Apollo- What would they have done if it failed?

Let me start this by saying I want this to be a friendly discussion, no arguing or bickering please. I'm not of the camp who says the moon landings were faked, I'm actually a big fan of space exploration and the Apollo missions. I've landed the LEM quite a few times in Microsoft Space Simulator lol. Ok, on to the thread.


I was reading up on the Apollo missions and I started thinking. The Russians never made it to the moon, most probably due to inferior equipment. Space flight was extremely dangerous at the time and often a little hit or miss. Kennedy's mission to the moon was an important goal to America at the time and winning the Space Race was almost tantamount to winning the Cold War.

We've all seen the video, the live feed from the moon. Neil Armstrong hopping out of the LEM and speaking his immortal words. I was watching it again when I started thinkng, what if something went wrong?

We all know the story of Apollo 13 and how it almost became an utter disaster, but they were lucky enough to still be in the module and not on the surface of the moon. There is an endless number of things that could've gone wrong, the LEM could've crashed while landing, someone could rip a space suit on the surface, there could've been an explosion on the rover. The list goes on.

My question is: What would the government have done if the LEM begins to take off from the Moon then crashes back down, showing the astronauts crawling out and gasping for breath? It would surely be a blow to America, a very costly one.

I find it very hard to believe that the US government had no contingency plans what so ever. I'm positive that they thought through this possibility. It was the 60s, they would never show a disaster of that magnitude on televisions watched by families through out the country.

My other questions are: Were there any plans, such as keeping a long enough delay between signals that they could switch to a studio if need be? Or did they film the whole thing before hand, just in case something happened? Were there any plans I don't know about? What would've happened if there was a disaster?


I'm not really trying to start a conspiracy so much as I want to hear opinions on something I've been pondering for a little while.

What do you think the Government's or NASA's plans were in the event of a total disaster which would result in the death of the crew members and failure of the Apollo mission resulting in the US losing the Space Race?

[edit on 27-6-2007 by Shadowflux]

Moon landings were faked, the Soviets were in front with the technology and they could not get to the moon, it was one upmanship, You have to understand the political climate at the time.

I dare say there may be some poor sods remains on the moon but that would never have been shown. Do you really think the US Goverment would transmit live feed if it went pear shaped. It was simply plan a and b, a being we will try to get there but plan b will be what we filmed on training and that my friend is what we all saw.

There were literally thousands of things that could of gone wrong but first time out no problems, come on be realistic, mans techno journey is a tortured one with many failures.

It was like a well rehearsed film and for those who say well people would know well how would they. How do you know where I am now, you beleive what you are told to believe.

The US did lose the space race, ask why is it that even today the US is using Soviet designed engines and techno if they were so far behind.

Look at it this way it can take 10/15 years to go from design to in service for a jet or a warship. Do you really believe that from gaining basic rocket techno at the end of ww2 that within 24 years we would have men walking on the moon, no I dont think so. But I would of liked it to be true because mans future can only succeed by getting off this planet.

For me the alleged moon landings were the greatest lie of all time and has only been eclisped by 9/11 in present times

I think it's too easy to just flat out say that we never went to the moon. I personally believe we have and I've never seen any convincing evidence to the contrary. I think you underestimate the abilities of our scientists and various personnel, i feel they were fully capable to do what they did. If you understand the intricacies of space flight you'll realize that it doesn't have to be high tech or complicated just EXTREMELY precise.

NASA likes to use Russian tech now because it's already there, why make another space station just to one up the Russians? Plus, NASA's funding has been trickling away since the end of the Apollo missions and can no longer afford to make 15 rockets before one works.

Anyway, this discussion is meant to revolve around the official story, us going to the moon and winning the space race and what type of measures were taken to ensure that the general populace would not be watching the death of Aldrin and Armstrong on the moon.

Irrespective of what scientists may or may not have achieved one cannot get away from the facts, radiation belts, extreme temps on the moon, high doses of radiation on the moon, a totally alien environment with no knowledge of it whatsoever.

Then we have perfect photography, no visable stars, everything working perfectly, no noise or dust when the lunar module takes off, the list is endless. At the end of the day we are given spurious footage of an event that could have been filmed anywhere and we are all asked to believe it.

Ask yourself why is the space station in close earth orbit, if the scientists are so good why are we not on the moon now, its not about money, or political will its about an environment so hostile to human life that we would be steralised in seconds if we were exposed to it.

Again the US did not win the race because they have not proved beyond all reasonable doubt that they achieved it. the facts consist of, poor video footage, still footage and radio transmissions and the alleged stories from the astronauts. All this so called evidence is still a matter of hot debate.

I'm sure Aldrin and co were in near earth orbit to give credabilty to the radio transmmisions and the rest was a film set, somewhere like area 51
how difficult is it to hoax something that people have never seen before or are able to prove.

I will pose you a question, satelite techno is so good now you could take a picture of a flea on a cat. Well point one of them at the moon and let it map in close detail all the alleged moon landing sites, that would go some way to prove they achieved it. But as that has not happened one can only ask why not.

We were on the moon and the soviets made it to the moon, not sure were you get that they were not.

There is in fact a laser reflector on the moon that we placed there by hand.

There was technical problems getting there.

