Did humans land on the moon?

Please vote.

According to me we never landed or perhaps apollo 13 was the only mission they tried to leave low earth orbit. The mission of that complexity and not even a single fatality is hard to digest of course 3 astronauts died in 1967 at the launchpad and not during the voyage. Apollo missions were the sincere attempt but we did not have the technology to safely send humans 240,000 miles away and bring them home safe. There are many anomalies that you can research it up. Sometimes it is just the body language that gives away, watch apollo 11 press conference. We still have many challenges to resolve before we could send a human beyond earth's protective magnetosphere.

I do think the moon landings were real. Achievements of such magnitude are difficult to fake, and it becomes near impossible when you consider that there was a hawkish rival like USSR who was adept in spying, monitored every move of USA and would've never let go of such an easy opportunity to discredit USA by catching them red handed trying to fake an achievement.

I so very want to believe we went up there, but, I have grown skeptical over the years. Some of the claims from the conspiracy theories are bull like lander should have created a crater, shadow angles etc. but there are a lot of legit anomalies too. Why there's never a 360 degree shoot of the panorama, astronauts casual attitude kicking the rocks, i'd be pissing my suit, a slight puncture and i'm done. The ascent of the lunar module looks so fake like a confetti blast launching 33000 lbs in orbit though the gravity is 1/6th but still. More and more people have grown skeptical and the number is only going to rise. If we do not prove it in next 50 years, lunar landing would become a fairy tale and no one would believe in it. Hitler once said "Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it". And the compartmentalization of the apollo program made it easier as only handful of people would know the truth.

Check out the body language of the astronauts and the go over the comment section.
[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BI_ZehPOMwI[/YOUTUBE]

And for the russia, not sure they really had the technology to track the manned flight. How would they tell the craft is carrying humans? Did they know apollo's radio frequency? And those were the days when people struggled with the tv antennas just to receive a good signal from near by station. While russia was ahead of US in space race, they did not even try to send humans on the moon and still can't do it but US did it in less than a decade. Just saying.

Another interesting debate link.
http://www.debate.org/opinions/was-the-1969-moon-landing-faked

Doc, this would have made a good debate back in the 1970's when information was not freely and easily available. In this day and age, we don't even need to be critical thinkers to either understand the fact sheet issued by NASA in 1977 or evaluate the 3rd party evidence for Apollo moon landings provided by space agencies not connected to NASA (such as JAXA or ISRO); all we would need to do is read up on a few wiki articles to rebut conspiracy theories ourselves.

Skepticism is good, and in fact, science encourages it, but you can't turn a blind eye to evidence and rational answers. All the valid questions pertaining to moon landings have already been answered, patiently, in hundreds of articles by experts. There is no point copy-pasting those here; if one is really open minded, they can seek the answers themselves.

I don't know what you mean by "And the compartmentalization of the apollo program made it easier as only handful of people would know the truth.". About 400,000 people worked on the Apollo project for 10 years. Them, their families and friends, the 12 men who walked on the moon, their families and friends, the command modules pilots, their families and friends, the astronauts, their families and friends,...how many people were silenced do you think?! Forget these, how did the powers-be silence the mighty Soviet union and the rest of the countries considering a lot of those countries were monitoring the missions real-time and tracking them by radar?!

Body language of the astronauts during the interview? Seriously?

K.Universe, this surely is good debate in this day and age in contrast to your belief. People were more gullible back in 1970 than today. We question our government more, and keep an open mind today. JAXA and ISRO had flybys over the lunar surface and these missions were not to prove apollo landing sites. Did they release any pics of leftover lunar descent stages or the artifacts, no. Chandrayan flyby simply mapped the lunar surface. With today's technology it shouldn't be too hard to take high resolution pictures of apollo landing sites but we still can't do it or should I say we don't want to do it for the fear of exposing the biggest hoax of the mankind. LRO released bunch of pictures with arrow pointing to the pixels that supposedly are the lander artifacts, totally laughable, while we have high resolution pictures of earth through the atmosphere from low orbiting satellite and we can even spot our cars yet can't provide high res pics of the lunar landing site from atmosphere-less moon.

Yes, the body language of astronauts reveals a lot, you don't even need to take any psychology classes to see thru that. Please do read the comment section from the video, it is pure gold. Let me paste few here:

"wow body language tells ALL!!!!! does not look like three astronauts that just witnessed the ultimate humanity experience! Are they at some "funeral"!?"

