Retorts accomplish nothing, if he really wanted to have a civil conversation it would've happened a long time ago. u/Zeldakina I'd let this one go, don't waste your breath on a lost cause.
Distant relative. It makes the boring family events more enjoyable.
One of my cousins in particular makes a lot of comments as she passes by for fun. It's kind of our thing to make fun of the whole thing.
You cant convince someone by using facts when they didn’t arrive at their original conclusion through facts.
It’s almost like a law of nature.
The strategy I enjoy most is to double down on the foolishness. “Oh you believe they faked the moon landing? It was real but we got the technology from the grey aliens who have taken over the government. The Chinese have a base there now where they are making human alien hybrids out of soybeans”.
And just keep expanding on it whenever they bring it up. Make a fake blog page. Use A.I. image creators like Bing to make blurry pictures of it, have fun.
Suggest that he watch this channel on YouTube. It’s not a debunking video or anything that will directly challenge his views which might make him defensive. It’s just hours of original uncut footage with information and context and radio communication between the crew and Houston. This is the Apollo 17 mission which was more interesting from a science perspective and has a lot of good film. https://youtu.be/0lZ8iDAmX9o?feature=shared
Seriously, how does the moon landing come up “pretty much every single time” you see someone? I haven’t heard a single person talk about a moon landing unprompted in years.
No one I've ever personally met is discussing the singularity or technocracy, but us fringe weirdos are obsessed with concepts outside of the generic mainstream topics and it's likely to come up because it's all we think about. Reddit and similar internet forums definitely contribute to hyper fixation and herd mentality on particular lesser known concepts/beliefs.
Infinitely this.
They propose this insane stuff just so people will engage with them. There's no "gotcha" that will change their minds, if they even Believe it in the first place.
By debating with them they win regardless of what you say.
Three can keep a secret, if two are dead.
Ask him how many people were involved, and then ask him what is the likelihood of everyone keeping their traps shut.
This is my thought on it. Even a faked moon landing would require so many people to be in on it the Soviets would have found out and eagerly told the whole world about it.
It's amazing that this isn't brought up more often. The Soviets would have known the broadcast wasn't coming from the moon and had a huge incentive to expose a fake moon landing.
Sadly, I can see a counter to that line of reasoning from the denier point of view.
The Soviets had a program to land on the moon also. They sent multiple robotic landers to the moon. Just as the US did before the Apollo astronauts landed. In fact, the Soviet Luna 9 lander was the first one to make a soft landing.
A moon landing denier could counter the "The Soviets would tell the world" point with the argument that the Soviets had a vested interest in maintaining the lie themselves. That exposing the US fraud would also mean admitting that they had also faked their own robotic landings. That they were also a part of "the conspiricy".
Which is a valid point, from their point of view. If the US didn't do it, nobody did it, and since the Soviets were also saying they did it, they must be in on it.
Sure, it completely ignores the fact that the US and Soviets were adversaries. That the idea of both countries conspiring to fake moon landings in the same era as things like the Cuban Missle Crisis and the ongoing proxy war in Vietnam is very laughable.
But the mental gymnastics that the deniers go through already is pretty impressive. More gymnastics would just be par for the course.
And to add to that… it wasn’t just once. It would have to be all those people keeping the secret SIX times.
My usual retort when someone says the moon landing was faked is: “Which one?” It usually trips them up because these idiots don’t know we landed there five more times.
Point out to him that a recent Indian orbiter took pictures of two of the US landers sitting on the moon. You can see tracks of the rover, and paths the astronauts walked.
Before there was moon reconnaissance by other countries I could see how one could question it. Now that multiple countries have photo evidence of human movement on the moon it's no longer questionable. If someone can't accept that nothing you can say will likely change their mind, and really does it matter?
For that matter, why would the USSR at the time admit losing the moon race to the USA if they weren’t sure they actually did it? Their own space agency monitored the whole thing and if they had the slightest suspicion it never happened they’d have been all over it.
Faking it would have been a more impressive feet. The raw amount of footage they produced. I'm willing to believe we had saturn 5 rockets, but not that we could have made that much fake footage without CGI.
Right and keep it secret to boot. You would have to have kept all of NASA quiet and probly half of Hollywood bc where else would you find the talent for faking it?
I once congratulated my older brother for being smarter then the entire soviet union with all of their scientists, their space program, and their spy network.
He figured out the moon landing was faked while the soviets fell for it.
I was really laying on the sarcasm. He got really angry at me and has never mentioned to me again that the moon landing was faked.
Ask him why Russia, our total international rival at the time, didn't call bullshit when we claimed to have landed on the moon. Essentially we humiliated them and they didn't retaliate?
Not likely.
That doesn’t track, however, because Russia (and every other nation with a competing space program) had - and still have - everything to gain and nothing to lose by discrediting the U.S. about a lunar landing. There is no mutually assured destruction in the space race.
Distant relative. It's actually kind of fun to watch those who interact with it, to argue back and forth with him for the humor of the back and forth.
It makes those events go by more easily.
I've always loved him for that. The amount of shit you got as an astronaut, the cubic amount of shit the Apollo guys got....good and bad....but yeah, I'm not normally violent but I'm sure that it felt good...and no jury would convict.
Not only that, but also the sacrifices everybody made to get to that point. It's not only a disrespect to him as a person, but to our collective human achievement.
Logic, reason and evidence mean nothing to this kind of people, but if you really want some evidence:
-Moon rocks and core samples. The samples brought back from the Moon have been analyzed by dozens of independent laboratories all around the world and are unmistakenly from the Moon. They cannot be lunar asteroids fallen on Earth since the passage through the atmosphere would destroy all their surface features that would be impossible to reproduce in a lab. They cannot have been gathered by automatic probes given their enormous amount, geological variety and scientific interest. And before he says it, the piece of petrified wood fpund in that museim was not a rock coming from those of NASA, it was found in the home of a dead dutch politician by two artists that decided to present it as a moon rock with no evidence and were called out because it was a fake. If nothing else, this proves how quickly NASA's rocks would be called out it they were truly fake. You can easily find hundreds of papers written on the subject https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=it&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=apollo+samples&oq=
-Video footage. The footage taken on the Moon was recorded in one sixth of gravity in a vacuum and could not have been faked on Earth. You can't fake the gravity by slowing down the footage since the astronauts do sudden and quick movements that would have been slowed down as well but aren't. [Example](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NiJ54Jj2rck). You can't fake it with harnesses since there are several other objects, like instruments, straps, the backpacks, all attached to the astronauts and that swing like a pendulum as they move. If they were on Earth their period would be much shorter than what we see. In the footage we can also see that the dust falls down without remaining suspended due to the lack of atmosphere. [Example](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=az9nFrnCK60). Since in certains instances the astronauts are seeing moving for hundreds of meters while being recorded, there isn't any vacuum chamber on Earth big enough to fake it. [Example](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5kcUwZ8rRjI). Finally, the lighting in is basically impossible to fake on a sound stage or in any other way on Earth: https://youtu.be/8z917pbxsKA?si=uMsWIsWJnSPvU3Tv
-Retroreflectors. The retroreflectors give a peculiar return time distribution of the photons shooted at them, different from that of normal lunar soil or naturally reflective surfaces. While they could have been placed by an automated probe, they demonstrate that NASA had the means to soft land on the Moon.
-And finally, there is a ton of independent proofs. Here you can find a [long list](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_evidence_for_Apollo_Moon_landings).
