What Happened on the Moon Debunked - Part 1

Before I begin to debunk this film, I would point out some common practices used by film makers of this type. The various techniques used are a combination of bare assertions and flawed examples followed by a generalisation referring back to the examples shown, as a means to imply the assertion as being proven. To anybody who has even a modicum of understanding in the various sections of photography, perspective, parallax, physics and logical fallacies, the arguments presented are quickly seen to be nonsense.

I would ask that anybody who watches this film, is observant of these techniques and takes careful note of how they present their so called evidence. There is simply not enough time to do a statement by statement analysis, so I will concentrate primarily in debunking each claim and pointing out how they use subterfuge to apply it to things not mentioned.

Disk 1 of 2

Minutes 1-7 Primarily makes bare assertions and begs numerous questions. It presents one piece of "evidence" from the "genius" Bill Kaysing, who quotes a study in the 50s of how likely it would be to land on the Moon. As though a study made without any real space program in place would be accurate, given the tremendous advances made with Mercury and Gemini, allied with increasingly popular satellite technology. We also have just Kaysing's word on the figures quoted in the study.


Minutes 7-8 Introduces the moronic contention that the flag movements in a vacuum during the act of placing them in the regolith, was down to wind blowing, yet we fail to see any ground disturbance from this implied wind.

Straightforward explanation video:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yc_mmtAxjMk
Mythbusters debunk:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhab86KoVjU



Minutes 8-10 David Percy makes more bare assertions about "whistleblowers", fakery and obvious anomalies. He states the inaccurate claim that TV was always filmed off of a screen on Earth, when this was only on Apollo 11 due to the way the signal was sent:-

http://www.clavius.org/tvqual.html


Minutes 10-12 He basically starts to lie. He indicates a "continuity error" occuring on the Apollo 16 mission (one that had a delayed landing of 6hrs due to technical difficulties), concerning a missing flap on the TV footage. One technique he uses at this point is to make a throwaway comment that makes the assumption that it is proven. He states "let's ignore the reasons as to why such a small jump in the 1/6th gravity of the Moon". This is wrong for two reasons.

The jump was certainly not made using maximum effort, and he weighs 360lbs on Earth. Try jumping with somebody on your back on Earth, you probably won't even get off the ground!

Explained here:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxAz5OIzQsU

Now this supposed continuity error - a blatant lie shown here:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0OS26q20R0


Minutes 12-17 Percy alleges that a transparency was clipped to the window to fake Apollo 11 half way to the Moon, says the blue glare on the window is the Earth, when it is the coating used to protect it. The whole thing is debunked in the most thorough fashion by proving weather patterns matched the view from the CSM in all 3 transmissions and the Earth disappears to the side as the camera pans back (must be a magic transparency!).

Not only would any craft be clearly visible to the Earth whilst in LEO, its radio signal would disappear with it orbiting every 90 minutes. Bart Sibrel, cited in this clip, made a 10 minute segment of his film alleging it was the Earth itself (not a transparency!) which is just totally impossible. He changed his claims later on (in line with Percy), after being barraged with counter argument showing his stupidity.

Here are numerous videos showing both these contentions are just complete bunkum, and the film makers are lying through deliberate omission!

Video 1:-

Demonstrates that during the footage filmed from the CSM, stills taken from the footage (supposedly a transparency) are moving in line with the Earth rotation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMe4kBklHhA

Video 2:-

Shows a brief clip from the transmissions that see the Earth disappearing to the side of the window. Very much not like a transparency!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHnGDFowHlY

Video 3:-

Shows a stunning demonstration of the weather patterns matching the Apollo 11 half way to the Moon video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OnZwqc-96Y

Video 4:-

A different weather pattern demonstration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3qEoA35cLs
Video 5:-

A thorough debunk of both Sibrel and Percy demonstrating how they lie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T9ZM50n0z4



Minutes 17-20 Introduces David Groves and Bill Wood, makes more bare assertions and casts "suspicion", nothing really said.


Minutes 20-22 Shows a "contradiction" in the Kodak film used, where a NASA spokesman says it was specially made, and a Kodak man who says it was not. The Kodak man was mistaken. The film implies subterfuge as is the normal theme running through it. Simple mistake from the Kodak man. The narrative is building the strawman that the film could not possibly survive in space because it uses standard available film.

