Moon Landing Conspiracy, will the LRO Accomplish anything?

I was going to add this to the An End To The Moon Conspiracy! thread. But figured it'd probably just get lost.

I'm curious as to peoples opinions on this, in 2008 NASA will be launching the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Able to capture images of the moons surface down to 0.5m resolution. By far the highest resolution images taken of the moon (apart from the images taken on the actual lunar missions, obviously). Also more than enough to positively identify the relics of the original Apollo landings. (Incidentally, heres Hubble's effort at imaging the Lunar landers).

Now, while the primary mission of the LRO is not going to be imaging the landing sites, you can be sure that it will be imaging them very early on in its mission. Such images are of huge PR value and will bring a lot of attention to NASA and the idea of future missions to the Moon.

My question is this: Does anyone actually think that images from the LRO mission will do anything to pacify the conspiracy theorists? Or what can be done to prove the accuracy of the images? I imagine the raw-image data will probably be made public in the same way as the imagery from the Mars Rovers is, but can anything else be done to help?


More info on LRO:
Official Home
Wikipedia

Personally I cant see anything pacifying the "Apollo 11 didnt happen" people, nor the "Mining settlements on the moon" people"
Those people need to believe there is a conspiracy to hide things and their life is not fulfilled unless they doubt the truth.
If you actually took them there and showed them the lander base units they would come up with some excuse or another and if you went to the craters where they tell you there are cranes and mining gear they would just say it had been moved.

I'll have to echo Chorlton somewhat. Those who deny it happened, even when presented with a lot of evidence already, will easily deny these images as nothing more than edited images.

I'm really looking forward to the LRO mission. I'm also looking forward to Japan's Kaguya Lunar probe. And China's Chang'e 1 and India's Chandrayaan-1 Lunar Probe. Which are all scheduled to launch some time before the LRO.

I cant wait too see these images as well. And yes if they do show any of the previous missions vehicles. Well then the conspiracy moon landings can pretty much be laid too rest.
Seems soon we will have multiple high res resourses. Good Times and should clear up many things involving the moon.


[edit on 23-7-2007 by VType]

without getting into the whole did we didn't we go thing i think they will capture some sort of image of the old landing sites with my belief that we did go but not being told everything..

Just think if they DID show us photo's of the landing sites the conspiacy would be over which means less interest in space travel,how many people get into space exploration just out of interest towards the moon landing??

my guess is loads.

If they DON'T show any pictures it keeps people imagination going with the did they or not theory,NASA would be wise to NOT to show us anything

Just as an update the JAXA launch was postponed..

link

The launch was originally scheduled for August 16, 2007 (Japan Standard Time, JST.) The new launch date will be announced as soon as it is determined.

I didnt realize the launch was so soon, or was.
I also wonder how long it will take to fix the problem that postponed it?

[edit on 23-7-2007 by earth2]

I'm pretty much with Chorlton on this; you'll get no "closure" on the Apollo conspiracy ever. I'm sure someone will argue the LEMs and rovers would have been planted in the meantime by secret DoD craft, and we'll have new round.

As an aside, though, I just downloaded the Hubble survey photos of the Apollo 17 landing site and must say they are very disappointing in terms of resolution. How can a telescope that produces such spectacular images of distant galaxies at such fine resolution not be able to get better photos of something in our backyard?

In response to your question, gottago, Hubble can't provide high-resolution images of the Apollo landing sites because it wasn't built to do so.

It can help if you think of telescopes like eyeglasses - it's not a one-to-one comparison, but it is illustrative for the purposes of this example. Some glasses (which would be like the Hubble, for the purposes of this example) help nearsighted people to resolve far-away images; others help farsighted people resolve nearby images. These glasses are like the Keyhole series of optical surveillance satellites used by the United States, which produce phenomenal images of the Earth's surface but are worth bollocks for deep-space images like those made by Hubble.

The cameras on the LRO have far more in common with the Keyhole satellites than they do the Hubble. And I'll join in with the rest of the group and agree that any pics returned by the LRO will do essentially nothing to make the Moon Landing Conspiracy believers see reason.

Originally posted by Chorlton
Personally I cant see anything pacifying the "Apollo 11 didnt happen" people, nor the "Mining settlements on the moon" people"
Those people need to believe there is a conspiracy to hide things and their life is not fulfilled unless they doubt the truth.

LOL, sounds like you're the one with the problem. Questioning anything makes you frustrated and, apparently, irritated enough that you have to lump all those with Moon landing questions into one pile to decrease your anxiety.

You seem to be unable to discern that the majority of those with ML questions have done a lot of reading and research and, in fact, have, themselves, debunked some of the theories, such as the Stone Mountain mix up, the Bart Sibrel Earth porthole experiment and the flag waving question.

