Apollo 17: alleged inconsistency of shadows

txt29

Senior Member.
In the thread https://www.metabunk.org/apollo-17-photos-and-transcript-contradicting-explanation-required.t9186/ user NobleOne made the following statement about the video discussed there:
Very nice set of proofs debunking moon walks. Also, shadows from buggy, stones, pole in the middle to astronaut get interesting from 04:42 to 04:54. They are not consistent in their directions. It's all to obvious the moon landing as is presented to us is governments perpetuated lie.

This is the concerned video:



And this is likely the frame he refers to:

apolo17-shadows1.jpg

NobleOne probably refers to the shadows pointing in different angles towards the same point further away. I guess he never heard about the term called the perspective. It is true that given the distance of the light source (the Sun), the shadows should appear almost parallel. What NobleOne omitted is that this would be true only for the view from a distance directly above the scene. In photos from another angle (or in realistic painting and artwork), parallels appear as lines joining at a distant point, hence the shadows in this photo are perfectly conform with being parallel. In conclusion the shadows in the photo cannot be considered as an evidence for the use of multiple light sources (i.e. reflectors in a studio) or for other image/video manipulation:

apolo17-shadows.jpg
 
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To me it is really a bad argument regarding Apollo, by conspirators, I my self did a lot of experiments on this and it seemed it was much like the crepuscular rays problem (convergence point), where these people tend to forget perspective combined with uneven terrain of the Moon (something which greatly exaggerates the view).
Here is one photo taken by me in which the perspective is quite the same. Also notice that this is was on an even ground which means if you can see non-parallel shadows in this then Moon is never going to be an exception:WP_20170709_07_00_58_Pro.jpg
See what I mean @NobleOne?
 
Ok & thanks. I was wrong thinking that multi directional shadows on photo are not possible. I can also accept that moon terrain is not well suited for analyzing shadows on photos. However, this only explains shadows and does not guarantee that imagery isn't faked on Earth.
 
However, this only explains shadows and does not guarantee that imagery isn't faked on Earth.
If it is not the shadows, what makes you think the photo was faked? If you have any evidence backing your opinion, do not hesitate to post it (just do it in another thread if it is not related to the shadows).
 
In conclusion the shadows in the photo cannot be considered as an evidence for the use of multiple light sources (i.e. reflectors in a studio) or for other image/video manipulation:

Furthermore, multiple light sources cause multiple shadows. That's fairly easy to prove.
 
Ok & thanks. I was wrong thinking that multi directional shadows on photo are not possible. I can also accept that moon terrain is not well suited for analyzing shadows on photos. However, this only explains shadows and does not guarantee that imagery isn't faked on Earth.

Here at Metabunk we look at individual claims of evidence, stripping away the false ones so that whatever remains is closer to the truth. This should be a positive and useful thing regardless of what that truth is.

So here this thread is about removing the false claims that shadows that appear to go in different directions is evidence of multiple or nearby light sources.

It's unfortunate that this exact claim has been debunked MANY times in the past, many years ago. Part of what we do here is to try to make it so people can find the explanations.

If I might ask for some help here, @NobleOne, did you try to look up any explanations of the shadows before you posted the claim? Did you find anything? What search terms did you look for? What might have made it easier for you to find the explanation yourself?
 
In the thread https://www.metabunk.org/apollo-17-photos-and-transcript-contradicting-explanation-required.t9186/ user NobleOne made the following statement about the video discussed there:


This is the concerned video:



And this is likely the frame he refers to:

apolo17-shadows1.jpg

NobleOne probably refers to the shadows pointing in different angles towards the same point further away. I guess he never heard about the term called the perspective. It is true that given the distance of the light source (the Sun), the shadows should appear almost parallel. What NobleOne omitted is that this would be true only for the view from a distance directly above the scene. In photos from another angle (or in realistic painting and artwork), parallels appear as lines joining at a distant point, hence the shadows in this photo are perfectly conform with being parallel. In conclusion the shadows in the photo cannot be considered as an evidence for the use of multiple light sources (i.e. reflectors in a studio) or for other image/video manipulation:

apolo17-shadows.jpg


It's also worth pointing out that the frame identified there is actually a composite image of 4 individual photographs, AS17-134-20422 to 5. The process of producing a panoramic image from those frames is going to add distortions to the result.
 
