Young Aussie genius whipping NASA in Moon Hoax Debate!

Originally posted by Tomblvd

Originally posted by Kailassa
I'm curious.

1. Does anyone know why a cement model was made of Mount Hadley?

2. When was this picture first shown?

3. When was it first officially acknowledged that this was a model?

Weedwhacker already gave a link to the article that describes the entire experiment, along with the picture. The year was 1972.

Thanks.
There is a problem though.
It does not state in this paper that a model exactly replicating Mount Hadley was made.

A model was made, and pictured on page 23, but it looks nothing like Mount Hadley. If they went to the trouble of making a model that replicated Mount Hadley, that would be more applicable to the report, and would surely have been used, would it not?

And this does not explain why a model would be inserted into a photograph of the lunar surface, when no such photograph was used in the report.

reply to post by Kailassa

And this does not explain why a model would be inserted into a photograph of the lunar surface, when no such photograph was used in the report

Seems reasonable that it was useful to them, in their study of light and shadows, as comparison to determine an answer to their debate over the layering seen...whether a feature of the "geography" (I prefer "selenology"), or if it was a trick of shadow ans light, at that particular time of day, and angle of photograph. (Since there was no opportunity to take comparison Lunar on-site photos, over a period of several days, to see the changes as the Sun's angle of illumination changed).

The "composite" was used to have a side-by-side comparison...(remember, this in 1972!!! Couldn't put it into a computer like they would do today!)

Still the ins and outs of what the USGS were studying? Not my field, I just read hte report, and it makes sense to me, as I read it.

Guess you could always email and ask them???? Maybe someone who participated is still alive (or at least kept good notes on the study...)

Originally posted by nataylor

Originally posted by Kailassa
I'm curious.
1. Does anyone know why a cement model was made of Mount Hadley?
2. When was this picture first shown?
3. When was it first officially acknowledged that this was a model?

It's a model covered in cement dust. It was made to see if they could some up with an explanation of the apparent "layering" seen on the mountain. It was believed it was an artifact of the lunar lighting, and they set up the model to verify that.

From the report The U.S. Geological Survey, Branch of Astrogeology—A Chronology of Activities from Conception through the End of Project Apollo (1960-1973):

Starting on 1 November 1971, geologist Ed Wolfe (Branch of Surface Planetary Exploration in Flagstaff) wanted to pursue Keith Howard’s earlier idea (see September 1971 above) questioning the “reality’ of the so-called “lunar grid” and perhaps try to prove that it might be an artifact of the unique lunar solar illumination. With significant help from Red Bailey they traced the lineaments on surface photographs taken both from orbit (Apollo 15 Metric Camera) and from the lunar surface near Mt. Hadley by the Apollo 15 crew (Scott and Irwin). They decided to make a model of Mt. Hadley using cement powder (best material they could find at the time with similar photometric properties of the lunar soil). They photographed the model in black and white at different low-lighting angles. They then decided to model Mt. Hadley in 3-D and to photograph that model, eventually using collimated light (like lunar Sunlight).

The resulting “cement” Mt. Hadley created quite a stir (Fig. 91). When the proper “solar illumination angle’ was used, there appeared the almost identical “layers” that were observed and photographed by the crew of Apollo 15. Figure 91 compares the cement Mt. Hadley (inserted into an actual Apollo 15 surface photograph) with the original photograph of Mt. Hadley. Both show remarkably similar “layers” sloping from the upper right to the lower left. This comparison convinced nearly everyone who says that the “layers” were in fact lighting artifacts, perhaps unique to the lunar surface.

The picture was probably first shown in a USGS report by the geologists involved. Since the purpose was to build a model to simulate the observations on the moon, it would have been immediately acknowledged as a model.

That's a fascinating report, thanks Nat. Well worth reading. Did you read about the practical joke Wolfe was involved in? Quite a sense of humour, that guy. - I'd have throttled the bastard.

However this copy, while referring to pictures, doesn't include them.

It does state: "The resulting “cement” Mt. Hadley created quite a stir (Fig. 91)."
However Fig 91 is most likely the picture from page 23 of Wolfes aforementioned paper.

