Nvidia Debunks Apollo Conspiracy

[raptor1956]

Nvidia modeled the lunar surface and the Apollo 11 LEM as well as Neil and Buzz using some of there skills to address a few of the conspiracy theories about the landing.  It looks like they jumped into this to give themselves a little more publicity but that's OK -- interesting nonetheless...




Brian

[EEVblog]

Even at 1.5x speed, his talk is excruciating slow, but I want to watch it, so I'll let it slide 

[EEVblog]

Ok, that gets   

[Brumby]

Worth the watch.

Any gamers or people with an appreciation of the Nvidia technology who might have been suspicious about the moon landing should now have their suspicions put to rest.

[Bud]

Depending which point want to prove you can manipulate rendering and prove it. This presentation is not convincing at all, and i am not a backer of one side or the other, i do not care. BTW, the guy is an awful presenter.

[suicidaleggroll]

Depending which point want to prove you can manipulate rendering and prove it.

Agreed.  The moon landing hoax/flat earth people are nutjobs, anybody who disagrees with their point of view is just part of the conspiracy, logic is irrelevant.  This would prove nothing to them, except that Nvidia is also part of the conspiracy, along with every scientist/engineer/physicist/etc in every country of the world.  Not a big leap for them.

[Ratch]

No one has to evaluate any scientific evidence to know that the Apollo Conspiracy is bunk.  Think of the number of reputable scientists and technicians who would have to agree and be in on the "fix". What would they do to those who didn't agtree?   Think of the number of death bed confessions that would be presented by now.  How many Edward Snowdens would there be in among that many people?  Not even a totalitarian police state like Russia or North Korea could keep a secret about an event that big.  It boggles the mind to even think about the logistics of faking such an event.

Ratch

[grouchobyte]

My Uncle, who recently passed away was the Program Manager for the LEM at Grumman. I have many of his notes, including the faded E size schematic blueprints of the LEM camera, meeting notes with Werner von Braun and LEM technical manuals. Over the years he shared many stories with me including the technical challenges in getting to the moon and one very particularly challenging problem.....how to deal with human waste, like stools. He told me that working in the space program was the most rewarding time of his life.

If the Apollo mission was indeed  a hoax then it had many more people on the ground fooled, including my dear Uncle, who managed the hardware aspect of the project until the LEM project was obsoleted

@grouchobyte

[tggzzz]

The moon landing hoax/flat earth people are nutjobs, anybody who disagrees with their point of view is just part of the conspiracy, logic is irrelevant.

Not entirely; some are highly intelligent albeit misguided.

I have a distant relative with two delightful daughters. Their mother is Russian, as is their grandmother. The grandmother has apparently worked closely with Putin over many years, so clearly she isn't a nutjob.

The mother and grandmother are both convinced that the moon landings are capitalist lies. I haven't embarrassed the daughters by asking their opinion, but I'm told they haven't been to Russia.

[daqq]

You can actually download the demo: http://www.nvidia.com/coolstuff/demos#!/apollo-11

Mind you, it won't run on any old GPU.

[raptor1956]

Even at 1.5x speed, his talk is excruciating slow, but I want to watch it, so I'll let it slide 

Yeah, he is particularly bad -- he must be an engineer!    Being a narrator or giving a public speech is NOT EASY!.

If you happen to look at the comments made about the video you can see the deniers feel no need to back down.  There are, of course, peoples from certain parts of the world that are inclined to think the US made this all up and it isn't just the obvious parts of the world -- many in the western world including strong allies of the USA don't particularly like the USA for one reason or another and are quick to jump on anything that puts the US down.  One of the things that the US space program did from pretty much day one was bring cameras in and show pretty much everything live -- this greatly complicates the falsification of things.  In the decades since the program ended the technology to expose falsification have greatly improved and at each step these advances only confirm the fact that human kind walked on another world.


Brian

[james_s]

I've decided there is no sense in even debating with a conspiracy theorist. Their belief is just that, a belief, and since it is not based on facts or reason to begin with, it is useless to use facts and reason to try to convince them otherwise. They begin with an assumption that the official explanation is always a lie no matter how reasonable or sensible it may be and then assemble impossibly complex conspiracies, relying on confirmation bias to find "evidence" supporting their views. Additionally much of what they claim as evidence requires a gross misunderstanding of science and/or physics.

[Dubbie]

Hey Groucho,

Do you want to sell any of your uncles moon program artifacts?

[Tinkerer]

My Uncle, who recently passed away was the Program Manager for the LEM at Grumman. I have many of his notes, including the faded E size schematic blueprints of the LEM camera, meeting notes with Werner von Braun and LEM technical manuals. Over the years he shared many stories with me including the technical challenges in getting to the moon and one very particularly challenging problem.....how to deal with human waste, like stools. He told me that working in the space program was the most rewarding time of his life.

If the Apollo mission was indeed  a hoax then it had many more people on the ground fooled, including my dear Uncle, who managed the hardware aspect of the project until the LEM project was obsoleted

@grouchobyte

Pieces of history, probably worth alot to collectors or museums.

