The moon is not a bad place. Definitely deserves a short visit.
Neil Armstrong
Almost half a century has passed since the Apollo flights, but the debate about whether the Americans were on the Moon does not subside, but becomes more and more fierce. The piquancy of the situation is that supporters of the theory of the "lunar conspiracy" are trying to challenge not real historical events, but their own, vague and error-ridden idea of them.
LUNAR EPOPE
Facts first. On May 25, 1961, six weeks after Yuri Gagarin's triumphant flight, President John F. Kennedy made a speech before the Senate and House of Representatives, in which he promised that the American would land on the moon by the end of the decade. Having suffered defeat at the first stage of the space "race", the United States set out not only to catch up, but also to overtake the Soviet Union.
The main reason for the lag at that time was that the Americans underestimated the importance of heavy ballistic missiles. Like Soviet colleagues, American specialists studied the experience of German engineers who built A-4 (V-2) missiles during the war, but did not give these projects serious development, believing that in a global war, long-range bombers would be sufficient. Of course, the team of Wernher von Braun, taken out of Germany, continued to create ballistic missiles in the interests of the army, but they were not suitable for space flights. When the Redstone rocket, the successor to the German A-4s, was modified to launch the first American ship, the Mercury, it was only able to lift it to suborbital altitude.
Nevertheless, resources were found in the United States, so American designers quickly created the necessary "line" of carriers: from Titan-2, which launched a two-seat maneuvering ship Gemini, to Saturn-5, capable of sending a three-seater Apollo spacecraft. "To the moon.
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Of course, a colossal amount of work was required before sending the expeditions. The Lunar Orbiter series spacecraft carried out a detailed mapping of the nearest celestial body - with their help it was possible to outline and study suitable landing sites. The Surveyors made soft lunar landings and provided excellent images of the surrounding area.
Lunar Orbiter spacecraft have carefully mapped the moon, determining the location of future astronaut landings
The Surveyor spacecraft studied the moon directly on its surface; the parts of the Surveyor-3 were picked up and delivered to Earth by the Apollo 12 crew
The Gemini program developed in parallel. After unmanned launches on March 23, 1965, Gemini 3 was launched, which maneuvered by changing the speed and inclination of the orbit, which was an unprecedented achievement at that time. Gemini 4 flew shortly thereafter, in which Edward White performed the first spacewalk for the Americans. The spacecraft worked in orbit for four days, testing orientation systems for the Apollo program. The Gemini 5, launched on August 21, 1965, tested electrochemical generators and a docking radar. In addition, the crew set a record for the duration of their stay in space - almost eight days (the Soviet cosmonauts managed to beat it only in June 1970). By the way,During the Gemini 5 flight, the Americans first encountered the negative consequences of weightlessness - the weakening of the musculoskeletal system. Therefore, measures have been developed to prevent such effects: a special diet, drug therapy and a series of physical exercises.
In December 1965, the ships Gemini 6 and Gemini 7 approached each other to simulate docking. Moreover, the crew of the second ship spent more than thirteen days in orbit (that is, the total time of the lunar expedition), proving that the measures taken to maintain physical fitness are quite effective during such a long flight. On the ships Gemini 8, Gemini 9 and Gemini 10, they practiced the docking procedure (by the way, Neil Armstrong was the commander of Gemini 8). On Gemini 11 in September 1966, they tested the possibility of an emergency launch from the Moon, as well as flying through the Earth's radiation belts (the ship climbed to a record altitude of 1369 km). On Gemini 12, the astronauts tried out a series of manipulations in outer space.
During the flight of the Gemini 12 spacecraft, astronaut Buzz Aldrin proved the possibility of complex manipulations in outer space
At the same time, the designers were preparing for testing the "intermediate" two-stage rocket "Saturn-1". During its first launch on October 27, 1961, it surpassed the Vostok rocket in thrust, which was used by Soviet cosmonauts. It was assumed that the same rocket would launch the first Apollo-1 into space, but on January 27, 1967, a fire broke out at the launch complex, in which the crew of the ship died, and many plans had to be revised.
In November 1967, tests began on the huge three-stage Saturn-5 rocket. During the first flight, it lifted into orbit the Apollo-4 command and service module with a lunar module model. In January 1968, the Apollo-5 lunar module was tested in orbit, and the unmanned Apollo-6 went there in April. The last launch due to the failure of the second stage almost ended in disaster, but the rocket pulled the ship out, demonstrating good "survivability".
On October 11, 1968, the Saturn-1B rocket launched the Apollo-7 command and service module with a crew into orbit. For ten days, the astronauts tested the ship, conducting complex maneuvers. Apollo was theoretically ready for the expedition, but the lunar module was still raw. And then a mission was invented, which was not originally planned at all - a flight around the moon.
