I don't believe we've been to the moon and SpaceXs failure further convinces me.

[MrsRobinsonsHandprints]

I know I've posted this before and the majority of you think I'm batty, but I don't think we've landed on the moon.

3 billion USD, a giant leap in technological advances and yet it can't even launch.

This could have been me talking about 20 years ago. I actually believed exactly what you just said there. And then I actually opened my mind, read a lot of stuff about it, and looked at the scientific facts. And now I really firmly believe man did walk on the moon in the 1960s. (And since.) It's not fake. Try watching the film Hidden Figures.

What IS fake is the crap the conspiracy theorists come up with, and their batshit TV programmes where they say, 'oh look, there's a little bit of breeze on the flag,' and 'oh look. there's a weird shadow there that shouldn't be. There is obviously filming equipment from the fake filming they've made.' And 'area 51 is where they film the moon landings and space stuff we see, coz Americans are sooooo arrogant they want to make us all believe their shit.......'

I think in 2023 anyone who thinks the moon landings and the 'space trips' are fake is seriously narrow minded and a bit dim. Also, suggesting the space station isn't real is absolutely baffling. FFS you can see the bloody thing coming over the planet three or four times a night some parts of the year. I can't even get over the stupidity and ridiculousness of some posts on here. Imagine having to deal with people like this in real life?!

50% of the population is below average intelligence.

The fact so many of them have flocked to this thread is in and of itself statistically interesting.

That's the American explanation. But why other countries with as much money as America and the same amount of technology haven't even tried?

Look, people believe whatever they want. If you want to believe in 6 moon landings in 1969, great for you. I don't.

I believed for a long time until politics and technology convinced me it was all a propaganda con.

@Alondra the last human moon landing was at the end of 1972, not 1970. And it wasn't as easy as taking a trip to the next suburb, it took a huge amount of money, resources, people and technical expertise.

You are completely ignoring the political landscape and the importance of the space race, which when comprehensively won by the US meant interest waned from the USSR and then other political concerns took over. The MIR space station, and now the ISS took over the science research aspect of space exploration.

I did believe in it but having seen the equipment at NASA itself and taking into consideration the tech at the time I believe it was not possible. It was more about showing military might nothing to do with space.
Buzz was then quoted saying that they never went!

You seem to have an odd view of critical thinking.

You're absolutely right that it wasn't "like taking a trip to their next suburb"

Just how close the margins were was demonstrated by Apollo 1 and Apollo 13.

But that doesn't prove it never happened, or support the idea that a massive hoax and lie has existed since 1969 without a single shred of evidence.

Can you give a reference for the claim about Buzz Aldrin making such a statement?

What was it about the tech that you saw at NASA that made you believe it was not possible at that time?

Why? Seriously please give one good reason why other countries would want to land on the moon.

Technology wasn’t in the infancy period in the 1960’s. If you say it is, you are basically admitting that you don’t know anything about either the history of technology or the history of spaceflight.

Practical modern rocketry dates from about the 1920’s. Practical ballistic rocketry began in WW2. Satellites were developed in the 1950’s. Manned space flight dated from the early sixties.

As other posters have pointed out, escaping Earth orbit is half the battle - you can rely on Newton’s first Law of Motion to keep the spacecraft moving until it gets somewhere. Once it’s got somewhere, the next problem is turning it round (so to speak) to get it home.

By the 1960’s the mathematical theory of how to reach the moon was well developed and the engineering of how to launch and return a human being to near Earth orbit had been successfully achieved. The next obvious achievement was to go somewhere - and the Moon isn’t that far away. You could walk the same distance in fourteen years.

We are going back in circles. It's like discussing if there is a God, I don't believe in one while many people keep telling me it exists.

Time to bring the discussion between us to a close, you won't convince me with your arguments when I've already made up my mind and vice versa. I don't think we offer anything positive to the thread by repeating the same arguments.

