mistaken conclusions, not hidden messages.

The death of the Apollo 1 astronauts was intentional, meant to prevent Gus Grissom from exposing the hoax.

This accusation is a complete fabrication with no corroborating evidence whatsoever. Some hoax advocates claim there have been many “suspicious” deaths among those associated with the Apollo program, alleging that NASA murdered these people. These accusations are both ludicrous and libelous. Bill Kaysing particularly has made many slanderous allegations against NASA, including the above. Kaysing accused NASA of murdering Christa McAuliffe, the school teacher who was to fly aboard Challenger in 1986, because she would not go along with NASA's lie that stars cannot be seen in space. To do this, NASA destroyed the Space Shuttle Challenger, with McAuliffe and six other astronauts, in one of the most spectacular, expensive, and embarrassing failures in US history that set back space exploration by ten years. As usual, Kaysing has no proof whatsoever to back up this claim. Also, consider that if NASA has a habit of silencing people bent on exposing this alleged hoax, then why haven't they killed any of the current hoax conspiracy theorists?

NASA faked the Moon landings to beat the Soviets, who were far ahead in the race to the Moon.

Hoax advocates often mention the early lead the Soviets held in manned space flight, implying that American technology was inferior. The Soviets accomplished many "firsts" because their program was designed to do so, often at great risk. The Americans, on the other hand, were more methodical and took their time to develop better technology. With its Gemini program the United States pushed far ahead of the Soviets, completing many space milestones of their own. Among these: the first use of an onboard computer, first use of fuel cells for power, first piloted spacecraft to change its trajectory, the first space rendezvous, and the first space docking -- all very important foundational elements for further space exploration. By the end of 1966 the United States held a 4-to-1 superiority in manned hours in space and a 30-to-1 superiority in EVA experience. The U.S. would not relinquish its lead in space man-hours until 1978, which was due to the Soviets’ emphasis on space stations.

Aside from technological advantage issues, it is true the US was in competition with the USSR, but the risks involved in trying to perpetrate a hoax would be tremendous. The devastating effect the exposure of a hoax would have on the reputation of the United States would be many times more severe than simply failing to reach the Moon. Why would NASA be willing to take that risk? Also, why six landings? After Apollo 11 the goal had been met, so why fake five more landings? In fact, NASA continued to send men to the Moon long after the public had lost interest. Continuing to perpetrate a hoax would only increase the possibility of making mistakes and being exposed. Furthermore, the Soviets would have never been fooled by a hoax. The USSR fully understood the difficulties of a Moon landing and tracked American progress closely, yet they have always acknowledged that the Apollo Moon landings were real.

Also, do not forget that some hoax advocates claim the supposed technologically inferior Americans were able to robotically collect and return to Earth over 800 pounds of diverse lunar rock and soil samples, while the so-called technologically superior Soviets could manage only less than a pound.

NASA faked the Moon landings to distract Americans from the war in Vietnam.

Hoax advocates like to point out that the timing of the Apollo missions almost exactly corresponded with the war in Vietnam and were therefore meant to pull the attention of the masses away from ravages of the war. However, we cannot merely look at when the Apollo missions actually occurred. Rather, we should look at when the planning for those missions took place. The genesis of the Apollo program was John F. Kennedy's speech to congress in May 1961, while the first US ground combat forces did not enter Vietnam until March 1965. Apollo 18, the last Apollo mission to be scrapped, was cancelled during the summer of 1970, while the last U.S. ground forces did not leave Vietnam until March 1973. That's 1961-70 for Apollo and 1965-73 for Vietnam. It is obvious that NASA plans were made years in advance of events in Vietnam. Planners could not have possibly anticipated the timing of future events.

Apollo 13 was a failure because it was the last time that NASA really tried to go to the Moon.

The last time? Wouldn’t that be the only time then? Or do the hoax advocates accept that there were at least several successful manned flights to the Moon before Apollo 11, even without landings? If so, why would NASA hoax two Moon landings, then give it a "real" try, and then, on failure, hoax four more over several years -- all while public interest had already waned significantly? This makes no sense from whatever angle you look at it. If NASA were indeed faking the landings, why would they encourage greater interest and unwanted scrutiny of their actions by risking a real landing attempt? Some hoax advocates have suggested that a failed mission was needed to renew interest in Apollo so that the dollars would keep flowing to subcontractors. However, the interest generated by Apollo 13 was short lived and the accident proved to be a contributing factor in the cancellation of latter flights, thus shortening the program.

The Soviet Union never attempted to land on the Moon because they knew it was impossible.

The failure of the Soviet Union to land a man on the Moon was due to the failure of their N1 Moon rocket, which was the USSR’s equivalent of the Saturn V. The Soviets attempted two test launches of the N1 in 1969, the first on the 21st of February and the second on the 3rd of July. The July test, which occurred just two weeks before the launch of Apollo 11, was a catastrophic failure, as the rocket exploded on the launch pad and destroyed much of the launch complex. After the failure of the first two N1 rockets, and the success of Apollo 11, Russian engineering efforts were diverted into crash development of the Salyut Space Station in order to beat the American Skylab. Cosmonauts, however, continued to train for lunar landing missions until October 1973, when the last training group was dissolved. By that time, manned flight of the original single-launch spacecraft to the Moon had been abandoned. Instead, work was underway on a twin launch scenario that would put a lander on the surface in 1978 for extended operations, and eventually, a lunar base. This in turn was cancelled with the entire N1 program in 1974. Clearly the Soviets believed a Moon landing was a technological possibility as they continued with their plans until well after the last Apollo mission.

The Soviet Union was also planning a fake Moon landing and, to avoid exposure, would therefore not question NASA’s achievements.

Surely the Soviets possessed the knowledge and experience necessary to debunk NASA's claim of a Moon landing. Since they declined to do so, they, according to the hoax advocates, must have had something to hide as well. Not only is there no evidence whatsoever of fraud on the part of the USSR but, if they were faking it, why didn't they just hoax a landing before the USA did? It was awfully generous of the Soviets to allow the US to fake it first. Another idea that's been proposed by the hoax advocates is that NASA paid-off the Soviets to keep them quiet. We are more than 30 years further in time. The USSR no longer exists and Russia has seen several regime changes. What has prevented all these changes from dissolving the alleged pay-off and silence?

If it was really possible to land on the Moon in the sixties, the Russians or Chinese would also definitely have gone there in the last 40 years, but they didn’t.

Despite the apparent ease with which NASA landed six crews on the lunar surface, traveling to the Moon was difficult, dangerous and very expensive. Once the US succeeded, one of the main reasons for the Soviets' for going to the Moon was eliminated. The failure of their N1 rocket lead to the cancellation of their Moon program altogether in favor of an orbital space station. To fly to the Moon today would be nearly as difficult and likely much more expensive than it was three decades ago and, as such, requires sufficient motivation to do so. The current Russian economy can hardly keep up with what is left of their former space programs. The Chinese are currently very actively pursuing manned space flight and future Moon missions.

Neil Armstrong’s refusal to appear in public or give interviews proves that he has something to hide.

A claim from hoax advocate Bart Sibrel. Neil Armstrong is, by nature, a very shy and private man who shuns the spotlight. It is true that he infrequently gives interviews or makes public appearances, but to say that he refuses to is simply not true. He was interviewed by Andrew Chaikin for the book A Man On the Moon, participated in a televised press conference for the 30th anniversary of Apollo 11, was interviewed by Stephen Ambrose and Douglas Brinkley in September of 2001, gave an interview to an audience of about 1,000 at Dublin's National Concert Hall in November of 2003, and has made a public appearance in Dayton, Ohio for the Centennial of Flight celebration in 2003. What he apparently does refuse to do (with good reason, and much like most Apollo astronauts) is grant interviews to those who call him a liar and a fraud.

The blueprints for the Saturn V rocket were purposefully destroyed or lost.

If the hoax advocates mean that there is no complete set of blueprints, then yes, this does not exist, nor has it ever. The literally millions of documents relating to the Saturn V and its components were spread out across the country among a dozen NASA centers and hundreds of contractors. Certainly many copies of these documents have been discarded, but much of it still exists. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama has much Saturn documentation on microfilm and the Federal Archives in East Point, Georgia has 2,900 cubic feet of Saturn documents. Rocketdyne, which built the F-1 and J-2 engines for the Saturn and is now part of Boeing, has in its archives dozens of volumes from its Knowledge Retention Program.

Plans for the Lunar Module and Lunar Rover were purposefully destroyed or lost.

Much paperwork relating to the Lunar Module and Rover has been discarded. However, this is to be expected. No company is going to keep in storage millions of documents for an obsolete project that has no chance of being resurrected. Still, there is much left of the documentation. The National Archives microfilmed everything they thought was historically significant and those films are currently in storage. It is not uncommon for space enthusiasts and modelers to find many obscure facts and details about the LM, Rover, and other Apollo hardware.

Gotta love conspiracy theorists--at least they are entertaining.

As a devotee, I always quietly believed in the back of my mind that, yes, we went to the moon. Now that I've thrown off larger portions of the belief system it's just not an issue to me at all.

I empathize with those who feel that to continue their belief they have to accept everything in the scriptures or none of it is right, but I don't feel that way. There are valuable spiritual insights that shouldn't depend on cosmology in a pre-telescope era being correct.

