Moon hoax - Wire Supports (Mythbusters) REPLY

"Upon further review..."

It looks like the excitement over lines--that some zealous Apollo doubters were sure must be evidence that NASA faked the moonwalks by using wires--is over. It appears that our friends at Mythbusters apparently used a particular copy that was a little messy when they did their Discovery Channel expose. After multiple copying and film transfer, that can happen.

Another source was used to create this reply to "Moon hoax - Wire Supports (Mythbusters)" (cardelo). I lifted this same clip from the 1975 documentary, "Apollo 17: On The Shoulders of Giants." It's apparently closer to the original. How can we know? Well, the color saturation is more accurate, the exposure levels and contrast levels are more realistic and the image is generally clearer.

Also...go check out this video: watch?v=yo5w0pm24ic&feature=fv sr

At 1:10:26 in that video, you can see another example of these exact same lines. In that video, they aren't even above the astronauts!

If you look carefully in this video posted on this page at 1:24, you can even see a "wire" above a scientist's left wrist ...ON EARTH! On old videos, there are ALL KINDS of lines--some across the frame, some halfway, some dark, some light. And on some copies there are NO lines, as I have demonstrated. Apollo videography is some of the most copied film in history. For that reason, there are lots of old, crusty, messy, dirty versions. To assume a line is evidence of a hoax is absurd!

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Moon
• Fake
• Hoax
• Wire
• Support
• Mythbusters
• Glint
• Gravity
• NASA
• scratch

[graywolf83]

The constant back-and-forth arguments are (at least, in my opinion) totally pointless. The fact is that many people tend to believe what they want to believe, and no amount of logic or evidence to the contrary will persuade them into changing their opinions on what they see as the Pure Undeniable Truth.

Conspiracy theorists are a prime example of this. A conspiracy theorist, to me, is simply another form of fanatic...I'd go deeper into this, but it seems that I have just about run out of space

[LunarTuner]

@graywolf83, I appreciate your point. Please don't misunderstand--I argue "band-and-forth" not to persuade the person I'm arguing with. I'm well-aware of the fanatical commitment of my opponent. I'm also very conscious that an entire generation did not experience Apollo, often has a weak grasp of science and needs to see a logical and rational defense of real things. I consider that demonstration for on-lookers to be a valuable endeavor.

[knowledgemonger]

@luccaskunk So long as there are no trees or light poles to give away the true vertical, the effect is not hard to have happen. The objects need to be far enough away that the distance between your eyes is very small or you have to close one eye or take a picture. A dray lake bed will work very well. So will grasses on a surface. In both cases the texture subtle and varies constantly. There is nothing to let you see the contour of the ground.

[luccaskunk]

@luccaskunk that is to say perspective is wonderful at playing tricks on our eyes

[luccaskunk]

@knowledgemonger I've actually replicated the shadows thing at a dry lake bed near the Sierra Madre, not far from Edwards Airforce Base. It was, as far as you could see, a completely flat plane of dry lake bed. However, shadows in the distance appeared to be at a different angle than shadows closer to the camera, despite the only light source being the sun at 4pm in the summer.

[knowledgemonger]

@luccaskunk Some people have never ridden in a car on a long trip near some mountains. Basically everyone has been outdoors on a sunny day. This makes the "shadows at angles" my favorite bit of bad logic by the other side. Just looking around themselves, on a sunny day, they could see the same thing happen. It shows a lack of more than mere knowledge. There is a lack of curiosity that runs so deep that they don't even look and notice the obvious.

[luccaskunk]

@knowledgemonger Yeah, i know all of those, but those aren't my favorites. Then there's the mountains, they see the same extremely distant mountain chain in the background at two different locations and expect the vista to change drastically when ironically there's enough parallax between the two vistas to get a 3d image of the mountains and they call it a 2D backdrop painting.

[knowledgemonger]

@luccaskunk They want stars to show up in pictures where exposure is set for sunlit objects. They see shadows falling on a curved surface and imagine multiple lights could do that. They see dust kicked up by the tires of the rover and imagine that sand looks the same. They see antennas sticking off at angles and imagine wires. They have a space craft in geostationary low earth orbit. They see the LEM take off and expect sparks and smoke like a Buck Rogers movie. The list is very long.

[luccaskunk]

@luccaskunk And then there's the one where they say the flag was waving in the wind... Seriously? They've obviously never seen the footage if they think that's the case.

[luccaskunk]

One of my favorites is where the conspiracy nuts will show the video where the one astronaut is asking the other if he can throw his rock hammer. The other one gives permission, saying "don't hit the lem" and the transmitter circuit bounces (try releasing the talk button on an old analog walkie talkie, you'll hear a click from the current in the circuit "bouncing") which they interpretted as a "p" They think he's saying "don't hit the lamp" meaning the movie studio lamp. What bullshit.

[knowledgemonger]

@LunarTuner At least in one case, your pointing out that what the other person has been saying appears to have been part of why they went away and stopped saying it (at least for a while) This suggests that perhaps you have effected the absolute certainty of the person making the bogus claims. It didn't stick but at least there was a pause in the nonsense.