Reflector Mirrors supposedly put on the Moon by NASA's men, have finally, simply revealed the Hoax

sweet mother of god! a man with a brain!! 187192 said that days ago.. albeit he didnt post the math (proly too complicated for the average nitwit here.

take that and the probability of actually reflecting photons FROM THE ARRAY and your in the realm of fairy tales and statistical tales anomalies at best.

"legend has it" the Germans put some automatons up there, and there is a base nowadays.. but that should be an entirely separate thread..

Then why even mention me, while speaking as an AC? WHy not say who you are, I did?

Yeah, if you read over the last few pages of that thread you will see where I proved beyond doubt the mirror didnt have to be aligned precisely, and that NASA proponents at thier propaganda websites had lied about it two years ago when I was researching my publication.

The rub is, if they can't say where the landing site is precisely , they cannot POSSIBLY accurately measure the distance between the Earth and the moon!
They are talking a 2 mile radius of certainty as to where the vehicles are!
Thats over 12 square kilometers. The reflector reflects almost equally as well to anywhere the monn is visable, preclusing the need of a precise alignment. Another stake in the heart of a main Apollo qualifier.

Both of them are ignorant shills that have repeatedly been taken to task on science.
Nomuse is more frequently ass backwards than he is even approximately right, and Barls never admits to any proof as enterable into the record. Why is that?
Take this laser mirror issue. Why not just admit something doesnt make sense about the two stories you have given us, if both are true. Did the reflector require a human to align it precisely? Barls, Nomuse, time to step up and explain this, if you can.
The evidence indicates no precise alignment was neccessary, all of it. My opponests here are all followers, they are not leaders like myself. They dislike me intensely not because I am right, but because they are wrong.

Best I've found so far on the criticality of alignment is mission report for A15. They used a modified reflector array -- larger than those previously placed down -- and the corner reflectors were specifically described as being "opened up" to permit up to a 30 degree off-axis signal return.



I don't, myself, believe that this could not be done automatically. It wouldn't be anything so far described, though. Perhaps the best combination would be a self-leveling base (since the specific terrain a hypothetical robot landed at would have an unpredictable angle), and some sort of powered pointing device.

Given the success rate of robotics even today, I wouldn't give an automated system terribly high odds. Still, given enough flights I'm sure one or two reflectors could get up there. They mostly stand as proof that _something_ landed. They are more circumstantial in proving _humans_ landed.

We do have descriptions of a human transport system and a human-deployed LRRR. We have seen this hardware, and we know this hardware could do the job as described. We lack any footprint left by the development of sophisticated automated landings, LRRR deployers, and of course the completely re-designed lander needed for the task.

Parsimony argues that, unless given some other strong evidence, the LRRR was human-deployed.

(We do have such a footprint for Lunokhod, and the performance of the Soviet reflectors fits expectations of how that equipment would perform.)

You say that a lot. Saying something is backwards doesn't make it so. How about you post the links, do the math, and really catch me up? It would be more interesting for the both of us.

(You still got my major wrong, by the way.)

So where is this statement that NASA doesn't know where they landed? Is there a paper, a book, a link that can be shown?

...and where's the evidence of the mirrors being remotely placed?

Soon enough we'll have a probe (Chinese maybe?) mapping the moon with hopefully enough resolution to resolve the debate.

What I wonder about is what exactly prevents us from going to the moon with people, if it was a hoax? I don't see any major obstacles. China is dead set on getting to the moon very soon and they don't seem to be acting like its impossible to get there.

Is it impossible that China or the USA will be on the Moon in the next few decades? If not, what made it impossible in 1969 and the years that followed?

We are sending probes to all kinds of planets just fine. Some were pretty huge, before we went to faster/cheaper/less risk with smaller probes.

So where is the "barrier" that prevented the moon landings? I haven't seen or heard of any...

The barrier is that no civilised society would have sent rabid dogs to the moon in a tin can never mind human beings. No other country could have found people dumb enough to volunteer.

Do you argue that no-one would send human beings in an even smaller "tin can" to the bottom of the ocean?

Perhaps you think human beings should never be sent to a relatively spacious "tin can" located near the south pole, left there to "winter over" during the long antarctic night.

