The astronauts should have died due to the extreme radiation coming from the Van Allen belt, because their spacecrafts lacked the required 12 inches of lead shielding as protection.
Actually, of all the issues put forth by the hoax advocates, this is the one that requires the most attention. The Van Allen radiation belts are a pair of toroidal-shaped belts of high-energy electrons and ions trapped in the Earth's magnetic field. The inner region is centered at about 1,800 miles above Earth and has a thickness of about 3,000 miles. The outer region is centered at about 9,300-12,500 miles above the surface of the Earth and has a thickness of 3,700-6,200 miles.
As early as 1962, six years before the first circumlunar flight of Apollo 8, several symposia were called: precisely to address the issue of protection against radiations in space, including specific planning for the Apollo Missions. Both NASA and the
Atomic Energy Commission held two symposia, the first in Gatlinburg, Tennessee in 1962 -- sponsored by NASA,
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the
American Nuclear Society. By 1964, more information on the radiation hazard had been gathered and analyzed. Meeting again at Gatlinburg, those concerned with the upcoming manned missions defined radiation problems encountered in deeper space, the radiobiological effects, and radiation effects on materials and components including shielding requirements. To refrain from writing volumes on what was covered as a result of this extensive study, refer to the October 1964,
NASA SP-71 Publication, Second Symposium on Protection Against Radiations in Space (.pdf format, 28Mb). By examining the contents of the 1964
Symposium, you will see the laboriously considered and investigated areas early in the space program's history that are directly relevant to Apollo and the radiation issue. The fact that it was studied six years prior to any Apollo Moon launch indicates that it had been the primary concern on their agenda. And from looking at the contents of the 1964
Symposium, it's blatantly obvious that the hoax advocates never even thought to address any of the specific early radiation topics that are seen there. Why would such extensive studies have been done if there were no contemplated preparations to avoid such hazards during the upcoming planned manned space missions?
The scientists working on the problem of Van Allen radiation considered it to be minor compared to other design hurdles to be conquered. Their solution was simple -- avoid exposure by keeping the spacecraft at low Earth orbit altitudes while in parking orbits and then send it through the belts at high speed. The astronauts took about an hour and a half to pass through the belts, keeping their dose well below 1 rad. Radiation sickness symptoms don't start to show until you get around 25 rads. Once you reach 100 rads you're going to be ill. At 500 rads and more you're probably dead. So the exposure the astronauts received is pretty mild. There was a modicum of shielding from the equipment, but in the end this was not necessary as the extraordinary transition speed kept the dose below harmful limits -- both going to and returning from the Moon.
The actual doses, in rads, that the astronauts received can be found in
NASA Technical Note, TN D-7080 - Apollo Experience Report - Protection Against Radiation, by English, Benson, Bailey and Barnes, March 1973. The tabulated radiation dose average from the thermoluminescent dosimeters carried by Apollo astronauts for their respective missions is given. In comparison to the doses actually received, the report states that the original maximum operational dose (MOD) limit for each of the Apollo missions was set at 400 rads (x-ray equivalent) to the skin and 50 rads to blood forming organs. Bottom-line actual doses received by the astronauts were 0.18 rads for Apollo 11, 0.58 rads for Apollo 12, 1.14 rads for Apollo 14 and 0.30 rads for Apollo 15. While the table does not include the results from Apollo's 16 or 17, there is enough data to conclude that the actual radiation exposure that the astronauts endured was very small. It never came close to being lethal or even damaging.
As to the issue of solar flares and the danger they presented, there simply weren't any major ones during any of the Apollo missions. So the biggest reason that none of the astronauts died from radiation exposure was that they simply did not get a high enough dose. If you really want to get the low-down on this issue, read the
NASA Technical Notes referenced above.
You can hear Neil Armstrong talking during the landing of Apollo 11, yet you can't hear the roaring of the rocket engine.
