“We're not going to the moon,” Buzz Aldrin whispered in horror.
- Why do you think so? - Imperturbably asked Armstrong, barely audible humming to himself under his breath "Earth in the window." He was a commander, and commanding peace of mind was due to him according to instructions, complete with rank, patches and a salary of $ 30,054 a year (taxes included).
- I have doubts, - Aldrin looked around suspiciously and covered the microphone with his hand. Then he bent down to Armstrong's ear. - I always knew that. This is not the Moon. Fake. We think that we are flying, but in reality we are not flying. We stand somewhere in the desert, with TV screens instead of windows. Now we are shown a movie about space, and then they will crash us.
- Here you are! You also tell me that you know who killed Kennedy, - Armstrong looked mockingly at Buzz and began to check the flight path once again.
- I know, - the co-pilot sighed resignedly, - Aliens. They have a conspiracy with the Communists and the Illuminati.
- Aldrin, confess, did you use drugs from the medical kit again? - asked the commander of the "Eagle", looking sternly at his subordinate.
“Well, I’m a little,” Baz blushed. He picked up a marker and, in front of the amazed commander, began to draw hippos and a rainbow on the wall of the ship …
The reason for referring to the topic of flights to the Moon was the following event: exactly forty years ago, on December 11, 1972, the star-striped leg last touched the surface of the Moon. 40 years … a whole era has passed, and what then? Instead of lunar bases and industrial development of a natural satellite of the Earth, we have only the book We Never Went To The Moon (We never flew to the Moon), written by the American writer B. Kaising in 1976. Actually, it was from this moment that one of the main intrigues of the twentieth century began.
For four decades, experts in the field of astronautics, astronomy, physics, radio engineering, biomedicine, directing, graphics, photography and photomontage have been trying to prove whether the Americans flew to the moon or not. Every day the number of arguments and evidence is growing: direct and indirect, well-grounded and not very well-grounded, refutable, or vice versa. Frankly, not a single 100% convincing fact of falsification of the American Lunar Program has been found. At the same time, there are a number of slippery questions that NASA supporters cannot give a clear answer to.
Things like the "flag waving in a vacuum" or "the absence of stars in photographs", of course, are designed for simpletons and do not contain any secret: the flag is hung on an L-shaped flagpole, and the stars are not visible due to the short exposure under conditions brightly lit moon.
Another doubt sounds much more solid: the level of technological development of astronautics in the 60s did not allow such an expedition to be carried out. Here we can only focus on indirect evidence:
- the first spacecraft to reach the lunar surface was launched in 1959 (the Soviet station "Luna-2");
- in 1966 the Soviet station "Luna-9" and the American "Surveyor-1" and "Surveyor-2" made a soft landing on the lunar surface. Before launching a man on the moon, NASA conducted 5 more successful landings under the Surveyor program + three expeditions to explore the moon under the Ranger program and five under the Lunar Orbiter program;
- in 1967, the first launch of the Saturn-5 carrier rocket, capable of placing 140 tons of payload into low-earth orbit, took place. Six million parts. The launch weight is 3000 tons. Rocket height with a 40-storey skyscraper. Even the skilled magician David Copperfield could not falsify the fact of the Saturn-5 launch (a key element of the Lunar program) - tens of thousands of people who came to Cape Canaveral from all over the world watched the launches with their own eyes.
The level of technological development here, on the contrary, sounds more like an argument of the supporters of NASA. And indeed, if back in 1959 Mankind was able to launch an unmanned probe to the Moon, then what prevented a probe from being sent there with a man on board 10 years later? And this is taking into account the colossal efforts and costs of the lunar program!
The second argument is deadly radiation! It is often believed that when flying to the Moon, to ensure human safety, 10-20-100 centimeters of lead biological shielding are required. Otherwise, deadly cosmic rays will kill all life on board. Astronauts would inevitably die on the moon in their thin rubber suits.
As for the spacesuits, they were, of course, not made of rubber. The lunar suit consisted of 25 layers: nylon, coolant hoses, thermal insulation, fiberglass, mylar, and finally, outer protective layers of teflon-coated fiberglass. The weight of the spacesuit in terrestrial conditions is 80 kilograms.
