The Glass Ceiling
Chapter 5: Moon Landings

The Moon

Of course, that's it! They have lots of space pictures and they are hiding them for some reason. I read somewhere that the pictures are full of alien space-ships and they can't show the real pictures because it would cause widespread panic.

But there were lots of pictures taken from the moon so I must find a real image there.

This one is famous and you have seen it in enough places to know it's an official picture.

A fabulous photograph from the lunar surface shows a space-suit guy from above. A camera guy must have been standing on the steps of the lunar lander.

The reflection in the astronaut's face shield is expanded at right. You can see it shows the lunar lander from high above, and rather exactly where the astronaut isn't.

The lighting is quite different in the reflected scene so you can see that the face shield image was added in post-production.

There is no air on the moon to scatter light and provide the soft shadows we see here on Earth. An object is brightly lit where the sun hits it, and totally dark on the shadow side.
The front of the suit, especially its logos, are well lit by the sun from behind the astronaut.

This picture was not taken on the moon.

Zooming in tight on the spacesuit, we see this is Buzz himself.

Wow, snaps and straps. Perhaps an initiation rite makes him wear a jockstrap on the outside.

It's vacuum on the moon, so we want to pressurize Buzz to about 14 psi.

If that suit was here on Earth, where the ambient pressure is already 14 psi, the fabric would hang slack as we see.

To simulate the pressure differential of the moon we have to raise the pressure to 28 psi.

If that cotton and velcro horror from the costume shop would actually hold air, Buzz would blow up like the Michelin man.

Although Hasselblad registration marks make it look very authentic, it is very clear that this space suit is not on the moon.
In any case, Buzz seems terribly underdressed for the rigors of space.

Given also that the sun side is hotter than boiling water and the dark side is 70 below, I hope he's wearing his space blanket undies. NASA has lots of compelling stories about the brilliant design of their spacesuits, but this is just silly.
This is a bit of an oddity, given that this is their poster shot. You'd think they would use a genuine moon picture for that one. Well perhaps we should put it down to artistic licence and look at the other pictures. There are a lot of them. Some are quite well done, some less so.

Strong unidirectional light in vacuum has different properties from studio lights on Earth. Once you see it, every picture has a distinct unmoonliness that you just can't unsee.



This is another official picture from NASA's site. Shadows show that the sun angle is very low but the front of the astronaut's suit is inexplicably lit. Likewise, the reflective surfaces of the solar panels of whatever that is in the foreground at the astronaut's feet. Some objects have long shadows, some short and the astronaut casts no shadow at all.

Framed in the starless inky blackness of space, is the improbable contraption they called the Lunar Lander. It must have landed very gently on the lunar surface because there is no rocket blast beneath and not a single speck of dust has fallen onto the craft's pristine mylar shoes.

NASA says the orbiter was 62 miles up, and doing 4,000 mph. The 3 astronauts shinnied their big ol' spacesuits into the lander, deftly twisted the joystick and accelerated to mach 6. The lander must have kept its orientation exact because an off-axis rocket blast would have sent it tumbling uncontrollably into oblivion. They found the orbiter up there, docked flawlessly, crawled through more hatches in their spacesuits and flew the rig home. They had no heat problems as they slid into the atmosphere at the exact place and angle needed to parachute bravely into the South Pacific.
The sheer improbability of this fantastic feat is underscored by the fact that they did it a lot of times, seven being I think the official number.

A lot of things about the moon landings made no sense.


In another official image the front of the space suit is remarkably well lit by the sun from behind. The sun is low so shadows are long, except for the astronaut, who casts no shadow at all. And what is the bright red highlight on the inside of the fender?

His visor might plausibly show a distorted view of the golf cart. Instead we have an impossible image of what looks like a half-wave two meter dish. But what's it for? It could reach the orbiter, 62 miles up, but the orbiter is doing 4,000 mph. That rig has no way to track it. Perhaps they mean instead to communicate with the Earth. Signal strength diminishes with the square of the 240,000 mile distance. If that's a special magical space antenna with impossible gain, you'd still need megawatts more than you can get from a golf cart battery.

In this picture, the sky sports an artistic nebula, a welcome relief from the inky blackness behind the other pictures. Or maybe that's a mountain, lit in front by the sun behind.

Of course NASA would not lie about man's greatest achievement, so they must have gone there. But why didn't they bring back any pictures?

As with the Earth pictures from space, every one of the moon pictures was faked. I could pull up every one for dissection, but maybe you can begin to see how we can tell. Shadows tell us where the light is. Inconsistent shadows show a composite scene. Light in the dark vacuum shows studio fill lights. You don't have to look very hard to know that none of the pictures were actually taken on the moon.

As with the Earth pictures, none of this is mere accidental oversight. The moon landing story is very elaborate and it must have cost a lot of money.

High quality pictures don't just fall from the sky. Major production values are seen throughout.

The problem here, simply is that NASA says these pictures are genuine when we can see clearly that they are not. It is apparent that somebody is knowingly lying about this.
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