On Earth, a rocket engine is an extremely noisy device; this comes from the shearing action between the high velocity exhaust jet and the surrounding atmosphere. The lander operated in a vacuum so the only sound would be that produced by vibrations transmitted through the spacecraft structure itself. Also, the microphones used by the astronauts were located inside their spacesuits, thus insulated from the cabin environment, and were designed to pick up only the sound in their immediate vicinity, that is, the astronauts' voices. This is no different from microphones fighter-jet pilots wear, who sit in front of a much more powerful engine that
does interact with the surrounding atmosphere.
There's no delay in the conversations between the Astronauts and Mission Control on Earth. There should be a lag just like with satellite connections.
Radio waves travel at the speed of light, but the Moon is far enough away for this to take a noticeable amount of time. Roughly 1.28 seconds. This means that an Astronaut would have to wait 2.56 seconds before getting a response from mission control.
All recordings of radio conversations of the Apollo missions were made on Earth. This means that we hear things as if we were standing beside the mission controller. The Astronaut's message comes in and the mission controller immediately responds. There is no delay because we are not aware of the 1.28 seconds it has taken the message to reach Earth, nor do we have to wait the 1.28 seconds it will take the response to reach the Moon before we hear it.
Obviously the reverse is true if the mission controller is asking the Astronaut something. In this case we have to wait for the request to reach the Astronaut and then for the answer to get back. So it's the Astronaut's turn to experience no delay. The recordings and transcripts of conversations with the Moon therefore show a mixture of this; sometimes a full 2.56 second gap, sometimes none at all. Also, if you listen carefully you can often hear an overlap. An astronaut is talking and is interrupted by Houston but will not notice until 1.28 seconds later. Another 1.28 seconds later you can hear the interruption of Houston echo back through the astronaut's microphone.
The Apollo Saturn rockets were not big enough to carry the fuel needed to reach the Moon.
The majority of the Saturn rockets were required to place Apollo into an orbit of only 100 nautical miles high. After that other factors come into play; speed given by the angular rotation of Earth (they don't put the launch site near the equator just for the sunny weather) and the fact that once you're moving in space nothing will slow you or speed you up, other than gravitational pull from planets or moons. All that was required from the rockets beyond this was to escape the initial Earth orbit, which did not require as much effort as the initial stage, and any minor adjustments on the way. What it's really doing is establishing a bigger orbit of Earth that will make it cross the path of the Moon's orbit. Once there, it does another minor burn (the lunar orbit insertion) and it's in a lunar orbit instead. So the rockets don't burn anything like all the way there and they never escape from Earth's gravity. It's all done with orbits. A lot of this kind of "proof" of a hoax is usually based on a comparison with the size of the Space Shuttle's fuel tanks and rockets. No consideration about the relative size and weights of either crafts. The Apollo missions actually jettisoned most of their rockets and weight once they left the Earth, leaving behind a comparatively tiny orbiter and lander. The Shuttles, on the other hand, come back down much as they left.
There are no flames or smoke plumes visible coming from the rocket during the take-off of the Moon lander, which looks strange to begin with.
The hoax advocates' claim that an exhaust plume should be visible is due to their experience seeing launches of such rockets as the Saturn V and the Space Shuttle, where large columns of smoke and flame are seen trailing the vehicle. Whether an exhaust plume is visible or not is mostly due to the type of propellant used. The Saturn V's first stage burned
liquid oxygen (LOX) and
kerosene (RP-1), which produces an opaque yellow flame. The plume we see trailing the Space Shuttle comes from the solid rocket boosters, which burn a propellant consisting mostly of
ammonium perchlorate and
powdered aluminum. However, if you look closely at the three main engines at the stern of the Shuttle orbiter you will see very little flame. The LOX and
liquid hydrogen burned by the Shuttle's main engines produces a nearly invisible flame. The lander used a propellant mixture consisting of
nitrogen tetroxide (NTO) and
Aerozine 50 (a 50-50 mixture of
hydrazine and
unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine), which, like LOX and
liquid hydrogen, produces exhaust gases that are mostly invisible. In space, the flame is even less visible as the gases disperse very rapidly. Also note that the video of the lander launches is generally of poor quality and low resolution.
