Hello, Romulus. Welcome, belatedly, to the board. I have skimmed this thread, and finally have a moment to chip in, so I wanted to briefly address your original claim.
If I understand you correctly, you say that the Apollo manned lunar missions are, collectively, a scientifically unproven claim, because the "scientific method" requires that they be reproduced. In support of this assertion, you claimed you were a scientist (which you qualified by saying you were a student of science for a long time).
Although my undergraduate degree was in space physics, I will stipulate that I am no scientist. My graduate degrees and work experience are in engineering. However, I think your "scientific method" premise suffers from two major flaws:
First, while people have been saying Apollo is an engineering subject, or a historical subject, rather than a scientific one, the whole truth is that Apollo is an engineering subject and a historical subject and a scientific one. So Apollo can be validated in a variety of different ways, and it is very thoroughly documented in each of those ways. The consensus of the relevant communities of practice in each field is that Apollo happened. More importantly, this consensus can be explored in almost any level of detail you can specify; Apollo is arguably the most heavily-documented large technical project in history. So the expert consensus is available for anyone to confirm. You've also stated that it's riddled with examples that prove your contention, and I see you've started a thread about photographic examples, but I have yet to see any such example hold up to informed scrutiny. We'll see if you come up with something different.
Second, even if we artificially restrict ourselves to only the "repeatability" argument, that argument in itself fails. A couple of posters have already pointed this out - forgive me, it's late, I have a ratty Internet connection, and I don't want to spend the time right now looking for their posts again - that in many ways Apollo has been reproduced. To revisit what's already been pointed out. consider the Apollo aspects that have been repeated:
- First lunar landing? Repeated by Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16, 17. But let's look at non-Apollo examples.
- Earth-orbit manned flights and EVAs: repeated by Soviets/Russians and Chinese.
- Earth-escape, cislunar, translunar, and lunar orbit operations: repeated by Soviets/Russians, European coalition, Chinese, Indians, Japanese (did I forget anyone?).
- Lunar soft landing: Soviets/Russians, Chinese.
- Lunar sample return: Soviets.
- Man-rated vehicles and living organisms sent around Moon: Soviets.
Also repeated were many of the technologies - rocket engines, manufacturing methods, guidance techniques, etc. - developed for Apollo. The gigantic and complicated prelaunch processing, checkout, and launch facilities used for Apollo have been in constant use for decades, getting modified for each successive launch and space system to use them. I work with a guy who was on the team that used an Apollo Guidance Computer to control the first digital fly-by-wire aircraft. I've used one of the same thermal vacuum chambers that was used to test the Apollo lunar module. Examples abound of the heritage of Apollo being confirmed by reuse and adaptation.
So, the only things that haven't been repeated since the last Apollo flight are humans actually being in a spacecraft to the Moon. You've said that NASA "admitted it can't be done for decades" (or words to that effect - I stipulate that's not a direct quote), but the reality is that there's no technical reason it can't be done. It's just hugely expensive, and without a clear political mandate no one has been willing to lay out the enormous amount of money to do it soon.
In short, there is more than one way to validate Apollo, and it's been done; and even in the most restrictive sense, Apollo capabilities have been very well reproduced. So I have to say that your starting premise is fundamentally broken.
That's all I have time for now, but I will try to address some of your other points when I have time.
