Merged: Apollo "hoax" discussion - continuation thread

[Tolls]

It's all a test of our faith...

(it's a sad indictment of the quality of conspiracy posters these days that we are reduced to this)

[bknight]

Originally Posted by Captain_Swoop

They were drawn by NASA in the 50s. Wernher Von Braun led the expedition.

Not you also with the same type of snippy comments.

[bknight]

Originally Posted by Tolls

It's all a test of our faith...

(it's a sad indictment of the quality of conspiracy posters these days that we are reduced to this)

It is not a test of my faith, but I agree with your CT comments.

[trustbutverify]

Originally Posted by bknight

Have you verified the vides you have linked?

Fully verified.

Quote:

The Moon has been in recorded history for all recorded time, far longer than holograms were THOUGHT possible.

They saw you coming, brother.

[CORed]

Originally Posted by threadworm

Seems to be a re-hash/regurgitation of this piece in conspiracy kooks-r-us site Nexus:

https://www.nexusmagazine.com/articl...-legacy-behind

Said article makes the hilarious claim that



Firstly, the low resolution claim is a lie. There are many high resolution pictures of the landings sites. Secondly, the suggestion that NASA published these images 'reluctantly' is a lie. I would argue that there was hardly a public clamour for such images prior to NASA publishing them at all. Thirdly, the claim that there no photographs taken by independent observers is also a lie.

If they don't know that those claims alone aren't true, they aren't fit to be writing about the subject.

The aulis article is a little self referential to say the least, and is chock full of knowing winks and sly inferences but very short on actual facts and the kind of independent sources 'Kouts' seems so keen on.

IIRC, most of the appollo mission photos were shot with Hasselblad cameras. These would have been 6cm x 6cm film images. They were most assuredly not "low resolution" images.

[trustbutverify]

Originally Posted by Tolls

It's all a test of our faith...

(it's a sad indictment of the quality of conspiracy posters these days that we are reduced to this)

At least we're making the effort.

[JayUtah]

Originally Posted by CORed

IIRC, most of the appollo mission photos were shot with Hasselblad cameras. These would have been 6cm x 6cm film images. They were most assuredly not "low resolution" images.

Not at all. I've shot with those cameras on that film and then had the results scanned at film resolution. This was to test the theory that the reseau fiducials would have been obliterated under some conditions. And yes, the photographic results are glorious. The Ektachrome E-3 emulsion on ESTAR base at roughly 60 mm square, through a Carl Zeiss lens, is considerably high resolution.

[Jack by the hedge]

Originally Posted by JayUtah

… This was to test the theory that the reseau fiducials would have been obliterated under some conditions.

Just as an aside, would I be right to imagine the test results supported the theory?

[JayUtah]

Originally Posted by Jack by the hedge

Just as an aside, would I be right to imagine the test results supported the theory?

Yes, but not in the way some had proposed. We had proposed such things as halation to explain missing fiducials in some images. That was not confirmed by experiment. Some had proposed gamut and dynamic range issues in the scanner. This too was disconfirmed by experiment. It turns out that a combination of reduced image size and JPEG compression finally made the fiducials disappear in light areas of the image. Therefore we did confirm that a plausible workflow designed to result in web-sharable images could produce a loss of density in the fiducials.

[bknight]

Originally Posted by JayUtah

Yes, but not in the way some had proposed. We had proposed such things as halation to explain missing fiducials in some images. That was not confirmed by experiment. Some had proposed gamut and dynamic range issues in the scanner. This too was disconfirmed by experiment. It turns out that a combination of reduced image size and JPEG compression finally made the fiducials disappear in light areas of the image. Therefore we did confirm that a plausible workflow designed to result in web-sharable images could produce a loss of density in the fiducials.

So the fiducials density would be "washed" out in brighter objects in the Apollo image library.

[abaddon]

Originally Posted by bknight

So the fiducials density would be "washed" out in brighter objects in the Apollo image library.

