The most powerful proof of moon landings is the fact

[tj2001]

that the Russians, who were our cold-war enemy and space rival, acknowledged that Americans landed on the moon. Many times.

[BurtWorm]

1. You believe the cold war hoax?!

;-)

[JamesA1102]

2. Don't waste your time.

The moon landing deniers are just a bunch of loonies (pun intended).

[billyoc]

3. Can't you see the junk they left on the moon with a telescope?

:shrug:

[JamesA1102]

7. What an intellectually dishonest argument.

Even with a huge telecope, on earth we can only see objects to down to 10 miles ie say, anyting under hat would not be detectable.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bulloney]

12. Would the Hubble telescope pick up images on the moon?

If it can, that would end the dispute.

[Statistical]

15. Nope at that distance Hubble has resolution of 60m

The lander base is about 8m across for the body 16m including the legs. It would be less than 1 pixel at that distance.

NASA is sent a mapping probe to the mapping probe to the moon with a resolution of 0.5m so we should have very detailed pics of the moon soon.

[dionysus]

14. class. you don't have it.

:rofl:

[JVS]

20. +1

:thumbsup:

[backscatter712]

26. There's the mirror the astronauts left on the moon for laser experiments.

Scientists still bounce laser beams off that mirror to measure the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

29. Sure.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/main/index.html

[Javaman]

30. Fail.

Telescopes are image enhancers not magnifiers.

Basic astronomy 101.

[Silent3]

4. Silly boy! It's the big THEY...

...you know, the all-powerful puppet masters who run the whole show, who staged the Cold War, for whom all the world's governments are just playthings, THEY wanted to trick us into believing we went to the moon, so of course the Soviets played their necessary part in the whole puppet show. :crazy: :tinfoilhat:

[livetoride]

5. How can this really

be a topic of discussion? The Tinfoil Hat crowd is always looking for things to refute, it used to be the that the Earth was flat now it UFO's and Moon Landing denial.

Lets face it, a goodly portion of the population is nuts..

-Peter

[Uben]

6. There is undisputable proof of the landing......

...How else would MJ know how to moonwalk? See?

[MadHound]

8. Actually the most powerful evidence that man landed on the moon

Is the fact that there is a laser reflector up there. Several times a week, we shoot a laser up to this reflector on the moon, and it bounces back, giving us information about distance, wobble, position, etc. You can't simply drop a laser reflector from miles up and have it work. It has to be placed, and aligned, by hand.

Thus, day in, day out, we keep getting this evidence that yes, man once walked on the moon.
<http://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/moon_worldbook.html>

[conscious evolution]

10. I remember my dads buddy

rigging up a radio antennae with a parabolic antennae so we could listen in on the radio transmissions from the Apollo crews.
The only time we could pick up the radio signals was when the dish was pointing at the moon.

[Odin2005]

19. Now THAT had to have been cool!

[ellie]

23. Did you get to hear

the secret transmission? The one about the aliens mining the moon?

[conscious evolution]

40. No but we did hear

them talking about some monolith thing they found.But then this god-awful screach came out of the speakers and we lost the signal.

[kentuck]

11. Of course we walked on the moon...

We went up there with a spacecraft. And as that spacecraft circled the moon, we sent another smaller spacecraft down to the moon, as the larger spacecraft orbited the moon. Don't you remember the "one small step for man - one giant step for mankind"?

Then we played a little golf, collected a few rocks, got back into the little spacecraft and flew back up to the larger spacecraft, and came back down to earth and landed in the ocean. Why is that so hard not to believe?

[Lochloosa]

33. You forgot a couple of them got to DRIVE on the moon.

[lunatica]

13. Only 5% of the population thinks it's a hoax

And I'm sure that a good chunk of that 5% are people who just heard about it for the first time and from those who think it's a hoax.

[GoneOffShore]

16. And it looks we've got 5% of DU believing that it's a hoax!

And I've got a pretty good idea which 5% it is.

[Codeine]

42. I'd venture to guess well over 5% of DU

are serious moon landing deniers. The vast majority of the MIHOP brigade almost certainly is, for example.

Distrust of science + distrust of authority + zero critical thinking skills = pure whackadoodle.

[ChickMagic]

17. When the astronauts were on the moon

they placed a mirror in a specified location. There is an observatory
on earth beaming a laser every day to that mirror and measuring the
time it takes for it to return. From this data they have learned the
moon is moving away from the earth.

How did the mirror get there if not for the moon landing?

That's usually the question I ask of deniers.

[RC]

21. Every day? Don't think so. When ever the moon is in position maybe.

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. What day would the moon not be in position?

Sure, 12 hours of the day it's below the horizon; but some time during an given day, the moon (and the reflector, since nearly all the face we see is always pointing at us - there's not a small variation around the edges) will be in the right place. The only problem would be clouds.

[kentuck]

24. The moon is stationary?

It does not orbit at a different rate than the Earth?

[muriel_volestrangler]

28. Let me explain to you what a 'day' is:

A 'day' is the time in which the 'Earth' rotates once. Thus, during a day, someone on a point on the earth gets a direct line of sight to just about anything in over half the sky (exactly how much over half depends on the latitude of the observer - someone on the equator gets to see everything, someone at the North Pole only sees the northern half the sky). An object like the 'Moon', which orbits the Earth (in roughly the same plane as the Earth orbits the Sun) appears every day to anyone outside the Artic or Antarctic Circles (and on most days to people inside them too). Of course, that's often during the day, and sometimes the relative positions of the Sun, Moon and Earth are such that there's very little sunlight reflecting off the Moon to the Earth, so we don't notice it in the sky; but it's there, and we can bounce lasers off it, if we want (give or takes clouds in the way).