"If I had gone to the moon, I would have a smile bigger than the moon itself.. To be the first to experience such a monumental achievement. I don't think I would have been able to contain my joy, especially in front of the worlds media. But these 3 seem so miserable."

"They don't look happy. They all look very dejected as if they're hiding a deep dark secret...or as if they're under duress to say what they're told to say or else. You think that they would be super excited, enthusiastic, and happy. But look at their faces and demeanor. They're preoccupied mentally. Sad to watch."

"Wait a second. These guys just went to the moon, the first humans to do so, and this is their reaction? You can forget all the technical/science evidence presented to show it was a hoax. This is all you need"

"Look at 48:40 Armstrong answers a question about if the saw stars and the guy on his left f**ks up saying "i dont remember seeing any stars" and Armstrong gives him the elbow as if he was saying hey shut up."

I rest my case.

Doc, I don't need to "believe". Belief comes into play only when there is no proof. The moon rocks are proof enough for those interested in empirical evidence. The moon rocks have been tested by various labs around the world.

You are right, we have the technology to take high resolution images of our streets from up above 200 miles but as you know 240,000 miles is a different ball game altogether.

If you don't trust the original footage and photographs, or the images obtained by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, what would make you trust any pictures or videos taken today or tomorrow by whoever? That's a question you need to answer to yourself and not to me.

FYI, privately funded teams are gearing up to place a spacecraft / rover on the moon's surface that could travel at least 500 meters and transmit high-definition video and images back to Earth.

https://lunar.xprize.org/

Maybe we could postpone our little debate till then?

P.S: Body language is not admissible in any argument, much less in a court of law.

Originally posted by: K.Universe.

Doc, I don't need to "believe". Belief comes into play only when there is no proof. The moon rocks are proof enough for those interested in empirical evidence. The moon rocks have been tested by various labs around the world.

Moon rocks is no proof humans landed on the moon. Russians claimed to have brought back moon soil with the unmanned luna probes. Moreover, moon rocks have been found in Antarctica too. Is it just a coincidence that Von Braun german engineer who built saturns for nasa made several trips to Antarctica during apollo program, just saying. Also, recently there was a news that moon rock gifted to a former dutch prime minister by an US ambassador turned out to be piece of petrified wood.

Originally posted by: K.Universe.

You are right, we have the technology to take high resolution images of our streets from up above 200 miles but as you know 240,000 miles is a different ball game altogether.

Are you telling me it was easier to send humans on a craft that traveled 240,000 miles, then slowed down to get captured by the moon gravity, started orbiting moon at 3700 mph 50 miles above lunar surface while lunar module undocked with 2 men, retro rockets fired to start the descent, LM controlled by gyro stabilizer soft landed perfectly on a single column rocket, the technology we are still struggling to make perfect. Then lifted off (ascent footage looks like cheesy 60's special effects) the lunar surface attaining 3700 mph speed to make a rendezvous with CSM, it then again fired it's rocket to escape moon gravity to a trajectory back home.

But it is a different ball game to send an unmanned craft one way to moon to orbit at 50 miles over lunar surface just to click high resolution pics?

Originally posted by: K.Universe.

If you don't trust the original footage and photographs, or the images obtained by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, what would make you trust any pictures or videos taken today or tomorrow by whoever? That's a question you need to answer to yourself and not to me.

I would be happiest to see high resolution pics from a 3rd party not affiliated to nasa as a proof we indeed landed.

Originally posted by: K.Universe.

FYI, privately funded teams are gearing up to place a spacecraft / rover on the moon's surface that could travel at least 500 meters and transmit high-definition video and images back to Earth.

https://lunar.xprize.org/

Good to know that. That would be exciting.

Originally posted by: K.Universe.

Maybe we could postpone our little debate till then?

Sure

Originally posted by: K.Universe.

P.S: Body language is not admissible in any argument, much less in a court of law.

This is not a court, just be true to yourself and tell me you don't see anything wrong with their behavior. I'm fine if you don't see anything wrong.