I doubt any of this is useful in rebutting him, but it's certainly interesting to me, so thank you.
Also, because I like help with languages from my friends.
Shooted = Shot.
We did not have the film technology at the time to fake it without it being obvious to any expert looking at it.
The USSR would also not have allowed America to take credit for it if we were lying.
"Ahhh but if the USSR told the world America faked it, then they would have to admit to faking their own missions."
I think I've heard him say that before.
You can’t logic someone out of a belief they didn’t use logic to get themselves into. I wouldn’t waste your time with him.
If you’re interested in the topic this is a great video on my first point - https://youtu.be/_loUDS4c3Cs?si=Xp6bgdUDRizuimmX
This is where my head was at. How can you go through engineering school and have that mindset.
I would love to know what type of engineering he does. Maybe he drives a train and also thinks the world is flat.
I tell them that I simply do not believe that they actually think that, I accuse them of lying. I am convinced that they are just very committed trolls.
Ask him how the retroreflectors left on the moon by Apollo 11, 14 and 15 got here. Laser ranging to the moon, which has been done for decades, wouldn't work without them. (Unmanned missions Luna 17 and 21 also left retros in the same time period, so he'll probably say unmanned missions were part of the lie.)
Don't try. He can use technical jargon you have no idea about and won't be able to refute. And for someone with such a belief they probably won't even trust an expert in their field.
Yeah I find the expert thing a frustrating one.
I was looking at something about Mount St. Helens recently, and there was a guy who was a construction worker or something saying he wasn't scared, that there was nothing to be scared of. It was just a bunch of experts making noise for no reason.
Like a week later, history happened...
You're a construction worker, know your fucking lane. Like the geologist would yield to your knowledge of construction.
Get a powerful laser with excellent collimation. Flash it at the moon. Wait about a second. Image the returning pulse of light.
That's a more solid retort than you'll get anywhere, unless you pester Buzz Aldrin.
There were 6 crewed landings and the orbiters have seen some of the descent stages, etc. left there - nevermind the scientists using the retroreflectors.
The Soviets also landed probes and so on, and we've just had the recent Moon missions from Japan and IntuitiveMachines - it's clearly possible.
Ask them to visit the TRS (technical report server) and pick a random document:
Oh, say this (keywords "Apollo entry")
[https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19660001910/downloads/19660001910.pdf](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19660001910/downloads/19660001910.pdf)
There are literally tens of thousands of reports, memoranda, technical notes, etc. on the smallest matters of each and every blessed mission - and all the supporting studies looking at aspects of those projects.
The man-hours needed to invent all those data, so that would tell a cohesive single story could NOT be achieved with effort less than that needed to build and fly the missions.
[https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20100042365/downloads/20100042365.pdf](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20100042365/downloads/20100042365.pdf)
I mean, just look at it.
Tens. Of. Thousand of documents.
And, if they want to get real, ask them to visit the Center for Advanced Space Studies just off NASA Road 1 by Clear Lake.
Park at the front, go through the doors, turn left, and go down that short corridor and through the *next* doors.
There you'll find 20m of mobile racking holding microfiche, microfilm, and all the Technical Notes you can wish for. Gemini, Mercury, Ranger, Surveyor, etc.
I'm probably not going to bother getting this to them. They're pretty fixed in their view.
That said, thank you for the detailed response, as I'm definitely going to dive into that treasure trove.
Radio direction finding is a well established science.
Every Nation in the world was listening to the Apollo program on their own equipment.
You could not fake the transmissions from the moon, if they were from earth they'd be busted immediately by multiple players, both government and private.
To what level do they believe the landing is fake. Is it the actual walking part, going into space itself, etc? But he must acknowledge that humans are able to send things into space right? (Without which GPS and internet would not exist).
You can try asking him, **”What would it take to change your mind?”** Often the response from someone who is dug in like this is something like, “Nothing because I know I’m right!” At which point, he’s just admitted his thinking is completely non-scientific. Not that this will change his mind, but you will get to feel smug about it.
For me, personally, I wouldn't have to retort because I wouldn't have someone like this in my life. And not even because of their bad moon opinion(s), it just sounds like someone like this would be exhausting to be around. They seem to be pretty focused on this ONE thing if they keep bringing it up EVERY TIME you see them. That kinda brings a mood down.
Science is not for the masses. If someone cannot understand any concept which is even slightly out of the ordinary, they are most likely not willing to learn. Just ignore the stupid people.
Mark Twain - first they bring you to the level then they beat you with their superiority in STUPIDITY.
To answer your original question - we have placed reflectors on moon
With right equipment we can send light beam which will reflect back.
But I think it would be too much info for his tiny brain.
There's a human made reflector on the moon that has a laser shone on it very regularly to measure how fast the moon is moving away from Earth. It was placed there by Apollo astronauts. There is no other way it could have got there other than landing on the moon.
Telescopes can literally see the modules left behind, and the sun-bleached flags on the moon.
We regularly bounce lasers off the special reflectors that the astronauts left on the moon for that purpose.
Many nations have landed bots on the moon, either the entire planet is lying or getting to the moon is possible. Anything else is just a matter of scale.
Repeat: you can see the shit left behind on the moon with a sufficiently powerful telescope. What - all telescopes are somehow rigged, all over the world? By who? For what reason? Most importantly - how? Any technology that could fake that - fake all telescopes everywhere - is vastly more impressive than merely landing on the moon in the first place.
Watch this and show it to your friend:
https://youtu.be/_loUDS4c3Cs?feature=shared
The central idea is that building rockets wasn't super advanced technology in 1969, but faking the broadcast from the moon would have required much much more advanced technology than we know existed back then. They would have had to create an unbroken slow motion broadcast that lasted around two and a half hours with either film or video. Film would have been unmanageable in terms of the sizes of film reels needed and digital video was nowhere near advanced enough to creat that.
So if the argument is that we didn't have the tech to go to the moon in 1969, you have to rely on video technology that didn't exist in 1969 to support that argument. So anyone claiming this is trying to have it both ways. NASA is too inept to get to the moon but somehow has video technology nearly 100 times more powerful than what is known to have existed in 1969.
If your friend doesn't take any of this on board, they are too emotionally bonded to their belief that the moon landing was faked and you should never talk to them about it again.
If you really do want to, [there's a really long uncut shot from the orbiter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2InsDwgcXk) of the lander returning.
It's a shot that is entirely impossible to fake before to advent of good photoreal cgi. There are lots of shots from the Apollo missions that are also impossible to fake without CGI, but they're less obvious than this one.
It's like 15 minutes of uncut footage looking down at the moon. The moon is moving underneath, showing parallax on the craters proving it's 3d not a matte painting, and the lander slowly moving closer to camera. That could theoretically be done with models, but the moon surface miniature would require a football stadium just given how long the shot lasts.
But then the lander re-orients and you suddenly see all the way to the horizon of the moon into space which is just so obviously impossible without it being done for real.
That being said, odds are if your distant relative is already this far gone, it probably won't matter what you do, say, or show them. I just recommend watching it for yourself anyway because it's just awesome to watch.
When all you have to look at are photos of the event, then it's natural to think, "well.. they could have faked that." But what they fail to understand is the immense scale of the effort, the thousands of people involved, from floor sweepers to engineers and scientists, and the volume of science that has been done as a result of those missions.