The Moon does indeed take the same time to go round the Sun as the Earth does; but that's not really relevant. The Moon orbits the earth, which orbits the Sun. I never said the Moon is 'stationary'. I said that some time during the day, the Moon will be in the right place - ie above the horizon. The Moon rotates at the same rate as it orbits the Earth, so we always see the same face (there are very slight variations, due to things like the orbit being a slight ellipse rather than a perfect circle). Since the reflectors were all placed on the 'near side of the Moon', when the Moon is above the horizon, the reflectors will be in sight too.

[lumberjack_jeff]

32. Heh.

:thumbsup:

[ChickMagic]

25. The face of the moon we see is always facing us

They send it out every day according to the astronomer who does this.
Whether it's actually returned every single day I don't know enough
about lasers to say. They have received it enough to know that the
moon is moving away from the earth.

The astronomer who talked about this was on a program I was watching
on the science channel. He's the one who sends the laser pulse.

Here's a link I found:

http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_11/experiments/lrr/

[Lochloosa]

36. Info here on the Laser Ranging Retroreflector experiment.

Science Experiments - Laser Ranging Retroreflector
The Laser Ranging Retroreflector experiment was deployed on Apollo 11, 14, and 15. It consists of a series of corner-cube reflectors, which are a special type of mirror with the property of always reflecting an incoming light beam back in the direction it came from. A similar device was also included on the Soviet Union's Lunakhod 2 spacecraft. These reflectors can be illuminated by laser beams aimed through large telescopes on Earth. The reflected laser beam is also observed with the telescope, providing a measurement of the round-trip distance between Earth and the Moon. This is the only Apollo experiment that is still returning data from the Moon. Many of these measurements have been made by McDonald Observatory in Texas. From 1969 to 1985, they were made on a part-time basis using the McDonald Observatory 107-inch telescope. Since 1985, these observations have been made using a dedicated 30-inch telescope. Additional measurements have been made by observatories in Hawaii, California, France, Australia, and Germany.

Laser beams are used because they remain tightly focused for large distances. Nevertheless, there is enough dispersion of the beam that it is about 7 kilometers in diameter when it reaches the Moon and 20 kilometers in diameter when it returns to Earth. Because of this very weak signal, observations are made for several hours at a time. By averaging the signal for this period, the distance to the Moon can be measured to an accuracy of about 3 centimeters (the average distance from the Earth to the Moon is about 385,000 kilometers).

The Laser Ranging Retroreflector experiment has produced many important measurements. These include an improved knowledge of the Moon's orbit and the rate at which the Moon is receding from Earth (currently 3.8 centimeters per year) and of variations in the rotation of the Moon. These variations in rotation are related to the distribution of mass inside the Moon and imply the existence of a small core, with a radius of less than 350 kilometers, somewhat smaller than the limits imposed by the passive seismic and magnetometer experiments. These measurements have also improved our knowledge of changes of the Earth's rotation rate and the precession of its spin axis and have been used to test Einstein's theory of relativity.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_11/experiments/lrr/

[Odin2005]

18. The original landing denier was a full-blown Flat-Earther.

Or so I've read. :wow:

[tabatha]

27. It would probably be more dificult to create the hoax

than to do the actual moon landing.

[blondeatlast]

37. Exactly. nt

[tuckessee]

31. Well, they could've been bought off.

Or decided to keep silent so their space program could continue to loot the Soviet treasury. Or both.

That being said, I have no doubt we went to the moon. It's just that your argument is proof of nothing.

[bikebloke]

34. They would have caused an itch.

If they really landed on the Moon, then they would have caused an itch. The Man in the Moon, then would've sneezed them off. :P

[BlooInBloo]

35. It's funny when people treat this like it's a genuine question.

[arcadian]

38. I'm not a moon landing denier, but for the hell of it I'll play Devil's advocate and say

That every object now on the moon could have been placed there by unmanned missions. So the fact that there are artifacts there, the laser reflector, moon buggy, etc., argument doesn't really work. Also, all the moon rocks could very well have been collected by unmanned probes.

[ThomWV]

39. Proof? They brought back moon-rocks. Where else you gonna get moon-rocks but on the moon?

[Gold Metal Flake]

41. pffft.

Proof.

[Ikonoklast]

43. That looks like the walk Marvin the Martian takes going to his mailbox.

Some 'proof' you have there.

[Gold Metal Flake]

44. Yup. Reality vs. fantasy.

[Ikonoklast]

45. That picture proves nothing.

Looks like a badly focused pic of a kid's sandbox.

Don't make Marvin angry.

[Gold Metal Flake]

46. Ahem

[Ikonoklast]

47. Now you went and done it.

[Gold Metal Flake]

48. Please don't move for a moment...

[Ikonoklast]

49. Ha! I've got you just where I want you!

[Gold Metal Flake]

50. What the...

How the hell did that get in this thread?

[Ikonoklast]

51. Lower your shields, and prepare to be boarded!

bljeghbe'chug vaj blHegh!

[Gold Metal Flake]

52. This is Tranya.

It will fuck your shit up.

[Ikonoklast]

53. Dude! Who's the green hottie?

Get me her number, will ya? I mean, dammmmn, boi!

[Gold Metal Flake]

54. .