I presume Wolfe, at some stage, did build the Mount Hadley model and set it up in a panorama, but I would have liked to see the record of that being done.
He may have even done it as another practical joke.

reply to post by weedwhacker

Thank you for your unexpectedly civil answer.

I expect you are right on this one.
Wolfe was very involved in not only analysing the environment, but also in setting up environments for the astronauts to practise in.

He'd be an interesting guy to talk to.

reply to post by Kailassa

Did you read about the practical joke Wolfe was involved in?

NO, I didn't...(that I recall, anyway. Maybe I did, and have forgotten??)

Ques: Does that relate in any way to the "practical joke" that Bill Kaysing started (on a dare)?

You know the one....when Kaysing was dared to claim that Apollo was a "hoax"?? Seems, once he started it, it was a "tiger by the tail", and he became self-deluded as a result, had to keep on, embellishing, etc..... (at least, that seems a likely explanation. Or else, a touch of senile dementia??)

reply to post by Kailassa

Here is Figure 91a
libraryphoto.cr.usgs.gov...

Here is Figure 91b
libraryphoto.cr.usgs.gov...

Originally posted by Kailassa
It does state: "The resulting “cement” Mt. Hadley created quite a stir (Fig. 91)."
However Fig 91 is most likely the picture from page 23 of Wolfes aforementioned paper.

Here is the page linking to PDFs of all the figures: pubs.usgs.gov...

Originally posted by weedwhacker
reply to post by Kailassa

 

Did you read about the practical joke Wolfe was involved in?

NO, I didn't...(that I recall, anyway. Maybe I did, and have forgotten??)
Ques: Does that relate in any way to the "practical joke" that Bill Kaysing started (on a dare)?
You know the one....when Kaysing was dared to claim that Apollo was a "hoax"?? Seems, once he started it, it was a "tiger by the tail", and he became self-deluded as a result, had to keep on, embellishing, etc..... (at least, that seems a likely explanation. Or else, a touch of senile dementia??)

I don't know if you're serious or having me on here, WW. I'm not familiar with Kaysing, and what I've just read up about him does not refer to any dare or joke.

You see I've done a lot of photoshopping myself, so I'm pretty aware of how things should look, and a lot of the arguments guys like this put forward, that I've seen, claim wrong shadows, (proving artificial lighting,) where the shadows are just how they should be, and signs of photoshopping where there are none.

Off topic, I once had a request to, "rub out the car so you can see the people behind it". Using other photos of the people concerned and some art-work to reconstruct the hidden people, I produced an apparent photo which showed just what the client wanted. Being evil, I never told her how, just let her show it around telling people she'd got someone to rub out the car.

Anyway, I'm curious about your story now, if you have a reference for it. But, if Kaysing says that's what happened, wouldn't he be just as likely to be making it up? There's big bucks in public speaking, but a guy needs a good story.

Here's the Wolfe and co. story, from page 312, in case you're interested:

Gordon and Jody Swann tell the story . . . about the time that the two of them, plus
George Ulrich, Ed Wolfe, Steve Reed, Jean Fischer, and perhaps one or two others played the
ultimate revenge game on jokester Apollo 16 Geology Team Principal Investigator Bill
Muehlberger in Houston. The story goes something like the following: went something like the
following:

Gordon and Jody Swann:
“The six of them went over to Bill Muehlberger’s apartment near MSC. George had a key to his
apartment. Bill had gone home to Austin, Texas for the weekend. He was coming back Sunday
night. Sunday afternoon, the six of them went over there and spent hours taking that apartment
apart. They took every pin out of every door hinge. They disabled his bed and put it back
together with butcher’s string—and short-sheeted it of course! They stretched Saran Wrap over
the toilet and filled his toothpaste tube with shaving cream. They dumped out his gin—they
didn’t throw it away but replaced it with water! They put coffee grounds in his ice cubes,
replaced all the cushions in his couch with Styrofoam, Kryloned his bars of soap, replaced every
bulb in the place with 15-watt bulbs, turned all the light switches upside down, and sewed the
towels to the towel rack.

