I keep trying, but I'm not getting anything out of that URL. Any chance of a summary until normal service is resumed?

Ah - it was working earlier. No doubt the server couldn't cope with the slashdotting.

Temporary mirror here - I'll only keep it up until the other server is fine:

http://www.ofla.info/Search_for_SSTV_Tapes.pdf

It makes you laugh how these tapes, tapes of the FUCKING FIRST MAN ON THE FUCKING MOON are somehow 'missing'. You'd think they'd take slightly more care of them than the BBC with old Who tapes, wouldn't you? For me this gives even more reason to speculate that the footage (not the landing itself, but the FOOTAGE) of the first landing was faked and that if anyone saw the high quality tape it would be more obvious.

You can't blame the Americans for faking the footage, if they did. After all, the whole point of the 'space race' was to show the world how large America's cock was by sticking their flag and staking their claim on the fucking Moon. It would be no good if no-one actually saw it! I don't doubt that they went to the Moon though. Or do I....?

There's more here about the TV signals sent from the first moon landing. According to this, in order to make the signal from the moon suitable for live broadcast, NASA just pointed a camera at a TV monitor and used that.

( simple question of a twisted mind )
" Why didn't the NASA in 37 years make a digital copy of these so important footage ''
Answer...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1913474363747128107&q=on%2Bthe%2BMoon
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5737681932896358451&q=on%2Bthe%2BMoon

best regards

I'm willing to bet there'll be a final series next year.

Well personally I go with the reasoning that if America hadn't landed on the moon in 1969, surely Russia would have led the investigation to prove the footage was fake and it'd be a rather larger issue than it has ever been?

And also: OF COURSE THEY LANDED ON THE MOON, YOU FUCKING NUTTERS.

Yes of course! That!

I always forget to add that bit in so cheers Ian.

I was really interested in this page: http://www.clavius.org/tvqual.html. I've always found the Apollo 11 footage really otherworldly, beautiful and haunting even on repeated viewings, while the later moon landings were immediately just like watching a bunch of rather smug men leaping about in quarries (admittedly ones with rather weak gravity, but you know, "meh"). It seems to echo our falling out of love with the moon so soon into the 70s, somehow.

> I'm willing to bet there'll be a final series next year.

Hang on a second. Why the hell did I type that?

This other video here...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2265515730495966561&q=on%2Bthe%2BMoon
is also fairly interesting, even though the guy that goes up to all the Apollo astronauts asking them to swear on the bible that they walked on the moon IS a bit of a dickhead. The best bit is where Buzz Aldrin punches him in the face!

Although I reckon the Apollo missions WERE faked (after all, you only need a little common sense to realise that they were and why they were) the only 'proof' that this guy has is 'proof' that the astronauts were sticking an image over the window to fake a shot of the Earth from a distance when they were really just in Earth orbit (as is shown by the bright blue light that pours through the window when they take the picture away).

> the Apollo missions WERE faked (after all, you only need a little common sense to realise that they were and why they were)

No, you need to be a fucking nutjob to think they were. Seriously, every single piece of 'evidence' that they're fake has been proved wrong. And who do you believe: a shitload of scientists, astronomers and general space experts, or a bunch of twats on the internet? Read the Wiki article on the matter.

I can't remember where I read this point made, but it's one I wholeheartedly agree with - if the moon landings were faked, then everyone involved must have been the best actors in the history of the world - with Buzz Aldrin chief among them all. They've been talking about that event for forty years now, and not once have any inconsistencies or slips ever dropped into their stories. Aldrin, in particular, is the most famous and vocal of the people involved to talk about it, and no-one's ever detected him letting his mask slip or making any mistakes.

All the supposition about the landings being faked is based on people looking for things to find, not something that is immediately apparent and makes people wonder. And sorry, but it's not up to NASA to prove it happened - it's up to the theorists to prove it didn't. Otherwise you may as well just call fake on just about every event that has ever happened. There is no reason to suspect that they were false save for wanting to find fault with it.

And hey, I'm a naturally cynical person. There are plenty of conspiracy theories that I have varying levels of belief in. But the moon landings were one of the greatest achievements in the history of humankind, and it fucking disgusts me the way people are so ready to disbelieve it, because it makes them feel superior and they can't handle the idea that people who weren't them were able to achieve something so brilliant.

> But the moon landings were one of the greatest achievements in the history of humankind, and it fucking disgusts me the way people are so ready to disbelieve it, because it makes them feel superior and they can't handle the idea that people who weren't them were able to achieve something so brilliant.

You have a point, but they were still probably faked. And one day NASA will HAVE to admit that because eventually, even if it's in a hundred years or more as has been suggested, someone else will have a go at flying to the moon and then they won't be able to pretend anymore.

