Is it even possible to go to the Moon?

There has been a sudden uptick in posts claiming that the Apollo missions never landed on the Moon. The debate is mostly between two camps.

The Historicists accept the historical evidence: archived documents, photographs, eye-witness testimony, physical artifacts and so forth. This camp finds them all to be in general agreement both in terms of internal consistency and with the known physical properties of the universe. In their analysis, the generally accepted account of the events of the past half century occurred, more or less, as described.

The Contra-Historicists reject one or more aspect of this evidence, and claim that the historical account is false. This camp is itself divided into three different groups. The first is composed of a very vocal, impassioned group of people who completely reject the historical record because they have a global belief that everything the United States government, and NASA in particular, says is a lie. They consider this to be self evident. The second group rejects the historical record because they believe that spaceflight is so dangerous as to render a flight to the Moon impossible. They are sometimes able to marshal evidence that proves their contention that spaceflight is extremely dangerous and difficult, but cannot use this to prove that it is therefore completely impossible. The third group rejects the historical record because they believe that space travel is accomplished using secret technology, or that the record has been falsified in order to conceal this technology. They will examine the record looking for what they consider to be censorship, but are unable to provide any positive evidence for the existence of this secret technology.

What I am proposing to do in this thread is open up a debate, not upon the historical record, but upon the fundamental disagreement between the various sides. Is it even possible to send human beings to the Moon and return them safely to the Earth? Let us imagine that project Apollo never happened, and strike all that evidence from the record. Using information gathered from Earth based observations and experiments, data gathered by space probes of all nations and the general knowledge of science and current technological progress, is there any reason why it would be impossible to send people to the Moon?

Allow me to begin. The logistics of sending human beings to the Moon is straightforward. All that is required is an off the shelf spacecraft; a Soyuz would do nicely. This must be given a high enough impulse to achieve an elliptical orbit with a perigee of, say, 300 kilometers and an apogee of 400,000 kilometers. This can be provided by any number of extant upper stages. The passage through the Electromagnetic Radiation Belts can be minimized by inclining the the flight path to an angle of 30 degrees relative to the Earth's equator and passing through them as quickly as possible. Once outside the ERBs, the ambient radiation will be greater than in low Earth orbit, but studies show that the cumulative effects are negligible during the course of a few weeks. Our current solar observatory infrastructure guarantees that the astronauts would have ample warning to re-orient their craft in the event of a dangerous solar event. Although there are obviously risks involved, such a mission could easily be undertaken with existing technology. All that is required is money.

Now... does anyone care to disagree?

I am still sitting on the fence with whether they went or not.

I have seen videos that the whole excursion was staged, then we see pictures of the moon and masked artifacts.

I have a feeling that the time frame was staged so as not to be outrun, but that perhaps there was a landing at a later time than broadcasted on television/radio.

The whole thing is plausible at best but IMO still remains the better part of a Jules Vern story. .

They did have a motive to fake it, that being the need to beat the Russians. Personally though, I don't think they faked it.

reply to post by Glargod

The whole thing is plausible at best but IMO still remains the better part of a Jules Vern story. .

Plausible works. The point to this thread is not whether or not "NASA faked the Moon landings." The question is: is sending people to the Moon even possible? I say it is.

One reply in and already a failure to respond to the OP's question.

You will see this throughout the thread. There is no reason travel to the moon is impossible, so deniers will generally not answer the question and instead reply with personal reasons why they think the landing was faked.

Also cue "LOLOL travel to moon is impossibel as the van aldrin's belts will fry the astronauts to pieces in secondz research youtube you sheep baaa"

Originally posted by humphreysjim
One reply in and already a failure to respond to the OP's question.

You will see this throughout the thread. There is no reason travel to the moon is impossible, so deniers will generally not answer the question and instead reply with personal reasons why they think the landing was faked.

As to personal reasons why it isn't fake?!

While I agree with your statement I do no agree with your premise.

Originally posted by ownbestenemy

Originally posted by humphreysjim
One reply in and already a failure to respond to the OP's question.

You will see this throughout the thread. There is no reason travel to the moon is impossible, so deniers will generally not answer the question and instead reply with personal reasons why they think the landing was faked.

As to personal reasons why it isn't fake?!

While I agree with your statement I do no agree with your premise.

DId you misread what I wrote?

I said they will come up with their personal reasons why the landing was faked.