"Kodak Film in Space: John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth, Kodak film recorded his reactions to traveling through space at 17,400 miles per hour. Kodak was asked by NASA to develop thin new films with special emulsions double-perforated 70mm film, which permitted 160 pictures in color or 200 on black and white. Apollo 8 was one of the first missions to use this film. There were three magazines loaded with 70 mm wide, perforated Kodak Panatomic-X fine-grained, 80 ASA, b/w film, two with Kodak Ektachrome SO-68, one with Kodak Ektachrome SO-121, and one with super light-sensitive Kodak 2485, 16,000 ASA film - which produced 1100 color, black and white, and filtered photographs from the Apollo 8 mission."

Minutes 22-23 I really don't know what the film is suggesting. Jan Lundberg confirms the camera was specially adapted by Hasselblad on NASA's original specification, which they then improved upon.


Minutes 23-24 More deception. Shows photographs where the cross hairs(reticles) appear to disappear "behind" objects. He deliberately uses low resolution photographs, knowing that the higher resolution ones do indeed show the reticles, but fainter on brighter areas where the light has bled on to the film. He makes the strawman statement about how it would be totally impossible for objects to get in front of the reticles, when no such thing ever occurs!

Demonstration of this on Earth:-

http://www3.telus.net/summa/moonshot/cross.htm

A good debunking of the subterfuge:-

http://www.xmission.com/~jwindley/photoret.html


Minute 24 Shows Jan Lundberg appearing to disagree with NASA about the use of Reticles to judge distance by suggesting that stereo-pairs were needed to perform this. They then just lie about there not being any stereo-pair photographs from the mission! The link just above has one of many examples used in the Apollo photographc record.



Minutes 24-26 Percy, continues with his "photagrammetric" bull, citing non parallel shadows as indicative of fakery(bunkum first voiced by Kaysing). To say this is just pure stupidity negates the fact that he is just plain lying. In his main example, he actually draws lines to a point where he says extra lighting had to have been used, but misses the stunningly obvious fact that multiple light sources create multiple shadows!! Also, the lines he uses to create an intersection, actually cross each other in the shot! Just mind numbingly wrong.

Numerous shadow debunking videos and photographs:-

Simple 30 second debunk.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATrFuCnW6T8
Mythbusters just nails this totally.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wym04J_3Ls0
Nailed again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy9rkc8jq0k
More simple demonstrations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrPaz3xFIg


These weblinks further explain it, with clear examples showing Percy as a liar:-
http://www.xmission.com/~jwindley/trrnshdow.html
http://www.clavius.org/shad15.html
http://www.clavius.org/a11rear.html


This website completely nails a direct example used by the film:-
http://www3.telus.net/summa/moonshot/shadows.htm
http://www3.telus.net/summa/moonshot/shadows2.htm


Part 2......

"Disinfo" and "Damage Control" Forums

From the first link:-

"Things don't seem to have the damping in their motions that would be expected from water immersion...the inertia without friction causes them trouble at several points. There are several instances of "bubbles", but no buoyancy to them...they actually seem to radiate from a projection further on down. Popping flakes of ice/paint/insulation from surfaces heating/cooling, perhaps caught in maneuvering thruster blasts?"

That is actually one point I hadn't considered. There are frequent thruster adjustments to maintain the orb-rate attitude.

"I disgaree, only an "insane conspiracy nut" would see that "something is wrong". A normal person might say "I don't understand why the rope appears to be coming out of the hatch, what explanations could there be?" Or they might realise that almost all pipes, ropes and wires tend to straighten out, as this one is doing, pushing itself out of the container in the process.

Furthermore when a curved rope or cable in a confined area on a spacecraft is suddenly unconfined on one side it might float out. There are some good videos of astronuats on the shuttle fighting with cables coming out of a locker in exactly the same manner."

"As I mentioned above, just because it's weird doesn't mean it's suspicious. Because the cable is weightless, the shape it takes is primarily determined by the shape it had when it was stowed. In this case, the shape of the cable is forcing it into a position "above" the bar to which it's tethered. That's why the cable looks like it's floating."

"Ah, thank you, that is much better. When you stop and start the video in half second increments the right looks angular to me and changes in attitude as well. I think it is a small piece of flat debris, foil, insulation paper maybe. The same appears to be the case on the right hand side one as well. Again, flatness, angularitry and opposite sense of movement are not what you woudl expect from bubbles."

"It appears to be moving in that direction, but that image is a 2 dimensional representation of a 3 dimension reality. What direction it really is moving it would require photogrammetry."