It's known as "bleed".

[bknight]

Originally Posted by abaddon

It's known as "bleed".

Oh all right:
So the fiducials density would be "bled" out in brighter objects in the Apollo image library.

[JayUtah]

The observation was that in some photographs the fiducials would seem to disappear in bright areas of the image. The hoax theory was that this occurred when foreground objects were photographically composited over background plates that already had the fiducials on them. The bright parts of the foreground object seemed to obliterate the fiducial selectively, with adjacent dark areas (most often part of the background) retaining the fiducial.

Among the photographic explanations for this behavior were such things as bleed and halation. Bleed occurs when energy migrates sideways from highly exposed portions of the film to adjacent parts of the emulsion. Even if the image is optically in perfect focus, this tends to make small details disappear. Halation occurs when light reflects internally from the rear of the emulsion layers, from the base, or both. If the incident angle is acute, such as with the aperture wide open or near the edges of the frame, the light reflects back to one side or the other of the incident point. The layer is then effectively exposed from behind in a way that blurs detail.

What we discovered in testing was that the film was robustly resistant to both bleed and halation. This is because Kodak knows what they're doing. Although the fiducials are very fine, we were not able to make any of them disappear entirely via simple photographic exposure changes and ordinary processing. While some dimming occurred, we could not replicate the effect in the subject images by manipulating the variables of mere photochemical photography.

Since the subject images were digital, we then turned to likely digital image processing techniques to see if they had an effect. They did. Reducing the image size decreases the number of pixels that can span the thickness of a fiducial. This made them more likely to disappear in various color quantization and compression schemes. As expected, lossy JPEG compression could eliminate a fiducial entirely in a bright area. This is mathematically sound too. Depending on quality settings, the sharp transition from very light to very dark to light again simply didn't make the compression cut. It was too high frequency a change to be expressible in a discrete cosine transform with given parameters. This was not a problem when the transition was between various grays and the black fiducial.

The one photographic effect we did not test was contact printing such as would have been employed to produce duplication masters. Naturally prints and scans made for the general public were not taken from the original camera transparencies but from dupe masters gingerly prepared from the camera originals. I have seen very high quality scans of the camera originals, which are still being systematically prepared for all the missions. Naturally Roll 39 from Apollo 11 had priority. The difference between scans of the camera originals and the typical convenience downloads was stark. There was much greater tonal range in the originals. The reason we are concerned here is that contact printing can suffer fine distortion at the edges where the light strikes the transparency at an angle and transfers it at that same angle to the underlying receiving transparency. Since each color element has its own layer, you often get small amounts of chromatic aberration in contact dupes if the light source is not properly collimated. For a fine detail like a fiducial, that aberration might be enough to make it insufficiently distinct in subsequent reproductions.

The real silly part of the hoax theory, of course, is that the proposed compositing method is too stupid for any actual process photographer to have actually contemplated. The last step in this process is to rephotograph the composited scene using a process camera. The obvious way to apply the fiducials would have been to put a reseau plate in the process camera, not the camera allegedly used to take the background plates. The "anomaly" that arises in the hoax theory requires the conspirators to have been quite stupid. So stupid, in fact, that many theorists change horses and say this was a deliberate attempt at whistle-blowing. And yet somehow none of them got caught doing it at the time.

[Roger Ramjets]

Originally Posted by JayUtah

The "anomaly" that arises in the hoax theory requires the conspirators to have been quite stupid. So stupid, in fact, that many theorists change horses and say this was a deliberate attempt at whistle-blowing. And yet somehow none of them got caught doing it at the time.

No, not whistle blowing. A deliberate attempt to make it appear to be whistle-blowing, which would then be dismissed as too obvious - thus boosting the 'authenticity' of the fake photos.

But in fact they are all fakes. Yes, every 'fake moon landing' photo is actually faked. We know this because the Moon landings are real, so NASA had no reason to make fakes. The Apollo Hoax is a hoax.

