A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon

Rating:
Summary: These same stupid "arguments" have been around for decades
Review: There is no need to see this. There is nothing new here at all. These same stupid "arguments" about shadows (perspective issues inherent to 2D photographs), radiation belts (like the producers know anything about them), Hollywood props (hey that cloud in the sky looks like it has a "C" carved in it, so it must be fake), etc. have been around for decades. The rest of the rhetorical questions posed here are less than illuminating (yes Nixon was a liar, but what does that have to do with the price of beans in Somalia?)

I saw some crackpot on TV discuss the hypothesis that the lunar missions were all fakes way back in the 70's. I was about eight at the time and I recall that I bought into it somewhat. My parents (both scientists) laughed at me, but I just thought they were ignorant because they didn't catch this incredibly enlightening bit on the idiot box!

I hate to burst the bubbles of those who are drawn to these same paranoid fantasies some thirty years later, but life is full of little disappointments. I remember as a gullible teenager being fascinated by the omnipresent "no money down real estate" guys on late-night TV. That seemed like a really fresh idea to me until I saw a dim-witted character in a forty-odd-year-old movie gushing about the exact same con. He was all ready to send them his money too!

I can't say with absolute certainty what happened on these missions, but I CAN tell you with absolute certainty that there is no proof of anything here (except that some things never change.)

Someone should put the crooks who recycled this thirty-year-old tripe into a rocket and send THEM to the moon. Watch out for that radiation belt guys!

Rating:
Summary: An HONEST Review - ( Not Another Shuttle Accident = NASA)
Review: This movie is very convincing - WE NEVER WENT TO THE MOON - The footage shows them faking it, and by the way the window was NOT SQUARE as another reviewer/debunker stated and this was NEVER SHOWN ON FOX (they aired "Conspiracy Theory" a worthwhile program but nowhere near as convincing as this film). Listen as Neil Armstrong all but admits the truth at the Whitehouse, Learn not only "how" but "why" we were decieved. Any thinking person would have a very, very hard time believing we actually went after seeing this video. you can explain away a few inconsistancies but when you are faced with this overwhelming mountain of evidence even a blind man could see the truth - We sent unmanned probes but WE COULD NOT & DID NOT - EVER STEP FOOT ON THE MOON - End of story.

Rating:
Summary: A great comedy for the ages.
Review: Now I'm not one to completely throw out conspiracy theories. I will listen to any, but they have to at least stand up to scrutiny. For instance the fine series "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" is actually scary in that after watching all the episodes, and seeing the fair descriptions and presentations of all the theories, witnesses, and evidence, the only Kennedy assassination theory that DOESN'T make any sense is the official one given by our government. Now with this film we get a possible concept (that we didn't actually go to the moon), concieved from some (but not all) reasonable ideas as to why and how such a thing could be faked. The problem is that the "evidence" given to "prove" this is so laughably bad that it couldn't hold up the weight of a butterfly, let alone such a huge claim. I particularly like the flag waving in the wind idea. What the film maker fails to notice is that every single shot of the flag "waving" in the "wind" also involves an astronaught actively fumbling and handling the flagpole. So this person thinks that the position of a cloth flag wouldn't be drastically effected by an astronaught, who is effectively six times as strong as usual moving the pole? Now footage of the flag waving when no astronaught is even in sight would be convincing. This footage just convinces you that the person making the claims can't grasp simple concepts of physics that even a child could comprehend. Another favorite bit of "evidence" is the shadows that are suposedly cast from different light sources. All these pictures do is convince me that the person making the claims can't grasp the simple concept of perspective. When viewing a landscape from an angle with a single light source, the shadows DO NOT run parallel to each other as is claimed, but rather they will all appear to converge towards a single spot on the horizon. That is exactly what these images show. Also the claim of shots of supposed different areas of the moon that are fakes because they have the same backgrounds are easily explained by perspective, when you take into consideration that you could move five miles to the east or west of your position, but that enormous mountain fifty miles to the north isn't going to change position much in the background of your images.

