Apollo 11

This is rich. I just read an article that reported that over 32 million Americans doubt the veracity of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon.

I read the historical accounts and one of them caught my eye. It turns out that Luna 15, a Russian space vehicle was in orbit around the moon at the time the Eagle landed and overflew the site. The Russian craft had been intended to land, retrieve a soil sample and leave before the Americans did. Unfortunately for them and good for the US, they were unable to land when they anticipated and remained in orbit. They had a literal bird’s eye view of the NASA men on the surface along with their craft.

When the Russian engineers attempted to land their vehicle later, they miscalculated and crashed into the side of a lunar mountain. (Note: They needed Neil Armstrong to pilot it. But I digress.) Despite crashing, the probe recorded telemetry and, pictures, which were transmitted back to the earth. Now, think a second. Given the frantic race to beat each other to the moon, do you think that if the Russian propagandists had pictures of an empty landing area that they would not have posted them all around the world as the Apollo astronauts supposedly landed and were lauded for their “successful,” but faked trip to the moon?

After completely humiliating the US space program they would have trumpeted their own successes, even if the landings were unmanned. But, even though they did manage to land a couple times before the Americans did, they were not able to return them to the earth. Only the US has sent manned teams, six in all, to the moon and back. So the conspiracy theorists have a mighty tall mountain of evidence to claim that they were all fake. And the mountain of evidence is even higher than the pile of, well, you know, that the deniers have thrown up.

Are the Russian photos somewhere? They would be fun to see. One other little nugget I discovered was on a site discussing ham radio operators tracking Apollo 11. I quote it here.
Due to the necessary trajectory of the spacecraft, the enroute communications did not appear to be coming from a direct line between the Earth and Moon, which is what another poster is referring to in the earlier comment. Trying to set up something that has the proper characteristics requires, well, that one has a spacecraft with people in it on its way to the moon.


Another note reported that an observatory in England tracked both the Luna 15 and Apollo 11 to the surface of the moon by measuring doppler shift. (Gee I love that kind of talk.) They literally “watched” the Luna 15 crash as it descended too rapidly. Isn’t science great?

Thank you for your time and attention. Some people will contest that the sun came up today, so we just humor them and hurry on to more important topics.