Why do some people think the moon landing was faked?

Imaging the landing sites from the Earth's surface in any detail would require a truly monstrous telescope (note to self: suggest that for a future telescope name), since optical resolution is limited by aperture. To pick out a 4m object like the descent stage would take an aperture about as wide as a football field.

Also, the astronomers who actually get time on such telescopes tend to want to discover something new, rather than pander to a bunch of hicks and scientific illiterates (like DNL, who have recharacterised the Van Allen Belts as a magical death ray field in their bizarre conspiracist fanfic, even though you won't find any empirical evidence to support this claim).

That said, if one were intending to image Apollo landing sites (all six of them) the best way would be to put a camera on a probe bound for the Moon. Being 50km above the lunar surface instead of 380,000 km away really makes for a larger angular diameter and requires a lot less glass to resolve. The folks at Arizona State University were able to do just that when NASA launched the lunar reconnaissance orbiter. In the process of creating detailed imagery of the lunar surface, ASU's LROC team was able image all six landing sites in high detail. The Indians and Chinese were also able to do this. Meanwhile, a Japanese radar mapping mission produced digital terrain models which precisely matched the landforms depicted in Apollo mission imagery.

>> Who do you think will look more like an "idiot" then ???

The deniers... at least if the observer making the judgement is even remotely scientifically literate. Tell me, dnl, when did your coalition of the severely normal launch its own mission to measure the radiation environment of the Van Allen Belts to determine that every measurement taken to date by the scientific community was wrong? Every last freaking one...

Some people will see a video on Youtube and believe the damnedest things. They are easily convinced that the Moon landings (all SIX of them!) were faked, JFK shot himself, Climate Change was invented to sell carbon credits, Elvis is a zombie, 9-11 was planned by the Pope, etc etc.

Just keep telling yourself that half the people are below average in intelligence. Explains so much. Like Country Music, Fox News and The Jersey Shore.

My friend, do you see the ad on the side of this page as you read me? For each visit to this web page, the provider gets money from the advertizing company.

Money is what motivates everything. If I have a juicy piece of news, I would post in and hope to have many visits. The more juicy the more visits and the more money I get. The question then is: Why do we like to read "juicy" or shocking news?

Well, the difference between us and other mammals is that we have an extended frontal lobe of our brain. It enables us to "simulate" the future and be better prepared. If the lion nearly ate the hunter-gatherer we once were and still have the genes of, it would be stupid to remember that e.g. the lion had a lovely fur. What we must remember is that, next time, we must run even faster!

Hence we survived by "simulating" the worst-case-out. And that is why we love to read scary stories of monsters, invading aliens, doomsday prophecies, and conspiracies from our governments.

Here is my way to debunk all conspiracy theories: how many people would have been involved in a "fake moon landing?" How much would you have to pay them to keep their mouth shut, never telling a friend, family or leaving a post-mortem testimony?

Do you know what the world would pay to prove that the USA government has been lying to their citizens for all those years? Millions of dollars! How would the have to pay all involved? Billions of dollars?

... wouldn't it then be cheaper to send three men to the moon? ;-)

A telescope's "seeing" ability is measured by its "resolving power", not by "how far" it can see. The resolving power is a ratio, indicating the smallest thing the telescope can see at a given distance. For the Hubble, this ratio is about 2.42×10^-7. This means, for example, when it looks at something 1 light year away, it can make out detail as small as 2.42×10^-7 light years across (about 1.4 million miles across). If it looks at something 300 miles away (say, at the surface of the earth), it could theoretically make out detail about (300 miles)×2.42×10^-7, or about 5 inches across.

Now let's point it at the moon. This is about 242,000 miles away from the Hubble, so the smallest detail the Hubble can possibly see on the moon would be about (242,000 miles)×2.42×10^-7, or about 300 feet across (the size of a football field). Anything smaller than that (like Apollo artifacts) would just blur into the background.

This limit in resolution is imposed by the telescope's diameter. You can't improve it by increasing the magnification (you'd just get a bigger blur); you can only improve it by making a bigger mirror. In order to see detail on the moon, from a telescope on or near the earth, the telescope's mirror would have to be hundreds of feet in diameter.

For those people, it does not matter what kind of proof you show them. They will simply claim that whatever you show them was as faked as they believe the rest to be,

You could actually take them to the moon and land next to one of the previous sites, and they would <<still>> claim that the whole trip and everything else was fake.

When people refuse to believe incontrovertible facts, then there is nothing you can do. They will remain both ignorant and stupid.

The Japanese orbiter got excellent pictures of the L.E.M. the Rover and the tracks.

Deep space telescopes cannot take the brightness of the moons surface and also cannot resolve detail that well.

They have.... there are photos available that shows various artifacts from the Apollo missions on the surface of the moon. Just google 'photos of moon landing sites'.

No man has ever traveled beyond 400 mile from the earth in the past 40+ years (most likely due to the lethal cosmic radiation) - this is an absolute fact nobody can deny but let me know if anyone happens to know any manned mission from ANY country that went beyond 400 mile.

Now do you honestly believe that they were able to make a return trip to the moon (close to 500,000 mile) six times without a hitch in the 60's ???

Sure, many people will get angry and start attacking me with the names like "Hoax Idiots". But let's face it... After another 50 years are they going to continue to say "We went to the moon a century ago but we don't go there any more because it's too expensive." ?...

Who do you think will look more like an "idiot" then ???

Well.... we actually have - the Japanese and American lunar orbiters have captured images of the equipment (and shadows of the equipment) left behind by the astronauts.

But...really... if they don't believe the moon landing happened - why would they believe grainy photos from some of the same agencies...?

Let them believe what they want... it hurts no one, and wastes your time trying to prove otherwise....

Research shows that people tend to believe in conspiracy theories because they feel helpless. This helplessness can be caused be poverty, discrimination, or lack of education. Such people believe outlandish claims because it makes them feel superior and in control ("I know a secret that most people don't, including scientists").

http://sciencequestionswithsurprisinganswers.org/2...

The best way to help such people is not to argue against their conspiracy beliefs (presenting evidence to someone who does not value evidence in the first place does little), but to help them out of their helpless situation (i.e. educate them with basic principles, help them get a job, etc.)