Have we landed on the moon?

[razark]

Sane people: Men have walked on the moon.

ADreamerwithinADream: No they haven't.

Sane people: What's your evidence?

ADreamerwithinADream: No they haven't.

Sane people: We have plenty of evidence, backed up by multiple disciplines of science.  Here, let us show it to you.

ADreamerwithinADream: No they haven't.

Sane people: All you're saying is "No they haven't".

ADreamerwithinADream: No they haven't.

Sane people: You are quite a sturdy brick wall.  We should use you to build many strong buildings in earthquake-prone areas.

 

This is why we need to be able to address the nature of fallacious arguments, beyond the arguments themselves.  Throwing out as many "points" as possible, hoping one will make it through, while refusing to address the opposing side is not a valid tactic.  It is well within the rights of those involved to call an opponent on bad tactics.  After all, how can one engage in the arguments when there is no argument offered beyond "I assert X" with no supporting evidence?

Edited February 13, 2017 by razark
Cause I'm drunk and made the you're/your error.

[Elthy]

Now that @Vanamonde mentioned it: I knew we had a forum rule against conspiracy theories once, no idea why its gone. Until its back we should use the standart procedure against trolls/nuts:

Stage 1: Reason (we are allready beyond that)

Stage 2: Ignore (what i would recommend)

Stage 3: Aldrin-maneuver (obviosly only possible by mods in the forum)

Stage 4: Gets messy, i want to avoid that...

[Codraroll]

Believing the moon itself to be fake requires you to overlook so many fields of science that it borders on contempt for the concept of fact-checking itself. That thread posted last year clearly shows a complete lack of regard for logic, and willingness to believe any alternative BS without a thorough examination of arguments. As long as the story is "sexier" and you get that warm feeling of knowing something other people don't, it's accepted, right? Predictably, the thread is locked. Then you disappear after that one thread, showing only a marginal investment in these forums to begin with.

Then you come back one year later, more or less, only to make more ridiculous statements about the Moon. As other members have pointed out repeatedly, you don't display even the simplest grasp on the concepts of logic and making your case in a way that makes sense to others. We're literally in "Tuesday is a ball because toast smells like purple" territory here. So many logical fallacies you can't even begin to count them.

In this forum, you can get very detailed description of the entire Apollo program, owning to a huge amount of documentation left behind by thousands of people working on everything from the rockets themselves, to the food prepared for the astronauts. It was a massive project, a cooperation between dozens of fields of science, spanning almost a decade. And forum users here who are certified experts in those fields and really know their stuff, have personally examined the historical documents - sometimes even artifacts - and found that the story checks out. I can't even begin to tell you how many years of hard work and experience you'd have to disregard for your story to make sense. It shows outright contempt for those people and their work, when you dismiss them in favour of some dumb story you heard a layman tell on YouTube.

Perhaps you would have been taken more seriously if you made actual arguments. If you took the discussion. If you backed up your statements with any evidence whatsoever. But you make your case in such a splendidly bad way that it's impossible to take you seriously. You're not only failing science with your stance on the Moon landing, you're failing logic with your style of arguments. You're displaying a proficiency of discussion so bad that people would automatically dismiss you as wrong, regardless of the subject of debate.

Nobody would ridicule themselves to that level intentionally. It makes no logical sense, it is not a good debate tactic, it won't convince anybody that you are right. You're making a fool of yourself, repeatedly, after repeatedly being told exactly what you are doing wrong. Therefore, I assert that you are either a troll, or just genuinely stupid. I consider the former to be more likely, giving that we're on the Internet and all that, but I would not rule out the latter either.

 

[0111narwhalz]

Parsing the above as:

Quote

Assertion:

10 minutes ago, ADreamerwithinADream said:

still there are the Van Allen Belt ect

Really, they can't pass them

i.e. "You cannot pass the Van Allen Belts"

Evidence:

Spoiler

11 minutes ago, ADreamerwithinADream said:

 

 

 

i.e. "A video by a veteran "hoaxer," which is of duration prohibitive to inlining with discussion."