Do you know that during WWII there were volunteers who allowed themselves to be shut into highly modified naval torpedoes and fired at enemy ships (the program was not a success, however)?

Every hour of every day people are in conditions ranging from uncomfortable to inhumane -- some of them from economic necessity, and others by choice, as it allows them to do something they love; whether it is exploring the ocean's depths or flying high-performance aircraft or creating a performance for film or theater.

The bottom of the ocean or the arctic isn't the same as the flying to the bleeding moon in a space ship designed by nazis that hadn't been tested landing or taking off. None of the things you mentioned comes anywhere close.

Imagine little Buzz trying to buy a life insurance policy in July 1969. What is your occupation ? Human torpedo is pretty close.

HAD been tested. Read up a little.

And Buzz was a test pilot. He'd spent decades in tiny metal spaces with explosive fuels behind him.

By the way, I take it by the recent directions this thread has gone, any pretense that there was a useful argument involving the LRRR has been dropped?

Or would the OP care to explain what he meant with that string of copied posts? Is there something about the LRRR, or the location of the landing sites, that concerns him? Is he interested in sharing? Or have we devolved to "It was a hoax....ah...something wasn't right somewhere...and, uh...Nazi's!"

By the by, why is Trieste different?

Was it not designed by engineers? Was there not a risk of life? Was it not exploring previously unknown territory? Did it bring back impeachable evidence that it had gone? Was it within the known technological capacity of the time? Was in a believable extrapolation of what had gone before? Did it not venture into conditions hostile to human life? Did it not venture somewhere where there was no possibility of rescue? Did it not have to deal with pressure and temperature issues in that hostile environment? Did it not have electronics on board? Did it not employ life support systems? Was it not cramped and uncomfortable? Did it bring back useful science? Was the expedition publicized at the time? Did the explorers speak of it in public in years following? Is there evidence on the ocean floor right now that Trieste had been?

Was it not......well, you get the picture! In what substantial way, pray tell, was the Trieste expedition so different than the Apollo landings? And, please, "ocean" is simply a truism. In what way was one exploration impossible and/or immoral and the other not?

cheeky wanker, read up yourself . Buzz was Ali G's dumbest guest by a street but not that dumb surely.

If you can't tell the difference between the ocean and outer space, you're even more stupid than I think you are which would be very stupid indeed.

Just in case anyone cares, Armstrong was the test pilot. Buzz was a fighter pilot.

Oh, right. Not that big a difference, when you are talking about squeezing into a tiny cockpit with explosives right behind you.

But let's not let the willful ignorance of some posters blind us to McDivitt and Scott, who first flew the lunar module (aka lander) in space for Apollo 9, or Borman, Lovell, and Anders, who orbited the Moon with Apollo 8, or Shirra, Eisele, and Cunnigham, who first tested Apollo hardware in Earth orbit...

And what is the substantive difference this makes to the mission? In what exact way does changing the environment make one hazardous exploration impossible and immoral, and the other not? What is this peculiar quality of water that makes it "all okay" to crawl into a tiny steel sphere and explore somewhere no-one had ever been before?

Lost Lunar Landing Sites: The CLLC Initiative
[link to www.xs4all.nl]
On the same day I sent my results of nearly two years research as (private) astronautics historian to the Group 'Back to the Moon'. My initiative is called 'CLLC' or 'Coordination of Lunar Landing Coordinates'. This initiative about the 'unsolved' location-problem of Apollo-Landers has already been published in X-List-URL of the Group.

I want to propose my initiative called 'CLLC', which stands for 'Coordination of Lunar Landing Coordinates'. Maybe you are able to support my effort and suggest it to those who are responsible today for the heritage of the great "first exploration of the moon", the Apollo program of 1969 - 1972. I believe that this achievement of mankind to leave the Earth and set the foot upon the Moon is not complete as long as one important point has not been finished. Namely that it is officially documented where exactly the landing points of the six Apollo-LM's are located. It turns out that there exist many inconsistencies in the data of lunar landing site. So far an uncommented variety of landing coordinates can be found in the literature.


My last discovery: NASA also lacks an 'official' version. Nearly 30 years after first landing there is no common-valid agreement concerning such basic data. A unique version of landing data is therefore still missing.