I remember the hoo ha about how much it all cost started pretty much immediately after Apollo 12.
The potential fatalies of the crew of Apollo 13 raised public interest for all the wrong reasons, then when they got home OK the critics started up again.

But I have to agree once men had landed a few times there was no point in keep going back.

Perhaps it will resume in future if there is a valid reason - a moonbase perhaps for manned voyages to Mars.

“Time to bring the discussion between us to a close, you won't convince me with your arguments when I've already made up my mind and vice versa.”

I’ve made up my mind, please don’t confuse me with facts?

It's not going round in circles, it's a straightforward case of you having every single point you're trying to make effectively rebuffed. Which I agree is pointless to repeat if you won't engage properly in reasoned discussion.

You haven’t made an argument @Alondra , you’ve just made an unfounded statement. By all means, have your own beliefs, but if you’re going to join a discussion and assert those beliefs then it’s perfectly fair to be asked to explain/justify them.

But why other countries with as much money as America and the same amount of technology haven't even tried?

Common sense and critical thinking, plus a knowledge of history leads to the answer of money, and cost v benefit of coming second.

Bit of history:

The only players in the world with a heavy lift launcher capability in the late 60s were the USSR and the US.

The USSR heavy lift programme almost literally crashed and burned with the failure of an N1 launch around the same time as Apollo 11.

The Russians then saw the US land, and decided that they were strapped for cash and there was no benefit in pressing on with their Moon landing programme just to be second- the remnants of which can be seen in one or two Museums in Russia.

Next up was China - but they were not willing to go on a war footing to even put a man in space in a big hurry so the first Chinese launched Taikonaut didn't fly until 2003. The Chinese have however hinted at maybe a Moon programme.

If you want to believe in 6 moon landings in 1969, great for you. I don't.

I don't either, and I'm afraid the fact you seem think that is what happened demonstrates you maybe don't have the level of knowledge of this subject as perhaps you think you do..

Yes if NASA is tasked with designing something they contract out the building of it to companies that lobby for the work at great expense and incredibly slowly. But in this instance NASA hasn't been tasked with designing anything. They've been given the funds to procure one entirely designed and built by the private sector.

The SpaceX motto is to test often it's taking a software development strategy to hardware. This test was never designed to reach orbit they publicly said anything above the pad is a success. Fail and learn then test again until it works.

I remember the many NASA launch failures before the successful ones!

Plenty of footage of them if you're interested.

Take a look at this image. It's a high-res shot of the lunar surface where Apollo 17 landed and shows various pieces of equipment left behind. Notably, look for the area marked 'LRV'. This refers to a rover vehicle, and if you zoom in, you can see the the tracks left behind by the rover over the surface of the moon.

And of course SpaceX uses a completely different fuel (methane) than was used by the Saturn rockets.

All new design and fuel - there will be more launch failures till they get it right, just as happened under NASA in the 50's and 60's.

One of the great things about conspiracy theories is you never need to admit you are wrong. You can just expand the theory to accommodate any new evidence.

So for example, all the hardware you showed in that picture was placed there by robots. No actual man landed at all. Or the photo was made up. Or etc. etc.

I used to follow this kind of thing on youtube for fun (flat earth too) and I recognise some of the same arguments

"Buzz Aldrin said ..." was popular, but only worked if you watched their clips and didn't go looking for the whole conversation.

"You couldn't take enough fuel" was one that hasn't come up this time. That was from those who thought if you stopped firing the rocket then the ship would slow and stop. (bless!)

I blame TV for that last one. I like SciFi but find myself shouting at the screen when the fuel runs out and someone says "I think we've enough momentum to make it" and then they turn the wheel to swerve around something.

On the "didn't go back" theme no one considered that when they had stopped for a time the factories that made the parts didn't sit there waiting to be restarted. They went on to make other things. Paying them to retool to make obsolete parts would be crazy.

This thread explains how internet scammers get away away with it.

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