Responding:

Quote

Assertion:

Manned spacecraft can go from within the Van Allen Belts to without, and not kill their occupants.

Evidence:

http://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/radiation.php

Quote

Dose (Grays): 0-0.5
Immediate Symptoms: No obvious effect
Latent Phase: None
Post-Latent Symptoms: No obvious effect, except, possibly, minor blood changes and anorexia.
Prognosis: Certain survival

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt#Implications_for_space_travel

Quote

The total radiation received by the astronauts varied from mission to mission but was measured to be between 0.16 and 1.14 rads (1.6 and 11.4 mGy)

Evidence is from Wikipedia, a moderated community encyclopedia, and from Atomic Rockets, a hard-sci-fi reference written by a nerd and backed up by extensive citations and math. I consider these equivalently viable sources.

The inner Van Allen belt was circumvented by a highly inclined transfer, while the outer was skirted (by the same high inclination transfer). Exposure was limited by relatively short immersion; the outer belt does not exceed eight Earth radii, while the Moon is at nearly 70 Earth radii. Immersion occurred near the periapsis; thus, the vessel possessed much of its velocity, and traversed quickly. These factors combined to ensure that the Apollo aggregate was not cooked.

Additionally, electron flux ("Beta radiation") is easily dealt with by a thin shield of highly conductive sheeting. Like, for instance, gold foil. Proton flux is more sticky, but the CSM possessed more than the third of a millimeter the LEM did; it was also structural, surviving the splashdown.

[ADreamerwithinADream]

So, you clearly haven't seen thus not studied the video about radiation eh?!

 

please do that first, Take it very slowly so you can take it all in, It is quite a lot.

[0111narwhalz]

All these videos...

signs out of Google

[TheKosmonaut]

I politely ask that you all keep your arguments based on evidence that you present instead of calling each other out in ad hominem attacks. If we are gonna have this thread, let it at least be one that remains on the rails. 

[p1t1o]

Maybe we should add this topic to the list of banned questions...Ooooh or am I a CIA spook?!.......

[kerbiloid]

16 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Maybe we should add this topic to the list

of rules.

0.1. The Moon is.
0.2. The Moon is reachable.
0.3. The Moon is reachable by XX cent. vessels.

[Nibb31]

It's not about faith. There are literally mountains of evidence accumulated over 40 years.

At it's peak, 400,000 people worked on the Apollo program to some extent with the support of 20,000 corporations and universities. A large proportion of Americans actually remember working on it or have parents who worked on the program. It was monitored by scientists and engineers from all over the world, including the Soviet Union, France, China, India, the UK. Over the years, it has been the subject of hundreds of peer-reviewed papers, including recent research that has confirmed the findings of the time. Most of the engineering of the Saturn V, the Apollo CSM, and Apollo LM vehicles are in the public domain, including detailed plans and diagrams. So are all the research results, the moon rocks that were given to the many countries, the recent pictures from LRO, the source code of the computer software... America's rivals would have jumped on the occasion to call out the US if they were being lied to. There is no doubt that the radio, TV and telemetry transmissions from the Moon were intercepted and analyzed by foreign governments. The rock samples that were given to the USSR were authenticated against their own samples. The lunar reflectors that were deposed manually on the surface at the landing sites still allow accurate laser beam measurements today.

Indeed, everything published confirms that every single detail about landing on the Moon had been figured out, including medical parameters and measurements that have been confirmed by later research. All the necessary hardware and equipment had been engineered, sourced, tested, and built, from the Saturn V to the flag poles and shovels, from the space suits and cameras to the lunar cart. Every minute of every mission has been accounted for. Every frame of every camera roll has been published. Every piece of equipment has been tracked, numbered, and documented.

If you look at the level of development, the published documentation, and the technology of the era, it was obviously easier to actually go ahead with the Moon landings than to fake them. Faking them would actually have required *more* work, involving the corruption of thousands of engineers, scientists, journalists, and government employees all over the world and keeping them quiet for 40 years, throughout an ever-changing political landscape.