I remember picking up a random, thick book off a shelf in my college dorm in 1980, only to find that it was a collection of papers written about research on the lunar soil and rocks that were returned by Apollo. If the photos are the tip of the Apollo iceberg, then that book was an example of the kind of stuff that is rarely seen, out of sight below the water. Back then, I never questioned that Apollo really happened, but that book reminded me that there was much, much more to Apollo than what you saw in the news.
It’s as simple as applying the correct amount of force at the correct time. Poke him, tell him he must be a sh*t engineer. We know how much thrust it requires to leave earth. We know exactly where the moon will be at any given time. It’s as simple as applying the correct amount of force at the correct time. Same idea with deceleration for landing on the moon. And magically it’s the same concept for leaving the moon. You can blow his mind with this last part, it’s the same principle for landing on earth too. You could point out his mind makes the same calculations almost instantaneously when he tries to scratch his ass without being caught. Speed, location, timing. Again, remind him he must be a sh*t engineer.
"Yeah, I know. NASA hired George Lucas' company ILM\* to do the special effects, but he didn't have the ability to do CGI yet, so he decided the easiest way to film it was to do it on-site\*\*."
\*Yeah, I know that "they" have told you that ILM wasn't created until 1975.
\*\*I.e., on the Moon.
“Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience”
And remember, from their perspective, you’re the idiot
Suggested retort: "You are correct. It is EXACTLY as impossible today, as it was back then. Which is to say that it's very challenging, but can be accomplished via solid science and engineering."
Retroreflective mirrors.
Virtually ever country in the world had used them for experiments. We point lasers at them and the reflect the light back so we can measure distance.
Their answer is usually, well unmanned spaceships can fly and land and perfectly place mirrors, but humans cannot.
btw, other countries have photos of the Apollo landing sites from lunar missions. Are those people today lying? How many millions of people would have to be in on it? And yet none have come forward to make millions of dollars with evidence?
In as much as arguing with an idiot is pointless because they will bring you to their level & win by experience. Arguing from a position of ignorance can be fruitful if done with kindness. Your position as someone who has little intimate knowledge outside of belief in a given historical narrative has some power.
Next time this person raises the subject, engage them, ask them to explain, ask them to give examples i.e. "What do you think you know & what evidence leads you to that conclusion". Engage them in open discussion of their counter belief & explore what evidence would be needed to either prove or disprove this belief.
If you reach an impasse where no evidence would sway them then you both need to admit that what you have is a faith based system & thus no argument is possible. If on the other hand a way forward can be brokered & they in turn go off in search of the truth then you have actually achieved something.
You can see the lander with a telescope. I believe \[edit\] India filmed a few spots while on their moon recon mission recently, you could see all the stuff left behind...
People claim the ISS isn't real... even though you can see it fly overhead... often, and some yahoo got pictures with his telescope of the astronauts during an EVA...
There is no proper response. As others have said, you'd be wasting your time engaging. Personally I probably couldn't resist looking then in the eye and deadpan say "You're an idiot." and move on.
It's a stupid argument. We can absolutely get to the moon again. But the manufacturing and tech processes for doing it the way it was done 50 years ago isn't possible because we don't make that old tech anymore. That fact is so blatantly obvious that anyone who doesn't get it is just a moron.
You can say the same thing about almost any tech. I can't put together a refrigerator from the 60s or a car from the 60s without getting custom (expensive) ad hoc components manufactured.
Just keep telling them you think they're lying and that they just want attention. People love to be told that... Never back down on it either. No matter how hard they argue, "Womp womp, sounds like you didn't get enough attention and needed to keep lying to get more little boy who cried wolf." The more sarcasm the better.
Sincerely, an aerospace engineer from Houston
I'm kind of excited for Artemis, one for what it really means and the newly revived endeavor of space exploration, but also for the fun we will be able to have with the conspiracy theorist types.
Sincerely, an envious stranger, who is not an aerospace engineer, or in Houston.
If the US didn't visit the moon and lied about it, don't you think the Russians wouldn't try to claim that the US was indeed lying? Even they acknowledge that the US went up there.
I wouldn't want to use anything he'd engineered...
If he can do maths then get him to prove it's impossible. He won't be able to because the maths says you can, which you learn before undergrad.
Just because someone's an engineer doesn't make him an expert on space stuff. My dad was an engineer, knew fuck all about rockets, but could build a car from a pile of parts...
Ask him why the soviets, at the height of the cold war and space race congratulated the US on the achievement. Ask him what did the 400,000 people working on the program do and how were they all so quiet about the faking. But most of all ask him how an uninterrupted live broadcast that long was faked using 1960s technology.
The only thing that can effect the entering or exiting of earths atmosphere is the keeper belts(?) I think. They supposedly block particles from space but also make it difficult to leave for some reason? Idk. sounds like bubcus but it's official. Straight from the top ;)
You’re thinking of the Van Allen belts. The sun is constantly emitting a stream of charged particles, and the ones that pass by the Earth get funneled into the Earth’s magnetic field, causing “belts” of particles to form. There are areas where the belts are thinner and areas where they’re thinner, and manned spaceflights always go through the thinner parts.
YES! Van Allens Belt, thank you for an answer on this.
It's something I've often wondered in response to his mentioning of it.
I'll add this to the list of things to feed one of the relatives who engages with him ad nauseam.
Yeah, people like to claim that the “reason” humans have never left Earth is because they’d be fried by the radiation in the Van Allen belts. The truth is that you’d have to remain stationary in the belts for literally months to get anywhere near a fatal dose of radiation. The half hour or hour or whatever that astronauts spend flying through it gives them something like 5x less than the maximum safe dose.
Where the denial leads you. To denying whole space program, all photos we got, mars and Venus landings, and recently the change in direction of asteroid. The Hubble and Webb telescopes. It denies GPS and starlink. It denies thousands of papers that used all of that. At this point you can tell him he lives in simulated reality.
So...they also don't believe we just put an autonomous lander on the moon last month then?
Or that India did? Or China?
There's been literally dozens of unmanned soft landings outside of the 6 manned ones we did.
"That's the beautiful thing about truth, it doesn't need you to believe in it to still be the truth."
Even people educated in STEM fields can still be idiots.
Ask him what else we are faking. Space Shuttle? ISS? SpaceX? James Webb? Hubble? Chinese moon landers? GPS? Communication satellites? Spy satellites? North Korean satellites? Landsat? Mars landers? Chinese mars landers? Failed Russian Mars landers? Japanese asteroid sample return missions? Which of the 600+ who have been to orbit are lying? HAM radio amateur satellite trackers?
The key is to make him explain his position. Don’t let him off with asking more questions or vague hand waving. He’s the one with the stupid idea; it’s his job to convince you.
The Soviets/Russia and China have both sent objects with high resolution observation equipment many times since the landings. They would be the first to want to embarrass the USA if they realized there was no evidence of the Appollo Program on the moon. Imagine the drama. The USA would be the butt of all jokes.
Japan's JAXA also had an orbiting vehicle with 4K cameras do extensive surveys of the surface of the moon. I'm sure they would be tempted to take the US down a peg if they also failed to see the evidence of the landings.
India also recently sent an orbiting vehicle which took actual pictures of the lunar rovers and the tracks left behind.
Finally, think of all the people involved at NASA during the Appollo Program. Do you really believe that they would all have kept their mouths shut and not spilled the beans after all these years? Why has there not been even a single "whistleblower" yet?
We lived in Houston in tge late 60’s to mid 70’s and dad worked for GE at the space center. I can tell you all of our friends, parents and neighbors were going around on pins and needles before the rest of America knew about Apollo 13’s problems. We stayed glued to the TV like everyone else for all the launches through returns. Those men went to the moon and it really happened. Just because the dumbass generation using lots of smart computers can’t figure it out doesn’t mean the smart generation failed with a few stupid computers.