If I might ask for some help here
It is actually my fault, not NobleOne's. I started the thread using his claim from another discussion. It is true I did not search too consistently. The expression "moon shadows" gave three pages of results, and I only scanned the first page of results, finding nothing fitting. I should have checked the option "search titles only" on the advanced search page, but I did not get that far in this case. With that option enabled, there would be only one result (https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-moon-landing-and-nasa-photo-non-parallel-shadows.t585/), which might have been sufficient for the debunking. However, I do not think that debunking the claim using this specific photo was useless. I think it persuaded NobleOne quicker than sending him to an old thread that he could be possibly less eager to read through.
 
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If I might ask for some help here, @NobleOne, did you try to look up any explanations of the shadows before you posted the claim? Did you find anything? What search terms did you look for? What might have made it easier for you to find the explanation yourself?

Of course you may ask Mick.

I watched the video in another thread here: https://www.metabunk.org/apollo-17-photos-and-transcript-contradicting-explanation-required.t9186/ and noticed those shadows. I didn't want to make specific claim and discuss about it so I did not searched for explanation because it won't change my opinion on the moon landing event. I only wrote what I noticed to effectively stir up conversation in the thread. I read about those shadows years ago (among other things considering moon landing event) but forgot about explanation, so refreshing was absolutely necessary and positive for me.

Sorry if I caused confusion or messed up the thread. It was not my intention to do that and I don't have a hidden smile on my face.
 
It is actually my fault, not NobleOne's. I started the thread using his claim from another discussion. It is true I did not search too consistently. The expression "moon shadows" gave three pages of results, and I only scanned the first page of results, finding nothing fitting. I should have checked the option "search titles only" on the advanced search page, but I did not get that far in this case. With that option enabled, there would be only one result (https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-moon-landing-and-nasa-photo-non-parallel-shadows.t585/), which might have been sufficient for the debunking. However, I do not think that debunking the claim using this specific photo was useless. I think it persuaded NobleOne quicker than sending him to an old thread that he could be possibly less eager to read through.

From my point of view, you've done the right thing. Actually, you've done exactly what this site is all about. Thank you!
 
I did not searched for explanation because it won't change my opinion on the moon landing event

Well what would change your opinion? I'm sure you've seen over the years hundreds of similar claims of "evidence" being raised, and every single one of them being explained, just like the shadows.

At what point do you start to consider that perhaps there's something to the moon landing after all?
 
Well what would change your opinion? I'm sure you've seen over the years hundreds of similar claims of "evidence" being raised, and every single one of them being explained, just like the shadows.
Yes I know. But there is more to discuss. Like: How would human body perform in a magnetic field different from the Earth or in a environment with extremely weak or no magnetic field?

At what point do you start to consider that perhaps there's something to the moon landing after all?

There is no such point. The only way is to repeat the voyage now in the 21st century.
 
You won't even consider it?
Nope. Why should I? Mostly I keep this to myself and trying not to change others belief when talking about this subject. Some people think it's for real and some don't. Some people think that Earth is flat, I don't. Just as you do here on Metabunk so I do when conversing about flat earth. The result is that most people continue to believe even if their claim is debunked. It's a system of belief.
 
...How would human body perform in a magnetic field different from the Earth or in a environment with extremely weak or no magnetic field?

There is no such point. The only way is to repeat the voyage now in the 21st century.
But you know that that won't really do it:
If we repeated "the voyage" in 2017, YouTube would immediately declare:
"Sure, with almost 50 years of improved technology, now it can be done,
but in primitive 1969 days they had to fake it to keep funding coming in..."

or somesuch. (Yeah...I've learned that the goalposts are on wheels).

