baker.phoenix•17d agoMost Upvoted

Question about the moon landing footage - real or just really good editing?

I got into a huge argument with my buddy last night about whether NASA actually faked the moon landing or not. He's convinced the flag waving and lack of stars in the photos prove it was a soundstage in Nevada or something. I kept saying the flag had a support rod and the stars were too dim for the camera settings they used. We went back and forth for like 2 hours and I started second guessing myself because he brought up some decent points about radiation belts. But then he pulled out a YouTube video with bad CGI and I lost it. Has anyone here actually dug into the original Apollo 11 telemetry data to settle this? I want to see if the shadows really line up with a single light source or if there's something weird going on.

2 comments

2 Comments

lily57417d ago

The Apollo 11 telemetry data is actually public and you can pull it from the NASA archives if you really want to dig in. But here's the thing about the shadows thing you mentioned... they actually don't all perfectly line up with a single light source because the lunar surface is uneven and reflects light in weird ways. I spent a few hours looking at the original Hasselblad images from the mission and you can see the same shadow behavior in the Apollo 15 and 17 photos too. The flag waving thing is easy to debunk because Buzz Aldrin is actually twisting the pole and the fabric keeps moving after he stops, which is exactly what happens in a vacuum with no air resistance. As for the radiation belts, your buddy probably watched that one Van Allen video that's been floating around for years... the Apollo capsules went through the thinnest parts of the belts and the astronauts were shielded by the spacecraft walls, plus the transit time was only a few hours total.

thompson.christopher17d ago

Honestly, that part about the Van Allen radiation belts is key. I've seen that same video floating around and it always leaves out the fact that the Apollo spacecraft went through the thinnest parts near the poles, not the thickest sections. Plus the walls of the command module had aluminum shielding that blocked a lot of that radiation anyway. The total time they spent inside the belts was something like 4 hours, which isn't enough to give someone a dangerous dose. It's like saying you can't walk past a hospital x-ray machine without getting cancer, you know?