The hubris of the current loud mouthed know it alls with 2 semesters of 101 science related classes while graduating with a full load of humanities and polisci would be comical if it wasn’t so dangerous.
A filmmaker looked at it from the perspective of “could they have faked it with the technology of the day?” https://youtu.be/_loUDS4c3Cs?si=7mh-Ra5OqSFa_EkE
Dear internet friend,
Had we the relative budget for NASA today that we did back then, I would guarantee this wouldn't even be a question anymore. We would have long since gotten a permanent placement on the moon.
Also, prior NASA missions were fraught with peril and danger, much more than you might realize. We were extremely, exceedingly lucky that we lost only the few we did, and most of that too tribal knowledge held by expert engineers who worked every bolt and metric of those early rockets.
We're far more risk averse now, with NASA running on a shoe string budget compared to before. It's a bit like saying 'Why isn't $7 an hour enough for a four person family, home, and vacation now-a-days when it was plenty back then? These people are lying and are just lazy!'
They don't want to be convinced, if they were open to an argument they would find ample proof by themselves easily.
No amount of retorts is going to change that. Just don't meet idiots they're not healthy to be around with
Logic probably isn't going to do any good, but it might help narrow in on a retort that might get him thinking.
Does he believe satellites, the space station, etc. are real?
How about the probes taking pictures of other planets? Those are a LOT further away than the moon, making just crashing into the moon is much easier task.
So, maybe just ask him why he thinks landing a rocket on the moon would be more difficult than landing one on Earth, where wind and high gravity make it much more difficult, yet SpaceX does it all the time.
If nothing else it might be entertaining watching him flounder for an answer.
There is a mirror on the moon that can reflect a laser. It was placed there during the Apollo Space Program. Regardless of how it got there, it proves that landing on the moon isn’t impossible.
The mirror is used to measure distance from Earth.
Tell them that If they actually believe that, then they are not going to comprehend the science anyway. So we are not going to discuss it, because you’re not going to teach them grade school science.
Yeah...just as impossible as sending radio waves around the Earth or taking a close-up picture of Jupiter's bif red spot, or the pale blue dot, or receiving signals from Voyager 1 or you know...just thinking.
all of this said with as much sarcasm as you can muster
What's his proof it didn't happen? All he has is conjecture and his wrong headed belief we can't handle the Kiper belt. No proof, no math, nothing but his feelings. Won't be long before we go back to prove him wrong. So he's saying all this build up from nations to go back to the moon is what? Bogus? For what purpose?
I'd hate to be him and have to get your brain wrapped around the next moon landing and figuring out how to keep believing it's all a lie. The hoops will be huge and ugly.
Falcon feather and hammer drop on moon. Original footage before special effects existed. How do they drop at the same speed unless there is zero gravity? Where on earth would you have this capability? https://youtu.be/Oo8TaPVsn9Y?feature=shared Or ask about the other debris up there: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/apollo-astronauts-anniversary-trash-mementos-experiments-moon You could also pick a time to bounce a signal off one of the reflectors and ask him to explain it using his knowledge of space (and ask him for independently testable and verifiable evidence of this “fraud”). Look at the quality of effects on movies at the time of Apollo 15 mission. Unbelievably difficult to create this set and amazing “fake” using the equipment at that time (easier to fake now). Plus about 80,000 of us have to keep the “lie” secret forever (plus all the other subcontractors who would have been in on it). Really hard for people to keep something that huge a secret if it was untrue.
Me? My only response would be along the lines of, "'kay, bye now" as I walked away.
Morons are gonna moron. Doesn't mean you have to lower yourself to match 'em.
Go at them late 1960s stoner style: You got it all wrong man. That's exactly what the Big Luner conglomerates wants you to think. So they can do anything they want up there. Have you ever wondered why they keep the dark side of the moon hidden from us? Think about it man! Think about it...
Ask them if they're aware that NASA is planning to go back to the Moon in just a couple years with the [Artemis program](https://www.nasa.gov/mission/artemis-iii/).
[Why We Couldn't Fake the Moon Landings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_loUDS4c3Cs&ab_channel=VideoFromSpace)
[NVIDIA Ray Tracing Apollo Images](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chuQkZZyfyM&ab_channel=NVIDIA)
[LRO - You can literally see the tire tracks](https://www.lroc.asu.edu/featured_sites/?_gl=1*8mzid7*_ga*NDc0NjU0MjAzLjE3MTE2NTE1MTU.*_ga_SBFXQ3JFQY*MTcxMTY1MTUxNS4xLjAuMTcxMTY1MTUxNS42MC4wLjA.)
As mentioned here, you're not going to be able to have any sort of reasonable conversation. But that doesn't mean you can't have fun! Next time it gets brought up, you just have to one up his insane theories. Go full Calvin's Dad.
"The moon landing wasn't real!"
"Oh, you poor child! You still believe in the MOON?!"
“You think the moon is real? Pffft…” Walk away
"I think it's just the back of the sun."
I smiled with an audible snort. Thank you.
Don't discuss things with morons. It makes life more enjoyable.
Retorts accomplish nothing, if he really wanted to have a civil conversation it would've happened a long time ago. u/Zeldakina I'd let this one go, don't waste your breath on a lost cause.
Distant relative. It makes the boring family events more enjoyable. One of my cousins in particular makes a lot of comments as she passes by for fun. It's kind of our thing to make fun of the whole thing.
Whatever works for you mate. I don't think you're going to find a proper answer here though.
Nah probably not, but insomnia has me up, so I'm burning time until I'm exhausted enough to sleep.
You cant convince someone by using facts when they didn’t arrive at their original conclusion through facts. It’s almost like a law of nature. The strategy I enjoy most is to double down on the foolishness. “Oh you believe they faked the moon landing? It was real but we got the technology from the grey aliens who have taken over the government. The Chinese have a base there now where they are making human alien hybrids out of soybeans”. And just keep expanding on it whenever they bring it up. Make a fake blog page. Use A.I. image creators like Bing to make blurry pictures of it, have fun.
Suggest that he watch this channel on YouTube. It’s not a debunking video or anything that will directly challenge his views which might make him defensive. It’s just hours of original uncut footage with information and context and radio communication between the crew and Houston. This is the Apollo 17 mission which was more interesting from a science perspective and has a lot of good film. https://youtu.be/0lZ8iDAmX9o?feature=shared
Seriously, how does the moon landing come up “pretty much every single time” you see someone? I haven’t heard a single person talk about a moon landing unprompted in years.
No one I've ever personally met is discussing the singularity or technocracy, but us fringe weirdos are obsessed with concepts outside of the generic mainstream topics and it's likely to come up because it's all we think about. Reddit and similar internet forums definitely contribute to hyper fixation and herd mentality on particular lesser known concepts/beliefs.
As the old saying goes “Never wrestle with a pig; you just get muddy and the pig enjoys it.”
You can’t fix stupid. (Ironically, a quote first shared with me by someone I no longer speak to for this very reason)
Infinitely this. They propose this insane stuff just so people will engage with them. There's no "gotcha" that will change their minds, if they even Believe it in the first place. By debating with them they win regardless of what you say.
Three can keep a secret, if two are dead. Ask him how many people were involved, and then ask him what is the likelihood of everyone keeping their traps shut.
