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June 18, 2013

Mythbusters set to bust moon landing hoax myths

by Brad Trechak, posted Mar 14th 2008 9:42AM

MythbustersMythbusters on the Discovery Channel will be airing a special about the "hoax" of the original Moon landing. I guess they're going to determine if the 1969 Apollo mission happened or not.

The team of Kari, Grant, and Tori went to the Marshall Space Flight Center to use a vacuum chamber. While there, they will be recreating Dave Scott's famous hammer and feather drop from the Apollo 15 mission.

They'll also be dealing with the hoax claim that dry lunar regolith can't hold a footprint, and how the flag can wave in a vacuum. They will be trying to reproduce a lunar surface in a studio somewhere.

I firmly believe that the Moon landing happened, but I also love watching wacky conspiracy theories. I loved the movie JFK, so I think I might try to catch this one. The air date has not been finalized for the episode.

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40_octaves

There is no dust on the lunar lander's feet. Staged footage. Stanley Kubrick stuff. A show an' tell. There is certainly a lot of difference in how we went than what was shown.

August 08 2009 at 4:34 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jeff Goebel

I always considered the moon landing real, but the video footage fake. I think they needed the moon landing to be filmed to be the inspiring event it was at the time, but I think they may have made fake footage just like hollywood does to make everything look good.

...like reality TV reshoots. It's hollywood real, not real real.

March 16 2008 at 8:22 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to Jeff Goebel's comment
Phil

But why should the footage be faked if the missions were real? It's not like that footage is of especially high quality, is it? You also see exactly what you'd expect to see from a place with no atmosphere and 1/6 gravity, and that would be impossible to fake with 1969 technology.

There are a lot of people (the conspiracy theorists) who base most of their arguments on the footage NOT looking real, or at least not matching their intuitive preconceptions of what it should look like. Yet it does match what a rigorously scientific analysis does say it should look like. Doesn't that argue it was real?

I am a communications engineer. I have analyzed the Apollo communications systems and I can say that what I saw is perfectly consistent with the expected performance of their systems.

August 29 2008 at 11:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Phil

I should say that even with modern CGI, it is still extremely difficult to fake the moon. An excellent simulation of the moon was in the recent IMAX movie "Magnificent Desolation". Despite the most modern CGI and extreme attention to detail, I easily and quickly spotted many clues that revealed that it was a product of Hollywood. None of these clues -- none -- appeared in the actual Apollo footage.

For starters, there is a closeup of an astronaut's boot walking on the moon. It clearly kicks up a cloud of fine dust -- something that simply cannot happen on the moon, and which did not happen in the real Apollo footage.

The same error appeared in "Apollo 13" during Tom Hanks' fantasy sequence of walking on the moon.

August 29 2008 at 11:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Freezer

I've run across several conspiracy wonks over the years, and I've fallen into the habit of simply asking them one question a friend of mine frequently cites: If they Moon Landing was faked, don't you think the Russians would've pounced on the evidence to discredit the US? It's not like they would've been tracking the launch or monitoring the signals or anything like that...

March 16 2008 at 6:58 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Freezer's comment
Phil

Ah, the Apollo conspiracy theorists DO have an answer for why the Russians aided the conspiracy: they needed our wheat!

No explanation of why they remain silent long after our wheat sales in, what, the 1970s? Or why they remained silent before we ever negotiated the deal.

Don't underestimate the ability of these guys to believe the craziest, most ludicrous things.

August 29 2008 at 11:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
superrrguy

This show is fantastic!

Will they build a scale of the moon and then blow it up?

March 14 2008 at 3:56 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to superrrguy's comment
Eugene

nah, you're thinking smashlab.

March 14 2008 at 4:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Alicia

Jaime and Adam like to blow stuff up too....

March 14 2008 at 11:23 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Eugene

national geographic did a pretty good show on these nut jobs and answered every claim quite handidly.

But hey, I'm all for Jamie and Adam taking these clowns to task as well.

March 14 2008 at 3:43 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
LC

It's gonna be tough to bust that myth with the irrefutable evidence found on this site:

http://stuffucanuse.com/fake_moon_landings/moon_landings.htm

March 14 2008 at 2:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jeff Edsell

Can't wait for this one -- I think the Moon landing conspiracy myths are fun too. Unfortunately, everything the Mythbusters manage to reproduce in a TV studio will be used the conspiracy fans as proof of the hoax!

March 14 2008 at 11:11 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
sitruc

I never know the schedule or plan around new episodes, but I watch the show since it seems to always be on. I hate their approach to mythbusting. They rarely use scientific process or method which leads to attempting to break myths by flawed methods.

March 14 2008 at 10:47 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Brian

Occam's Razor. Which is more likely: human ingenuity, strength and courage actually placed people on the moon, or there is a massive shadowy conspiracy going on almost 40 years now, involving thousands of people, nary a one of them coming out from the shadows, making a deathbed confession or a tell-all book?

Conspiracy theories can be a fun mental exercise, but people who legitimately believe them just aren't worth responding to. Penn & Teller had an episode that summed it up quite nicely.

March 14 2008 at 10:42 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
MCW

I hate how Mythbusters takes 8 weeks off, does an episode, leaves for ten weeks, comes back for 2 episodes...

Why can't they get on a real schedule? They used to be the highlight of Wednesday nights... now - nothing. I thoroughly enjoyed Macgyver myths, they could do ten episodes about those. It's amazing how factual they have been.

I don't really care about the Moon landing myths too much, but I make a point to not miss an episode with Kari in it :P

March 14 2008 at 10:32 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply

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