Time is tight!

[smartcooky]

I've been thinking, and I am probably not the first one to have said this, but I'm going to put it out there anyway for comment.

One of the key things that HB's hang their hat on is their claim that Apollo Landing site videos all took place in secret, specially built studios with a mock-up of the LM and the lunar surface. Given the level of sophistication of special effects in the 1970's (remember, this was before CGI) such fakery would probably not stand up to scrutiny today.

However, there is another issue here. The Apollo Spacecraft (AS) were tracked by the Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN), a system of global tracking stations throughout the world. The people who manned those stations knew which direction their dishes were pointed in, and they monitored the voice up-link/downlink audio. The people manning tracking stations outside of the US were mostly foreign nationals, so the likelihood of them all being paid to keep quiet and say nothing is very slim. This falls under Clavius Base's "Huge Conspiracy Scenario" where the more people who know a secret, the less likely it will be kept. Of course, it is possible, so the HB's might claim, that the AS had no astronauts on board; just a relay transmitter so that when Mission Control (MC) would transmit, the signal would be sent from Houston, routed via whichever MSFN dish was in use at the time, up to the AS down to the secret studio. Any reply would follow the reverse route. The people manning the MSFN wouldn't know anything about this (or so it would seem), and they would come under Clavius Base's "Absolute Minimum Scenario".

However, there is a problem with this too; the delay in the receipt of a transmission from the Earth to the Moon caused by the distance the radio signal has to travel. With the Moon being at a distance of around 384,000km, this delay is around 1.3 seconds. There is no way to circumvent this. NASA are good, but they aren't that good, they can't make radio waves travel faster than the speed of light. If NASA faked the moon landings using their secret studio, they would face two additional 1.3 second delays for the signal to travel from the AS, down to the studio and back up again, and this is the flaw in the HB's thinking, because the use of a studio in this fashion would have caused a doubling of the delay time, a minimum 2.6 second delay for the Astronaut in the studio hearing a transmission and another 2.6 seconds for his reply to be received at MC, making a total of 5.2 seconds.

Now it is plainly obvious to anyone who listened to the transmissions as we all did, that while some replies were longer than 5 seconds in coming, many of them were not. It may be possible to create an additional delay, it is definitely impossible to create a shorter one.... "y'cannae change the Laws of Physics".

As I said, the MC - AS - Studio - AS - MC  loop delay would have been obvious to anyone listening; including those at the tracking stations. The people who operated these stations were not stupid, they were radio and electronics engineers. They would have understood what to expect... to observe a 2.6 second delay in transmissions. A minimum 5.2 second delay would have stuck out like the proverbial pair of canine's gonads.

IMO, this time delay alone is enough to scupper the idea of faking the landing site video.

[ka9q]

This has occurred to me too (I specialize in communications) but I can see a way that might work. Instead of taking a double hop through the relay at the moon, you send Capcom audio directly to the "astronauts" on Earth and send only their "downlink" through the relay. Then the round trip delay is still about 3 seconds and everything sounds legit.

The problem is that the earth station operators would have to be in on the scam. They constantly monitored both the Capcom uplinks and the spacecraft downlinks, and they would definitely have noticed if "astronaut" audio (instead of Capcom audio) was sent on the uplink.

The only way to do this without the earth station operators being in on the scam would be to have a completely separate and secret uplink sending the "astronaut" audio to the unmanned relay so it would come back down to the nominal ground site. Capcom audio would be fed directly (terrestrially, without delay) to the "astronauts" on earth so as to maintain the apparent 3-second round trip constraint.

The antenna for the secret uplink would not have to be that big as the ground transmitters were far more powerful than the spacecraft transmitters and had considerable link margin.

There are still ways that an astute ground station operator not in on the scam could detect it. To keep them in the dark, they would send Capcom audio on the nominal Apollo uplink frequency to the spacecraft even though the spacecraft would ignore it. (It is instead relaying the secret uplink with the ground "astronauts" voices.) If the ground station were to interrupt the uplink, accidentally or intentionally, the secret uplink site wouldn't necessarily know this. The "astronauts" on the ground would still hear Capcom and respond, and an astute ground station operator would scratch his head and begin wondering.

