Buzz Aldrin Punches Moon-landing Conspiracy Theorist

Buzz Aldrin Punches Moon-landing Conspiracy Theorist

From the website:
Bart Sibrel, a conspiracy theorist who believes that NASA faked the moon landing, confronted retired astronaut Buzz Aldrin on September 9, 2002.

"You're a coward," he exclaimed, "and a liar, ..."

At that point, Aldrin (age 72) landed a spirited punch to Sibrel's jaw.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office has declined to file charges.

Way to go Buzz!

I personally dislike the Moon Landing Conspiracy folks. Why on earth would anyone want to believe it didn`t happen? One of the absolute greatest technological achievements in human history? Even if for some odd reason it didn`t really happen, wouldn`t it be better to believe it did?

Honestly. Some people....

ROCK & ROLL, BUZZ!!!

Even if mankind never made it to the moon, the space program has brought us so many technological and medical improvements that are utilized in every day life. So, if the moon landings were only elaborate fabrications, they still had a positive effect on the species known as human.

Dan

I cannot believe with all the facts out there, all the TV news cameras covering the launch, all the HAM radio operators who were able to pick up the signals... that people would fool themselves into thinking that we faked the moon landings. A lot of them also seem to believe that the moon landing was a single event. I hate to break it to them, but we didn't go once, we landed on the moon 6 times.

There will always be morons out there. I try not to waste my time arguing with them, because sometimes you just cannot convince someone that they didn't just have lunch with Jesus and Jimi Hendrix and fly away on a purple dinosaur. Not all people are that wacked, but some have differing levels of schizophrenia.

My grandma was over eighty when it happened, and she never believed it.
Of course television itself was a miracle to her...

That's the crazy thing about the internet, you never know what someone really believes and what they are doing for hype. I would have guessed that the sites about the moon landing being fake were fake themself, but you never know. I even saw a web site about the airliner that crashed into the pentagon being faked. There are real nutcases out there and now they have a way to express themselves.

I was going to give a bunch of examples, but I don't want to stir things up too much.

How could LA's DA possibly press charges?

Have that guy look back at the video of him getting punched -- if he looks at the shadows & all he should be able to tell it's a fake.

lol binky!

http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html

They aren't going to press charges against him, I quote from the above page (which is excellent you should surf around it and read the rest

"This Just In (September 27, 2002): Buzz won't be facing charges. The LA County prosecutor has to be the one to file the charges, and their office decline to press the issue. Mr. Sibrel received no real injury (as the video shows that pretty clearly, since he turns to the camera almost immediately and asks "Did you get that?") and so the prosecutor won't pursue this. "

There is a link to the movie somewhere up there too.

Cheers,

Good stuff, James.

Most folks think we had better special effects than actually existed in that era.

The one thing that puzzles me about the moon landing is that since their is no atmosphere, why do the astronauts leave footprints & kick up lunar dust? If they are truely in a vaccum that would be impossible since their is no air to be displaced. It would be like walking on concrete. They would not sink unless they stomped out a hole. The only tracks they would make would be by the dust sticking to thier boots.

Can someone explain this to me?

Dust particles have mass. Force applied, including the force due to gravity, gives accellaration to stuff with mass. A big space boot scuffing the dusty lunar surface would accelerate a whole bunch of particles, some of which which would travel upward (depending on the direction of the applied force). Soon, they run out of momentum, gravity takes over and pulls them back. The result? Lunar dust clouds.

Footprints? Well, I would expect most of the moon`s dust comes from space, raining down on it over billions of years. In that layer of dust are gaps, spaces between each particle. A boot will push down and compress those particles closer together and viola, a small violin . No, sorry, a footprint.

-

And the light in the shadows of the astronauts and lunar module? I expect it was reflected from the very pale coloured surface - the higher parts overlooking the landing area being brilliantly illuminated by the sun. Also could come from the space suits of the other lunar operatives to a lesser degree.

Of course they put a man on the moon! It`s just too fantastic to have not happened.

Originally posted by Chris M.:

A boot will push down and compress those particles closer together and viola, a small violin

. No, sorry, a footprint.

Click to expand...

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">That's just it though, the boot could not press those particles closer together because they are in a vacuum and cannot be pressed any closer together because there are no empty spaces (read: air) between the particles. If there were any empty spaces, they would have been taken care of already by a combination of gravity & moon-quakes. (Yes, the moon has moon-quakes)

On earth we leave footprints in sand and dirt because we squeeze out the air trapped between each particle. If we pack it down enough to were most of the air is removed and then walk on it, we no longer leave footprints, even though we can still bend down and scrape up the particles left on the surface.

I don't believe that the moon's atmoshphere is considered a total vacuum.

http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/prrl/prrl9826.html

The Rover on Mars left tire tracks all over the place..

