The moon is a long way off and it is impossible to get there

Does our whole system of physics forbid us from believing someone has been on the moon?

Keith S. Taber

Image by WikiImages from Pixabay (with Emoji superimposed)

I never had the chance to interview Ludwig for my research, but was intrigued when I found out about his outright dismissal of the possibility of manned missions to the moon.

There are of course people who are strongly committed to ideas at odds with current scientific consensus – suggesting the earth is flat; that evolution does not occur; that COVID-19 was deliberately produced in a laboratory; that governments have physical evidence of alien visitors, but deny it and keep all relevant documentation classified; and so forth.

Moon landing deniers

Even in the United States of America, the home of the Apollo missions, surveys regularly show that a substantial minority of people doubt that people ever actually went to the moon, and think the Apollo moon landings were faked. Why would NASA have gone to such trouble with the collusion of the US Government machinery and the support of Hollywood studios?

As President Kennedy had put such weight on (American) people getting to the moon before the end of the 1960s, then – the argument goes – once it became clear this was technically impossible, it became important to convince the population that JFK's challenge had been met by a massive initiative to forge and disseminate evidence. There has been something of an industry in explaining how the photographs released by NASA can be seen to have been clearly faked if one looks carefully enough and knows a little science.

Unreasonable doubt?

I try to be someone who is always somewhat sceptical (as any scientist should be) of any claims, no matter how widely believed, as in time some canonical ideas are found to be flawed – even in science. But I tend to give little credence to such conspiracy theories.

Sometimes there are good reasons why science is doubted by sections of the public when it seems to conflict with well established world-view beliefs deriving from religious traditions or traditional ecological knowledge which has sustained a culture for a great many generations. So, even when the science is well supported, we can sometimes understand why some people find it difficult to accept. But the Apollo missions being faked in a film studio: surely that is just the kind of nonsense that only ignorant cranks like to believe – isn't it?

Ludwig on the sure belief that no one has been to the moon

Thus my interest in Ludwig, who was certainly not an ignorant person. Indeed he was highly intelligent, and something of an intellectual – a deep thinker who was very interested in the nature of knowledge and considered issues of how we could ground our beliefs, given that the evidence was never sufficient to be absolutely sure.

He thought that individual ideas were convincing when they were embedded in a 'nest' of related ideas – what we might call a conceptual framework. One example he discussed was his accepting that people always had parents: he thought this "sure belief" was based "not only on the fact that I have known the parents of certain people but on everything that I have learnt about the sexual life of human beings and their anatomy and physiology: also on what I have heard and seen of animals". Ludwig thought that although this could not be considered definite proof, it was robust grounds for someone to accept the belief.

Another example of such a sure belief was that a person could be confident that they had never been on the moon,

A principal ground for [a person] to assume that he was never on the moon is that no one ever was on the moon or could come [i.e., get] there; and this we believe on grounds of what we learn.

¶171

Physics forbids moon landings

Ludwig seemed to consider the impossibility of people getting to be on the moon was something he could be pretty sure of,

"But is there no objective truth? Isn't it true, or false, that someone has been on the moon?" If we are thinking within our system, then it is certain that no one has ever been on the moon. Not merely is nothing of the sort ever seriously reported to us by reasonable people, but our whole system of physics forbids us to believe it. For this demands answers to the questions "How did he overcome the force of gravity?" "How could he live without an atmosphere?" and a thousand others which could not be answered…

The intellectual status of unreasonable people

So someone making such a claim would not be a 'reasonable' person in Ludwig's evaluation. So how would Ludwig feel about such an unreasonable person?

We should feel ourselves intellectually very distant from someone who said this.

¶108

But of course there are people who claim this has indeed happened, that we have been to the moon,and walked there and whilst there collected rocks and indeed played golf. (Had this been more recent, we would perhaps instead have danced the tango and baked cakes.) NASA astronauts have since often acted as ambassadors for space science, and told their stories across the world, including to the young – enthusing many of them about space and science.

How might Ludwig respond to a child who had met one of those Apollo astronauts who claimed to have walked on the moon?

