UKC

Watched a fascinating programme that claimed the 1969 event was a massive hoax

Evidence against:

Poor grain movie
The flag moved in the wind, when the moon doest have atmosphere
Photographic tampering
Lots of video and photography that seemed too perfect to be shot on the moon.
No Russian attempts at a moon landing.
Man apparently couldnt stand the trip due to radiation levels caused by solar flairs
Suspicious deaths of 3 Astonaut deaths during Apollo testing at the time.
-250 to +250 temperature changes meant the spacesuits couldn have coped

I know it was only a TV programme, but it really made a solid case that we have never set foot on the moon.

Do you think it was the worlds biggest ever hoax?

In reply to Blizzard:




Difficult to win really isn't it.

In reply to Blizzard:


Nope. Plenty more evidence that we did.

T.

In reply to Blizzard:

Yes they went and no it wasn't a hoax.

In reply to hokkyokusei: Actually is was a fake, even Armstrong says so


http://www.theonion.com/articles/conspiracy-theorist-convinces-neil-armstro...

In reply to Blizzard:

Is that the most appallingly typed attempted troll ever?

And yes, they did go. They left mirrors behind.

In reply to MG: 1/10. And that's generous.

In reply to Blizzard:

this is a joke right?

In reply to Blizzard:

It was real, but it's sad that such conspiracy theories can get any credence. Says a lot about how far backwards we have gone since those days in some ways.

Anyway, the Russians were trying for lunar landings too, and (Wikipedia tells me... God, who am I to criticise conspiracy theorists!) in fact got the first living creatures to the moon (orbit) and back. The creatures involved make it almost worth of Aesop:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zond_5

In reply to Blizzard:

No you watched a pile of junk.

= All the TV from that era was poor!

= There's no atmosphere so any motion imparted by the astronaut putting it up wouldn't decay due to drag as it would on Earth.

= misunderstanding of lighting without an atmosphere to scatter light.

= It was the Americans in a race, not the Russians.

= Whilst the flairs in the 1960s were pretty bad, the moon landings were timed for periods of minimum solar activity. Also the time spent passing through the Van Allen Belts was so short that it didn't affect the overall radiation dose.

= The deaths on Apollo 1 were two years prior to the first moon landing.

= The space suits don't have to cope with that temperature range - they have to cope with the astronauts overheating from their own body heat.

= It made a solid case for there's one born every minute.

ALC

In reply to Blizzard:
There is no evidence, just wild ideas from people who do not understand science.

Broadcast live. Bandwidth was small. Small bandwidth = bad picture.

It waved only when it was first placed. This in fact DEMONSTRATES there was no atmosphere as there was no damping form the vibration caused by putting the aluminium pole up.

Lots of photos were taken. I'm quite sure some of the exposures were stopped or had other processes carried out. And?

Why? They used the very best cameras available. You don't SEE the video of them bounding around because they either weren't filming then and it would have been pointless, or if they were occasionally, it was too shaky to use. So you see the good stuff taken while they were standing still taking photos. Sounds sensible to me.

No MANNED russian attempts. They put up a couple of moon rovers. The americans insituted and unprecedented effort to beat the Russians, so hardly surprising. The Russians changed tactic and went for low earth orbit longevity. In fact, the Russian work was more productive than the American work in this respect because no one has left LEO since the apollo missions.

No. If a solar flare had happened, there were some strategies to deal with it (putting the spacecraft end on to the sun) However, while individual flares are not predictable, general activity is.


In what way suspicious!! They tested in a pure oxygen environment. They do this because it keeps costs down to have a lower pressure in the cabin. A lower pressure means a lower partial pressure of oxygen. So they had to increase the oxygen. To conduct a proper plugs out test, they HAD to increase the pressure inside the cabin in order to simulate positive pressure. NASA had been asked not to do this by North American, but went ahead anyway. This was swept under the carpet because it could easily have killed the program if NASA had been seen to be at fault. North American took some of the blame because it was in their interest........ if the program had been pulled, they wouldn't have been in the spaceship building business. Hell, I'VE taken the blame for my client before for exactly the same reason.


And you're an engineer? Spacesuits were made of around 15 layers. Some thermal, some reflective. The temperature difference is relatively easy to deflect because the reflective surfaces radiate it back out. Only one side of the suit is taking radiation at any given time.




No it didn't.


No, I don't.
In fact the sites have been photographed recently by the lunar mapping program.

