Reality is a mirage wrote:
Meanwhile, the technology to make fakes (likely known to CIA etc for a long time) is accelerating in main stream.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/14/ai_created_photos/
The biggest argument for the moon landing skeptic is wondering why we haven't gone back in 50 years. Ironically, if we were to go back now, we actually do have the computer imaging technology capable of totally faking it. So the moon landing skeptics would stay unconvinced. The bottom line is that there is no way with photos or any other physical artifact to prove beyond all doubt that we went to the moon. So it all comes down to whose word you believe. I've heard that with the right telescope you can see the man made stuff on the moon. So if I were to personally look through a telescope, then I would be 100% convinced. Or if I where to personally examine the moon rocks AND have the geological background to properly assess if the mass spec data proves they are not from earth, then I'd be 100% sure. But since I don't actually have access to the raw evidence I'm only 99% convinced we went to the moon. It's always good to keep and open mind. And I think both sides of this argument totally miss the point when they just call the other side stupid. I have no problem with anyone questioning anything and wanting to see the evidence. That said, both sides also have to acknowledge the evidence has limited persuasion because we are all just going off what someone else said about the raw evidence because it can always be interpreted a different way, or its reliability questioned. Most all of us are just going with who we believe is a reliable testimony.
So, the real deciding factor for what is true always comes back to human testimony. The reason I'm 99% convinced is that human nature makes it really hard to fake something like this and no one tells. Early in this thread someone said "what about the manhattan project, that was kept secret." Except that it wasn't, a Russian spy gave A-bomb technology to the Russians very early on. It's what started the whole nuclear arms race. Also, working on top secret military things and keeping it secret due to "compartmentalizing" is a much different endeavor than pulling off a public hoax when the whole world is watching. To pull of that sort of hoax, a substantial number of people in NASA would have to be in on the secret to pull it off. I just don't see any of these people NOT talking about it after all this time. A previous poster said their were multiple whistle blowers, but then didn't include any links. My own search shows a few here and there. Like a camera man who claims to be working with Kubric, but where is the rest of the crew to corroborate? Other whistle blowers are talking about UFO's etc. So that's the strongest evidence is the sheer difficulty of pulling of a hoax and not getting caught.
Next the moon skeptics bring up a variety of physical arguments that say going to the moon is impossible (like the van allen belt being too much radiation to pass through safely, or the temperature on the moon would melt the aluminum on the spacecraft, or that you can't transmit strong enough radio waves from the moon back to earth with the technology they had in 1960, etc). I have enough of my own physics knowledge to know that these arguments are not necessarily a slam dunk. For example, temperature and heat transfer are not the same thing. But with these again, you can rely on human testimony. What are the chances that there are blatant physical facts that make the moon landing impossible, and there aren't thousands of physicist and engineers pointing these discrepancies out? On the contrary, most of the people who have more knowledge of physics and engineering are the ones saying the moon landing is possible. It's the armchair skeptics on the internet, who don't actually work in that field, who coming up with the supposed physical problems.
Now all that said, I think NASA has devolved a great deal from their glory days. Like all government institutions, it puts as much energy into propping up it's image to convince the public why it need to exist, as it does into actually doing space stuff. I think the moon landing skeptics are correct when they start to get suspicious of NASA's constant bragging about what awesome new things it's going to accomplished. Unfortunately, this warranted suspicious gets transferred into not believing the real things NASA did. NASA is kind of like the guy who always talks about how he set the mile state record back back in HS, but has since gained 60 pounds and never runs a 30 minute 5k at the turkey trot. I can give people a pass if they start to think the guy is making the whole thing up.
So both sides, stop calling each other morans. Can't we just get back to arguing over Russia collusion or that rapist Kavanaugh?