As for the notion that these things are true on some other plane of existence--I myself don't much care. Maybe it will help the fundamentalists continue in their belief system, and that's fine. I find it irrelevent to my life whether or not there is some civilization on the Moon in another dimension. Interesting maybe, but irrelevent.

One suggestion--it might be helpful to split up some of these long posts into more than one. It helps one keep track when reading large chunks of material--and makes the chunks more digestible.

As for the dynasty in question, my name-sake is involved in the story:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m01/m01174.htm

Tapati's mother was:

____

Tapati was a river, personified.

Ah, looking at more resources on the web, further down the dynastic family tree the Moon gets involved:



http://logos_endless_summer.tripod.com/id97.html

A friend on livejournal referenced this web page today and I got a chuckle:

http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/p67.htm

excerpt:

Warning: Gravity is “Only a Theory”
by Ellery Schempp

All physics textbooks should include this warning label:

“This textbook contains material on Gravity. Universal Gravity is a theory, not a fact, regarding the natural law of attraction. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.”

The Universal Theory of Gravity is often taught in schools as a “fact,” when in fact it is not even a good theory.

First of all, no one has measured gravity for every atom and every star. It is simply a religious belief that it is “universal.” Secondly, school textbooks routinely make false statements. For example, “the moon goes around the earth.” If the theory of gravity were true, it would show that the sun's gravitational force on the moon is much stronger than the earth's gravitational force on the moon, so the moon would go around the sun. Anybody can look up at night and see the obvious gaps in gravity theory.

The existence of tides is often taken as a proof of gravity, but this is logically flawed. Because if the moon's “gravity” were responsible for a bulge underneath it, then how can anyone explain a high tide on the opposite side of the earth at the same time? Anyone can observe that there are 2 -- not 1 -- high tides every day. It is far more likely that tides were given us by an Intelligent Creator long ago and they have been with us ever since. In any case, two high tides falsifies gravity.

______________________________

I felt it was in keeping with the good/bad science theme here. Even if tongue firmly in cheek.

This is a reasonable point, of course. There may be Chandralokans there whom (and whose buildings, products etc.) we can't experience, just as we can't experience Sun dwellers (of course, we can't send probes to the surface of the Sun, for it doesn't have a solid surface in the first place - if we could, there might will be devotees who would see the photos taken from the gaseous outer layers of the Sun, and would see that this is a hoax, because it doesn't show the Sun's surface and the radiating demigods in their fiery palaces). The thing is, one of the descendants of the unexperiencable Chandra dinasty is Krishna, who was supposedly can be experienced. Kamsa, the wrestlers in the arena, the spectators, the armies at Kurukshetra - they all saw him. He supposedly left some visible and tangible traces in Vraja as well; and there is purportedly still a tangible, visible piece of His body in the Jagannatha murti. Because it is heavy for most people to imagine how the descendants of the Chandra dinasty turned visible and tangible at some point, although their predecessors weren't - they rather accept a mental image of a visible and tangible Chandra demigod. At least that's how I speculate why your viewpoint is not that frequent among devotees.

That makes sense. No problem.

Attention modem users: most image links link to high-resolution images that are often around a megabyte in size.

Moon Environment, Surface, Dust and Rocks

If the Moon has one sixth the gravity of the Earth, dust should float around in the air much longer.

The Moon has no air for dust to float in. In a vacuum dust behaves exactly like any other object. You throw it up and it will fall down. It is no different from what a rock would do. Rocks do not float or billow around, nor does the dust, even if it is lighter. Without resistance from an atmosphere everything falls to the surface with the same speed, regardless of weight. Because there is no air, dust falls quicker on the Moon than on Earth. Still, it falls slower than you'd expect a rock to do on Earth because the gravity on the Moon is less.

These two facts make almost dead certain proof of a lunar landing. There is absolutely nowhere on Earth that you could make dust behave in this, to us, peculiar way. If you were to create a vacuum on Earth, the dust would fall very quickly, just as we are used to a rock doing. But here is evidence of dust behaving like it's in a vacuum and in low gravity. Without modern computer movie graphics there is no way this could be faked on Earth. Creating a vacuum chamber large enough to hold an entire fake Lunar scene with a Moon lander and astronauts running around is beyond even modern technology, what to speak of the technology of the sixties. And there is no technology to artificially influence gravity on such a large scale either.

Apollo 11 photographs AS11405850, AS11405917, AS11405918, AS11405920, AS11405925, and many of the other missions, show the feet of the Moon lander without any dust on them, which should have been there as it was thrown about by the rocket engine on descent.

According to Kaysing and a Fox Television program, this is the strongest evidence that the Moon landings are faked. They allege that with the swirling dust from lander's descent engine, the foot pads should be covered with dust.

This argument is wrong on two counts. First, the allegation that there is no Moon dust on any of the landing pads of any of the landers is wrong. Photographs AS14669234, AS1610717441, AS1610717442, and AS1713420388 clearly show Moon dust on the footpad. Judging from the foot prints next to the pads of Apollo 16 and 17, it is highly likely that the dust got there by being kicked onto to it by one of the astronauts. The dust on the footpad of Apollo 14 obviously got on when it dug down in the surface during touch down.

Second, it is far from accurate that there should be dust on the pads for reasons other that mentioned above. Absence of dust would actually prove, rather than discount, that the lander had landed in an alien environment. The downward traveling exhaust stream from the rocket engine would impact the ground and rebound mostly outward and radially away from the surface. Since there is no atmosphere to interact with, the gas molecules would simply fly off and disperse. The only dust particles that would be displaced would be those directly impacted by the exhaust gas. Since the exhaust stream was concentrated mostly in the area directly beneath the lander, this zone would experience the greatest disturbance. The area adjacent to the lander would be largely unaffected by the exhaust stream. On Earth, the exhaust gas would impact and displace air molecules that would, in turn, displace other air molecules and so on. This phenomenon would create a large area of disturbance and a cloud of dust. Since the Moon has no atmosphere this type of widespread disturbance would be nonexistent.

There is also the issue of the height of the lander above the surface. The lander had landing sensors built into three of the four footpads. When one of the six-foot-long sensors scraped the surface, a light went off in the cabin and the lander's pilot cut the descent engine. Without exhaust to circulate the dust particles, the swirling of the dust essentially ceased within seconds of the engine cutoff. This will be discussed further with the crater-beneath-the-lander issue.

Attention modem users: most image links link to high-resolution images that are often around a megabyte in size.

There is no water on the Moon, yet the dust clumps together like wet sand in the astronauts' footprints. These footprints should have disappeared like footprints in dry sand dunes.

The lunar surface is predominately composed of materials that fall under the general category of silicates. Silica has a natural tendency to bond with other silica, forming large molecular chains. When a meteoroid impacts the Moon, much of the energy goes into fracturing the surrounding structure causing breaks in the molecular bonds. On Earth, exposed bonds quickly fill with oxygen in a process called oxidation or weathering. On the Moon, with a total lack of oxygen, these bonds have nothing to attach to until an event occurs that aligns the molecules. When an object, such as an astronaut's boot, disturbs lunar dust new molecular bonds are created. The new bonds enable the dust to hold its shape, forming an impression of the deforming object. Thus, footprints can form despite the absence of water.

The powerful rocket engine on the lander should have created a crater beneath the lander, yet none of the photographs of the successful Apollo Moon landings show one.

Several facts:

(1) Although the lander's descent engine was capable of outputting a maximum of 10,500 lbs of thrust (compared to a modern jet fighter's 18,000 and 22,000 lbs of thrust), it was throttled down to below 3,000 lbs as it neared the lunar surface. While still several feet above the ground, the descent engine was shut down as probes, extending 6 feet below the footpads, sensed contact with the surface. This was done to prevent the rocket's thrust rebounding off the surface and damaging the lander itself.

(2) The engine nozzle was about 54 inches across, which means it had an area of 2300 square inches. The thrust of 3000 lbs therefore generated a pressure of only about 1.3 pounds per square inch. On Earth, the air in our atmosphere constrains the thrust of a rocket into a narrow column, which is why you get long flames and columns of smoke from the back of a rocket. In a vacuum, exhaust gases expand rapidly radially outward once exiting the engine nozzle, which lowers the pressure even more.

(3) As NASA did not have a precise landing point in mind, the lander did not descend vertically. The actual site it landed at was picked out by the astronauts themselves as they descended at an angle, traveling across the landscape and skidding to a stop. Consequently the lander did not hover directly above its final landing site for any significant length of time. So there was no thrust powerful and long enough directly above the landing point to cause a crater.

(4) The Moon's surface is covered by a layer of rocky material called regolith, which consists of fine dust particles, glass spheres and a jumble of large boulders and rocky debris. At all of the landing sites, the astronauts found this layer to be about two inches thick. Regolith has many unique properties, the most obvious being that the particles are very jagged, which causes them to interlock. When subjected to pressure, regolith will resist, almost like solid rock.

When one considers these facts the truth becomes obvious. The exhaust stream was not powerful enough or centralized enough to displace the regolith and blast out a crater. In Apollo 11 photograph AS11405921 you can see the discoloration caused by the exhaust stream and a general lack of surface dust, which was mostly blown away. After the dust was removed a harder surface was exposed. Especially noteworthy is the obvious radial pattern of disturbance beneath the exhaust nozzle. You can also see a groove caused by one of the probes on the lander's feet as it came down and skidded across the lunar surface. In Apollo 12 photograph AS12466780 the lander did leave a strikingly clear, discolored track (when photographed at right angles to the sun) as it descended to its final resting place across the lunar surface.