Suppose some adult had told a child that he had been on the moon. The child tells me the story, and I say it was only a joke, the man hadn't been on the moon, no one has ever been on the moon, the moon is a long way off and it is impossible to climb up there or fly there.

Ludwig adds, rhetorically,

If now the child insists, saying perhaps there is a way of getting there which I don't know, etc. what reply could I make to him?

¶106

Believers in moon landings are ignorant and wrong

So how could Ludwig explain that there are many people, indeed a majority today, who do believe that people have visited the moon, and returned to earth to tell others about the experience?

What we believe depends on what we learn. We all believe that it isn't possible to get to the moon; but there might be people who believe that that is possible and that it sometimes happens. We say: these people do not know a lot that we know. And, let them be never so sure of their belief-they are wrong and we know it.

If we compare our system of knowledge with theirs then theirs is evidently the poorer one by far.

¶286

So, just as I might suspect the moonshot deniers are somewhat ignorant, for Ludwig it is the reverse: it is those who think people can get to the moon who have poor knowledge systems and are simply wrong.

Now I suggested above that Ludwig was an intelligent and reflective person – indeed he worked as a school teacher, both in primary and secondary education – so his views may seem incongruent. As some readers may have suspected, I am being a little unfair to Ludwig. I pointed out at the outset that I never had the chance to interview Ludwig – indeed I never met him, although he did spend part of his life in Cambridge where I now work.

We can all be wrong

Ludwig did not live to see the moon landings, as he died in 1951 almost a decade before I was born (of parents – he was right about that), shortly after he wrote the material that I have quoted above. That is a few years before Sputnik was launched by the Soviet Union and the 'space race' began. So, Ludwig was not a denier of the moon landings as such, refusing to accept the media accounts, but rather a denier of the possibility of there ever being moon landings at a time when no one was yet actively planning the feat.

Ludwig was wrong. But had he lived another 20 years I am pretty sure he would have changed his mind. That's because one of the things he was best known for was changing his mind.

Having written a highly influential book of philosophy that convinced many intellectuals he was one of the greatest thinkers of his time, if not all time (the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus) he took a long sabbatical from Academia, only to later write an equally influential and profound book (that he did not live to see published – the Philosophical Investigations) that contradicted his earlier ideas. Had Ludwig seen the technological developments of the 'space race' in the 1960s, it seems certain – well, a sure belief – that he would have accepted the possibility of people going to the moon.

However, when I first read the comments I quote above I was struck by how such a highly intelligent and deep thinker could be so sure that getting people to the moon was not possible that he actually chose to use the idea of people on the moon as an exemplar of something that was impossible ("it is certain that no one has ever been on the moon"), and indeed contrary to the laws of physics.

Presumably at the time he was writing he could assume most intelligent people would fully accept his position (as "we all believe that it isn't possible to get to the moon") and see the suggestion of people going to the moon as absurd enough to stand as an example of an idea that could not be accepted by us reasonable people, only by someone "intellectually very distant" from us.

However, barely a decade later JFK was convinced enough of the possibility of getting people safely to the moon and back to commit his nation to achieving it – and a decade after that men being on the moon was already ceasing to be seen as anything out of the ordinary (until the near disaster of the Apollo 13 mission got the flights back into the popular imagination).

I do not present this example to ridicule Ludwig Wittgenstein. Far from it. But it does make me reflect on those things that we think we can treat as 'sure beliefs'. Even the most intelligent and reflective of us can be very wrong about things we may treat as certain knowledge. That's always worth keeping in mind.

Nothing is absolutely certain, except, perhaps, uncertainty itself!

All citations are from ¶ in Wittgenstein, L. (1975). On Certainty (D. Paul & G. E. M. Anscombe, Trans. G. E. M. Anscombe & G. H. v. Wright Eds. Corrected 1st ed.). Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing.

Author: Keith

Former school and college science teacher, teacher educator, research supervisor, and research methods lecturer. Emeritus Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.

61 thoughts on “The moon is a long way off and it is impossible to get there”

  1. What is radiation level on the other side of the Van Allen radiation belts? What size oxygen tanks required to operate the rocket engines? What size and weight of the liquid nitrogen tanks to fuel the rocket engines for such a long distance? What about the extreme temperatures in the upper thermosphere which reaches above 2000 degrees which normally melts steel and glass?