American experts were aware of the danger of the Earth's radiation belts, so the flight path of the Apollo when crossing the belts was planned in such a way that the Earth at that moment was turned towards the ship by its North or South Pole, where the magnetic field strength and radiation level are an order of magnitude lower. Despite the seeming complexity of such a trajectory, specialists in space mechanics will only shrug their shoulders - for them to carry out such a calculation is just a common task.
American astronomers, along with their Soviet colleagues, have been closely monitoring solar flares: in case of a threat of increased solar activity, the launch should be canceled and postponed to another date. Fortunately for the astronauts, this did not happen.
We have very specific ideas about the fluxes of cosmic radiation received from dozens of different scientific satellites, including from the surface of the Moon. There is no "super-radiation" there, which, of course, does not exclude a certain danger to human health (the astronauts really received a good dose of radiation). As for the low Earth orbit, the Russian cosmonaut Valery Polyakov spent 438 days on board the Mir station (a world record!) And returned safely to Earth. So everything related to radiation safety in near space does not raise any doubts.
Separately, I would like to note the fact that all the landings were planned in places that had just emerged from the earth's shadow, and the ground in this place had not yet had time to get very hot. Otherwise, the astronauts would have to jump like on hot coals. Knowing the exact dates of the expeditions, all this can be easily checked using free astronomical programs, for example, Stellarium.
In addition to space technology and radiation, I would like to note a few more important points, because of which the supporters of the "lunar conspiracy" theory break their spears. Search optical defects in photographs in the era of "Photoshop" - clearly a thankless job. You can add or paint over anything you want. To be honest, I never saw anything suspicious in the official NASA photos. Several clearly compromising photographs with three or even four astronauts on the moon turned out to be fakes from the NASA / fun art section of the website. The famous photograph with a distinct "C" symbol on a stone accidentally caught in the frame (experts explain it as a defect during development, a hair hit) looks very suspicious, but much less impressive than the launch of the Saturn-5 rocket. Although, of course, a strange defect is suggestive …
The accusations of the absence of an image of the Earth in the "lunar" photographs (and where there is Earth, on the contrary, all the elements of the lunar landscape disappear in a strange way) can be explained by the choice of sites for the Apollo landing - the Earth, for quite certain reasons, was too high above the lunar horizon (checked by any free astronomical program).
More alarming is the fact that the Americans have contrived lose the original film strip lunar expedition "Apollo 11". All the other five expeditions are available, but these are missing. NASA sparingly justifies itself, referring to the usual human stupidity and inattention - there are millions of films in the archive, somewhere they were stuck, or even erased and used in a new way. “Everyone knows that the original Beatles tapes were accidentally thrown away by a maid. So now the Beatles were gone? " - American astronauts sneer.
There is another funny fact: in the videos in which the Yankees cut across the moon in electric cars, the sound of a running engine is clearly audible! Just like in Star Wars! NASA specialists just shrug their shoulders: “Do you think we skipped physics lessons at school? This is indeed the sound of a rover engine, but it does not come through a vacuum, but through the vibration of the ground. " Believe it or not. By the way, director George Lucas at the press conference on the release of the next series of "Star Wars", began his speech with the words: “I know that in a vacuum, sound does not travel. Now ask your questions."
You can often hear a well-founded accusation concerning the absence of any crater at the landing site of the "lunar module" and, in general, traces of the impact of a jet stream. But the working engine of the 15-ton "Eagle" (although on the Moon its weight is 6 times less) should, in theory, scatter all the dust and stones for many tens of meters around!
NASA responds by referring to numerous photographs of the Harrier VTOL. Where the landing operations are carried out in the field, the Harrier is very dusty, but, alas, no crater is formed under it. It should be noted that the Eagle's landing stage engine was two times weaker than the powerful Harrier engine with a thrust of 10 tons.
According to NASA, astronauts installed on the moon laser reflectors … It is these reflectors (and one more, on the Soviet "Lunokhod") that are still used by experts all over the world for ultra-precise measurement of the distance to the Moon. There is no doubt that reflectors are installed on the lunar surface, but another matter, could the Americans have installed them in an automatic mode, like on the "Lunokhod"?