I hope you get some relief from your symptoms and can start to apply reason and observation again, however, I can see it's very important for you to believe everything that the government tells you.

Good luck, and try not to question things too much; maybe you'll feel better that way.

Originally posted by PhloydPhan
And I'll join in with the rest of the group and agree that any pics returned by the LRO will do essentially nothing to make the Moon Landing Conspiracy believers see reason.

First, it depends on what the LRO shows. Remember they threw out a lot of garbage, and debris, blasted some kind of black dust ring or crater that the Landing Believers (LB) think can be seen from Clementine pics.

If the LRO shows some kind of indistinct blob, the LBs will say that proves there was an Apollo landing, since they get very anxious when that stuff is even questioned. Of course the blob could just be a rock, but hey, if it's in the right place it will suffice.

Do you know what the resolution of the LRO camera is? I'd be mildly surprised if NASA bothers to image these landing spots with sufficient quality to make out anything.

However if it is a clear picture and they do show some specifics, then it would constitute sufficient evidence to give some verification (though it wouldn't be independent verification).

Regardless, I'll stand by my earlier statement that we, as humans, are essentially stuck in LEO quarantine by the problems of deep space travel. We'll have to be satisfied by exploration of the solar system using probes.

The LRO homepage Kano was goodly enough to provide in his original post notes that the LRO Camera will be able to resolve images of approximately 1 meter. The Apollo LM descent stages remaining on the moon will be large enough to be resolved with some degree of clarity.

Originally posted by Badge01

Originally posted by Chorlton
Personally I cant see anything pacifying the "Apollo 11 didnt happen" people, nor the "Mining settlements on the moon" people"
Those people need to believe there is a conspiracy to hide things and their life is not fulfilled unless they doubt the truth.

LOL, sounds like you're the one with the problem. Questioning anything makes you frustrated and, apparently, irritated enough that you have to lump all those with Moon landing questions into one pile to decrease your anxiety.
You seem to be unable to discern that the majority of those with ML questions have done a lot of reading and research and, in fact, have, themselves, debunked some of the theories, such as the Stone Mountain mix up, the Bart Sibrel Earth porthole experiment and the flag waving question.
I hope you get some relief from your symptoms and can start to apply reason and observation again, however, I can see it's very important for you to believe everything that the government tells you.
Good luck, and try not to question things too much; maybe you'll feel better that way.

There there ! You continue believing the conspiracy if your life is so lacking in anything that you have to invent reasons to believe.
There is far far too much evidence proving that Apollo 11 and those following missions did land on the moon.
I personally know someone who was watching Armstrong step onto the moon from a radio relay station in Australia.

But, like I said I cant see anything pacifying the 'deny Apollo 11 and the moon mining maniacs' and yes I do lump them all together along side the 9/11 conspiracy people, sad, the lot of you.

Have faith and I hope you get some relief from your symptoms and can start to apply logic, reason and observation again, however, I can see it's very important for you to disbelieve everything that the US government tells you.

Originally posted by PhloydPhan
The LRO homepage Kano was goodly enough to provide in his original post notes that the LRO Camera will be able to resolve images of approximately 1 meter. The Apollo LM descent stages remaining on the moon will be large enough to be resolved with some degree of clarity.

OH HELL dont tell them that! It will send the old ladies into panic and give them all an attack of the vapours.
I can see them all U2Uing each other asking how they are going to explain the landing sites away.

Originally posted by Chorlton
OH HELL dont tell them that! It will send the old ladies into panic and give them all an attack of the vapours.

I can see them all U2Uing each other asking how they are going to explain the landing sites away.

I fail to see how launching an ad hominem attack, calling people 'old ladies', and 'sad' advances any investigation.

It's important in any topic on ATS to avoid 'name calling' and to try to stick to the topic and post useful information, pro or con.

Originally posted by PhloydPhan
The LRO homepage Kano was goodly enough to provide in his original post notes that the LRO Camera will be able to resolve images of approximately 1 meter. The Apollo LM descent stages remaining on the moon will be large enough to be resolved with some degree of clarity.

During at least part of the mission, they should be able to get 0.5 meters, although scientists don't like to publically advertise imager performance that can't be sure about. That should be sufficient. Of course, the Hoax Believers will cry foul, because after all these years, NASA is still Conspiring To Deceive Them. They don't give a damn about evidence.

Originally posted by Badge01

Originally posted by Chorlton
OH HELL dont tell them that! It will send the old ladies into panic and give them all an attack of the vapours.

I can see them all U2Uing each other asking how they are going to explain the landing sites away.

I fail to see how launching an ad hominem attack, calling people 'old ladies', and 'sad' advances any investigation.

