Most conspiracy theories receive short shrift from the vast majority of people. That’s not to say that they may be wrong, it’s just that most people don’t tend to believe the conspiracy theorists, concluding that they are “nuts”. There are two exceptions to this rule: 9-11 and the “Nasa Moon Landing Hoax”. It’s the latter I want to talk about. There are two levels to this theory. One set of people argue that Nasa did not send men to the moon, and never has done and that the famous video and images of Neil Armstrong et al were faked by Nasa. The other set argue that men clearly have been to the moon, but that it didn’t happen when Nasa said it did, and they too believe the images and video were faked.

Personally, I believe we did send men to the moon, and I don’t believe that Nasa faked the footage. Further, I think simple science, that is to say, science that most children learn at school, can be used to disprove the hoax claims. So, I thought it would be interesting to write a post on the subject, taking a few of the conspiracy theories and seeing if I could debunk them.

No. 1 – The Dodgy Shadows

In this image you will see that the shadow of the lunar landing module and the shadows of the rocks in the foreground do not run parallel to each other. How can this be, as the moon only has one light source – the sun? Surely this photo must have been faked in a studio with multiple light sources?

Well, firstly each item only has one shadow, whereas if there were two light sources, might there not have been two shadows for each object at different angles? In fact, that is largely irrelevant anyway. The reason why the shadows appear to be pointing in different directions is due to the topography of the moon. As you can see from the photo, the moon does not have a completely flat surface. These undulations in the surface cause the shadows to appear distorted from the perspective of the photo. This is easily demonstrated with two sticks at either end of a sand pit. Light it from one side and take a photo from the front whilst the sand is level, and the sticks will have parallel shadows. Create a small mound under the nearest stick and retake the photo and you will see that the shadows now appear to be at different angles, but the mound of sand, due to being brightly lit, will not be obvious.

The exact same thing can be viewed in a desert on Earth.

No. 2 – Astronaut appears bright, but he’s standing in shadow

This astronaut is stood in the shadow of the lunar module, so why does he appear so well lit? Surely this photo must have been taken in a studio?

Have you ever noticed how the moon shines? On clear nights when there is a full moon, and if you are away from urbanisation a little, it’s amazing how much light the moon actually provides. Sure, the moon itself isn’t providing the light, it’s just reflecting the sun. We all learned that fact as children. The reason the moon does its job of reflecting the sun so well, is due to the luminosity of it’s surface. It is this ambient reflective light that makes the astronaut appear brighter, helped along by the whiteness and surface luminosity of his own space suit.

No. 3 – The Footprint

How do you make a footprint like this in dust unless it is damp? But, there’s no water on the moon…

Well, you can’t judge the behaviour of lunar dust with sand or fine dry earth. This is Earth, the moon is the moon. In fact, very fine powders will form footprints like this even on Earth. However, another contributing factor is the vacuum of space. If you take regular dry sand and put it in a vacuum, you will find you can leave a clear footprint in it. This has been tested and proven.

No. 4 – The Waving Flag

This flag is waving. Since there is no air in space, what is making it blow around?

Actually the photo is no proof of this, it could be completely still in this picture (which in fact it is). The video of the flag being planted though does show the flag waving around as if in a breeze. How so?

The Italian scientist Gallileo made a significant study of the forces of gravity. One of the things he found, was that the denser an object, the faster it would fall to Earth. Yet gravity exacts the same force over all objects, regardless of density or mass. Since this is true, why do some objects fall quicker than others? For example, if you dropped a brick and a feather from the same height at the same time, why does the brick fall straight to Earth, whilst the feather floats slowly down?

The answer is friction. Or to be more precise in this case, the answer is air resistance. The air is basically an upward force of friction that slows the effect of gravity on the feather. Take the air away by placing these two objects in a vacuum, then do the same experiment, you will find that both fall at exactly the same rate. In fact, the lack of friction in space means that were you to hit a tennis ball out into space from the International Space Station, it would keep going and never stop (assuming it didn’t bump into anything or get affected by other gravitational forces along the way).

The same is true of the flag on the moon. The waving was generated by the astronauts turning the flag pole to and fro to set it into the moon’s surface. You can simulate this effect again in a vacuum on Earth. The flag will stop moving sooner in the Earth experiment though because of the greater gravitational forces being exacted on the flag. As you can see, the flag is held out by a horizontal pole, and gravity will be causing the flag to hang downwards from this pole. This is the force that causes the flag to stop waving in the vacuum on Earth.

The moon only has one sixth the gravity of Earth, so the flag will take much longer to stop moving, giving the impression in the video that it was waving in the breeze. In fact, the moon’s gravity is not necessarily strong enough to overcome the natural friction of the fibres in the flag, meaning that it is most unlikely that the flag will ever hang perfectly straight.

Conclusion

There are many many more pieces of “evidence” the conspiracy theorist will refer to, and frankly, I don’t have the time or inclination to debunk them all. I don’t believe these people will ever approach any argument with an open mind. It was not my intention to convert the conspiracy masses anyway. I just thought it was interesting to look at how there are simple scientific explanations for some of the very convincing (at first) hoax evidence.