Mythbusters covered this a couple of months ago, they devoted an entire hour to it. I've been saving the tape, waiting for motivation to post their results here. Here are the most prominent and reasonable arguments for doubting the moon landing, and their debunking:
- Faked photo #1: Rocks with shadows that appear not to be parallel to the shadow of the lander. How can you get that without studio lighting? The Mythbusters built a miniature set with an adequately distant light source, and they sculpted a "lunar landscape" with topography that exactly duplicated the shadows.
- Faked photo #2: An astronaut climbing into the lander on the shady side, yet he's clearly visible. How could that be done without studio lighting? The Mythbusters built a miniature set, complete with a miniature lander, a proper light source, and a surface of artificial regolith with the same albedo as moon dust. The moon's surface is so reflective (have you ever seen it at night?) that the reflected light from the surface brilliantly illuminated the miniature astronaut.
- Faked photo #3: The flag was waving. How could that happen in a vacuum? The Mythbusters erected a flag in one of NASA's vacuum chambers and used a motor to move the flag the way the astronauts did while planting it. In a vacuum, with no air to damp its movements, the momentum imparted to the flag by the astronauts kept the flag wiggling for quite a long time.
- Faked photo #4: The astronauts' footprints remained intact. How could that happen in dry moon dust? The Mythbusters were allowed to inspect genuine moon dust brought back from the moon, and although they weren't allowed to use it they were able to duplicate it. Moon dust has not been ground up by water like earth dust, so the granules are jagged. When you stack them up they hold their shape, whereas rounded earth dust granules slide down unless they're wet.
- Faked movie footage: The film of the astronauts skipping on the moon's surface could have been faked by taking the shots on the earth and just slowing them down. The Mythbusters are experts with special effects and tried to replicate three of the actions in the film--in spacesuits. There was no way they could duplicate the ways the bodies moved when their feet were off the ground. Gravity just doesn't work that way. To double-check, they booked time on NASA's zero-gee training aircraft, and had the pilot modify his flight plan to simulate the moon's 1/6 earth gravity instead of zero gravity. This was to make sure they were truly moving like the astronauts, and they got footage exactly like NASA's original.
So, the Mythbusters proved that all of the footage could have actually been taken on the moon, did not require studio lighting, and did not betray earthbound photography. This disproves the argument that the photos
could not have been taken on the moon. In addition, they demonstrated that even trained special effects photographers could not fake the moon-walking scenes. This provides evidence that the footage had to have been taken on the moon, but it's probably not enough to convince a dedicated conspiracy theorist. So... on to the clincher.
The astronauts left objects called
retroreflectors on the moon, which allow scientists to shine light on them in order to measure some of the moon's properties. A retroreflector is an assembly of prisms configured so that any incoming light beam is reflected directly back at its source, instead of requiring a perpendicular reflection. The Mythbusters went to an observatory with a big laser, pointed it at the locations of several retroreflectors, and got the reflections back at exactly the right wavelength.
Retroreflectors do not occur naturally and must be built by human engineering. These reflections could not have been produced if men had not landed on the moon and left the retroreflectors behind.
The conspiracy theory has been debunked.
). Anyway, I've heard that -some- of the missions were real and some were faked. Apparently, certain aliens weren't happy about man doing a few experiments on the moon and decided that enough was enough. NASA had to turn tail but couldn't do so publicly, so they faked the rest of the landings. This theory is brought to you by Jim Marrs, who I respect a fair amount. I am aware that some of his work may not be perfect, so I'm willing to entertain the possibility that this did not, in fact, happen. But I'm not going to simply dismiss it either.
