Apollo denial on Coast to Coast AM

        Say what you like about Richard Hoagland, Mike Bara and Robert Morningstar, but at least they aren't Moon landing deniers. So, by all logic, they can't be blamed for the fact that some people are. OK, many people are. It makes me sad to report that, but it's a fact.

        However, I'd like to suggest here that in an indirect sense they are responsible for the spreading virus that is belief that Apollo was faked. The very fact that Hoagland, Bara and Morningstar ram home the message that NASA is a deceptive and untrustworthy agency feeds that mind-set even if they don't themselves believe it. If you don't believe me, read the Encyclopedia of American loons. The entry for Mike Bara alleges that he believes the moonlanding was a hoax. Hoagland's entry says, correctly, that he thinks NASA itself started the Apollo denial ball rolling. The encyclopedia is wrong about Bara, but it's an understandable mistake in the sense that whoever wrote the article felt that Bara was so obviously a doctrinal NASA hater that he surely must disbelieve Apollo.

Not from the Moon
        These thoughts came to me as I reviewed Marcus Allen's guest spot on Coast to Coast AM last Saturday night. Allen is a British photographer who publishes Nexus Magazine-- a source of "alternative, overlooked and under-reported news." His schtick on Apollo is that examination of the 5,777 70mm still photos from the Moon missions proves that these images were not shot on the Moon at all, but back on Earth during training simulations. I must say that considering he was given three hours to make his case he was remarkably unconvincing. His major points have already been well answered by clavius.org among other debunkery.

photo credit: NASA

         Allen cites the above photo of Buzz Aldrin as "impossible" because Aldrin is in shadow, therefore there had to be a source of foreground light. He's not the first to grossly underestimate the intensity of the back-scatter from the bright lunar regolith.^{note 1} And then, think about what's immediately behind the camera—an astronaut in a white suit in full sunlight. Very effective as a fill light.

        He complains that the Hasselblad photos are too good to be the work of amateur photographers under stress and hampered by heavy gloves. The composition and exposure of the photo-set, he says, are virtually perfect. Allen doesn't seem to understand that many of the images were adjusted to be suitable for general release. Such adjustments quite often included re-framing.^{note 2} However, there's not much that the labs could do about images like this:

photo credit: NASA (Apollo 17)

        Perfect exposure? I don't think so. Allen also thinks photography would be impossible in the temperature extremes on the Moon-- a contention that clavius.org has taken care of.

        When it comes to the moving pictures, Allen's criticisms are even more dismal. He maintains that the bouncing or hopping gait that lunar gravity forced on the astronauts was simply simulated by over-cranking film. The TV show Mythbusters tried that and showed that it couldn't be done. Besides, there were many, many such sequences that were television rather than film, and seen live around the world in real time. You can't over-crank reality. There are other moving images, too, that could not possibly have been obtained on Earth. Apollo 15's hammer and feather stunt... the big "rooster tail" of lunar dirt thrown up behind the Apollo 16 lunar roving vehicle... one requiring a perfect vacuum, the other requiring one-sixth g.

        How, then, does Mr. Marcus Allen say the photographic evidence of Apollo was obtained? Ignoring the above examples, he says it was all created in a studio, in advance, during training. He says it wasn't necessary to keep this enterprise secret because the technicians involved were openly creating training and simulation materials. What they didn't realize was that their work would later be misrepresented as having been carried out by astronauts on the Moon. He doesn't, apparently, wonder why these photographers and crews don't ever yell that their work was mis-labeled.

        It seemed to me that Allen allowed the possibility that the Apollo landings did indeed happen, but only the photography was faked. That, of course, is nonsensical. He's saying that the Apollo astronauts were sent to the Moon with photographic equipment that was useless. AND THEY DID THIS NOT ONCE BUT SIX TIMES. Marcus Allen, go to your room.

Brookings
        There's another reason why I think Hoagland, Bara, and Morningstar have to take some blame for all this bad information. Late in the third hour, host Richard Syrett asked about possible cover-up of alien structures in the Apollo photography. Allen replied that it would not be surprising, since the Brookings Report strongly advised NASA to STFU about any evidence it might find of extraterrestrial intelligence. Well, this contention is totally untrue, and it's all the fault of Hoagland/Bara/Morningstar that the rumor is widely believed. Hoagland started it, and Bara/Morningstar vigorously espouse it. It's the only way they can answer the obvious question "Why would NASA be shy about announcing something that would do them nothing but good?"

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[1] He stated that the albedo of the lunar regolith is typically 7%. Actually, it's a bit more than twice that.
[2] See, for example, this account of how NASA PR messed with a very famous photograph.