In reply to Blizzard:
Definitely faked. Proof here:
http://users.telenet.be/vdmoortel/dirk/MoonLanding/MoonLanding.html

In reply to Blizzard:
The idea that it was a hoax seems quite infeasible. There were so many people working on the Apollo project that to dupe all of them would require a tremendously sophisticated scheme. All the people who were in on it would have had to be silenced for the rest of their lives.

The Russians would have had to keep quiet about not seeing any evidence of rocket ships heading for the moon.

Scientists using the Laser Ranging Retroreflector experiment which was (said to have been) deployed on Apollo 11, 14, and 15 would have had to be duped into thinking they were getting real data over the last forty years.

crazy

In reply to Blizzard:

I saw the program last night and found it VERY interesting. Never really had a view before but some of the photographic evidence & deaths (particularly Grissom) does make you think?

In reply to Blizzard:

Compelling stuff! However, I read a fascinating book that claimed the 1969 event wasn't a massive hoax. Do books trump TV?

You're kidding, right.
jk

In reply to Blizzard: Well first I'd suggest reading this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Apollo-Springer-Praxis-Books-Exploration/dp/1441971... (Yeah it's my dad)

Poor grain movie. The technology of the time. Film was grainy, the photography was hi-res, specially adapted Hasselblad cameras. Mind bending quality even by today's standards. Every one of the thousands of photos are on the net (somewhere) full res and available to view.

And a question to the inverse - if they wanted to fake it, why land on the Moon six times and increase the quality of footage each time? Film footage was getting pretty high quality by 1972.

The flag - they mount it by driving a staff into the ground, then inserting the flagpole which goes in by a twisting motion. This causes the flag to move from side to side. As they walk away, there is no drag caused by atmosphere to stop it from moving, so it keeps on waving. The only thing to stop it is internal tension of the cloth. (You can tell I spend far too long with a guy who talks about this stuff a lot........)

- to + 250 are roughly the temperature extremes of the Moon. The Apollo missions landed in areas near the terminator (I think usually coming into daylight) so that they hadn't heated up. The Moon rotates about once monthly so there is time for temperatures to go through the roof/floor, but you can land in areas that aren't extreme.

The deaths of the Apollo 1 crew seem suspicious to me only if you make them so. To me it seems a miracle more people didn't die when you consider how outrageous what they were doing was. But a spark igniting a pure oxygen atmosphere (in the cabin), combined with a door that was designed to be heavy duty (and therefore time-consuming to open) you can see how it happened. In later missions, cabin atmospheres were similar/identical to Earth's and (I think) the crew had oxygen only in their pressure suits. That's the big box they all carry on the way to the rocket. The doors were redesigned to open in minutes.

"Man apparently couldnt stand the trip due to radiation levels caused by solar flairs" Then ask how were have people in space these days for many months. Solar flare was an inherent danger in Apollo, not something they could design out as far as I'm aware. But solar flares aren't so common and they simply risked their necks. Since the Moon was 3 days away, it was a risk and I think there was at least 1 mission that had a narrow escape there.

Anywayyy could go on forever. And I've got no interest in the subject, it's just knowledge passed on from above.

But I can say, concerning the book linked to at the top, is that when you read about how they did it and all the things they took account of and technology developed for it, *why wouldn't you go to the Moon?*

In reply to Padraig:

How about a compromise?
They landed there, but faked the footage as they couldn't show the actual landing?

In reply to Blizzard:

Of course they landed on the moon!

I watched it live.

It was in the middle of the night which made sense because that's when the moon is out.

If it was a hoax what would have been the point? The Russians would have blown the whistle, but they believed it. Anyway men have been back several times since. Thousands of NASA personel were involved - if it had been a hoax there is no way they would all have kept their mouth's shut. how do you explain the moon rock samples which are totally uncontaminated unlike rock originating from Earth?

In reply to MG:

OMG, I'm like, totally convinced, especially after I made^H^H^H^Hfound this:
http://www.nsrg.org.uk/darren/homemaderockets/proof

In reply to Ramblin dave:

LOL

youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw&

In reply to Blizzard: A couple of other arguments put forward were that there were no blast craters beneath the modules (which on the face of it seemed more convincing) and that when speeded up to twice the speed the footage looked like how you would move on earth (which sounded ridiculous).

I got annoyed with the programme at this point and switched it off so only heard the conspiracy side and not the debunking half, anyone know the counter argument to the blast crater theory?