Probably the most laughable bit of evidence was something that was actually on the website for the movie. It shows the Lander and claims that it couldn't possibly have launched from the surface of the moon back into lunar orbit because it's fuel tanks would have to be one sixth the size of those on the space shuttle, and they were not. This is somewhat true. If the space shuttle requires a certain amount of fuel to reach earth orbit, then with one sixth gravity on the moon you would need one sixth of that fuel to reach lunar orbit. Of course this is only if the lunar lander was the same mass as the space shuttle, which it wasn't. In fact it was extremely small compared to the shuttle. So it would take one sixth of the fuel it takes to get the shuttle off the earth to get the SHUTTLE off the moon. And noe of this takes into account that it wouldn't even take that much fuel as the shuttle leaving Earth must travel through the atmosphere to do so, and the moon has no atmosphere. This would also drastically cut the fuel needed to get the lander pod off the surface.

This "film", or "documentary" is a sloppy joke that couldn't convince anyone who wasn't looking to be convinced. Any intelligent person who looks at the "evidence" and draws their own conclusion from it will see that there is nothing behind this arguement. Not that the calims made are impossible, just that this arguement made to back up the claims has no weight, and proves nothing but the ineptitude of the person making the arguement, and anyone who would be convinced by it. In this way the film is a total failure. It sets out to do something specific, and fails in every possible way. For it's entertainment value though it is high. You can examine it, and pick it apart, and experience it crumble in front of you. It's a wreck. I suppose that is what makes it such fun to watch.

Rating:
Summary: Not just nonsense, but dull nonsense
Review: I knew when I bought this bit of silliness that the science in it would be either suspect, or nonexistent, but I didn't expect it to be so breathtakingly boring. The FOX special, though equally bad from a science/logic standpoint, was at least fun to watch.

Mr. Sibrell has so many faults in his reasoning and film footage, that a review of all the errors would be longer than I care to write or that most people would care to read. Still, here are a few items that should provide some idea of how bad this tape is:

1. Twice, Sibrell, through the monotone narrator (if I could have watched it with the sound off, I would have), refers to the USSR having the first animal in space. This is true, of course, but the animal he shows in both cases is a chimp. The Soviet critter who was first in space was Laika - a dog. Footage of Laika is easily found. I've got at least two tapes with her in my own collection. This is sloppy, lazy production.

2. Sibrell mentions that the USSR was the first program to accomplish a rendezvous in space. This is a questionable claim, since the rendezvous in question was really just two orbiting spacecraft passing within a few miles of each other without being in the same orbit. Still, I'll give it to him. The problem is that the footage accompanying the claim is of a US rendezvous in the Gemini program. I suspect he had to use US footage because none exists of the Russian rendezvous (too far apart for pictures). Still, this is shoddy production.

3. The cornerstone of his claim is the usual one for "Moon-Landing Hoax" proponents: the Van Allen Belts are too dangerous to fly through. He claims heavy lead shielding would be necessary to protect the astronauts. Well, he's right about one thing - the radiation would be lethal to astronauts - if they were traveling naked outside their ship. The flaw in the reasoning is simple. All radiation is NOT created equally. The belts are NOT X-rays or other electromagnetic radiation. The radiation is PARTICLE radiation (which he acknowledges), which is much easier to shield against. Did we need shielding? Yes. Did it need to be thick lead? No.

There's plenty more to ridicule, but I'll let it go at that. I do have my own theory, however: Since all Sibrell's claims are so easily refuted by even a tiny understanding of science, I don't think even Mr. Sibrell believes this load of manure. He just hopes enough other people can be duped to make "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon" a good meal ticket for him.

Now, if you want to really learn something, including why hoax proponents claims are nonsense, order Phil Plaitt's book, "Bad Astronomy." It's an entertaining read, and you won't be wasting your time or money.

