- contains graphics, added 27 January
1999 - contains graphics, added 27 January
1999There is a lot of speculation about this theory and much of it can be found on the net. In fact, this is where I discovered the theory - I had never even considered the possibility of this before.
What was happening in the world in 1969? Well, the US had just changed it's underwear after the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Space Race was well and truly under way.
The Russians had already beaten the US by putting the first object in orbit, the first man in space, the first spacewalk and the first manmade object on the moon. The Americans were lagging well behind.
President Kennedy had declared that America would put a man on the moon - at almost any cost. And he was determined to beat the Russians to it.
Much of the theory is based on some photographs that NASA released. These pictures appear to have either multiple shadows, i.e. multiple strong light sources, or else the single light source casts shadows of objects in different directions, as it would if it was very close.
I have not been able to find these pictures, though I believe, and it is said by some, that they could be pictures released by NASA that were actually promotional pictures, taken before the launch.
However, what I did find, were numerous pictures where the depth of the picture varied enormously. Taking only pictures contained on NASA's web sites there are quite a few pictures where the results are not consistent with other shots taken at the same location.
Some pictures show one or other of the astronauts with a depth of view that I'd estimate at about a mile or so, often with mountains visible in the background. Other pictures, taken in similar locations, have a field of view of about 25 yards - that's total darkness 25 yards behind the subject. I find this a little unlikely.
The pictures reminded me of pictures released during World War II, where part of the picture had been cut out, or censored, to conceal something essential to the war effort - had this happened with some of the moon shots? What could they have been concealing? Some would have it that there are studio equipment and props in the real pictures and these have been masked out.
Another inconsistency with the original moon landing is the matter of how they got the TV picture beamed to Earth from the Moon. Back in the 60's the TV companies had difficulty sending a stable picture 50 miles across relatively flat countryside - yet here we had pictures coming from over 150,000 miles away. Granted, NASA undoubtedly had great financial backing and could have invested millions of dollars in TV equipment, but it is worth thinking about.
Amateur radio operators sometimes use the moon to 'bounce' radio signals, in order to reach part of the Earth that they would not otherwise be able to reach, due to line of sight limitations. Was this same technique used by NASA to make the TV pictures appear to be coming from the moon itself? Given a highly directional antenna and large financial backing, this is a distinct possibility.
I recently received some new information on this theory. Information that not only corroborates the details above, but also adds some new startling hoax theories. Read on.
Some sources have suggested that in 1969 NASA's technology was not sufficiently advanced enough to put a man on the moon and get him back to Earth alive. It is said that the computing power used by the Apollo craft would have been less than that contained in a modern pocket calculator. One author, Bill Kaysing, who reputedly worked for NASA just before the time of the Apollo launches says that NASA commissioned a feasibility study to check the odds of completing the moon landings successfully. The odds were reported as being 0.0017% chance.
He alleges in his book, "We never went to the moon", that NASA and the Defense Intelligence Agency faked the moon landing at a remote, possibly underground site in Nevada - Area-51 perhaps?
Other hoax theorists say that although the intention was not to fake the moon landings, as soon as NASA realised that they could not perform this feat they opted to fake it rather than lose face to the Soviets. In turn this also generated a feeling of euphoria in the American people and would have assisted with funding for other space projects.
There was no independant coverage of the Apollo missions, apart from the actual launch stage, so how do we know that the astronauts were aboard the Saturn V rockets and how do we know that NASA didn't fake the footage we saw?
Find out more! Apollo program pictures and commentary. - may be slow to download, contains large amount of graphics.
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Vendemen - Updated 27 January 1999 |