    1. Actually the temperature can get up to 4,500°, but it's actually cold because there's not enough molecules to be heated also spacecraft use heat shields to deflect heat that would cause damage here is a quote from a book about the thermosphere written by NASA physicists

      The thermosphere lies between the exosphere and the mesosphere. “Thermo” means heat, and the temperature in this layer can reach up to 4,500 degrees Fahrenheit. If you were to hang out in the thermosphere, though, you would be very cold because there aren’t enough gas molecules to transfer the heat to you. This also means there aren’t enough molecules for sound waves to travel through.

      This layer of Earth’s atmosphere is about 319 miles (513 kilometers) thick. That’s much thicker than the inner layers of the atmosphere, but not nearly as thick as the exosphere.

      The thermosphere is home to the International Space Station as it orbits Earth. This is also where you’ll find low Earth orbit satellites.

    2. We cannot go. He was right.
      The moon, sun, and stars are in the firmament. The bible says so and big money told nothing but lies. They control everyone. Shame on you for saying without a doubt we ever went there argue with God if you ever get there. God bless you. You have been hoodwinked. Never a nonstop video of us or any other country going. We have been capable of that a long time ago. The dont do it because they cant.

      1. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and to ignore as much evidence as they wish, but, really, if "the moon, sun, and stars are in the firmament" then how do they change positions relative to each other? I am sure you must have noticed that the moon is sometimes in the night sky, and sometimes in the day sky – so, it is sometimes closer to the sun than at other times. Have you not heard of eclipses when the moon comes in front of the direction of the sun from our viewpoint – despite them being in a firmament – or do you think I have been hoodwinked by eclipses as well? (I have seen a couple.)

  2. It could be a great lie, 1 what are the radiation levels on the other side of the Van Allen radiation belts? 2 what is the combined weight of the oxygen and liquid nitrogen tanks to run the rocket engines? 3 the Thermophere upper levels reaches temperatures 2000 degrees and above these temperatures melt steel and glass? 4 NASA has admitted they cannot geta human past the Van Allen radiation belts? 5 Russian Scientists have said an astronaut would need air conditioning the size of a double bus surrounding the astronaut to keep him alive from the heat?

    1. There are of course technical challenges in space exploration.

      The gas in the thermosphere is very tenuous so although it is technically of high temperature, this is misleading if we expect heat transfer as one would get from a dense material at that temperature.

      Astronauts do take a risk with radiation exposure (as well as other risks, think Apollo 1, Challenger, etc). There is an increased cancer risk in living in areas built on granite, or of having dental X-rays, or taking flights in airliners, and people sometimes choose to take such risks given the perceived benefits. Astronauts do indeed expose themselves to higher levels of radiation which could increase their chances of ill health.

      1. you remind me of a used car salesman trying to sell a car with a bad transmission, shame on you!
        why would NASA want to hang out on ISS 200 miles from earth if we really went to the moon? Orion failed, Artemis failed!..it is getting as silly as the foolish theory Erasmus Darwin invented.
        State funded fake news has poisoned the public with CGI frauds of curves when basic math proves a maximum viewing area of 2.8% from a ISS 200 miles from earth..prove me wrong!
        Avaricious greed is a seed from Satan's garden, Copernicus fraud was designed to create atheism by the satanic sun God "Baal" sucklers/free masons. The Lunartick Club designed many "evil lies" as they met only on full moons as per their satanic agenda.
        Obfuscation of reality will not deter our great creator, the liars will meet their judgment eventually. Werner Von Braun Psalm 19:1(kjv)
        Geocentric, for the win!

      2. So they never knew they could go through, but went through on a suicide mission in 1969 to and from. Laughable. Please.

    2. now they are obfuscating biology saying men can have babies LoL.
      you are correct, operation fishbowl proved nothing will ever pass the firmament( Van Allen Belts)

      1. Operation Fishbowl was a series of nuclear weapons tests carried out by the United States before international treaties were established to stop atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons. These tests spread large amounts of radioactive debris into the atmosphere at a time when the threat of nuclear war seemed real and there was less concern with environmental pollution of climate change.

