Did man really walk on the moon?

[Dark Falken]

I personally believe we did land, though the arguements the other way are interesting. I've always wondered what would have happened if the Russians had beat us up there. At the time, I bet it would have seemed like a big deal, but in retrospect...I don't think it would have changed a thing. Just thought I'd throw that one out there. I know if has no bearing on this debate.

Has anyone ever wondered about the rover? I was always curious why I've never seen any photographs of it before it was detached from the lander, or while it was being setup. I'm not just talking about Apollo 11 either...I don't believe I've ever seen pictures or video from any of the missions. In your search for data for this arguement, have any of you come across stuff on the rover? I'd love to see it, just to satisfy my curiosity.

[udsuna]

You mean the little vehicle thingy that looks like a LEGO toy? Actually, I haven't seen any images of it specifically in digging up stuff. I'm having trouble finding images of the landing zones taken from either earth or orbit. I don't have time to sort through the 100,000+ pages that meet my search criteria.

I've seen plenty of views of the rover(s) on various TV shows. Discovery likes to show them off almost as much as the rockets. The last one I saw figures on us launching Rovers to every body in the inner solar system (except mercury) by the end of this decade.

But, you're absolutely right. At the time, Russia beating us to the moon would have been considered a national emergency like none our country had ever seen... Now, it's one of those "eh, who cares?" issues.

[Doomgaze]

Or, a few of them... I didn't personally verify every single supposed landing on the rock. But, we can see the lander bases for at least some of the others.

PROVE IT. What we do have at some of the sites are reflectors that NASA bounces a laser off of to measure the Earth-Moon distance. It's entirely possible Apollo 11 did not leave one of these behind, I'm not sure. However, NO HARDWARE HAS EVER BEEN PHOTOGRAPHED FROM THE EARTH. If you want to keep using that argument, you're going to have to prove otherwise.

Dark Falken - There was no rover on Apollo 11. It was first used during Apollo 14, I believe.

EDIT: Yes, Apollo 11 left behind a reflector, and it is still in use.

[Endless]

Well, from Earth, I provided plenty of links. The problem is that there is no high resolution picture of any of the site. From orbit, there are pictures from the LM that I guess you will dismiss as "fake". How easy. I mean, I see plenty of evidence that it did happen (500+ pictures archived, videos, crappy live transmission, recordings of the conversations in the LM/on the Moon plus transcripts, the huge gap between making up fake pictures in 1969 and 2005, not to mention the ability to see it, the materials brought back, all the people involved at the NASA, etc... So far, the only defense of your opinion is "the pictures/video/voice recordings are fake", and even that has been seriously damaged by evidence posted here.
Edit: http://www.nasm.si.edu/collections/i...1-37-5447l.jpg

[Doomgaze]

Oh, it was Apollo 15 that first used the rover. Anyway. Are the people pinging the reflector at the Apollo 11 site also working for the CIA to cover up that the landing was a hoax?

[udsuna]

I'll have to look into the reflector thing, now THAT could be workable physical evidence. And, I never said FAKE pictures, just STAGED areas. The difference should be obvious. The pictures themselves are real and unedited (probably)- it's the location that is suspect.

And I should think most people would be smart enough to know better than trust a government that has the means and one helluva motive, not to mention a history of coverups and black ops, operating so far away that they couldn't be discredited. Leave someone alone in a diamond mine for a few hours, then they go home, and you ask a couple weeks later if they took anything with them. They say no. And they prove it by showing that they're not carrying one on them, but never let you enter their house to check there. Damning? No. But very, very suspect. I wouldn't be too surprised if we made that first landing... I just doubt it highly.

[Dark Falken]

Ah...I didn't know it didn't ride up there with them till 15. Still, anyone have any pictures of it? I've always been curious how it was transported and how much assembly was required to get it going....and how they assembled it in that harsh environ. That laser reflector find was pretty cool. The funny thing is, now that you posted it I recall learning about it way back when in gradeschool. They kinda made a big deal about finally being able to acurately measure the distance between the Earth and moon. Good work all...like I said earlier, the arguements against an Apollo 11 landing are intriguing, but I still think the landing did occur. Now all that we've been led to believe about the landing might not be entirely true, but I think it did occur.

[udsuna]

Well, I'm trying to verify this reflector deal. I know we didn't even have lasers until 1960... I wonder if we had astronomical laser tech by the time Apollo 11 was launched. I've got the timeline for all kinds of other crap . We had CDs in '65 and fiber optics in '70. Yeah, we probably had them. I'm still about it not actually giving that little detail anywhere, but...

No reason to dis-believe the reflector was placed. A reflector like that couldn't have been placed without local-area manuals (meaning people, because we didn't have robots that smart back then, nor did we have remote-control tech that advanced). Congradulations on the first piece of believable, incontrovertable evidence . But we still can't visibly see the damned thing from earth.

EDIT: They use the He-Ne (helium-neon) lasers. Invented in 1965. Appearently, the old ruby-laser weren't NEARLY good enough for that kind of distance, but these things were far better. Given the scope of calculations necessary to prepare for liftoff, the application of a reflector would have been a last minute inclusion, but still within the area of possibility.