So what other evidence has been claimed by the hoax protagonists? The photo below was taken during the Apollo 16 mission of April 1972 and features Charles Duke working next to the LRV (Lunar Rover Vehicle) and has become one of the hoax theorists main pieces of evidence. They claim the picture shows several anomalies which prove it couldn't have been taken on the Moon.
Firstly, the repeated claim of the lack of stars (see previous pages) then the claim that as there is no water on the Moon, it would not be possible to make footprints or tyre tracks in the powdery soil. This claim almost answers itself. There is no erosion at all on the Moon, so the soil or dust grains on the surface are very angular and bond together easily under compression. Simply put, if you walk on the surface of the Moon you will leave pretty much everlasting footprints...indeed the footprints left by all the Apollo Astronauts will still be there today.
Then the claim that one of the crosshairs on this photo is obscured by a part of the LRV, meaning the crosshairs were added later. Why NASA would bother to do this, even if the hoax claims were true, would be beyond reason. The cameras used on the Apollo missions had a glass plate with crosshairs fitted so the photos could be scaled later on. It is very difficult when looking at an object on the Moon to tell if it is the size of a car or a house and the crosshairs enabled scientists to do this. However, should a part of the photo be overexposed, then the white colour in the image can "bleed" into the black colour. This is why one of the crosshairs is obscured by a part of the LRV in this photo. Indeed, there are several Apollo mission photos where this occurs. Another attack on this picture was the alleged letter "C" carved into one of the rocks in the foreground. The picture featured here does not have this mark, as it is an original, but the claim that it is proof of a hoax says much about those who are desperate to see evidence where there is none.
Another attack on this photo claims that the LRV could not have made such acutely angled tracks, showing that the vehicle must have been pushed into position. Finally a hoax claim that rings true! The Astronauts sometimes had to pick up the front of the LRV and manoeuvre the vehicle manually, rather than waste time driving it into position. So this hoax claim goes some small way towards proving the missions were real.
The picture above is of Harrison Schmitt at Tracy's Rock, taken during the Apollo 17 mission of December 1972 - the last Apollo mission. I've included this photo to illustrate a point made above. Use your thumb to hide the Astronaut in the picture. Can you tell how big Tracy's Rock is? There is no way to be certain of scale here. That is why the Apollo photographs contain crosshairs.
The hoax theorists cite many factors as to why the Apollo missions were faked, not least the lethal radiation in space that prevents man from travelling through the Van Allen Belts (a claim refuted by Van Allen himself, by the way) but I can't personally see any legitimacy to their arguements. I have been interested in the work of NASA for years and conspiracy theories are always curious and worth at least some attention. But the weight of proof here is that the Apollo missions were real, rather obviously so, and hoax theorists, by claiming otherwise, are just trying to make money from books, TV and DVD's.
