If we can put a man on the moon...

[Triste]

...we can do (fill in the blank)
I used to believe that.  Then I was reading one of the "Unstoppable Bathroom Readers" (which, I might add, is worth the money) where they mention that serious doubt has been cast on whether in fact men DID walk on the moon.  Huh.  Imagine that.
 
From 'Uncle John's Unstoppable Bathroom Reader':
"Moon Scam? 
Is nothing sacred?  Those conspiracy nuts won't leave anything alone.  They attack our most sacred institutions.  (On the other hand, they could be right)."

I'll pull out sections of the text:
"NASA experts recently admitted that they currently do not have the capability of sending manned missions to the moon.  So how could they have done it more than 30 years ago?" "...the computer onboard the Columbia had a capacity smaller than many of today's handheld calculators."

Paraphrase:
The American flag in the footage is fluttering.  But there is no air in the Moon's atmosphere.  How could the flag flutter?

The photos are too good, the astronauts appear to "be well lit on all sides, regardless of where the sunlight is coming from, as if there were some artificial light source".

"Even when everything else is in shadow, the American flag and the words "United States" are always well lit."

Absence of stars in photos of lunar sky.

There's more, but too much too type.  I'm now a man-on-the-moon skeptic.

[QuirkyCarla]

how depressing. 

[lilia]

I like the reports that the astronauts supposedly saw a UFO while they were up there.

[Leto729]

They where on the moon.

[Triste]

But we'll never know for sure, in the end.

[QuirkyCarla]

Yeah. True.

[Nomaken]

How much money do i have to spend to get to the moon?  I'll go there and let you guys know if we can go there.

[QuirkyCarla]

I'll go with you. I wanna see what it's like there.

[Leto729]

But we'll never know for sure, in the end.

There has been to many involved in the Apollo Missions to make it a cover up that We did not go to the moon I believe.

[QuirkyCarla]

Maybe we went, and they tried to film it, but something went wrong...so they had to make a fake tape.

[Leto729]

Maybe we went, and they tried to film it, but something went wrong...so they had to make a fake tape.

I still doubt that theory too.

Solar wind or flares from the Sun could blow the flag You see. Sun radiates energy We feel it everyday Ourselves.

[Callaway]

I visited the Smithsonian Museum of Air and Space.  There is a flexible stick along the top edge of the flag so it will display properly, even on the moon.  Maybe vibrations were causing it to jiggle?

[Callaway]

...we can do (fill in the blank)
I used to believe that. Then I was reading one of the "Unstoppable Bathroom Readers" (which, I might add, is worth the money) where they mention that serious doubt has been cast on whether in fact men DID walk on the moon. Huh. Imagine that.
 
From 'Uncle John's Unstoppable Bathroom Reader':
"Moon Scam?
Is nothing sacred? Those conspiracy nuts won't leave anything alone. They attack our most sacred institutions. (On the other hand, they could be right)."

I'll pull out sections of the text:
"NASA experts recently admitted that they currently do not have the capability of sending manned missions to the moon. So how could they have done it more than 30 years ago?" "...the computer onboard the Columbia had a capacity smaller than many of today's handheld calculators."

Paraphrase:
The American flag in the footage is fluttering. But there is no air in the Moon's atmosphere. How could the flag flutter?

The photos are too good, the astronauts appear to "be well lit on all sides, regardless of where the sunlight is coming from, as if there were some artificial light source".

"Even when everything else is in shadow, the American flag and the words "United States" are always well lit."

Absence of stars in photos of lunar sky.

There's more, but too much too type. I'm now a man-on-the-moon skeptic.

http://www.braeunig.us/space/hoax.htm

DID WE LAND ON THE MOON?
A Debunking of the Moon Hoax Theory

On February 15, 2001 the FOX television network aired a program titled Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land On The Moon? This program showed alleged evidence that NASA faked the moon landings. This hoax theory has been around for several years, but this is the first time it has been presented to such a wide audience. Since this Website, Rocket and Space Technology, is dedicated to the men and women who brought the moon landings to fruition, I feel the time is right for me to speak out on this topic.

This TV program capitalizes on America's fixation with government conspiracies by sensationalizing the notion that NASA perpetrated a multi-billion dollar hoax on the world. In my opinion, the FOX network acted irresponsibly by airing this program. What they produced is a TV show filled with sloppy research, scientific inaccuracies and erroneous conclusions. To support such an absurd theory and to cast doubt in the minds of the American public is an insult to the courage of the astronauts and the brilliance of the engineers who worked to achieve mankind's greatest technological feat. FOX is apparently only concerned with ratings while exhibiting total disregard for the integrity of America's true heroes.

Some of the most prominent advocates of the hoax theory are Bill Kaysing, author of We Never Went To The Moon, Ralph Rene, author of NASA Mooned America, David Percy and Mary Bennett, co-authors of Dark Moon: Apollo and the Whistle Blowers and, more recently, Bart Sibrel, producer of A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon. These people, and other hoax advocates, usually point to alleged anomalies in the Apollo photo and video record as evidence of their claims. The FOX program featured many of these claims while providing very little refuting evidence or testimony. Below are my comments refuting both the evidence presented in the TV program and many other common hoax allegations. I invite you to draw your own conclusions, but I suspect you will find the facts speak for themselves.

