Some doubts.

[Halcyon Dayz, FCD]

I'd like to point out that the hoax believers were completely unaware that the backup tapes even existed, until NASA announced some were missing, at which point the tapes suddenly became the "Smoking Gun."

Conveniently providing themselves with an excuse to ignore all the other evidence.
The vast, vast amount of other evidence, including 3rd party evidence.

[ka9q]

I'd like to point out that the hoax believers were completely unaware that the backup tapes even existed, until NASA announced some were missing, at which point the tapes suddenly became the "Smoking Gun."

This has become a recurring pattern: demand some piece of evidence they think doesn't exist, as though it and it alone would convince them of the reality of the Apollo program.

So the real fun comes when they demand something like this, and then you produce it for them and watch the furious backpedaling and goalpost-moving.

[BertieSlack]

Thank you BertieSlack, I enjoyed reading your analysis of the grain to the Soviets. I thought it was clear, concise and compelling. I learned something new today... again!

The CT argument that the USSR was desperate for grain, that the U.S was the only place they could get it, and that they were prepared to pay the price of Apollo silence (starting three years AFTER Apollo 11) in exchange is simply not borne out by the facts. So the hoaxnuts then turn the goalposts around: it was actually the Americans who were desperate to send gifts to buy off the Soviets - 'gifts' that the Soviets didn't need and had to pay hard currency for, and which helped prevent the bottom falling out of the U.S domestic grain market. Typical hoaxnut Doublethink.

[gwiz]

What do you think about aulis? is it legit? It has lots of content about the photos anomalies

If you've got the time, there are a series of pieces on the Education Forum in which Evan Burton systematically examines the Aulis claims and shows the errors in every one.
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showforum=262
Look down the list for the threads with "Jack White" in the title.

[Kiwi]

Could the soviets know it was faked but they could not tell it to the world because they are isolated from the rest or because they were losing and nobody wanted to hear them about the landings?

Look up your own newspapers of July 1969 and read what the Soviets said about Apollo 11. It can be exciting to read about news as it was originally written.

Here's what an Australian newspaper said:

The West Australian, Wednesday 23 July 1969, page 8
Congratulations from Kosygin
Moscow, Tuesday

Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin sent congratulations to the Apollo 11 astronauts and President Nixon yesterday through former vice-president Humphrey, who is visiting Moscow.

Mr Humphrey was called to Mr Kosygin's office in the Kremlin after the moon walk.

Mr Humphrey quoted Mr Kosygin as saying: "I want you to tell the President and the American people that the Soviet Union desires to work with the U.S. in the cause of peace."

Prompt reports

The Russian radio reported the landing of the astronauts within ten minutes of touch-down and announced the ascent from the moon even more promptly. Moscow television showed the moon walk yesterday.

A first screening was edited to blank out the American commentary and the voices of the astronauts. It ended just before the astronauts raised the U.S. flag on the moon's surface.

About two hours later, in another TV broadcast, the sound and the flag raising had been restored.

In Peking, the official newspapers, TV and radio totally ignored Apollo 11, but some Chinese people may have heard of the landing by courtesy of Radio Moscow. A half-hour Chinese-language news broadcast from Moscow gave 30 seconds to the landing.

In London, a man who almost arranged the death of Saturn rocket designer Wernher von Braun sent him a cable of congratulations - and relief.

Politician Duncan Sandys, who planned a raid designed to kill Nazi Germany's major rocket scientists at Peenemunde (one of them Dr von Braun), said: "I am thankful that your illustrious career was not cut short in the bombing raid at Peenemunde 26 years ago."

And a New Zealand newspaper:

Manawatu Evening Standard,  Friday 25 July 1969, page 1
Astronauts home — Perfect, but upside down, landing
NZPA  Aboard USS Hornet, July 24

Apollo-XI's astronauts, their footprints stamped forever in history, splashed (upside down) "in excellent condition" today to make good America's commitment to walk on the moon in the 1960s.

A beaming President Nixon was aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet in the Pacific, 1000 miles southwest of Honolulu, when the epic voyage of the three explorers came to its end.

Civilian Neil Armstrong, aged 38, Air Force Colonel Edwin Aldrin, aged 39, and Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Collins, aged 38, blazed back through the atmosphere and disappeared into the most severe medical quarantine in history.  They came back from a voyage of nearly a million miles in space.