How about buring up on the launch pad or coming back on low power and oxygen having to use an aborted LEM vehicle as a life raft.

We went there and discovered its a big dusty expensive dirt rock to travel to.

What more do you want, we became focused on building bigger badder faster weapons then pump the money needed into exploring an outpost of some type on the moon, they should have built the space station on the moon. But I guess you need to build a way point first to escape earth's gravity, refuel etc before multiple trips to the moons surface become economical.

There is also this threshold that carrying extra solid rocket fuel up into space take more and more lift. So we have to develop a close orbit engine using atomic or electrical engine that can produce sufficient thrust to transport a payload to the moon with minimal cost and develop a decent system to lower the payload to the moons surface without the need for a carraige vehicle to land and return to lunar orbit.

ultimately we need to devise a way to modulate gravity with low input power. To make long term, teraforming or even construction on other solar bodies even feasible.

I'm surprised you haven't already seen Nixon's contingency plans if the mission were to breakdown.

It was on several of the Moon Landing videos.

Why not review the material?

In fact simply Googling "nixon moon landing contingency" calls up several links.

Robert man did not have to land on the moon to plant devices on it, how many rovers on mars? Please provide irrefutable proof that man landed on the moon.

Originally posted by Shadowflux

I was reading up on the Apollo missions and I started thinking. The Russians never made it to the moon, most probably due to inferior equipment.

Untrue. The Zond series was succesful before Lunar Orbiter. Luna 15 was in orbit around the moon 3 days before Apollo 11 and co-orbited the moon with Apollo 11 and since I am a dedicated CT I think that Luna 15 had some operational connection with Apollo 11. Luna 17 landed on the moon in August of 1970 with the Lunakod rover. Lunakod roamed around the moon and took pictures for 11 months. Luna 15, which allegedly had a lunar rover aboard allegedly crashed on July 21, 1969. Probably to hide the evidence. If, indeed it crashed. If indeed it went. Now, do you really think all this was going on and there wasn't any high level coordination between us and the Russians? If, that is, it was all going on at all?

Originally posted by magicmushroom
Robert man did not have to land on the moon to plant devices on it, how many rovers on mars? Please provide irrefutable proof that man landed on the moon.

We have video (thats not good enough) we have real instruments that were left there (thats not good enough) we have real tangible space junk aka lunar rover we left there (thats not good enough) we planted a flag (thats not good enough) we brought back lunar rocks and dust (thats not good enough).

Really unless you were in the lander and put your own two feet in the dirt you are going to say the above is not crediable enough to prove we actually went there...

Like having a debate with a tree.

Originally posted by johnlear
Now, do you really think all this was going on and there wasn't any high level coordination between us and the Russians? If, that is, it was all going on at all?

John,

Let me first say that I am honored by your attention to my humble post and want to thank you for the great info. I suppose I still have much studying to do. I had always found it strange that much of the Russian endeavors are rarely talked about here in the states.

Have you ever read "Rocketship Galileo" by Robert A. Heinlein?

It's a story of American astronauts who land on the moon and find out they're not a lone. As a child I was disappointed by the fact that the "other beings" on the moon turned out to be Russians but in hindsight it was a good book by one of my favorite authors.

To answer your question, I do believe there was some cooperation between the US and Russia during the Space Race. I mean, it wasn't as if the two countries were incommunicado since they had direct phone lines to each other. The Russians were probably able to monitor everything we were doing and vice versa.

More importantly, if the existence of ETI/EBE was a well known fact between the two countries it would make it even more probable that there would've been some kind of cooperation.

Plus, the Cold War was so full of lies and propaganda it's hard to believe anything we're told about that time.

I suppose I'm off to search the net and study some more. Would you happen to be privy to knowledge of the Russian moon missions I won't find on Google?

Thanks again John!


Edit to add: Ok, so no Soviet ever walked on the moon, according to history. I checked here for the whole time line of Soviet Manned Lunar missions and didn't find any evidence that they actually walked on the moon. Turns out they had crappy rockets. The time line is here: Russian Space Web

The weird thing is, I swear I once saw a stamp depicting a cosmonaut on the moon, full suit and all, holding the soviet flag. It had a bunch of Cyrillic writting I couldn't decipher. I saw it on the back of a matchbook, I wish I had scanned it when I saw it. Perhaps just CW era propaganda?

[edit on 28-6-2007 by Shadowflux]

Magic,

Would you please stick to the thread topic?

Robertfenix,

Just do like I do, ignore those people.

Robert as stated before, all your so called evidence is still being hotly contested to this day, why, if the proofs you believe are so cast iron why the debate to the contrary. Perhaps you could explain how the film was not affected by the radiation or come to that why were the crew not affected by it. Space junk yes there should be some but I have not seen any of it have you.

Again we have been landing vehicles on Mars for years yet no human has set foot on that planet. All the so called proofs that we walked on the moon looks like a bad B movie. Cameras with no viewfinders mounted on the chest yet perfect pictures every time how convenient and taken by amatuers, you and others want to believe all the evidence so much yet when the anomalies are pointed out your blinkers come on.

Fluttering flags, perfect highlighted shots taken in silhouette, shadows at different angles, no stars, as I said before the list is endless. Maybe the problem for some is that they cannot distinguise between Holywood and reality.