[bknight]

Originally Posted by JayUtah

The observation was that in some photographs the fiducials would seem to disappear in bright areas of the image. The hoax theory was that this occurred when foreground objects were photographically composited over background plates that already had the fiducials on them. The bright parts of the foreground object seemed to obliterate the fiducial selectively, with adjacent dark areas (most often part of the background) retaining the fiducial.

Among the photographic explanations for this behavior were such things as bleed and halation. Bleed occurs when energy migrates sideways from highly exposed portions of the film to adjacent parts of the emulsion. Even if the image is optically in perfect focus, this tends to make small details disappear. Halation occurs when light reflects internally from the rear of the emulsion layers, from the base, or both. If the incident angle is acute, such as with the aperture wide open or near the edges of the frame, the light reflects back to one side or the other of the incident point. The layer is then effectively exposed from behind in a way that blurs detail.

What we discovered in testing was that the film was robustly resistant to both bleed and halation. This is because Kodak knows what they're doing. Although the fiducials are very fine, we were not able to make any of them disappear entirely via simple photographic exposure changes and ordinary processing. While some dimming occurred, we could not replicate the effect in the subject images by manipulating the variables of mere photochemical photography.

Since the subject images were digital, we then turned to likely digital image processing techniques to see if they had an effect. They did. Reducing the image size decreases the number of pixels that can span the thickness of a fiducial. This made them more likely to disappear in various color quantization and compression schemes. As expected, lossy JPEG compression could eliminate a fiducial entirely in a bright area. This is mathematically sound too. Depending on quality settings, the sharp transition from very light to very dark to light again simply didn't make the compression cut. It was too high frequency a change to be expressible in a discrete cosine transform with given parameters. This was not a problem when the transition was between various grays and the black fiducial.

The one photographic effect we did not test was contact printing such as would have been employed to produce duplication masters. Naturally prints and scans made for the general public were not taken from the original camera transparencies but from dupe masters gingerly prepared from the camera originals. I have seen very high quality scans of the camera originals, which are still being systematically prepared for all the missions. Naturally Roll 39 from Apollo 11 had priority. The difference between scans of the camera originals and the typical convenience downloads was stark. There was much greater tonal range in the originals. The reason we are concerned here is that contact printing can suffer fine distortion at the edges where the light strikes the transparency at an angle and transfers it at that same angle to the underlying receiving transparency. Since each color element has its own layer, you often get small amounts of chromatic aberration in contact dupes if the light source is not properly collimated. For a fine detail like a fiducial, that aberration might be enough to make it insufficiently distinct in subsequent reproductions.

The real silly part of the hoax theory, of course, is that the proposed compositing method is too stupid for any actual process photographer to have actually contemplated. The last step in this process is to rephotograph the composited scene using a process camera. The obvious way to apply the fiducials would have been to put a reseau plate in the process camera, not the camera allegedly used to take the background plates. The "anomaly" that arises in the hoax theory requires the conspirators to have been quite stupid. So stupid, in fact, that many theorists change horses and say this was a deliberate attempt at whistle-blowing. And yet somehow none of them got caught doing it at the time.

And thusly the "C" rock came to be, by a slight fiber becoming "part" of the copy and Rene hitched a ride onto this dead horse.

Thanks for the clarification of the public train of processes.

[abaddon]

Originally Posted by bknight

And thusly the "C" rock came to be, by a slight fiber becoming "part" of the copy and Rene hitched a ride onto this dead horse.

Thanks for the clarification of the public train of processes.

Have you happened upon the demand for a link to the "original" "undoctored" photographs?

How they think it is possible to link to physical film is puzzling to say the least.

[bknight]

Originally Posted by abaddon

Have you happened upon the demand for a link to the "original" "undoctored" photographs?

How they think it is possible to link to physical film is puzzling to say the least.

No I think the hoaxies pulled the old slight of hand attempting to indicate tat they were the originals.

