cheaters :: moonlanding hoax debunked :: moon environment




If the Moon has one sixth the gravity of the Earth, dust should float around in the air much longer.

The Moon has no air for dust to float in. In a vacuum dust behaves exactly like any other object. You throw it up and it will fall down. It is no different from what a rock would do. Rocks do not float or billow around, nor does the dust, even if it is lighter. Without resistance from an atmosphere everything falls to the surface with the same speed, regardless of weight. Because there is no air, dust falls quicker on the Moon than on Earth. Still, it falls slower than you'd expect a rock to do on Earth because the gravity on the Moon is less.

These two facts make almost dead certain proof of a lunar landing. There is absolutely nowhere on Earth that you could make dust behave in this, to us, peculiar way. If you were to create a vacuum on Earth, the dust would fall very quickly, just as we are used to a rock doing. But here is evidence of dust behaving like it's in a vacuum and in low gravity. Without modern computer movie graphics there is no way this could be faked on Earth. Creating a vacuum chamber large enough to hold an entire fake Lunar scene with a Moon lander and astronauts running around is beyond even modern technology, what to speak of the technology of the sixties. And there is no technology to artificially influence gravity on such a large scale either.

Apollo 11 photographs AS11405850, AS11405917, AS11405918, AS11405920, AS11405925, and many of the other missions, show the feet of the Moon lander without any dust on them, which should have been there as it was thrown about by the rocket engine on descent.

According to Kaysing and a Fox Television program, this is the strongest evidence that the Moon landings are faked. They allege that with the swirling dust from lander's descent engine, the foot pads should be covered with dust.

This argument is wrong on two counts. First, the allegation that there is no Moon dust on any of the landing pads of any of the landers is wrong. Photographs AS14669234, AS1610717441, AS1610717442, and AS1713420388 clearly show Moon dust on the footpad. Judging from the foot prints next to the pads of Apollo 16 and 17, it is highly likely that the dust got there by being kicked onto to it by one of the astronauts. The dust on the footpad of Apollo 14 obviously got on when it dug down in the surface during touch down.

Second, it is far from accurate that there should be dust on the pads for reasons other than mentioned above. Absence of dust would actually prove, rather than discount, that the lander had landed in an alien environment. The downward traveling exhaust stream from the rocket engine would impact the ground and rebound mostly outward and radially away from the surface. Since there is no atmosphere to interact with, the gas molecules would simply fly off and disperse. The only dust particles that would be displaced would be those directly impacted by the exhaust gas. Since the exhaust stream was concentrated mostly in the area directly beneath the lander, this zone would experience the greatest disturbance. The area adjacent to the lander would be largely unaffected by the exhaust stream. On Earth, the exhaust gas would impact and displace air molecules that would, in turn, displace other air molecules and so on. This phenomenon would create a large area of disturbance and a cloud of dust. Since the Moon has no atmosphere this type of widespread disturbance would be nonexistent.

There is also the issue of the height of the lander above the surface. The lander had landing sensors built into three of the four footpads. When one of the six-foot-long sensors scraped the surface, a light went off in the cabin and the lander's pilot cut the descent engine. Without exhaust to circulate the dust particles, the swirling of the dust essentially ceased within seconds of the engine cutoff. This will be discussed further with the crater-beneath-the-lander issue.

There is no water on the Moon, yet the dust clumps together like wet sand in the astronauts' footprints. These footprints should have disappeared like footprints in dry sand dunes.

The lunar surface is predominately composed of materials that fall under the general category of silicates. Silica has a natural tendency to bond with other silica, forming large molecular chains. When a meteoroid impacts the Moon, much of the energy goes into fracturing the surrounding structure causing breaks in the molecular bonds. On Earth, exposed bonds quickly fill with oxygen in a process called oxidation or weathering. On the Moon, with a total lack of oxygen, these bonds have nothing to attach to until an event occurs that aligns the molecules. When an object, such as an astronaut's boot, disturbs lunar dust new molecular bonds are created. The new bonds enable the dust to hold its shape, forming an impression of the deforming object. Thus, footprints can form despite the absence of water.

The powerful rocket engine on the lander should have created a crater beneath the lander, yet none of the photographs of the successful Apollo Moon landings show one.