Alternatively, if the secret uplink transmitter were to fail, the nominal ground station would no longer hear the astronauts' voices even though everything would appear to be working normally; the transponder would be locked and even turning around a ranging signal if active. (See below)

The communications technicians at the ground sites occasionally communicated directly with the astronauts when the terrestrial link to Houston was down. They would be unable to do this in the "hoax" setup unless there was a secret link carrying the comtech's voices to the "astronauts" on earth. An astute technician might notice this secret link, and it too might go down.

The Apollo S-band links provided functions other than voice communications, such as ranging and telemetry. The spacecraft transponder phase-locked its transmitter to the uplink receiver so the ground stations could perform "2-way" Doppler measurements that gave range-rate. And on request the astronauts enabled their transmitter to turn around a PN uplink ranging sequence (similar to the signals now used by GPS). These functions would be implemented normally in the relay so that the ground station operators would properly track the (secretly unmanned) spacecraft.

So the speed of light need not necessarily defeat a secret relay scheme, although there would be many little gotchas that could tip off an alert and inquisitive operator. There are probably some I haven't thought of; this is actually an interesting challenge.

[smartcooky]

Yep. All of what you describe is possible, but its not "airtight". It would surely leave so many potential "leaks" in the plan, that the risk of discovery would be unacceptably high. I don't believe for one moment that none of the thousands of people involved in tracking stations around the world AS would not have noticed.

Another point of failure would be the Soviets, or for that matter, anyone who had the ability to intercept the downlink. They also tracked the AS to the moon, and their communications system was entirely independent. While they would only have been able to hear the downlink side directly, they would also have been listening to the live broadcasts, and a simple comparison would have shown up that something was not kosher -  unless of course THEY were in on the conspiracy too.

Lastly, Apollo 13 is the dead giveaway. Surely, when something went wrong with the AS on that occasion, the simplest thing would have been to just go ahead with the mission anyway, and fake it using the studio. There would have been no astronauts on Apollo 13, so no-one to say "Houston, we have a problem" Without the astronauts on board Odyssey & Aquarius no-one outside of MC would have known about the explosion, and they could have simply faked the LM descent and lift off (or had a convenient camera failure).

[ka9q]

I'm not sure how the Soviets could have detected a fake like this. They would be listening to the downlink, so they'd hear just what the tracking stations heard -- and we've assumed they're not in on the hoax. Even if they could overhear the uplinks from one of these sites (e.g., off an antenna side lobe) they would hear the Capcom's voice, just as they'd expect. And the delays would be right.

But imagine if they found and intercepted the secret uplink carrying the "astronaut" audio to be relayed back down. It would be 3 seconds ahead of the nominal downlink -- a dead giveaway that the mission was a hoax. The uplink would have to be protected from interception and presumably encrypted. Good digital encryption exists now, but it simply didn't exist in 1969.

[Kiwi]

Yep. All of what you describe is possible, but its not "airtight". It would surely leave so many potential "leaks" in the plan, that the risk of discovery would be unacceptably high.

A few years ago there was an interesting discussion about his type of thing where people with expertise in many of the Apollo-related subjects discussed how they would attempt to pull off a convincing moonlanding hoax.  Some thought it was simply impossible and others said the same as you have, "Possible, but unlikely it could be done that way without being detected."  IIRC few came up with a plan that would really work, or if they did, the expense and/or difficulty would be so high that it would have been cheaper and easier to just go to the moon.

I don't recall exactly where the discusssion was and would like to see it again.  It may have been at the old Bad Astronomy Bulletin Board or in the early days of the BAUT forum, and if so the thread might still be around at CosmoQuest.

My expertise is photography, and while there was much I had to learn about Apollo and the equipment and techniques used, I eventually come to my own conclusion that the photographs were not faked and could not have been faked.  In one or two cases it was only my experience as a photographer in the 1970s that helped me solve, in online discussions, some of the "mysteries" of lunar surface photos, because of the ways things were done back then but are not done now.

Many examples of this can be seen in Michael Light's Book "Full Moon."  If you compare the colour photos with the black-and-whites, the latter are of poor quality.  The dark lunar sky or dark shadows on the moon bleed into the greys and whites.  It even shows on the dust-jacket photo, where the entire limb of the moon is shaded.

