Moon Landing Conspiracy Theories - The Hoax Claims - Mechanical Issues

Mechanical Issues

1. The Moon landers made no blast craters or any sign of dust scatter.

• No crater should be expected. The Descent Propulsion System was throttled very far down during the final landing. The Moon lander was no longer quickly decelerating, so the descent engine only had to support the lander's own weight, which was lessened by the Moon's gravity and by the near exhaustion of the descent propellants. At landing, the engine thrust divided by the nozzle exit area is only about 10 kilopascals (1.5 PSI). Beyond the engine nozzle, the plume spreads and the pressure drops very quickly. In comparison, the Saturn V F-1 first stage engines produced 3.2 MPa (459 PSI) at the mouth of the nozzle. Rocket exhaust gases expand much more quickly after leaving the engine nozzle in a vacuum than in an atmosphere. The effect of an atmosphere on rocket plumes can be easily seen in launches from Earth; as the rocket rises through the thinning atmosphere, the exhaust plumes broaden very noticeably. To lessen this, rocket engines made for vacuums have longer bells than those made for use on Earth, but they still cannot stop this spreading. The Moon lander's exhaust gases therefore expanded quickly well beyond the landing site. However, the descent engines did scatter a lot of very fine surface dust as seen in 16mm movies of each landing, and many mission commanders spoke of its effect on visibility. The landers were generally moving horizontally as well as vertically, and photos do show scouring of the surface along the final descent path. Finally, the lunar regolith is very compact below its surface dust layer, further making it impossible for the descent engine to blast out a "crater". In fact, a blast crater was measured under the Apollo 11 lander using shadow lengths of the descent engine bell and estimates of the amount that the landing gear had compressed and how deep the lander footpads had pressed into the lunar surface and it was found that the engine had eroded between 4 and 6 inches of regolith out from underneath the engine bell during the final descent and landing.,pp. 97–98

2. The second stage of the launch rocket and/or the Moon lander ascent stage made no visible flame.

• The Moon landers used Aerozine 50 (fuel) and dinitrogen tetroxide (oxidizer) propellants, chosen for simplicity and reliability; they ignite hypergolically –upon contact– without the need for a spark. These propellants produce a nearly transparent exhaust. The same fuel was used by the core of the American Titan rocket. The transparency of their plumes is apparent in many launch photos. The plumes of rocket engines fired in a vacuum spread out very quickly as they leave the engine nozzle (see above), further lessening their visibility. Finally, rocket engines often run "rich" to slow internal corrosion. On Earth, the excess fuel burns in contact with atmospheric oxygen. This cannot happen in a vacuum.

3. There should not have been deep dust around the Moon landers, given the blast from the landing engines.

• The dust is created by a continuous rain of micro-meteoroid impacts and is typically several inches thick. It forms the top of the lunar regolith, a layer of impact rubble several meters thick and highly compacted with depth. On Earth, an exhaust plume might stir up the atmosphere over a wide area. On the Moon, only the exhaust gas itself can disturb the dust. Some areas around descent engines were scoured clean.

Note: Moving footage of astronauts and the Moon rover kicking-up Moondust clearly show the dust kicking up quite high due to the low gravity, but settling quickly without air to stop it. Had these landings been faked on the Earth, dust clouds would have formed. (They can be seen as a 'goof' in the movie Apollo 13 when Jim Lovell (played by Tom Hanks) imagines walking on the Moon). This clearly shows the astronauts to be (a) in low gravity and (b) in a vacuum.

4. The Moon landers weighed 17 tons and made no mark on the Moondust, yet footprints can be seen beside them.

• The lander weighed less than three tons on the Moon. The astronauts were much lighter than the lander, but their boots were much smaller than the 1-meter landing pads. Pressure (or force per unit area) rather than mass determines the amount of regolith compression. In some photos, the landing pads did press into the regolith, especially when they moved sideways at touchdown. (The bearing pressure under the lander feet, with the lander being more than 100 times the weight of the astronauts, would in fact have been of similar magnitude to the bearing pressure exerted by the astronauts' boots.)

5. The air conditioning units that were part of the astronauts' spacesuits could not have worked in an environment of no atmosphere.

• The cooling units could only work in a vacuum. Water from a tank in the backpack flowed out through tiny pores in a metal sublimator plate where it quickly vaporized into space. The loss of the heat of vaporization froze the remaining water, forming a layer of ice on the outside of the plate that also sublimated into space (turning from a solid directly into a gas). A separate water loop flowed through the LCG (Liquid Cooling Garment) worn by the astronaut, carrying his metabolic waste heat through the sublimator plate where it was cooled and returned to the LCG. Twelve pounds of feedwater gave about eight hours of cooling; because of its bulk, it was often the limiting consumable on the length of an EVA. Because this system could not work in an atmosphere, the astronauts needed large external chillers to keep them comfortable during Earth training.
• Radiative cooling meant there would have been no need to drink water, but it could not work below body temperature in such a small volume. The radioisotope thermoelectric generators could use radiative cooling fins to allow indefinite operation because they operated at much higher temperatures.

6. Although Apollo 11 had made a landing well outside its target area, Apollo 12 made a pin-point landing, within walking distance (less than 200 meters) of the Surveyor 3 probe, which had landed on the Moon in April 1967.

• The Apollo 11 landing was several kilometers southeast of the middle of their intended landing ellipse, but still within it. Armstrong took semi-automatic control of the lander and steered it further down range when it was noted that the intended landing site was strewn with boulders near a middling-sized crater. By the time Apollo 12 flew, the cause of the mistake in the landing site was found, procedures were bettered and allowed Apollo 12 to make its pinpoint landing. Apollo 11 fulfilled its role by simply landing safely on the Moon and a pinpoint landing was not needed on its mission.
• The Apollo astronauts were highly skilled pilots and the lander was a maneuverable craft that could be accurately flown to a specific landing point. During the powered descent phase, the astronauts used the PNGS (Primary Navigation Guidance System) and LPD (Landing Point Designator) to foretell where the lander was going to land and then they would manually pilot it to a chosen point with great accuracy.

7. All six lunar landings happened during the first Presidential administration of Richard Nixon and no leader of any other state has claimed to have landed astronauts on the Moon, even though the mechanical means of doing so should have become progressively much easier after almost 40 years of steady or even swift technological development.

• Other states and later US Presidents were less interested in spending great sums to be merely the second state/President to land men on the Moon. Had Nixon's administration faked the Moon landings, the Soviets would have been happy to argue for a hoax as a propaganda victory, but the Soviets never did. Further exploration by the US or USSR, such as building a Moon base, would have been much more costly and maybe too provocative to be in any state's self-interest during the Cold War.

• The development of the Saturn V rocket, the Apollo CSM and LM and the flights up to Apollo 8 (which orbited the moon) were made before Richard Nixon became president in January 1969. Furthermore, Nixon did not personally care much for the program begun by the man who defeated him in the 1960 Presidential Election, and his administration pushed for NASA to nix Apollo 18, 19, and 20 in favor of the space shuttle program.