The biggest question would be "can we survive the radiation of passing the Van Allen Belt and beyond?" The second biggest question would then be "How much radiation do we need to protect our crafts and suits from?"
so, do you believe the "story" of how much radiation there would be?
Then you have the passing of the belt...again on the way back!
Then you've got, can you make the craft light enough, and the suits light enough to withstand said radiation.

reply to post by DJW001

There has been a sudden uptick in posts claiming that the Apollo missions never landed on the Moon. The debate is mostly between two camps.

No. There are Three camps.

The third camp is that they heavily manipulated all the "public" missions.

WHY?

Your question: sending people to the Moon is possible, and even rest on for a long long period.

There's another group who think we have people on the moon now. A military moon base.

Japan, China, India all saw something up there.

stupid question probably but..

dont we have (expensive) top notch equipment for regular joe nowadays which should spot the american flag on the moon? ..or dont we?

edit: im on the fence too....my 2 biggest issues are

a) the astronauts testemonies and especially the WAY they speak about it..
b.) it is against human nature that we do not have people there all the time if it worked once...even if there is "nothing"...

Not only is it totally possible to go to the moon using exisistant technology today, I believe that with vast amounts of money, humanity could have accomplished this goal as early as 1955.

The British Interplanetary Society had a beautiful plan to visit the moon in the late 1930s: www.britain-in-space.co.uk...

Of course, today, the idea of rubber and leather spacesuits sounds hilarious.

reply to post by Pervius

There's another group who think we have people on the moon now. A military moon base.

These are subsumed by the "secret technology" category.

In this day in age I truly believe that is it possible NOW. Regardless of what happened back in the day, which may or may not have been possible. So again my answer is YES.

Originally posted by DJW001
Is it even possible to send human beings to the Moon and return them safely to the Earth? ...
Allow me to begin. The logistics of sending human beings to the Moon is straightforward. All that is required is an off the shelf spacecraft; a Soyuz would do nicely.

You'd have to convince me the Soyuz is capable. It might be able to send a small probe to the moon and back, but not a manned mission like Apollo, right?

You need a lot of fuel for the trans lunar injection, the moon landing, some fuel for the takeoff from the moon and more fuel for the return trip escaping the moon's gravity. I don't know the exact Trans-Lunar-Injection payload capacity of the Soyuz rocket but my guess is it's far smaller than the Saturn V that launched the Apollo missions, which is 45,000 kg. Wiki only lists the payloads to low earth orbit:

Saturn V: 119,000kg en.wikipedia.org...
Soyuz 2: 7,800 kg en.wikipedia.org...

Is there another Soyuz rocket you're thinking of? Because that seems like too small a payload for a manned mission to the moon.

reply to post by Acetradamus

dont we have (expensive) top notch equipment for regular joe nowadays which should spot the american flag on the moon? ..or dont we?

No we do not.

edit: im on the fence too....my 2 biggest issues are

a) the astronauts testemonies and especially the WAY they speak about it..
b.) it is against human nature that we do not have people there all the time if it worked once...even if there is "nothing"...

This is off topic. This thread is not about project Apollo. No evidence from or about Apollo is relevant

reply to post by Arbitrageur

You'd have to convince me the Soyuz is capable. It might be able to send a small probe to the moon and back, but not a manned mission like Apollo, right?

You need a lot of fuel for the trans lunar injection, the moon landing, some fuel for the takeoff from the moon and more fuel for the return trip escaping the moon's gravity.

I'm referring to the Soyuz command and service module, not the booster. As I said, you would require an additional stage for the TLI, something like an Atlas upper stage. I also said nothing about actually landing on the Moon; that would require designing and constructing something new, but it is well within our current capabilities.

reply to post by Arken

No. There are Three camps.

The third camp is that they heavily manipulated all the "public" missions.

WHY?

I mentioned that.

Your question: sending people to the Moon is possible, and even rest on for a long long period.

Thank you for staying on topic. Have a star.

reply to post by theclutch

The biggest question would be "can we survive the radiation of passing the Van Allen Belt and beyond?" The second biggest question would then be "How much radiation do we need to protect our crafts and suits from?"
so, do you believe the "story" of how much radiation there would be?
Then you have the passing of the belt...again on the way back!
Then you've got, can you make the craft light enough, and the suits light enough to withstand said radiation.

Excellent questions. I'll show you my data if you show me yours.

reply to post by DJW001

OK we're on the same page then.

When I toured the NASA facility the tour guide made a point that we don't have the capability to go to the moon anymore.

We could design something, and build it, if we could get the funding, and if it was a priority. But it's not a priority, so we don't.