Bill’s wife Sally said the next day that it was hilarious when they got back to the apartment that
[Sunday] night. Bill was fumbling with the key to get into the doorknob—and the door fell
down. He said everything was going wrong! She said Bill stepped in the room—flipped on the
light switch—and there was this dim glow. Finally Bill said, I’m going to have a Martini—that
had been watered of course! He went in and plopped down on the couch, and about broke his
back [on the hard Styrofoam]. He was really hacked!

But Jody recalls that Bill did NOT think it was funny!

These guys had fun in their spare time.

reply to post by Phage

Thanks Phage. Actually that's where I first saw these pictures (today.)
Very first time was on a "Moon landing hoax" site, and it was the one picture I could accept was a hoax.
Anyway, I'd not looked at the numbers, 091a and 091b. Seems likely they're related to the Fig 91 quoted in the report.

Originally posted by nataylor

Originally posted by Kailassa
It does state: "The resulting “cement” Mt. Hadley created quite a stir (Fig. 91)."
However Fig 91 is most likely the picture from page 23 of Wolfes aforementioned paper.

Here is the page linking to PDFs of all the figures: pubs.usgs.gov...

Thanks Nat, I look forward to checking that out.
Got internet trouble right now, capped plan and nearly used up this month's allowance, have to start being careful.
Switching to a better plan start of December.

reply to post by Kailassa

These guys had fun in their spare time.

That's what you get when you have that many highly intelligent people, needing to let off some stress.

You ought to see/hear what pilots (and of course Astronauts...not all are pilots of course, nowadays, though) can get up to!!

You may enjoy a memoir by former Space Shuttle Astronaut Mike Mullane. He is quite a hoot, in style of writing and recounting...even to admit his (back then) misogynistic tendencies, as a typical "alpha male jet jock" archetype. (He had his ears pinned back a few times, over the years, by his female colleagues.... who could return the jibes as well as they received them...)!

You just have to laugh, though, at the jokes they tell each other, when strapped in for launch, with hours to kill, laying in their chairs....and it's a hot mic "party line" intercom, where everyone can hear what you say....anticipation of the impending lift-off, only to be crushed with disappointment at the (all too often) launch scrubs....and the knowledge that you have to undo everything, re-set, and do it all over again next time....

It's "Riding Rockets". www.amazon.com...

(Many libraries will likely have it). He has his own web page too......just Internet Search his name!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Example of style:

Chapter 1

"Bowels and Brains"

'I was naked, lying on my side on a table in the NASA Flight Medicine Clinic bathroom, probing at my rear end with the nozzle of an enema. Welcome to the astronaut selection process, I thought.......'


At this point, he was just a 'candidate' for selection...and had heard others who had failed this part----

'....At the word failed my ears perked up. He had skimped in his bowel-cleansing efforts and would have to repeat his test tomorrow.

"FAILED PROCTO-PREP" . I could imagine those words in big red letters on the man's physical report. Who would see them? Would they count in the selection process?

......Military aviators looked forward to a physical exam about as much as they looked forward to an in-flight engine fire. We didn't want failed on any document that came out of a flight surgeon's office.

......Hold for Five Minutes, read the instructions on the dispenser. Screw that, was my thought. That milquetoast civilian who had failed his clean out had probably blown his load at the first contraction. I would hold my enema for fifteen minutes......'


What gets better than that??? Ahhhh...the glamor of it all!!!

reply to post by weedwhacker

I'm definitely going to get hold of that.
Sounds a great combo of history and laughs.

Didn't a pee-bag break on on Apollo mission and they rode home amidst a cloud of yellow droplets?

Oh, that was a Mercury mission.

When an astronaut's urine bag broke during a Mercury flight, the fluid dispersed in the weightless environment and entered the radio unit, causing corrosion of the electronics and shutting down communications.

Uck, those guys would really need a sense of humour.
And the ability to gope with unexpected emergencies.

Originally posted by FoosM
The issue is this photo...



...is a fake. Made by the USGS

"cement" model of Mt. Hadley (a) (inserted into an actual Apollo 15 surface photograph)

But if this photo could be faked so easily, doesn't that mean the others could have been as well?
I've always thought there was either too much detail or not enough in the distant background hills and mountains.