The flight of the Apollo 8 spacecraft was not planned by NASA: it became an improvisation, but it was carried out brilliantly, securing another historical priority for the American astronautics
On December 21, 1968, the Apollo 8 spacecraft without a lunar module, but with a crew of three astronauts, set off for a nearby celestial body. The flight went relatively smoothly, but before the historic landing on the Moon, two more launches were needed: the Apollo 9 crew worked out the procedure for docking and undocking of the spacecraft modules in near-earth orbit, then the Apollo 10 crew did the same, but already close to the Moon … On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin stepped onto the lunar surface, thereby proclaiming US leadership in space exploration.
The Apollo 10 crew performed a “dress rehearsal”, completing all the operations required to land on the moon, but without landing itself
Lunar module of the ship "Apollo-11", named "Eagle" ("Eagle") leaves for landing
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Moon
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's moonwalk was broadcast via the Parkes Observatory radio telescope in Australia; the originals of the recording of the historical event were also preserved and recently discovered there
Then new successful missions followed: "Apollo-12", "Apollo-14", "Apollo-15", "Apollo-16", "Apollo-17". As a result, twelve astronauts visited the moon, conducted reconnaissance of the area, installed scientific equipment, collected soil samples, and tested rovers. Only the crew of Apollo 13 was unlucky: on the way to the moon, a tank of liquid oxygen exploded, and NASA specialists had to work hard to return the astronauts to Earth.
THEORY OF FALSIFICATION
It would seem that the reality of expeditions to the moon should not have been in doubt. NASA regularly published press releases and bulletins, experts and astronauts gave numerous interviews, many countries and the world scientific community participated in the technical support, tens of thousands of people watched the takeoffs of huge rockets, and millions watched live TV broadcasts from space. Lunar soil was brought to Earth, which many selenologists were able to study. International scientific conferences have been held to make sense of the data that came from instruments left on the moon.
Devices for creating an artificial sodium comet were installed on the Luna-1 spacecraft
But even in that eventful time, people appeared who questioned the facts of the landing of astronauts on the moon. A skeptical attitude towards space achievements manifested itself back in 1959, and the likely reason for this was the secrecy policy pursued by the Soviet Union: for decades it even hid the location of its cosmodrome! Therefore, when Soviet scientists announced that they had launched the Luna-1 research apparatus, some Western experts spoke in the spirit that the communists were simply fooling the world community. The specialists foresaw the questions and placed a device for vaporizing sodium on Luna-1, with the help of which an artificial comet was created, equal in brightness to the sixth magnitude.
Conspiracy theorists even dispute the reality of Yuri Gagarin's flight
Claims arose later: for example, some Western journalists doubted the reality of Yuri Gagarin's flight, because the Soviet Union refused to provide any documentary evidence. There was no camera on board the Vostok ship; the external appearance of the ship itself and the launch vehicle remained classified. But the US authorities have never expressed doubts about the reliability of what happened: even during the flight of the first satellites, the National Security Agency (NSA) deployed two observation stations in Alaska and Hawaii and installed radio equipment there that could intercept telemetry that came from Soviet devices. During Gagarin's flight, the stations were able to receive a TV signal with an image of an astronaut transmitted by an onboard camera. Within an hour, the printouts of individual frames from this broadcast were in the hands of government officials,and President John F. Kennedy congratulated the Soviet people on their outstanding achievement.
Soviet military specialists working at the Scientific and Measuring Station No. 10 (NIP-10), located in the Shkolnoye village near Simferopol, intercepted data coming from the Apollo spacecraft throughout the entire flight to the Moon and back.
Soviet intelligence did the same. At the station NIP-10, located in the village of Shkolnoe (Simferopol, Crimea), a set of equipment was assembled that allows intercepting all information from the Apollo, including live TV broadcasts from the Moon. The head of the interception project, Aleksey Mikhailovich Gorin, gave the author of this article an exclusive interview, in which, in particular, he said: “For the guidance and control of a very narrow beam, a standard drive system in azimuth and elevation was used. Based on the information about the location (Cape Canaveral) and the launch time, the flight trajectory of the spacecraft was calculated in all areas. And it should be noted that during about three days of the flight, only sometimes there was a deviation of the beam pointing from the calculated trajectory, which was easily corrected manually. We started with Apollo 10,who made a test flight around the moon without landing. This was followed by flights with the landing of "Apollo" from the 11th to the 15th … They took rather clear images of a spacecraft on the Moon, the exit of both astronauts from it and travel on the surface of the Moon. Video from the Moon, speech and telemetry were recorded on appropriate tape recorders and transmitted to Moscow for processing and translation."
