Friday, August 08, 2008

Mythbusters Lunar Landing Hoax

Update: This episode of Mythbusters originally aired on August 27th, 2008 at 9Pm.

The Huntsville Times is reporting today that an upcoming episode of the popular TV show Mythbusters will explore the conspiracy theory that NASA faked the moon landings. The episode will be broadcast on the Discovery Channel. Portions of the episode were filmed on location at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL. This episode will broadcast on August 27, 2008 at 9PM. For years, conspiracy theorists have said that the U.S. government, the Apollo astronauts and thousands of NASA employees faked the lunar landing in order to win the space race to the moon.

The idea that the moon landing was faked first came from Bill Kaysing's book "We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle," released in 1974.

Four years later, the movie "Capricorn One" (which depicted a fake Mars landing) added to the conspiracy's popularity.

Facts cited by conspiracy theorist's that the landings were faked include:

  • Blueprints and design and development drawings of the machines involved are missing.
  • Apollo 11 data tapes containing telemetry and the high quality video (before scan conversion) of the first moonwalk are missing.
  • Crosshairs in photographs appear to be behind objects.
  • There are no stars in any of the photos. The Apollo 11 astronauts also claimed in a press conference after the event to have not remembered seeing any of the stars.
  • The color and angle of shadows and light are inconsistent.
  • Identical backgrounds in photos are listed as taken miles apart.
  • The number of photographs taken is implausibly high. Up to one photo per 50 seconds.
  • The flag placed on the surface by the astronauts flapped despite there being no wind on the Moon
  • The Lander weighed 17 tons and sat on top of the sand making no impression but directly next to it footprints can be seen in the sand.
To learn more about the Moon Landing Hoax Theories, check out these resources.

Here are some video clips of the episode Mythbusters episode.

Part 1


Part 2


Other Articles about Legends and Conspiracy Theories.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mythbusters are actually proving how it was done here on earth.

Anonymous said...

If you go to this link
http://www.google.com/moon/
and click on Apollo 11 series, once you are there click on the 10 Th picture, it is described as "10. The view from North of the Lunar Module" There is one chopped astronaut leg left on the moon ! with some famous boot prints on it.

Anonymous said...

As far as picturing the stars are concerned, I could be able to find only one picture from the NASA files here is the link
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/mirrors/images/html/sl3.htm
image number: SL3-133-3263
from the Skylab this image as the text indicate was taken by a conventional camera!

Good Astronomer said...

Chopped Astronaut leg is eventually posted .

Unknown said...

Myth Busted! Feel stupid now?

Anonymous said...
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