(July 15, 2009 at 7:21 am)bozo Wrote: For example, given the timing, at the height of the cold war and with USA and USSR racing to be first on the moon, is it beyond the possible that the Americains could have staged it?Possible, although like phil said, the Russians would have been tracking the rockets and transmissions. If they had any evidence to suggest it was a hoax, they would have used it to make their enemy seem inferior.
Quote:Just recently I read that there is more computer stuff in today's washing machines than was in the computers controlling the moon shot. Is it credible that such basic computer power was sufficient?Well these days washing machines can run versions of Linux and Java, so they are incredibly more powerful. It might sound like the apollo computers were pathetic, but if you look at them, they were quite powerful, it's just that by today's standards they are beaten by washing machines. This doesn't mean the apollo computers couldn't do the job though.
Two decades before, a computer was built that broke the Nazi enigma machine. The apollo computers seem to that machine as advanced as the washing machine computers do to them. It's all relative.
Quote:In the same programme it was admitted that as the eagle was landing, a malfunction led the astronauts to believe the eagle was travelling well faster than their speedo was indicating, yet they still managed to land softly, on suitable ground, in the moon landscape!Well, if they were travelling slower than they actually thought they were, then it isn't much of a problem. It only gets very tricky if you are actually travelling faster than you think you are. Given that the moon has less than half the Earth's gravity, even if they did miscalculate their speed (and you don't mention by how much they were out), landing on the moon is made a lot easier due to the gravity.
