The Apollo Program: The Best Special Effects Hollywood Could Buy?

 

On July 20th, 1969, man first set foot on the moon.  For many in lab-coats, it represented a triumph for science; for others, humankind’s conquering of the heavens; and for the more nationalistic Americans, a major victory for the United States over the Soviets in the cosmic sport known as the space race. 

The first mention I ever heard of the conspiracy theories that held that the Apollo Eleven astronauts did not actually land on the moon was in 2001, with the airing of the Fox television show Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon.  Since the airing of that “documentary” (but never before it), I have encountered a number of people who genuinely believe that the Apollo Eleven moon-landings were faked.  It is a pretty telling reminder of how mass media exposure of fringe ideas can help popularize them, especially when conspiracy theorists’ claims are not counterpoised by the responses of representative experts. 

The conspiracy theories predate the 2001 Fox program, of course.   A 1999 Gallup poll found that six percent of Americans believed  that the Apollo moon landings were faked, not astonishingly high numbers when compared to the percentages who believe that Oswald did not shoot John F. Kennedy or deny evolution, although perhaps twenty five percent of Britons believe the moon landings were faked.  [1]

A quick Google search finds this Apollo Hoax website at the top of the results, with promises of a, huge update to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the moon landings, which, of the 40th anniversary of the moon landings, do not exist.  This website (like so many conspiracy theory treatises) does not actually put forward a cogent alternative explanation, but rather presents a laundry list of claimed inconsistencies with NASA’s version of the Apollo Eleven mission.  I am not going to bother going into detail with debunking this, as many others have already done so (some links appear at the end of this posting). 

The best, simplest, and most consistent explanation (like with so many other conspiracy theories), is the “official” one.   The Soviets successfully launched a satellite into orbit in 1957.  In 1961, they safely launched, and retrieved a man from Earth orbit.  While landing people on the moon was a much more complicated procedure, with a lot more variables, requirements, and chances for disaster, the basic  level of scientific competence and technology was not particularly different, although it did require much more complicated calculations and the technology was more complicated, it was not, on a basic level, more technology or scientifically advanced.  What it did require was more careful planning, a more complicated technological system, and a lot more money. 

One day, tourists may routinely visit the location of the first moon landings, but it may be a long time before men walk on the moon again.  Currently, NASA has no concrete plans to ever return.  Until then, we will have to be satisfied with unmanned probes, like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter that recently snapped these pictures of the Apollo mission sites. 

Courtesy NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/369228main_ap14labeled_540.jpg

Sources:

[1]http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Apollo11MoonLanding/story?id=8104410&page=1

Links:

Bad Astronomy does a good job reviewing the Fox program mentioned above: http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html

Another good debunking of popular myths by National Geographic. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/photogalleries/apollo-11-hoax-pictures/

Lessons of the ‘Fake Moon Flight’ Myth
JAMES OBERG
Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 2003, pp 23, 30 http://www.jamesoberg.com/042003lessonsfake_his.html

If Man Landed on the Moon Today

It's a shame how accurate this is.




In honor of Walter Cronkite, this is how it happened 40 years ago.

United States, Korean Government Sites Under Cyber Attack

(By North Korea?)

The predecessor to the internet was created with the intention of decentralizing critical US communication infrastructure, so that, in the case of a nuclear war or other significant disaster that may collapse traditional communication methods, the United States military and government would continue to be able to communicate.

While the United States government is still a major user of the internet, the US economy is now completely reliant on it.  While the nature of the internet is such where it would be difficult to completely collapse, a well-executed attack could slow down sections of it into near uselessness.

This is called a denial of service attack, which is generally launched against specific websites, in order to flood them with so much traffic that they are unable to function normally and either crash or slow to a crawl. 

In an attack linked with the one in South Korea, 14 major Web sites in the United States — including those of the White House, the State Department and the New York Stock Exchange — came under similar attacks, according to anti-cyberterrorism police officers in Seoul.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/technology/09cyber.html?ref=global-home

The US military is struggling to restructure their mission to include not just defending the United States from air, land, and sea attacks, but also to buttress and secure our cyber-“borders”.

The reality is disheartening.  We live in a world that is increasingly reliant on technology, technology that is grounded in sometimes classic, sometimes nascent scientific principles.  Unfortunately, our increasing reliance on technology (and the science behind it) is not correlated with an increasing understanding of those principles  among the general public.  This is a dangerous trend. 

I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time ... when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstitions and darkness. (Sagan, 1995, p. 25)

Further Reading:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/technology/13cyber.html?scp=1&sq=military%20internet%20cyberattack&st=cse 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/opinion/02goldsmith.html?scp=7&sq=military%20internet%20cyberattack&st=cse

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/13/us/politics/13cyber.html?scp=10&sq=military%20internet%20cyberattack&st=cse

References:

Sagan, C. (1995). The demon-haunted world : science as a candle in the dark (1st ed.). New York: Random House.

Why We Need Science Writers

 

Science and technology are essential to almost every aspect of modern society, yet technology, and the scientific principles on which it operates, might as well be magic to a large portion of the population. Science articles can be just an essential contributor to understand of the modern world as understanding developing stories in Washington or the Middle East; yet, science reporting frequently is effected by journalists with minimal background in the fields on which they are reporting, and with no editorial review by experts, much less an accomplished science journalist or editor.

Given how essential good science reporting is, combined with how ignorant most of the population is with regard to scientific facts (including otherwise educated people, like journalists), it is a travesty that major news sources leave science reporting in the hands of journalists that are neither competent to report on the subject nor to explain complicated scientific discoveries, in context with the current body of scientific knowledge, to the general public.

Take this recent example from Fox News's website.

Red giant stars are thought to have short, complicated and violent lifespans. Lasting at most a few million years, they quickly burn out their hydrogen fuel and then switch to helium, carbon and other elements in a series of partial collapses, refuelings and restarts.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525695,00.html [accessed: 07JULY2009]

Red giants are a phase of stellar evolution after the star has moved off the main sequence (id est, exhausted the hydrogen in its core). This article almost implies that Betelgeuse was always a red giant and that it was a red giant before it "burn[t] out [its] hydrogen fuel." Furthermore, the elements that a giant will "burn" depends on its mass. While larger stars may burn "carbon and other elements," less massive stars like the sun will not. While this may seem a minor point of contention with the Fox article, anyone familiar with the evolution of stars would have rewritten this in a more accurate and less confusing manner and given a proper explanation of what a red giant is. Perhaps something such as:

Betelgeuse long ago left the main sequence, or normal hydrogen burning phase of its (existence), and began the giant phase of its existence, which, in the case of a less massive star such as the sun will result in a white dwarf, and in the case of a more massive star such as Betelgeuse, will result in a core-collapse supernova, which is a spectacular explosion which occurs at the end of the fusion life of a large star, leaving either a neutron star or a black hole.