[dudalb]

I presume the 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing is why we are having such a upturn in Moonbat activity.

[Foster Zygote]

Originally Posted by JayUtah

The real silly part of the hoax theory, of course, is that the proposed compositing method is too stupid for any actual process photographer to have actually contemplated.

And the really, really silly part of the hoax theory is that it means that only the white stripes on the U.S. flag were composited into the images on some photos.

[Foster Zygote]

Originally Posted by JayUtah

When the APS ignites, the flimsy Kapton sheet immediately disintegrates...

I've been slumming YouTube comments for a while now, and in the comments section of a video of the Apollo 17 LM launching from the lunar surface, I've explained several times to various people that the "multicolored sparks/cheap fireworks" are actually scraps of Kapton insulation being blasted away by the APS and, because it's happening in a vacuum, flying away at high speed, moving so fast that the color wheel on the TV camera only exposes them in single colors of either red, blue or green.

[Foster Zygote]

Originally Posted by theprestige

I know you guys are just joking around, but seriously, the parentheses-thing is an anti-semitic meme. You may want to reconsider whether it's a good look for your posts. To me it comes across about the same as putting the big-nosed International Jew caricature up as your avataor, "ironically".

I learned something new today. I thought it was just part of the conspiracy theorist shibboleth of using weird personalized punctuation - like ending every sentence fragment with multiple periods....and starting new sentences without punctuation..

[JayUtah]

Originally Posted by Foster Zygote

And the really, really silly part of the hoax theory is that it means that only the white stripes on the U.S. flag were composited into the images on some photos.

Haha, yeah I forgot about that. Checkout Fig.7 on this page: http://www.clavius.org/photoret.html

[JayUtah]

Originally Posted by Foster Zygote

I learned something new today. I thought it was just part of the conspiracy theorist shibboleth of using weird personalized punctuation...

I'm just laughing at the irony that all the Lisp programmers I know are Jewish. Seriously.

[Jack by the hedge]

Originally Posted by abaddon

Have you happened upon the demand for a link to the "original" "undoctored" photographs?

How they think it is possible to link to physical film is puzzling to say the least.

I did point out to one troll that any "C" photos he could find had higher contrast than the subtle gradations of this non-C photo: https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a16/AS16-107-17446HR.jpg and that contrast is the entropy of photographs; later generation copies only ever increase in contrast.

So unless he could bring evidence that wasn't obviously a later generation than the clean version, he had nothing.

Ah, you made me go back and re-read that thread. It's probably bad form to laugh at stuff you wrote yourself but I'd forgotten and badscience.net allows swearing and it got a bit Malcolm Tucker.

[JayUtah]

Originally Posted by Jack by the hedge

[C]ontrast is the entropy of photographs; later generation copies only ever increase in contrast.

That depends on the processing workflow. In many cases you lose midtones. I'm astounded how much better (in terms of tonal range) the Apollo color photos appear the closer you get to original transparencies. This is definitely a problem for color reversal stocks and various ad hoc printmaking processes that NASA's photo distribution contractor has used.

However, one of the big problems we had in the blue-screen traveling matte days was loss of contrast. As you went through more generations (and later processes that allowed for partial transparency had many generations) you lost contrast and this would be evident in a contrast disparity among elements of the final composite. Mostly you lost the deep darks, especially in the foreground elements. Eastman tried to help this with the 529x stocks, which were experimental fast high-contrast color negative stocks. The first feature to use them for VFX work was The Neverending Story. There was visible improvement.

ETA: These stocks migrated to the Kodak side in 35mm format as various incarnations of Kodacolor VR, VR-G, Gold, etc.

[dudalb]

Yup, the Moon Hoax nuts are defiantly building up to July 20th....

[bknight]

Originally Posted by dudalb

Yup, the Moon Hoax nuts are defiantly building up to July 20th....