Just curious though: You must have encountered some amazing,
incredibly compelling evidence a while back to be so damned cemented into your position.
I'm surely not the only one here that would like to get a gander at that holy grail! Please share.
 
But you know that that won't really do it:
If we repeated "the voyage" in 2017, YouTube would immediately declare:
"Sure, with almost 50 years of improved technology, now it can be done,
but in primitive 1969 days they had to fake it to keep funding coming in..."

or somesuch. (Yeah...I've learned that the goalposts are on wheels).

Just curious though: You must have encountered some amazing,
incredibly compelling evidence a while back to be so damned cemented into your position.
I'm surely not the only one here that would like to get a gander at that holy grail! Please share.
Very funny!

Sometimes debunkers give an analogy of Concorde airplane for the reason why "the voyage" isn't repeated nowadays. It's to expensive to keep the program going, they said. However, people still fly in airplanes but they are not flying to the Moon. Isn't that interesting?

What were the reasons to go to Moon back then, years in a row? Why sudden disinterest for almost 50 years? Do we know everything about the Moon so our adventures on Moon are over? And how is it possible that back then NASA had money for developing technology resulting in 9 manned missions (6 landings included) and nowadays can't afford even one?
... that holy grail! Please share.

There is no holy grail.
 
Very funny!

Sometimes debunkers give an analogy of Concorde airplane for the reason why "the voyage" isn't repeated nowadays. It's to expensive to keep the program going, they said. However, people still fly in airplanes but they are not flying to the Moon. Isn't that interesting?

What were the reasons to go to Moon back then, years in a row? Why sudden disinterest for almost 50 years? Do we know everything about the Moon so our adventures on Moon are over? And how is it possible that back then NASA had money for developing technology resulting in 9 manned missions (6 landings included) and nowadays can't afford even one?


There is no holy grail.
Well, yeah...in the '60s & '70s it was mind boggling and new,
so we forked over a gazillion dollars to explore and try to understand it.

Then it was largely understood, mystery mostly solved, and no way you could get the
taxpayers to pay for hyper-expensive, unnecessary, potentially astronaut-killing missions.
It's really pretty basic. You aren't saying that question is really what has you so cemented in (?)
 
What were the reasons to go to Moon back then, years in a row? Why sudden disinterest for almost 50 years? Do we know everything about the Moon so our adventures on Moon are over? And how is it possible that back then NASA had money for developing technology resulting in 9 manned missions (6 landings included) and nowadays can't afford even one?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race

The Space Race began on August 2, 1955, when the Soviet Union responded to the US announcement four days earlier of intent to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year, by declaring they would also launch a satellite "in the near future". The Soviet Union beat the US to this, with the October 4, 1957 orbiting of Sputnik 1, and later beat the US to the first human in space, Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961. The "race" peaked with the July 20, 1969 US landing of the first humans on the Moon with Apollo 11. The USSR tried but failed crewed lunar missions, and eventually cancelled them and concentrated on Earth orbital space stations.

A period of détente followed with the April 1972 agreement on a co-operative Apollo–Soyuz Test Project, resulting in the July 1975 rendezvous in Earth orbit of a US astronaut crew with a Soviet cosmonaut crew. The end of the Space Race is harder to pinpoint than its beginning, but it was over by the December, 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, after which true spaceflight cooperation between the US and Russia began.
Content from External Source
 
Sometimes debunkers give an analogy of Concorde airplane for the reason why "the voyage" isn't repeated nowadays. It's to expensive to keep the program going, they said. However, people still fly in airplanes but they are not flying to the Moon. Isn't that interesting?
People don't fly to the moon, but rovers fly to the moon, and to Mars, and people spend months in orbit on the International Space Station.

Think about what can bring the best benefit/cost ratio: a rover that requires no food or oxygen, can spend months or years on the surface, is expendable if things go wrong, and doesn't have to be brought back to Earth, or a human, who needs lots of expensive and heavy life support, can only spend a limited time on the surface, has to be brought home again and will be a public relations disaster if he/she doesn't?
 