In addition to intercepting data, Soviet intelligence also collected any information on the Saturn-Apollo program, since it could be used for the USSR's own lunar plans. For example, the scouts followed the missile launches from the Atlantic Ocean. Moreover, when preparations began for the joint flight of the Soyuz-19 and Apollo CSM-111 spacecraft (ASTP mission), which took place in July 1975, Soviet specialists were admitted to the official information on the ship and the rocket. And, as you know, they did not express any claims to the American side.
The Americans themselves had complaints. In 1970, that is, even before the end of the lunar program, a brochure was published by a certain James Kraeney "Did a man land on the moon?" (Did man land on the Moon?). The public ignored the brochure, although it was perhaps the first time the main thesis of the "conspiracy theory" was formulated: an expedition to the nearest celestial body is technically impossible.
Technical writer Bill Kaysing can rightfully be called the founder of the theory of the "lunar conspiracy"
The topic began to gain popularity a little later, after the release of Bill Kaysing's self-published book We Never Went to the Moon (1976), which lays out the now “traditional” arguments for conspiracy theory. For example, the author seriously argued that all the deaths of participants in the Saturn-Apollo program are associated with the elimination of unwanted bystanders. I must say that Kaysing is the only one of the authors of books on this topic who was directly related to the space program: from 1956 to 1963 he worked as a technical writer at the Rocketdyne company, which was engaged in the design of the super-powerful F-1 engine for the rocket. Saturn-5 ". However, after being fired “of his own free will,” Kaysing became a beggar, grabbed hold of any job and probably did not have warm feelings for his former employers. In the book,which was reprinted in 1981 and 2002, he argued that the Saturn-5 rocket was a "technical fake" and could never send astronauts on an interplanetary flight, therefore, in reality, the Apolloes flew around the Earth, and the TV broadcast was carried out using unmanned devices.
Ralph René made a name for himself by accusing the US government of rigging flights to the moon and organizing the September 11, 2001 attacks
Bill Kaysing's creation was also ignored at first. Fame was brought to him by the American conspiracy theorist Ralph Rene, who posed as a scientist, physicist, inventor, engineer and scientific journalist, but in fact did not graduate from any higher educational institution. Like his predecessors, Rene published the book "How NASA showed America the Moon" (NASA Mooned America !, 1992) at his own expense, but at the same time he could already refer to other people's "research", that is, he looked not like a lonely psycho, but like a skeptic in search for truth. Probably, the book, the lion's share of which is devoted to the analysis of certain photographs taken by astronauts, would also have gone unnoticed if the era of television shows had not come, when it became fashionable to invite all kinds of freaks and outcasts to the studio. Ralph Rene managed to make the most of the sudden public interest,fortunately, he had a well-hung tongue and did not hesitate to make absurd accusations (for example, he claimed that NASA had deliberately damaged his computer and destroyed important files). His book was reprinted many times, and each time increasing in volume.
Among the documentaries devoted to the theory of the "lunar conspiracy", there are outright hoaxes: for example, the pseudo-documentary French film "The Dark Side of the Moon" (Opération lune, 2002)
The topic itself also begged for a film adaptation, and soon there were films with a claim to documentary: "Was it just a paper moon?" (Was It Only a Paper Moon ?, 1997), "What Happened on the Moon?" (What Happened on the Moon ?, 2000), "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon" (2001), "Astronauts Gone Wild: Investigation Into the Authenticity of the Moon Landings, 2004) and the like. By the way, the author of the last two films, filmmaker Bart Seabrell, twice pestered Buzz Aldrin with aggressive demands to confess to deception and was eventually hit in the face by an elderly astronaut. A video recording of this incident can be found on YouTube. The police, by the way, refused to open a case against Aldrin. Apparently, she thought that the video was faked.
In the 1970s, NASA tried to collaborate with the authors of the lunar conspiracy theory and even issued a press release, which analyzed the claims of Bill Kaysing. However, it soon became clear that they did not want a dialogue, but they were happy to use any mention of their fabrications for self-promotion: for example, Kaysing was suing astronaut Jim Lovell in 1996 for calling him a "fool" in an interview.
However, how else to name the people who believed in the credibility of the film "The Dark Side of the Moon" (Opération lune, 2002), where the famous director Stanley Kubrick was directly accused of filming all the astronauts on the moon in the Hollywood pavilion? Even in the film itself, there are indications that it is a fictional fiction in the mocumentari genre, but this did not prevent the conspiracy theorists from accepting the version with a bang and quoting it even after the creators of the hoax openly confessed to hooliganism. By the way, another "proof" of the same degree of reliability has recently appeared: this time an interview with a man similar to Stanley Kubrick surfaced, where he allegedly took responsibility for falsifying the materials of lunar missions. The new fake was quickly exposed - it was made too clumsy.