It's important in any topic on ATS to avoid 'name calling' and to try to stick to the topic and post useful information, pro or con.

Your first post above was nothing but an ad hominem attack at me, I fail to see how that advanced any investigation but you chose to do it.

Take your own advice and not the 'do as I say not do as I do approach'
However to save any moremud hurling I will simply click my ignore button and Voila you are gone
Pax Vobiscum

[edit on 24/7/07 by Chorlton]

Its not that the moon is too close at all, its simply that we underestimate just how small the Landers would be, remember the entire landers are less than 10m across and the Lunar Surface is more than 375,000km away from Earth (and the Hubble in Low Earth Orbit. A good explanations of this can be found in this section of Wikipedia's Moon Hoax Page. Its fairly simple math to check up on too if you want to make sure wikipedia has it right.

There have been other images taken of the landing site from much closer than Hubble, NASA's Clementine and the ESA's SMART-1 orbiters have had a go at it. As well as the images taken by the Lunar missions themselves while they were above their Landing sites.

Clementine had the most successful image as it was using filters to allow it to identify recently* disturbed areas on the lunar surface. The resolution is still far less than needed to see the landers direct, but it did spot the disturbed area around the Apollo 15 landing site.

Check out this page for some pictures taken by the Apollo 15 crew to put the Clementine image in perspective.

SMART-1's image of the Apollo 11 landing site is less revealing (info), but it was more of a test-bed project than a concerted lunar explorer. SMART-1 was the probe that kamikaze'd into the moon to end its mission.


Space.com's slightly over-enthusiastic article on the Clementine images.

*Relatively speaking, of course.

I don't think any amount of proof will dissuade certain people from believing that the moon landing was faked.

They need to believe no matter what so they feel special and different. So they can believe they know something important that the rest are not privy to.

I believe in facts as everyone should.

There is ZERO evidence that the moonlanding was faked but people still believe it was. Partially because they don't understand science and partially because an authority figure of some sort with the same lack of understanding, has ingrained this misinformation into them.

It's sad really that for some it's more important to believe in a conspiracy then KNOW the facts.

Originally posted by jfj123
I don't think any amount of proof will dissuade certain people from believing that the moon landing was faked.

This may be true of a few people on this board, but not true of all who are investigating or pondering some puzzling aspects of the missions.

They need to believe no matter what so they feel special and different. So they can believe they know something important that the rest are not privy to.

This statement has no basis. It's probably just a reflection of your internal feelings about being a 'conspiracy' fan. Unless you can cite studies showing this to be true, why bother? There are MANY reasons why people are interested in studying conspiracies, or potential conspiracies.

I believe in facts as everyone should.

I'm sure if you examine your life you'll discover that there are quite a few areas in which you operate under a number of fantasies, or non-fact-based ideologies. We all do. Religion is one; believing that life should be 'fair' is probably another.

There is ZERO evidence that the moonlanding was faked but people still believe it was. Partially because they don't understand science and partially because an authority figure of some sort with the same lack of understanding, has ingrained this misinformation into them.

I would agree these is no -evidence-. There are some things which seem strange, one of them in the news right now, and that's NASA's culture of denial and lack of good paths of communication.

We have the Administrators at NASA telling us things are better now than back then. But that begs the question how bad were things to eclipse 'drunken Astronauts' and 'Astronaut stalkers'?

It's sad really that for some it's more important to believe in a conspiracy then KNOW the facts.

Here's an example of a fantasy under which you are operating. Without any evidence you are exclaiming knowledge of others that you simply do not possess.

It may have escaped you, but one reason to study conspiracies is to improve one's reasoning power and ability to look deeply into things and tease out connections.

It may also have escaped you that some people will debate one or the other side of an issue when they may not have made up their minds. It's the sign of a good debater that they can argue either side.

Maybe it would be helpful if you gave some actual facts rather than just condemning people or making blanket statements or showing disdain. Anyone can do that, so what's your point?

Originally posted by Kano
Clementine had the most successful image as it was using filters to allow it to identify recently* disturbed areas on the lunar surface. The resolution is still far less than needed to see the landers direct, but it did spot the disturbed area around the Apollo 15 landing site.

Excuse me but this conclusion is premature and probably completely mistaken.

The dark marks imaged by Clementine (through various filters, I might add) are MUCH bigger than any disturbance that may have been made by Apollo 15. They are on the order of more than a kilometer in diameter, and do not depict a disturbance due to Apollo 15 rockets which would be on the order of a few meters or tens of meters.

Though they may be in the approximate location of Apollo 15 or other Apollo sites, there's no evidence that they were made by the lander, either on putting down or taking off.

In addition, even the one scientist that found them was not sure what made the marks, and thought they might also have been meteorite impacts.