Originally posted by: doczatka

Moon rocks is no proof humans landed on the moon. Russians claimed to have brought back moon soil with the unmanned luna probes. Moreover, moon rocks have been found in Antarctica too. Is it just a coincidence that Von Braun german engineer who built saturns for nasa made several trips to Antarctica during apollo program, just saying. Also, recently there was a news that moon rock gifted to a former dutch prime minister by an US ambassador turned out to be piece of petrified wood.

The lunar sample returns from Soviet Union's unmanned spacecrafts weighed less than a kilogram. The Apollo landing missions collected about 380 kilograms. Would you be willing to share your evidence on how that much lunar rock material could have been obtained from the moon by unmanned spacecrafts, or better yet, from Antarctica? Would you also explain the differences in terms of composition between lunar meteorites found on earth and samples collected by the Apollo missions?

BTW, lunar rocks are a US national treasure. Back in 2003, a federal court set the price of 1 gram (yes, 1 gram) of lunar rock at $50,000 based on how much it cost the US to get hold of those during the Apollo missions. if you (or others) think it is as easy as pie to go some place on this planet and excavate kilograms and kilograms of lunar rock, you should absolutely start your expedition today. It would be well worth your time and effort.

Originally posted by: doczatka

Are you telling me it was easier to send humans on a craft that traveled 240,000 miles, then slowed down to get captured by the moon gravity, started orbiting moon at 3700 mph 50 miles above lunar surface while lunar module undocked with 2 men, retro rockets fired to start the descent, LM controlled by gyro stabilizer soft landed perfectly on a single column rocket, the technology we are still struggling to make perfect. Then lifted off (ascent footage looks like cheesy 60's special effects) the lunar surface attaining 3700 mph speed to make a rendezvous with CSM, it then again fired it's rocket to escape moon gravity to a trajectory back home.

That's not how it went down. But, if I really have an interest in knowing the mission highlights, I would consult credible sources.

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo11.html

Originally posted by: doczatka

But it is a different ball game to send an unmanned craft one way to moon to orbit at 50 miles over lunar surface just to click high resolution pics?

The context back when I brought this up was Google Earth program giving us the ability to view the globe through high-resolution graphics and satellite images as opposed to our best telescopes not being to able to give us similar abilities such as providing us high resolution pics of the moon or some other celestial object.

Every mission has its own set of scientific objectives and allocated funds. Sometimes, they do extend the initial set of objectives. The LRO mission is not about silencing conspiracy theorists. it is about mapping moon's surface, identifying sites with potential resources, etc. it mostly focuses on the polar regions of the moon. it is bonus that it provided images of landers and equipment from previous missions.

The straightforward "occam's razor" story along with extremely credible footage, images, and lunar rock samples belongs to NASA. You (conspiracy) theorists on the other hand are presenting convoluted explanations asking us to believe in tons of additional postulated events and/or stories which have no direct proof whatsoever, and in the process, undermining the achievements and accomplishments of national (or global, depending upon how you look at it) heroes and brilliant men/women.

Dude, I said "Moon rocks is no proof humans landed on the moon". Russians claimed to have done it by sending unmanned craft whether you scoop out the soil or the rocks, it is plausible. This does not prove humans landed on the moon. Do you think any lab or research institute is going to discredit it anyway? Most of the research institutes are govt funded and no scientist would ever say out loud or acknowledge something that would stop the funding or hurt national sentiments. And how about you showing an evidence that the rocks are not obtained from an unmanned mission or from Antarctica? You believe it because that's what you have been told and yes govt never lies and you should always believe what govt tells you.

That's not how it went down. But, if I really have an interest in knowing the mission highlights, I would consult credible sources

I gave you a high level overview of simple orbital physics involving alleged lunar landings or with in any future landings. Do you care to explain what's wrong in it? I don't care if the orbiting speed or the altitude was slightly different or the descent stage involved more than gryo controller, may be attitude control thrusters and more. It still soft landed on the single column rocket technology we are trying to prove it out on earth. The intent was to point you out sending humans to the moon was a cake walk back then that we did it 6 six times then how come it is so difficult to get high resolution pics of the artifacts today? I understand every mission has certain objectives and if LRO was not intended to photograph the landing sites then why they did it, and published low resolution pics with arrows and made further fool out of themselves? Some 580 million dollar mission but they forgot to install a high resolution camera. I feel sorry for Neil, I really respected the man but he became recluse and that's the sad truth.