A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon (2001)

In an otherwise good review, loleralacartelort7890 says "The truth is that the Americans use a secret aluminum-anti-radiation-alloy. It is not that well-known. And the exact specifications are a secret. And why is it a secret: Well, why should they reveal it back then?? If they where in a space race with the Russians, then it would be VERY dumb to reveal that they had new technology that could shield crew against radiation." This is completely incorrect. There is (and was) no "secret" to radiation protection in Apollo. The design and construction of the Apollo Command Module has long been publicly available. It uses a lightweight "honeycomb" of aluminum and stainless steel. The entire outer surface (except the windows of course) is covered with a heat shield made of a phenolic resin, thicker on the bottom that faces forward during re-entry. These materials are actually *better* at stopping the kind of radiation we have in space (charged particles) than lead, which is better suited to stopping ionizing photons like X-rays and gamma rays.Space radiation is a definite problem for *long term* space flight because of the risk of big solar flares. But it simply wasn't a serious threat to the Apollo astronauts. The Command Module gave them pretty good protection during their brief (1/2 hour or so) passage through the Van Allen belts. They all carried dosimeters so we know exactly how much radiation they each received: no more than 1.5 rem, and usually much less. Of the 24 men who flew to the Moon (12 of whom landed), 18 are still alive. Only two have died from cancer: Alan Shepard (leukemia) and Jack Swigert (bone cancer). The rest died from heart attacks, pancreatitis (Roosa), and a motorcycle accident (Conrad). These are actually pretty good statistics for a group of men now in their late 70s (Shepard would be 86).

I was very skeptical about the claims that Apollo program was fake at first. But a few pictures that is originate from NASA itself on their official pages make me wonder and raise my first questions, as they are so obviously fake on the very first sight: http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/gallery/apollo08_earthrise.jpg Hence I started looking out for more data and informations and with just few hours of research I manage to stumble upon some even more disturbing pictures. NASA claim that there is no artificial lighting used on the Moon, yet take a look there: http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/frame/?AS11-40-5872 http://www.lpi.usra.edu/resources/apollo/frame/?AS15-82-11057 What are these? A stars? Why do they look like very much a classic studio spotlights? Hence I started taking these "Apolo hoax" guys way more seriously. And there come the movie - it answer most of my questions about why it was necessary to fake the landings. Since Russians are ahead in the space race and the war in Vietnam is all but lost, the USA is not looked like superpower at all. The assassination of JFK by "lone Communist sympathizer" Lee Harvey Oswald in 1963 was just another drop to the declining global leadership of USA. Hence a success was desperately need. When it was discovered that the Van Allen belts prevent the mission to be successful it become necessary to convince at least the public about this success. How? A TETR-A satellite, that was launched to simulate communication and data flow with Apollo crews it claimed to be used, as NASA lied about it "entering atmosphere" in 1968, since was well orbiting back in 1972... Take it with grain of salt, but take it. Worth considering.

I think that a splendid 10 out of 10 rating for this documentary is well deserved, for we owe it to Bart Sibrel to have discovered that Michael Collins was merely a camera man on that infamous trip. What he did was very clever, to darken all the windows of the capsule bar one, and to leave a black veil onto the remaining window with a tiny visible circle. Then as time wore by, he would simply make that circle smaller and smaller thereby creating an optical illusion of and fool us into believing that we were seeing the earth from a distance. Of course, we now know that none of these manned Apollo missions ever travelled into deep space beyond the Van Allen radiation belts. Still though, there are far too many people among us for whom any talk of a lunar hoax sparks off defensive emotions of hysteria coupled with sarcasm and rebuffle. Neil Armstrong has as of today 07/11/2006 spoken merely THREE TIMES about his so called giant leap on the moon! What does that tell you?

The Great Old Myth! Did we ever land on the moon? First of all, this is a MUCH better documentary then Fox's "Did we really land on the moon", especially because of some of the footage you're presented. For example; How does NASA explain the clip were Armstrong tells ground control that they're 130,000 miles away from earth, and by holding the camera up against the window they get this perfect shot of the earth. Then seconds later turning on the cockpit light and removing a cardboard cutout of earth in a shadow, showing the earth being right outside their window? I would like to hear the explanation for that!