The Moon rocks allegedly collected and returned to Earth by Apollo astronauts are identical to rocks found here on Earth, in Arizona.

Between 1969 and 1972 Apollo missions brought back 842 pounds of lunar rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand and dust from the lunar surface. The six space flights returned 2,196 individual specimens from six sites on the Moon. These specimens have been processed into more than 97,000 individually cataloged samples. The lunar sample laboratory at Johnson Space Center is the chief repository for the Apollo samples where pristine lunar samples are prepared for shipment to scientists and educators. More than 60 laboratories worldwide actively pursue sample studies; some 1,100 samples are sent out to researchers annually.

Over the last 30 years thousands of geologists from all over the world have analyzed these samples and found that they are like nothing else on Earth. There has never been presented any proof of any rocks from Arizona being identical to any of the specimens of Moon rocks.

The Moon rocks allegedly collected and returned to Earth by Apollo astronauts were actually manufactured by NASA in a laboratory on Earth.

It has been suggested that researchers could not to tell the difference between fake and authentic rocks since no one had ever examined a Moon rock before. This claim is utter nonsense. In addition to the rocks returned by Apollo, there are samples of lunar rocks that have fallen to Earth as meteorites (which are very rare, with only about 30 known samples). Tests have shown the Apollo Moon rocks and the meteorites are of identical origin; however, the Apollo samples lack other features that would distinguish them as meteorites, such as scorching and oxidation. Also, the Moon rocks have characteristics that are not found in terrestrial or artificial rocks, such as evidence of meteoroid bombardment and exposure to cosmic rays. Likewise, terrestrial rocks have unique characteristics not found in the Moon rocks, such as weathering and exposure to water. Finally, the Moon rocks returned by Apollo have been determined to be between 3.1 and 4.4 billion years old.

The Moon rocks allegedly collected and returned to Earth by Apollo astronauts were actually collected and returned to Earth by robotic spacecraft.

Any mission capable of returning over 800 pounds of rock and soil samples would be a massive, complex and difficult undertaking. If NASA could pull this off, then surely they had the technical know-how to land a manned vehicle. In fact, with an astronaut at the controls, a manned mission would likely have greater odds of success than a robotic mission. Perhaps the greatest case for the Apollo landings exists in the variety of rock samples collected. A robotic mission would be limited to a random collection of samples in the lander's immediate vicinity. However, the Apollo astronauts visited vastly different geological sites and were able to roam about the surface looking for particularly interesting and valuable specimens. For example, it is very unlikely that a robot would have been lucky enough to scoop up the "genesis rock" found by Apollo 15 astronauts. Only trained human explorers could collect the diversity of samples credited to the Apollo astronauts.

During the 1970s the USSR successfully completed three lunar sample return missions: Luna 16 (1970), Luna 20 (1972) and Luna 24 (1976). However, these missions returned a grand total of only 10.6 ounces of soil. The properties of these samples are the same as those of the Apollo samples.

Attention modem users: most image links link to high-resolution images that are often around a megabyte in size.

Apollo 16 photograph AS1610717446 shows a rock with a clearly defined "C" marking on it, which is a studio prop identification marking that proves that the photographs were made on a fake lunar landscape in a studio.

This rock is famous amongst those who want you to believe that the Apollo landings were faked. It is suggested that every rock on the faked landscape was individually labeled, starting at A. The image, found widely spread over the internet, indeed shows what appears to be the letter C. Magnification of the image, however, has shown that it is no more than a hair or fiber that was likely on the paper when the print was made. On the magnification it is clearly differently colored. This print was then scanned to produce the digital image seen on many web pages -- third generation at best. Scans of the original have been found to be clean, with no evidence of the C. The issue of original scans versus third or worse generation scans will come up more often, as it underlies several of the arguments against the Moon landings.

The lunar rover's tires should have burst in the vacuum atmosphere of the Moon.

The lunar rovers did not have ordinary, pressurized tires. The wheels were made of a see-through wire mesh supported on spokes, as can be seen very clearly on Apollo photographs AS158811901, AS1713420475, and AS1713720979.

The Apollo astronauts should have been pierced by thousands of micro-meteoroids.

Shielding was provided to protect the Apollo astronauts from micro-meteoroid bombardment. Due to their low mass, only a thin layer of material was necessary to stop these dust-sized particles. For example, the Lunar Module was protected by a thin aluminum outer shield a few thousandths of an inch thick. The astronauts' spacesuits included a micro-meteoroid garment to protect them while performing activities on the lunar surface.

The astronauts' footprints are deeper than the footpad imprints of the lander, which weighed 17 tons.

Hoax advocates often quote the weight of the lander as 16 to 18 tons (weights varied mission to mission). This was the lander's weight on Earth when fully fueled and included about 9 tons of descent stage propellant. By the time the lander reached the surface of the Moon, its weight in lunar gravity was only about 2,700 lbs. With four 37-inch diameter footpads, the load on the surface was about 90 lbs per square foot. Neil Armstrong's fully suited weight on the Moon was 58 lbs. His boots covered an area of about one square foot, giving a load of 58 lbs per square foot. In Armstrong's own words "the LM footpads are only depressed in the surface about 1 or 2 inches." On the other hand, the footprints of the astronauts were depressed only a fraction of an inch, although people often exaggerate their depth.

The pressure inside the astronauts' spacesuits was greater than inside a football, which should have made them puff up like the Michelin Man and restricted the movements of their joints.

While on the surface of the Moon, the Apollo astronauts wore a spacesuit known as the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU). The EMU was a closed-circuit pressure vessel that enveloped the astronaut. The environment inside the suit consisted of 100% oxygen at 3.7 PSI (about a third that of a football). The complete suit included a liquid cooling garment, pressure garment assembly, and integrated thermal micro-meteoroid garment. The pressure garment was an airtight bladder with accordion joints at the knees and elbows, and swivel joints at the shoulders to allow mobility. When pressurized, the suit was kept from ballooning outward too far by a restraint layer of non-stretch netting. The fabric of the EMU's outer garment covered the pressure garment assembly.

Attention modem users: most image links link to high-resolution images that are often around a megabyte in size.

Shadows and Lighting

In many photographs the shadow side of the astronauts is illuminated, while the shadow side of nearby rocks is totally black.

Apollo 17 photograph AS1714522165 is a good example often used for the above hoax claim. The explanation is apparent from the photo itself. Look at the astronaut's feet and you will see that the shadow in this area is just as dark as that of the foreground rocks. The lunar surface acts as a reflector to illuminate the shadow side of the astronaut. At the elevation of the astronaut's feet, and the foreground rocks, this reflector surface is mostly covered by the adjacent shadows. However, at the elevation of the astronaut's head and torso, the shadows cover a much smaller percentage of the surface. For example, on a flat surface the angular distance from horizon to horizon is 180 degrees. At an elevation of five feet, a one-foot wide shadow subtends an angle of 11.4 degrees, or only 6% of the distance from horizon to horizon. At two inches above the ground, this shadow subtends an angle of 143 degrees, or nearly 80% of the surface. Furthermore, the rocks are darker and less reflective than the astronaut's white space suit.

In many photographs there are lighting hot spots and a darkening of the surface toward the horizon, while Sunlight should not produce hot spots and in an airless environment the surface should not fade.

The hot spots are the result of the lunar soil's (regolith) tendency to reflect light back toward its source. There are many reasons for this, but it is mostly due to countless tiny glass spheres found in the lunar soil, and formed by meteorite impacts. When you see a photo taken down sun, away from the Sun, you see what looks like a spotlight around the shadow's head. This is because the light is strongly reflected back toward the Sun, so the soil around the head of the shadow looks very bright. This phenomenon also explains why the surface fades so drastically toward the horizon. It is brightest near the foreground due to sunlight being preferentially reflected back toward the camera. Farther away, the sunlight is preferentially reflected away from the camera, making the ground look dark. This phenomenon can also be observed in wet grass on Earth, as spherical water droplets act like the glass spheres. The technical term for this phenomenon is Heiligenschein, and is the result of light refraction, reflection, and diffraction on the surface of and inside the glass spheres and/or water droplets. Apollo photographs AS11405961, AS12476985, AS14669233 and AS1713420435 are very good examples of Heiligenschein.

In Apollo 11 photograph AS11405903 the horizon is located at eye level, but should have been at chest level because the camera was mounted to Neil Armstrong's chest.

The referenced photograph is the press released version of the most reproduced image from the entire Apollo archive. The claim of the hoax advocates assumes that Aldrin and Armstrong were standing on level ground; however, if Armstrong were standing on higher ground, the apparent elevation of the horizon would rise accordingly. If we look at Armstrong's reflection in the visor, we see the horizon is located at his chest. This shows Armstrong was indeed standing on higher ground with his chest located in approximately the same horizontal plane as Aldrin's eyes. Given this camera position, we see the horizon across Aldrin's eyes as expected. More detail can be seen in the original. From the original it is also clear that the press release photo was rotated and the top extended with black.