        To suggest these tests prove there is an impenetrable barrier (no one seems to have informed meteorites of this) seems like suggesting that nothing can penetrate clouds because the arrows of medieval archers fell back to earth before they reached the clouds.

        1. You will never know that anyone ever has yet you believe a group founded by Nazi war criminals and funded by elites actually ever went. Fairy tale.

          1. And you know this because you have personally met and talked to these 'Nazi war criminals', perhaps, whereas I am relying only on the scientific literature and the history books and documentary evidence and recalling the news reports at the time? Come on, which sounds most like a fairy tale?

            1. Yes , If the truth of scientific endeavor is to be researched we indeed ought to begin with scientific literature…. such as The Smithsonian. An entity that seeks fact and truth first ! Yes…. What an uninformed opinion. The Smithsonian… who in their efforts to convince mankind that there is no God stole and hid in their basements the skeletons of literally thousands of giants. ( Not a theory my friend ) With the bible telling of giants from front to back , the ensuing worldwide flood they brought on from the terrible sin they ushered into our world. and the massive people the Jewish tribes had to fight…… this government sponsered museum thought it best to take them from around the world and bury them to refute the facts. Perhaps they would have gotton away with it…. until too many men spoke of how they dumped thousands and thousands of huge skelotons into the ocean … until caught and taken to court. How about we believe their word about the moon landing !

              1. Certainly not a theory – we can agree on that. A theory is a coherent network of propositions with strong evidential support. (I assume this court case is not reported in the official court records anywhere?) But thank you for your thoughts.

  3. Below in both links provided, Nasa OPENLY admits that we/they CANNOT GO TO THE MOON!! If we CANNOT GO NOW – How did we go THEN?

    Unfortunately, we/they did not go. it is IMPOSSIBLE.

    https://youtu.be/4O5dPsu66Kw — NASA engineer admits they can't get pass the Van Allen radiation belts (read the comment section)

    https://youtu.be/JgXDi7mc43M — Astronaut Terry Virts admits we can't go to the moon while talking to an audience on the Space Station

    Honestly, NASA LIED about landing men on the moon. We cannot go more than 400 miles into space because of the Van Allen radiation belts. This is NOT "my opinion" this is a scientific fact that several astronauts in at least 2 NASA videos admit is true – see below.

    There are at least 10 direct pieces of irrefutable evidence that 100% proves we did NOT land on the moon. Sorry. But that is a fact. ALL NASA missions were low earth orbit missions and the astronauts along with those on the ground on a "need to know" basis only helped orchestrate the shooting of the fake moon landings which were mostly shot at Langley air force base. All the proof in the world has been provided by scientists and former military and NASA engineers and researchers. Sorry, but it just did not happen.

    http://apolloreality.atspace.co.uk
    – Original images and written information of the NASA moon landing facility at Langley Air Force base.

    https://youtu.be/xciCJfbTvE4

    — A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon (Bart Sibrel – writer, director, producer): this documentary presents strong proof that we DID NOT and CANNOT go to the moon including original NASA footage of Apollo 11 astronauts FAKING their distance from the moon "LIVE" on camera and SHOWS THEM DOING IT! Also, see Bart Sibrel's blog: https://www.sibrel.com

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kiBvdYO4yw — Patrick Bet-David talks with Bart Sibrel

    1. You are quite right, Paul, that I do not claim to have been to the moon myself, so I am relying purely on the authority of others – in much the same way that I accept (for example) that the scientists at CERN really do have particle accelerators and have achieved what they have claimed – claims which seem a lot more fantastic than travelling to the moon. But in the face of all the evidence for the moon landings, and (in my view) no persuasive evidence otherwise, on balance it is hard not to accept the moon landings.

      That NASA does not currently have the technology to get there does not logically exclude that they had in the past. Currently the railway authorities are building a railway line between Cambridge and Oxford. When they complete it, I will be able to get a train from Cambridge to Oxford. At the moment there is no direct train as the line is not complete. That does not mean that when people tell me that they have made that journey in the past I should distrust them, because the public record shows there was a line which was decommissioned decades ago, just as the Apollo technology was. (Perhaps it is a lie, and a conspiracy. Perhaps the public record has been falsified, and many people persuaded to lie or have had false memories implanted? This is not impossible, but it is not very feasible, and seems a much less persuasive scenario.) So, the astronaut who suggests we cannot get to the moon till the technology is ready is quite right, but he certainly does not say it did not happen in the past!