The United States top space official, Dr Thomas Paine, administrator at NASA, predicted the Russians would be on the moon too, within 18 months, and urged his countrymen not to "turn inward" and sacrifice interplanetary exploration to internal problems.

Bedlam broke out in many American cities, large and small.  Car horns, city and ship sirens screamed and fireworks crackled in San Francisco, where the Mayor, Mr Joseph Alioto, had asked every noise-making device in the city to be turned on for five minutes.  Church bells rang in New England.

Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins splashed down a few miles from the Hornet just at dawn, and bobbed in the dark ocean for more than an hour while they put on quarantine garments.

AAP-Reuter reported that Mission Control in Houston, Texas, said the unofficial splashdown time was 195 hours, 18 minutes and 21 seconds after lift-off from Cape Kennedy.  This was a bare 45 seconds earlier than the original flight plan.

Black out

The spaceship seared into earth's atmosphere at over 24,000 miles an hour, and there were tense minutes of waiting for radio contact to be re-established after the re-entry blackout.

The flight controller, Mr Ron Evans, put in nine tight-voiced calls to the spacecraft before getting an answer.

Apollo-XI landed upside down in the sea, and there were long minutes while controllers waited for flotation bags to inflate and right the bell-shaped capsule, and so confirm that all was well aboard.

Then a recovery helicopter pilot radioed: "The crew is excellent and ready to take on swimmers."

Before they were taken aboard the helicopter which brought them to Hornet, the astronauts were sprayed and scrubbed with a fluid scientists believe will effectively take care of any moon organism — if such exist.  The spacecraft was also sprayed and scrubbed.

The astronauts already had been given biological isolation garments — head-to-foot suits designed to prevent contamination of the earth by possible moon germs.

A frogman then sprayed the outside of the spacecraft with germ-killing fluid.

Trailer

The astronauts were taken by the helicopter to an aluminium trailer on the deck of the Hornet, to be quarantined from the world for 18 days.

The astronauts stepped on the Hornet's deck and walked steadily, clad in their isolation suits, into the rear door of the trailer that will be kept sealed, for a two-day trip to Honolulu on the Hornet and then by air to the space centre near Houston.

A moment later one astronaut's face appeared at a window and a great cheer broke out on the hangar deck.

In mission control at Houston, weary controllers cheered themselves hoarse and the room bloomed with American flags.

Soviet praise

From Moscow, the Soviet President, Mr N. Podgorny, today congratulated President Nixon on "the successful completion of the outstanding flight of the spaceship Apollo-XI, the moon landing and the safe return to earth of the American cosmonauts."

The Soviet President's telegram said:  "Please convey our congratulations and best wishes to the courageous space pilots Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin and Michael Collins."

Russian television viewers saw their first live transmission from the epic Apollo-XI flight, as the moon-walking astronauts landed on the Hornet.

I'm also intrigued about you saying "I believe the landing happened ..."

Did you really think there was only one?

And regarding the rock thefts, I think that confirms that the landings happened.  Why would anyone want to steal fakes?

At least your post got me wondering where New Zealand's Apollo 11 rock is now, and Google instantly gave me the link:
http://collections.tepapa.govt.nz/object/64368

Te Papa is our national museum.

Then there's the rock that the Apollo 17 guys dedicated to other countries not long before they stepped off the lunar surface.  I don't recall hearing what happened to that.

Gazpar, you've obviously spent time looking at hoax literature, but have you balanced that by looking at the other side?  Spent a few tens or hundreds of hours at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journals and the Apollo Flight Journals?
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/frame.html
http://history.nasa.gov/afj/

Read just the Mission Summaries at Apollo by the Numbers? Thought about all the highly-detailed information there and whether or not scientists could blow big holes in it if it wasn't reliable?
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/SP-4029.htm
Contents page:
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_00g_Table_of_Contents.htm

[Dr_Orpheus]

This has become a recurring pattern: demand some piece of evidence they think doesn't exist, as though it and it alone would convince them of the reality of the Apollo program.

So the real fun comes when they demand something like this, and then you produce it for them and watch the furious backpedaling and goalpost-moving.

Near the end of his run at JREF, Patrick had repeated examples of this.  He had an especially amusing back-peddle claiming the non-existence of close up photos of astronauts exiting the capsule after splash down.  I think he finally amended the claim to the lack of close up videos of them leaving the capsule.  He insisted that was what he had meant all along and the earlier failed claim was a  white lie to trick us.