The FOX television program dealing with the alleged hoax points out NASA illustrations showing an exhaust plume coming from the lander's ascent engine. This is a simple case of NASA artists taking artistic license. The illustrations are a dramatization of a lander launch and are not meant to be scientifically accurate. The claim that the videos look strange, as if wires were used, is based on how the video abruptly ends when the Lunar Module ascent stage reaches the "ceiling" of the "movie stage." The video to which they refer is of earlier missions seen in Apollo documentaries and on television, shot with a stationary camera that could not follow the ascent.
The rover was too big to be carried in the lunar lander.
A great deal of money was spent on the lunar rover and a great number of problems had to be resolved before it could work on the Moon's surface. It wasn't a last minute addition deployed without any thought. As with everything taken to the Moon, weight and size were major considerations. If one takes the measurements of the Lunar Rover Vehicle (LRV) when it was fully deployed and assembled, then yes, it would not fit in the lander; however, the Rover folded for stowage in the descent stage of the lander in a quadrant to the right of the ladder. The chassis was hinged in three places and the four wheels were pivoted nearly flat against the folded chassis occupying only 30 cubic feet. When the astronauts
deployed the Rover, all they had to do was pull on two cords and the Rover popped right out of its berth and down to the lunar surface. As it did so, the wheels deployed outward and were then locked into position.
The tracks of the rover in Apollo 16 photograph AS1610717446 turn at almost right angles behind it, which is impossible.
The rover was steered by its front and rear wheels, as can be seen in
A16V1245810 (Quicktime format, .mov), so all this photograph shows is where the wheels turned. Other photographs, such as
AS1713720979, show hardly any or no tracks behind the Rover wheels. From the lunar journals it is clear that the dust layer was not uniformly distributed and usually thinner on mountain slopes. Activity around the Rover would also quickly obliterate tire marks with dust kicked up by the astronauts. And since the rover's turn radius, like that of any four-wheeled vehicle, was limited, the astronauts sometimes found it easier to lift one end of the rover and turn it so it pointed in the direction they wanted to go, rather than manuevering through a three-point turn. When this occurred, there would obviously be no tracks leading up to the wheels.
The Apollo crews were launched into space but never left Earth orbit.
Orbiting spacecraft and satellites are easily visible to the naked eye; in fact, there are many people who enjoy tracking satellites as a hobby. The Apollo spacecraft were large vehicles, thus bright and easy to see. Had the Apollo crafts not left orbit, they would have been observed by many people worldwide, yet there where no such sightings. Also, there are documented cases of observers following the crafts as they left Earth orbit on their translunar trajectories -- exactly when and where the spacecraft were predicted to be. Furthermore, the Soviets closely tracked the crafts all the way to the Moon and back.
NASA used its TETR-A training satellite to transmit data to Earth to simulate transmissions from the Apollo spacecraft to fool ground controllers into believing they were receiving real data.
This is a claim made by hoax advocate Bill Kaysing. The flight controllers in the
Mission Control Center (MCC) read only what was on their computer screens and wouldn't have known where the data came from. Thus, it can be argued the MCC flight controllers could be fooled by simulated data and a satellite would not have been necessary to do it.
On the other hand, a satellite could not possibly fool controllers of the
Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN), who collected radio signals from space and relayed them to the MCC. The Apollo spacecraft followed a trajectory to the Moon that was tracked with great precision.
TETR-A was an Earth orbiting satellite and followed a vastly different trajectory with no similarity to Apollo whatsoever. In addition, TETR-A re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on April 28 1968, eight months before the first lunar flight.
The astronauts' movement inside the Lunar Module would change the center of mass, making it impossible to control.
This is a claim of hoax advocate Ralph Rene who, apparently, has a poor understanding of physics and the lander's control systems. The lander had an automatic computer guidance and inertial control system. This system was designed to measure the attitude of the lander several times per second using a system of gyroscopes. If it found that the lander was out of proper attitude it would make adjustments by gimballing the main descent engine and/or throttling it back, and firing control thrusters as needed to stabilize the spacecraft. Despite claims to the contrary, the control thrusters exerted sufficient force to nudge the spacecraft around as necessary to keep it stable.
