If you've been paying attention to this page, you know that it is not updated very often, but once in a great while something comes along that gets Mr. Hook so riled up that a rant ensues. The thing that set him off this time was the recent airing of a FOX special called “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To the Moon,” an “investigative report” type program that explored the possibility that the 1969 Moon landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (as well as all the other moon landings) may have been a big fat hoax.
I have seen a lot of stupid things I my life, but this show took the cake and ate it too. If you’d like to see a tit for tat list of arguments which refute the “evidence” that the FOX show offered as proof that the moon landings were faked, I heartily recommend that you go visit: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html
I’m only going to get into the first piece of “evidence” the FOX show used to imply that the moon landings were hoaxed because it is the most ridiculous item and it will help make my point, namely that the people who produced this show simply didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.
The first and foremost complaint the conspiracy theorists had to offer was that you can’t see any stars in the sky in most of the film footage captured on the surface of the moon. If you want to know why the stars don’t show up in the lunar film footage and why the “sky” on the moon appears completely black, I suggest you try this little experiment:
Go to Wal-Mart. Get one of those cheap “disposable” cameras. Now go to a location well outside city limits (to avoid light pollution) on a starry night and take some snapshots of the sky. Then go back to Wal-Mart and get your film developed (it only takes an hour and it should cost about $7.00). Now count how many stars appear in your photos.
I can tell you how many stars you will find. NONE. Why? Because starlight is so dim and so faint that the film in the camera cannot register the stars as a light source. To take pictures of stars you have to use a camera that can leave the lens aperture open for a prolonged period of time and a film stock that is extremely sensitive to light. Motion-picture cameras take several exposures per second, every film frame is a film exposure unto itself. So of course you’re not going to see any stars on film-footage from the moon. It has nothing to do with the moon’s lack of atmosphere, the stars are simply too far away and don’t emit enough light for them to show up on the film stock the astronauts were using at the time.
The people who made the FOX special clearly don’t understand any of this. They don’t understand how cameras work. They don’t understand how film stock works. They don’t understand how photo development works. They’re ignoramuses. They simply don’t know what they’re talking about when they make the assertion that the lack of stars in the moon footage is clinching proof that the film footage has been faked.
They continued to demonstrate their ignorance throughout the program. All of their photo “analysis” which was meant to demonstrate “anomalies” in various moon photographs came across as ludicrous if you actually know something about how photography works (or more to the point, how photography _doesn’t_ work). Their nitpicking on lighting effects and discrepancies in shadow angles only demonstrated that they were completely ignorant of the principles of optical perspective, something they could have picked up at any junior-high drawing class, but obviously never had.
I could go on about how the makers of the program didn’t know anything about radiation either (they directly compared the radiation in the Van-Allen belts to the amounts of radiation present in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima - if that doesn’t clue you in to the fact that these people are morons, I don’t know what else can), but the real issue at hand here is that these “experts” were proud of their ignorance and tried to persuade the viewing audience that they were really the smart people who knew better (anyone who gives NASA the benefit of the doubt is a hapless dupe as far as the conspiracy theorists are concerned).
And this is the part that really got me riled up. Point #1: Ignorance is NOT strength (militant agnostics take note!). Note that ignorance, in this case particularly, is NOT a sign of objectivity or neutrality. Understand that these conspiracy buffs have a vested interest in NOT KNOWING whether or not man landed on the moon because they think it makes them look smart and open minded. Rather than hail the moon landings as one of the most significant events in human history (despite all the gathered evidence and eye-witness accounts), these yokels would RATHER believe that NASA collaborated with the U.S. Government to perpetrate a massive hoax upon a gullible American public. Which leads me to Point #2: Disbelief is NOT a virtue (militant atheists take note!). Just because these people are willing to believe that the moon landings might have been hoaxed does NOT make them more open minded than the rest of us. In fact their minds have been CLOSED to the possibility that NASA might be telling the truth.
This is a common tactic of self-appointed intellectuals of all stripes. Under the guise of “tolerance” and “open-mindedness” they try to disguise the fact that their minds are completely closed to anything that is outside the boundaries of their own world-view. Then they pat themselves on the back for adopting such a narrow-minded philosophy because they KNOW that everyone else is just a dumb hick who doesn’t know any better. ENOUGH ALREADY!
The way the FOX program closed was the biggest outrage of all. The authors of the program suggested that if and when the Japanese finally launch some satellites to orbit the moon and we get photo data on the American lunar lander from this “neutral” (read non-NASA) third party, THEN and only then will we “know for sure” that man landed on the moon. Balderdash! 20 years from now FOX will no doubt be broadcasting a new special entitled: “Were the Japanese Moon Photos Faked?” Not because they’ll have any evidence to support their claims, but because some people will go to any lengths to deny any truth that is contrary to their world-view. It’s sad. It’s pathetic. It’s what we’re stuck with. Ain’t humans fun?
For more infromation regarding stupid NASA conspiracy theories:
http://www.crank.net/apollo.html
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