What happened?  There are a few possible explanations, all revolving around the darkroom printer's methods of working.  I settled on the the most amusing one: "He smoked in his darkroom."

In that case, a fog of smoke might have a small effect on the beam of light from the enlarging lens to the paper, but it's more likely that the smoke would have, over time, coated the enlarger lens, causing it to lose contrast and with a soft-focus effect, spread the most light from its beam into areas it shouldn't. (We're talking negatives here, so the most light comes through the unexposed areas such as lunar sky, and turns the paper black when developed.)

Other possibilities are that the enlarger lens was just plain dirty from fingerprints, or the printer did the same dumb thing I did when I was a new, naive printer.  For far too long I was getting that same edge fog on my prints, and couldn't figure why.  I smoked back then, but not in the darkroom, although it was okay to briefly carry a lit cigarette into the darkroom because its glow didn't fog paper.  I had checked.

After much detective work, I finally looked inside the lens with a light behind it, and saw a thin film over the surface of one internal lens element.  Immediately I knew what it was.  Months before, that lens had developed a squeak when I changed the aperture, so I lightly oiled it.  A no-no.  The squeak went away, but the heat of the enlarger bulb had, over time, partially evaporated the oil which caused it to coat the internal surfaces.

[cjameshuff]

One particularly bonkers poster in the BAUT conspiracy forum claimed first that the signal was crafted to induce a delay in the receivers..."it's all in the internal computing power of the reciever", "similar in principle to a home computer being slowed by adware".

When it was pointed out that even if this worked, it wouldn't explain the direction, he first claimed a geostationary satellite, and to fix the problems quickly pointed out with that, it turned out to be "not completely geostationary", accompanied by a whole constellation of secondary satellites. When asserting that failed to convince people:

i know its hard to comprehend, but the hoax was developed and executed with assistance from aliens. aliens have mastered space/time relativity. they assisted in formulating satelites which can give the impression that they are at greater distances (or vice versa) by bending space. which is what i was getting at when i said the signal can be formulated to appear as if coming from somewhere else. that mixed with bending space can trick even the most knowledgable communications expert, let alone amateurs.

Yes, NASA faked the Apollo moon landings with assistance from extraterrestrials (weed-smoking aliens from Andromeda, as it later turned) who helped them engineer a complex scheme involving a constellation of space-warping satellites.

[gillianren]

I was watching an episode of NOVA Science Now the other day (starts with "N"!), and they interviewed a guy who works in detecting photographic forgery.  Based on that one interview, I would say it was impossible, given 1969 technology, to fake the photographs and not have it revealed with modern technology.  Heck, he can detect really good forgeries now, ones which fool the naked eye even beyond that vague sense of wrongness the less obvious forgeries produce.  To us, they appear perfect; his computer can show you where they are not.  Fake Apollo pictures wouldn't stand a chance.

[smartcooky]

I'm not sure how the Soviets could have detected a fake like this. They would be listening to the downlink, so they'd hear just what the tracking stations heard -- and we've assumed they're not in on the hoax. Even if they could overhear the uplinks from one of these sites (e.g., off an antenna side lobe) they would hear the Capcom's voice, just as they'd expect. And the delays would be right.

But imagine if they found and intercepted the secret uplink carrying the "astronaut" audio to be relayed back down. It would be 3 seconds ahead of the nominal downlink -- a dead give-away that the mission was a hoax. The uplink would have to be protected from interception and presumably encrypted. Good digital encryption exists now, but it simply didn't exist in 1969.

I think they could easily have had the ability to detect the uplink too, and as you rightly say, if they did, and they found it contained astronaut audio, the game was up!!

IIRC, the Soviets Launched a probe at the same time as Apollo 11... which was supposed to scoop up some lunar soil and return it to Earth. It was launched three days before Apollo ll, preceded it all the way there and went into lunar orbit two days before. However, it malfunctioned during the de-orbit burn and crashed in Mare Crisium, just after Armstrong and Aldrin completed their moon walk.

So, what was it doing for two days? I'll bet it was monitoring the uplink. I find it difficult to believe that the Soviets would not have taken the opportunity of giving a probe that they had put into lunar orbit two days days before the AS got there, the capacity to spy on the uplink.