I can go on forever (since I myself took a lot of these pictures), you can also search on Google:shadows_trees.jpg
That first image illustrates another property of shadows that shows there is a single light source - if the shadow of the camera is in the photo, then lines drawn from an object through its own shadow (eg the tips of the posts here) will converge at the shadow of the camera:

upload_2017-10-24_10-48-42.png


AS17-136-20744 from Apollo 17 is an extreme example of "non-parallel shadows", but they obey this rule, meeting in the chest area where the camera was mounted.


Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/21703935065/sizes/l


upload_2017-10-24_11-27-10.png


(It's not always easy to tell exactly which part of an irregular rock casts the shadow, and of course irregularities in the surface mean that the alignment will not always be 100% perfect, but it's pretty clear what is happening.)
 
...What were the reasons to go to Moon back then, years in a row? Why sudden disinterest for almost 50 years? Do we know everything about the Moon so our adventures on Moon are over? And how is it possible that back then NASA had money for developing technology resulting in 9 manned missions (6 landings included) and nowadays can't afford even one?...

The Apollo program wasn’t a program designed to move forward in measured increments, making steady improvements. Instead, it was a high-pressure, high-stakes program, intended to get the job done as quickly as humanly possible. It was a dangerous program, in that it pushed technology to the limit and required that every part of the spacecraft work to near perfection.

Robert Frost: Instructor and Flight Controller at NASA:
The US didn't continue because the Nixon Administration redirected NASA's focus towards building the Space Shuttle, partly due to the public losing interest in the moon landings.

The Russians lost interest as soon as the US landed in 1969. They almost immediately redirected their focus towards the Soyuz and Salyut programs that eventually led to Mir.

No other country had BOTH the necessary technology and the financial resources to make the effort.
Content from External Source
https://www.quora.com/Why-have-humans-never-been-back-to-the-Moon-after-1972

NASA's budget was at its peak in 1966 and significantly declined after that even after Apollo 11's landing!

NASA_budget_linegraph_BH.PNG
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA#/media/File:NASA_budget_linegraph_BH.PNG

Political will was lost, NASA's budget dropped from 4.4% federal budget to about 0.5%. The budget for all the Apollo mission accounted to $20.4 billion if we simply added yearly spending of its 15 year-lifespan (1959–1973), or $109 billion in today’s money. Today NASA's budget is $19.5 billion, 0.47% federal budget. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA

Still NASA did this: Until 2011 I think from Space Shuttle

$209 Billion:
The estimated total cost of NASA's 30-year space shuttle program from development through its retirement.

229,132: The amount of cargo (in pounds) that NASA's shuttles have returned to Earth from space through 2010.

198,728.5: The number of man-hours NASA shuttles spent in space during their 30-year history. That's about 8,280 days of manned spaceflight, NASA officials said.

20,830: The number of orbits of Earth completed by NASA shuttles before the last 13-day mission of Atlantis during the STS-135 flight. Atlantis will add another 200 orbits to that tally.

1252(as of 2016 April): Satellites and other payloads, including components for the International Space Station, deployed by NASA space shuttles.

135: Total number of NASA space shuttle missions that will have flown between 1981 and 2011. NASA added the prefix of "STS" (Space Transportation System) to each shuttle mission. Of the 135 missions, 133 flights went as planned, with two ending in disaster. [Most Memorable Shuttle Missions]

52: The total number of satellites, space station components and other payloads returned from orbit on NASA shuttle missions.

37: The number of times a NASA shuttle has docked at the International Space Station during the outpost's lifetime.

9: The number of times a NASA shuttle docked at Russia's space station Mir between 1994 and 1998.

7:
The total number of missions by shuttle astronauts to retrieve, repair and then redeploy a satellite in orbit.

5: NASA's final tally for the number of spaceworthy vehicles built for the space shuttle fleet. The shuttles that have launched into space are: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. Challenger and Columbia were lost during spaceflight tragedies.

Another shuttle prototype, the Enterprise vehicle, only flew in Earth's atmosphere and never launched into orbit.