      The Van Allen belts are not an impenetrable barrier, but outside their protection astronauts would be exposed to a higher level of radiation. Is that risk acceptable?

      In the 1960s it was considered acceptable for the duration of moon missions in view of the perceived importance of the goal (and that it was a much lesser risk to life than the ship exploding, leaking air, running out of fuel, losing navigational control, burning up on re-entry, or the parachutes failing). Going to the Moon was seen as in part a great adventure, cf. explorers like RF Scott being prepared to die trying to reach the South Pole. Let's face it, what the U.S. did at Bikini Atoll to its own service people and local indigenous people suggests they were not overly careful about radiation risks.

      But a different judgement may be made now, and certainly this is a much more critical issue for longer flights such as a Mars project. Many of the NASA astronauts smoked – as indeed most adults did in the 1960s (going on a bus or train was exposing yourself to a level of smoke and toxins totally unacceptable today) – but I suspect that would count against a candidate for selection now: standards have changed, and notions of health and safety have changed. (And not just for NASA – how many elite athletes, such as footballers, smoke and regularly drink heavily today, compared with the norms of the 1960s and 1970s?)

      Sure, they had mocks ups for training on earth – they did not just plan it all and then do it without first having many simulations. That is in large part why they were able to succeed.

      So, I do not find the arguments for a conspiracy to cover-up a pretence at all convincing. If they could cover up something like that, would they not have successfully covered-up the much smaller matter of the Three Mile Island accident?

      Think how much political capital would have been available to the Republican party had they wanted to show that the achievement of JFK's great dream was just an illusion? If it was not possible, would the Soviets (with their own programme) not have realised that and called 'foul'?

      How did they create all those samples of moon rock brought back? (Have they fooled all the laboratories that have examined samples, or are they all also part of the conspiracy?) How did they get the mirror there that was used to measure the earth-moon distance accurately (or are the observatories involved in that work also part of a conspiracy)?

      What about the tracking stations around the world that tracked the spacecraft – what was it they tracked going to and from the moon (or were people in these various countries, including the USSR, also part of the conspiracy?)

      As a scientist, I have to be prepared to believe I might be wrong on any scientific question, and that given enough new evidence I might have good reason to change my mind. So, I do not claim to be absolutely certain beyond all possible doubt that people went to the moon. It is even theoretically possible that there is an enormous decades-long conspiracy involving many thousands of people that has duped untold billions for some bizarre purpose. However, on the balance of evidence and probability, it seems people went to the moon and came safely home.

      Occam's razor is only a heuristic, but when the alternative to the Apollo landings (a largely technical feat requiring modelling of physical systems) is something much more complex, challenging and fantastic (an immense social engineering project requiring the careful coordination of thousands of individual human beings that would have been unlikely to succeed even in a totalitarian state), the scientist has to (provisionally, of course) go with the most straightforward and technically feasible explanation of the evidence of the moon landings: that they resulted from…moon landings.

      I respect your right to come to a different conclusion, and as a scientist I have to admit that I cannot be absolutely certain I am not being duped. (But, can you?)

      1. They did send some of the moon rocks for testing and it was faked. The Dutch did it.

        If you seen videos of the returned moon landings, you will see impossible videos of the astronaunts jumping and waving in the oceans, which is technically impossible after 13 days of space travel; the body is too weak to even stand and that is why astronaunts have to be carried down.

        Also, how you get back to earth after landing on the moon? Jump or fire a rocket to the orbiting spaceship above the moon? That is 1960s and the instructments are not that precise. This part was censored and never explained because it is pure science fiction.

        1. I cannot find any reference to the evidence of faked moon rock in Google Scholar. Do you have a citation to a report in a trusted peer reviewed journal? Unless there is any scientific evidence, I would not take this seriously.

