Here's an example of how AI is being used by people but not helping them at all, but still convinces them it is.
In one of their vidoes, and it grates to link to it but it's this one:
a contributor has made this comment quoting a Russian author describingt how the USSR tracked Apollo:
"In order to track the American lunar spacecraft during their flight in lunar orbit and during landing on the Moon’s surface, it was necessary to have ballistic data of these orbits for calculating antenna targeting. However, such data was not published by the Americans. Therefore, the flight orbit data was calculated by ballistic specialists based on the launch and arrival times of the Apollo spacecraft to the Moon, which were announced on American radio. Using this information, antenna targeting data was calculated and further refined based on the signals received from the lunar spacecraft by the control complex.
This approach to calculating targeting data allowed for reliable reception of signals from the Apollo missions. The task of signal acquisition was made easier by the fact that the antenna’s directional diagram covered nearly half of the Moon’s disk.
Tracking was carried out for the spacecraft of the Apollo 8, Apollo 10, Apollo 11, and Apollo 12 missions from December 1968 to November 1969.
High-quality reception of voice communications between the astronauts and Earth, as well as telemetry data on the status of onboard systems, was achieved from all these spacecraft. However, the received television signal was of low quality due to the insufficient energy potential of the radio link based on a 32-meter antenna.
It should be noted that the American tracking and control network provided nearly round-the-clock communication with the Apollo spacecraft, whereas the Soviet control complex could receive signals only within that part of its visibility zone which, in terms of timing, coincided with the visibility zone of the Madrid tracking station.
The lunar expedition led by F. Borman on the Apollo 8 spacecraft in December 1968 carried out the first manned flight to the Moon, completed 10 orbits around it, and, returning to Earth at second cosmic velocity, made a soft landing in the ocean.
This flight became the basis for halting work on the first stage of the Soviet L-1 program, even though all the equipment and crews for a manned flyby of the Moon were ready by that time.
The flight of the Apollo 11 crew, with N. Armstrong and E. Aldrin landing on the Moon’s surface on July 20, 1969, definitively ended the race to land a human on the Moon."saying that it's a quote from
"We "saw" the Americans landing on the Moon' was title of piece in in russian journal in russian language. most of article come from Russian book: RYAZANSKY, MIKHAIL SERGEYEVICH to celebrate 100 years since born in 1909"Resident comment deleter and channel guardian straydog02 consulted his AI oracle and came back with:
"Me: Apparently there is an article from a Russian journal and translated to English: 'We "saw" the Americans landing on the Moon.' by E. Molotov specially for "Cosmonaut News"
AI reply: Thanks for bringing that up—this claim has circulated in various forums and discussions, but verifying its authenticity is tricky.
🔍 Based on available sources, there is no publicly archived or peer-reviewed article titled “We ‘saw’ the Americans landing on the Moon” by E. Molotov in a Russian journal called Cosmonaut News. Despite repeated mentions online, especially in moon landing debates, the article:
Does not appear in Russian scientific archives, such as the Russian Academy of Sciences or major aerospace publications.
Is not indexed in international databases like JSTOR, Scopus, or NASA’s Technical Reports Server.
Lacks citation in any formal academic or historical work on Soviet space tracking or Apollo-era geopolitics.
🧾 What does exist are secondary references—people quoting or paraphrasing the alleged article, often without a scan, link, or bibliographic trail. That’s a red flag for historical verification.
🚨 Conclusion:
Unless someone produces a verifiable copy of the article—either in Russian or translated English—complete with publication details, editorial context, and technical content, it remains anecdotal and unconfirmed. That makes it unreliable as evidence, and potentially misinformation if used to imply Soviet visual confirmation of Apollo landings.
If you're building a case around independent verification of Apollo missions, this quote should be treated with extreme caution."With a couple more AI contributions in separate comments saying that they can't find it, so maybe it doesn't exist and can't be relied on.
It's a pity their laptod doesn't read around more. On my page here:
http://onebigmonkey.com/apollo/CATM2/ch5/7/zond.htmlI have (among many opther things) this link
https://web.archive.org/web/20140116121904/http://88.210.62.157/content/numbers/271/03.shtmlwhich seems to quote from this
https://epizodyspace.ru/bibl/ryazanskii/ryazanskii-2009.PDFwhich is the exact document the orignal commenter is referring to.
AI is lazy, and it's no substitute for stubborn unrelenting persistence and creative search times.
The epizodyspace.ru site is excellent by the way. It's a litte chaotic, but there's all sorts of stuff on there of interest.
