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11

The Hoax Theory / Re: Watching the detectives...

« Last post by onebigmonkey on September 15, 2025, 04:53:05 AM »

This chap's entire PhD

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/19750023913/downloads/19750023913.pdf

was based on intercepting ALSEP signals.

I'm sure they'll repeat the claim that they were placed there by robots, but I'm willing to be they won't supply a logically consistent, evidentially sourced timeline as to how that was accomplished.

12

The Hoax Theory / Re: Watching the detectives...

« Last post by onebigmonkey on September 15, 2025, 03:02:35 AM »

Following a comment by the nlunder on their latest video, where he claims it was all done by remote craft and only in lunar orbit and that somehow this means something I did some more digging.

I came across this site:

https://www.ok2kkw.com/next/pa0ssb/pa0ssb_eng.htm

describing the work of a Dutch amateur - there are even links to photos of newspaper articles at the time so as with the QST article it's not something fabricated after teh fact:

“On 11 Dec at 0630, Jan clearly heard a signal from the command module (CSM) orbiting the Moon at a strength of 10 dB above the noise. After 10 minutes, the signal was gone due to shadowing on the Moon's surface. The signal returned after an appropriate time. After the astronauts landed on the surface of the Moon, they placed a beacon operating in the 13 cm band on its surface. Jan then used this beacon for a long time for accurate alignment of the dish’s aiming. Jan was the only amateur to listen to Apollo signals from EU. He recorded the astronauts' conversations with the control center.”

I also found this page discussing Jan's work,

https://mail.amsat.org/archives/pipermail/amsat-bb/2006-December/002091.html

where they state that:

“I know of at least one Dutch radio amateur, Jan Ottens PA0SSB who used his EME dish (one of the first in PA land to do EME back in those days) to receive the ALSEP packages. He still keeps audio tapes of these which I listened to a while ago... quite a thrill. He also used the dish to listen to the command module S-band transmissions, but he could only hear the subcarrier which they used, not enough gain/low NF to demodulate, but from the modulation you could clearly tell that an astronaut was talking. And, you could clearly distinguish the Doppler shift and hear the carrier drop out suddenly when it would go on the "flipside" of the moon.”

EME is "Earth-Moon-Earth", which a lot of amateurs used to bounce radio signals from the moon.

Another contributor, who worked at Goldstone at the time fo Apollo says:

https://mail.amsat.org/archives/pipermail/amsat-bb/2006-December/002089.html

“My boss set up a ten foot comm dish in his front yard and using a diode mixer with a signal generator as LO, detected the 2-GHz carrier of the orbiter as it circled the Moon.  It was fascinating to hear the signal and the Doppler shift as it orbited and lost signal for about 20-min as the orbiter went behind the Moon.  That was too small and poor a receiver to recover modulation, so we did not hear any voice.”

So on the one hand you have idiots like Rasa (who seems to have been kicked out of his own facebook group!), claiming that there's no way amateurs could have access to S-band or use Doppler to track things, and then you have the actual amateurs and enthusiasts who were doing just that. Those same amateurs are not just intercepting signals from a moving object in lunar orbit, but from equipment set up on the lunar surface by astronauts during the mission, where they are recorded doing so on live TV, and where that live TV shows surface details that have been verified independently since.

13

The Hoax Theory / Re: Watching the detectives...

« Last post by bknight on September 14, 2025, 03:29:10 PM »

And of course they either know about this and are ignoring it, or don't know about it when their claimed expertise means they should.

http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/Apollo17/APOLLO17.htm

Stupid is as stupid does, I debated with other HB on YTube and discussed A 11 with similar listening with crude antennas.  Comments such as how I can prove that this listening occurred or other hand waving.  To the hard core HB nothing shows the error of their ways, just ignoring/handwaving away any evidence that they are wrong.  Yet they completely ignore the facts and evidence that completely refutes the stupid ideas that hold dear.

14

The Hoax Theory / Re: Watching the detectives...

« Last post by onebigmonkey on September 13, 2025, 03:19:09 PM »

And of course they either know about this and are ignoring it, or don't know about it when their claimed expertise means they should.

http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/Apollo17/APOLLO17.htm

15

The Hoax Theory / Re: Watching the detectives...

