Post
by nick c » Mon Jul 21, 2008 3:44 pm
Maybe I am being duped by Nasa, but I believe that they went to the Moon. (I don't trust government, my political philosophy tends toward 'that which governs least governs best.')
I don't think, landing and returning a man to the Moon is that remarkable when one considers that space probes could be sent to distant planets, simply a matter of outfitting a small spaceship for human cargo for a quick trip and return. The USSR's Luna probe flew by the Moon in 1959! Mariner 2 to Venus in 1962 etc, etc. Do Lunar Landing skeptics believe that the interplanetary probes were/are faked too? Manned missions to the Moon were well within the technology of the time, though no doubt at great economic cost, for scientific results that could have been done much cheaper with unmanned probes. But the bottom line is that it was great publicity.
Now, if I were to assess the believability in terms of probabilities, I would say that I am 99% for real and 1% for fake; I can't totally discount the possibility of it being a hoax, as I said I distrust them too.
The secrecy of the Manhattan Project is not a good comparison, the people involved believed that the country was in a life and death struggle to survive, they believed secrecy was necessary to protect the nation. Those keeping the secret of a lunar 'hoax' would soon realize that they were part of an effort to swindle the American people (and the rest of the world) and there would be, I would expect whistle blowers, and furthermore, details of the Manhattan Project are out, the secret was kept for only a short time, and the USSR did figure that out and get the information they needed to build nuclear bombs.
I agree with BullSchmutz, there is no way the USSR would not sniff out a lunar hoax, the alternative being that they were complicit, a highly unlikely situation given the tensions between the two countries. The USSR would love nothing more than to expose such a hoax, it would have been an enormous idealogical victory for the Iron Curtain.
I would have to see much better evidence, like... some ex Nasa official or scientist or astronaut, perhaps a 'deathbed' confession, come out and say "it was all a hoax," combined with some sort of paper trail...a revealing memo or such, perhaps some film, say some "outtakes," like film of an identifiable astronaut on the Moon taking off his helmet and saying "can I have a glass of water?" Analysis of the film would reveal that it was the same as used by Nasa on the Apollo missions.
The evidence presented thus far is not so convincing. But then as Paris Hilton once said, "Hey, I'm not a rock scientist."
Nick C