BTW I am not convinced at all by the conspiracy, just hadn't heard about the blast crater before.

In reply to Blizzard: And how could this have been made if we didn't, eh? It's another TV programme, so is worth just as much in evidential terms as the one you saw.

youtube.com/watch?v=OTyjBUoCnKM&

T.

In reply to Blizzard: Aww, c'mon! 'Course it was a hoax - just look at the obvious evidence:

* No mention of any Clangers, even though every child alive in the sixties knew the Clangers lived there
* No sightings of the Soup Dragon. NASA tried to tell us that astronauts would have to eat meat paste out of tubes etc... when if they'd actually gone to the Moon they could have just signed up with the Soup Dragon for daily soup deliveries
* No cheese - everyone knows that the Moon is made of green cheese. What did the astronauts bring back? Rocks - rocks, I ask ya! Could've just picked a few up off the nearest scree slope n' saved billions.

No, I tell ya it was just a big fat con. Ha, next you'll be telling me that the International Space Station is for real too, when it's well known that its actually Thunderbird 5. The evidence for that was in that series of documentaries about International Rescue and the Tracy family that used to be on when I was a kid. They're trying to pretend that it's some new place for international co-operation in space when we already know it's been there for nearly 45 years.

No, I tell ya, it's all a big fat con. Like that one where they tried to tell us Mars was barren and dry, when we all know it's full of little green men with intellects vastly superior to ours who study our Earth with envious eyes as one might study microbes under a microscope and slowly and surely they draw their plans against us.

Now, where's that nice young man in his clean, white coat...

In reply to IceKing:
There was dust blown up on the landings. But there's no air on the moon so it doesn't stay suspended, anything blown up follows a ballistic trajectory and falls straight back down. The surface was solid with a covering of dust which was blown away. No crater.

Re the camera speeded up thing, yes, if you speed the film up correctly it will look like earth type movements to a degree. However, looking at the trajectory of things they throw in the air, which they do a few times, plug that into an equation and you find that the gravity MUST be the same as moon's gravity.

In reply to Blizzard:

I think they were spunking 5% of GDP on the project - U.S. taxpayers probably still paying for it today. Infunking credible where an arms race can take you and the greatest ever publicity coupe for the MIC.

D

In reply to Blizzard: Some compelling arguments were put forward but the most damning thing was the counter arguments offered or not offered by the NASA man. Don't know if this was a NASA fault or a program editing fault but it didn't help. For what it's worth I'm not convinced but I wouldn't put money on it either way and hope that we did land on the moon.

In reply to Blizzard:

Anyone see Brian Cox's tweet about this?

"Oh for gods sake why have channel 5 conspired to fill my timeline with nob ends. #yeswelandedonthemoonyouf*ckwits "

In reply to Dauphin:

Actually there is a theory that in fact, many of us owe our lives to the space race and it goes like this:
Kennedy was in a very difficult situation whereby he could not appear soft on the Russians, but being no war monger, and being very worried that a lot of public and military opinion supported a first strike against the soviets, he grasped the moonshots as a way of funneling that competetive spirit into something just a little bit healthier than an all out nuclear exchange.

In reply to Blizzard:

Good grief! Is this still going on
youtube.com/watch?v=OTyjBUoCnKM&
what more proof do you need?

In reply to IceKing:

Thanks for pulling to pieces the main evidence put forward by the programme. I didnt have the answers to oppose what they suggested. It was compulsive viewing, the way they built the case against was good. I enjoyed the conspiracy theorists rheotric it was convincing, but I am no scientist, nor the brightest button on the planet. lol

In reply to Coel Hellier:

No what was his tweet???

In reply to Blizzard: New photos came out this year.
http://www.space.com/12796-photos-apollo-moon-landing-sites-lro.html

Of course, they have had a while to get good on photoshop.

In reply to Blizzard:

Lets humour the OP for a minute and pretend that the moon landings were in fact faked... Have you any idea how many people would have to have been silenced? Approximately 400,000 according to our good friend Wikipedia. Imagine trying to keep that many people quiet.

I mean, the BBC couldn't even keep the identity of the Stig a secret properly!

World's biggest hoax? Certainly not.

In reply to Carless:

PS I loved that clangers clip!

In reply to Carless:

This is nearly as good - youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw&

ALC

In reply to Blizzard:


I quoted it. Though UKC filters have added an auto-tone-down.

In reply to Coel Hellier:

What did it say???