Yes, according to a newer member of the fraternity,
1. It is rumored that one of the Lunar astronauts is going to break ranks an spills the beans about the Apollo hoax.
2. There will be individual(s) that will post on the internet copies of documents that will prove the hoax/conspiracy.

IMO neither will occur.

[Foster Zygote]

Originally Posted by bknight

Yes, according to a newer member of the fraternity,
1. It is rumored that one of the Lunar astronauts is going to break ranks an spills the beans about the Apollo hoax.
2. There will be individual(s) that will post on the internet copies of documents that will prove the hoax/conspiracy.

IMO neither will occur.

I predict that from now on, every sad passing of another one of these heroes will be declared an assassination because he was about to spill the beans.

[PhantomWolf]

Originally Posted by JayUtah

I'm just laughing at the irony that all the Lisp programmers I know are Jewish. Seriously.

Gah. I hate LISP with a passion. Though funnily enough because of learning MUSHcode later on, I have a lot more respect and understanding of LISP than when I first had to learn it. Much like learning C derivative scripts such as ASP gave me a greater respect for C.

[CORed]

Originally Posted by Foster Zygote

I predict that from now on, every sad passing of another one of these heroes will be declared an assassination because he was about to spill the beans.

Well sure, because who'd believe an 80-something-year-old died of natural causes?

[bknight]

Originally Posted by CORed

Well sure, because who'd believe an 80-something-year-old died of natural causes?

Nobody, it has to be the NASA death squads in action.

[Foster Zygote]

Here is one of the rare conspiracy videos that actually raises an interesting question. Not that I think he has the right answer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_66cqMQsW4&t

My suspicion is that we are seeing some sort of compression artifact, either from the original compression used, or from subsequent copies of original video. If you look closely at the right edge of the frame, you can see a line of compression artifacts.

I have to admit that I don't know what is causing the apparent movements, and I figured this would be a good place to ask.

[MRC_Hans]

Originally Posted by Foster Zygote

Here is one of the rare conspiracy videos that actually raises an interesting question. Not that I think he has the right answer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_66cqMQsW4&t

My suspicion is that we are seeing some sort of compression artifact, either from the original compression used, or from subsequent copies of original video. If you look closely at the right edge of the frame, you can see a line of compression artifacts.

I have to admit that I don't know what is causing the apparent movements, and I figured this would be a good place to ask.

This is presumably the flag just coming into sight on the edge of the picture. However, note that the picture is not quite stable: The aim of the camera is is shifting slightly several times. I have no idea of the reason for that (is it remote controlled?) Whatever the reason, this will explain the flag coming in and out of sight at the edge.

Hans

[Reality Check]

Originally Posted by Foster Zygote

Here is one of the rare conspiracy videos that actually raises an interesting question....

Looks like more of the conspiracy theory stupidity about flags on the Moon.

We do not see any flag! The flag on the Moon was a normal flag and did not have a ragged edge. If it moved measurably into frame we would see the edge of the flag. The blurry discrete blobs at the edge of the frames could be artefacts from the filmmakers processing or maybe light flares from the flag as the camera moved.

The comments from NASA Jet Propulsion scientist Stephen Edberg was not about this crank's film. It was about previous crank claims that wind moved the flag as if NASA were so abysmally stupid to fake a flag in vacuum and not shield it from wind! Stephen Edberg pointed out the obvious - the flag moved when handled and in the "wind" from the ascent module launch. That suggests a remote possibility - the flag was still moving from the last time that the astronauts handed it if they did this just before the close of EVA 2.

[Foster Zygote]

Originally Posted by MRC_Hans

This is presumably the flag just coming into sight on the edge of the picture. However, note that the picture is not quite stable: The aim of the camera is is shifting slightly several times. I have no idea of the reason for that (is it remote controlled?) Whatever the reason, this will explain the flag coming in and out of sight at the edge.

Hans

This is Apollo 14, so no remote control yet. It's the Westinghouse color TV camera, and now that I think about it, compression wasn't used until Apollo 16 or 17. So it's probably a compression artifact from whatever copies he's showing.

