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qwop ago

The lunar orbiter takes photos so low resolution the landing sites look like pixels.

I see more than one pixel in these images. Of course you can always say it's all made up and fake. In this day you're never going to get a picture that is not in digital format, so you can always use the CGI claim for everything.

https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5445/17229073722_0325e33482_o.jpg

I also stumbled upon these guys from Germany, who used the Bochum observatory 20m telescope in 1972, to record the Apollo 16 TV signals directly from the moon:

http://www.classicbroadcast.de/stories/stories_sternwarte_bochum.pdf

I guess it can be fake also. Maybe NASA bounced a signal from a secret geostationary satellite? Seems they went through an awful lot of trouble to fake it in that case. Almost as much trouble as just doing the mission in the first place.

In time we will know for certain though, as more orbiters and more pictures will eventually show up. Sooner or later someone is going to find the moon landing sites are either empty, or we'll get some super high res photos from there, and then we can finally lay this debate to rest.

oligarchsalamander ago

I'd love for it to be true, if it is true the story is incredible. I'd hold a lot of resentment for the geniuses who apparently pulled it off because of their records keeping but I'd still be pretty happy about it. I just don't think it was physically possible for them to have done it, they discovered at some point their heat shield wasn't strong enough, their radiation shielding wasn't strong enough, their rocket wasn't strong enough.

They were looking at a 10 year delay for those reasons alone, who knows what other problems they were running into at the same time. I think they just decided that before the existing president's term was up they would fake it and it worked.

I see more than one pixel in these images. Of course you can always say it's all made up and fake.

I could say it is fake, but mainly because none of those pictures are independently verified. They all come from one source. I'd only add that it's a bit weird the lander is barely visible (about 8 pixels) yet you can clearly see footprints. Maybe that's possible, that footprints put big enough a dent into the soil that shadows make them visible.

They probably did use radio signals, I'm not suggesting they plugged the Houston command centre into a tv station. But it is very curious that since it was transmitted via radio signals that not a single copy exists of it.

qwop ago

So those Germans were watching Apollo 16 and just decided recording the data wasn't important?

They did record it, but this was Apollo 16 already remember. It was not the first mission any more. They recorded the video feed, and seems to have also caught some telemetry data. The problem is they used machines and formats that do not exist today any more. These guys were just enthusiasts, and they probably never assumed it was going to be important for archival purposes.

Here is a guy who was attempting to restore the tapes. As you can see it is not a simple thing, when nobody is manufacturing the esoteric recording equipment that existed almost 50 years ago any more.

https://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=38779

I just want to point out that radio telescopes like that are extremely directional and sensitive. So unless the signal would have been coming straight from the direction of the moon, they would have known something was wrong. So IF we assume this story is right, AND what they reported is true, then there are really only two possibilities: 1) NASA had a geostationary satellite bouncing the signal right in front of the moon, just for purposes like this, 2) The signal was really coming from the moon.