I myself am a (private) astronautics historian and maybe the first who ever documented the "inconsistencies in lunar landing site data". The discovery of the inconsistencies began in June 1996. By funny accident I read about a man called Dennis Hope who claims to be able to sell small pieces of property on the Moon. Allegedly even U.S. Presidents like Carter and Reagan "have" such properties on the Moon. As I myself cannot get up there to select a "good" site, I decided to "order" a nice piece of Moon on a site, where other men already took a lot of photos. So my search for the six Apollo landing sites began with maximal accuracy.

But I made a discovery. To get the exact and congruent data of lunar landing coordinates was impossible! To me this was a total surprise and everyone I told couldn't believe it. Everbody was convicted that facts like this were established data that could be found in history book for 30 years already!

Now I was challenged as an astronautics historian. This novel profession raised in me 30 years ago and my activities began when I was 8 years old (starting point was exactly the famous Christmas-flight of Apollo 8 in 1968). Now I have nearly a small private "astronautics museum" with many contemporary documents and even flown hardware (one piece of oxygen hose of Apollo 12 circled 45 x around the moon)!)

In main occupation I am industry-computer scientist at the University of Muenster, but every free minute I turn to "higher places".

And now I was looking for the places where the descent stages of Apollo LM's touched down on the moon standing there till today.

In specialized textbooks there were partly remarkable deviations in statements about the landing coordinates. I turned to the Internet to find out the "truth", but here I found the same discrepancies. Sometimes contradictory data are in two adjacent web sites of the same provider!

Whithin nearly 2 years of searching the 'lost lunar landing sites' I could not get a satisfactory answer from any NASA site. When asked they didn't understand my 'problem' saying: "It's all described in this and that web-page" and so on. So I decided to collect all available 'official' NASA versions of landing coordinates and I found not less than 10 different main versions, 8 of them in NASA sites. Not listed are many sites whose statements are identical (and derived) from official listed sites and those which precision is only one place after decimal point:.................................

I produced these for decision to NASA-authorities in an e-mail-action with some provoking subject: "lost lunar landing sites". Some answers clearly said: "I do not know the exact coordinates...", and: "I am unable to suggest sites other than the ones that you mentioned." And another authority finally: "Other than that, we have no further suggestions."

Or other not definitive answers like: "I would advise to use these coordinates...". The basic attitude seemed to be: "..not so important..". That may be right, and I don't write that to reproach anyone. It was neither important nor did it strike anyone who read a single book about astronautics in the past.

But now in the age of Internet, where all kind of information and even digitalized books are available simply per mouse-click, and mighty search engines present all available information in parallel, opportunities of comparison became better and quicker.

To emphasize the discrepancies I standardized all data to decimal numbers and 'threw' them into a statistical program (SPSS) using only the 8 NASA sources. It showed that the greatest deviation was about 20 km (Apollo 11 LAT). Even the smallest range of coordinate-deviation amounted to about 120 m (Apollo 16 LON). Besides the (in some cases) different grades of accuracy there are other explainable reasons: writing errors, mistake of ARC- and DEC-systems.

But the data also show that there must be a fundamental problem not explainable by that.

After nearly two years I finally found two specialists who at least could explain the 'problem' (but couldn't solve it): I got certain indications that no agreed coordinate systems for determination of landing coordinates was used. One source is the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC), where Dr. Dave Williams answered me:

"I've run into the same problems you have, and as far as I know there is no "official" list of Apollo landing sites. In fact I have it near the top of my list to go through all the information and try to decide the best locations. One problem is that (I believe) the cartographic grid on the Moon has undergone some changes over the last 30 years based on new data and analyses, so the coordinates may be different just based on what coordinate system was used. But there also seems to be a basic inconsistency between all the values. I'm going to try and get to this next week, thank you for the list of sources, and I'll put up the best values (but not the "official" values) for each landing site."
Paul Spudis of the Johnson Space Center wrote:

"There are two fundamental reasons why you are seeing different numbers quoted as site coordinates. First, until recently, we did not have a very accurate cartographic control network for the Moon. Although the Apollo zone (the near-equatorial area where the Apollo landings took place) was very well mapped, and we know exactly where those sites are to very high degree of precision, when you express site coordinates in degrees, it must be in reference to some global system. Thus, your coordinate knowledge is only as good as the global control network you are using. (As an illustration of this "paradox", imagine that I know that the Apollo 11 site is exactly 301 km from the Apollo 16 site. I know the RELATIVE positions of the two sites extremely well, but where are they in relation to any other lunar feature, arbitrarily chosen? This is the basic reason why control networks are important). Moreover, to make this even more confusing, the flight people at the Houston mission control and the lunar map makers used different control networks, and those networks were constantly being modified during the Apollo flight program, as our knowledge improved, so many different numbers found their way into print."