You can forget about all the 'evidence' from the footage shot on the lunar surface that suggests it was faked because all of that is irrelevant. The important point is that just a few years before Apollo 11 they thought there was like a 0.01% chance of ever making it to the Moon and back with the astronauts still alive. It was a suicide mission. They STILL couldn't make it there now. The space shuttles have never gone above around 350 miles up due to the lethal radiation. Until they can overcome that obstacle they will never make it to the moon or Mars.

One thing though - they definitely used wire rigs to make it look like the astronauts were walking in 1/6th gravity. If you've ever seen the David Copperfied flying illusion (which, coincidentally, of course, uses wires previously developed by NASA, wires strong but so thin that they are invisible in the right lighting) you know it was possible.

Oh, right - so it's not that some footage was made in a studio/desert in 1969 so that they'd be able to broadcast something whether they reached the moon or not, and it's not that they intended to show that footage without even ATTEMPTING to get to the moon.

It's that all the moon landings post 1969 have been faked AS WELL and nobody went to the moon EVER.

Now I get you.

> You have a point, but they were still probably faked. And one day NASA will HAVE to admit that because eventually, even if it's in a hundred years or more as has been suggested, someone else will have a go at flying to the moon and then they won't be able to pretend anymore.

I can't believe this - I'm actually rendered completely speechless.

(See also responses to Anti-Evolution Creationists, The Flat Earth Society and that David Ike lot who promote a lizards-in-human-form-taking-over-our-reality thing.)

The 'space race' was complete bullshit. Russia and America worked together rather than against each other. Russia never ended up going to the moon, but the U.S. were supposed to be racing them to it. Why the hell didn't they go in the end? Surely if they'd plowed millions into their space programme they wouldn't have just said 'well, the Americans got there first so we might as well forget going altogether'. They didn't go because they knew it was IMPOSSIBLE. The Russians knew the landings were faked. They struck a deal with the Americans - they wouldn't blow the whistle on the fake landings if the U.S. didn't blow the whistle on all the bullshit that surrounded Russia putting the first man in space. The landings were just propaganda making the Americans look like winners and gods.

There you go.

Also, the Russians let the Americans get away with it so that they wouldn't stop the vast quantities of beef jerky that were imported secretly to the Kremlin, in exchange for information on advanced cunnilingus techniques.

I've just made that up, and there's just as much evidence to support that as there is to support your theories, ie none.

> The 'space race' was complete bullshit.

FACTS, there.

Why were all the other replies deleted?

THE US GOVERNMENT MADE US

Just a server changeover.

> FACTS, there.

Look, you know as well as I that if I divulge the facts this site will get taken down and we'll all be 'removed'.

OK, seriously, there's no way of knowing for sure whether the Apollo landings were faked or not, but, just like with 9/11, the Americans cover up so much that it gives conspiracy theorists a lot of fuel. You'd think they'd WANT to show everyone proof that it was a commercial airliner that flew into the Pentagon, seeing as so many people suspect otherwise, and seeing as they would want to corroborate their official story, but NO they keep that footage hidden from the public. Why would they do that unless they have something to hide?

Personally, I think they like to have conspiracy theories surrounding events because it helps to divert attention from the worse truth. i.e. no matter which way you look at it, they fucked up on 9/11, so they'd rather have conspiracy theories flying around than proof of mistakes they made on that day. That's obviously what happened with the whole Roswell incident. They fucked up big style with whatever secret operation they were carrying out, so they allowed the UFO story to escalate. There's actually a chance that whatever happened at Roswell was related to the Apollo project - that the 'bodies' supposedly recovered from the wreckage of a 'craft' were dead test astronauts (the most sinister story is that they were Japanese POWs being used in experiments to test the limits of human beings...).

Oh, Andrew, how do you know for sure that the Earth ISN'T flat until you've seen it yourself from space? :)

"Just a server changeover."

Oh, well this link was originally totally relevant to this thread - I should re-post it I suppose, sorry that the context for its presence has been lost:

http://www.dvdactive.com/editorial/articles/star-wars-the-changes-part-one.html

I suggest you check out this website:

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/apollohoax.html

Nah, performingmonkey is one step ahead of us on that score, here:

"You can forget about all the 'evidence' from the footage shot on the lunar surface that suggests it was faked because all of that is irrelevant."

This bit's really useful. It's from here: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html and it's a good response to performingmonkey's comment about wire rigs "definitely" being used to fake the 1/6th gravity.

"To me even when sped up, the images didn't look like they were filmed in Earth's gravity. The astronauts were sidling down a slope, and they looked weird to me, not at all like they would on Earth. I will admit that if wires were used, the astronauts' gait could be simulated.

