Buzz Aldrin punches out Moon Conspiracy theorist (1 Viewer)

[andrew markworthy]

most people I know who saw it now believe the moon landing was faked.

Change your friends.

Amaxingly, this story hasn't reached the UK [well, the 'moon landing was faked' bit has, but the only person I know who believed that was my batty late aunt, but she also believed in practically anything which couldn't be supported by empirical evidence] - did he *really* hit him, or am I misunderstanding American slang?

 

[Steve Christou]

Well if I had walked on the moon and some geezer asked me to prove it, I'd have nutted the bastard and than moonwalked over him.
Buzz, Neil and the others must be really pissed off with that tv show and all the ignorant people asking them whether it really happened, its pathetic.

 

[Keith Mickunas]

Andrew, I believe it was an actual punch to the chin. Aldrin has stated he was defending himself because the loon wouldn't let him out of a hotel and was poking him in the chest with a bible, which Sibrel pretty much admitted was the truth. Apparently the incident was taped for Sibrel's next film. He had lured Aldrin to the hotel for an interview under false pretenses according to one of articles I read. Here's a recent CNN article on it.

 

[Scott Leopold]

I actually have two friends who were duped by this special. One of my arguments to them that this was a bunch of rubbish was that it's a Fox Special! That wasn't enough to convince them. Sadly, all the scientific evidence in the world hasn't been enough to convince them, either.

 

[Chad R]

Any chance we could send Buzz over to France to give a good slapping to the 9/11 conspiracy theorist?

 

[Mike D.]

I use this issue in a college class I teach, in a section about evaluating credibility of information on the Internet. I first let them look at the hoax proponent's site, then point them to the rebuttal site. So far, I've had 2 out of appx 30 students side with the hoax theroy. I'm not sure if that's good or not, I would have hoped for 0 out of 30! I won't name the University, if it were 0-30 maybe I would!

 

[Grant B]

That fox special was quite a while ago and i remember laughing more than for most Simpsons episodes. The one thing that threw me was the Russians saying they did not believe anyone would live going through the Van Allen radiation belt.Those Apollo missions were the only ones to ever travel through it

I'll put $5 on Buzz if he ever agrees to a Texas Death Match with Chuck Heston.

 

[Mike Broadman]

What else does this Sibrel guy do with his spare time- run up to war veterans with a bible telling them to swear that the Vietnam War was real? Demand blood tests of AIDS patience to prove that HIV isn't a hoax? Hang out with those scumbags who claim the Holocaust didn't happen?

 

[Lew Crippen]

I can’t resist a few more links. This one borders on lunacy, although I do love the way FDR, Moses and Columbus are included on the side of truth. This one contains a copy of the flat-earthers views (I lost my direct link). You can go Link Removed for a series of links to all sorts of craziness. Finally, I found this, which provides some nice commentary regarding the Flat Earthers. Its particularly amusing to note that this site feels it necessary to point out that they know that the earth is spherical.

 

[Jonathan Burk]

This guy was on an AM talk show for a whole hour earlier this week here in Los Angeles, and while I'm not a "scientist", I had learned enough in one semester of a Critical Thinking course to see he didn't have any real arguments. His main talking points were:
-he has "top secret" film footage of them faking the trip to the moon while in earth orbit.
-Neil Armstrong has never given an interview about his trip to the moon.
-We stopped "going to the moon" once China had the capability to monitor deep space.
-Von Braun (sp?) apparently said, in 1954, that it would take three rockets the size of the Empire State Building to get to the moon.
Having just finished "From the Earth to the Moon", I was fascinated by the interiew. In the end, I believe we went to the moon. If you think about it, you only need three things to put a man on the moon:
-The scientific knowledge of how to do it.
-The resources (material, people, and money) to fascilitate it.
-The will to go.
As far as I can tell, we had the scientific knowledge in 1969. If we didn't, it wouldn't have been hard for a Russian scientist to point out the flaws in our program. I'm also assuming that most of the "top secret" stuff in the space program back then has now become pretty common scientific knowledge, so any huge flaws in the physics of the endeavor could be easily pointed out.
We definitely had the resources to do what it would take. I don't think anyone's argued that we spent too little money on NASA (except maybe NASA )!
And we definitely had the will to go.
So why is it so hard to believe we went?

 

[andrew markworthy]

Thanks for the link, Keith.

I have deleted the response I originally made to the further information about conspiracy theorists because I don't want a lifetime ban from HTF for excessive bad language.

Does anyone know if the 'faked landing' idea was conceived before or after Capricorn One was released?

 

[Jack Briggs]

There have been foolish people doubting NASA's (and Russia's) accomplishments in space from the get-go. At the time of the December, 1972, Apollo 17 launch (the final Apollo/Saturn manned lunar mission), NASA invited a man who was, back then, believed to be the oldest person alive, to attend the nighttime liftoff on the space agency's dollar. The man claimed to be 130 years old, and also claimed he believed NASA never landed humans on the Moon.

Some media pundits at the time were saying that more people found the man's claims of being 130 years old far less believable than the notion of humans walking on the Moon.