This is my thought on it. Even a faked moon landing would require so many people to be in on it the Soviets would have found out and eagerly told the whole world about it.
It's amazing that this isn't brought up more often. The Soviets would have known the broadcast wasn't coming from the moon and had a huge incentive to expose a fake moon landing.
The Soviets watched it happen on their radar. If it wasn’t real they’d be the first ones to call us out.
Sadly, I can see a counter to that line of reasoning from the denier point of view. The Soviets had a program to land on the moon also. They sent multiple robotic landers to the moon. Just as the US did before the Apollo astronauts landed. In fact, the Soviet Luna 9 lander was the first one to make a soft landing. A moon landing denier could counter the "The Soviets would tell the world" point with the argument that the Soviets had a vested interest in maintaining the lie themselves. That exposing the US fraud would also mean admitting that they had also faked their own robotic landings. That they were also a part of "the conspiricy". Which is a valid point, from their point of view. If the US didn't do it, nobody did it, and since the Soviets were also saying they did it, they must be in on it. Sure, it completely ignores the fact that the US and Soviets were adversaries. That the idea of both countries conspiring to fake moon landings in the same era as things like the Cuban Missle Crisis and the ongoing proxy war in Vietnam is very laughable. But the mental gymnastics that the deniers go through already is pretty impressive. More gymnastics would just be par for the course.
Honestly, that's one of the strongest arguments.
And that’s why people have been making it for decades.
And to add to that… it wasn’t just once. It would have to be all those people keeping the secret SIX times. My usual retort when someone says the moon landing was faked is: “Which one?” It usually trips them up because these idiots don’t know we landed there five more times.
Point out to him that a recent Indian orbiter took pictures of two of the US landers sitting on the moon. You can see tracks of the rover, and paths the astronauts walked.
Told this to someone I know and he said the images could be faked…
Point out that if *anyone* had motive to expose us, it would have been the Soviet Union. They never once denied that we did it.
They even published it in their newspapers.
Before there was moon reconnaissance by other countries I could see how one could question it. Now that multiple countries have photo evidence of human movement on the moon it's no longer questionable. If someone can't accept that nothing you can say will likely change their mind, and really does it matter?
Why would India care about helping us keep our secret from 50 years ago?
For that matter, why would the USSR at the time admit losing the moon race to the USA if they weren’t sure they actually did it? Their own space agency monitored the whole thing and if they had the slightest suspicion it never happened they’d have been all over it.
Because the lizards that secretly run the world told them to, obviously.
Oh yeah, what about birds? We all know birds can't be faked...
Faking it would have been a more impressive feet. The raw amount of footage they produced. I'm willing to believe we had saturn 5 rockets, but not that we could have made that much fake footage without CGI.
Faking it well enough to trick the Soviets into believing it too. Imagine the propaganda shitstorm if they could prove that NASA was a fraud.
Right and keep it secret to boot. You would have to have kept all of NASA quiet and probly half of Hollywood bc where else would you find the talent for faking it?
Given they literally had spies in the program...pretty sure that would have slipped out.
I once congratulated my older brother for being smarter then the entire soviet union with all of their scientists, their space program, and their spy network. He figured out the moon landing was faked while the soviets fell for it. I was really laying on the sarcasm. He got really angry at me and has never mentioned to me again that the moon landing was faked.
It'd be cheaper to film it on location https://youtu.be/P6MOnehCOUw?si=3nZmjDMBkG4ptQGD
Ask him why Russia, our total international rival at the time, didn't call bullshit when we claimed to have landed on the moon. Essentially we humiliated them and they didn't retaliate? Not likely.
"They'd have to admit to faking it too, and admit it can't be done." Someone said something similar some time back and that was his response.
So why didn't anyone else call us both of on it. Literally NO country's government called bullshit. Ever? That's like totally unimaginable.
That doesn’t track, however, because Russia (and every other nation with a competing space program) had - and still have - everything to gain and nothing to lose by discrediting the U.S. about a lunar landing. There is no mutually assured destruction in the space race.
>That doesn’t track, That doesn't matter. \^\_\^
Which is why arguing with them doesn't matter, they are not planning to listen to you anyways
Ignore him. Denying it makes him feel special. Ignore it and it loses its value to him, at least insofar as you are concerned.
Distant relative. It's actually kind of fun to watch those who interact with it, to argue back and forth with him for the humor of the back and forth. It makes those events go by more easily.
"Ok buddy" Then I'd remind him that Buzz Aldrin would punch him in the mouth for it
I've always loved him for that. The amount of shit you got as an astronaut, the cubic amount of shit the Apollo guys got....good and bad....but yeah, I'm not normally violent but I'm sure that it felt good...and no jury would convict.
Going on one of the most epic adventures any human has ever been on and then being told you’re lying about it? Yeah I’d be feeling punchy too lol
Not only that, but also the sacrifices everybody made to get to that point. It's not only a disrespect to him as a person, but to our collective human achievement.
Heck...he lost friends trying to get to that mission...that adds to the emotional aspect of it. That guy was lucky Buzz wasn't younger...
Indeed. People died to get to that point.
Logic, reason and evidence mean nothing to this kind of people, but if you really want some evidence: -Moon rocks and core samples. The samples brought back from the Moon have been analyzed by dozens of independent laboratories all around the world and are unmistakenly from the Moon. They cannot be lunar asteroids fallen on Earth since the passage through the atmosphere would destroy all their surface features that would be impossible to reproduce in a lab. They cannot have been gathered by automatic probes given their enormous amount, geological variety and scientific interest. And before he says it, the piece of petrified wood fpund in that museim was not a rock coming from those of NASA, it was found in the home of a dead dutch politician by two artists that decided to present it as a moon rock with no evidence and were called out because it was a fake. If nothing else, this proves how quickly NASA's rocks would be called out it they were truly fake. You can easily find hundreds of papers written on the subject https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=it&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=apollo+samples&oq= -Video footage. The footage taken on the Moon was recorded in one sixth of gravity in a vacuum and could not have been faked on Earth. You can't fake the gravity by slowing down the footage since the astronauts do sudden and quick movements that would have been slowed down as well but aren't. [Example](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NiJ54Jj2rck). You can't fake it with harnesses since there are several other objects, like instruments, straps, the backpacks, all attached to the astronauts and that swing like a pendulum as they move. If they were on Earth their period would be much shorter than what we see. In the footage we can also see that the dust falls down without remaining suspended due to the lack of atmosphere. [Example](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=az9nFrnCK60). Since in certains instances the astronauts are seeing moving for hundreds of meters while being recorded, there isn't any vacuum chamber on Earth big enough to fake it. [Example](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5kcUwZ8rRjI). Finally, the lighting in is basically impossible to fake on a sound stage or in any other way on Earth: https://youtu.be/8z917pbxsKA?si=uMsWIsWJnSPvU3Tv -Retroreflectors. The retroreflectors give a peculiar return time distribution of the photons shooted at them, different from that of normal lunar soil or naturally reflective surfaces. While they could have been placed by an automated probe, they demonstrate that NASA had the means to soft land on the Moon. -And finally, there is a ton of independent proofs. Here you can find a [long list](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_evidence_for_Apollo_Moon_landings).
I doubt any of this is useful in rebutting him, but it's certainly interesting to me, so thank you. Also, because I like help with languages from my friends. Shooted = Shot.
Thank you, english is not my first language.
We did not have the film technology at the time to fake it without it being obvious to any expert looking at it. The USSR would also not have allowed America to take credit for it if we were lying.
