Just Believe Us!

Unblievable. But then, so is the fact that millions of people would agree with this drone.

Mutant Mouse:

At the risk of being redundundant, I was in data processing in 1969 and the best we had (publicly) was the IBM 360/30-40-50 etc series computers. We thought 64k memory was a lot of space to program in back in those days... usually we wrote in Assembler, very compact code. However, the 360-30 cpu plus at least 1 disk drive to run things from would not have fit in the Apollo capsule, and even if it could have been squished into the capsule, that wasn't enough memory to load and run the complex pgm needed to land and take off from the Moon.

What Apollo 11 really had was a punched paper tape system that was unfolded and read into the small dashboard computer, storing/running about 500 instructions. At one time. And every time they wanted to do something else, they had to whip out a tape and feed it into the cpu. Forget corrections to any landing, paper tapes could not be read that fast... and what if one ripped?

No, the computer aspect of Apollo 11 is a joke, and I don't think they manually flew it to the surface either... did you see the spindly legs on that Lunar Lander?  'Spring loaded'... really?  Was that Moog, Monroe Gas-Matic or Gabriel Striders?

But the all-time killer that JFK knew nothing about when he committed us to putting a man on the Moon, were the Van Allen radiation belts -- 2 of them. Lethal. These belts have messed up our satellites as they flew thru them -- so new satellites were lifted to a lower orbit. Our astronauts did not have lead shielding, not to mention protection from cosmic rays and micro-meteorites...

Sorry but it didn't happen. Not surprised they attacked you for questioning what everybody knows happened. People saw it happen! I watched the 'landing' that night on TV -- and I remember thinking it looked hokey... when Neil came down the ladder, there was a camera strapped to one of the landing legs taking his picture... then in later pictures, it was not there... guess the ground crew removed it....    And the camera survived the landing, dirt and flame...? Ooooo!

To see how they did it, go see the movie (rent a video) Wag the Dog.

To answer that question, you have to put yourself back in the time period. 

What was going on in 1969? 

The U.S. was smack in the middle of the Vietnam War.  A very unpopular war that had driven the morale of the country into the ground.   The U.S. was at a very low place........and not only that, but the Russians were kicking our ass left and right in the space program. They were the first person to get a person in space, the first orbit, the first woman astronaut, and on and on and on. 

What this country needed was a major patriotic morale boost, some major distraction to offset the war, and to finally one-up Russia.

That's about it, in a nutshell.

An even better movie to watch though would be "Capricorn 1", about a faked landing to Mars, where NASA blackmails the astronauts into going along with the hoax, or else their families will be killed.  It's a REALLY good movie.  Don't let the 1978 date, or the fact that OJ Simpson is in it, fool you.      Definitely worth renting if you haven't seen it.

That makes sense - it explains why they've remained quiet about things even after all these years, and why Neil Armstrong punched a guy in the face several years ago for even daring to suggest that he didn't actually go to the moon.  His reaction struck me as being one of two reasons: Extreme defensiveness because he knows the guy is telling the truth and so he got scared and hit him to shut him up, or, he really believes he went to the moon, and was stunned/pissed that anybody would suggest otherwise...and to his face, no less.