This post from that thread, which sums it up quite well:-

http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php/87594-Chinese-space-walk-conspiracy?p=1480461#post1480461


And this one, which I have bolded as it confirms my own analysis totally:-

"Something that is ejected, say, from the capsule by an impulse of escaping gas or a mechanical effect does not fly away from the capsule in a straight line. In fact it enters its own orbit around Earth, very similar in period and other orbital elements to the capsule itself. But what this means is that as the capsule pursues its orbit and the fragment pursues its own very similar (but not identical orbit) the fragment will be seen to move in various directions relative to the capsule. In orbital operations this is known as periodic recontact, and it is something we have to plan for when we schedule intentional ejections."

From the second link:-

"True, but the point is that it was written in advance and we agree that it was sensible to have done so. If you have reports written in advance to cover all of the likely outcomes, it's only a matter of time time before an inappropriate one is released accidentally. If the Nixon administration writes a speech in advance for a contingency, then it's just good thinking. If the Chinese news agency does the same thing, they're typical disinformationists."

"1 meter per frame, 30 frames a second so the "water jet used to achieve neutral boyancy" (Why??? [B]Last time I went diving I managed it with a few weights[/B],) is travelling at 30 meters per second.

Who would believe that?

Are they completely deranged?"

Once again you make your credibility test based on your own ignorance.

As for your opposingdigits, look at your own behaviour!

http://www.politicalforum.com/4166145-post67.html

Meh.

If there was damage in the first place! Once again offering your opinion as the finite analysis of something. It's pretty clear they are full of people a quantum leap smarter than yourself, who aren't gullible or ignorant and who don't spend their lives spamming the internet.

One of your other spam sites, offering more Aulis regurgitation. Each of those threads has correct assessments on them. Once again I cite somebody who has refuted this already (though his links to the ALSJ are a little out of date - I may need to rewrite this).

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=5911

Irrelevant. This is called attacking the messenger. The purpose of which is to indirectly suggest that his extremely competent rebuttals are in some way suspect.

From that link, somebody has also noticed your propensity to spam:-

http://forum.davidicke.com/showpost.php?p=1059060846&postcount=4

That's given me a great idea for the video I was preparing!

"If the webmaster used to work in aerospace, then doesn't that mean he and all the other contributors could be part of the conspiracy? "

"Yes, it's possible but not very rational. The conspiracists wish to divide their opponents into two groups, those who know very little about the moon landings and therefore don't have the knowledge required to see through the holes in the conspiracy theory, and those who know quite a bit about the moon landings and therefore (say the conspiracists) are probably part of the conspiracy. To stack the deck so that all the possibilities point to the conspiracy is to avoid seriously examining the question. Evidence which seriously challenges the conspiracy must be dealt with, regardless of who proposes it.

As a practical matter, the webmaster has never worked for NASA. He has no financial interest in supporting NASA's claims."

The "guilty" astronauts!

Last link doesn't work. No surprise since it is years old repeated spam.

I always have trouble with conspiracy theorists who attribute guilt to somebody because of how they "think" they look! This is especially true when considering hoax believers who are looking for absolutely anything as some kind of proof for their stupid hoax theory. The conviction rates of criminals would go through the roof if all that was needed was bare assertion to confirm "guilt".

Now, the contention itself. Not only is the full press conference full of light hearted moments, it is probably the first time any of one these 3 men has appeared in front of thousands of people and expected to talk publicly to them. Anybody who has got up to speak to just a room full of people will know that it can be quite nerve wracking and intimidating. These are astronauts, not media savvy people used to appearing in front of large gatherings.

The actual circumstances surrounding the press conference are more than adequate to explain why anybody wouldn't be at their best, if any such explanation were needed.

1.  Apollo 11 spends 8 days in space and on the Moon, in itself that is quite a physical exertion, with no normal food, toilet facilities, beds or bathing.

2.  Apollo astronauts land back on Earth July 24th and go straight into quarantine for just under 3 weeks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LpTQdgThBI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFg8aSiDnTU

3.  Quarantine ends on August 11th.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNEZZ_mUMWM

4.  Press conference August 12th the day after!

So, no proper R&R, no contact with their family, no time to go outside, no proper downtime and straight into a packed auditorium in front of the world's media. It is absolutely ludicrous to suggest that anybody would be in tip-top condition in those circumstances. Even so, they did a good presentation, answered numerous questions and as can clearly be seen (for anybody who wants to trawl through 90 minutes of this!) there are numerous instances where everybody has a good laugh.