In reply to Blizzard:


It was on a very flimsy (to save weight) aluminium pole, that pole was vibrating after being stuck in the ground; that flapped the fabric.


What's the problem? Which shadows do you think are anomalous?


The hand-held cameras were top-notch Hasselblad's using full-frame film, so were very high quality. The astronauts extensively practised using them in space suits.

In reply to Blizzard: for your first point - see Kevin above

The flag - they mount it by driving a staff into the ground, then inserting the flagpole which goes in by a twisting motion. This causes the flag to move from side to side. As they walk away, there is no drag caused by atmosphere to stop it from moving, so it keeps on waving. The only thing to stop it is internal tension of the cloth.

In reply to Coel Hellier:

I wondered what that tweet was about last night - didn't look at the TV schedules. Makes sense now.

ALC

In reply to Blizzard:


See above, I quoted it.

In reply to Coel Hellier:

Brian Cox said...

#yeswelandedonthemoonyouf*ckwits

SHOCKING

In reply to Blizzard: Can someone explain the flag movement and shadows please. That flag did look like it was "in the wind" and shadows on the moon, how so when the sun was in full view. How were they taken with 1960's cameras in a spacesuit?

(1) I explained the flag already and I was correct in my explanation.
(2) Why do you think 1960s camera optics were worse than ours??? They had good optics.
(3) They managed to take good pictures by drilling a lot on Earth before they left. The Hassleblads used were the best optics available at the time and were specially adapted with big focus and stop ring levers to be easily moved in a gloved suit.
(4) Can't be bothered to go into the shadows, go on the internet and look. I can't be bothered because there isn't one answer, there are several depending on which pictures you're talking about.

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

I sort of agree with the theory - But I had thought the first strike option was off the table by 1961/62 - the U.S. had realized they would of put enough KT's downrange to ensure no or limited retaliation they would of killed the planet.

D

In reply to a lakeland climber:

Excellent as well!


Coel: careful - you're entering into people-with-non-engaged-brains territory
Anything may happen... have you at least got clean underwear on?

Enough said

http://news.sky.com/story/880706/new-pictures-reveal-footprints-on-the-moon

In reply to Philip:

From Wiki (scroll to the bottom):

"New Explanation for Dinosaur Extinction? The Lunar Laser Ranging experiment has shown that the moon is moving away from the earth at a rate of about two centimeters a year. If you perform a regression you find that 65 million years ago, the moon must have been orbiting the earth at a height of about 20ft, which, if you think about it, explains why the dinosaurs died out (well, the tall ones anyway)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment

In reply to Blizzard:


Good job off-duty isn't a follower of Brian Cox's twitter feed, you can get locked up these days for calling someone a f**kwit in twitter.

More good stuff...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_evidence_for_Apollo_Moon_landings

In reply to Shani: That assumption is based on the moon moving away linearly over time.

Is there evidence the moon has always moved away from the earth linearly?

In reply to Shearwater:

I watched the tv programme. I was taken in. I made a few points on here. Thats all I can say, and a few people have started to shoot me down. I am an ordinary bloke, and the program duped me. At least now I have the counter arguments !

In reply to Blizzard:

My intention wasn't to be mean (though to be fair, my earlier link was slightly mocking) just informative... I wasn't aware of the third-party evidence page before today, for example and there's lots of interesting stuff referenced there that's all news to me too.

Just cos internet folk appear omniscient, doesn't mean they've always been that way

In reply to Blizzard:

Anyone care to explain how many people were actually in on the hoax??

Dont forget to Include Russia, china, UK, france, Spain, Australia and countless other countries who were either assisting the Americans as allies or "watching very carefully" as "enemies".

All would have to "keep quiet" about it...Russia and america , in the sixties, had a go at each other for every little difference of opinion. They nearly had a nuclear war over the Cuban missile crisis. So we are to beleive that Russia either agreed to stay schtum about America not actually sending anyone to the moon or they were taken in by the hoax too???

Get real

They went, they landed on the moon and they came back. Bloody incredible feat of engineering.

In reply to mgco3:


And don't forget to include all those who study Apollo moon rock today, plus all those today involved with lunar laser range-finding, and thus monitoring the moon's orbit.

In reply to mgco3: if it was real, how come they never saw any clangers?

youtube.com/watch?v=HArUmqqiL0s&

In reply to skarabrae: Thats because Clangers WERE the hoax. They aren't from the moon

They actually live in Derbyshire..


