Cygnus X1 said:
Well, I think that both sides can misinterpret the photos. In particular, I liked the idea that "the tires are made of wire mesh", and that "we can see right through" them. Nice. So much for "rationalists" versus "conspiracy theorists".
But my eyes caught something else in one of the linked NASA images. Compare these two shots:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/AS15-88-11901HR.jpg
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/AS15-88-11900HR.jpg
Both shots were obviously taken within seconds from each other, since light conditions were exactly the same. However, when you look at the top right corners of the images, you will notice that the first shows a completely black sky, of the kind we have come to expect from NASA images. However, in the second picture we see three spherical objects, which look like planets in a triangular formation. How can this be? What happened to the spherical objects, from one moment to the next?
I think here we have pretty solid evidence of NASA tempering with Apollo images.
We need to remember that NASA told us repeatedly that it was impossible to take photos of stars and planets on the Moon. We don't even have photos of what would have been breathtaking displays, taken during the journeys to and from the Moon.
I'd like to come back to the Apollo page I mentioned earlier, and I quote:
NASA - ESMD
"Truly, moon shadows aren't absolutely black. Sunlight reflected from the moon's gently rounded terrain provides some feeble illumination, as does the Earth itself, which is a secondary source of light in lunar skies. Given plenty of time to adapt, an astronaut could see almost anywhere.
Almost. Consider the experience of Apollo 14 astronauts Al Shepard and Ed Mitchell:
They had just landed at Fra Mauro and were busily unloading the lunar module. Out came the ALSEP, a group of experiments bolted to a pallet. Items on the pallet were held down by "Boyd bolts," each bolt recessed in a sleeve used to guide the Universal Handling Tool, a sort of astronaut's wrench. Shepard would insert the tool and give it a twist to release the bolt--simple, except that the sleeves quickly filled with moondust. The tool wouldn't go all the way in.
The sleeve made its own little shadow, so "Al was looking at it, trying to see inside. And he couldn't get the tool in and couldn't get it released--and he couldn't see it," recalls Mitchell.
"Remember," adds Mitchell, "on the lunar surface there's no air to refract light--so unless you've got direct sunlight, there's no way in hell you can see anything. It was just pitch black. That's an amazing phenomenon on an airless planet."
So the "sunlight reflected from the moon's gently rounded terrain provides some feeble illumination". "Feeble" is defined as "lacking physical strength". How can "feeble" ambient light cause very deep, black shadows, that reduce visibility to almost zero, yet the same "feeble" light was simultaneously able to provide perfect fill-in light? Only because of this highly convenient fill-in light were the astronauts - who only had cameras without viewfinder or any of the other aids we nowadays take for granted - able to take photos any professional photographer would have been proud of.
I think this is a good example for NASAs double-speak. NASA repeatedly wants us to believe in mutually exclusive concepts.
Another example would be the notion that NASA was simultaneously competent and powerful enough to send human beings to the Moon (which, btw, is a natural satellite, not a "planet", as bizarrely claimed by Ed Mitchell, further up) and get them back again, yet didn't have the computer technology or man-power for faking such an event. Or to put it differently, doing the real thing was supposed to have been easier than pretending to do so. That's about as credible as claiming that it is easier to climb Mount Everest, rather than pretending climb it.
As far as I am concerned, the photographic and film record is not consistent with what one would reasonably expect from a true event, yet consistent with an elaborate hoax. The probable reasons for such a hoax are secondary to the underlying argument.