However, not the rover! If you watch the clip, you will see dust thrown up by the wheels of the rover. The dust goes up in a perfect parabolic arc and falls back down to the surface. Again, the Moon isn't the Earth! If this were filmed on the Earth, which has air, the dust would have billowed up around the wheel and floated over the surface. This clearly does not happen in the video clips; the dust goes up and right back down. It's actually a beautiful demonstration of ballistic flight in a vacuum. Had NASA faked this shot, they would have had to have a whole set (which would have been very large) with all the air removed. We don't have this technology today!"

The best rebuke against the hoax conspiracists is to read interviews with people like Bill Kaysing. When you realise how stupid they are, they lose all credibility whatsoever. Confront them with Actual Science, and they basically stick their fingers in their ears and go "LA LA LA LA NOT LISTENING!!!" Proven scientific reasons for things such as not being able to see stars get completely ignored as they continue to trot out the same, tired points.

When I see that plaque about "Men from the Earth first walked here, we came in peace for all mankind", it really stirs something in me - I'm not an American, but I am a human, and in this horrible, cynical world, it gives me a great feeling to know that there have been a few people who've devoted their entire lives to something so noble. The ultimate in exploration and discovery. And pricks like Kaysing just can't accept that these people were better than him, so he has to drag them down at every available opportunity. It's sickening.

> it gives me a great feeling to know that there have been a few people who've devoted their entire lives to something so noble

Yeah, but there's nothing 'noble' about what they did! The sole reason for going there was political. That's why there's been no manned landings for 35 years because it would have little to zero impact politically/economically (unlike something like 9/11). The technology was developed for war weaponry, V2 rockets bombing the fuck out of Europe, which is about as far from the stars as you can GET (said in Christopher Eccleston's voice). You could even say that the Apollo programme was partly built on the Nazi regime.

I'm gonna annoy you even more in a minute, so bear with me... Hey, 'Bear With Me', that'd make a good reality show, do you reckon? I'll write that down. OK...like I said, all of the 'evidence' from the moon landing footage and photos that people always go on about, the shadows, the flag, no stars, no blast crater etc. are all pointless because they can't be proved either way. We've never been to the moon, we don't know what it's like. For all we know, the sun really could look like huge studio lights. I mean, sunlight IS replicated in movies, after all. And NASA could very well be lying about not taking extra lighting along with them (why they would do so is beyond me, but they MUST have). The problem is, there'll be naysayers from now until NASA finally return there, whether it's in a hundred years or whatever.

Yeah, but there's nothing 'noble' about what they did! The sole reason for going there was political.

No, you're confusing the government behind it with the people who actually did it. You can say all you want that the only reason the government funded the whole thing was to "beat the Commies" if you want, and you might be right. But are you telling me that every single scientist and astronaut was motivated by the same desire? Fuck, no.

Quite. Space travel has always been far too risky for an individual to take part simply for political reasons, and astronauts are still risking their lives in the pursuit of knowledge. In fact, the space programme is a shining example of the capability of people from different countries to work together.

"like I said, all of the 'evidence' from the moon landing footage and photos that people always go on about, the shadows, the flag, no stars, no blast crater etc. are all pointless because they can't be proved either way. "

And like I said, great way of separating yourself from the conspiracy nutters whilst essentially arguing the same way. I'm gradually losing my sense of humour on this, but keep going.

Well, to be fair he's closer to throwing in with the christians and other religious types here - We can't personally prove one way or another, so it is as equally likely to be true as untrue. Except the logical extension of that argument is that nothing he doesn't experience for himself is verifiable. I wonder if he believes that, say, Hong Kong exists, or whether it's potentially an elaborate hoax? I mean seriously, what would it take to believe someone's gone to the moon? Is it so fantastical a claim that he can't bring himself to accept it? What about germs? Has anyone here actually ever SEEN a germ?

A fantastically good point, James. Monkey's veering dangerously towards a deranged form of postmodernism.

Well, Lyotard states somewhere or other that the postmodern condition entails some degree of schizophrenia. I can't think of anything to back that up or elaborate it, however, so I hope I've helped.

> What about germs? Has anyone here actually ever SEEN a germ?

You probably have. I wash.

> Monkey's veering dangerously towards a deranged form of postmodernism.

Well...I'd rather think outside the box than live in it...god, that sounds like something an utter twat would say (followed by an annoying laugh) at a business lunch.

To be brutally serious for a moment, look at 'The Truman Show' - Truman (played by Jim Carrey) believes everything he is told about the 'world' he lives in, he believes everything is real when it's fake. That's because he lives a nice safe life and has learned not to question things because, hey, why disrupt that? This is similar to (bear with me) when rock stars, such as Noel Gallagher, get a bit of money and security and look, suddenly they can't write for shit because their life is good. They're not holed up in a shitty flat clinging to their guitar like it's a ticket out of the doldrums, they're sipping coloured cocktails at Paul Weller's house and fucking the shit out of a model. Is there a point to this? Er...yes...life is shit, the Moon is just a hologram in the sky, we are all in Purgatory, it's all taking place in one of Hurley's dreams, and the dog is the monster. Peace out. Oh, and I've never been to Hong Kong.

