Debunked: NASA tampered with the original television audio of the Apollo 11 moon landing

Antithesis

New Member
A conspiracist recently directed me to this site which examines this video of the moon landing:

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMINSD7MmT4&t=21s

Starting at 0:21 in the video:
Houston: Roger. The EVA is progressing beautifully. I believe they are setting up the flag now.

Houston: I guess you're about the only person around that doesn't have TV coverage of the scene.

Lunar orbit: That's all right. I don't mind a bit.
The astronaut's response comes well before the 2.56 seconds needed for radio to travel to the moon and back (2*384400 km at 299792 km/s).

The NASA audio from network television broadcasts (e.g. CBS) contains the expected radio delays as well as the response of "Great!" from the lunar orbiter following "setting up the flag now".

The claim is that the first video has the original audio.
NASA apparently rounded up many of the original television tape recordings in order to make their "new and improved" versions.
...
NASA purposely altered the audio recordings to try to make them fit in with the Earth-Moon transmission delay
Content from External Source
This is debunked by identifying the source of the first video: the 1971 documentary Moonwalk One. It is understandable that filmmakers would remove radio delays and less interesting bits like "Great!". These are the pieces of Moonwalk One that were stitched together to make the video:
  • 1:05:01 - 1:05:15
  • 1:09:12 - 1:09:34
  • 1:06:17 - 1:06:24
  • 1:09:45 - 1:10:44
Quindar tones also debunk the claim.
Quindar tones, most often referred to as the "beeps" that were heard during the American Apollo space missions, were a means by which remote transmitters on Earth were turned on and off so that the Capsule communicator (CapCom) could communicate with the crews of the spacecraft. It was a means of in-band signaling to simulate the action of the push-to-talk and release-to-listen (often referred to as PTT) button commonly found on two-way radio systems and walkie-talkies.
Content from External Source
Each transmission from Houston begins with a specific tone and ends with a specific lower-pitched tone. In the first video, the end tone is missing after "setting up the flag now".

search terms: northerntruthseeker apollo-moon-hoax-audio-delay-problem First Moon Landing 1969 RMINSD7MmT4
 
Last edited:
This sort of issue also crops up in other places, e.g. with documentary filmmakers cutting together Apollo footage out of order to make a particular point or just tell what they think is a compelling story. While obviously not a concern back in 1971, it does make things difficult for the debunker these days and tends to confuse people who notice the contradictions but aren't aware of the third-party editing of the original footage.
 
Back
Top