(Merged) Fetzer / Burton Apollo Hoax debate thread

[Kevin M. West]

Someone borrowed a moon rover and drove it across the beach at Malibu?

Clearly not, since the tire tracks seen were not from the rover wheels.

And why does the background so strongly resemble the background in so many other "moon rover photographs" that are in the "official" collection?

What background? You can only see ground in that picture, no sky, no mountains, nothing but sand and dirt.

[Kevin M. West]

Ready for a laugh? Same artist on fotosearch. Title "Desert Tracks".

http://www.fotosearch.com/CSP067/k0672584/

http://www.fotosearch.com/CSP067/k0673508/

[Duane Daman]

Ready for a laugh? Same artist on fotosearch. Title "Desert Tracks".

http://www.fotosearch.com/CSP067/k0672584/

http://www.fotosearch.com/CSP067/k0673508/

"Desert Tracks"

Armstrong: "The surface is much like the high desert of the United States."

Correction: The surface IS the high desert of the United States.

It really is difficult to tell the "moon" and the desert apart, isn't it?

* Edited to delete the word "lunar" from Armstrong's quote .. He never said the word lunar before the word surface .. So I guess he really is an honest guy after all!

Edited September 8, 2010 by Duane Daman

[Kevin M. West]

Duane never disappoints.

[Duane Daman]

Besides the fact that the soil looks wrong and the footprints look wrong, the track in question has a tread pattern different than every single apollo rover picture or the tires themselves. Notice the repeating pattern down the middle of the tread (highlighted green) that doesn't exist in any apollo photo or on the rover wheel:

The only thing that picture has in common with some apollo photos is that it's in black and white.

Well, at least it was in black and white until you added the green part.. The two pictures have more in common that just being in black and white.. The

"moon" terrain looks very similar as well.

Doesn't look that similar to me. The moon isn't covered in sand.

Maybe those tracks were made by crane that lifted the Rover onto the moonset.

Yes, maybe they built a different set just for that one picture, covered it in sand instead of lunar regolith, drove a crane through it, walked all over it in sneakers that didn't exist in the 60's, and then waited 40 years to release that single image through fotosearch.com. Perfectly logical.

Actually the "moon" does appear to be covered in sand in many of the Apollo photos .. I'm surprised you never noticed that before.

As for my comment about the crane tracks, it's called being facitious, since it's obvious that desert pic is not one of the original Apollo fakes.. The dead giveaway being that in the original fakes, the moonset crew always more moonboots matching those of the Apollo astronots. Pretty clever, huh?

Kevin never disappoints.

Edited September 8, 2010 by Duane Daman

[Guest James H. Fetzer]

REPLY TO BURTON'S FIRST RESPONSE (IN THREE PARTS)

Part 3. That my contributions are proceeding at a snail's pace has to do with the fact that (i) I am new to this, (ii) I do not have replies that I can take "off the shelf", and (iii) that I am giving these issues a fresh look, but I am going to make some mistakes along the way. That should not be too surprising, since everyone else involved in this knows more about the "moon photos" than I do. But it occurs to me that, if I had some fake "moon photos", I would surround them with "artist's conceptions", "training photographs", and "photo composites" to create a background against which discoveries about some of these anomalies could be deflected by alleging that they were "mixed up" with the real Apollo photos, were not from the right set, and all of that. That makes it easier to disarm finds.

Now that I am getting my feet wet, I am not surprised that I might have made a mistake in suggesting that the moon rover may have been located "using a crane", which is less likely than at least one alternative. It would have been cumbersome, but it might have used a harness (or "cradle") to lift the rover. Either driving it or pushing it would not have left the areas between the tires undisturbed by rover tracks, which is the oddity that indicates these images have been staged or otherwise faked. The best method to have used to do that may have been much simpler, such as the use of photo compositing, a technique that has been around at least since 1858! (See THE GREAT ZAPRUDER FILM HOAX, p. 44 and p. 139.) Something like that might have been more efficient.

A more systematic approach to the issues before us, therefore, would involve the application of the four stages of scientific investigations: PUZZLEMENT, where something simply does not fit into our background knowledge and beliefs; SPECULATION, enumerating the possible alternative explanations that might account for the anomalous phenomenon; ADAPTATION, comparing the alternatives with respect to their respective explanatory power, using likelihood measures of evidential support; and, finally, EXPLANATION, accepting the hypothesis with the highest likelihood, when the evidence has "settled down" and all points in the same direction. When the evidence is inconsistent and does not hang together, then the probability of fabrication is great.

