As I say at the end: “No matter what the scientists say and how overwhelming the evidence is, conspiracy theories can always believe what they want. Perhaps the best response is what [Arthur] Clarke once proposed in relation to UFOs: a decade or so of benign neglect. Myth-makers thrive on counter arguments. When they don’t get it, they might run out of steam.”

You and Yapa both need to check you eye-sights. Does the boot print look bulged out to you? Look at the shadow on the south eastern corner, and the smaller one in the north corner of the boot print. Is the boot print still bulging out?

You also need to check your science knowledge. The fact that moon’s gravity is 1/6 of earth’s doesn’t explain bulging out. Not even an anti-gravity field explains it.

By the way Yapa, if the moon landing was a hoax, and the whole thing was orchestrated in some desert on earth, how did they manage to make boot prints that bulged out, on earth?

yapa, first of all read the NEW YORK TIMES news article-right side column… A POWDERY SURFACE IS CLOSELY EXPLORED, it may be light weight dusty surface like plaster of paris, and also gravitation power on the moon 6 times lesser than earth ( 1/6 th ), so it’s lighter surface, that is the reason to bulged out the foot print,

For the benefit of others who believe their five senses can grasp reality, however imperfectly, if you look at that photograph closely you’d see that the boot print is not bulging out at all. It’s a depression on the moon’s surface, and judging by the shadow, the sunlight comes from the south-east corner of the photograph.

Don’t worry Yapa. Since your five senses, according to you, aren’t grasping reality, this blog isn’t real. Nalaka Gunawardena isn’t real. I am not real. The moon landing definitely is not real. People who claim the moon landing was a hoax aren’t real. If any of these things are real, then you are grasping reality. That can’t be right, can it?

The first photograph of this article too has an unbelievable feature in it. The boot print shown here is bulged out??????

See the shadow the boot print creates. Can a foot print be bulged out like this?

Am I seeing it wrong or what?

Can somebody explain this?

I may not be correct, but something doubtful should be doubted until explained.

Thanks!

@Nandasiri Wanninayaka,

Apollo 11 mission had twin goals – to land astronauts on the moon; and to send back a live TV transmission so that everyone could see it – particularly the rival Soviets. This entailed a great deal of effort in that analog era, but the process is very well documented.

All communications between the Apollo spacecraft and mission control were done using broadcast transmissions. The portion of the broadcast spectrum traditionally used for video was sending vital ship data to Earth: there was no room left for the standard black-and-white video format of the era. So technicians devise a smaller format that resulted in so-called slow-scan footage which were beamed to Earth. These were then converted to conventional broadcast formats before being offered to TV networks.

For live transmissions to be sustained, NASA uses its Deep Space Network (DSN), an international network of antennas that supports spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe. DSN now consists of three deep-space communications facilities placed approximately 120 degrees apart around the world: at Goldstone, in California’s Mojave Desert; near Madrid, Spain; and near Canberra, Australia. These ensure that contact is maintained between mission control (located at one or the other of the NASA centres in the US) and the spacecraft despite the Earth’s rotation. More at: http://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/dsn/index.html

On 20 July 1969, three tracking antennas received the signals simultaneously. They were the 64m Goldstone antenna in California, 26m antenna at Honeysuckle Creek near Canberra in Australia, and 64m dish at Parkes Observatory in New South Wales, also in Australia. During the first few minutes, NASA alternated between the signals received from its stations at Goldstone and Honeysuckle Creek, searching for the best quality picture. Some nine minutes into the broadcast, the TV feed was switched to the Parkes signal which was much better. NASA stayed with Parkes for the remainder of the 2.5 hour broadcast from the Moon.

“The Dish” is a 2000 Australian film that tells the story of how the Parkes Observatory was used to relay the live television of man’s first steps on the moon, during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/

1. How did the communication happen between the moon and the Earth at an age where a computer’s memory was few kilobytes.
2. How does communication happens even today between planets. (Earth and Mars) Is it through Internet or any other technology.