The hoax advocates also point out that the top of Aldrin's backpack should not be visible if the camera was attached to Armstrong's chest. Again, the hoax advocates fail to recognize that Armstrong is standing on higher ground. In addition, Aldrin is leaning forward; thus, exposing the top of his backpack to the camera. Due to the weight of the astronauts' backpacks, a slight forward lean was required to maintain balance.

In Apollo 16 photograph AS1611318339 an astronaut stands on the surface of the Moon in direct sunlight without casting a shadow.

This photo is one of astronaut John Young saluting the US flag. Young's shadow is clearly visible on the ground below him and to the right (his left). His shadow is not attached to his body because Young was leaping off the ground and was elevated about two feet when the photo was taken. There is some very good corroborating video (in QuickTime format, .mov) of the event. Young made two leaps for the occasion. This is one of the most famous of the Apollo photos and it is surprising that hoax advocates would be unfamiliar with the story behind the photograph. Other comments often made about this photo include (1) the flag appears to be fluttering and (2) the flag's camera facing side should be shaded from the sun. The fluttering issue will be dealt with later. As for the lighting issue, it is obvious that the flag is angled to the right and toward the camera. With the sun to the right, the flag's camera facing side would be sunlit at a shallow angle, which agrees with the shadows on the flag itself.

Attention modem users: most image links link to high-resolution images that are often around a megabyte in size.

The astronaut in Apollo 11 photographs AS11405866-AS11405869 should be in the dark, as he is located in the shadow of the lander.

This question about shadows in a lot of the photos taken on the Moon comes up over and over again. What needs to be realized is that the sun, while being the only source of direct light, was not the only light source. Light reflects off everything around the astronauts. Because this is very bright light and the lunar surface already reflects light very well, the reflected light can be very significant.

So the answer to these questions is: reflected light. In the photographs the astronaut is significantly above the ground and is lit by reflected light off the surrounding lunar landscape. The fact he is wearing a pristine white spacesuit also helps, as it reflects most of that light again. So he really shows up against the shadow on the ground below him. The highly reflective white spacesuits also explain some of the light in individual pictures of the astronauts. These were taken with the sun's light reflecting off the photographer, providing a great deal of infill on the astronaut being photographed. Remember that the photographer would be reflecting a lot of light, think of a snowy landscape on a bright winter's day. This is a very common trick also used by photographers on Earth. They get someone to hold up a large sheet of white card or cloth. This reflects the sunlight back across the shadows on the person being photographed,
providing a natural infill to any harsh shadows.

If the Sun is the only source of light on the Moon, all shadows should run parallel, instead of going in different directions as in Apollo 16 photograph AS1611318342 and many others.

You'll find lots of Apollo photographs like this on the web with colored lines indicating the directions of the shadows. Without fail they show lines that are very rough guesswork, designed to prove a suspect theory rather than reflecting what the photograph shows. All they prove is that two dimensional photographs cannot completely represent three dimensional features. We all know how lines on a highway appear to diverge as they approach the observer, yet we know they are parallel. Another important factor that comes into play here is the slope of the ground. Let's consider two shadows -- one cast on an upward slope and the other on a downward slope. If viewed from the side, these shadows would appear to go off in different directions. However, if viewed from high above, they would be seen as parallel. In other words, looks can be deceiving. There is no evidence of NASA trickery here.

You might also want to ask; if there were more than one light source because spotlights were used, then why do we not see more than one shadow on everything? Surely this would be impossible to avoid, yet no Apollo photograph ever shows that happening.

Hot and Cold

The temperatures on the Moon reach 280 degrees Fahrenheit and should have destroyed the films in the cameras of the astronauts.

The temperature mentioned refers to the surface temperature. Air temperature has no meaning on the Moon since there's no air. In an airless environment, objects transfer heat either through direct physical contact, or through the somewhat inefficient process of radiation and absorption. The temperature of the film has nothing to do with the lunar surface temperature unless the two were somehow to come into direct physical contact. The film temperature is determined mainly by the absorptive properties of the Hasselblad (500EL Data Camera) camera body. And predictably enough, those properties were controlled in the design such that the camera absorbed just enough heat from the sun, on average, to keep the film within its operational limits. The camera was given a silver finish to make it more resistant to thermal variations that ranged from full Sun to full shadow helping maintain a more uniform internal temperature. The two magazines carried along with the camera also had silver finishes.

The film used was an Ektachrome E-3 emulsion on the special-purpose Estar thin base. Estar is made from polyester and was specially created for high-altitude surveillance photography where it would have to endure temperatures as low as -50 F. The E-3 emulsion is good up to that temperature and below. Polyester melts at about 550 F. The emulsion, however, would be rendered chemically ineffective before the base melts. The film was able to withstand strong temperature extremes. The extremes of the Moon's surface temperature, however, don't apply as the film never got that hot or that cold.

The astronauts could not have survived in the heat on the Moon, because the vacuum of space cannot cool heated objects.

The astronaut's spacesuits weren't white just because it looked cool. White reflects heat radiation most, thereby minimizing the amount absorbed. The suits were also cooled using a system not unlike a refrigerator. It worked because water sprayed into a vacuum experiences a very rapid drop in pressure and consequently temperature. The same thing happens to aerosol sprays, which is why spray-on deodorants feel so cold. It is due to the sudden drop in pressure between the can and outside air.

When a small amount of water was sprayed onto a cooling element on the rear of the spacesuit, its temperature dropped so much that it would freeze over. The cooling water of the spacesuit was then pumped through this element. The heat of the water melted the ice, which rapidly boiled off (the boiling point of water being very low in a vacuum) into space, taking the unwanted heat with it.

Attention modem users: most image links link to high-resolution images that are often around a megabyte in size.

Video and Photography

Like many other Apollo photographs, Apollo 11 photograph AS11405872 shows strange blobs in the sky that should not have been there.

The blobs are a very common camera effect called lens flare. It is caused by bright light shining into the lens and reflecting off its interior and then down onto the film. This isn't unusual and you'll be able to find it happening in lots of photographs, whether taken on the Moon or on Earth. On good scans of the originals these flares show up very clearly, whereas on images used on the Web, which are often third generation copies or worse, the flares are often washed out by contrast, making only the brightest spots show up as "strange blobs."

The cross hairs on Apollo 16 photograph AS1610717446 go behind the objects, which proofs that it is a fake, pasted-together image.

The Apollo cameras were fitted with a so-called Reseau plate. The Reseau plate was made of glass and was fitted to the back of the camera body, extremely close to the film plane. The plate was engraved with a number of crosses to form a grid. The intersections were 10 mm apart and accurately calibrated to a tolerance of 0.002 mm. Except for the larger central cross, each of the four arms on a cross was 1 mm long and 0.02 mm wide. The crosses are recorded on every exposed frame and provided a means of determining angular distances between objects in the field-of-view.

This crosshair overlapping phenomenon appears not only in this photograph, but in many Apollo photographs. Some clear examples are AS158711845, AS1713420491, and AS1714622296. In all instances the crosshairs disappear only when crossing a brightly lit white object, especially when the adjacent area is dark. What's happening here is that the intense light reflecting off the white surface is bleeding in around the crosshair and saturating the film, thus obliterating the crosshair. This is commonplace and is in no way evidence of fraud. It happens on photographs with crosshairs on Earth, too. Again, please note that on the high-resolution scans the bleeding is much more obvious.

In Apollo 11 photograph AS11405942 Buzz Aldrin is carrying the EASEP experiments toward the deployment site. There is no antenna on top of his PLSS. In Apollo 11 photograph AS11405943, supposedly taken only a few seconds later, an antenna is clearly visible.

Unlike the antennas on portable radios and automobiles, the VHF antennas on the astronauts' backpacks were not metal tubes, but flat metal strips painted white on one side and black on the other. The antennas were meant to be folded down when entering or leaving the lander. In a few of the later missions you can see astronauts with the antenna folded down because they have just emerged from the lander or are just about ready to enter it. When you look at these antennas edge-on (from the astronaut's front or back), they tend to disappear against the dark background. But when presented broadside (from the astronaut's side) to the camera they appear bright and prominent. In the second photograph Aldrin has turned slightly to the left and presented the broad face of the antenna.

The original photographs are both much richer in detail and you can actually see the antenna in both; in the first one as a thin line and in the second as a broad strip. This once again illustrates two important points about Apollo photographs available on the Internet. First is resolution. The images commonly available are scanned at a low resolution, at the cost of detail. Hoax advocates that complain about missing detail should work from prints or high-resolution scans. It also illustrates the lossy compression in JPG picture encoding. Even high-resolution JPGs can lose some detail when they are compressed.

Attention modem users: most image links link to high-resolution images that are often around a megabyte in size.

Photographs and video footage of the American flag on the Moon shows it fluttering, although there is no atmosphere or wind on the Moon.

This is one of the most ridiculous observations. It is readily apparent that in all the video clips showing a fluttering flag an astronaut is grasping the flagpole and is obviously twisting the pole, which is making the flag move. In fact, in some clips the motion of the flag is unlike anything we would see on Earth. In an atmosphere the motion of the flag would quickly dampen out due to air resistance. In some of the Apollo clips we see the twisting motion of the pole resulting in a violent flapping motion in the flag with little dampening effect.