Several facts:

(1) Although the lander's descent engine was capable of outputting a maximum of 10,500 lbs of thrust (compared to a modern jet fighter's 18,000 and 22,000 lbs of thrust), it was throttled down to below 3,000 lbs as it neared the lunar surface. While still several feet above the ground, the descent engine was shut down as probes, extending 6 feet below the footpads, sensed contact with the surface. This was done to prevent the rocket's thrust rebounding off the surface and damaging the lander itself.

(2) The engine nozzle was about 54 inches across, which means it had an area of 2300 square inches. The thrust of 3000 lbs therefore generated a pressure of only about 1.3 pounds per square inch. On Earth, the air in our atmosphere constrains the thrust of a rocket into a narrow column, which is why you get long flames and columns of smoke from the back of a rocket. In a vacuum, exhaust gases expand rapidly radially outward once exiting the engine nozzle, which lowers the pressure even more.

(3) As NASA did not have a precise landing point in mind, the lander did not descend vertically. The actual site it landed at was picked out by the astronauts themselves as they descended at an angle, traveling across the landscape and skidding to a stop. Consequently the lander did not hover directly above its final landing site for any significant length of time. So there was no thrust powerful and long enough directly above the landing point to cause a crater.

(4) The Moon's surface is covered by a layer of rocky material called regolith, which consists of fine dust particles, glass spheres and a jumble of large boulders and rocky debris. At all of the landing sites, the astronauts found this layer to be about two inches thick. Regolith has many unique properties, the most obvious being that the particles are very jagged, which causes them to interlock. When subjected to pressure, regolith will resist, almost like solid rock.

When one considers these facts the truth becomes obvious. The exhaust stream was not powerful enough or centralized enough to displace the regolith and blast out a crater. In Apollo 11 photograph AS11405921 you can see the discoloration caused by the exhaust stream and a general lack of surface dust, which was mostly blown away. After the dust was removed a harder surface was exposed. Especially noteworthy is the obvious radial pattern of disturbance beneath the exhaust nozzle. You can also see a groove caused by one of the probes on the lander's feet as it came down and skidded across the lunar surface. In Apollo 12 photograph AS12466780 the lander did leave a strikingly clear, discolored track (when photographed at right angles to the sun) as it descended to its final resting place across the lunar surface.

The Moon rocks allegedly collected and returned to Earth by Apollo astronauts are identical to rocks found here on Earth, in Arizona.

Between 1969 and 1972 Apollo missions brought back 842 pounds of lunar rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand and dust from the lunar surface. The six space flights returned 2,196 individual specimens from six sites on the Moon. These specimens have been processed into more than 97,000 individually cataloged samples. The lunar sample laboratory at Johnson Space Center is the chief repository for the Apollo samples where pristine lunar samples are prepared for shipment to scientists and educators. More than 60 laboratories worldwide actively pursue sample studies; some 1,100 samples are sent out to researchers annually.

Over the last 30 years thousands of geologists from all over the world have analyzed these samples and found that they are like nothing else on Earth. There has never been presented any proof of any rocks from Arizona being identical to any of the specimens of Moon rocks.

The Moon rocks allegedly collected and returned to Earth by Apollo astronauts were actually manufactured by NASA in a laboratory on Earth.

It has been suggested that researchers could not to tell the difference between fake and authentic rocks since no one had ever examined a Moon rock before. This claim is utter nonsense. In addition to the rocks returned by Apollo, there are samples of lunar rocks that have fallen to Earth as meteorites (which are very rare, with only about 30 known samples). Tests have shown the Apollo Moon rocks and the meteorites are of identical origin; however, the Apollo samples lack other features that would distinguish them as meteorites, such as scorching and oxidation. Also, the Moon rocks have characteristics that are not found in terrestrial or artificial rocks, such as evidence of meteoroid bombardment and exposure to cosmic rays. Likewise, terrestrial rocks have unique characteristics not found in the Moon rocks, such as weathering and exposure to water. Finally, the Moon rocks returned by Apollo have been determined to be between 3.1 and 4.4 billion years old.

The Moon rocks allegedly collected and returned to Earth by Apollo astronauts were actually collected and returned to Earth by robotic spacecraft.

