So in the red corner, we have the most successful conspiracy in history involving thousands of people (NASA personnel, private contractors, astronomers from all over the world etc) lasting over forty years, to convince people that humans walked on the Moon for... what purpose, exactly?

In the blue corner, we have the 9/11 conspiracy, involving not so many people but just as much, if not more, effort to set up, pull off, and maintain, but which was exposed in short order by brave Youtubers looking at video and photo footage. The sole aim of which, apparently, was to drag America into the least popular war since Vietnam and spark off wave after wave of protest and paranoia.

Which is it: the US and other major governments have the resources to carry out a global conspiracy and not even worry about getting caught, or they're so incompetent they can't even produce convincing forensic evidence right here on Earth where people can see it with their own eyes?

(June 12, 2014 at 6:48 pm)BlackSwordsman Wrote: This seems like a really stupid question but my sister swears that the Moon landing was completely faked, her boyfriend agreed!

What are your thoughts.


DO NOT KILL THE MESSENGER

You already know as indicated by this post. An absurd topic to start and is as pointless as debating the existence of vampires. It is conspiracy bullshit, period.

YES WE LANDED ON THE MOON, PERIOD.

I find it sad that several decades after the fact with tons of media covering it at the time that Mythbusters had to waste an entire show debunking the bullshit of people who need to be put in rubber rooms.

Oswald acted alone, 9/11 was not an inside job, and there is no fucking big foot either.

Not killing you for starting this thread, but do get tired of the nuts who keep perpetuating this crap.

Now for the shitty part. While we -did- get our business together and go to the moon back in the day...we are currently incapable of repeating the trip....

Apart from all the times we've been back, you mean? Not manned, granted, for various reasons not connected with technological limitations, but I hear NASA has plans for that some time in the next ten years or so. Interestingly, they intend to use broadly the same designs that Apollo perfected.

(June 13, 2014 at 9:19 am)Rhythm Wrote: Now for the shitty part. While we -did- get our business together and go to the moon back in the day...we are currently incapable of repeating the trip....

You're perfectly capable, there's just no demand for it. We could put a man on Mars if we really wanted to, problem is there really isn't an urgent need for it. Back in the day there was an urgent need because of the whole space race thing, having to beat the Russians etc and the cold war.

Nowadays there's not a driving force like that to spur any particular country into going to the moon or further. If there was no doubt we'd be doing it.

I think the future of space travel is with commercial enterprises though, once more businesses start piling the money into space exploration it will become the most lucrative business venture out there, and once that happens we'll be colonising and all sorts. It might even happen sooner than people think.

I think the next big spur is going to be about mining resources. The discovery of lunar water is likely to be a focus of a manned return, up to and including a permanent presence there. It would serve as a way-station to other planets and particularly the mineral-rich asteroids.

No, we're not perfectly capable. We're busy reverse engineering our own old rockets so that we have a launch vehicle capable of making any such trip again. Some of our best stuff is currently attached to warheads...but even they aren;t capable of pushing a manned craft there. We still have a few of the old ones laying around but due to some truly hilarious fuckups we no longer fully understand how or why they work the way they do. Any trips in the works now are basically holding until we can compile all the fragmentary bits of design and experience that remain from earlier, successful programs ( which isn't much), before we could call ourselves even "moderately capable". Bunches of truly great ideas for manned missions are stuck on this even if they had the funding...or the public saw a "need".

(that's why they're planning to use our old rockets btw Nap..just as soon as they figure out where the power switch is)

This is what happens when you gut your space program......

(June 13, 2014 at 9:51 am)Rhythm Wrote: No, we're not perfectly capable. We're busy reverse engineering our own old rockets so that we have a launch vehicle capable of making any such trip again. Some of our best stuff is currently attached to warheads...but even they aren;t capable of pushing a manned craft there. We still have a few of the old ones laying around but due to some truly hilarious fuckups we no longer fully understand how or why they work the way they do.

(that's why they're planning to use our old rockets btw Nap..just as soon as they figure out where the power switch is)

This is what happens when you gut your space program......

I'm pretty sure if you put the resources into NASA like you do with your defence budget you'd overcome these problems pretty easily. Like I said, the problem isn't that you simply can't, it's that you don't want to.

Space travel isn't exactly rocket surgery. Orbital mechanics is actually quite straightforward. Even a trip to the Moon is a walk in the park once you're in Earth orbit - and getting into orbit is a piece of piss. The only limitations are largely financial - the cost of the fuel needed to move all that extra mass of crew and life support, plus the fuel to move that fuel. The launch vehicle designs we've always used are incredibly inefficient but they do the job, in much the same way that a hammer will remove a rotten tooth.

The only other real limitations involve safety and necessity; is it really necessary to send fragile humans to do the work that robot probes can do far more safely, cost-efficiently and reliably?

Easy? Funding would only be a problem if we could build and operate the vehicles...which we cannot, and then ask an astronaut aboard, which we cannot - in good faith.

-The launch vehicles we have always used are currently inoperable....the designs are fragmentary...mission notes lost...the experience has left (or died).-

late edit: this applies to both Apollo and Gemeni