So what about the evidence presented by Bill Kaysing, Bart Sibrel and the rest? How does this stand up to scrutiny?
A good place to begin here is by clicking the link to Bart Sibrel's site placed at the top of this page by Angelfire: moonmovie.com - see above (at the time of writing. Links do change, but have a look anyway) and watching the short video presented by the young lady with a very authoritative tone. What is said there is, of course totally innaccurate. Not only did the entire Saturn V rocket not go to the Moon and back (only the Command Module made the whole journey) but the rocket itself was used only to break free of Earth. The Saturn V was never intended to go anywhere near the Moon itself, merely to propel the final stage into orbit for what was called the trans lunar injection, where the slingshot effect of orbiting the Earth was used to build up the necessary velocity to reach the Moon - the trans lunar coast (as mentioned previously). Wernher Von Braun is used in Mr Sibrel's video clip to add weight to a wrong theory, a snippet from a book helping create the illusion that even the man who built the rockets NASA used said a moonshot wasn't possible...even though it was Von Braun's determination that led to Apollo in the first place. All of Mr Sibrel's theories are of this calibre, scientifically flawed and fundamentally innaccurate, and people pay for it which mystifies me personally. Try having a look at this site for a real explanation of Apollo spaceflight.

One of the main criticisms of the Apollo photographs is that there don't appear to be any stars in the lunar sky. The sky in the pictures taken on the Moon is uniformally black, apart from the occasional lens flare and the sun itself. The claims are that not only do the lack of stars prove fakery, but also that more than one light source is used in order to light up the Astronauts and other objects in the Moon photos. The belief is that anything facing away from the sun should be in pitch darkness, there being no atmosphere on the Moon to scatter light. Of course with the appliance of a little thought and a modicum of scientific knowledge all these theories are quite easily explained.

Firstly, the lack of stars. Having camera shutter speeds set to capture a man in a white spacesuit standing in a white/light grey landscape in extremely strong sunshine prevents the film from registering the relatively weak light from stars. Set the shutter speed to pick up stars and you get an almost blank white image. Over exposing photos on the Moon would mean very poor quality images. If you stand in bright light yourself you cannot see stars in the night sky because of the way your eyes work. This is why there are no stars in the lunar sky in the Moon photo's. The proof that there were no secondary light sources used in the pictures is that there are no examples of any object in any Apollo photo casting two or more shadows. One shadow per object means one light source - The Sun. You can see the Astronauts and objects illuminated although the position of the sun is behind them because of light reflecting back at them from the lunar surface. Bill Kaysing insists that going to the Moon and ignoring the star fields visible from there is like "...going to Niagra falls and talking about the hamburger you ate", in reality the Apollo missions were about The Moon itself, not what stars you can see from there. The hoax believers themselves point out that every photo taken on the Moon was perfectly framed and exposed (not true - see below)

The picture above was taken during the Apollo 14 mission at the Fra Mauro region. As you can see the photo is grainy, exhibits lens flare and is perhaps not entirely correctly framed. All this despite training on these cameras thousands of times over, proving that not every photo was perfect every time. The fact that so many of the photos were remarkably good serves only to prove how highly trained and capable the astronauts were. Yet another attack (indeed on this very photo) is how the shadows in the picture run across the ground at different angles. Of course the ground is uneven, resulting in irregular shadows (here is an excellent explanation of this and other lunar lighting effects) accompanied by depth perception, don't forget this is a cameras eye view of a three dimensional image. Some of the photos you might take of your family on a sunny day in the park would exhibit similar shadow patterns - would that make you a hoaxer?

The photo above is of Pete Conrad at the Surveyor 3 Lunar probe taken during the Apollo 12 mission. Conrad returned the camera from Surveyor 3 for scientific analysis. Studies of the camera found bacteria (in fact, the common cold) still alive when stimulated in the laboratory despite the camera being exposed in a near complete vacuum for two years. Again the photo is not perfect, showing a small amount of over exposure. There are also instances of uneven shadows due to irregularities of the Lunar landscape, as explained previously. Many of the Apollo photos are of this quality. You can see them for yourself at The Apollo Lunar Surface Journal



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