But all a hoax believer can do is say "they look guilty"!

Here are some videos showing the exact opposite of that. Relaxed, proud, happy and with no problem telling their individual accounts of their missions:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4qlZcWWWL0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A8BEIVa1rM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bF_VVfB8b8

Some Cosmored "Hoax" Videos

Link 1:-
This is a youtube search on "Moonfaker" by Jarrah White. I have no intention of debunking every single thing in his hopelessly ignorant videos. I offer instead a youtube search for "Moonfaker critique", where Phil Webb has already debunked a large proportion of them already:-

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=moonfaker+critique&aq=f


Link 2:-
This is a demonstration whereby having a Phd in no way gives you skills in other fields. Hologram image analysis is not photogrammetry.
Before I debunk this rubbish, I want to present a critique on David Groves.

1. He begins by telling us that he is the director for Quantec Image Processing Ltd, a point raised 3 times, as though it has some weight of argument. The company went into liquidation in 1999 and ceased to trade in 2000. The film came out in 2000.

http://apollohoax.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=theories&thread=1055&page=3#31777

2. Groves performs a heat experiment on the Kodak film, by placing it in an oven!! For those who understand physics, using convection as a means to heat something, when supposedly comparing to the activity in a vacuum where none such convective heat is possible, is just plain stupid.

3. Groves fires a full strength X-ray at the film and concludes that it is a comparison to Solar x-ray, when the x-ray strength from the Sun is less than 1/1000th of  a standard x-ray machine! In addition, he lists the energy levels in measurements of REM, when this is a measurement of human tissue exposure, instead of RADS which is the unit he should have used!

http://www.clavius.org/envradfilm.html

4. He used the wrong camera, and gave no indication that the magazines had been strengthened as per the ones used on Apollo.

If he is a scientist, he's a pretty poor one, selling out to make a buck!

Analysing the actual clip:-
The video clip is from What Happened On The Moon. Groves says he places the secondary light source next to Aldrin, yet ignores the most obvious of all methods to determine where the source is, by eye. As can be seen from this photo close up, the centre of the picture is about 30 centimetres to the left of his boot and it is so stunningly obvious that the hotspot is pointing straight back at the camera! The light source is the spacesuit of Armstrong, lit up like a Christmas Tree from the Sun! The clip even shows the video record with him brightly lit.

Percy, the maker of the film, then compares the TV footage using low bandwidth 10 fps, exposed for the surface, to the picture lit by surface reflected light and exposed accordingly. Just plain daft, as though a TV picture on a Vidicon camera will compare to a Hasselblad still camera!

They then debunk themselves with some "normal" and "backlit" models of the LM. In the backlit versions, we see the ground shadows soften noticeably, and the ladder now casts a solid shadow! Way to go Percy, I'm sure none of the gullible HBs noticed that one!

Percy then goes on to indicate average Lunar albedo as 7%, and says it is "untenable" as a natural light reflector. Bunkum. I wonder how many people think the Moon is not bright enough when viewed from Earth!

http://www.asterism.org/tutorials/tut26-1.htm

"Our Moon’s average visual albedo is 0.12. The brightness of the Moon changes dramatically as its phase changes. During first and third quarters, the visible Moon is 50% illuminated by the Sun, but its brightness is only about 8% of full Moon -- an increase of 2.7 magnitudes. The Moon’s visual albedo on its illuminated segment gets progressively smaller as the angle between the Earth and Sun on the Moon (phase angle) increases. A major reason for this decrease of visual albedo with increasing phase angle is the greater creation of shadows on the irregular lunar surface, thereby reducing reflected light back to Earth."

Indeed, one of the properties of the Moon, is its propensity to reflect light back at the light source. It is why a full Moon is 8 times brighter than a half Moon.

The natural backlighting of the Moon's surface is obvious to all but blnkered HBs, and corrupt film makers. Remember also, that the average albedo accounts for such things as crater rims, depressions and rocks, which are much lower, so a reasonably open area of surface will be higher than the average.

Percy continues with his ignorance, by showing pictures exposed for the surface, up sun and distant terrain to supposedly demonstrate nearfield under exposed rocks have shadows. Bunkum.

He uses a picture of the LM with a huge over glare from the Sun, indicating a high exposure, to insist it has been filled in with a light. Yet, we see no shadow softening, and no secondary shadows as per his example shown above.