Whatever you may think, it is extremely hard to keep any government activity a total secret. Any conspiracy that includes more than one person, stuff like Watergate, the Iran Contra, or the Monica Lewisnky affair eventually leaks. Projects like the F-117 or the B-2 were top secret, but there were still leaks. How could you seriously corrupt (or fool) thousands of the smartest brains in the world, especially people from other countries and rival governments. Ex-CIA agents and government officials have written books or reported on secret WWII missions, the Bay of Pigs, or the political manoeuvering from inside the Bush administration post-9/11, but despite the considerable fame and wealth that they could get from it, no single one of these people has ever made a death bed testimony or published a book of confessions about an "alternative" role they might have had in the Apollo program. Although most of the archives of the Soviet Union have been published, including many with embarrassing information about US policy, or details about secret military projects, there is no evidence of any intelligence reports out of Russia that cast any shadow of doubt on the Moon landings.

On the side of the hoax theory, there is conjecture, based on misunderstandings of physics, deformed information, and disbelief, but absolutely zero evidence and no testimony that the Moon landings didn't happen. Not a single person has ever been formally identified as being part of a hoax. Every single argument from the Moon hoaxers has been debunked many times.

It's not a matter of faith. It's a matter of some people living in an alternative reality where the illusion that they detain an alternative truth makes them feel special. They feel like their alternative knowledge makes them smarter than the rest of the "sheeple", when they are under the influence of conspiracy websites and folks like Hoagland (who is laughed at even in conspiracy circles) that distort reality to make it match their skewed vision of the world.

5 hours ago, ADreamerwithinADream said:

So, you clearly haven't seen thus not studied the video about radiation eh?!

I don't study YouTube videos. Give me a peer-reviewed science paper. I bet you don't even know where to look to find one.

You can find a YouTube video with just about any claim, as well as the opposite claim. Just about any YouTube video can be debunked by another YouTube video.

I strongly suggest that you try looking at actual information from the Apollo archives, including internal reports and peer-reviewed papers. The evidence goes way beyond the few photos and TV transmissions that conspiracists seem to focus on. The more you understand about the actual science and engineering that went into and came out of Apollo, the more ridiculous the hoax theory becomes.

 

[peadar1987]

@ADreamerwithinADream, you seem to be quite hung up on the van Allen belts and their radiation. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions.

-What sort of dose rates are experienced in the van Allen belts?

-How long would a capsule on a lunar transfer trajectory take to traverse the belts?

-What sort of dose would this imply for any humans inside the capsule?

-How much would a couple of millimetres of aluminium shield those humans from the radiation?

-What would be the implications for the health of the astronauts of absorbing such a dose?

I can't watch videos at work, so I'd very much appreciate it if you could post something I can read.

Thanks!

Edited February 13, 2017 by peadar1987

[KerikBalm]

13 hours ago, ADreamerwithinADream said:

Maybe Hoagland is not credible. maybe he is. BUT he pointed to valid information.

He is not credible, I have no doubt.

He pointed to irrelevant information. You didn't even read my post, did you?

[p1t1o]

15 minutes ago, peadar1987 said:

@ADreamerwithinADream, you seem to be quite hung up on the van Allen belts and their radiation. I was wondering if you could answer a few questions.

-What sort of dose rates are experienced in the van Allen belts?

-How long would a capsule on a lunar transfer trajectory take to traverse the belts?

-What sort of dose would this imply for any humans inside the capsule?

-How much would a couple of millimetres of aluminium shield those humans from the radiations?

-What sort of total radiation dose would this sort of trip expose astronauts to?

-What would be the implications for the health of the astronauts of absorbing such a dose?

I can't watch videos at work, so I'd very much appreciate it if you could post something I can read.

Thanks!

These are excellent questions! The answers will be interesting!

@ADreamerwithinADream - don't worry!