Keep going.

Well...I'd rather think outside the box than live in it

I agree that it's good to question things that authority figures say rather than become some kind of socially programmed zombie, but the point is, you're supposed to pick and choose the things that seem suspicious. Do you honestly think that given the number of people who would've been involved with a hoax of this magnitude that it could be sustainable this long after anyone's stopped even caring that we've been to the moon?

It's one thing to ask whether there's actually any point to being told that the terror condition is "tangerine" or if we're getting the full explanation about David Kelly turning up dead, or even whether the death of JFK was quite as straightforward as a nutcase with a gun, but once you start questioning things that stand up to rigourous scientific analysis without any cracks then you're just heading into David Icke territory.

In my experience, moon hoax believers tend to ignore any debunking of the science behind their reasons for thinking it's a hoax and repeat the same arguments. For instance:
"The crosshair goes behind the astronaut, he was painted on the image, on top of the crosshair"
"We can prove with actual science and diagrams why this occurs"
"....BUT THE CROSSHAIR GOES BEHIND THE ASTRONAUT!"
I'd be far more inclined to believe any of it if it stood up to testing, but in the 15 years since I first read about these insane theories in the Junior Conspiracy Magazine, X-Factor, they haven't been revised at *ALL* despite the number of reasons given that debunk them. When someone tells me why the crosshair thing definitely *isn't* caused by camera exposure, then it'll have a case again.

Er, I think I may possibly have overstated my points here, but you get the general idea.

"Well...I'd rather think outside the box than live in it...god, that sounds like something an utter twat would say (followed by an annoying laugh) at a business lunch."

Yes, quite. Nothing better to help us think outside the box than a set of inspiring SMART targets.

Why stop at The Truman Show analogy? Why not add that you can see in green code, stop bullets and fly, and that you've come to set us all free? This is all profound stuff, right?

There's no point going on about the crosshair thing. The photos are real. Whether they were taken on the moon or in a studio is the question.

And regarding the whole 'but so many people would have to keep quiet' thing. A lot of people work for the government and highly classified information doesn't get out. Take Area 51 - it may not house alien technology, but the public still don't know what they do there, because it's a SECRET. It's possible to keep huge secrets. Look at the development of stealth aircraft.

Whether they were taken on the moon or in a studio is the question.

To which you refer to the behaviour of dust in gravity on the videos. Again, hoax theorists say one thing, scientists say another, and yet there's never been any response to that, only the hoaxers trotting out of the same theories as if it'll make the proof against them go away. And, like you say, if the nature of the photos isn't the issue, why do they *still* mention them? Presumably because, like christians who use Pascal's wager on idiots, it strengthens their case if they find someone who doesn't think about what they're being told.

It's possible to keep huge secrets.

This isn't just a "Don't talk about X" secret though, this is an actively scrutinised hoax we're talking about. It's one thing to keep quiet about developing stealth aircraft, it's another entirely to constantly, over a 30 year period, repeat and refine a pack of lies in the face of massive public interest. Even one-man hoaxers can have difficulty keeping their story straight. Is there any existing hoax which even approaches the scale that a moon landing hoax would be on?

Remember, the only lie (if it is a lie) is that they didn't actually go to the moon. The whole Apollo programme was real, the astronauts had been trained vigorously for an actual landing, the tech was real, they were really launched into space etc. Most people involved assumed the pictures were coming from the moon and that the astronauts were really there. People working on the moon set in a studio won't have known what was going on, they would have been fed bullshit but still told to keep their mouths shut as anyone who entered a military base would.

The most amusing theory I've read is that not even Aldrin and Armstrong knew, that they were knocked out and placed inside the craft in the studio, pretending it was the lunar surface!

okay, but what you're currently dealing with is, as you're probably aware, pure speculation. Yes, it's possible, but objectively there's no evidence that suggests that it's all a big hoax, at least, none that stands up to scrutiny. You could as easily claim that immunisation programs are really secretly harvesting the DNA of the population and have about as much evidence.

Fact is, I agree with you to an extent - once the astronauts are out of view of the naked eye in that rocket only a handful of people had *all* the information, but to jump from that to claiming outright that the moon landing was faked despite the ropey nature of the "proof" (and I'm not even accounting for the evidence to the contrary) well, that's where you become a member of the tinfoil hat brigade.

Have you ever read the Disinformation Guide, out of interest? Sounds like it'd be right up your street. I really enjoyed a lot of it, but given the amount of stuff it covers, the moon landing "hoax" is certainly notable because of its blatant omission - as in, even the most prominent subversives and activists around today couldn't scrape together a decent case for *that* one.