Apollo 11 – Conspiracy on Trial
The moon has been a part of a human life from prehistoric times. Being a second brightest object in the sky (after the sun) it fascinated mankind throughout ages. In earlier times, when less was known about cosmos, before astronautic era, our distant ancestors used to prescribe some mystical features to this terrestrial body. In middle ages, it was widely accepted ‘fact’ that werewolves were the daemons that took their true face during the full moon. Since then, perception of the world around us has undergone significant changes. In the seventeenth century telescope was invented. The observations conducted using this tool unveiled the most interesting, barely imaginable, information about space, celestial and terrestrial bodies. We can consider this date of telescope’s invention as a start point of deep space explorations. Indeed counting down from seventeenth century to the present date, this is a real era of revelations, which destroyed superstitions - and as a result, in the middle of the twentieth century, gave birth to the project Apollo 11.
“One small step for man – one giant leap for mankind” (A Man on the moon, P.18) said Neil Armstrong when he stepped out of the spaceship. Indeed this was the breakthrough in science… Moon is the first terrestrial body ever visited by human kind – it was the first step, but what could be next? I think Neil’s little step, just like invention of the telescope, opened a new era of astronomy. Apollo mission unveiled even greater perspectives, raised limits, established new standpoint and gave birth to a new ideas that once, may also become reality. History shows that day by day, as long as science develops, unimaginable becomes reality, once considered as a fantasy in the future it may become animated. So we may not foresee the results of this mission, we cannot actually leap into the future to see definite consequences, but it’s beyond doubts that Apollo 11 was the greatest achievement of our times… Probably, only thing of the same importance, for its own time, is the creation of the pyramids.
So as everything great and unimaginable, this mission also had various enemies. Publishing numerous books, this people even up to date try to prove that there was no Apollo 11 - that it was a mere show, conspiracy directed by the government officials… But are the arguments of these people genuine? Do they provide enough proof for us to believe in them? - In this project, I’ll try to understand their viewpoint and reasons for having this kind of ideas; I’ll dissect and inspect every facet of their argumentation – Finding the truth is my ultimate mission.
First step in my investigation will be a hunt for motives; Just like Sherlock Holmes, who asserts: “if there is no motive, we can assume that crime could never take place…” – So first of all, upon delving deep into the clues themselves, we need to understand if there was someone who could ever benefit out of this affair. In this case we cannot find any concrete character who could ever operate a conspiracy of this dimension. As long as project itself is immense, there are thousands of people involved – Bureaucracy is the credo of every single agency, operated by government - thus it’s merely impossible to point out someone and say that he was the main impresario of the whole business. So, as long as no single suspect exists, in order to uncover real motives, we need to analyze aims and views of the whole institution from toe to top. In this case our institution, that actually prepared everything, is NASA – and when we speak of NASA we should consider it as a child project of US government – and when we speak of US government we should certainly consider political motives of the whole country… So, now we come to an actual question: being a supervisor of this all, in what way could US government benefit out of this affair?
First thing that comes to mind is money, indeed project Apollo could raise huge amount of funds – the estimated cost of the flight to the moon was thirty billion dollars! I believe this mission could be used as a cover-up for removing this money from the budget. But this theory seems quite imaginary to me, there are some other versions that are more truth like then this… In his ‘famous’ book “NASA MOONED AMERICA”, Ralph Rene brings forward an issue that is quite remarkable – based upon historical background this theory looks more then possible. According to Rene, all that noise about mission to the moon was raised to distract people from other important topics of that time – Vietnam War for instance.
My personal view of Apollo mission and motivation behind this hoax is a little bit different. Like Rene I also believe that if this operation was a scam, than it definitely had something to do with global political reality of that time – apart from Ralph’s ideas, I believe that the problem was cold war and the tense competition between Russia and United States.
The story lifts off in 1961 when Russia fired Yuri Gagarin into space, leaving America far behind in the space race. It was clear that United States wouldn’t tolerate this position, and after a short delay president made a swift response - At an emergency meeting of Congress, President Kennedy proposed the ultimate face saver; putting a man on the Moon. The very same year following the Russian triumph, Kennedy made a passionate speech to an open audience and revealed the plan of an unbelievable mission to the moon.
Even at that time, whole world doubted possibility of sending a man to an outer space. Radiation, lack of data, technological drawback, every single scientist was pondering upon these issues. Besides those problems it was quite risky too, so here we come up with another motive for faking Apollo 11. I guess, not a single businessman, with brain in his head, will ever put thirty billion dollars in a project where the risk of failure is more then 40%… So, forging the mission would give NASA guaranteed results – America would be back at the top of the space race, and billions of dollars would be saved. Everything this done in a quiet atmosphere on the earth, without any risk of failure involved.