Any mission capable of returning over 800 pounds of rock and soil samples would be a massive, complex and difficult undertaking. If NASA could pull this off, then surely they had the technical know-how to land a manned vehicle. In fact, with an astronaut at the controls, a manned mission would likely have greater odds of success than a robotic mission. Perhaps the greatest case for the Apollo landings exists in the variety of rock samples collected. A robotic mission would be limited to a random collection of samples in the lander's immediate vicinity. However, the Apollo astronauts visited vastly different geological sites and were able to roam about the surface looking for particularly interesting and valuable specimens. For example, it is very unlikely that a robot would have been lucky enough to scoop up the "genesis rock" found by Apollo 15 astronauts. Only trained human explorers could collect the diversity of samples credited to the Apollo astronauts.

During the 1970s the USSR successfully completed three lunar sample return missions: Luna 16 (1970), Luna 20 (1972) and Luna 24 (1976). However, these missions returned a grand total of only 10.6 ounces of soil. The properties of these samples are the same as those of the Apollo samples.

Apollo 16 photograph AS1610717446 shows a rock with a clearly defined "C" marking on it, which is a studio prop identification marking that proves that the photographs were made on a fake lunar landscape in a studio.

This rock is famous amongst those who want you to believe that the Apollo landings were faked. It is suggested that every rock on the faked landscape was individually labeled, starting at A. The image, found widely spread over the internet, indeed shows what appears to be the letter C. Magnification of the image, however, has shown that it is no more than a hair or fiber that was likely on the paper when the print was made. On the magnification it is clearly differently colored and even casts its own shadow. This print was then scanned to produce the digital image seen on many web pages -- third generation at best. Scans of the original have been found to be clean, with no evidence of the C. The issue of original scans versus third or worse generation scans will come up more often, as it underlies several of the arguments against the Moon landings.

The lunar rover's tires should have burst in the vacuum atmosphere of the Moon.

The lunar rovers did not have ordinary, pressurized tires. The wheels were made of a see-through wire mesh supported on spokes, as can be seen very clearly on Apollo photographs AS158811901, AS1713420475, and AS1713720979.

The Apollo astronauts should have been pierced by thousands of micro-meteoroids.

Shielding was provided to protect the Apollo astronauts from micro-meteoroid bombardment. Due to their low mass, only a thin layer of material was necessary to stop these dust-sized particles. For example, the Lunar Module was protected by a thin aluminum outer shield a few thousandths of an inch thick. The astronauts' spacesuits included a micro-meteoroid garment to protect them while performing activities on the lunar surface.

The astronauts' footprints are deeper than the footpad imprints of the lander, which weighed 17 tons.

Hoax advocates often quote the weight of the lander as 16 to 18 tons (weights varied mission to mission). This was the lander's weight on Earth when fully fueled and included about 9 tons of descent stage propellant. By the time the lander reached the surface of the Moon, its weight in lunar gravity was only about 2,700 lbs. With four 37-inch diameter footpads, the load on the surface was about 90 lbs per square foot. Neil Armstrong's fully suited weight on the Moon was 58 lbs. His boots covered an area of about one square foot, giving a load of 58 lbs per square foot. In Armstrong's own words "the LM footpads are only depressed in the surface about 1 or 2 inches." On the other hand, the footprints of the astronauts were depressed only a fraction of an inch, although people often exaggerate their depth.

The pressure inside the astronauts' spacesuits was greater than inside a football, which should have made them puff up like the Michelin Man and restricted the movements of their joints.

While on the surface of the Moon, the Apollo astronauts wore a spacesuit known as the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU). The EMU was a closed-circuit pressure vessel that enveloped the astronaut. The environment inside the suit consisted of 100% oxygen at 3.7 PSI (about a third that of a football). The complete suit included a liquid cooling garment, pressure garment assembly, and integrated thermal micro-meteoroid garment. The pressure garment was an airtight bladder with accordion joints at the knees and elbows, and swivel joints at the shoulders to allow mobility. When pressurized, the suit was kept from ballooning outward too far by a restraint layer of non-stretch netting. The fabric of the EMU's outer garment covered the pressure garment assembly.



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