Some of the Apollo video shows the American flag fluttering. How can the flag flutter when there is no wind on the airless Moon?

This I find to be one of the more ridiculous observations. It is readily apparent that all the video showing a fluttering flag is one in which an astronaut is grasping the flagpole. He is obviously twisting or jostling the pole, which is making the flag move. In fact, in some video the motion of the flag is unlike anything we would see on Earth. In an atmosphere the motion of the flag would quickly dampen out due to air resistance. In some of the Apollo video we see the twisting motion of the pole resulting in a violent flapping motion in the flag with little dampening effect.

I've heard many hoax advocates claim that some of the Apollo photos show a fluttering flag. (How one can see a flag flutter in a still photograph is a mystery to me!) I can only guess that ripples and wrinkles in the flags are being perceived as wave motion. The flags were attached vertically at the pole and horizontally from a rod across the top. On some flights the astronauts did not fully extend the horizontal rod, so the flags had ripples in them. There is much video footage in which these rippled flags can be seen and, in all cases, they are motionless.

There are several photographs of objects that are in shadows, yet they appear lighted and with surprising detail. Objects located in shadows should appear totally black.

The problem with this statement is that it fails to consider reflected sunlight. Next to the Sun, the largest source of light on the Moon is the lunar surface itself, which reflects large amounts of sunlight. At the Earth-Sun distance, maximum solar illumination is about 10,000 lumens per square foot; however, if the Sun is not directly overhead its rays will strike the surface obliquely. This decreases the intensity of sunlight per unit area. A typical Sun elevation during the Apollo landings was about 20 degrees, thus the illumination per square foot was about 3,400 lumens. Since the Moon's surface reflects about 10% of the light it receives, each square foot of surface reflected about 340 lumens. This is equivalent to the luminosity of a 35-watt light bulb. This amount of light easily explains the illumination observed in the Apollo photographs.

The black sky should be full of stars, yet none are visible in any of the Apollo photographs.

This claim is one I hear frequently, and is one of the easiest to refute. The answer is very simple: they are too faint. The Apollo photos are of brightly lit objects on the surface of the Moon, for which fast exposure settings were required. The fast exposures simply did not allow enough starlight into the camera to record an image on the film. For the same reason, images of the Earth taken from orbit also lack stars. The stars are there; they just don't appear in the pictures. The hoax advocates often argue that stars should be visible, and some of their claims are valid, however they fail to recognize the difference between "seeing" stars and "photographing" stars. The astronauts could have recorded star images in their photos by increasing exposures, but they were not there to take star pictures. The purpose of the photos was to record the astronauts' activities on the surface of the Moon.

Bill Kaysing claims that NASA has perpetrated the lie that stars cannot be seen in space to validate the lack of stars in the Apollo photos. This assertion is utterly ridiculous; in fact, NASA has released many photos in which stars are visible. Common among these are long-exposure nighttime photographs of aurora taken by space shuttle astronauts. This example [see photo] is a four-second exposure taken from the flight deck of the shuttle Endeavour.

The astronauts should have seen a beautiful star-filled sky above them, yet they never mention it.

Even though there was a black sky above them, the astronauts still had to contend with the glare of a brightly lit lunar surface. The bright landscape prevented the astronauts' eyes from becoming dark adapted, thus making it nearly impossible to see faint stars. It would be like trying to see stars at night on Earth while someone is shining a flashlight directly into your eyes. Some astronauts reported that, while inside the LM, they could see stars through the upper rendezvous window. Also, astronaut Gene Cernan said that, while standing in the shadow of the Apollo 17 LM, he could see some stars while he was outside.

By the way, there is much more information on the website linked above.

[SovaNu]

the moonlanding was hogwash. never happened.

[Peter]

"NASA experts recently admitted that they currently do not have the capability of sending manned missions to the moon.  So how could they have done it more than 30 years ago?" "...the computer onboard the Columbia had a capacity smaller than many of today's handheld calculators."

The problem is that when the Apollo program was terminated, NASA went for the Space Shuttle, which is fundamentally a low-earth-orbit vehicle (and a pretty shit one at that).  Since all their resources were tied up in the shuttle, including launch pad design etc, it was no longer possible to manufacture and launch the giant rockets necessary for sending high-tonnage payloads to the moon and beyond.

Fortunately, the Space Shuttle program is now on it's way to being scrapped, and they're bringing back the old rocket design (rather than a modified plane stuck on it's end), so manned lunar exploration will be possible once more.

The photos are too good, the astronauts appear to "be well lit on all sides, regardless of where the sunlight is coming from, as if there were some artificial light source".

"Even when everything else is in shadow, the American flag and the words "United States" are always well lit."

Lunar regolith scatters and reflects light, much like the ground does on Earth, thus objects which are elevated (flags, astronauts, lunar module) are illuminated by the reflected light, wheras areas closer to the ground (shadows under rocks, depressions etc) aren't exposed nearly as much due to the smaller angle between them and the rest of the terrain.  The surface is also uneven, so light comes from many angles.

Absence of stars in photos of lunar sky.

That's a very simple matter of exposure times.  It's impossible to show both the very bright lunar surface and the very dim stars in the same photo without either having the lunar surface overexposed to the point of being pure white, or having the stars underexposed to the point of invisibility.