The second reason the numbers don't agree is much easier to understand. People are often both lazy and ill-informed. They so not bother to track down exactly where certain numbers come from; they just reproduce the first thing they find. Thus, in case more than one set of numbers exists, the different sets or even mixtures between them may become current. Thus, set of authors "A" get their numbers from one source, set "B" get theirs from another. Set "C" mixes the two!

So which ones to believe? Here's the best part: IT DOESN'T MATTER! Each set (assuming that they were not just made up, but come from some legitimate control system) are equally valid (or invalid). I have no doubt that different numbers will continue to be quoted for the foreseeable future, as apparently no one can be bothered to do the work needed to reconcile all of them. For your information, I happen to believe that the most accurate (and believable) numbers were published in 1987 in a paper in The Journal of Geophysical Research, vol. 92, number B13, pages 14177 to 14184. The authors are Merton Davies et al. This paper will give you the Apollo site coordinates to five decimal places!"

"I don't know that these are the "official definitive" locations, but they are precise insofar as they are referenced to the control network established by Mert Davies and based on the information in the science reports."

Even the above 5-decimal-accurate version is considered to be 'most reliable', but everywhere it is mentioned that these coordinates are not an official NASA-version. There apparently is none even after nearly 30 years after the first moon landing!


Therefore I am starting the following initiative:
The 'first exploration of the Moon' from 1969 till 1972 will not be really completed until there exists a complete authorized documentation of the lunar landing coordinates. My suggestion: to create this before the 30th anniversary of the first manned landing on the Moon.

But as astronautics historian I think this 'giant leap for all mankind', which was taken 'in peace for all mankind' has enough symbolic power, that it is worthy to become more concrete again (especially in view of the 30th ann. 1999) if man can locate it. Consider the following:
The badges with the inscription 'We came in peace for all mankind', attached on the remaining descent stages of lunar LM's (at least of Apollo 11 and 17 as I know) will be the only human extraterrestrical fixed 'peace message' at the end of 1999, when the Russian MIR-station (Mir = Peace) splashes down in the Pacific ocean.
Isn't it therefore a considerable aspect saying the 30th anniversary has a better efficiency for this message if man can determine an universal valid location of the original places ? So I think an official NASA version of Lunar landing site coordinates would be a historic matter."

Neat!

I'd never heard of this before, but it makes a certain terrible sense. There's been so much wrangling over planetary co-ordinate systems I can believe there has been more than one set used for the Moon!

(I've read about issues picking co-ordinate systems for smaller bodies in the Solar System. And I seem to recall an article about what became an international fight, over whether to put the prime meridian of some body at the crater discovered by or named for one country's hero, or another country's hero. If I remember enough details to drag up an article on it I'll post it.)

What confusion, though! And not helped any by the way so many sources, including NASA PAO types, give bald tables without enough information about the particular system and derivatives and assumptions. Heck, it's hard enough to see standard error bars in much of this stuff!

Note by the by that Herr Stennecken is a believer in the history of the Apollo Program. At the top of his personal web page is a picture of him posing with Aldrin. Doesn't seem like the attitude of a hoax-monger.

But then, the friendly L5'er who wrote to him sums it up pretty well;

"You have performed a valuable service in compiling the data you have and bringing this problem to wider attention. It appears your efforts may even bear fruit in finally settling on a standard, world-recognized lunar coordinate system."


Still, thanks for the info. There's always something new and fascinating to learn about the Moon.

Two wrongs don't make it right, look at the evidence or lack of evidence in the supposeded precise pinging of the laser reflectors on the Moon.