A postscript to my review (added on Dec. 18. 2003) has to do with an interview or two I've read from Mr. Sibrell. In these interviews, he changes his claim that the view of the Earth taken through the Apollo CSM window was staged using a round window and a cutout of some sort. It was pointed out by quite a few people that, if the crew had been filming the Earth from Earth orbit, the land masses and clouds should appear much larger. In fact, the Earth, in that footage, appears EXACTLY as you'd expect it to from 130,000 miles altitude. Apparently, Mr. Sibrell agreed. He now claims the shot was staged using TRANSPARENCIES placed on the window. Too bad he didn't make that theory up first.

Something else I can't resist regarding the seemingly non-parallel shadows: Go find a sixth grade art student and have him/her explain the phenomenon of a "vanishing point," then go look at the shadows again.

How the USA managed to pass the Soviets in rocket technology is a matter of history. After Alexei Leonov's near-fatal first spacewalk, the USSR had exactly zero flights until after the USA's entire Project Gemini was completed. In Gemini, the US accomplished the first REAL rendezvous, first docking, first changing of orbit during a flight. and two long duration missions in addition to multiple spacewalks. Then, while our Saturn V booster was operational, the Soviet moon rocket, the N1, was lauched four times - and blew up four times.

I stick by my theory of last year: Sibrell knows this stuff is nonsense. He's just making a living pedalling his tape to suckers.

Rating:
Summary: One-of-a-kind footage???
Review: Bart Sibrel claims that in his "documentary" you can see an arm move across the earth."Is this the arm of God moving across the earth, or an outtake of an astronaut's arm in front of a mockup of the earth as it might appear from a distance if they were actually able to leave earth orbit? See our streaming video: "God's arm or astronaut's?" Either way, it's one-of-a-kind footage and is only available in "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon!" Not so fast! This footage has been available for decades. Producer Mark Gray has transferred for the space enthusiast the original unedited NASA Apollo 11 television transmissions, 16mm film & Hasselblad 70mm camera images onto a 3-disc DVD set entitled "Apollo 11: Men on The Moon" available from Amazon.com. Mr. Sibrel's "one-of-a-kind footage" can be viewed in it's "raw" form on Disc One - FLY ME TO THE MOON: Chapter 3 - Unscheduled transmission 30:28 GET.

In reality it's TV transmission of the earth taken through a SQUARE side window inside the darkened Command Module. The camera is not right up against the window. It looks to be about 2 - 4 feet between the window & camera. The lights were turned off inside the spacecraft so that all you see is the earth. The so called "God's arm or astronaut's" is nothing more then the edge of the window! You clearly see this as the picture of the earth is focused out & focused back inside the Command Module.

Rating:
Summary: Fun For The Feeble-Minded
Review: Complete and utter paranoid nonsense. Total disregard for scientific facts. Then again, stupidity is its own punishment.

Rating:
Summary: There is a sucker born every minute
Review: About a year ago, my son told me about a program he had seen on fox (deliberately not capitalized) about how NASA had faked the moon landings. Since both of us are engineers, we had a great laugh about that and couldn't believe that with the great wealth of scientific and engineering data available, anyone could be swindled by such an obvious attempt to make money. Recently, my son bought this DVD, used at second hand store, and we watched it. As I watched this show, two thoughts kept running through my mind. First, was that the writers and producers of this show know nothing about, engineering and science or if they did, they were out to deliberately cheat people out of their money. Even now, after months of pondering these two ideas, I still can't say which one is true, maybe both are. That being said, I'll provide you with a few comments about things I noticed, based on my over 50 years as a machine design engineer including several years working on the Saturn V launch vehicle, designing fluids lines. One last thing, there is no opposing point of view from either NASA or the scientific/engineering community on this DVD, only one-sided, non-scientific spouting.

The first thing that struck me was how could a conspiracy of this magnitude, with 400,000 people and hundreds of companies working on the project, be maintained for over 30 years, without someone coming forward and saying that the landings were faked. There has not even been a deathbed confession. The supporters of this conspiracy theory believe or at least want the viewer to believe that only a select few were involved in creating the faked landings; however, thousands of engineers and scientists received data on vehicle performance, such as pressure, temperature, flow rates, acceleration and many other parameters that also had to be faked. I know; I was there. There are only two possible ways that this could happen. First, NASA had an alternative of group of engineers and scientist that provided fake data to all parties involved, but I don't how they could fool the thousands who actually designed and built the hardware and software. Of course I don't know how this data could survive over thirty years of scrutiny. The second possibility is that those thousands of people were in on the hoax too, but if that were the case, there now are a huge number of people involved.

