....that's the real reason why NASA wants to get there and back....the exclusive franchise ....... Dagorath, get aboard

i thought about a trip to Uranus but on second thoughts

On a more serious note....

Does anyone remember the movie Dr. Zhivago and the scene where Lara and Zhivago flee to the Zhivago family's country home? The entire landscape is blanketed with 3 feet of snow. The deciduous trees are barren, white branched ghosts of their summer selves. The conifers are frozen snow monoliths. Lara and Zhivago, in sable overcoats, arrive in a horse drawn sleigh . You absolutely believe you are in Siberia in the cold Russian winter. The sun is low in the sky and the shadows are long. In reality the entire scene was shot in the middle of summer. Not scenes shot in winter spliced with summer scenes, 100% summer shoot.

If filmmakers of yore were able to achieve what they did in Dr. Zhivago they most certainly could fool us into believing Armstrong walked on the moon. I am not saying we were fooled, I am saying we have little tangible evidence that could not have been faked. We believe what we want to believe and who does not want to believe we have been to the moon and back.

Remember, during the Cold War, things were vastly different from the way they are now. The USA had strong political reasons for winning the race to the moon or at least to appear to win the race. We have witnessed many occassions when the USA has lied to us. They may have done so back then too.

Why have they not turned Hubble scope toward the moon and snapped photos of Armstrong's footprints, the flag and whatever was left behind? Would such photos prove anything? Or would they be condemned as fakes too. Experts on forging photos never seem to know for sure unless the forgery is very amateurish. On other occassions the say "If it's a forgery it's a very good forgery. It might be forged, I can't be sure."

I want to believe. It's not easy to look at Neil Armstrong's face and think he might have been bought. He looks so honest. But I know every man has a price and when you're the gubbermint there is no price you cannot afford to pay when it's deemed critical to the safety and survival of the nation. Or when your twisted mind convinces you it's critical.

Anyway, if they go back to the moon I want them to take me for the ride. I'll tell you all about it upon my return. I won't lie. You can trust me on that ;)

We have rock they claim came from the moon. Some people say the rock was synthesised here on Earth. Maybe it was brought from the moon by a manless drone. Maybe all we really have is a few authorities who have been be paid to say we have moon rock.

Logical explanations? The only pure and true logic is math. Most other logic rests upon initial assumptions. All of the logical explanations that defeat the nay-sayers seem rather sensible to me but I don't see any of those arguments as air tight. Each and every explanation asks me to have faith in the word of a pervertable man or questionable assumption. Few of us have the time to study ALL the science involved so there is always an element of faith.

Radio communications? What do they prove? At best they prove some thing very close to the moon or perhaps on the moon was transmitting to Earth. That does not prove there were men inside that thing or that men traveled from that thing to the surface of the moon. NASA claimed the orbiter relayed signals between the LEM and Earth because the LEM did not have a strong enough transmitter. So at best amateurs on Earth might have triangulated the origin of the signals and confirmed they came from very close to the surface of the moon, if their method had sufficient resolution. Thus amateur radio doesn't prove men walked on the moon.

Global conspiracy? The conspiracy (i.e. the network of lies between the few who know the truth), if there is a conspiracy, would not have to extend any further than NASA. The belief generated by the conspiracy would be global but what does that prove?

Flawless conspiracy? It wouldn't have to be flawless. And it might crack wide open at any time, if there is a conspiracy. Just one quilty conscience laying on its deathbed in a hospital pondering what's on the other side could change all our beliefs on the matter.

Can the gubbermint cover it up? Probably not forever but maybe their goal was to keep it covered just long enough to deal the Russians a psychological blow to help turn the tide in the Cold War. Perhaps they wanted to buy time until they were able to do a genuine mission. Perhaps they feared the Russians would blast the Apollo ship out of the sky so they decided not to invest a lot of money in a real mission until they knew how the Russians would react. Maybe later missions were real and maybe we got the moon rock from those missions, not the first mission.

I am not convinced there was a conspiracy but I like to maintain a certain level of skepticism.

Actually, Newton gave us most of the maths required to get to the moon and back a long time ago. The problem since then has been an engineering problem rather than a theoretical problem. It's largely a matter of packing enough transistors into a processor that will do the required maths, making the system redundant and capable of withstanding vibration and extreme acceleration, packing all that into a capsule along with life support and setting it all atop a rocket powerful enough to boost it to escape velocity. The maths and navigation are not all that difficult. It was accomplished with an onboard computer roughly equivalent in power to a Commodore 64.

The fact that Armstrong's descent to the surface was reported to be a near disaster and re-telling the tale doesn't prove it was real. It could very well have been faked. The near disaster story is even easier to believe than a tale of a journey that went off without a hitch. In the end we have no independent eye witnesses, no corroborating evidence that could not have been faked, no proof at all, just stories from people with vested interests.