It's hard to expand on what's already been said. And it seems likely this will be a seagull post.
NASA's 30 Billion Dollar Scam
Unless you made the video, or you can compel its author to appear here and defend it, I'm not watching it. This is a place for you to make your arguments, not just regurgitate those made by others. You must think here, not allow others to do your thinking for you.
Does this not seem a bit strange?
Begging the question. Unless you can explain why it must be strange, it isn't. For every list of activities that had a memorable first, we can provide a list of contrary activities for which the first was the only, such as the descent to the deepest depths of the oceans. Thus not every activity must be repeated to be valid the first time. The world is not compelled to adopt your contrived schedule.
I used to be in that camp too until I actually started to seriously examine the photographic and video record of the alleged moon landings.
No. Every conspiracist makes this claim. They want it to sound like they were dragged kicking and screaming against their will to believe in a hoax -- the evidence for it is allegedly just that strong. This implies that they would welcome having their faith restored. However when it is shown just how factually wrong and ill-conceived their beliefs are, they do the opposite from what we would expect. Instead of dropping the silly hoax belief and returning with relief to the majority view, they dig in deeper. Very few are interested in having their hoax beliefs tested or challenged in any way.
Using photo and video editing software, it is often possible to detect how a photo or video was put together.
No, that's not what happens. What happens is that people with no demonstrable training, qualification, knowledge, skill, or experience now have easy access to software tools for their personal computers, and easy access to
ad hoc sources of Apollo historical material. Applying those tools to convenience sources, they attribute what they ignorantly perceive to be "inconsistencies" and "anomalies" to some speculative process of fakery.
Stated another way, these charlatans invent homegrown processes of "analysis" that they insist are able to tell real photographs from fake. They never validate these methods, or relate them to anything in the science. Most don't even know that the forensic inspection of photographs is a well-developed science. They simply wiggle sliders until they see something that defies their uninformed expectations and immediately pronounce it to be evidence of some kind of fraud.
I've listened to ten years' or more worth of finger-wagging authoritative-sounding claims based on "analysis" of photographs and video, without yet hearing one from someone who actually knew what he was talking about. My web site (linked below and elsewhere) provides an excellent cross section of many of those ridiculous claims. These self-proclaimed analysts do not get to proceed from the assumption that we accept them as authorities, and their alleged authentication methods as valid and revealing.
From my observations, I have come to the conclusion that all of the 12 alleged moon walkers presented to us in the Apollo videos and photos, were actually played by the same two actors.
As has been noted by others, your conclusion is based on an astounding level of ignorance of what the Apollo record actually shows. Your observations are incomplete and wrong, and therefore your conclusion is contradicted.
However, if the Apollo landings were faked, there are a number of good reasons why the truth will come out soon.
People have been saying this since the 1970s that the truth will "come out soon." This is a euphemistic admission that even after 40 years of studying and writing on their part, and continued space exploration on the world's part, the hoax claimants have been unable to prove their point any more convincingly now than 40 years ago.
And yes, the world's scientists have been busy probing the Moon. A decade ago, the hoax claimants said that if only the landing sites could be photographed with sufficient clarity, we'd know for sure. A couple of them even promised to recant if the eventual photographs showed evidence of Apollo activity. Little did they know how soon such a thing would come to pass. Even before the spacecraft reached lunar orbit the hoax claimants were busy shifting the goalposts. Now that low-level fly-bys and clear pictures are easily available, the conspiracists are falling all over themselves trying to tell us why we shouldn't accept
that evidence either.
In short, the steady progression of science tends to confirm the Apollo record, and tends to force the conspiracists deeper and deeper into a fantasy world of doctored evidence. The truth is coming out, and it's not about a hoax.
If NASA wants us to believe the Apollo moon landings were real, the onus is on them to provide irrefutable evidence to support their claim, and they have failed to do this.
Nonsense. The evidence at hand is accepted as real and authentic by almost every qualified practitioner the world over, including those with no particular allegiance to the United States.
As stated, the problem is with your definition of "irrefutable." You seem to believe that a "refutation" consists of speculation about other ways the evidence at hand may have arisen, without bearing the burden to show your explanation is the better one. To wit:
The photo and video evidence can be discounted because of the many inexplicable anomalies they contain...
No, this is just ignorance.
It's ignorant first because it presumes authentic photographs cannot contain elements that defy later explanation, and second because the "inexplicable anomalies" are almost things that experienced photographers and analysts know to expect, but the untrained conspiracy theorists do not. The inability of the ignorant to explain something is not a challenge to the authenticity of that something.
...it is possible to create realistic images of the moon using a studio set up.
It is possible to create realistic settings of _____________ in a studio, for all possible ways to fill in the blank. That's why we have studios. But the existence of methods to simulate something does not prove that the thing doesn't or cannot exist. Formally speaking, your argument is a blatantly affirmed consequent.
The moon rock evidence can also be discounted...
As for the laser reflector on the moon, this does not prove that humans landed on the moon.
And as for claims that the Soviet’s were able to track the Apollo craft all the way to the moon and back, well that’s a big red-herring...
Others have correctly outlined your factual errors in the above claims, so I see no need to repeat their excellent responses.
None of NASA’s so-called evidence proves they actually sent humans beyond Earth orbit or landed them on the surface of the moon.
Nonsense. You simply set aside all the evidence according to ignorant pretext. You don't know what you're talking about with respect to any of it.
On top of that, NASA has made itself look even guiltier by attempting to cover up their sloppy mistakes in the photographic record of the Apollo program.
They have recently been caught altering and removing the incriminating photos from their website in an attempt to cover their tracks.
That's a very young, web-centric way of dealing with evidence. The Apollo record has been available in print and elsewhere for 40 years. It has been only recently that one could sit in the living room and download Apollo materials with little effort. It makes no sense to try to change photos on a website when so many other "incriminating" copies would still exist. In my living room, prominently displayed on a rack, is a slightly worn copy of December 1969
National Geographic (complete with vinyl "sounds from space" phono record). Spread across pages 736-737 is the famous AS11-40-5903, showing all the "anomalies" conspiracy theorists pretend to see in it. How could anything NASA did on its web site possibly alter that?
Your argument is silly not only for proposing something that's not being done in the first place, but also for proposing something that would be useless anyway. It tells the world just how little you've really thought through your conclusions and how desperately you want to believe in a hoax. It now remains to see whether you really are the reluctant conspiracy theorist you say you are.
...in reality, the Apollo program was completely compartmentalized so only a handful of senior insiders would have needed to know the big picture.
No, in fact the evidence shows almost exactly the opposite. "In fact," Apollo employed a rigorous program of cross-training among its people. And these were not just mindless factory drones, but rather highly skilled engineers, many of whom had cut their teeth in wartime engineering. The people who built Apollo were not "compartmentalized" away from a broad understanding of what they were about to do. The surviving training manuals tell exactly the opposite story, as well as the testimony of those who participated.
To say that a large engineering project can be artificially filed into silos to prevent talented, intelligent people from seeing some supposedly incriminating big picture is to fundamentally misunderstand how engineering works -- indeed how it
must work. It's a fantasy invented by non-engineer conspiracy theorists to account for the patent implausibility of their claims.