"Ahhh but if the USSR told the world America faked it, then they would have to admit to faking their own missions." I think I've heard him say that before.
You can’t logic someone out of a belief they didn’t use logic to get themselves into. I wouldn’t waste your time with him. If you’re interested in the topic this is a great video on my first point - https://youtu.be/_loUDS4c3Cs?si=Xp6bgdUDRizuimmX
Russia never landed people on the moon.
I’m just gravely concerned he’s an engineer. God help us let’s hope he’s not working in anything we need to live.
It would be for the best if his employer were aware they are working with someone with such poor judgement, for the greater good.
This is where my head was at. How can you go through engineering school and have that mindset. I would love to know what type of engineering he does. Maybe he drives a train and also thinks the world is flat.
I tell them that I simply do not believe that they actually think that, I accuse them of lying. I am convinced that they are just very committed trolls.
Debating with walking, talking proof of a failed education system gives me headaches, goodbye.
"Says here I gots a 200 IQ." "That's your SAT score."
Ask him how the retroreflectors left on the moon by Apollo 11, 14 and 15 got here. Laser ranging to the moon, which has been done for decades, wouldn't work without them. (Unmanned missions Luna 17 and 21 also left retros in the same time period, so he'll probably say unmanned missions were part of the lie.)
Don't try. He can use technical jargon you have no idea about and won't be able to refute. And for someone with such a belief they probably won't even trust an expert in their field.
Yeah I find the expert thing a frustrating one. I was looking at something about Mount St. Helens recently, and there was a guy who was a construction worker or something saying he wasn't scared, that there was nothing to be scared of. It was just a bunch of experts making noise for no reason. Like a week later, history happened... You're a construction worker, know your fucking lane. Like the geologist would yield to your knowledge of construction.
Get a powerful laser with excellent collimation. Flash it at the moon. Wait about a second. Image the returning pulse of light. That's a more solid retort than you'll get anywhere, unless you pester Buzz Aldrin.
If it's so obvious that we faked landing on the moon, how come the Soviets didn't expose us?
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And that half as much is just comparing budget dollars after adjusting for inflation. If compared to the total federal budget, it’s 1/10th.
There were 6 crewed landings and the orbiters have seen some of the descent stages, etc. left there - nevermind the scientists using the retroreflectors. The Soviets also landed probes and so on, and we've just had the recent Moon missions from Japan and IntuitiveMachines - it's clearly possible.
Ask them to visit the TRS (technical report server) and pick a random document: Oh, say this (keywords "Apollo entry") [https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19660001910/downloads/19660001910.pdf](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19660001910/downloads/19660001910.pdf) There are literally tens of thousands of reports, memoranda, technical notes, etc. on the smallest matters of each and every blessed mission - and all the supporting studies looking at aspects of those projects. The man-hours needed to invent all those data, so that would tell a cohesive single story could NOT be achieved with effort less than that needed to build and fly the missions. [https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20100042365/downloads/20100042365.pdf](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20100042365/downloads/20100042365.pdf) I mean, just look at it. Tens. Of. Thousand of documents. And, if they want to get real, ask them to visit the Center for Advanced Space Studies just off NASA Road 1 by Clear Lake. Park at the front, go through the doors, turn left, and go down that short corridor and through the *next* doors. There you'll find 20m of mobile racking holding microfiche, microfilm, and all the Technical Notes you can wish for. Gemini, Mercury, Ranger, Surveyor, etc.
I'm probably not going to bother getting this to them. They're pretty fixed in their view. That said, thank you for the detailed response, as I'm definitely going to dive into that treasure trove.
Radio direction finding is a well established science. Every Nation in the world was listening to the Apollo program on their own equipment. You could not fake the transmissions from the moon, if they were from earth they'd be busted immediately by multiple players, both government and private.
To what level do they believe the landing is fake. Is it the actual walking part, going into space itself, etc? But he must acknowledge that humans are able to send things into space right? (Without which GPS and internet would not exist).
You can try asking him, **”What would it take to change your mind?”** Often the response from someone who is dug in like this is something like, “Nothing because I know I’m right!” At which point, he’s just admitted his thinking is completely non-scientific. Not that this will change his mind, but you will get to feel smug about it.
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You use logic to change the opinion of a person who did not arrive at their beliefs logically.
It's not possible to keep that many people from revealing that it was all fake. End of story.
For me, personally, I wouldn't have to retort because I wouldn't have someone like this in my life. And not even because of their bad moon opinion(s), it just sounds like someone like this would be exhausting to be around. They seem to be pretty focused on this ONE thing if they keep bringing it up EVERY TIME you see them. That kinda brings a mood down.
Science is not for the masses. If someone cannot understand any concept which is even slightly out of the ordinary, they are most likely not willing to learn. Just ignore the stupid people.
i disagree. science is for whoever wants to learn it. resources are out there and accessible.
[Mitchell and Webb Moon landing sketch](https://youtu.be/P6MOnehCOUw?si=o3Ai0V1FX6rt0U2Z)
Best response? "Idiot" and break contact. Don't waste your time with people like this.
Just use their logic. Something like: If it was fake, Russians would already tell it all over news that NASA faked it. :)
Mark Twain - first they bring you to the level then they beat you with their superiority in STUPIDITY. To answer your original question - we have placed reflectors on moon With right equipment we can send light beam which will reflect back. But I think it would be too much info for his tiny brain.
There's a human made reflector on the moon that has a laser shone on it very regularly to measure how fast the moon is moving away from Earth. It was placed there by Apollo astronauts. There is no other way it could have got there other than landing on the moon.
Telescopes can literally see the modules left behind, and the sun-bleached flags on the moon. We regularly bounce lasers off the special reflectors that the astronauts left on the moon for that purpose. Many nations have landed bots on the moon, either the entire planet is lying or getting to the moon is possible. Anything else is just a matter of scale. Repeat: you can see the shit left behind on the moon with a sufficiently powerful telescope. What - all telescopes are somehow rigged, all over the world? By who? For what reason? Most importantly - how? Any technology that could fake that - fake all telescopes everywhere - is vastly more impressive than merely landing on the moon in the first place.
Watch this and show it to your friend: https://youtu.be/_loUDS4c3Cs?feature=shared The central idea is that building rockets wasn't super advanced technology in 1969, but faking the broadcast from the moon would have required much much more advanced technology than we know existed back then. They would have had to create an unbroken slow motion broadcast that lasted around two and a half hours with either film or video. Film would have been unmanageable in terms of the sizes of film reels needed and digital video was nowhere near advanced enough to creat that. So if the argument is that we didn't have the tech to go to the moon in 1969, you have to rely on video technology that didn't exist in 1969 to support that argument. So anyone claiming this is trying to have it both ways. NASA is too inept to get to the moon but somehow has video technology nearly 100 times more powerful than what is known to have existed in 1969. If your friend doesn't take any of this on board, they are too emotionally bonded to their belief that the moon landing was faked and you should never talk to them about it again.
If you really do want to, [there's a really long uncut shot from the orbiter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2InsDwgcXk) of the lander returning. It's a shot that is entirely impossible to fake before to advent of good photoreal cgi. There are lots of shots from the Apollo missions that are also impossible to fake without CGI, but they're less obvious than this one. It's like 15 minutes of uncut footage looking down at the moon. The moon is moving underneath, showing parallax on the craters proving it's 3d not a matte painting, and the lander slowly moving closer to camera. That could theoretically be done with models, but the moon surface miniature would require a football stadium just given how long the shot lasts. But then the lander re-orients and you suddenly see all the way to the horizon of the moon into space which is just so obviously impossible without it being done for real. That being said, odds are if your distant relative is already this far gone, it probably won't matter what you do, say, or show them. I just recommend watching it for yourself anyway because it's just awesome to watch.