[Gazpar]

I believe all the fly-by's and landings happened.
Since I have read all the hoaxers claims(they are louder), I wanted to hear about the opposing side.
Of course, all the landings and flybys happened, the evidence is overwhelming.
Now that you all gave me something to read and spend my time, my doubts have now been cleared and I see now the faulty logic of HB's.
I just needed advice from professionals and Im glad I received them here.

[Echnaton]

Glad you stopped by, Gazpar.  Feel free to hang around too.

[Abaddon]

I believe all the fly-by's and landings happened.
Since I have read all the hoaxers claims(they are louder), I wanted to hear about the opposing side.
Of course, all the landings and flybys happened, the evidence is overwhelming.
Now that you all gave me something to read and spend my time, my doubts have now been cleared and I see now the faulty logic of HB's.
I just needed advice from professionals and Im glad I received them here.

Just remember that you will often happen upon HBs with what appears to be a watertight argument at first glance.

What you have here at your fingertips is an enormous pool of expertise; scientists, engineers, etc. some of whom have been, and indeed currently are, involved directly in space programs.

It is likely, should you continue to peruse deluded HB musings, that you will happen upon claims you cannot effectively refute. This here site has seen it all, done it all. I know for a fact that when I happen upon some random claim that I have not seen before, I search here first because I know it has most likely been dealt with here before. If it hasn't then I know that an answer will be forthcoming in short order.

Feel free to dip in whenever you happen on something you can't figure out. Nobody knows everything, but it's a fair bet that somebody here knows the answer you seek for any question.

As Echnaton said, feel free to hang around.

[Gazpar]

Im glad to be here and thank you for your responses

[nomuse]

Most of the fun in coming here is learning about bits and angles (of not just the Apollo Program, but aerospace, astronomy, optics, chemistry, who-knows-what) from the other posters here.

If the hoaxies perform a useful function it is that; shining a light into interesting places that one might not otherwise have looked, and bringing out interesting and informative people to talk about what they've found.

[Luke Pemberton]

As for the isolation theory, the USSR was a freaking superpower. This wasn't  some stain on a map of a country.

Absolutely, they had a huge sphere of influence across Eastern Europe, most Governments in Eastern Europe were puppets of Moscow. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, they were based across the world. It is quite arguable that the Korean War and Vietnam were heavily influenced by the Soviets and their provision of arms to Communist forces. Far from isolated.

[gillianren]

It has lots of content about the photos anomalies

This phrasing amuses me.  It does have lots of content.  So does TV Tropes.  The difference is that TV Tropes is generally reliable about what it's saying.

[smartcooky]

It is likely, should you continue to peruse deluded HB musings, that you will happen upon claims you cannot effectively refute. This here site has seen it all, done it all. I know for a fact that when I happen upon some random claim that I have not seen before, I search here first because I know it has most likely been dealt with here before. If it hasn't then I know that an answer will be forthcoming in short order.

And I'll give you an example of this....

The walls of the LM pressure cabin are only of micro-millimetric thickness. I once heard Jim Lovell (Commander Apollo 13) say that if you weren't careful you could easily put your boot through it and puncture it, and in space, that is immediately fatal for anyone inside because on the other side of that micro-thin wall is the vacuum of space. On Apollo 13, Haise and Lovell knew this and were familiar with this facet of the LM's construction, but Zweigert wasn't and they had to brief him. One time they had to warn him to be careful that he didn't kick the door out!!!

Now, I had an HB once claim (and I am sure that it is a common claim) that the LM walls should blow out like a balloon with the pressure differential. I didn't have the answer to refute his claim, as at the time, I could not see why he wasn't right.

* Cue an Apollohoax member who is an aerospace engineer or someone with the requisite engineering knowledge, who will now explain why this does not happen.......

[Jason Thompson]

Well firstly the LM pressure vessel had plenty of ribs and crossbeams to give it structural strength, and secondly even if the walls did bulge out you'd never see it from the outside because the outer panels are not the pressure vessel of the LM but thermal and micrometeoroid protection system that is essentially thin sheets of metal connected by rivets, tape and various other methods. TO see how thin and flimsy this layer was, look at the state of the back of the Apollo 16 LM after lunar liftoff.

Additionally, inside the LM are plenty of control panels and stowage lockers that make touching the actual pressure vessel skin not so easy as stretching your foot out and accidentally putting it through the wall. Even if you could, try puncturing a coke can without a sharp object. Similar thickness.

That all being said, the astronauts did note that the door appeared to bulge out when the LM was pressurised....