[james_s]

It would certainly be good to get that stuff scanned and archived online somewhere so that everyone could enjoy it. I'm sure there are organizations out there who would be happy to help.

[Brumby]

I've decided there is no sense in even debating with a conspiracy theorist. Their belief is just that, a belief, and since it is not based on facts or reason to begin with, it is useless to use facts and reason to try to convince them otherwise.

Indeed.  My statement was a tad naive.

At best, it might persuade some fence-sitters, but hard core theorists would stand their ground irrespective.

Even if they were taken up there to see for themselves, they would probably believe a "Total Recall" scenario over the truth.

[jpc]

Excellent idea.

[Rick Law]

That anyone believe moon landing is a "conspiracy" is incredible.  It is so easy to debunk and we have direct proof even without Nvidia.

Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong left something on the moon on July 21, 1969: a corner-cube reflectors mirror array.  Being a corner-cube reflectors array, shoot a laser beam at it and it will bounce right back to the origin regardless of what angle it hits the mirror face.

https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/21jul_llr

We earthlinks can and did use those mirrors to measure the rate of moon's recede to a high degree of accuracy. 

Anyone doubting that we land on the moon can point their own laser at the mirror.  Mirror is going to reflect whether you are a scientist or a poet, a democrat or a republican, a boy or a girl or anything in between.  So when in doubt, reach for a laser.

[jpc]

Unfortunately, it won't work, I know as I have tried. All they will say is that they were placed there by unmanned landers, exactly like the Russian one's were.

[StillTrying]

If you listen to some of the old 2 way audio recordings between the Earth and Moon, you can find places where they've forgotten to edit in the 2.5 sec. delay. 

[cdev]

If you shoot a laser at the moon you can measure the return to Earth of the light because its quite precisely reflected back by corner cube prisms which were left on the Moon by the various missions. Also when modern satellites fly over the moon you can see the sites where they landed with the equipment still there. Its visible in the imaging. They couldn't fake that.
There is a lot of fake news today but not all of it is coming from the nuts, some of it is coming from the people who claim to be the sources of truth.

So, just because the BS about the Apollo landings turns out to be just that, BS, doesn't mean that everything is the way they say it is.

 People have no idea...

[EEVblog]

Anyone doubting that we land on the moon can point their own laser at the mirror.  Mirror is going to reflect whether you are a scientist or a poet, a democrat or a republican, a boy or a girl or anything in between.  So when in doubt, reach for a laser.

I don't believe it's that easy, the return is in the order of single photon level for a large zap.

[Rick Law]

Anyone doubting that we land on the moon can point their own laser at the mirror.  Mirror is going to reflect whether you are a scientist or a poet, a democrat or a republican, a boy or a girl or anything in between.  So when in doubt, reach for a laser.

I don't believe it's that easy, the return is in the order of single photon level for a large zap.

Yeah, it is not that easy.  It was just an expression.

I have used laser (in 1970's) to measure length of a hallway about 100 feet long.  100 feet was short so I used split beam and interference based on wave length.  But I still needed the laser to be stable and well aimed.  I had a hell of a time doing it.

(When my neighbor's trees were not so tall...)  Viewing a fairly low grade (90mm reflector) telescope aimed at the moon, I know a truck is passing by on the next street by the vibration of my telescope.

To aim a laser at that mirror on the moon and get a reflected signal is certainly not something done outside a well built astronomy-lab/observatory.  And of course one has to account for the diffraction due to air movement before we even get the bloody photon there, and back.

So, there is a hell of a lot of stuff to account for to make the bloody thing work.  Point is, we (human) left something there that many universities at the time used.  That is proof we were there.

EDITed a zillion times.  (Too late in the day, can't write worth a damn...)

[VK3DRB]

No need to debunk the lunar landing. Those who think it was staged are just not worth listening to unless you want to be ear bashed about the Illuminati.

In 2003, a random poll of 1003 adults suggested about 70% of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11 attacks. And that 63% believe the US was right in going to war in Iraq. People are allowed to believe what they want, but the poll inidcates some people are simply too ignorant, gullible or just plain stupid to seek the truth .

There is no point trying to convert the epsilons of society into becoming alphas. Just let them go their merry way and let them believe whatever that is fed to them, as long as they don't do any harm to anyone else.

[SingedFingers]

Anyone doubting that we land on the moon can point their own laser at the mirror.  Mirror is going to reflect whether you are a scientist or a poet, a democrat or a republican, a boy or a girl or anything in between.  So when in doubt, reach for a laser.

I don't believe it's that easy, the return is in the order of single photon level for a large zap.

It's actually quite a difficult problem from a mechanical perspective as well:

1. It's a very long way away.
2. It's very small.
3. It's moving bloody fast relative to the sender.

It's like trying to shoot the dick off an ant riding on an express train 10 miles away.

As for the original question, it's very improbable that we didn't get there and have an amble around. I know how hard it is for even a small group of people to keep a secret even in the defence sector.