As a chemist I am qualified to independently verify your answers against known physics! Without referring to any possible NASA, CIA or Wikipedia propaganda! The haters will have no leg to stand on!

We will get to the truth of this matter.

 

[kerbiloid]

For me, this black trapezoid right under the nozzle gives +10 to the lunar landings believability.

Spoiler

This whole thing looks like an engineers' "Oh, s**t, it's heating... Let's quickly insert something between."

If this were a fake, such ugly thing would be either more stylish or not be. (As anyway the nozzle is turned away from the hull and you can say to the viewers: "No, it's will not heat the vehicle, we have tested.")

Edited February 13, 2017 by kerbiloid

[adsii1970]

6 hours ago, razark said:

We prefer "Johnson Space Center", and there's a hell of a lot more going on than just Mission Control.

Sorry, bro. I wrote that fairly quickly and off the top of my head (NACA and NASA history was one of my minor study areas). It was in response to the person claiming NASA was a DoD agency...

@kerbiloid  The CIA is a strange fellow. Unlike NASA, they have a spot on the NSC (National Security Council) and a spot for an advisor on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. NASA has none of this. The CIA does use intelligence assets from the DoD and has some folks embedded within our military. Technically it is a civillian agency but totally unlike NASA.

[razark]

54 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

Sorry, bro. I wrote that fairly quickly and off the top of my head...

No problem.  People just seem to not realize our center has an actual name.  In the movies and mission transcripts, it is only ever referred to as "Houston".

[adsii1970]

3 minutes ago, razark said:

No problem.  People just seem to not realize our center has an actual name.  In the movies and mission transcripts, it is only ever referred to as "Houston".

At least I didn't refer to it as the "Stennis Space Center..." Yeah, I've been there, too! I was on a tour there and actually overheard someone ask the tour guide, "I didn't think the Houston Space Center was so small and out of the way..."

[Snark]

This topic has been extensively pruned (removed or redacted many posts) in order to clean up:

• various off-topic comments
• personal attacks
• bickering about personal attacks
• arguing about arguing
• deliberate attempts to provoke rage
• responses to attempts to provoke rage, from people who should know better

C'mon, KSP forums, you're better than this. 

 

Since it's clear at this point that this thread can't stay on track without going off the rails and exploding into massive fireballs at regular intervals, 'fraid we gotta lock this one, folks.

I'll close with a few bits of Moderator Finger-Wagging, and then some friendly advice.

First, the finger-wagging:

• Don't troll.  Please review the forum guidelines, specifically rule 2.3.b.  Troll-posting, or making posts that are intended to provoke an emotional reaction, is against the rules.
• If you see a troll, report it.  Since trolling is against the rules, it's absolutely the right thing to do to report it-- that's what the report function is for.  We're the moderators, we'll deal with it.
• Don't publicly accuse a troll.  Deciding that someone's a troll (or breaking any other rule) isn't your job, it's the moderators'.  Taking on moderator's jobs for yourself can be construed as "backseat moderation" and may, itself, be a rules violation (see rule 3.2).
• Don't publicly announce that you've reported someone.  More backseat moderation, folks.

And finally, the friendly advice:

If you think someone is a troll... do not feed them.  If someone actually is a troll, their whole mission in life is to get a reaction out of you.  They're specifically looking for sore spots and hot buttons that they can press.  When you give in, and show them that they've gotten your goat, they win.  You reward their behavior, and they double down on it and persist.

C'mon, folks, this isn't your first rodeo.  I know that you know better.  I assume you've gotten caught up in the heat of the moment, and hey, we've all been there.    But any time you're responding to someone on the forum and you find yourself brimming over with rage... perhaps just stop and think for a moment, take a few deep breaths, maybe step away from the keyboard and consider.  It's never a good idea to post angry, troll or no troll.  But it's an especially bad idea to post angry when that's exactly what someone is trying to get you to do.

By far the best response to someone whom you think is a troll is to do just three simple things:

1. Ignore them
2. Report them
3. Move on.

Thank you for your understanding.