Sean,

There is LOTS of dust all over the universe and it behaves just like dust on earth. The only difference without any atmosphere is that identical particles would settle more quickly since there is no air for them to push against. Like a feather on the moon falls at the same rate as a hammer, since it's air on earth that buoys the feather up. There is actually video footage of an one of them doing that experiment I think.

All you're seeing is the dust re-arranging. You can certainly re-arrange it and compress it. Are you telling me that dust would automatically compress itself into concrete on the moon? The dust is also moved by the boot and bunches up around the edges, it's not only compressing. When you leave footprints on the beach it's not just that you are compressing out the water and making the sand closer together, you're moving the sand around.

There is actually a lot of study on how random particles behave. Most of the study has to do with understanding landslides and such. There is nothing in the moon footage that is in any way unusual or not what someone would expect under those circumstances. If you want to learn about how particles behave there is a LOT of information about that on the web. Start with the websites that describe landslide formation if you're really interested in understanding it. Sand and soil settling on earth has very little to do with the atmosphere and everything to do with orientation and friction which is the same anywhere. If you want to see this for yourself you could actually duplicate that in almost any high school or college physics lab in the country. All you need is some dirt and a bell jar and a vacuum pump. Use a magnet outside to hold up something heavy, pump out the air and drop it. Then do the same thing with air in it. I think you'll find that they both leave footprints. If you don't understand something, experimentation will show you much better than just sitting around thinking about what it might do.

That and just about any other question you might have is answered on that page I linked to as well as many others.

I know several people who worked on the project. We were there.

Because there is no air, does not neccessarily mean there are no spaces. There are, but there`s just no air in them. There`s nothing in them, just empty space. These could be microscopic spaces, they could be in the particles themselves. Moon dust is not 100% dense, it has a degree of "give". Take a hunk of polystyrene packing out of a TV shipping box, leave it on the moon and you`ll still be able to squish it, because inherant in the material are gaps, whether there`s air in them or not. It`s probably just like that on the Moon, except of course on a more microscopic scale. OK maybe polystyrene isn`t a good example, as there would be air sealed inside it. Sand, perhaps. Or flour, etc.

The particles will probably not just clump together with no gaps just because there is no air, as the forces pushing on them are as tiny as the gravitational force of the moon pulling on each and every one of them. Which is not much, so they are unlikely to become compressed like concrete. Besides, even if they were, they`re not stuck together like concrete is, so you`d still be able to scuff the surface, displace the particles and leave footprints. Don`t forget an astronaut in a space suit has a lot of mass, hence inertia, even if the gravity on the moon is so much less. More than enough to leave footprints though, I`m sure.

Then there`s that Solar Wind. I`m sure that plays a small part in something?

But now I`m at the extent of my Lunar knowledge, so I think I`ll just go back to waking up the Torch Reviews Site from hibernation now...



*edit* James explained it better than I did

This "vacuum" arguement is exactly the kind of flat out non-facts that the "it was all faked" crowd bases their entire story on. they write a story starting out with a false sttement that the moon is in a vacuum, and base the entire arguement on that untrue "fact". because There are plenty out there who don't know that the moon is not in a vacuum (it has an atmosphere...just not one like the earth's), they believe it and next thing you know it spreads like wildfire.

In case this hasn't made my position clear.... I know we landed on the moon. I have serious concerns that anyone out there who thinks it is fake is in a job position where even a slight demonstration of coherent thought is required. Let me guess, a large number of the "it was fake" crowd also work for the DOT.

Lack of air does not mean molecules (or atoms) are any more densely packed. Air is not what keeps sand particles from compressing into concrete. A good experiment to try would be to have 3 clear cylinders. Fill each with the exact same amount of sand. Draw a line with a marker at the sand level on each container. Now remove the air from one. Leave the 2nd alone as the control. Now pressurize the 3rd. The levels of sand will remain the same in each. Why? Because the air pressure (or lack thereof) around each sand grain is the same as the next sand grain. This is true due to the laws of equilibrium. Of course I'm ignoring the minute amount of "shrinkage" each sand particle would experience due to pressure since silicon has a pretty rigid atomic structure. But a vacuum doesn't suddenly change matter so it "sucks itself" into other matter with no space in between. If that were true then the moon would suck itself into the Earth.

Now, gravity is a different story... use 2 of the above containers with the lids removed and put one on Earth and one on a surface of a dwarf star. If the level of sand in the container was 3 inches on Earth, the level of sand on the dwarf star would be probably be something like 1 micron on the dwarf star because all of the atoms in the sand would be compressed so much due to the incredible gravitational force. One teaspoon of "dirt" on a dwarf star weighs something like a ton. Imagine that for a moment.