I have some questions about the myth: "One of the NASA photos is fake because the shadows of the rocks and lunar lander are not parallel."

Posted by Ban-Subverting@reddit | mythbusters | View on Reddit | 23 comments

The MythBusters built a small-scale replica of the lunar landing site based on the photograph, using reflective sand similar to that found on the Moon, and a single light to represent the Sun. Next, they took a photo which was exactly the same as the NASA photo, including the differing shadows. The MythBusters explained that the shadows were not parallel because of the way the light falls on the Moon’s natural topography, concluding the myth to be busted

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGg6ywErf9Y

I happen to think it is fairly self-evident that the moon-landings really happened. I don't think the way they failed to properly explain how they solved this myth is going to convince anyone who thinks otherwise, however. They just sort of took the picture, and said "See? Looks the same!"...

They didn't explain their process at all, or where the light was bouncing from, or how the illusion they created really worked. They just created it, called it busted, and moved on. Which is sort of a waste of their talent because this could have put an end to the conspiracies if they'd gone into more depth with how this illusion is actually occurring, instead of just snapping a picture and deciding that was somehow scientific and conclusive enough from the other side of the lens.

Like I said, I believe the moon landing is real, but I'm genuinely not sure why the images on the moon would look like that, or exactly how the images the Mythbusters produced their images to look the same. Meaning, they have practically zero explanatory value to the viewer. And that anybody who was skeptical before, will remain completely unmoved by this recreation...

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FunLeather6348@reddit

I cant even get any results searching for photos and all i get are 25 debunked moon landing conspiracies. No google im not im not looking for that haha. Its the same thing when i ask real questions about stuff like where did the 20 billion dollars in fema relief funds and i get a million results calling out all these conspiracy theories like they already thought of all these scenarios and stamped fact check but then you go into the fact check they misdirected the real issue by saying blah blah republican and orange man is hitler blah blah mat gaetz because he is trying ro abolish stock trading in washinton so we just make up accusations. At some you are just like well whatever they say at this point is a lie because you never get a straight answer and the only people dumb enough to just take their word for only reads a headline and they repeat the same stories on all the networks so it must be true. Then once you do actually call them out they censor on all media platforms like youtube facebook or Instagram. I canr tell you how many times my stuff gets auto deleted or i get put in timeout for a day eventhough i didnt use any foul language or said anything remotely offensive and i actually have true facts straight from government court documents tramscripts foia documents. That one time they made a big deal out trump saying kamalas photos were ai and she bought out hundreds of google ads disguised as news headlines to fraudulently claim he is a liar. I go in and used 4 different ai photo checkers that are trusted and in got all pretty much the same data that 80-95% of the photos were ai and theyvused midjourney. I mean if it wasnt obvious enough just looking at the photos and she has the audacity to pay experts to lie to tbe us over rally photos. If she is willing to go that far and beg for campaign funds so she can lie people then i have lost trust government completely. You had hilary clinton in 2016 pay mi5 agent to fabricate the steel dossier and get caught then in 2020 anthony blinken and biden had 51 cia agents fabricate a knowlimg false report that claims hunter bidens laptop had all the hallmarks of a russian disinfo campaign just so he had somethijng to throw in trumps face. That os by far the definition of elections interference and still even after alll of it comes out washington and the doj refuse aknowledge or bring it up in the news just shows you how corrupt and deep this stuff goes. That laptop alone is a treasure trove of biden rico crimes with a bunch of others in washington. You have fbi stalling their known chs agents that were in the stormijg of the capitol and they lost count and gave an excuse saying they wont have the report done till after the elections especially since this should have been done 3 years but they will move the heavan and earth if it means investigation of any one else like all the people they have held up thar were in a 4 mile radious of the capitol and didnt even take part of it. Just last 2 weeks ago they finally released the transcript that proves trump ordered for national gaurd that they withheld contempt and evidence tampering in the j6 illegal commitee and yet they are indicating trump yet again for a fake poltical smear by special im not a real boy council jack smith. See they figure they dont need to change laws when they can just not enforce or enforce laws on certain people. If we know fron the past ever single case they lost and for a good reason because they were fraudulent indictments. They use the.media and google to paint a bad reputation on the man.all these key players in the shaddow government belong to the council on foreign relations...google meta blackrock abc nbc fox cnn cbs northop gruman boeing bank of america goldman saches jpmorgan ivyleague universities cia directors fbi directors Joe biden merrick garland alejandro mayorkas janet yellen john kerry bill clinton george clooney jeffery epstein yes the one who was trafficking minors barack obama george bush the list is huge and you can find it on Wikipedia with present day and past members. The men who created the federal reserve created the council.you can imagine with their combined influece they basically use it to prop up controlable politicians that prostitute themselves out to the highest bidder and get access to the "the biden brand" they have ran this country for the past century and used intelligence agencies to set up indebted coubtries in our service by rigging elections and assasination of political oppents.

pdjudd@reddit

For that one they don’t need to get into the details that much. They are just debunking the claim that the two shadows could only have come from multiple light sources. Book. They showed that wasn’t the case. They weren’t addressing if it was faked or not since that’s not something they can do when they are special effects guys and would be the ones nasa would employ to fake it.