Many hoax advocates claim that even some of the Apollo photographs show a fluttering flag, which begs the question how one can see a flag flutter in a still image. Perhaps the ripples and wrinkles in the flags are being perceived as wave motion? The flags where attached vertically at the pole and horizontally from a rod across the top. On some flights the astronauts did not fully extend the horizontal rod, so the flags had ripples in them. There is much video footage in which these rippled flags can be seen and, in all cases, they are motionless.

On some video footage of the Apollo landings you can see right through the astronauts, like they're ghosts, which proves that the footage was faked.

This only happens in footage of the early flights and is a result of the primitive video technology used. What could happen if they were pointed at a bright stationary object is that the image of it could burn into the electronic receptors. It's a temporary effect, just like your eyes can still see a light bulb if you stare at it long enough and then turn away. It's also not dissimilar to what can happen to older computer monitors without a screensaver. What happened on the Apollo footage is that the image of the stationary lander in the background was burned onto the camera. So it remained on the screen over the top of the astronaut even as he walked in front of it.

You don't have to take NASA's word on this. Ask anyone who purchased one of the first video cameras on the market in the 1970s.

Some photographs have strange, smudged areas and lines on them, which prove that they were faked.

Most of these observations are based not on the actual photographs, but on scanned JPG images published on web sites. As discussed before, there's a trade-off with JPG compression. It uses a lossy compression algorithm, which means that the image loses detail. The higher the compression, the more detail is lost. Usually this doesn't matter as the detail lost is minor and the algorithm makes a good job of disguising it. But if you look really hard, or magnify bits, you're always going to see what appears to be smudging.

There is, however, also a set of Apollo photographs (AS1611618574-AS1611618664) that show actual smearing -- almost as if someone spilled something over them. This possible film damage is quite obvious, though, and is hard to mistake for tampering as the smearing is virtually identical on each photograph of that particular film.

Since the Moon has no atmosphere, there should be thousands of stars visible on the photographs, but there are no stars at all.

The Moon's surface is airless. On Earth, our thick atmosphere scatters sunlight, spreading it out over the whole sky. That's why the sky is bright during the day. Without sunlight, the air is dark at night, allowing us to see stars. On the Moon, the lack of air means that the sky is always dark. Even when the Sun is high off the horizon during full day, the sky near it will be black. If you were standing on the Moon, you would indeed see stars, even during the day. Yet to capture them on film is a different matter, because despite the dark sky during the lunar day there is still an enormous amount of reflective light to take into account.

In the harsh light of the sunlit lunar surface, very short exposure times were needed to keep the film from overexposing foreground objects -- like the surface and the astronauts themselves. As a result, faint, distant objects (like stars) are simply not visible in any of the photographs taken of foreground action on the Moon.

There are other pictures, taken by several unmanned Surveyor spacecraft from the lunar surface, that overwhelmingly demonstrate this underexposure. In order to get the stars even to show up for navigation and location purposes, the Surveyor cameras had to use (in one example) a three-minute time exposure to record them. In contrast, the average exposure time of the hand-held film photographs taken on the lunar surface by Apollo astronauts is about one 250th of a second, or an average of forty-five thousand times shorter than the exposure required to actually record stars in the airless lunar sky.

Attention modem users: most image links link to high-resolution images that are often around a megabyte in size.

Some of the photographs show the cross hairs at a strange angle, instead of straight as they should be, which proves that the photographs were tampered with.

Some of the photographs have the Reseau-lines, or cross hairs, at odd angles because the photograph was originally taken with the camera squint. When the image was developed and printed for publication it was rotated to straight up and down, and then cropped to a tidy rectangle. A good example is Apollo 11 photograph AS11405903, which was rotated several degrees clockwise to make Buzz Aldrin stand up straight. Also, as you can see, in the original the topmost part of his backpack is cut off by the frame edge. On the press-released image several inches of black space has been added for balance.

There was nobody to film the lander taking off from the Moon's surface, yet footage of it exists for all landings and it appears to have been done with models and wires. With Apollo 16 and 17 the camera even follows the ascent.

This often shown footage was taken by a remotely controlled camera. This camera was initially mounted on the lander to film the astronauts leaving the lander. It would later be removed from the lander and, in earlier missions, mounted on a tripod (photographs AS11405907, AS12466756 -- which failed, and AS14669241). In later missions it was mounted on the Lunar Rover, which was left behind (AS158811901, AS1611718797, and AS1713420475). By the last two missions, Apollo 16 and 17, it was known exactly how fast the lander would ascend and how fast the camera had to pan up. It was set up in advance of the take off and triggered remotely from Earth.

The photographs taken on the Moon were taken by amateur photographers under allegedly very difficult conditions, yet they all came out perfect.

The astronauts received a great deal of training before they left Earth. Part of this was in the operation of the cameras, which were specially designed by Hasselblad to be used by the astronauts with their suits on. What many people do not know is that the Apollo astronauts took about 17,000 photographs on the lunar surface. So there are plenty of not-so-great photographs that NASA simply has never published -- over or underexposed, strange angles, accidental exposures, out of focus, extreme lens flares, etc. A few examples: AS11405901, AS11405904, AS11405965, AS11405966, AS12466735, AS12466806, AS1611718852, and AS1713420389. Those that the public are most familiar with are the best ones.

Everything looks normal when you double the speed of the Apollo landing video footage, because it was simply filmed on Earth and slowed down to look like it was on the Moon.

There's an easy explanation for this phenomenon. An object in free flight will follow a ballistic trajectory in accordance with Newton's laws of motion. The only force acting on the object is gravity, which on Earth has an acceleration of 32.2 ft/s2. On the Moon gravity is much less, 5.33 ft/s2. If the ballistic flight of an object on the Moon is sped up by a factor of 2.46 it will mimic exactly ballistic motion on Earth, and vice versa. The double speed the hoax advocates claim is close to this 2.46 ratio, hence free flight motion looks somewhat normal because it is what our eyes and brains are accustomed to seeing here on Earth. Other motion however, such as the movements of the astronauts' arms, looks very unnatural when speeded up. The hoax advocates deceivingly apply this explanation very selectively. If the Apollo footage is viewed in its entirety at double speed it becomes clear that this assumption cannot account for all
observed motion.

The Apollo footage is exactly what it appears to be, that is, man on the Moon. The convincing evidence is in the dust, which is particularly apparent in the footage of the Lunar Rover. If this footage were shot on Earth there would be clouds of dust thrown into the atmosphere by the Rover's wheels; however, there is no evidence of this. The dust immediately falls back to the surface in a ballistic arc matching its airless and low gravity environment. The same applies for dust kicked up by the astronauts.

There also is footage that shows clumsiness and inadvertent falls by astronauts. For instance Apollo 15 (.mpg format), Apollo 16 (.mpg format), and Apollo 17 (Quicktime format, .mov), which, when played back at double speed, looks extremely unnatural. So playing with film speeds really doesn't prove anything other than that the footage is authentic at its normal speed.

Neil Armstrong was the first man on the Moon, yet there is video footage of him descending the ladder and taking his initial steps on the lunar surface taken from outside the lander.

There was a video camera mounted on and extended from the side of the landing module especially for this purpose. NASA anticipated that the moment that Armstrong stepped onto the Moon would be particularly significant and something everyone would want to see. As Armstrong started down the ladder he remotely deployed it, swinging it out from its storage position in the side of the module. Note how the left hand side of the video image is obscured by both the side of the lander and the arm of the storage compartment that lowered it (A11V1092338 in .mpg format). The way the camera was mounted meant that these first pictures were actually upside-down and had to be flipped over once received on Earth. The same camera was then removed and used to send video pictures of the rest of the lunar activities from a stand on the lunar surface. Here is a collaborating statement from Buzz Aldrin:

"As Neil backed out of the hatch, it was not that easy -- with the backpack on -- to clear the opening. So I had to guide him down: left, right and so on. Once he got on the ‘porch,' as we called it, he pulled a lever, which brought the live television camera into view. But the image was upside down; Houston had to send the computer a signal to put it right-side up again."

The hills in the background of many of the photos keep reappearing in other photos, but with different foregrounds, which proves that the scenes are artificial backdrops.

What can often be seen in the background of the Apollo lunar photographs are not hills, but mountains. Very big mountains even compared to mountains on Earth. Lunar mountains tend to be big because there is nothing to wear them down, unlike on Earth. It is also very difficult to judge distances on the Moon. This is because there's no atmosphere to soften distant objects and the landscape is pretty featureless. Things that are very far away can appear to be quite close. Unless you know their relative size it can be hard to tell. This comes out very clearly in Apollo 16 video clip A16V1673855 (RealMedia format), where the boulder that appears to be about ten feet high and only a few yards away from the astronauts turns out to be as big as a house and quite a distance away.

Another example is the unassuming hill pictured in Apollo 15 photograph AS158711835, which is in fact Mount Hadley -- all 14,765 feet of it. That makes this hill over three times the height of the tallest mountain in the British Isles and bigger than any mountain in the US outside of Alaska. And Mount Hadley is by no means unusual in lunar terms. So many of the apparent hills are actually mountains, and they're far away. So the astronauts would have to travel a long distance before they'd ever stop being in the background. What Apollo photos taken from different points actually show is a slight variation in the angle you can see the mountains. This is called parallax and is often used on Earth to estimate distances from photographs. Parallax is very hard to fake and would be impossible with a backdrop. Rather than proving they're a fake background, the photographs prove they are three
dimensional, large, distant objects.