I remember at the time there was some conjecture that the Soviets had launched a manned mission to get there first. That idea was later explored in an episode of "The Cape"



PS: I have posted a "belated" personal introduction here: http://www.apollohoax.net/forum/index.php?topic=200.0

[ka9q]

So, what was it doing for two days? I'll bet it was monitoring the uplink. I find it difficult to believe that the Soviets would not have taken the opportunity of giving a probe that they had put into lunar orbit two days days before the AS got there, the capacity to spy on the uplink.

Was there ever an official, post-Cold-War explanation of that mission?

I'm not so sure that this is what it did. After all, the Russians had no serious doubts about the reality of the Apollo missions but they were racing to scoop the Americans. I think it more likely that it was just what we thought it was: a robot intended to return a sample before Armstrong and Aldrin could return with their samples. Had it succeeded, the Russians would have crowed that they produced the same results at far less cost and risk to human life. Everyone would have seen it as the sour grapes it was, but the Russians did that sort of thing all the time.

[smartcooky]

The official story about  Luna 15 was that it had a number of scientific tasks, that included lunar soil return, the study of circum-lunar space, the lunar gravitational field, and the chemical composition of lunar rocks. It was also capable of photographing the lunar surface

In July 1969 the radio telescopes at Jodrell Bank (England) were tracking Apollo 11, but they were also tracking Luna 15. They reported that it went into lunar orbit on 1969:07:17 at 09:57 UT, nearly three days before Apollo. They continued to track it while it completed 52 orbits varying between 1½ and 2 hours, and over 80 communications sessions  before it crashed on the Moon on 1969:07:21 at 15:50 UT - just a few hours before Eagle lifted off from the Moon's surface. It was in Lunar orbit before Apollo arrived, and remained there for almost all of the EVA.

Now while its official missions were scientific, I find it difficult to believe that the Soviets would not have had a communications receiver on board capable of listening in on the Apollo transmissions, and any secret uplink from "the Nevada Desert" would surely have been detected.

[Echnaton]

My thoughts on the possibility of a hoax have centered on the idea that no one would have tried to hoax the Apollo program, as it is.  A hoax mission would have been much different and included only one landing.  The astronauts on that mission would have determined some surface conditions that made further landings unwise.  The only condition I can think of that would have been plausible is that the surface was mostly a deep powdery dust with only occasional small islands of rock.  Making it appear that the lander got very luck not to have sunk in, the program would have been canceled.  Only the contingency sample would have come back to earth.  It would have been collected by the robotic lander secretly placed in the faked and un-crewed Apollo 10. 

That is the most plausible sketch of a hoax scenario I can come up with.  Hoaxing the Apollo program as presented by history is beyond plausible for all but those with the greatest fundamental desire and motivation to believe.

[gillianren]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the very fact that the orbit varied in length like that evidence that something was wrong?

[ka9q]

You mean that Luna 15's orbit varied in duration? Not necessarily; Apollo orbits also varied in duration as various maneuvers were made for various reasons. For example, on the early flights the lunar insertion maneuvers were made in multiple steps for safety reasons. The first burn produced an elliptical orbit with an apocynthion on the near side, and after tracking showed that the expected orbit was achieved another burn was made on the far side to drop the apocynthion down to an approximately circular orbit. This played it safe in case the first burn was a little greater than expected.

[smartcooky]

Yes, the orbit of Luna 15 was being changed on purpose, a shorter orbital period would bring the satellite lower, a longer one would put it in a higher orbit.

Back in 2009, the radio observatory Jodrell Bank released audio which was recorded in the telescope control room while both Apollo 11 and Luna 15 were being tracked. Here is an mp3 of an edited version of the audio

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/98915197/Luna15-Apollo11.mp3

It describes some of the moments leading up to Luna 15's landing (later discovered to be a crash). The commentator, British scientist Sir Bernard Lovell describes some of the changes in Luna 15's orbit.

[gillianren]

Ah.  Thank you.  To the person unfamiliar with much of orbital mechanics, the idea that the orbital period changed probably sounds more ominous than it does to experts.