Apollo was delivered from the moon 382 kg of soil, of which about 40 kilograms were donated to scientific organizations around the world. Some of the samples ended up in our Institute. Vernadsky. After a comprehensive study of the "American soil", Soviet researchers came to the conclusion that these are really extraterrestrial samples, similar in properties to the lunar soil delivered to Earth by the Soviet automatic stations "Luna-16", "Luna-20" and "Luna-24".
Lunar soil differs sharply from terrestrial rocks in its chemical composition, complete absence of traces of water exposure and, most importantly, radiological age: regolith was formed 3.7 - 4.0 billion years ago, and the oldest minerals found on Earth are 2.6 billion.
In recent years, about 20 kg of lunar soil has strangely disappeared from the NASA collection - according to the Americans, "moonstones" are regularly taken for research by various scientific organizations, while scientists are in no hurry to return it, shamelessly taking it to home collections.
Finally, the most violent story associated with elimination of "unwanted" personswho refused to participate in the grandiose falsification. Indeed, in the period 1966-1967, eight people died in a strange way, one way or another connected with space flights. This is not a simple story from the "yellow press", all the victims are known by name:
Air Force Major Robert Lawrence crashed on December 8, 1967 while landing in an F-104. You ask what Lawrence had to do with space and the moon? Shortly before his death, he took part in the program for the development of an orbital station. Obviously, he learned something about the "Lunar Program", for which he was liquidated.
Russell Rogers was killed on September 13, 1967 - his F-105 fighter exploded in the air. Shortly before his death, he worked for NASA.
All the rest of the victims were NASA astronauts, although none of them, except for Grissom and White, had time to visit space.
Elliot Sea and Charles Bassett were the first candidates to fly the Gemini 9, crashing on 28 February 1966 while landing on a T-38 trainer.
On January 27, 1967, tragedy struck: Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee from the Apollo 1 crew were killed. All three were burned to death in an oxygen atmosphere while training in the cockpit of the spacecraft.
Alas, experts in the field of cosmonautics do not find anything suspicious in the tragic death of the Apollo-1 crew, for example, on March 23, 1961, under completely similar conditions, Soviet tester Valentin Bondarenko burned down in the pressure chamber. A tragic accident.
Surprisingly, all nine Air Force pilots selected for flights on the Soviet Buran (the same relative of the Shuttle) also died under strange circumstances in the late 1980s. What is it? A government conspiracy? Has Buran really never existed in reality?
From my point of view, all the cases described above only confirm the high risk and danger of the professions of pilots and cosmonauts. By the way, out of 12 astronauts who have visited the moon, four have died to date, and all of them survived to old age (on average, they were over 70). Some of them after the "Lunar program" again participated in space flights, for example, John Young was twice the commander of the Shuttle.
As for the opinion of the Soviet cosmonauts and those who took direct part in the "Space Race of the 60s", their opinion sounds very prosaic: the Americans were on the moon. According to Alexei Leonov, he was personally at the center of distant space communications and monitored broadcasts from the Moon. Sensitive radio telescopes in Crimea were able to locate the source of radio signals with an accuracy of 1.5 arc minutes - there was no doubt, the signal came from the surface of the Moon. Otherwise, the exposure of the American scam would have paid huge political dividends to the Soviet Union.
In 2009, the Apollo and Lunokhod landing sites were photographed by the Japanese Kaguya probe and the American Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter (LRO). Of course, shooting such small relief details from lunar orbit is not of high quality. NASA experts point to subtle spots and shadows, explaining their origin by traces of the stay of terrestrial visitors..
In general, the situation looks like this: supporters of the "lunar conspiracy" are finding new suspicions that NASA supporters manage to more or less successfully refute. Until now, not a single clear fact of falsification has been found, at the same time, not a single 100% reliable confirmation of the stay of American astronauts on the lunar surface has been presented (for example, high-resolution photographs of landing sites).
To the direct question: "Why did they stop flying to the moon?"