Two video clips that NASA claims were taken at different locations many miles apart show an identical hill.

The video clips to which the hoax advocates refer are from a non-NASA documentary that accidentally used a wrong clip. This was a simple mistake, but not one made by NASA. According to NASA, the clips were actually taken about three minutes apart on the same hill.

Attention modem users: most image links link to high-resolution images that are often around a megabyte in size.

Technology of the Sixties

In the sixties and seventies the computer technology simply did not exist to build de guidance systems and other sophisticated hardware required to go to the Moon.

It's true that computing technology of the time was really primitive compared to that of today, but a couple of things have to be considered.

NASA was at the cutting edge of technology, and if they didn't have it they could buy it. What they had available to them was well in advance of anything else around at the time. It doesn't take much computational power to plot a course to the Moon. We're talking Newtonian physics here that can be done on the back of an envelope by any experienced physicists. Unlike general-purpose computers, the Apollo guidance computer had to perform only one task: guidance. Most of the number crunching was performed at Mission Control on several mainframe computers. The results were then transmitted to the onboard computer, which acted upon them. The Apollo guidance computer was capable of computing only a small number of navigation problems itself. Since the guidance computer had to run only one program, that program could be put in ROM; thus, only a small amount of RAM was required to hold the temporary results of guidance calculations.

The hoax advocates tend to overrate the tasks performed by the onboard guidance computers of the 1960's. In fact, the Mercury spacecraft, 1961-63, flew into space without any onboard computer whatsoever, yet the trajectories were precisely controlled and the capsule was capable of fully automated control.

One of the most commonly quoted "facts" about technology from the sixties is that "a modern washing machine has more computational power than the first lander." This is a questionable fact, but it hardly matters. It's amazing what you can achieve with primitive computers if you're not worried about fancy user interfaces. Remember how much gaming power was contained in the mere 64 kilobytes of RAM of the computers of the early eighties? All the computing power needed for the interfaces of modern flight simulation programs is needed to generate the realistic graphic surroundings, not for the actual flying controls, which are mostly rather simple calculations. The Apollo missions didn't need to generate pretty surroundings on a screen.

From Earth to the Moon, and Back

The astronauts should have died due to the extreme radiation coming from the Van Allen belt, because their spacecrafts lacked the required 12 inches of lead shielding as protection.

Actually, of all the issues put forth by the hoax advocates, this is the one that requires the most attention. The Van Allen radiation belts are a pair of toroidal-shaped belts of high-energy electrons and ions trapped in the Earth's magnetic field. The inner region is centered at about 1,800 miles above Earth and has a thickness of about 3,000 miles. The outer region is centered at about 9,300-12,500 miles above the surface of the Earth and has a thickness of 3,700-6,200 miles.

As early as 1962, six years before the first circumlunar flight of Apollo 8, several symposia were called: precisely to address the issue of protection against radiations in space, including specific planning for the Apollo Missions. Both NASA and the Atomic Energy Commission held two symposia, the first in Gatlinburg, Tennessee in 1962 -- sponsored by NASA, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the American Nuclear Society. By 1964, more information on the radiation hazard had been gathered and analyzed. Meeting again at Gatlinburg, those concerned with the upcoming manned missions defined radiation problems encountered in deeper space, the radiobiological effects, and radiation effects on materials and components including shielding requirements. To refrain from writing volumes on what was covered as a result of this extensive study, refer to the October 1964, NASA SP-71 Publication, Second Symposium on Protection Against Radiations in Space. By examining the contents of the 1964 Symposium, you will see the laboriously considered and investigated areas early in the space program's history that are directly relevant to Apollo and the radiation issue. The fact that it was studied six years prior to any Apollo Moon launch indicates that it had been the primary concern on their agenda. And from looking at the contents of the 1964 Symposium, it's blatantly obvious that the hoax advocates never even thought to address any of the specific early radiation topics that are seen there. Why would such extensive studies have been done if there were no contemplated preparations to avoid such hazards during the upcoming planned manned space missions?

The scientists working on the problem of Van Allen radiation considered it to be minor compared to other design hurdles to be conquered. Their solution was simple -- avoid exposure by keeping the spacecraft at low Earth orbit altitudes while in parking orbits and then send it through the belts at high speed. The astronauts took about an hour and a half to pass through the belts, keeping their dose well below 1 rad. Radiation sickness symptoms don't start to show until you get around 25 rads. Once you reach 100 rads you're going to be ill. At 500 rads and more you're probably dead. So the exposure the astronauts received is pretty mild. There was a modicum of shielding from the equipment, but in the end this was not necessary as the extraordinary transition speed kept the dose below harmful limits -- both going to and returning from the Moon.

The actual doses, in rads, that the astronauts received can be found in NASA Technical Note, TN D-7080 - Apollo Experience Report - Protection Against Radiation, by English, Benson, Bailey and Barnes, March 1973. The tabulated radiation dose average from the thermoluminescent dosimeters carried by Apollo astronauts for their respective missions is given. In comparison to the doses actually received, the report states that the original maximum operational dose (MOD) limit for each of the Apollo missions was set at 400 rads (x-ray equivalent) to the skin and 50 rads to blood forming organs. Bottom-line actual doses received by the astronauts were 0,18 rads for Apollo 11, 0.58 rads for Apollo 12, 1.14 rads for Apollo 14 and 0.30 rads for Apollo 15. While the table does not include the results from Apollo's 16 or 17, there is enough data to conclude that the actual radiation exposure that the astronauts endured was very small. It never came close to being lethal or even damaging.

As to the issue of solar flares and the danger they presented, there simply weren't any major ones during any of the Apollo missions. So the biggest reason that none of the astronauts died from radiation exposure was that they simply did not get a high enough dose. If you really want to get the low-down on this issue, read the NASA Technical Notes referenced above.

You can hear Neil Armstrong talking during the landing of Apollo 11, yet you can't hear the roaring of the rocket engine.

On Earth, a rocket engine is an extremely noisy device; this comes from the shearing action between the high velocity exhaust jet and the surrounding atmosphere. The lander operated in a vacuum so the only sound would be that produced by vibrations transmitted through the spacecraft structure itself. Also, the microphones used by the astronauts were located inside their spacesuits, thus insulated from the cabin environment, and were designed to pick up only the sound in their immediate vicinity, that is, the astronauts' voices. This is no different from microphones fighter-jet pilots wear, who sit in front of a much more powerful engine that does interact with the surrounding atmosphere.

There's no delay in the conversations between the Astronauts and Mission Control on Earth. There should be a lag just like with satellite connections.

Radio waves travel at the speed of light, but the Moon is far enough away for this to take a noticeable amount of time. Roughly 1.28 seconds. This means that an Astronaut would have to wait 2.56 seconds before getting a response from mission control. All recordings of radio conversations of the Apollo missions were made on Earth. This means that we hear things as if we were standing beside the mission controller. The Astronaut's message comes in and the mission controller immediately responds. There is no delay because we are not aware of the 1.28 seconds it has taken the message to reach Earth, nor do we have to wait the 1.28 seconds it will take the response to reach the Moon before we hear it.

Obviously the reverse is true if the mission controller is asking the Astronaut something. In this case we have to wait for the request to reach the Astronaut and then for the answer to get back. So it's the Astronaut's turn to experience no delay. The recordings and transcripts of conversations with the Moon therefore show a mixture of this; sometimes a full 2.56 second gap, sometimes none at all. Also, if you listen carefully you can often hear an overlap. An astronaut is talking and is interrupted by Houston but will not notice until 1.28 seconds later. Another 1.28 seconds later you can hear the interruption of Houston echo back through the astronaut's microphone.

The Apollo Saturn rockets were not big enough to carry the fuel needed to reach the Moon.

The majority of the Saturn rockets were required to place Apollo into an orbit of only 100 nautical miles high. After that other factors come into play; speed given by the angular rotation of Earth (they don't put the launch site near the equator just for the sunny weather) and the fact that once you're moving in space nothing will slow you or speed you up, other than gravitational pull from planets or moons. All that was required from the rockets beyond this was to escape the initial Earth orbit, which did not require as much effort as the initial stage, and any minor adjustments on the way. What it's really doing is establishing a bigger orbit of Earth that will make it cross the path of the Moon's orbit. Once there, it does another minor burn (the lunar orbit insertion) and it's in a lunar orbit instead. So the rockets don't burn anything like all the way there and they never escape from Earth's gravity. It's all done with orbits. A lot of this kind of "proof" of a hoax is usually based on a comparison with the size of the Space Shuttle's fuel tanks and rockets. No consideration about the relative size and weights of either crafts. The Apollo missions actually jettisoned most of their rockets and weight once they left the Earth, leaving behind a comparatively tiny orbiter and lander. The Shuttles, on the other hand, come back down much as they left.

There are no flames or smoke plumes visible coming from the rocket during the take-off of the Moon lander, which looks strange to begin with.