The other thing that struck is their photograph analysis, or lack of rigorous photographic analysis. While I am not a professional photographer or a professional photographic analyst, I am quite proficient at engineering graphics and spatial analysis, which are both needed to develop drawings that are ultimately used to fabricate products that I developed. At least two views are needed, say the top and side, so that any part can be manufactured. In other words, you can't make a three-dimensional part from a single two-dimensional drawing. When it comes photography the same principles apply. Therefore, one can only infer the direction of the shadows from a single photograph and the writers' arguments about multiple lighting sources fail. Also, if there were more than one light source, wouldn't there be multiple shadows. It happens all the time at home. Try it yourself.

My final thought is in regards to the moon rocks, which are not covered in any detail in the DVD. I find it extremely interesting that not one geologist of the many thousands that have examined these rocks who come from all over the world has come forward to say the moon rocks were fakes. Furthermore, many moon rocks have been given to scientists in countries that are not friendly to the United States and again no statements about fake moon rocks.

Save your money and a buy a book or a movie that is written by people who understand, science and engineering.

Rating:
Summary: A Little Knowledge is a Ridiculous Thing
Review: Bart Sibrel's "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon" claims to prove that man never walked on the moon. But the "proof" consists of far-fetched photographic interpretations (including footage of Apollo 11 "staging" its mission), unsupported claims, and rhetorical questions easily answered by common sense and a little research.

We see a staged spacecraft landing on the videobox; the same scene is shown in the video. But since he doesn't mention that these images come from the 1976 fictional movie "Capricorn One," Sibrel obviously wants us to wrongly believe that they are from an Apollo mission.

Sibrel discusses the earth's Van Allen radiation belts, and claims that astronauts traveling through them could not survive. He says this is why the Soviets never sent men to the moon. Truth is, scientists don't really know how dangerous the belts are. But they took the gamble that the men would survive the 90-minute trip through them--which they did. (If the Soviets "knew" no man could survive the belts, why didn't they trumpet this fact when the Americans were claiming to beat them to the moon? Instead, they congratulated NASA.)

The reason the Soviets didn't go is that their moon rocket never worked. We're told that the Soviets' 1969 space technology was ahead of the US, which is baloney; by 1969 the US had docked two spacecraft six times--a maneuver critical for a moon landing--while the Soviets had not done it once.

If the moon landings were faked, how'd they keep the thousands of NASA employees quiet? Sibrel claims "only a few people saw the entire picture," but never gives any names or proof.

Some of Sibrel's reasoning makes your head spin. Sibrel concludes the reason no photos of Neil Armstrong on the moon exist is because he "feared liability" if the moon hoax were revealed. Then why did he sign the moon plaque?

The flag appears to flutter on the moon; how can it if there's no air? Sibrel believes that "massive air conditioners" blew across the soundstage to cool the actors inside the spacesuits, which made the flag flutter. But how could someone feel a breeze inside a spacesuit? (Apparently the fact that the flag, suspended by a rigid wire along its top to keep it unfurled, is shaking, not fluttering, from the astronauts' adjusting the flagpole just seems too simple.)

Sibrel notes that objects lit by one light source produce parallel shadows, and shows a moon photo where two shadows are not parallel. He deduces that there was a secondary light source, which proves they weren't on the moon, since the sun was the moon's only light source. But shadows only run parallel on a flat surface. The moon's surface is not flat, which accounts for the divergent shadows. You can even see this in Sibrel's own demonstration photo, which shows two shadows parallel on a street--but which diverge when they hit the curb!