I know ,I have met some of them.. Along with the muppets that live there too

In reply to Blizzard: You may be surprised to find The Guardian agrees with you. No, really.

And it talks about planes on conveyor belts too.

http://gu.com/p/3cfm6

T.

In reply to Blizzard:

Everyone's said it all really but just to take one point: the flag moving in the 'wind'. Odd to have a wind in a studio don't you think? unless they left the door open of course and were very very careless!

In reply to Blizzard: If I wanted to answer the OP headline really accurately I'd have to say:
No, men did not walk on the moon. The gravity made walking quite difficult.

So they cantered mostly.

In reply to Bulls Crack:

Apparently according to the conspiracy folk, the whole thing was filmed outside in area 51. The film was then speeded up....

It was a fascinating program, even if it was targeted at dimwits like me.... ( like I say, I aint no scientist)

In reply to Blizzard:

This will answer your questions about the film being 'speeded up'

youtube.com/watch?v=NxZMjpMhwNE&

In reply to Blizzard:

Mythbusters tackled this: youtube.com/watch?v=qz7cUP4o-ZQ&

In reply to Blizzard:

Well they would say that wouldn't they?!

Beware though; you'll end up as one of THEM is you are truly 'fascinated' by such nonsense!

In reply to Coel Hellier:
<SIDETRACK>

Really? You'll have to remind me of that case.


</SIDETRACK>

In reply to Blizzard:


dunno. in the same era when the US was getting its ass kicked by people who didnt have telephones or lace up shoes they could beat the russians to the moon???

well thats what i say to agitate the subject whenever it arises.

In reply to Blizzard: No evidence is needed for me (though it is more than strong). I remember the late Sir Patrick Moore once said on The Sky at Night, "Yes, we we're there. I saw them through my telescope." and left it at that. Which is what I'll do.

In reply to Blizzard:

There's only one response to nonsense like this - sock it to 'em Buzz:

youtube.com/watch?v=1wcrkxOgzhU&

In reply to Blizzard:

Ah come on, that's the nature of UKC.

Listen, when I was a bit younger I came across a site dedicated to proving the moon landings were a hoax, and they pretty much used all of the points your tv program did. I was taken in. It seemed to all fit together.

Then as a bit of a mission I went away and tried to find sites who would have the nerve to try and say the moon landings were real. I found lots but I also discovered that they were a lot more compelling, rational and believable.

You just need to have a sceptical frame of mind and to be a natural 'doubty' person - when you see something like this, go away and try and find sources of information that have an opposite point of view, weigh the two of them up and then see which makes more sense. TRY and prove your beliefs wrong.

These programs are very uncritical in their approach, and will cherry pick the 'facts' that suit their arguments. Adopting a more sceptical / critical approach to these things will make you see the world in a slightly different light and (in my case anyway) can help you revaluate things which you may have thought held a glimmer of truth in them (such dowsing, channelling, spiritualism, telephathy, ESP etc etc etc) to the point where you see tham as the complete and utter bullshit they actually are.

In reply to ThunderCat: Do you all really think that Russia were not monitoring this down to the inch, do you really think they would not have debunked it if it didn't really happen?
Even the gold old USA were not that good at fooling the soviets, besides it would ruin my 1969 trip to the Alps if it was untrue.

In reply to shaymarriott:

Yes, a very good point and one usually conveniently ignored by conspiracy theorists.

In reply to Blizzard: Its ridiculous, it's like saying 'did an aircraft likr Concorde ever fly'; WE have gone backward in space technology as we have in commercial flight, not forwards, at least in terms of manned expeditions, but there are people around in this age that cannot accept that, so they belittle the acheivements of the pioneers.
It has been a regular feature of mankind, to deride it's great scientists, Galileo etc and these conspiracy theorists are no less insane and intrangisent. Personally I regard the Moon landings as the last great exploration undertaken by mankind so far, up there with Amundsen, Skackleton and Hilary, probably along with the great Africa explorers too.
I really thought when I was a teenager that mankind was still a great exploratory animal with the moonlandings. My personal addition was a few feet of unclimbed rock in the UK, and Europe later.

In reply to jonny2vests:

Actually, this isn't really the case.
Conspiracy therorists don't argue no launches took place, just that no one went to the moon.
So those 400,000 people, most of whom worked in R&D and production etc wouldn't need to be in on it.

The people who would need to be kept quiet would be the scientists who discovered whatever made the landing impossible, the higher ranking managers in that company, anyone having anything to do with telemetry, the astronauts, the tracking stations etc. Probably no more than about 2000 people.