Now, when we see that reasons for this fraud do exist, we need to move to the arguments themselves… So what made people like Rene think that Spaceship never visited moon? Finding motives isn’t enough for blaming anyone anything, so is there any definite evidence of the felony? In the next part of my essay, I’ll try to disclose all those arguments that supporters of this theory use to prove that spaceship never left earth – and I’ll do my best to prove them all wrong! (Most of these arguments are from Rene’s book “NASA MOONED AMERICA”).
In the early hours of May 16, 1990, after a week spent watching old video footage of Man on the Moon, a thought was turning into an obsession in the mind of Ralph Rene. “How can the flag be fluttering?” the 47 year old American kept asking himself, “how can it be, when there’s no wind on the atmosphere free Moon?” Self educated physicist transformed a small doubt into a full blown theory of conspiracy. Indeed even today, Ralph has huge number of supporters both amongst physicists and ordinary people, and the number of followers grows every day. I’m neither physicists nor a scientist; I don’t have much knowledge regarding this subject, and still I was able to find numerous flows in most of Rene’s arguments…
The conspiracy theory itself is essentially based upon TV and photo footage; besides the rocks brought by astronauts, photographs and film footage are the only proof that the ‘Eagle’ ever landed on the surface of the moon. So Rene had to analyze and find all the clues in those photos that NASA provided for journalists – As long as the movie was the main inspirer of his revolutionary theory, he starts by pointing out several interesting issues related to it. For a start, he says: “the TV footage was hopeless. The world tuned in to watch what looked like two blurred white ghosts gamboling across the screen.” (NASA Mooned America P.9) - So what? One may ask, ‘it’s a signal from the moon, it passes millions of kilometers and it is supposed to be muddled…‘ But Ralph makes different assertions and transforms this little, at first sight unimportant, issue into a full scale argument. He declares that low quality film was done deliberately to hide all the details and to obstruct the proper examination. Assertion is quite witty, but I find it highly dubious, and it’s obvious that Rene didn’t have much information about the way it was transmitted to the TV networks - Part of the cause of the low quality film was that, NASA provided the TV networks with no direct link up. This means that video that people saw in the TV was filmed as it happened on the big screen in the NASA mission control center. So this explains the poor quality that some people regard as a deliberate act, but in reality it’s not. Another way of looking at this point is that if someone wanted to fake a movie, they would do it so perfectly that we would never take any doubts in its genuineness. I believe that the low quality of the transmission, in contrast with Rene’s ideas, is the sole proof that it was a real moon to earth broadcast.
The story with the film quality led Rene to another stunning conclusion, if the video footage was of such a poor quality, how come that all the photos taken by the astronauts were crisp and clear? How come that every single photo was perfectly focused and exposed? It’s also important to note that cameras that astronauts took with them didn’t have any viewfinder, thus photos were taken ‘blindly’. Again, Ralph is unaware of the true data, the photos that he saw, the ones that were free for public, was the only small part of the entire gallery brought back by the members of the mission. Of course photos that were badly exposed were kept away from peering eyes, and I don’t see any reason why shouldn’t poor quality photos be hidden. Besides this, I think NASA would never give astronauts cameras without proper instruction and knowledge. In one of the public discussions about this issue, one of the Space Agency officials declared that indeed there were special trainings held. Being quite familiar with photography, I also don’t see any problem with the lack of the viewfinder, it all depends upon whether you feel the camera or not, and if you are familiar with the device you will easily learn to shoot even without looking through the lens. In addition to this all, under or over exposure isn’t a big deal either, for most photo laboratories can easily correct the majority of the problems.
In his book, Rene also points out several technical setbacks regarding ‘space photography’ – One NASA picture from Apollo 11 is looking up at Neil Armstrong
about to take his giant step for mankind (See Photo #1). So skeptics ask; who took the picture? How come that Armstrong is the first, when obviously someone was standing there shooting him making that famous step? I was more then challenged with this question. Indeed conclusions look quite accurate, but that’s only at first sight and only if we don’t have enough knowledge of the spaceship itself. I think Rene should have made a little research and it would be clear for him that NASA did include an electronic arm on the lender, with the camera fixed on it. This arm was deployed right before Neil went out, so I guess this explains the strange nature of the photo.
So here I want to note inaccuracy of the information that most conspiracy theory supporters provide. I think the main problem with the people like Rene is that being too eager to find some revolutionary clues; they forget to do a little research regarding those issues. Next topic that I’ll discuss here is largely a consequence of not being familiar with laws of physics and concretely the problem of optics. It’s quite rude to mention this, but I feel that Ralph Rene’s self education obviously didn’t give him much knowledge about the nature of the sun rays.