Sibrel reveals his "lost footage," which supposedly shows Apollo 11 being staged. We see the earth from the spacecraft, which is now halfway to the moon. The earth moves as the camera moves. We also see the earth's penumbra (the line separating day from night). But Sibrel tells us another story. He claims that Apollo is still in earth orbit, and that the astronauts faked the penumbra by placing a piece of cardboard on the window to make the earth look smaller than it really is.

How stupid does Sibrel think we are? If they were in orbit, the continents would be bigger. And when the earth moves, the penumbra moves along with it, which wouldn't happen if the cardboard were attached to the window. (In response to an inquiry before I bought the movie, Sibrel assured me that we see them attaching the cardboard. But we don't.)

We meet a mysterious "third party" who allegedly coached the astronauts with their script: a sinister-looking fellow smoking a cigarette. But he's never identified, and we never hear nor see him saying anything.

Sibrel claims to catch Michael Collins contradicting himself at a press conference, where he says he didn't see any stars; in his later book, he says he did. But Collins is discussing a solar experiment in which the sun's glare blocked out the stars, which is why he couldn't see them.

Other answers:

1. Why is there no moon dust on the landing pads? Dust was blown down and away during landing. Wouldn't it billow up and back? Billowing is caused by the friction of dust particles against air molecules, and there is no air on the moon.

2. Why, if you double the speed of the moon movies, do the astronauts look like they're running on earth? They DON'T look like they're running on earth.

3. Why is there no blast crater underneath the LM? Just before landing, they throttled back to almost no thrust at all. But why does Norman Rockwell's moon landing painting show a blast crater? Artistic license.

Sibrel wants the astronauts to stop lying and come clean. This includes men like Apollo 12's Alan Bean, who now does paintings of astronauts on the moon. And Apollo 15's James Irwin and Apollo 16's Charles Duke, who were both so moved by their moon walks that they became evangelical Christians. Or Apollo 14's Ed Mitchell, whose experience motivated him to found an ESP institute. Funny how these men had their lives changed so profoundly by something that didn't happen.

A possible redeeming use for this truly idiotic video would be to demonstrate tricks con-artists use in constructing faulty arguments, including begging the question (assuming something is true when it has not been proven so) and the argument ad hominem (appealing to emotion so as to lead away from the truth). I hope that there are enough intelligent parents and teachers out there who can explain to their kids why the FOX moon hoax special and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon" are exercises in deception, absurd arguments, and misleading claims masquerading as facts.

Rating:
Summary: Paranoid nonsense.
Review: We have had many conspiracy documentaries with their manufactured "evidence":-the "In Search Of Noahs Ark" film(which was filmed in Utah),the "Elvis Is Alive" TV film which even host Bill Bixby disputed on-air,the Nostradamus special that produced "evidence" telling us why the world was going to end in 1999 and others.
But the daddy of them all are the "Moon Landing hoax" films with their paranoid nonsense.
It is interesting that out of 400,000 people that worked on the moon landings,they cannot come up with one witness to dispute it.
And they cannot explain who did the effects,where they got a soundstage big enough to film it,why they took cars on some missions,how they managed to "fool" all the world's scientists and geologists with hundreds of pounds of moon rock that was brought back and how come instruments left on the moon sent back signals to Earth until 1979?
And they did this six times without anyone finding out.
Above all the silly conspiracy comments by the paranoid,they cannot answer one simple question-if it was a hoax then why would they do it six times?

Rating:
Summary: Good production, Facts Somewhat Believable
Review: I recently viewed the DVD "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon" and I felt the artistic creativity was excellent. The facts presented, however, were somewhat believable but then again I am not sure of the "never before seen footage". From other sources it is said that that footage is available to anyone. Also, the title "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon" came from the movie Capricorn 1. There is a scene in the movie that one of the actors (I don't remember which one) said "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Mars". Also, the part in the documentary that shows the astronauts staging the landing inside a studio is directly from the same movie. Mr. Sibrel is a very creative and intelligent man but from personal experience, he can lie to you without any remorse or apology and that has changed my view of his credibility. But see the movie for yourself and make your own judgement.