Not suggesting the idea holds up, it doesn't, there were independant tracking stations too.
Just correcting the idea that you'd need to keep all 400,000 people involved in the project quiet.

In reply to Philip:

Correct. Lunar Laser Ranging has helped to constrain our model of the moon's orbit ever since. The impact on geodesy as a whole would be huge without these continued observations (which we are somehow cleverly making up otherwise), things like GPS satellite orbits, coordinate systems and tidal models would all suffer. Can't remember the whole acronym, but the LL in APOLLO stand for Lunar Laser, we didn't send people there just to wave back.

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

You're missing the point. Keeping secrets, especially ones that good, is hard. You try keeping 20, nevermind 2000 people quiet for the rest of their lives about something that big. People would listen if a real contributor of the day were to cast doubt.

In reply to jonny2vests: Apollo isn't an acronym.

In reply to jonny2vests:

Im not missing the point, I'm just being correct. Nothing worse than incorrectly refuting nut jobs with incorrect facts. They tend to leap on such things.

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

Wrong again I'm afraid. My PhD is Space Geodesy, so I know a little about the subject, so feel free to respond with gay abandon.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Point_Observatory_Lunar_Laser-ranging_O...

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

But your missing my point, which is what you responded to. How many is irrelevant once it becomes 'a lot'. I should have been clearer in my original response about what I was agreeing with.

In reply to Blizzard: I don't think anyone has mentioned the Shining yet.
I get well sucked in

youtube.com/watch?v=a2g-qvloXns&

Kubrick did it I tell you

In reply to jonny2vests: Ok, so more correctly, PROJECT Apollo wa not named after a science package on the project. It was named after Apollo the god with the chariot in the sky.

If they decided after making a science package to give it an acronym to fit with Apollo, fair enough,but it was not the other way around.

In reply to jonny2vests:

You are missing the point that it is VERY relevent when used as an argument against conspiracy theorists.

FFS, I know you can't keep 2000 people quiet any more than you can keep 400,000 quiet.

But I'm not the one who's idiot enought to come up with the conspiracy theorist's stance.

Convince them, not me.

In reply to Wonko The Sane:

And of course all the Russian scientist tracking the landing at the time Doh! This conspiracy theory really is a nononononono.

In reply to jonny2vests:

Very minor point... the presence of retroreflectors on the moon doesn't imply human visitation. The Soviet Lunokhod rovers had some as well, for example.

In reply to Blizzard: No but it makes a good story and journalists have to do something (I'm an old cynic)

In reply to ThunderCat:

dowsing, channelling, spiritualism, telephathy, ESP etc etc etc

Do you know the sheer numbers of people that believe in all that stuff???

What does that make all of those people?

In reply to Blizzard:

They're all witches? Burn 'em!

In reply to Toby S:


dont be hasty they might not be. Lets throw them in the lake first, if they float then we burn them.

In reply to Blizzard:

In the absence of any type of evidence, I'm afraid it makes them deluded and gullible and lacking in any type of critical reasoning skills.

In reply to Shearwater:

I think it was in '69. I have deployed retroreflectors, the American ones were a faff, bigger than the Russian ones and not designed to be deployable automatically.

In reply to jonny2vests:

APOLLO may well be the "Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation", but that's a post-facto naming, to echo the Apollo lunar missions.

Note this comment in the Wiki article:

"The APOLLO laser has been operational since October 2005, and routinely accomplishes sub-millimeter level range accuracy between the Earth and the Moon."

36 years after the first Apollo landing, then...

As for the conspiracy theorists.... <shakes head in despair>

In reply to captain paranoia:

That is correct. Quite when the acronym came about, I do not know.

Continuous ranges were observed once we had the equipment to do so on Earth. This was circa 1970.

Silverberg, E. C., Operation and performance of a lunar laser ranging station, Appl. Opt., 13, 565-574, 1974.

In reply to Blizzard: Jesus, is this still up for debate? That documentary is old now and much of what they posed has been completely debunked.

They even took photos earlier this year of the buggy and lander.

Bringing this topic up again is almost an act of trolling.

In reply to Blizzard:

Just google 'moon landing conspiracy theories' and choose the wikipedia entry. Answers each of your points (and many more). In fact it answers the points to the point where you begin to think that this whole thread is a waste of time!

In reply to George Ormerod:

One of my favourite youtube clips. Well done old man.