No, actually it's an infamous piece of conspiracy trash by a raving loon named Bart Sibrel. Try some information by real engineers:
Noisy engine
And the lack of a blast crater? Again, not a mystery (other than why you would expect a crater at all; VTOL aircraft here on Earth routinely produce thrusts ten times that of the LM descent engine without producing blast craters).
As for the lack of lunar dust around the LM, it's quite simple. The descent engine blew what there was of it away, and since there's no air to constrain its movements, the particles followed parabolic arcs instead of swirling around.
An eight-page dissection of Sibrel's opus can be found here.
Noisy engine
Quote:We should hear the lunar module's descent engine firing in the radio transmissions during the landing.
When firing in a vacuum most rocket engines are silent. Even the large SPS engine on the service module was not audible from the command module. This is because the noise from a rocket engine is not really coming from the engine, but from the effect of the exhaust on the surrounding atmosphere. It's the shock wave of the supersonic exhaust gases colliding with the air near the engine nozzle. If there's no atmosphere, you shouldn't expect to hear a loud sustained sound.
But you can expect to hear an ignition transient. The space shuttle astronauts report hearing bangs and pops as the steering jets work. This is a noise produced when the rockets first ignite. When they're running smoothly, they run silently.
Astronauts report feeling gentle vibrations through the structure of their spacecraft as the engines fire. The rush of exhaust products through the throat of the engine would produce some flow noise that would be transmitted through the engine mounts to the frame of the spacecraft. But this doesn't necessarily produce audible sounds in the cabin.
Consider also that the microphones used in aerospace for pilots and crew are built to operate in a noisy environment. You have to speak very close to the microphone in order for the sound to be picked up. The microphone helps cut cabin noise in aircraft. So even if the engines were to make a sound, it's very unlikely that the microphones would pick them up. Astronaut Bill Anders called his microphone a "tonsil mike" because he quipped that you had to practically shove it down your throat to make it work.
And the lack of a blast crater? Again, not a mystery (other than why you would expect a crater at all; VTOL aircraft here on Earth routinely produce thrusts ten times that of the LM descent engine without producing blast craters).
Quote:The conspiracists seem disappointed that a more dramatic result was not produced. Unfortunately this is what we expect to see under the lunar module. The exhaust plume is simply not powerful enough to dig holes in the tightly-packed regolith.
As for the lack of lunar dust around the LM, it's quite simple. The descent engine blew what there was of it away, and since there's no air to constrain its movements, the particles followed parabolic arcs instead of swirling around.
An eight-page dissection of Sibrel's opus can be found here.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