Alongside with British photographer David Passer, Ralph keeps on proving that some of the photographs could never been shot on the moon - due to abnormal shades and strange behavior of the light rays. There is a huge gallery of photos that fall under this critique. Basically the problem is that on some photos shadows diverge. Skeptics say that this is a cause of a second light source, and as long as the only light source was the sun thus photos are faked. I think this is quite logical for in case of one light source shadows should have been parallel, but here once again Rene misses an important issue and that is a perspective and understanding the nature of the lunar surface. Truly, if we place one light source and two objects on the clear plane, we’ll see that shadows projected will be parallel. But in case of the moon, with its ‘ragged’ surface, with all those rocks and mountains it’s impossible to get parallel shades. More then that it’s quite evident, for every single person who has ever witnessed football match with the lit stadium, multiple light sources tend to produce multiple shadows, they don’t bend them! That is if multiple lights were used, then we would get doubled shadows not unparallel ones… (See Photo #2)
One of my ‘favorite’ proofs is about a strangely lit astronaut depicted on one of the photos. On this image Buzz Aldrin is standing under the shade of the Lander. But quite weirdly, his costume is lit as if sun rays fall right upon him, wile in normal conditions he should have been darkened as the Lander blocked the sun rays. Conspiracy theorists say that anything in shadow (out of the Sun) in the lunar photo’s should be dark and unable to be seen, which proves that there was another, artificial, source of light and therefore the photo’s must have been taken under studio conditions. In the beginning of this passage I noted that this is my favorite argument, and the reason for this is that it shows how incompetent and unprofessional these ‘conspiracy theorists’ are. Has any one of them ever seen the full moon? Under best conditions, one can even read a book under the light of the moon. This is due to fact that lunar surface itself reflects light in high proportions. Glassy surface is caused by multitude of meteors that fall on the surface - rocks just fuse into glass. So a moon is a large mirror that reflects lots of light, so under these conditions, the rule that Buzz should have been under the shade is incorrect for it was indirect rays of the moon that lit his costume. Another interesting way of seeing everything this is considering an earth as another light source… Indeed it also reflects lots of light and its huge proportions in comparison with moon, leads us to the fact that earth also could influence abnormalities of the shadows. (See Photo #3)
Last but not least is proof related to general picture taking – I say general, because every single person who ever held a camera in his hands will be able to solve this riddle. The problem is the appearance of stars in the background of most photos, to be more accurate of stars not showing in the background. “Quite phenomenal” states Rene, but to say the truth it’s impossible to get those stars appear on the film. Difficulty here is the difference between the brightness of the light sources. Personally I’ve come to this problem wile taking pictures of the fireworks; I was standing in the middle of the street amongst various lamps; I tried hard but couldn’t get any sparkle of light beyond the light of the lamps. Applying this experience to our problem provides us with definite answer to the question - due to high contrast of brightness of the lunar surface and the stars of inferior brightness behind, astronauts couldn’t make any star appear on the film.
In the last place I want to draw some light upon one of the most interesting mysteries of the twentieth century and that is the strange flattering of the flag. Everyone who has seen the film footage of the mission, should have mentioned this trivial and at the same time dazzling behavior of the flag. In outer space there is no air, thus there are no winds, what makes flag move in this odd fashion? Greedy for proofs Rene makes assertions that it was all done on the earth and that’s the cause of it all, but I think this is not an acceptable explanation – first of all let’s consider Ralph’s point, suppose it was all photographed in the studio, so are there studios with the wind inside? No, I guess. So here NASA aids us with more information, (NASA Kids Website) it appears that the structure of the flag is the fault of this all. As long as in space there is no air, smart space agency engineers came up with the idea to make the flag be unwrapped all the time, that is to have wires all around the flag (To make it solid).
So here, I think, ends all the controversies that Rene and other skeptics can find about Apollo 11. Neil Armstrong did make first step on the moon and no one can change this. There is no credible evidence that the Apollo moon landing was faked thus it did happen. Apollo 11 entered history as the first spacecraft that ever visited moon and Rene won’t change this until he finds some more agreeable evidence.
Bibliography:
– Books:
“NASA Mooned America” by Ralph Rene (Skeptical Account of the mission. Mainly consists of Mr. Rene’s arguments supporting theory of conspiracy)
“A Man on the Moon” by Andrew Chaikin (General detailed account of the flight, supported by the audio materials and the stories of astronauts)
– Internet Sources:
http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/history/apollo/apollo-11/apollo-11.html (General overview of the mission. Government’s version of the flight)
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/moon.htm (Arguments supporting theory of the conspiracy, and possible answers to some questions)
http://www.geocities.com/apollofacts/ (“Facts” supporting conspiracy)
– Photos & Video Materials:
http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.mobility.html
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/ap11ann/kippsphotos/apollo.html
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/F_Apollo_35th_Anniversary.html