To this day, scientists bounce laser beams off the Lunar Laser Retroreflectors left behind by the six successful landing missions. They enable us to measure the distance from Earth to the Moon to an accuracy of within six inches.

The Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) left on the surface by five of the six successful landing missions (Apollos 12, 14-17) returned data on lunar surface conditions for more than two decades.

Then, of course, there's all the material returned from the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts. This material forced the book to be rewritten as to how the Moon was formed.

Finally, of course, there's the fact that Project Apollo remains, to this day, humanity's greatest accomplishment. Dr. Edwin Eugene "Buzz" Aldrin, along with Mission Commander Neil Alden Armstrong and Command Module pilot MIchael Collins, risked his life in order to help achieve the late president Kennedy's goal of landing humans on the Moon before the decade was over. Aldrin served not only his country but the entire human race with honor, courage, and distinction.

I met the man back in 1997. What a gentleman.

Dr. Aldrin will live on history, while this nutcase who harrassed him will be forgotten before the year is over. So be it.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Some other comments about previous posts:

* Werner Von Braun never made any such claim about needing three launch vehicles the "size of the Empire State Building." Dr. Von Braun had been yearning for space travel ever since the 1920s. He led the design of the Saturn 1B and the Saturn V. And he wanted to build the even-larger Nova vehicle (which would have been required had NASA opted for the "direct ascent" lunar trajectory mode).

* Neil Armstrong was absolutely bewildered and put off by the media stampede upon him and his crewmates when they were sent on a post-mission world tour by the U.S. in August of 1969. The frenzy drove Dr. Aldrin into a serious bout of depression and alcoholism. And it drove Mr. Armstrong into seclusion. After accepting a teaching job at an Ohio university, Mr. Armstrong swore off all interviews. In books written about the Apollo program in the ensuing decades, you will notice that all Apollo astronauts but Armstrong are interviewed. It's just the way the man is. (That sort of "logic" is so utterly refuted by the simple fact that Mr. Armstrong's crewmates have spoken publicly about the mission on numerous, numerous occasions.)

* China? Any country with radio telescope and telemetry technology could and did track the Apollo flights (as well as Gemini, Vostok, Voskhod, Soyuz, etc.). There's nothing mysterious or mystical about tracking objects in space. You can even do it with an optical telescope if you know where to look. (NBC, during the near-tragic mission of Apollo 13, broadcast a television image of the returning spacecraft; it was a pinpoint of light as seen through a groundbased telescope.) Also, England's Jodrell Bank radio observatory always tracked the Apollo missions.

 

[Lew Crippen]

And on a another subject, who else has seen For All Mankind? The Criterion DVD is something special, with commentary by the filmmaker and Gene Cernan (last man on the moon). And I really liked the paintings and their accompanying commentary by Alan Bean.

Love that. Think that I’m inspired to watch this again tonight.

 

[Jack Briggs]

It's a great, great documentary, Lew. I too might screen it tonight. And I prefer to think of Gene Cernan (Gemini 9, Apollo 10, Apollo 17) as the "last man on the Moon ... for now."

Another thing for the nutcase to ponder: portions of the Surveyor 3 unmanned lunar lander. The Apollo 12 lunar module Intrepid touched down in the Moon's "Ocean of Storms" by the very rim of the crater in which the unmanned lunar lander Surveyor 3 (1966) had landed. It was one of the primary targets of the second manned landing mission. Astronauts Conrad and Bean could actually see the Surveyor from where their own lunar module had landed. (The pictures of Al Bean cutting the Surveyor's imaging camera loose are so cool.) Scientists were amazed to find that an Earth bacterium had actually survived on the Surveyor in the harsh lunar environment for three years!

 

[Lew Crippen]

And I prefer to think of Gene Cernan (Gemini 9, Apollo 10, Apollo 17) as the "last man on the Moon ... for now."

We can but hope.

 

[Leo Hinze]

Without people like those who believe what the Fox special had to say to fill out the bottom regions of the bell curve, the rest of us would just be average everyday folks, not the rocket scientists we appear to be by comparison
Lew - with the last name of Crippen, it's no mystery where you stand on the issue

 

[Blu]

If I'm not mistaken can't people with the proper kind of telescope actually see the stuff left on the Moon?

 

[Carlo_M]

If I'm not mistaken can't people with the proper kind of telescope actually see the stuff left on the Moon?

Yeah...'cos NASA went to each powerful telescope and stuck a sticker on the lens that makes it LOOK like you can see stuff on the moon! Duh!
Seriously, Buzz did not hit that guy hard enough. I sure hope if it goes to trial that I get picked for that jury...

 

[BrianW]

If I'm not mistaken can't people with the proper kind of telescope actually see the stuff left on the Moon?

Blu, I could be mistaken, but I'm quite positive that there are no ground-based telescopes powerful enough to resolve a picture of the artifacts we left on the Moon.
------------------------------------------
Dr. Aldrin has certainly served humankind well. We should be thankful for his significant contribution to history. (And we should thank him for landing on the Moon, too! )