I can't get beyond "if it was fake, why would they do something you claim proves it was fake?" Because if all this is a proof the missions were faked, it's so obvious. This isn't hidden. This isn't revealed after extensive effort, because it's quite clear no effort has been expended to understand the Apollo missions. This is a whole bunch of readily available information. So either NASA was spectacularly bad at faking a Moon mission yet somehow fooled everyone who had a reason to want to make NASA look bad at the time or else the whole idea that it proves a hoax is based on faulty expectations. Now, I ask you--which is the more logical answer?
[Applauds.
Yes, this is the inherent contradiction of almost every conspiracy theory. The alleged perpetrators were clever enough to fool so many people for so long, including eminent practitioners of the various professions, trades, and sciences that pertain to it. But those same perpetrators can't fool some particular claimant who has little if any correct understanding of the facts or the relevant sciences and trades. The ways in which various claimants explain it, if they address it at all, is often comedy gold.
Before I point those ways out, I reiterate that the purpose of conspiracism (or really any fringe theorization) is rarely to establish an alternative narrative on its own merits. It's almost always instead ego reinforcement for the claimant. He wants to elevate his status within a particular worldview. You point out that the claim is not based on deep research because the claimant here, true to form, hasn't done any deep research. And that's because the ego-reinforcement objective requires the elevation of status based on the knowledge the claimant presently has. It's not that he can become an eminent commentator on the validity of space exploration, but that he already is. Thus any theory that requires substantial extra effort doesn't fit the bill. The mission to buttress the claimant's ego is much easier served by supposing that the circumstances must change to accommodate his knowledge. Whatever little knowledge he now possess, or can Google-and-regurgitate with little mental effort, must be sufficient to fully discuss the authenticity of Apollo.
Now back to how claimants respond to the core contradiction. Continued bluster is usually the first defense. "Is that all you've got? Parading your degrees and real-world experience around as if that means anything or challenges my opinions in any way!" The pawn of this argument is usually a premise along the lines, "Common sense says..." or "It's obvious that..." Begging the underlying expectations in this way suggests that no special understanding is needed to see egregious flaws in the conventional narrative. But this eventually runs afoul of the core contradiction again. It just kicks that problem down the road a few more meters. And it ultimately fails to reinforce the ego, since all that comes of it is that the claimant feels he is more commonsensical than some.
Sometimes a claimant will aspire to different knowledge. This is where Jr Knowing seems to be, and it's the rationale that operates most commonly in alternative medicine. In this mode of reasoning, the claimant plainly affirms that his knowledge and understand are somehow inherently more attuned to questions of authenticity. In its mildest form, it's the argument that goes, "If you were more of a free thinker like I am, you'd be open to this new evidence." This hits the ego-reinforcement target a little more center-mass because no matter what facts are presented, the claimant can still believe that the "right" conclusion would be reached by anyone operating according to his enhanced paradigm of thought. If his critics can't see his special genius, it's just because they're too constrained by conventional thinking. Since most opposition to fringe theories comes from mainstream sources, a certain congruence emerges.
The problem comes, as it has in this case, when the claimant has first made arguments that allude to mainstream knowledge. Jr Knowing asserted that the science of free-body stability precluded a stable lunar module with the plume deflectors attached. In his other thread he asserted that the behavior of aerosols and projectiles guaranteed his expectations. When one has started out on that footing, transitioning to the wholly opposite footing is a blatant shift. If the rebuttal is a learned treatise on how the sciences actually work, the claimant can't credibly excuse his ignorance by saying that others are just defending their worldview. The mathematics of free-body dynamics don't suddenly change or stop being predictive just because of a mental paradigm shift or a socio-political epiphany.
The last recourse in resolving the core contradiction is sometimes just to do deeper down the rabbit hole. People can't see the "obvious" truth of the conspiracy because they've been brainwashed not to. In the case of relevant professionals like me, this extreme argument has even gone so far as claiming that we were all ushered into a room at some point and told about the terrible consequences of revealing the truth about Apollo. And we spend our whole careers looking over our shoulders for the agents shadowing us, and we fulfill our dark duty by coming onto these forums and arguing a bunch of pseudo-technical mumbo jumbo to keep the masses fooled. Granted that's the vivid extreme of such an approach, but paler version of it sometimes rear their ugly heads even when the discussion is otherwise reasonable. Any argument fits this pattern if it boils down to expanding the alleged conspiracy as wide as it needs to be to substantiate the claimant's belief in himself as a lone genius.
Though I expect jr Knowing to ignore me again.
My hard questions challenge his fantasy. Your hard questions shatter it. I ask hard questions that come from certain specialized fields of knowledge that apply to his claims. Paradoxically those are easier for him to argue around. He can just make up new speculative rules or properties for those fields that restore his belief. Who's to know they won't work? "Well maybe it's the RCS jets themselves that are causing the visible flow separation." Ludicrous, if you know the field. But -- as he insinuated -- sufficiently reasonable(-sounding) if you don't. That's how science fiction works. The Epstein drive sounds plausible
enough to people with a smattering of science knowledge. But its real purpose is just to get people around the Expanse series solar system in days or weeks instead of years. It only needs to be plausible enough to tell that story, not to actually work. In like manner, Jr Knowing is writing a science fiction novel in his head. Who's to know that most of it is implausible, if not downright impossible? It doesn't matter, as long as it serves a compelling story.
Instead you ask hard questions that come from ordinary critical thinking. You bare the inherent contradictions in his narrative that are rightly in everyone's ken. There's no way to argue around them because everyone can see them for what they are. Readers don't need special training or degrees to see that his story makes fundamentally no sense. Since he can't build a plausible alternate reality as a pretext to answering your questions, your questions just don't exist in his universe. Yes, we have magical storytelling devices that get us easily to other planets and stars, but you point out that the circumstances and characters he's built the plot around are absurd and contradictory. That's far more fatal to his narrative than whether plume deflectors are plausible technology.
