Hoax "theorists" becoming scarcer?

[Noldi400]

I was watching the interview that Neil Armstrong did for the Australian CPAs last night and I still get a chuckle when the interviewer asks him about the CTs and he says "I'm not worried. I'm certain someone will eventually return to the moon and pick up the camera I left there."  Class act, that one was.

For it not being "planned" that way, he was the perfect person to be the first...his almost complete lack of ego has always empressed me.

Too right.  Can you imagine how it would have been if 11 had had to 'wave off' and 12 had made the first landing?  No that Pete Conrad was egotistical, but he was certainly more colorful....

But your post inspired a notion...I imagine the camera was handled before the gloves were put on, so shouldn't Neil, and Buzz's fingerprints be all over that camera?

Although as irrational as Moon hoax bats are, it would mean nothing to them...

I believe that the skin oils that form fingerprints degrade and evaporate fairly rapidly in a hot environment - I seem to remember hearing that fingerprints inside a closed car in hot weather will be gone, or at least unusable, in a fairly short time.

And you're absolutely correct. The HB nutjobs would just cry 'fake' as they always do when they don't have an answer.

[smartcooky]

That seems to sum up the hopelessness of ever changing the mind of the committed HB. All evidence is "faked" or "planted", all witnesses are "lying" or occasionally "brainwashed".  If they can make up a story - no matter how far-fetched - to account for something (like, oh, 380kg of 'moon rocks' collected from Antarctica or by robotic probes) they think that proves the hoax. Oh, someone who was about to blow the whistle mysteriously died just before they could go public.

To sum it up more succinctly.... there is no cure for stupid!

[Glom]

Of course, we are all well aware of the HB talent for shifting the goalposts.  They say they want evidence but fail to ever define what they won't just dismiss as fake.

[Luckmeister]

To sum it up more succinctly.... there is no cure for stupid!

Oh darn! And I just bought a cure on ebay. Maybe when it arrives I'll put it on Craigslist and make a profit.

Hey, that would show I'm cured. 

[frenat]

Is the Apollo lunatic fringe gradually dying out?  There's a thread over on the UK Yahoo site called "Visions of the Universe".
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/photos/visions-of-the-universe-1367509568-slideshow/
now the UK Yahoo site is, IMHO, infamous for the poorest quality of reporting going. It also seems to attract comments from the hard of thinking (ie, any mention of politics seems to result in a flurry of posts about UKIP ). This particular item has the usual time-worn rubbish about dust, shadows, blast craters, yet most of these seem to get pounced on. To me, it looks like the Apollo conspiracist is a dying breed?

I know this is off topic but I think that holds true for all of Yahoo.  IMO they do I on purpose.  They make money through hit counts on the ads.  What gets more hits, a well written article that is visited once?  Or a badly written article with typos and blatant mistakes that people make comments on and return to make more comments?

[Chew]

Too right.  Can you imagine how it would have been if 11 had had to 'wave off' and 12 had made the first landing?  No that Pete Conrad was egotistical, but he was certainly more colorful....

Before the flight the NASA Administrator told the crew not to take any chances and to abort at the slightest sign of trouble and he would put them on the next flight back to the Moon. He also told this to the Apollo 12 crew. He did not, however, tell this to the Apollo 13 crew.

[ka9q]

I was watching the interview that Neil Armstrong did for the Australian CPAs last night and I still get a chuckle when the interviewer asks him about the CTs and he says "I'm not worried. I'm certain someone will eventually return to the moon and pick up the camera I left there."  Class act, that one was.

Even better would be if someone could return to the Apollo 12 site, pick up and process the film magazine that Conrad and Bean left there accidentally. Problem is, even if it somehow survived many decades of exposure to lunar conditions, would anybody still have the ability to process it?

[gillianren]

I don't see why not.  There are people who know how to process pictures taken on glass plates.

[raven]

I worry that 40 years would have washed out any exposures. Still, it would be something if they could.

[RAF]

I worry that 40 years would have washed out any exposures.

I don't know...betcha Jay has a pretty good idea one way or the other...I'll PM him and ask...

[Hal]

Whether or not the emulsion has been fried/fogged/what-have-you, you'd also have to question whether the film substrate itself has survived the radiation environment and the extreme heating/cooling cycle.  We know that the nylon flags have survived, in some fashion, so perhaps the film is intact as well.  Of course, that doesn't mean that either the flags or the film have retained any useful structural integrity.

[smartcooky]

Whether or not the emulsion has been fried/fogged/what-have-you, you'd also have to question whether the film substrate itself has survived the radiation environment and the extreme heating/cooling cycle.  We know that the nylon flags have survived, in some fashion, so perhaps the film is intact as well.  Of course, that doesn't mean that either the flags or the film have retained any useful structural integrity.

40+ years of being subjected to a monthly frying and freezing cycle of +115°C to -150°?

That film will be FUBAR; totally and utterly heat fogged. Even if it survived physically, if you developed it, it would be an ink-black strip of film substrate with no image on it whatsoever.

[JayUtah]

The base is thin polyester, which will harden with long exposure to vacuum.  The magazine has sufficient UV protection to avoid photochemical degradation, but the emulsion will also dry out.  Since this will likely cause them to expand and contract at different rates over the many thousands of thermal cycles, I expect the base to be essentially hardened into the roll shape and the emulsion to be a pile of flakes and powder at the bottom of the magazine.

[RAF]

The magazine has sufficient UV protection to avoid photochemical degradation...

I thought that might be the case, but wasn't sure...thanks, Jay.

[onebigmonkey]

Following on from the camera discussion, there's an interesting side issue here given NASA's reported requests for private ventures to stay away from Apollo sites in order to avoid disturbing their historical value.

In my view, they represent valuable research sites, given that we know exactly how long the objects have been there. The condition in which they exist now would give important insights into the behaviour of materials in the lunar environment. Apollo 12's site in particular would be useful as we already have a record of the Surveyor 3 probe's condition after just a few years.

I don't think we should be pandering to the idiots by deliberately picking out Apollo sites to go "See? Told ya", but their value as sources of data is huge.