If NASA and other groups regularly ping the mirror a 100 feet from where Apollo 11 landed. Shouldn't the landing site/remains be recorded as being in a 100 feet radius around the reflector mirrors?

Naw.

As has been mentioned in this thread (and others) the laser spreads to nearly two kilometers by the time it hits the Moon. So that's as close as the LRRRs could come -- and that's only for locating the sites of those missions that deployed one.



The missing distinction here is that the locations of the landing sites are known to a high degree of precision -- but there isn't a trustworthy singular list with an official certification. Instead, even on NASA-maintained sites there are tables that have perhaps been copied too many times without being checked for accuracy.

Fact is, the reflection of a single photon can just as well be from a speck of silica or whatever.

Its just utterly retarded to regard it as scientific evidence of the moon landing.

And I will continue repeatedly calling BS on all that say the Van Allen Belt is no problem. That was one big back-track.. the opinions were wholly opposite back then. But scientists like to shift their oppinions often. That's ok, we say, because science learns. Science can also be baught. Bush proved this over and over. And do you think LBJ or Nixon were different?! Kinda like in the seventies we had the "global cooling threat" (if anyone can remember that). Fit nicely to the "cold war" and now we got "the global warming effect", fits to the hot middle east. (I don't mean that seriously, but it is quite amusing)

Not "A" photon. "A" photon per minute. Maybe better. Integrated over time to get the final result.

Typical results before the Apache Point Observatory got into the act were 5-100 photons received over a 10-45 minute observation. They boosted the return to up to 100 photons a second - which is how they were able to push the accuracy of their measurements into the millimeter range (descriptions and papers can be found online with a simple search).

That still only gets 5-10 photons returned per radar pulse. But you can do the math. If there were other than the reflector as described at the target, this rate would drop to nothing.

Rough, off-the-top assumptions here. Beam spread on the way is 2km. On the way back, 18 km. Earth subtends 2' or so over the 180' of lunar horizon. So a photon bouncing off some random part of the Moon already has a 1/10,000 chance of hitting Earth. To hit the reflector at the expected power, that's hitting a 18 km circle inside a 40,000 km circle. One in five million, there. So the power return from a completely random jumble of mirrors would be 5*10^-10.

Compare to functional LRRR. A target about a meter across, hit with that 2km beam. 4*10^-6 of those photons hit.

By this totally off-the-cuff estimate, if the LRRR wasn't where and what they said it was, detected signal would fall to 1/10,000 of the expected strength.

Maybe they'd still detect it. They'd sure as heck notice something was wrong, though. If your detailed calculations show 100 photons in the detector, and you don't even get one?

"5-100 photons received over a 10-45 minute observation. They boosted the return to up to 100 photons a second"

could you be kind enough to post a link? I'm getting lazy.. But you do realise that 5-10 photons over time x (totally unspecific) is virtually nothing. But, lets give them the benefit of the doubt. Fair enough? So maybe, just maybe they really hit the thing and are really getting results from the reflector and nothing else that happens to be reflective enough to give similiar results.

Which brings us to the next point - who says manned missions dumped them up there? Unmanned seems far, far more likely and is much more acceptable.

I don't mean to be a prick, but anybody would ultimately dismiss this kind of "evidence" in front of court as inconclusive. So at the moment, we still don't have a clear winning hypothesis.

If anybody has a doable and relatively simple theory how we could finally clear this up and move on with our lives, feel free to do so! =)

Why? Just what would have prevented the manned missions?

Further, what proof do you have of any unmanned missions that put the mirrors there?

1. Who designed the mission hardware?
2. When was it launched?
3. Who controlled it?
4. How was this hidden?
5. Why are the mirrors better positioned than the Russian ones?
6. How was all this done while the Apollo missions were on?

7... how in heck is all of this easier than just doing Apollo?

anyone here seen the show "Eureka" ??

one episode they had this big weapon-laser device that could target anywhere in the world by shooting it at the moon and having it bounce off the mirrors that are placed on it. I think they also had mirrors on mars so that if the moon wasn't visible from their country, they could shoot it at mars instead. Was a very cool episode, at the end they had something called MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) which was about to destroy the entire world. Great show, wonder if there's any truth behind the things they have on there like plasma armour and things like that.