The untested Lunar Module landed on the Moon six times flawlessly, although its prototype crashed on Earth during training.
The prototype to which the hoax advocates refer was not a prototype at all, but two classes of training vehicles known as the
Lunar Landing Research Vehicles (LLRV) and the more advanced
Lunar Landing Training Vehicles (LLTV). These vehicles included a jet engine to support five-sixths of their airborne weight, a pair of rocket engines that simulated the lander's descent engine, and small jets that mimicked the lander's attitude control thrusters. The Apollo astronauts trained in the LLRV and LLTV to learn the skills necessary to maneuver the actual lander. During one test flight, Neil Armstrong was forced to eject when the LLRV's helium pressurization system for the steering jets failed, causing the LLRV to become unstable and crash. Despite this incident, the LLRV and LLTV flew hundreds of successful flights.
The LLRV and LLTV were very different from the lander and the allegedly untested lander was far from untested. Every component of the lander was tested over and over again during its development. Furthermore, the lander was tested in space during the Apollo 9 and 10 missions.
The astronauts could not pass through the tunnel connecting the Command Module and the Lunar Module with their spacesuits and backpacks on.
That is correct, but the astronauts did not have to. Their EVA suits and backpacks were stowed in the Lunar Module the whole time. The only time the astronauts donned their suits and packs were when they actually left the lander for surface activities on the Moon.
The astronauts could not have left the Lunar Module because they could not fit through the hatch and there was no room to even open the hatch, which opened to the inside.
This is an often quoted "fact" that has never been proven. The astronauts were positioned on either side of the central cockpit panel, with the main EVA door between them. There was in fact plenty of room to open the hatch. On Apollo 11, Armstrong would have been manning the left position and Aldrin the right. The door was latched to Aldrin's side, necessitating that the door be swung open inward, and effectively trapping Aldrin momentarily on his side of the lander. In fact, this is the main reason that Armstrong left the lander first. Once he was out, Aldrin was able to close the hatch, move over to Armstrong's position, and leave himself.
As to the issue of whether the astronauts could fit through the hatch, clearly they could. There are many photos (like
AS11405862 and
AS11405863) and video, both on the Moon and while in training, showing fully suited astronauts crawling through the hatch. There are a couple possible sources for this misinformation. First, early versions of the lander had a round hatch that hampered astronaut egress; however, the original round hatch was changed to a rectangular hatch while the lander was still in development. Second, there is a story that a hoax advocate compared the width of the lander's hatch to dimensional data on the astronauts' spacesuit. It was found that the published width of the suit exceeded the hatch width. What he failed to realize is that the suit dimension was the maximum width measured across the elbows. When crawling through the hatch, an astronaut would draw his arms in under his body, thus decreasing his width and allowing him to pass through the opening, which, judging the following words of Buzz Aldrin, was still not that easy:
"As Neil backed out of the hatch, it was not that easy -- with the backpack on -- to clear the opening. So I had to guide him down: left, right and so on. Once he got on the 'porch,' as we called it, he pulled a lever, which brought the live television camera into view. But the image was upside down; Houston had to send the computer a signal to put it right-side up again."
The fuel tanks of the Lunar Module were nowhere near even a sixth the size of those on the space shuttle, as one would expect to achieve lunar orbit.
This comment, by hoax advocate Bart Sibrel, fails to take into account propellant density. It is not the volume of the propellant that matters; it is the mass. The main engines of the Space Shuttle consume
liquid hydrogen and
liquid oxygen. Since
liquid hydrogen has an extremely low density, a very large tank is required to store it. The lander, on the other hand, used propellants of much higher density. On average, the lander's propellants were 3.3 times denser than the propellants stored in the large external tank of the Space Shuttle. With an average specific gravity of 1.19, the 5200 pounds of propellant stored in the lander's ascent stage would displace a volume of only 70 cubic feet. This volume is consistent with the size of the tanks we see in photographs of the lander.