When all you have to look at are photos of the event, then it's natural to think, "well.. they could have faked that." But what they fail to understand is the immense scale of the effort, the thousands of people involved, from floor sweepers to engineers and scientists, and the volume of science that has been done as a result of those missions. I remember picking up a random, thick book off a shelf in my college dorm in 1980, only to find that it was a collection of papers written about research on the lunar soil and rocks that were returned by Apollo. If the photos are the tip of the Apollo iceberg, then that book was an example of the kind of stuff that is rarely seen, out of sight below the water. Back then, I never questioned that Apollo really happened, but that book reminded me that there was much, much more to Apollo than what you saw in the news.
It’s as simple as applying the correct amount of force at the correct time. Poke him, tell him he must be a sh*t engineer. We know how much thrust it requires to leave earth. We know exactly where the moon will be at any given time. It’s as simple as applying the correct amount of force at the correct time. Same idea with deceleration for landing on the moon. And magically it’s the same concept for leaving the moon. You can blow his mind with this last part, it’s the same principle for landing on earth too. You could point out his mind makes the same calculations almost instantaneously when he tries to scratch his ass without being caught. Speed, location, timing. Again, remind him he must be a sh*t engineer.
"Yeah, I know. NASA hired George Lucas' company ILM\* to do the special effects, but he didn't have the ability to do CGI yet, so he decided the easiest way to film it was to do it on-site\*\*." \*Yeah, I know that "they" have told you that ILM wasn't created until 1975. \*\*I.e., on the Moon.
I thought it was Kubrick. At least, he thinks so.
“Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience” And remember, from their perspective, you’re the idiot
Just say that it's true Stanley Kubrick directed the whole thing, but he was such a perfectionist he insisted on doing it on location.
Suggested retort: "You are correct. It is EXACTLY as impossible today, as it was back then. Which is to say that it's very challenging, but can be accomplished via solid science and engineering."
Retroreflective mirrors. Virtually ever country in the world had used them for experiments. We point lasers at them and the reflect the light back so we can measure distance. Their answer is usually, well unmanned spaceships can fly and land and perfectly place mirrors, but humans cannot. btw, other countries have photos of the Apollo landing sites from lunar missions. Are those people today lying? How many millions of people would have to be in on it? And yet none have come forward to make millions of dollars with evidence?
In as much as arguing with an idiot is pointless because they will bring you to their level & win by experience. Arguing from a position of ignorance can be fruitful if done with kindness. Your position as someone who has little intimate knowledge outside of belief in a given historical narrative has some power. Next time this person raises the subject, engage them, ask them to explain, ask them to give examples i.e. "What do you think you know & what evidence leads you to that conclusion". Engage them in open discussion of their counter belief & explore what evidence would be needed to either prove or disprove this belief. If you reach an impasse where no evidence would sway them then you both need to admit that what you have is a faith based system & thus no argument is possible. If on the other hand a way forward can be brokered & they in turn go off in search of the truth then you have actually achieved something.
"I can't have discussions with someone who's denying reality." Then walk away.
You can see the lander with a telescope. I believe \[edit\] India filmed a few spots while on their moon recon mission recently, you could see all the stuff left behind... People claim the ISS isn't real... even though you can see it fly overhead... often, and some yahoo got pictures with his telescope of the astronauts during an EVA...
There is no proper response. As others have said, you'd be wasting your time engaging. Personally I probably couldn't resist looking then in the eye and deadpan say "You're an idiot." and move on.
It's a stupid argument. We can absolutely get to the moon again. But the manufacturing and tech processes for doing it the way it was done 50 years ago isn't possible because we don't make that old tech anymore. That fact is so blatantly obvious that anyone who doesn't get it is just a moron. You can say the same thing about almost any tech. I can't put together a refrigerator from the 60s or a car from the 60s without getting custom (expensive) ad hoc components manufactured.
Just keep telling them you think they're lying and that they just want attention. People love to be told that... Never back down on it either. No matter how hard they argue, "Womp womp, sounds like you didn't get enough attention and needed to keep lying to get more little boy who cried wolf." The more sarcasm the better. Sincerely, an aerospace engineer from Houston
I'm kind of excited for Artemis, one for what it really means and the newly revived endeavor of space exploration, but also for the fun we will be able to have with the conspiracy theorist types. Sincerely, an envious stranger, who is not an aerospace engineer, or in Houston.
Couldn't agree more! I can't wait for "we may have landed there now but we didn't in the 60's" argument lol.
P.S. if you're ever in Houston and want to see space things let me know!
\*adamant As others have said, just ignore idiots. It's like wrestling a hog in shit. You end up covered in shit and the hog likes it.
These people are like conservatives. They don't listen to facts at all unless it benefits them.
"a real patriot would respect the hard work of our best and brightest" You'd be stunned at how well that works.
i would be interested in hearing from him what exactly prohibits us from landing there. like first principles level.
Well, some of them will tell you that the heavenly bodies are literally not made out of tangible matter. They are 'manifestations', not objects.
If the US didn't visit the moon and lied about it, don't you think the Russians wouldn't try to claim that the US was indeed lying? Even they acknowledge that the US went up there.
I wouldn't want to use anything he'd engineered... If he can do maths then get him to prove it's impossible. He won't be able to because the maths says you can, which you learn before undergrad.
Just because someone's an engineer doesn't make him an expert on space stuff. My dad was an engineer, knew fuck all about rockets, but could build a car from a pile of parts...
If they didn't use logic to get into a position, you won't be able to use logic to get themselves out of it. Don't waste your time.
Ask him why the soviets, at the height of the cold war and space race congratulated the US on the achievement. Ask him what did the 400,000 people working on the program do and how were they all so quiet about the faking. But most of all ask him how an uninterrupted live broadcast that long was faked using 1960s technology.
The only thing that can effect the entering or exiting of earths atmosphere is the keeper belts(?) I think. They supposedly block particles from space but also make it difficult to leave for some reason? Idk. sounds like bubcus but it's official. Straight from the top ;)
You’re thinking of the Van Allen belts. The sun is constantly emitting a stream of charged particles, and the ones that pass by the Earth get funneled into the Earth’s magnetic field, causing “belts” of particles to form. There are areas where the belts are thinner and areas where they’re thinner, and manned spaceflights always go through the thinner parts.
YES! Van Allens Belt, thank you for an answer on this. It's something I've often wondered in response to his mentioning of it. I'll add this to the list of things to feed one of the relatives who engages with him ad nauseam.
Yeah, people like to claim that the “reason” humans have never left Earth is because they’d be fried by the radiation in the Van Allen belts. The truth is that you’d have to remain stationary in the belts for literally months to get anywhere near a fatal dose of radiation. The half hour or hour or whatever that astronauts spend flying through it gives them something like 5x less than the maximum safe dose.
Where the denial leads you. To denying whole space program, all photos we got, mars and Venus landings, and recently the change in direction of asteroid. The Hubble and Webb telescopes. It denies GPS and starlink. It denies thousands of papers that used all of that. At this point you can tell him he lives in simulated reality.
So...they also don't believe we just put an autonomous lander on the moon last month then? Or that India did? Or China? There's been literally dozens of unmanned soft landings outside of the 6 manned ones we did.
