Moon landing 1969

[Yorkshiremum17]

Just watching a programme about the 1st men on the moon. I'm still not convinced that we actually did it. I would love to think that we did, but I just don't think that the technology of the time was capable of doing that.
What do you think, did the human race actually land on the moon in 1969 and return safely to earth?

I am also a bit sceptical (pro-vax, degree in biochem, masters in computer science, work in technology). Not that they havent been since, justvthat they went in 69 or that that footage is real (I dont think it is, but maybe just because they couldnt get the inages to work and had to show something). Also, why had noone been since 1972?

But OP how can we possibly have an "intelligent" discussion about it when none of us have the technical expertise to back up either argument?

I was 11 in 1969 and totally believe they really did it. As PP said, the USSR would have screamed from the rooftops if there was the remotest whiff of fakery - they didn't and never have.

The fact that you (and many others) find it just too incredible with the technology that existed then just emphasises how amazing and dangerous it was. But this is what humans do - many more failures than successes, but still we try.

Do you find it equally impossible that America was voyaged to by Columbus? That Everest was climbed eventually without modern equipment?

Do you believe Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space or do you think that was fake too? Do you think the space shuttles really did as claimed? Why stop at the moon landings?

has no one, typing with left hand due to injury.

OP Do you think the 382kg of Moon rock brought back is fake too?

OP, if you are ever fortunate enough to meet Buzz Aldrin, I strongly suggest you don’t mention that you don’t believe that he and his colleagues went to the moon.

He doesn’t suffer fools gladly.

Yes, they landed on the Moon in 1969. I watched it on television.

It didn't happen from nowhere, it was an iterative process. There had been decades of spaceflight beforehand by Russia and the USA - Sputnik, Laika (the Russian dog), Gagarin, Valentina Terechkova (the first woman in space), the Gemini and Apollo space programmes. Each going further for longer. All reported in newspapers cinemas and TV all over the world.

If it was faked then Russia and the USA would have had to be colluding for years to hoodwink everyone.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ApolloGuidancee_Computer

There you go.
I hadn't realised the Apollo onboard computers were the first to use integrated circuits.
Well, I'm learning something at any rate.

Thats an easy one to answer Boom

Once it had been done further missions lost public support because 1) it looked too easy and 2) it cost so very very much 3) what was the point?

The onboard computer on Apollo 11 had less computing power than a basic pocket calculator, it was overloading during the landing and heading the lunar module into a boulder field. Armstrong had to do the final approach and landing manually with very little margin of fuel left, and making the calculations himself.
People were much more accustomed to doing mental arithmetic etc in those days - we didn’t have calculators, let alone computers. In school maths lessons we used logarithm tables and slide rules.
The moon landing was an amazing achievement, and it was fully accepted that the risks were enormous. There was no possible rescue plan, and they actually had an alternative speech written for President Nixon to make in the event that the astronauts were killed in a failed mission.
There was much more enterprising spirit in those days - the zeitgeist was gung ho, not playing safe!

@littlelongdog said it perfectly.

Although public interest perked up considerably with Apollo 13, because it was most likely the astronauts were doomed.

On one of my trips to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral many years ago, I went to a talk by a retired astronaut. He told us that when NASA embarked on the Apollo program, they were already fairly confident that, from what they had earned from Gemini, putting humans on the moon was technically and logistically feasible.

Bringing them back alive, however, was a completely different matter, and nobody really knew if it was going to work until it did.

Armstrong was an aeronautical engineer by background, don't forget. Do the skeptics have any idea what sorts of calculations those people do?!

Putting men on the moon was in some ways largely 'because it's there' - and having done that, the move to doing science on the ISS, using shuttles, and robotic exploration of Mars and remote probes elsewhere is simply vastly more useful and cost effective.

@bmw6 & @tenbob you may be right in that we are so used to seeing things through modern eyes that it's very easy to forget that computers back then were not like the ones we have now and that a lot of calculations were done manually by people who then plugged the results into the computers.

Having seen a few programmes on telly and read a few articles, there seems to be such a jump from complete failure to success in such a short space of time, if it did happen it just seems like such an enormous piece of luck. They were so sure it was going to happen after so many failures - why? What made it such a sure thing that time? Assuming the technology was capable at that time, how did it move from abject failure to success that quickly, the technology of the time does not seem to have moved as quickly as it does now a days.

I really thought the world would be such a different place afterwards, having seen how very tiny we are in the wilderness of space. All we have truly is the ground that we each stand upon, for each little fraction of time, upon the same little bit of earth.............

OP why do you think they were so sure? Yes, they had many rocket failures, so each failure contributed to eventual success (as it does).

But of course there IS an enormous jump from fail to succeed - there are lots of "almost" of course, that's the learning curve, but in the end anything always succeeds or fails. It's binary.

As for the short space of time - JFK. The Cold War. Money.

Yorkshire Mum FWIW I agree with you .I am on the fence TBH I would like to think it happened .(I was a little girl and was enthralled at the notion of the moon landings then),but there are a lot of discrepancies in my opinion.For example "the Van Allen Belts! (The radiation levels would have been excessive according to various articles).Whether we would have been able to acccess solar winds and so on .On th other hand it would have been a huge exercise to pull off and the amount of people who would have been privy to it would be hard to silence .I think the jurys out TBH!

You can literally see the landing site through lunar satellites. I'm baffled as to why it's debated at all- it is a fact 🤦‍♀️

@babdoc & @erroll, those are very valid arguments, I am not arguing that the astronauts were not very impressive men, they absolutely were. I guess I am trying to get my head around the "technology stuff" at that time. I know that we had computers and basic guidance equipment available, I think I'm just finding it hard to judge how that fairly simple tech took men to the moon and back.

It's so weird with conspiracy theorists that they never respond to any factual rebuttals.

They then pretend to be hurt when rational people get frustrated with them.

I think they're just lonely.

Only a fool argues with a fool. I'm out

Van Allen belt is only dangerous if you hang around in it, not if you are passing through rapidly.

WTF have "solar winds" got to do with this?

I find it hard to believe now that in the 1980s my now DH and I were actually able to write programs which did something vaguely useful on a Commodore 64 - a mere 64 kB of RAM. And yet we did.

I think it's that sort of phenomenon, we forget what we used to be able to do with less. The Apollo computers were evidently very specialised and created by very clever people. We do things much more lazily now (I write scientific software).

But OP, if you struggle with "technology stuff" what gives you the expertise to question what they claim to have achieved?

If your boiler breaks down do you argue the toss with the repairman??
Do you debate with your electrician and plumber? Microsoft?

Sorry but this has really got my goat.

I wish they shut-up about this,I was born '69 .Stop it.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I am genuinely trying to understand how tech at the time took men to the moon. I have already said that I believe men have been to the moon, I am just not convinced it happened in July 1969.

I think that perhaps @ErrolTheDragon has hit it on the head with we forget what we used to be able to do with less.

Anyway it's late at the end of a very long week. Thank you to those people who engaged in sensible discussion. I'm away to bed!