« Last post by onebigmonkey on September 13, 2025, 10:34:32 AM »

More stream of consciousness nonsense from the ADs this week, and amongst other things they turn their attention to the amateur interception of lunar conversations, which they have declared to be impossible, for, well, reasons. They didn't have the4 equipment they claim, the frquences weren't available to them!

It's a shame no-one told the amateur radio community at the time, because they were more than informed about how to intercept transmissions, and actually did. And no, we're not discussing Baysinger, but this:

https://www.worldradiohistory.com/Archive-DX/QST/60s/QST-1972-06.pdf

where enthusiasts detail exactly what they intercepted for several missions, and how.

The ADs make a lot of noise about how it would have been impossible to detect S-Band, but Baysinger is quite clear that he didn't even bother trying to do that.

They also make the frankly ludicrous claim that one of the TETR satellites, far from being inoperable and no longer in use, was actually sent on to lunar orbit somehow, without anyone noticing that both outward and return signals, and the conversations in them were exactly the same.

16

Other Conspiracy Theories / Re: HBO Miniseries From the Earth to the Moon

« Last post by Ranb on September 12, 2025, 10:36:03 PM »

I'm not sure a series about the journey from the Earth to the Moon could have got away with not having an episode about Apollo 11.

Perhaps I should have said they could have done without what they produced. 

A better version of the Apollo 11 episode could have featured some of Apollo 10 and the test of the abort procedure, more about the LLRV crash, why they landed long, etc. 

The Apollo 13 episode could have centered more on the efforts of Grumman and mission control to bring the crew back.

17

Other Conspiracy Theories / Re: HBO Miniseries From the Earth to the Moon

« Last post by Ranb on September 12, 2025, 10:30:12 PM »

I did enjoy the Apollo 13 ep as it focused on how the media changed,....

That episode centered around fictional characters, so it was no good for me.

18

Other Conspiracy Theories / Re: HBO Miniseries From the Earth to the Moon

« Last post by Obviousman on September 12, 2025, 04:56:37 PM »

I did enjoy the Apollo 13 ep as it focused on how the media changed, and the viewing audience changed: no longer was the Walter Cronkite, fact-orientated news delivery sufficient. People now wanted excitement, fear... and the networks were prepared to give them what they want. I actually felt genuine sadness & concern when Emmett Seaborn is 'pushed out' of his senior position in favour of the young reporter with the 'human interest' side of the incident.

19

Other Conspiracy Theories / Re: HBO Miniseries From the Earth to the Moon

« Last post by bobdude11 on September 12, 2025, 12:06:02 PM »

Thomas Kelly wrote about this in his book, Moon Lander.  The chapter on "Crew Systems and the LM Cockpit" describes Rigsby, Harms and Sherman rehashing cabin design and asking, "What if we get rid of the seats?".  This was followed by a frenzied afternoon of sketching and debating among the three.  The next day they showed their plans to Kelly; he agreed it was a superior approach.

That makes more sense to me.

20

Other Conspiracy Theories / Re: HBO Miniseries From the Earth to the Moon

« Last post by Jason Thompson on September 12, 2025, 04:20:29 AM »

I think the resistance shown by Kelly, as well as the cardboard mockup of the windows they built to convince him in the TV series, was dramatic license.

More 'let's help the viewers see it' than helping Kelly see it. Kelly was an engineer. I'm reasonably sure he'd have seen the plans and understood without the need for a full-size mockup. It makes for a much more engaging moment in a TV drama, though, so it's a bit of dramatic licence I can get behind. 

The episode on Spider was my 2nd favorite, after the episode on Apollo 12.

They're in my top 3. Apollo One is my favourite, for very different reasons.

The series could have discarded the episodes on Apollo 11 and 13 and been the better for it in my opinion.

I'm not sure a series about the journey from the Earth to the Moon could have got away with not having an episode about Apollo 11. The difficulty is that it's inevitably the episode that tells a story the viewers most likely to tune in are already very familiar with. The Apollo 13 episode is probably my least favourite, but of course they had not long made an entire movie about it so had to find a new angle on the story. I think it's a shame that Apollo 16 was relegated to little more than a footnote in the astronauts' wives episode. Maybe Apollo 13 would have suited that better, or maybe they just couldn't find enough new to talk about with Apollo 16.

Overall, though, a damn good series with some amazing moments.