The hoax advocates' claim that an exhaust plume should be visible is due to their experience seeing launches of such rockets as the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle, where large columns of smoke and flame are seen trailing the vehicle. Whether an exhaust plume is visible or not is mostly due to the type of propellant used. The Saturn V's first stage burned liquid oxygen (LOX) and kerosene (RP-1), which produces an opaque yellow flame. The plume we see trailing the Space Shuttle comes from the solid rocket boosters, which burn a propellant consisting mostly of ammonium perchlorate and powdered aluminum. However, if you look closely at the three main engines at the stern of the Shuttle orbiter you will see very little flame. The LOX and liquid hydrogen burned by the Shuttle's main engines produces a nearly invisible flame. The lander used a propellant mixture consisting of nitrogen tetroxide (NTO) and Aerozine 50 (a 50-50 mixture of hydrazine and unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine), which, like LOX and liquid hydrogen, produces exhaust gases that are mostly invisible. In space, the flame is even less visible as the gases disperse very rapidly. Also note that the video of the lander launches is generally of poor quality and low resolution.

The FOX television program dealing with the alleged hoax points out NASA illustrations showing an exhaust plume coming from the lander's ascent engine. This is a simple case of NASA artists taking artistic license. The illustrations are a dramatization of a lander launch and are not meant to be scientifically accurate. The claim that the videos look strange, as if wires were used, is based on how the video abruptly ends when the Lunar Module ascent stage reaches the "ceiling" of the "movie stage." The video to which they refer is of earlier missions seen in Apollo documentaries and on television, shot with a stationary camera that could not follow the ascent.

Attention modem users: most image links link to high-resolution images that are often around a megabyte in size.

The rover was too big to be carried in the lunar lander.

A great deal of money was spent on the lunar rover and a great number of problems had to be resolved before it could work on the Moon's surface. It wasn't a last minute addition deployed without any thought. As with everything taken to the Moon, weight and size were major considerations. If one takes the measurements of the Lunar Rover Vehicle (LRV) when it was fully deployed and assembled, then yes, it would not fit in the lander; however, the Rover folded for stowage in the descent stage of the lander in a quadrant to the right of the ladder. The chassis was hinged in three places and the four wheels were pivoted nearly flat against the folded chassis occupying only 30 cubic feet. When the astronauts deployed the Rover, all they had to do was pull on two cords and the Rover popped right out of its berth and down to the lunar surface. As it did so, the wheels deployed outward and were then locked into position.

The tracks of the rover in Apollo 16 photograph AS1610717446 turn at almost right angles behind it, which is impossible.

The rover was steered by its front and rear wheels, as can be seen in A16V1245810 (Quicktime format, .mov), so all this photograph shows is where the wheels turned. Other photographs, such as AS1713720979, show hardly any or no tracks behind the Rover wheels. From the lunar journals it is clear that the dust layer was not uniformly distributed and usually thinner on mountain slopes. Activity around the Rover would also quickly obliterate tire marks with dust kicked up by the astronauts. And since the rover's turn radius, like that of any four-wheeled vehicle, was limited, the astronauts sometimes found it easier to lift one end of the rover and turn it so it pointed in the direction they wanted to go, rather than manuevering through a three-point turn. When this occurred, there would obviously be no tracks leading up to the wheels.

The Apollo crews were launched into space but never left Earth orbit.

Orbiting spacecraft and satellites are easily visible to the naked eye; in fact, there are many people who enjoy tracking satellites as a hobby. The Apollo spacecraft were large vehicles, thus bright and easy to see. Had the Apollo crafts not left orbit, they would have been observed by many people worldwide, yet there where no such sightings. Also, there are documented cases of observers following the crafts as they left Earth orbit on their translunar trajectories -- exactly when and where the spacecraft were predicted to be. Furthermore, the Soviets closely tracked the crafts all the way to the Moon and back.

NASA used its TETR-A training satellite to transmit data to Earth to simulate transmissions from the Apollo spacecraft to fool ground controllers into believing they were receiving real data.

This is a claim made by hoax advocate Bill Kaysing. The flight controllers in the Mission Control Center (MCC) read only what was on their computer screens and wouldn't have known where the data came from. Thus, it can be argued the MCC flight controllers could be fooled by simulated data and a satellite would not have been necessary to do it.

On the other hand, a satellite could not possibly fool controllers of the Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN), who collected radio signals from space and relayed them to the MCC. The Apollo spacecraft followed a trajectory to the Moon that was tracked with great precision. TETR-A was an Earth orbiting satellite and followed a vastly different trajectory with no similarity to Apollo whatsoever. In addition, TETR-A re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on April 28 1968, eight months before the first lunar flight.

The astronauts' movement inside the Lunar Module would change the center of mass, making it impossible to control.

This is a claim of hoax advocate Ralph Rene who, apparently, has a poor understanding of physics and the lander's control systems. The lander had an automatic computer guidance and inertial control system. This system was designed to measure the attitude of the lander several times per second using a system of gyroscopes. If it found that the lander was out of proper attitude it would make adjustments by gimballing the main descent engine and/or throttling it back, and firing control thrusters as needed to stabilize the spacecraft. Despite claims to the contrary, the control thrusters exerted sufficient force to nudge the spacecraft around as necessary to keep it stable.

The untested Lunar Module landed on the Moon six times flawlessly, although its prototype crashed on Earth during training.

The prototype to which the hoax advocates refer was not a prototype at all, but two classes of training vehicles known as the Lunar Landing Research Vehicles (LLRV) and the more advanced Lunar Landing Training Vehicles (LLTV). These vehicles included a jet engine to support five-sixths of their airborne weight, a pair of rocket engines that simulated the lander's descent engine, and small jets that mimicked the lander's attitude control thrusters. The Apollo astronauts trained in the LLRV and LLTV to learn the skills necessary to maneuver the actual lander. During one test flight, Neil Armstrong was forced to eject when the LLRV's helium pressurization system for the steering jets failed, causing the LLRV to become unstable and crash. Despite this incident, the LLRV and LLTV flew hundreds of successful flights.

The LLRV and LLTV were very different from the lander and the allegedly untested lander was far from untested. Every component of the lander was tested over and over again during its development. Furthermore, the lander was tested in space during the Apollo 9 and 10 missions.

Last post on these hoax arguments.

Attention modem users: most image links link to high-resolution images that are often around a megabyte in size.

The astronauts could not pass through the tunnel connecting the Command Module and the Lunar Module with their spacesuits and backpacks on.

That is correct, but the astronauts did not have to. Their EVA suits and backpacks were stowed in the Lunar Module the whole time. The only time the astronauts donned their suits and packs were when they actually left the lander for surface activities on the Moon.

The astronauts could not have left the Lunar Module because they could not fit through the hatch and there was no room to even open the hatch, which opened to the inside.

This is an often quoted "fact" that has never been proven. The astronauts were positioned on either side of the central cockpit panel, with the main EVA door between them. There was in fact plenty of room to open the hatch. On Apollo 11, Armstrong would have been manning the left position and Aldrin the right. The door was latched to Aldrin's side, necessitating that the door be swung open inward, and effectively trapping Aldrin momentarily on his side of the lander. In fact, this is the main reason that Armstrong left the lander first. Once he was out, Aldrin was able to close the hatch, move over to Armstrong's position, and leave himself.

As to the issue of whether the astronauts could fit through the hatch, clearly they could. There are many photos (like AS11405862 and AS11405863) and video, both on the Moon and while in training, showing fully suited astronauts crawling through the hatch. There are a couple possible sources for this misinformation. First, early versions of the lander had a round hatch that hampered astronaut egress; however, the original round hatch was changed to a rectangular hatch while the lander was still in development. Second, there is a story that a hoax advocate compared the width of the lander's hatch to dimensional data on the astronauts' spacesuit. It was found that the published width of the suit exceeded the hatch width. What he failed to realize is that the suit dimension was the maximum width measured across the elbows. When crawling through the hatch, an astronaut would draw his arms in under his body, thus decreasing his width and allowing him to pass through the opening, which, judging the following words of Buzz Aldrin, was still not that easy:

"As Neil backed out of the hatch, it was not that easy -- with the backpack on -- to clear the opening. So I had to guide him down: left, right and so on. Once he got on the 'porch,' as we called it, he pulled a lever, which brought the live television camera into view. But the image was upside down; Houston had to send the computer a signal to put it right-side up again."

The fuel tanks of the Lunar Module were nowhere near even a sixth the size of those on the space shuttle, as one would expect to achieve lunar orbit.

This comment, by hoax advocate Bart Sibrel, fails to take into account propellant density. It is not the volume of the propellant that matters; it is the mass. The main engines of the Space Shuttle consume liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Since liquid hydrogen has an extremely low density, a very large tank is required to store it. The lander, on the other hand, used propellants of much higher density. On average, the lander's propellants were 3.3 times denser than the propellants stored in the large external tank of the Space Shuttle. With an average specific gravity of 1.19, the 5200 pounds of propellant stored in the lander's ascent stage would displace a volume of only 70 cubic feet. This volume is consistent with the size of the tanks we see in photographs of the lander.

I have heard it many times in many classes: "Ganges water is pure. Even modern science has proven that. There was this Indian professor who took Ganges water and normal water and compared them. In Normal water, tuberculosis bacteria multiply for up to two weeks, until the water becomes brown. In Ganges water, tuberculosis bacteria multiply for several hours, then start to die off gradually. This happens to all kinds of pathogens and parasites. After three days, Ganges water is completely pure."