Here is where a major problem occurs for the next or first moon landing... depending on what you believe.
The images we will receive from a real, future landing will look so vastly different to what we witnessed on alleged Apollo moon landings.

This will throw up all sorts of awkward questions. I think this might be why everyone is saying, no need to go to the moon again .. Let’s go to mars instead.

One last thing, when the first men/women do eventually land on the moon, the travesty is they will never be rightly attributed and honoured as being the first on the moon. When this future crew do finally master the ability to overcome the many almost insurmountable obstacles in their path to landing on the moon, they will never receive the recognition they deserve. This will be a tragedy.

reply to post by ppk55

The images we will receive from a real, future landing will look so vastly different to what we witnessed on alleged Apollo moon landings.

What if the pictures look exactly like the ones we already have? Will that constitute proof that they, too, are faked? Just come out and admit it: you refuse to believe that people can travel in space. Period.

Originally posted by ppk55
But if this photo could be faked so easily, doesn't that mean the others could have been as well?

That's a pretty poor "fake." If you happen to find cloth backdrops in any of the other photos, let us know. And it's a little disingenuous to call it "fake" in the first place, as it was never meant to be, nor was it ever actually passed off as an Apollo photograph.

You seem to be ignoring the totality of the evidence. You really think that all the Apollo photographs could have been faked in such a way to be so consistent with each other, and with the observations of previous and later lunar images, so as to fool thousands of scientists for the last 40 years?

Originally posted by nataylor

Originally posted by ppk55
But if this photo could be faked so easily, doesn't that mean the others could have been as well?

That's a pretty poor "fake." If you happen to find cloth backdrops in any of the other photos, let us know. And it's a little disingenuous to call it "fake" in the first place, as it was never meant to be, nor was it ever actually passed off as an Apollo photograph.

You seem to be ignoring the totality of the evidence. You really think that all the Apollo photographs could have been faked in such a way to be so consistent with each other, and with the observations of previous and later lunar images, so as to fool thousands of scientists for the last 40 years?

Pretty poor fake? Most- Ill say all, of you wouldnt know the difference.
Cloth background? How is that possible, then what is the foreground?
Where is the line that separates the foreground from the background in the first place.
Show me that line, then show me how its any different that the supposed real photograph, that actually is blurrier than the model.

Originally posted by weedwhacker
reply to post by FoosM

 

Wow, what a nice, clear defined photo. NO shadow problems with that, looks exactly as it should.

Shouldnt
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/c7a1e7bdf5bb.gif[/atsimg]

look like

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/1624dc4112bc.gif[/atsimg]

I mean, what is going on here?
Giant UFO casting a shadow?
Earth casting a shadow?
Sun changed positions?

We got a BIG shadow problem here.
And please, dont even say it has anything to do with camera settings. LOL.

reply to post by FoosM


FoosM: What are you talking about? Where? What shadow problems? On which image? And where are the links to the originals?

Originally posted by FoosM
Pretty poor fake? Most- Ill say all, of you wouldnt know the difference.
Cloth background? How is that possible, then what is the foreground?
Where is the line that separates the foreground from the background in the first place.
Show me that line, then show me how its any different that the supposed real photograph, that actually is blurrier than the model.

How is a cloth background possible? They hung up a black cloth behind the model when they photographed it. What is in the foreground? The actual Apollo 15 photo is in the foreground. Where is the line that separates them? Along the ridge that runs in front of the mountain.

See if this animation helps you figure out the differences in the pictures:

Notice how the sky is solid black in the real photograph and you can see the folds and billows of the cloth in the model photo? Notice the cross-hair registration marks over the mountain in the real photo that are missing in the model photo?

Yes, it's a poor "fake," if the intent was to fool someone into thinking that was an actual photograph from an Apollo mission. But of course that wasn't the intent. The intent was to build a model to simulate lighting conditions.

Originally posted by DJW001
reply to post by FoosM

 

FoosM: What are you talking about? Where? What shadow problems? On which image? And where are the links to the originals?

DJ... you got to be kidding me. You dont see the problem?
In one picture Hadley Mons creates a strong shadow, in the other it doesnt.
Its all from Apollo 15 easy to find for all you Apollo experts. LPI should be bookmarked by now.