When some of the evidence has been fabricated or faked, then its exposure as fabricated or faked will be what “points in the same direction” as the evidence that is authentic. In the case of the assassination of JFK, for example, establishing that the weapon cannot have fired the bullets that killed him, that he was on the 2nd floor at the time of the shooting, that the palm print on the barrel was created after his death, and that the back-yard photos of him were his head pasted on someone else’s body all serve to reinforce other indications that he was the “patsy”, not the assassin. See, for example, “Dealey Plaza Revisited: What Happened to JFK?” < http://www.und.edu/instruct/jfkconference/ > and “JFK Assassination. How Patsies are Framed: The Case of Lee Harvey Oswald” < http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16224 >

The likelihood of an hypothesis h, given evidence e, equals the probability of evidence e if hypothesis h were true. Thus, we are looking for the hypothesis that would have the highest probability as the cause of producing the evidence as its effect. The probability that the weapon could not fire the rounds, that he was not on the 6th floor, that his print was planted, and that the backyard photos’ were faked, if Oswald was the assassin of JFK, is exceedingly small, since it should not have been necessary to frame a guilty man. The probability of those same effects, if Oswald was the “patsy”, however, is very high. Since one hypothesis is preferable to another when it has a higher likelihood on evidence e, the patsy hypothesis, whose likelihood is very high, is clearly preferable to the assassin hypothesis, whose likelihood is exceedingly small. The evidence suggests he didn’t do it.

Kevin West has argued that “The missing tracks between the wheels are easy to explain. The astronauts had to stand between the wheels to get on and off the rover. They had to walk around the rover to use the equipment on it. They walked all over the tracks and destroyed them in the process. It's clear when you look at the other pictures from the same time, the soil around the rover, including between the wheels, is stirred up from the astronaut activity, but you can see the tracks in the areas they haven't walked yet.” So we need to consider the likelihood that he is right as opposed to the alternatives that this was done using a crane, that the rover was carried or driven into position, or the photos faked.

The problem for Kevin (Evan, Greer, and the others) is that the area between the wheels is too smooth and unperturbed for rover tracks to have been “covered up” by kicking the dust while performing other activities. Consider posts #91, #92, and #93. #91 and #93 show no indications of rover tracks at all, yet, if the rover had been driven or pushed to those locations, its tracks would have to be present. There is no indication of activity by astronauts that would have obfuscated them or “covered them up”. #92 seems to show some dust or dirt falling off the right front tire, but even in that case there are no tracks where we would expect to find them between the wheels, which suggests these photos are fake.

The likelihood that the rover was driven or pushed into position, in view of the absence of tracks between the tires, appears to be vanishingly small, since the dust or dirt would have had to reconstitute itself, rather like a rake smoothing over disruptions in a bunker during golf. Remember, there is no atmosphere on the moon; dust and dirt aren't being blown around. The likelihood that it was carried to its locations, given it only weights 80 pound on the moon, is clearly higher than its having been driven or pushed; but on Earth, where I believe these photos were taken, it would have weighed 480 pounds. The use of a crane would at least be consistent with the missing tracks between the tires. Absent further evidence, the most likely explanation appears be that some were created by compositing and others perhaps by using scale models.

If compositing appears to be the most likely and therefore preferable explanation for the absence of tracks in some moon rover photographs, then it should not be surprising if the same technique is employed in other contexts in creating the moon landing photographic portfolio. Evan has given links to his arguments, which I consider rather inappropriate. It is far better to present his arguments here in the thread itself, since many readers are unlikely to turn to them. Moreover, it is not entirely obvious what he is actually arguing, so I will offer my take on what he claims and then explain whether I agree or disagree. Remember that only some of the photos have to be exposed as fakes to impeach NASA's integrity.

LIGHT/SHADOW NUMBER ONE: To explain the inconsistency, Evan says, “It is a composite!” Possibly, but how and by whom was it composed? The suggestion that reflection from a space suit has caused the back of the lander to be illuminated is highly improbable. Consider that these space suits do not carry a concave mirror on their fronts that would concentrate the light to illuminate it like a flashlight or a beacon. The rather crinkled suit would have reflected light in many directions, not focused in on the lander. The likelihood that this could explain what we see in the photograph is extremely small. Indeed, I would say that it is virtually zero, which means a second source of light from an artificial source, which was present on the set, appears to have created unintended effects.

LIGHT/SHADOW NUMBER TWO: Shadows cast do not have to be parallel, but it is a function of the distance between the source and the objects of illumination. If you have a small lamp on a table surrounded by small objects, for example, then those objects cast shadows in different directions. But that is because of their spatial proximity. The Sun is at a enormous finite distance from the moon, which implies the shadows thereby cast should be virtually exactly parallel. They are obviously not. The likelihood that these shadows, which run in distinctly different directions, were caused by the light from the Sun as their source cannot be correct. The rectilinear propagation of light from the Sun confers a probability of zero on this explanation. It required a separate, artificial source of light when the only available source, according to NASA, was the Sun. The photo has to have been faked.

LIGHT/SHADOW NUMBER THREE: The center of the photo does not appear to be on an extension of the line of sight from the camera. Indeed, one of the gross oddities about the moon photos is that they should be so uniformly well-focused and centered, given the primitive equipment—externally mounted camera with no focusing ability—being used. Moreover, as http://www.ufos-aliens.co.uk/cosmicapollo.html has observed, variations in temperature that the film itself would have had to endure on the lunar surface “were recorded as being between -180F in the shade to an incredible +200F in full Sunlight. How could the film emulsion have possibly withstood such temperature differences? The astronauts can be seen to move between the shadows of the rocks and then into full sunlight in some shots.” Surely the film would not have survived under such conditions and the astronaut’s lives would have been jeopardized. This photo, too, is another fake.

LIGHT/SHADOW NUMBER FOUR/FIVE/SIX: More could be said about the others in this set, but what is important is that many of these photographs display anomalies that are inconsistent with their authenticity as genuine photographs taken from the moon. If Evan wants to discuss these three as well as those I have already addressed, then I invite him to do so in the thread itself. Remember, if some of the photos can be proven to have been faked, then the jig is up. There should not have been necessary to fake photos of real moon landings. I have been struck by another companion thread on the forum entitled, “NASA has been CAUGHT retouching and switching photos”, which is accessible here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=16532&st=15

where Duane Daman has observed, “Nice find Jack, but we already know that NASA alters it's faked Apollo photos from time to time … Conspiracy researcher Ralph Rene discovered that fact many years ago when he asked NASA to send him a copy of their "C" rock photo, but they switched the ID numbers, so they could send him a different faked photo instead of the one he asked for. Then months later, when he finally did receive the correct photo, the "C" has been purposely airbrushed out”, observing that “NASA is always correcting their mistakes by altering their faked Apollo photos.” It sound very plausible to me that what Duane is describing is what NASA has been doing.

An illustration comes from the cover to the magazine, AVIATION WEEK AND SPACE TECHNOLOGY, which, Duane reports, “just happens to be one of the best examples [of the use of front screen projection], showing where the foreground of the set ends and the back wall of the set begins... Those front screen projection special effects really were amazing, considering how new that technology was during the filming of Project Apollo". Duane also provides a link to front-projection-screen “frolics” compliments of NASA here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWSg8pXqyMI

where the vertical wall front screen projection can be seen between time stamp 1:13 to 1:38. So I would like Evan to address this technique, which may also explain how the moon rover photographs were produced with missing tracks between their moon rover wheels.

Edited September 9, 2010 by James H. Fetzer

[Jack White]

I have deleted an inadvertent repetition of my previous post. I have asked Jack to post an additional (highlighted) image for me as the next post.

Per Jim's request.

[Jack White]

Jim asked that I post this image.

<IMAGE REMOVED BY MODERATOR>

Jack

[Kevin M. West]

Which mission was that from Jack?

[Jack White]

Which mission was that from Jack?

You tell us. You are the expert.

[Jack White]

Jim asked that I post this image.

Jack

I have a question about this and all other LRV track photos. This seems to show tracks from a TWO WHEELED VEHICLE.

Rovers had TWO left and TWO right wheels...SO ALL PHOTOS OF TRACKS SHOULD SHOW A DOUBLE SET OF TRACKS,

two left and two right. How can this be explained?

Jack

[Matthew Lewis]

When the wheels are in line, the trailing wheels would obiterate the tracks from the leading wheels as they make their own tracks. There are photos that show the multiple tracks when the rover turns.

[Jack White]

I have a comment about the poll which is displayed on every page in this thread.

The TRUTH has never been determined by a poll or popular vote.

In this case, the TRUTH has been attracting all sorts who come out of the woodwork to oppose the truth.

Jack

[Jack White]

When the wheels are in line, the trailing wheels would obiterate the tracks from the leading wheels as they make their own tracks. There are photos that show the multiple tracks when the rover turns.

That would be true ONLY if the rover always drove in a perfectly STRAIGHT line.

When going in a curved line or a turn, the trailing wheel would not track the front wheel exactly.

Some curved paths show no such widening of the doubled tracks.

[Kevin M. West]

That would be true ONLY if the rover always drove in a perfectly STRAIGHT line.

It's also true when you have 4 wheel steering.