As evidenced in the post about the Soviets' first shot around the moon, when America cried, "Fake!" at the lack of photos because there was a problem transmitting them until the rocket had gotten closer to Earth, just because a rocket goes up in the air does not mean it arrives at the given destination.
For instance, Bart Sibrel makes a fairly good case in his film, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon" that the astronauts may have gone up the gantry, taken the elevator back down, and the rocket was fired off.
The big problem I have is the Van Allen radiation belts. I'm not concerned with all the photo inaccuracies, the fact that NASA _admitted_ that they used some faked shots in lieu of having the ones they wanted, and some of the other questionable stuff.
Even today, scientists say that a craft would need four feet of lead lining outside the crew compartment to pass through the radiation belts--and as we all know, the skin of the crew compartment was "so thin you could poke a pencil through it". At the beginning of the Apollo program, there was a scientist (I don't remember his name) that claimed that the Van Allen Belts were 64,000 miles across. He later revised this down to less than half that, at 25,000 miles across, just before launch time. I find this a little too convenient. Nasa's offhanded response to questions about the Van Allen Belts is that they were crossed where they are the thinnest, around the poles.
Unfortunately, we know this is not the case. One of the reasons ALL maned space flight launches happen from Florida is because it's equatorial. This helps take some of the load off of the spacecraft and requires less fuel because they are taking advantage of the Earth's spin to help escape gravity.
If Nasa's claim were true, then like a magic bullet, the Apollo rockets would have had to start off at the equator, then snake their way to the pole (pick one), pass through the Van Allen Belts (both of them), and then reestablish an equatorial orbit to pick up speed to get to the moon.
If we assume that robotic or unmanned craft could do everything that the Apollo missions did, then Sibrel's claim makes sense. The launch, even going to the moon, gathering the moon rocks and coming back could all have been done without crews.
Also, apparently, in an effort to dispense with the Van Allen Belts, the U.S. exploded a nuclear weapon in the Van Allen belts which only increased their radiation by a great deal. I found this to be one of the most stupid and shocking thing affiliated with the entire space program. According to the H.A.N.D. documents, The following scenarios occurred:
1. Project Fishbowl (U.S., 1962) exploded a 1.4 megaton H-bomb 250 miles above the South Pacific. This intensified the Van Allen belt from altitudes of 200 miles to 800 miles. Radiation levels were 100 times more intense then natural. Resulted in the destruction of 7 satellites in 7 months.
2. Argus Tests (U.S., 1958 ) exploded a low yield atomic weapon at altitude of 200 miles. New radiation belt extended for 40,000 miles.
Now that the space program is trying to get on track to send men to Mars, they are finding it difficult to properly insulate the cabin against cosmic and solar radiation. On a not-so-recent shuttle mission, mission control had to bring the shuttle down to a safer orbit because the "radiation was more dangerous than initially suspected". There was a lot of controversy stirred up about that at the time, and the moon-hoaxers hooted and hollered about that.
An astronaut from Nasa has designed a radiation shield to protect the crew compartment based on the Earth's magnetosphere. This would set up an electromagnetic charge around the cabin, and bounce radiation off of it. There are also new anti-radiation plastics that would reduce launch weight and would allow engineers to pursue a technology less bulky than four feet of lead--but they didn't have the benefit of such technologies in the sixties.
So, this one is a tough nut to crack. I'm also really concerned about the missing boxes of tapes with the original telemetry of those missions and the fact that they went ahead and destroyed the only machine that could play them. They seem unconcerned and this sends up a big red flag for me. Nasa Naysayers such as Richard Hoagland say that this is a big problem, and that while one branch was preparing to retrieve the tapes to put in a museum, another branch was busy hiding those tapes. The questions remain, who took the tapes, why, why weren't they signed out for, and where did they go? If they still even exist.
There _are_ some shady dealings around the Apollo missions. Nothing short of a full review by the GAO would clear it up, and frankly, I doubt with their track record, at least on UFOs, that they would get anywhere anyway.
Oh, and how come Neil Armstrong hasn't done a single interview since the first one, EVER?
The best way to shut down the "moon landing was hoaxed" thread on the Paracast formus, David, would simply to be to have Bart Sibrel on the show, and let him have it. Go at him with everything you've got, guns blazing. BUT--you'd have to watch his film first. But that's okay--it's only 47 minutes long.
