Seems to me that the problem is that you might think that the moon is made completely of soft dust that would actually create a crater instead of a ball of rock with a thin layer of dust on it. In which said dust would be blown off by the thruster before the lander landed, and thus, not actually create a skidmark of any sort.

But then, I'm drunk right now, and this argument is ridiculous (not mine, yours), so I've got no more time for it.

That being the case, wouldn't the pads of the lander have at least slid/skidded a little in the dust before they came to a complete stop if they were coming in like a plane? Or did they just float down to a nice soft landing at the last second? If the dust is as fine as they claim it is on the moon, I would at least expect to see some scattering of the dust from underneath the landing pads when they touched down. But I don't see any of that here:

http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5920.jpg

Or here:

http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5902.jpg

There's not even any dust inside the cupped area on top of the pads, which I would fully expect to see if they plopped down into a fine dust. Drop a penny in some flour if you need a visual of what I'm talking about. Either way, it still doesn't add up in my book.

I have no problems with the flag movements. He was also moving the pole around while placing it in the ground, thus the flag appears to "flutter" in the non-existent wind.
I also have no issues with the shadows.

It's all really a mute point anyway until someone actually goes back to the moon and finds out for themselves. The evidence is still there. (Or not there depending on your point of view).

>> ^Duckman33:
I'm referring to NASA's own pictures after the landing has taken place. Not the footage of the landing. You tell me where the blast crater is, or any disturbed dust under the thruster of the lander for that matter in these pictures


You want to check those pictures again professor, on pictures 2 and 4 you can clearly see the scorch marks under the lander. The engine at approach was not powerful enough to create any big crater in the surface of tightly packed regolith, neither is it expected to.

badastronomy.com sums it up rather nicely:

"Bad: In the pictures taken of the lunar lander by the astronauts, the TV show continues, there is no blast crater. A rocket capable of landing on the Moon should have burned out a huge crater on the surface, yet there is nothing there.

Good: When someone driving a car pulls into a parking spot, do they do it at 100 kilometers per hour? Of course not. They slow down first, easing off the accelerator. The astronauts did the same thing. Sure, the rocket on the lander was capable of 10,000 pounds of thrust, but they had a throttle. They fired the rocket hard to deorbit and slow enough to land on the Moon, but they didn't need to thrust that hard as they approached the lunar surface; they throttled down to about 3000 pounds of thrust.

Now here comes a little bit of math: the engine nozzle was about 54 inches across (from the Encyclopaedia Astronautica), which means it had an area of 2300 square inches. That in turn means that the thrust generated a pressure of only about 1.5 pounds per square inch! That's not a lot of pressure. Moreover, in a vacuum, the exhaust from a rocket spreads out very rapidly. On Earth, the air in our atmosphere constrains the thrust of a rocket into a narrow column, which is why you get long flames and columns of smoke from the back of a rocket. In a vacuum, no air means the exhaust spreads out even more, lowering the pressure. That's why there's no blast crater! Three thousand pounds of thrust sounds like a lot, but it was so spread out it was actually rather gentle."

>> ^Duckman33:
I'm referring to NASA's own pictures after the landing has taken place. Not the footage of the landing. You tell me where the blast crater is, or any disturbed dust under the thruster of the lander for that matter in these pictures:
http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5864.jpg
http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5872.jpg
http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5873.jpg
http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5927.jpg
http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5931.jpg
The first linked picture pretty much sums up my point. I suppose they moved the lander to a different spot then took the pictures because the blast crater created by the thruster was unsightly? I'm not saying it was fake or not. But there are many discrepancies in NASA's own pictures that need to be answered.


What does disturbed dust look like as opposed to undisturbed dust? What does a blast crater in a bunch of craters look like? Even more so, this isn't earth dust, most of it is very ridged and doesn't behave in the same manor as the rounded dust you and I are exposed to everyday. You are using your experiences of unlike conditions on earth to equate to the entirely different conditions on the moon and trying to pass that as a reasonable.

I tell you who doesn't doubt the moon landing; radio telescope operators who traced its decent and ascent to and from the moons surface. Not to mention that the government couldn't keep the Manhattan project a secret and NASA is 20 times as large as. The Russians would have been the first ones to call our bluff.

I'm referring to NASA's own pictures after the landing has taken place. Not the footage of the landing. You tell me where the blast crater is, or any disturbed dust under the thruster of the lander for that matter in these pictures:

http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5864.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5872.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5873.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5927.jpg

http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/5931.jpg

The first linked picture pretty much sums up my point. I suppose they moved the lander to a different spot then took the pictures because the blast crater created by the thruster was unsightly? I'm not saying it was fake or not. But there are many discrepancies in NASA's own pictures that need to be answered.

Still doesn't explain how the Lunar Lander touched down on the face of the moon without it's thruster both creating a crater, or disturbing one single iota of moon dust underneath it....

There, I said it!!

Hey, ya don't go gold every day.

In reply to this comment by MrFisk:
Wow! Thanks again. I truly appreciate the assistance.

In reply to this comment by schmawy:
*promote

Wow! Thanks again. I truly appreciate the assistance.

In reply to this comment by schmawy:
*promote

Seems like the lander made it safely. Check out http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2030961/Phoenix-Mars-lander-beams-back-first-images.html
for 2 small pictures. Can't wait for bigger high res pics.

Complete animation sequence
http://www.videosift.com/video/NASA-Phoenix-Mars-Lander-Animation

It will be easier for future sifters and those interested in the video if you change "pheonix" to it's correct spelling of "phoenix" in the title and tags.

Great video btw.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Mars-Pheonix-Lander-touches-down-tomorrow-May-25-2008

anyone remember the Lunar Lander game back in the old-school arcade days??? Loved landing that green stick-pod on those @-d cliffs.....

Sigh

Armadillo's fourth and final shot at winning the $350,000 portion of the $2 million Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge ended today in flames.

Bugger.

Seriously, with all the CGI I see from NASA (such as the Mars lander) all they need is to add a couple first person views, interactions and they've got a whole new virtual based tourist industry.

I agree though, our focus needs to be on making space travel cheaper, safer and available to the masses.

I had seen a video of Pixel(the one with the four spherical tanks) attempt one of the Lunar Lander Challenge competitions. It landed about a foot off the pad and busted one of it's legs, they tried a repeat, but the missing leg threw off the flight charateristics and caused a crash.

They have a lot of videos at their site:
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home
http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home/News?news_id=337

Good crash video, of one of the other designs:
http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2004_08_08/48InchCrash.mpg