They showed how the topography can make things look different the best way they could. Getting onto the detail you wanted wouldn’t have done anyone any good and would very well be tedious from a laypersons perspective.

It made perfect sense to me.

donkeydave7@reddit

Why believe MythBusters when the area of expertise was special effects!!!Only have to watch the 3 astronauts being interviewed 2 weeks after NOT going to the moon to see what liars they were!!

invertedBoy@reddit

They clearly explained that the moon topography more than explains the divergent shadows, not sure what else they should have done

No_Tank9025@reddit

If you’ve seen the MythBusters episode, they close it by reflecting a laser off of the purposely-installed laser reflector, which was installed on the moon for the very purpose of providing a verifiable piece of evidence that Americans went to the moon.

We installed hardware there, to prove it, to ANYone on Earth….

Yep, I remember that, it was the final proof if I recall

ricky_lafleur@reddit

I have no doubt that Apollo astronauts walked on the moon, but I don't think the reflectors are proof of it when an unmanned craft could have landed and deployed a reflector. IMO, the broadcasts from the moon heard by countless people around the world including our rivals and the rocks distributed to labs around the world.

Hehehe… so “drone remotes”, in the late sixties?

That’s what dropped the equipment?

Certainly not, but an argument could be made that it was technologically feasible to remotely land and deploy one.

“An argument could be made”, indeed…. And then picked apart by persons familiar with the tech available at the time.

And the budgets…

True. I read something years ago that said it would have cost at least as much money to fake it as it did to really do it. Not sure how much of that would been in hardware and how much in payoffs.

The joke I heard was that: “if Kubrick was the director of the fake landing footage, the joke is on NASA, because he would have insisted on filming “on location””

Strong_Examination41@reddit

This is not actually truw, Kubrick never filmed overseas, hence why this what you are saying is invalid.

The overhead to fake it inherently makes it more expensive to cover up the moon landing than the actual landing itself - most of which would go to paying people off to keep quiet (which isn't always going to work since at somepopint having proof of that magnitude would be worth a lot to write a tell all).

Yendormi@reddit

Welcome to the beginning of learning space is fake.

itsminedonttouch@reddit

They didn't explain their process at all, or where the light was bouncing from, or how the illusion they created really worked. They just created it, called it busted, and moved on.

I like mb, but many of the episodes were done to prove wrong no matter what. they didnt do it in an unbiased way. one point is the moon landing. im not going to get into yes or no if it happened. im talking that they have biases and dont test things with a neautral pov.

they were going to bust everything no matter what because they worked with nasa over the years and they cant try to confirm anything for the theorists when youre working with the company that helped you with many episodes.

but there were other episodes where they purposely must bust so the public wouldnt try them. its very evident they were very biased with things.

I also disliked season 2014 with the annoying social media prompts every 1 minute. very annoying. mostly enjoyable show. but definitely very few myths they did. it was mostly challenges, made up stuff they wanted to try and testing youtube stupidities they saw others do. I thought the earlier seasons were better then the later. they were more authentic vs later where they become too commercial and had too many silly things in it.

HeavyMike@reddit

According to sources close to the show, the government deemed the original episode’s content to be highly sensitive and potentially damaging to national interests. At NY Comicon in 2016 Adam Savage issued a brief statement, hinting that their moon landing experiments yielded "compelling" results, but they were unable to share details due to imposed restrictions by the federal government. Many of the experiments did not make it into the final cut of the show, or were heavily censored.

vescis@reddit

I guarantee you no level of detail would be sufficient to stop the conspiracies

reynloldbot@reddit

This is absolutely true. I’ve engaged with moon hoax people and they wouldn’t budge even if you personally flew them to the moon using the same hardware and showed them the landers and footprints on the surface.

SpaceNinjaDino@reddit

It's too bad that a lot of tech used to get to the moon is essentially lost in a way. NASA has to reinvent the wheel with modern tech because it would be too expensive and backwards to refabricate the old tech. A lot of intimate knowledge was lost because it wasn't passed onto new crew after 1972.

Well, there was the Apollo-Soyuz project that eventually led to Skylab, so a lot of that stuff did continue to evolve, but you are right that a lot of the engineering and documentation was lost over time

madmattd@reddit

Yes, if you think the conspiracy theory believers can actually be reasoned with, boy I’ve got news for you…

There’s so much more depth to all of the moon hoax claims the mythbusters showcased, and so many more claims they didn’t address, that there’s no way a single episode could cover everything. I think they assume if you find the topic they are covering particularly interesting that you’ll be willing to learn more on your own (and that goes for just about every myth they’ve ever done).

I find the moon hoax conspiracy utterly fascinating and it helped me learn lots of cool things about astronomy, rocketry and the Apollo missions. Phil Plait’s “Bad Astronomy” series is a great place to start if you want to learn more.