Believers and non-believers
The supporters of the theory of the "lunar conspiracy", or, more simply, the "anti-Apolloists" are very fond of accusing their opponents of illiteracy, ignorance, or even blind faith. A strange move, given that it is the "anti-Apollo people" who believe in a theory that is not supported by any significant evidence. The golden rule applies in science and jurisprudence: an extraordinary statement requires extraordinary proof. An attempt to accuse space agencies and the world scientific community of falsifying materials that are of great importance to our understanding of the universe must be accompanied by something more weighty than a couple of self-published books published by an offended writer and a narcissistic pseudo-scientist.
All hours of film footage of the Apollo lunar expeditions have long been digitized and are available for study
All hours of film footage of the Apollo lunar expeditions have long been digitized and are available for study
If we imagine for a minute that a secret parallel space program existed in the United States using unmanned vehicles, then we need to explain where all the participants in this program have gone: the designers of the “parallel” technology, its testers and operators, as well as the filmmakers who prepared kilometers of films of lunar missions. We are talking about thousands (or even tens of thousands) of people who needed to be involved in the "lunar conspiracy." Where are they and where are their confessions? Let's say they all, including foreigners, swore to remain silent. But there should be piles of documents, contracts-orders with contractors, the corresponding structures and landfills. However, apart from nagging some public NASA materials, which are indeed often retouched or presented in a deliberately simplified interpretation, there is nothing. Nothing at all.
However, the "anti-Apollo people" never think about such "trifles" and persistently (often in an aggressive form) demand more and more evidence from the opposite side. The paradox is that if they, asking "tricky" questions, themselves tried to find answers to them, it would not be difficult. Let's consider the most typical claims.
During the preparation and implementation of the joint flight of the Soyuz and Apollo spacecraft, Soviet specialists were admitted to the official information of the American space program
For example, anti-Apollo people ask: why was the Saturn-Apollo program interrupted, and its technologies were lost and cannot be used today? The answer is obvious to anyone with even a general idea of what happened in the early 1970s. It was then that one of the most powerful political and economic crises in the history of the United States occurred: the dollar lost its gold content and was devalued twice; the protracted war in Vietnam drained resources; the youth were engulfed in the anti-war movement; Richard Nixon is on the verge of impeachment in connection with the Watergate scandal. At the same time, the total costs of the Saturn-Apollo program amounted to $ 24 billion (in terms of current prices, we can speak of $ 100 billion), and each new launch cost $ 300 million (1.3 billion in modern prices) - of course,that further funding has become prohibitive for the dwindling US budget. The Soviet Union experienced something similar in the late 1980s, which led to the inglorious closure of the Energia-Buran program, the technologies of which have also been largely lost.
In 2013, an expedition led by Jeff Bezos, founder of the Internet company Amazon, lifted from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean fragments of one of the F-1 engines of the Saturn 5 rocket that brought Apollo 11 into orbit
Nevertheless, despite the problems, the Americans tried to squeeze a little more out of the lunar program: the Saturn-5 rocket launched the Skylab heavy orbital station (three expeditions visited it in 1973-1974), a joint Soviet-American flight took place. Soyuz-Apollo (ASTP). In addition, the Space Shuttle program, which replaced the Apollo, used the Saturn launch facilities, and some technological solutions obtained during their operation are used today in the design of the promising American SLS launch vehicle.
Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility Moonstone Work Crate
Another popular question: where did the lunar soil, brought by astronauts, go? Why isn't it being studied? Answer: it has not gone anywhere, but is stored where it was planned - in the two-story building Lunar Sample Laboratory Facility, which was built in Houston (Texas). Applications for the study of the soil should also be applied there, but only organizations that have the necessary equipment can receive them. Every year, a special commission reviews applications and satisfies from forty to fifty of them; on average, up to 400 samples are sent. In addition, 98 samples with a total weight of 12.46 kg are exhibited in museums around the world, and dozens of scientific publications were published on each of them.
Images of the landing sites of the Apollo 11, Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 spacecraft taken by the main optical camera of the LRO: the lunar modules, scientific equipment and the "paths" left by the astronauts are clearly visible
Another question in the same vein: why is there no independent evidence of a visit to the moon? Answer: they are. If we discard the Soviet evidence, which is still far from completeness, and the excellent space photographs of the lunar landing sites, which were made by the American LRO apparatus and which the "anti-Apollo people" also consider "fake", then the materials provided by the Indians (Chandrayaan-1), the Japanese (the Kaguya apparatus) and the Chinese (the Chang'e-2 apparatus): all three agencies have officially confirmed that they have found the tracks left by the Apollo ships.
Anton Pervushin, Science fiction writer, popularizer of science, author of many popular science books