3: The number of main landing sites for NASA space shuttles at the end of their missions. They are: the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (primary site), Edwards Air Force Base in California (backup), White Sands Space Harbor in White Sands, New Mexico (backup).

In addition to these three sites, NASA has a long list of airport runways that could be suitable for a shuttle landing in an emergency.
The statistics are at Wikipedia.

Watch this video by Vintage Space it explains why did the interest go down:
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyPIRheeOig
 
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Sometimes debunkers give an analogy of Concorde airplane for the reason why "the voyage" isn't repeated nowadays. It's to expensive to keep the program going, they said. However, people still fly in airplanes but they are not flying to the Moon.

err, you do know the difference between a "normal" airplane and the concorde, right?
 
err, you do know the difference between a "normal" airplane and the concorde, right?
Also, a further difference. Slower planes can go anywhere the Concorde could, just slower.

Slower spacecraft, however, cannot go to the moon, slower or not. Orbital maneuvers are limited by change in velocity - Delta-V. At launch you have a defined amount of delta-v available. Most of it is spent getting out of the atmosphere, with every adjustment, transfer, or insertion consuming more. Since we stopped making the Saturn V, we have not made a rocket that can carry a manned vessel with enough delta-v to go beyond low earth orbit. We've got two in the works right now, but the SLS is a boondoggle NASA probably won't be able to afford to actually use, and the Falcon Heavy could end up there too if Space X can't realize the level of savings they project from stage one recovery.
 
Nope. Why should I? Mostly I keep this to myself and trying not to change others belief when talking about this subject. Some people think it's for real and some don't. Some people think that Earth is flat, I don't. Just as you do here on Metabunk so I do when conversing about flat earth. The result is that most people continue to believe even if their claim is debunked. It's a system of belief.

so you believe there were no humans ever on the moon? youd admitted that you wont even consider the posibillity of the moonlandings werent faked/staged, so whats your point in this thread? cause I thought debunking is anything but belief.o_O

furthermore to add to my confusion you said it yourself earlier:

From my point of view, you've done the right thing. Actually, you've done exactly what this site is all about. Thank you!
 
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I'm not quite sure what is your question? Did I have to write "jet airliner" instead of airplane or something else?
Well, he simply means to ask you the difference between a "jet airliner" or an "airplane" or whatever AND Concorde.
They are way different in what they were capable of achieving; it seems like you do not know.

P.S. Also read post #27
 
If you dont mind mick; my last bit slightly OT as compressed response to NobleOne

I'm not quite sure what is your question? Did I have to write "jet airliner" instead of airplane or something else?

No, I should have wrote "jet airliner". sorry for that.
difference is, in terms of economical value vs mach2-capability (more than twice as fast as todays commercial airplanes): the concorde today would be the most expensive commercial jet in general (for example: Concorde ca 16 L/100 km/passenger vs todays Airbus 380 ca 3 L/100 km/passenger, and thats just the fuel). oil/kerosine was cheap when she flew for the first time, after that, it was mostly pure prestige as it would be with a manned landing on the moon today as it was done in 1969, despite modern technology.
 
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Of course the Soviet Union must have been conspiring with the USA to fake the moon landing, because they never once alerted the world to this trickery. Must have been a good time for US/Soviet relations.
 
What were the reasons to go to Moon back then, years in a row? Why sudden disinterest for almost 50 years? Do we know everything about the Moon so our adventures on Moon are over? And how is it possible that back then NASA had money for developing technology resulting in 9 manned missions (6 landings included) and nowadays can't afford even one?.

The one-word answer: Russia

Long answer: We were in the height of the cold war. In the 50s and 60s the fears and antagonism against the Eastern block (regardless to the extent justified or not) were at 11. When USSR launched Sputnik in Oct 1957, it collectively terrified the nation, including the political class. The Space Race was an extension of the cold war. with each trying to 1-up the other. Race to the moon was end goal.

If the same 1950/1960s cold war attitude still prevailed in the US, and if Russia announced a man mission to Mars, we'd launch to Mars tomorrow.
 
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