[bknight]

Originally Posted by Foster Zygote

This is Apollo 14, so no remote control yet. It's the Westinghouse color TV camera, and now that I think about it, compression wasn't used until Apollo 16 or 17. So it's probably a compression artifact from whatever copies he's showing.

It is more likely outgassing affecting the flag from opening the valve to depressurize the LM. Jet Wintzer, if you watch his videos, takes happenings an "builds" a case of hoax, but he does little to n research nor apply physics to anything he does concerning Apollo. I remember one where he claimed that Apollo 16 crews "spilled" orange juice that had spilled from Charlie Duke's LCG while on the Moon, not in the LM but on the Moon. And thereby showed "orange juice" smudges on one of the magazines. How could this happed in a vacuum? Well it was more likely regolith that had been trapped in one of the magazine changes and rubbed of a little as the film was advancing, no conspiracy, just a small error in a very complex program.

[JimOfAllTrades]

Isn't the camera attached to the LM? And the astronauts are inside the LM.

Is it possible that as they moved inside that some vibrations reached the camera and in some cases shifted it's field of view just slightly?

[threadworm]

The flag moves post-EVA have been recorded elsewhere but U can't remember where. Certainly if you look at Apollo 14's surface photos taken from inside the LM you can see that it changes position. Wetzner has found nothing new, and the fact that it occurs during the final stages of the surface phase should tell him the likely cause if only he had applied some thought to it.

[Foster Zygote]

Originally Posted by bknight

I remember one where he claimed that Apollo 16 crews "spilled" orange juice that had spilled from Charlie Duke's LCG while on the Moon...

I remember that. I didn't realize this was Orange Juice Guy. Yeah, Duke had disassembled the Hasselblad inside the LM while attempting to clean the dust off of it. He'd used a damp cloth to try to wipe some away and he got a little on the interior. You can see that all the photos from that magazine are clear up to the end of the previous EVA, and dirty from the start of the next.

[threadworm]

OK I've now watched the entirety of this miserable little video. Wetzner's claim is that the flag moves "8 times", ie it appears 4 times and disappears 4 times at the edge of the frame, and can only have done this as a result of a breeze from somewhere.

He includes some mission audio where Bruce McCandless says:

"Okay, Antares. Could you verify Suit Relief in Auto, please?"

but not the crew before this saying that they are starting the process of depressurising the cabin prior to dumping all the surplus equipment.

What he then does is spend a lot of time claiming that NASA have only ever provided two explanations for the flag moving (when touched, or during the LM ascent initiation), then dismisses the perfectly reasonable explanations that have been given for other instances when the flag has moved because a NASA expert on on a FAQ didn't mention it (and probably wasn't aware of it). He doesn't bother giving any kind of justification for handwaving them away, he just does.

He completely fails to understand an article explaining the difference between Earth's atmosphere and the Moon's very sparse one, and seems to think that because there are very few molecules in the natural lunar atmosphere this somehow explains the behaviour of gases exiting the lunar module.

He tries to claim that the gas pressure exerted is very small and thus not capable of moving the flag, but forgets that there is no other gas to get in the way, and uses an instrument located quite some distance from the LM as the proof. That's right, he uses an instrument on the moon, put there by astronauts, to try and prove that they weren't on the moon.

He also doesn't understand how a rod inserted in a tube can rotate freely, and it obviously doesn't occur to him that these could actually be a series of rotations caused by a single event and not slowed by an actual atmosphere.

He also hasn't found the part of the ALSJ that explains another movement of the flag as a result of hot firing the LM RCS thrusters, so there's yet another source of gas to move it.

He's happy to quote experts, but only the bits that suit him. Everything else is all "smoking gun" and "NASA admit" and "alibis" and all the other stock phrases that people like him like to use to poison the well. It's all "A-HAA" but without any actual rabbit from the hat.