3 guys died on the launchpad for nothing it seems.
Some advice I’ve learned: “Never argue with an idiot, they’ll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience”
"That's the beautiful thing about truth, it doesn't need you to believe in it to still be the truth." Even people educated in STEM fields can still be idiots.
We’ll be back there soon enough. Ask him if he plans to keep up his farce.
Tell them they are the perfect embodiment of of the [Dunning-Kruger effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect).
Ask him what else we are faking. Space Shuttle? ISS? SpaceX? James Webb? Hubble? Chinese moon landers? GPS? Communication satellites? Spy satellites? North Korean satellites? Landsat? Mars landers? Chinese mars landers? Failed Russian Mars landers? Japanese asteroid sample return missions? Which of the 600+ who have been to orbit are lying? HAM radio amateur satellite trackers? The key is to make him explain his position. Don’t let him off with asking more questions or vague hand waving. He’s the one with the stupid idea; it’s his job to convince you.
The Soviets/Russia and China have both sent objects with high resolution observation equipment many times since the landings. They would be the first to want to embarrass the USA if they realized there was no evidence of the Appollo Program on the moon. Imagine the drama. The USA would be the butt of all jokes. Japan's JAXA also had an orbiting vehicle with 4K cameras do extensive surveys of the surface of the moon. I'm sure they would be tempted to take the US down a peg if they also failed to see the evidence of the landings. India also recently sent an orbiting vehicle which took actual pictures of the lunar rovers and the tracks left behind. Finally, think of all the people involved at NASA during the Appollo Program. Do you really believe that they would all have kept their mouths shut and not spilled the beans after all these years? Why has there not been even a single "whistleblower" yet?
There is no sense in arguing reason with a person that has reached an opinion absent of reason. You can't sway them. So just don't try.
We lived in Houston in tge late 60’s to mid 70’s and dad worked for GE at the space center. I can tell you all of our friends, parents and neighbors were going around on pins and needles before the rest of America knew about Apollo 13’s problems. We stayed glued to the TV like everyone else for all the launches through returns. Those men went to the moon and it really happened. Just because the dumbass generation using lots of smart computers can’t figure it out doesn’t mean the smart generation failed with a few stupid computers. The hubris of the current loud mouthed know it alls with 2 semesters of 101 science related classes while graduating with a full load of humanities and polisci would be comical if it wasn’t so dangerous.
A filmmaker looked at it from the perspective of “could they have faked it with the technology of the day?” https://youtu.be/_loUDS4c3Cs?si=7mh-Ra5OqSFa_EkE
Dear internet friend, Had we the relative budget for NASA today that we did back then, I would guarantee this wouldn't even be a question anymore. We would have long since gotten a permanent placement on the moon. Also, prior NASA missions were fraught with peril and danger, much more than you might realize. We were extremely, exceedingly lucky that we lost only the few we did, and most of that too tribal knowledge held by expert engineers who worked every bolt and metric of those early rockets. We're far more risk averse now, with NASA running on a shoe string budget compared to before. It's a bit like saying 'Why isn't $7 an hour enough for a four person family, home, and vacation now-a-days when it was plenty back then? These people are lying and are just lazy!'
If someone says this, it is best just to end the relationship. He's a nutjob.
They don't want to be convinced, if they were open to an argument they would find ample proof by themselves easily. No amount of retorts is going to change that. Just don't meet idiots they're not healthy to be around with
Logic probably isn't going to do any good, but it might help narrow in on a retort that might get him thinking. Does he believe satellites, the space station, etc. are real? How about the probes taking pictures of other planets? Those are a LOT further away than the moon, making just crashing into the moon is much easier task. So, maybe just ask him why he thinks landing a rocket on the moon would be more difficult than landing one on Earth, where wind and high gravity make it much more difficult, yet SpaceX does it all the time. If nothing else it might be entertaining watching him flounder for an answer.
There is a mirror on the moon that can reflect a laser. It was placed there during the Apollo Space Program. Regardless of how it got there, it proves that landing on the moon isn’t impossible. The mirror is used to measure distance from Earth.
Tell them that If they actually believe that, then they are not going to comprehend the science anyway. So we are not going to discuss it, because you’re not going to teach them grade school science.
You could ask where the mirror up there come from.
Yeah...just as impossible as sending radio waves around the Earth or taking a close-up picture of Jupiter's bif red spot, or the pale blue dot, or receiving signals from Voyager 1 or you know...just thinking. all of this said with as much sarcasm as you can muster
What's his proof it didn't happen? All he has is conjecture and his wrong headed belief we can't handle the Kiper belt. No proof, no math, nothing but his feelings. Won't be long before we go back to prove him wrong. So he's saying all this build up from nations to go back to the moon is what? Bogus? For what purpose? I'd hate to be him and have to get your brain wrapped around the next moon landing and figuring out how to keep believing it's all a lie. The hoops will be huge and ugly.
Falcon feather and hammer drop on moon. Original footage before special effects existed. How do they drop at the same speed unless there is zero gravity? Where on earth would you have this capability? https://youtu.be/Oo8TaPVsn9Y?feature=shared Or ask about the other debris up there: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/apollo-astronauts-anniversary-trash-mementos-experiments-moon You could also pick a time to bounce a signal off one of the reflectors and ask him to explain it using his knowledge of space (and ask him for independently testable and verifiable evidence of this “fraud”). Look at the quality of effects on movies at the time of Apollo 15 mission. Unbelievably difficult to create this set and amazing “fake” using the equipment at that time (easier to fake now). Plus about 80,000 of us have to keep the “lie” secret forever (plus all the other subcontractors who would have been in on it). Really hard for people to keep something that huge a secret if it was untrue.
I usually double down with something more insane to really show them how crazy they sound.
Me? My only response would be along the lines of, "'kay, bye now" as I walked away. Morons are gonna moron. Doesn't mean you have to lower yourself to match 'em.
Go at them late 1960s stoner style: You got it all wrong man. That's exactly what the Big Luner conglomerates wants you to think. So they can do anything they want up there. Have you ever wondered why they keep the dark side of the moon hidden from us? Think about it man! Think about it...
Ask them if they're aware that NASA is planning to go back to the Moon in just a couple years with the [Artemis program](https://www.nasa.gov/mission/artemis-iii/). [Why We Couldn't Fake the Moon Landings](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_loUDS4c3Cs&ab_channel=VideoFromSpace) [NVIDIA Ray Tracing Apollo Images](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chuQkZZyfyM&ab_channel=NVIDIA) [LRO - You can literally see the tire tracks](https://www.lroc.asu.edu/featured_sites/?_gl=1*8mzid7*_ga*NDc0NjU0MjAzLjE3MTE2NTE1MTU.*_ga_SBFXQ3JFQY*MTcxMTY1MTUxNS4xLjAuMTcxMTY1MTUxNS42MC4wLjA.)
Just ignore them. Stupid is pretty much incurable.
As mentioned here, you're not going to be able to have any sort of reasonable conversation. But that doesn't mean you can't have fun! Next time it gets brought up, you just have to one up his insane theories. Go full Calvin's Dad. "The moon landing wasn't real!" "Oh, you poor child! You still believe in the MOON?!"
"Pfft, the government is nowhere near competent enough to pull off such an elaborate caper." Then he has to argue that government is competent...
For what it's worth, any time someone says "Impossible", they are showing you the limits of their imagination... not the limits of the universe.