Continuing the clip, we hear the account of HJP Arnold (assistant to MD of Kodak 1966-74) where he makes some observations about the quality of the pictures. Presumably the film makers used this to suggest that perfect photography was not possible. Despite the hundreds of duff photographs never shown, the hours and hours of practice performed, and preset aperture and exposures calculated, this is just more bunkum.

It did make me smile when I heard what Mr Arnold said:-

"That sequence of images on the Lunar surface, taken mainly by Armstrong of course, with that one camera, which incidentally was left on the Moon, so it's gonna be a marvellous relic for when we eventually get back there of course.... the film came back."

I get the impression he knows we landed on the Moon, and has no trouble believing the film made it back safely!

Percy now moves up a gear to pure subterfuge. He "analyses" the classic Aldrin photo and concludes all sorts of fall off problems, and alignment problems(from David Groves who concludes the camera must have been tilted down!) assuming I suppose that the Moon is as flat as a pancake! He then shows the picture to Jan Lundberg (of Hasselblad) who cannot explain it.
Perhaps if he had used the correct version, rather than a magazine adjusted crap copy, he would have had no problem with it at all?

Here is the photo analysed by somebody who knows what they are doing:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q07Xrsc397E

Here is why Jan Lundberg was confused:-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VZIwtrDsRQ

And visually, the picture shown to him, and the proper picture next to each other:-

Link 3:-
This is another clip from the film What Happened on the Moon.
Firstly he looks at a photo of Al Bean and concludes the astronaut was above him in the visor reflection as though it's impossible?? He was in a slightly elevated position. The area they took these photos was undulating and perfectly normal as one would expect from the Moon's surface.

He then concludes that 2 Apollo 11 photographs are suspect, because the horizon is a different level to other shots at different angles. Once again, for some reason, he seems to think the Moon is dead flat! Google Moon shows perfectly the terrain of the Apollo 11 landing site with its undulations, and is fully consistent with what is seen.

HBs have no trouble in believing this contention, with David Percy begging the question at every opportunity, yet failing to realise this so simple point.

This clip from the camera setup, shows the nature of the terrain, clearly undulating and a very wide area. This sequence alone, debunks the stupid "shot in a studio" contention!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juIX4suNoFs&feature=player_detailpage#t=253s


Link 4:-
This is where I become suspicious of whether you have actually watched this clip. It is a small Real Player version of the film "Was it a Paper Moon", which you include later on in your wall of spam.
I will address that film separately.


Link 5:-
This is where some observant HB has noticed a Mythbusters film with some fleeting scratches on a small piece of film played back through a studio monitor and concludes they are "wires"!

Directly responded to by Mythbusters:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9mYWWHREag

Completely refuted in this clip from a very long wires debunk video:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjEItn1sSQg&feature=player_detailpage#t=44s

Not only does that clip show the two scratches appearing in the exact same frame as each other, but also shows that the scratch doesn't match the astronauts movement. Not wires - scratches. Bunkum.


Link 6:-
Doesn't work. I expect it is a clip from the What Happened On The Moon film, and I will address it in one series(including and expanding upon the two clips above).

The Dunning Kruger effect

The user who has posted his wall of spam over many forums, links to them on blogs and youtube, actually had the stunning audacity to post this about the 911 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. This whilst demonstrating that same incredible cognitive dissonance, in repetitive posting for 5 years, of virtually the same content.

Ignoring the debunks that turn his argument to mush, he wrote:-

"Cognitive dissonance is a psychological phenomenon which refers to the discomfort felt at a discrepancy between what you already know or believe, and new information or interpretation. It therefore occurs when there is a need to accommodate new ideas, and it may be necessary for it to develop so that we become "open" to them. Neighbour (1992) makes the generation of appropriate dissonance into a major feature of tutorial (and other) teaching: he shows how to drive this kind of intellectual wedge between learners' current beliefs and "reality".

Beyond this benign if uncomfortable aspect, however, dissonance can go "over the top", leading to two interesting side-effects for learning:

■ if someone is called upon to learn something which contradicts what they already think they know — particularly if they are committed to that prior knowledge — they are likely to resist the new learning. Even Carl Rogers recognised this. Accommodation is more difficult than Assimilation, in Piaget's terms.

■ and—counter-intuitively, perhaps—if learning something has been difficult, uncomfortable, or even humiliating enough, people are less likely to concede that the content of what has been learned is useless, pointless or valueless. To do so would be to admit that one has been "had", or "conned"."

Here is another definition of that level of stupidity.


Dunning Kruger

"The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes."