https://twitter.com/comunistamexico/status/1533258676718403584

  • Omegamint [comrade/them, doe/deer]
    ·
    2 years ago

    This is one of my favorite conspiracies but I believe that Apollo 11 left a reflector on the moon that's been used since then to check the exact distance the moon is from earth. It's still operational, even (afaik).

    • ssjmarx [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      It's a big mirror, it shouldn't ever stop working unless it gets hit by something.

      But then again, whose to say they didn't drop an unmanned lunar lander on the moon and then bring in Kubrick to fake the rest of it :illuminati:

      • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        But then again, whose to say they didn’t drop an unmanned lunar lander on the moon and then bring in Kubrick to fake the rest of it

        the point of the space race (especially from the US side as Sputnik was launched on a whim by some soviet scientists just trying shit) was to show off missile technology without the overt aggression of nuclear tests. An unmanned mission would be just as good for the actual purpose

        • ssjmarx [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          The first unmanned landing on the moon was in 1966 by the Soviet Luna 9 probe, in order for there to be anything for the Americans to claim as groundbreaking they would have had to fake their unmanned landing actually being a manned landing.

          spoiler

          for the record i don't actually believe Apollo 11 was faked, i'm doing as bit

          • Nakoichi [they/them]M
            ·
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            Yeah the folks at unreal oops it was Nvidia actually did a pretty convincing demonstration that the lighting in the footage could only have come from the sun at the precise distance of the moon from earth in an environment without an atmosphere.

            • TankieTanuki [he/him]
              ·
              edit-2
              2 years ago

              But even after the light was modeled [...] the image still did not look right.

              Part of the challenge was---we got the surface reflection of the Moon dust, we got the reflection off of the lunar module, we got all of that in place and properly modeled---we thought---but the image still didn't look quite right. There was some additional light source that was just missing...

              They said that their computer model perplexingly didn't work until they found a solution in changing the albedo value of Armstrong's suit. But unless they experimentally derived that value themselves using instrumentation, then how can they be sure that they weren't simply moving a slider until it fixed their simulation, i.e. working backwards from a solution?

              The same goes, to some extent, for the values of the lunar dust. It's impossible to experimentally confirm this stuff unless we go back to the Moon. That's the problem I have with using the photographic evidence as proof. It's the same reason I never really found the conspiracists' claims of photo trickery very convincing either.


              In order to prove that the footage "could only have come from" the Moon's conditions, it's also necessary to prove the negative on Earth. The Nvidia rep says at 8:52 that they never attempted to prove the negative. They only attempted to prove that it can be done on the Moon. They didn't model the conditions with an atmosphere for comparison.


              lighting [...] at the precise distance of the moon from earth

              I'm confused. I didn't hear them say anything about using reflective light from the Earth in their model. Did you mean to say "the precise distance of the Moon from the Sun"? Is that significantly different than the distance from Earth to the Sun? Sometimes the Moon is farther away from the Sun than the Earth, and sometimes it's closer.

              • Nakoichi [they/them]M
                ·
                2 years ago

                Sometimes the Moon is farther away from the Sun than the Earth, and sometimes it’s closer.

                Yes poor wording on my part.

        • Z_Poster365 [none/use name]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          Nah manned mission is 2-way and involves life support systems. It’s much harder and shows much more mastery of rocketry and all that

          • EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]M
            ·
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            Not really, it just shows you can lift a bigger payload of return fuel and life support. Doing 2 orbital maneuvers is not substantially harder than doing 1, it just means you need more fuel. Obviously, having life support for a longer time is more complex, but it's not a mastery thing, it's mostly just a budget thing. Both weight and money.

            • TankieTanuki [he/him]
              ·
              edit-2
              2 years ago

              it just shows you can lift a bigger payload

              This is the primary hurdle. The Soviets failed to put a man on the moon because they couldn't create an engine with enough thrust. To this day, the thrust on the Saturn V has not been matched or surpassed, and its engines are a lost art.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        My favorite fake moon landing joke is that Kubrick was brought in to fake the whole thing, but being an auteur he insisted on filming on location.

        My second favorite fake moon landing thing is the old Battlezone game, where the moon landings happened, but they were a diversion for moving a large army of anti-gravity space tanks to the moon to fight the Soviets.

      • Omegamint [comrade/them, doe/deer]
        ·
        2 years ago

        I mean yeah, I guess that's a viable way to keep the conspiracy alive. Honestly it's a fun one because it makes so much sense.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      It's also possible to just see the lunar lander stuff on the surface with a powerful enough telescope

      • TankieTanuki [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        I don't think this is true. Even the Hubble Telescope isn't powerful enough to resolve the landing sites. You have to use lunar orbital satellites to see anything worthwhile.

    • TankieTanuki [he/him]
      ·
      edit-2
      2 years ago

      You're correct. They're called Lunar Laser Ranging Retroreflectors.

      NASA installed three and the Soviet Union installed two.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_retroreflectors_on_the_Moon

      I didn't learn about the Soviet ones until last year, and I did a lot of research on the Space Race to create this meme three years ago.

      • TankieTanuki [he/him]
        ·
        edit-2
        2 years ago

        signal [...] coming from the Moon

        Could be accomplished with a radio repeater dropped by Apollo 10. :shrug-outta-hecks:

          • TankieTanuki [he/him]
            ·
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            You have no idea how many layers I'm on right now. I have terminal Epstein-brain. Please send help. :scared:

          • KobaCumTribute [she/her]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Pfah, they clearly... [rolls dice] built a supercomputer roughly equivalent to a mobile graphics card from 2010 and filmed the whole thing in an early build of source film maker, which was later leaked to Valve. Everyone knows that.