Is there anyone who has the actual data on this so often quoted "scientific research" of Ganges water? Who did it? What were the actual findings? Was anything ever published?

The same for "modern science has proven that cow dung has all antiseptic properties." You'll find a myriad of references to it online, but as to the source of it, all you'll find is an article from an Indian periodical called The Financial Express that states:

"Have you heard of a famous Italian scientist named Professor GE Bea? He has proved that cow dung kills malaria and TB germs. He has also proved that cow’s urine has 24 salts that help control sugar for diabetic patients and also have disinfectant and antibiotic properties."

Any search for this famous scientist or his research turns up nada.

In a certain internet forum some HK people make a wild propaganda against evolutionism, darwinism and material science en bloc. They quote several books, articles, whatever. Let us suppose they succeed in convincing people that material science and evolutionism is just a big hoax. However, what do they possess to offer instead? "Well, some old books that we consider holy say that a big blue giant is floating in space, and from his navel a flower grows, and on the top of that flower sits a four-headed creature, now he is the one who created everything." I wonder how many people will agree that this is any more "scientifical" or "reasonable" than modern day scientifical theories. I could never understand why something must be true simply on the basis that it is written in an (supposedly) old book. There are several different creation myths in the world (http://www.magictails.com/creationlinks.html), and Indian mythology is just one of them. Of course, we live in a free world so one can decide to accept it as the absolute truth, but trying to sell it as some universal and scientifical explanation is a little funny. One could as well point to the myths of the Navajos or the Dakotas and declare that it is "the absolute truth that has to be accepted by those who are intelligent".

There is no reference to the antiseptic Ganga water in the VedaBase -- at least I haven't found any. There are however some refs to the great mind behind the antiseptic cow dung.

Lecture on Bg 2.8-12, Los Angeles, November 27 1968:

And one Dr. Ghosh, a great chemist, he examined cow dung, that why cow dung is so much important in the Vedic literature? He found that cow dung contains all the antiseptic properties.


Lecture on SB 6.1.40 Surat, December 21 1970:

And if you want to know why one is accepted pure and one is accepted impure, if you make, I mean to say, research, you will find that the Vedic injunction is right. Take for..., this cow dung. Perhaps, you doctor, know, that one Dr. Lalman Ghosh in Calcutta, he analyzed this cow dung and he was a professor in the medical college. He has declared that cow dung is full of antiseptic properties.

We should get together and hire a lab to test both.

Anybody going to India soon who could collect samples?

Maryada, I wanted to thank you for the trouble you've taken in compiling the documentation in this thread. I've been meaning to look into it, but never had sufficient interest to go around hunting for tidbits of information spread across the cyberspace.

On Ganga-water:

In India, one can actually see that a person who takes a bath in the Ganges waters daily is almost free from all kinds of diseases. A very respectable brahmana in Calcutta never took a doctor’s medicine. Even though he sometimes felt sick, he would not accept medicine from the physician but would simply drink Ganges water, and he was always cured within a very short time. The glories of Ganges water are known to Indians and to ourselves also. The River Ganges flows by Calcutta. Sometimes within the water there are many stools and other dirty things which are washed away from neighboring mills and factories, but still thousands of men take baths in the Ganges water, and they are very healthy as well as spiritually inclined. That is the effect of Ganges water.

============ REF. SB 4.21.31


It is a proven fact that a person who regularly bathes in the Ganges is purified both externally and internally. Externally his body becomes immune to all kinds of disease, and internally he gradually develops a devotional attitude toward the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Throughout India, many thousands of people live on the banks of the Ganges, and by regularly bathing in her waters, they are undoubtedly being purified both spiritually and materially.

============ REF. SB 5.17.1


The whole Vedic knowledge is infallible. There are different examples how we take Vedic knowledge as infallible. Take for example, so far the Hindus are concerned, and how they accept the Vedic knowledge as complete, here is an insignificant example. Just like the cow dung. The cow dung is the stool of an animal. According to smriti or Vedic wisdom, if one touches the stool of an animal he has to take his bath to purify himself. But in the Vedic scriptures the cow dung is as stated as pure. Rather, impure place or impure things are purified by touch of the cow dung. Now if one argues how it is that in one place it is said that the stool of the animal is impure and another place it is said that the cow dung which is also the stool of an animal, it is pure, so it is contradictory. But actually, it may appear to be contradictory, but because it is Vedic injunction, therefore for our practical purposes we accept it. And by that acceptance we are not committing mistake. It has been found by modern chemists, modern science, one Dr. Lal Mohan Gosal, he has very minutely analyzed the cow dung and he has found that cow dung is a composition of all antiseptic properties. So similarly, he has also analyzed the water of the Ganges out of curiosity. So my idea is that Vedic knowledge is complete because it is above all doubts and all mistakes. So, and Bhagavad-gétä is the essence of all Vedic knowledge. The Vedic knowledge is therefore infallible. It comes down through the perfect disciplic succession.

============ REF. First Tape Recording, Done by Srila Prabhupada Himself


But you will find practically, that anyone who is taking regular bathing in this dirty water, he is healthy. You will find. It is very healthy. No disease touches him ordinarily. Of course, the body is susceptible to disease, but generally, those who are taking regular bath in the Ganges water, they are not diseased. You will find it practically still.

============ REF. Garden Conversation with Dr. Gerson and devotees -- June 22, 1975, Los Angeles

Interesting! So it's the same person behind both statements. Thank you, dear Madhava, for digging it out!

I'd still like to see independent verification by scientists who have no vested interest in the answer to the question.

The name seems to have some variants. Lal Mohan sounds more correct htan Lalman, Ghosh sounds more correct than Gosal. Google doesn't turn up anything relevant under Lal Mohan Ghosh or LalMohan Ghosh. There was one famous LalMohan Ghosh that was an early contemporary of Swamiji's and from Krishnanagar, WB, but he doesn't seem too relevant otherwise.

That is exactly my point. Nowadays, in the information age, anyone and their brother can say anything or put it up on a website. We have also seen in Thompson and Cremo's Forbidden Archeology that references to references to referances not seldom end up with statements completely different from the original. As long as it serves the referrer's purpose. Credibility has entered a completely new level.

I could very well believe that Ganges water has unique properties. The same for cow dung. But to believe is one thing, to claim scientific confirmation without verification is another. To say, "I believe and accept that cow dung is anti-septic and Ganges water is pure because of my deep faith in Sastra" is a kind of credibility -- even if just for the believer. To say that it is proven scientifically and have nothing to show to back that up is no credibility at all.

This Lal Mohan Gosal/Gosh and his research may very well be the real deal, but in the absence of verifiable data it could just as well be a fairy tale.

Curiously, I asked the people from ISKCOWP and several devotees connected to Cow Protection programs and big goshalas about the cow dung thing, but nobody was able to substantiate it. I don't even know where to begin asking about the Ganges water...

Anyway, if I ever find out the scoop, I'll let y'all know.

But you will find practically, that anyone who is taking regular bathing in this dirty water, he is healthy. You will find. It is very healthy. No disease touches him ordinarily. Of course, the body is susceptible to disease, but generally, those who are taking regular bath in the Ganges water, they are not diseased. You will find it practically still.

============ REF. Garden Conversation with Dr. Gerson and devotees -- June 22, 1975, Los Angeles

[/quote]

I don't know, Prabhupada. It gave me a pancreas infection. Plus I looked pretty yellow too for a while. I felt like a Simpson character. I don't know where that came from. Maybe it was just purification.

Must have been purification. Isn't yellow the color of the mode of goodness?

Alternatively, your consciousness at the time of bath was so polluted that you did not even touch the real Ganga water, rather a maya-ganga -- an illusion created to bewilder the asuras.

Haha, it must have been. If it's between me and the Ganges, guess who wins if the game is called 'purity'.

Indeed. "Purity" (closely related to "selflessness") may well be the most spiritually destructive game I know of. (A reading suggestion: Alstad, Kramer: The Guru Papers. Has any of you read that book?)

Maryada - I came across another hoax-site incidentally, hosted on a certain Vaishnava's collection of resources. Here. Any thoughts on the following, I don't recall sun flares and outer space radiation being covered in your notes:

What would be the fundamentalist vaisnava scientific explanation of solar flares be since the sun is a wheel on Vivasvan's chariot that rides along? Sounds like the chariot wheel has hit a pothole and the resulting jolt cause the corona ejection.

No, solar flames are just illusions Krishna put up to misguide the karmi scientists, didn't you know?

One turns yellow when the liver isn't functioning properly to remove toxins from your system. I turned a nice yellow when some friends brought me type A hepatitis from Guatemala. Hepatitis is caused by ingesting the virus from contact with fecal matter. Yes you can get it from water with fecal content if you accidentally ingest some. More commonly, someone cooks for you after not washing their hands really thoroughly.

Other symptoms of type A hepatitis include bright yellow eyes, odd colored urine and stool, and intense fatigue. Nausea is not uncommon.

Yah know, I always wonder when I hear the news about the latest thing that fecal matter has been found on. For instance, last week I heard that the lipstick samples at department stores are prone to fecal contamination. I really think our public schools should teach a class in wiping yourself being that folks are getting feces all over their hands. Sure folks should wash their hands after thier bathroom business but I just don't get how so many folks are getting gobs of feces on their hands from wiping themselves.