          I've not seen footage of astronauts jumping in the oceans. As I recall, they were slowly retrieved form the capsule and helped to the waiting ship. Yes, I did see them waving after being recovered.

          (I am not sure why you think it would be so much more difficult for rockets to return the spacecraft from the moon {with its smaller gravity}, than to get there. There was plenty of footage of the lander module returning to orbit – it was not censored in my country? If you've not seen it, perhaps try a web search, it is easy to find.)

        2. I am Dutch, you twit and you got the story wrong. We were given several moon rocks and only one in the end as a piece of petrified wood. The others were still really real moon rocks.

      2. do you really think magnetic hills are "optical illusions" or do they prove gravity is a untenable theory? Both Einstein and Newton himself admitted his theory was asinine, privy to huge flaws and highly debatable as real.
        why has Orion and Artemis failed?..are you really that naive or are you a "double agent" like Georges Cuvier?

      3. How did they create all those samples of moon rock brought back? (Have they fooled all the laboratories that have examined samples, or are they all also part of the conspiracy?) How did they get the mirror there that was used to measure the earth-moon distance accurately (or are the observatories involved in that work also part of a conspiracy)?

        Evidently you have done no research whatsoever, because answers to the above questions can be found at the bottom of webpage at:-

        apollofacts.atspace.co.uk

      4. Who are you to say that the Van Allen Belts are penetrable?
        You say it as if its 100% fact. This is insanity coming from anyone to talk that way, and just explain things like you do like you actually know. Its sad. Now I know why everything is pending on here because you probably leave out comments that dont fit your story book of lies told to you. Im done here. Not a good feed. Its all based on spevulation and heresay.

        1. I check for comments regularly, but do have a life. The reason "everything [you had posted wa]s pending on here" was because you posted your comments between 04.21 and 04.33, and I was in bed, asleep.

          If you think I will not post comments that do not fit my position, then perhaps you have not read through the other comments. The only comments I have declined to post are those which have no substantive content and/or are abusive or using profanity. Because a small number of people (perhaps maliciously, perhaps they think it is humorous) will post obscene and abusive comments, I do not allow comments to appear until I have approved them. I hope you would agree that is a sensible policy.

      5. All the answers to the same stupid questions you Apollo believers keep asking, can be found at the following website:-

        apollofacts.atspace.co.uk

        Now wake up and smell the coffee, or moreover, the BS from NASA

        1. People who are interested in the topic should look at sources critically. I've taken a look at the site you recommend. It makes the fantastic claim that "there are more scientists who support the hoax theory, than those who refute it" and supports this by the following evidence:

          "here is a list of scientists who support the Moon landing as being genuine … grand total of 4. Now here is a list of scientists who support the Moon landing as a hoax…That makes a grand total of 9. So the Moon hoax supporters are out in front on 69% with Moon landing supporters way behind on 31%".

          I do not know if the claimed affiliations are accurate, but, really, presenting a sample of 13 people as representative of all the scientists in the world? Can anyone find that persuasive?

          Another point made is that:

          "The current Airfix plastic kit model of the Saturn V rocket, has no mention whatsoever on the box that Apollo went to the Moon, in fact the word "Moon" does not appear anywhere on the box. It merely states that the Saturn V launched the Apollo capsule into space, (low earth orbit, which is correct). Evidently Airfix realise that Apollo did not go to the Moon, otherwise there would be a reference to it somewhere on the box containing model. NASA lies is as plastic as the Airfix Saturn model."

          I found images of the box at the Amazon.co.uk site, and you can see the blurb on the box which refer to the rocket taking the crew of Apollo 11 to the moon. Airfix tell purchasers that

          "The first manned Saturn V sent the Apollo 8 astronauts into orbit around the moon in December 1968. After two more missions to test the Lunar Module, in July 1969 a Saturn V launched the crew of Apollo 11 to the first manned landing on the moon."

          I am not suggesting Airfix should be taken as an authoritative source on the history of science and technology, but clearly apollofacts.atspace.co.uk has not been well researched.

    2. Werner Von Braun Psalm 19:1(kjv)
      Operation fishbowl
      Operation Looking Glass
      ISS only 200 miles from earth with maximum viewing area of 2.8% of earth( same as looking out a airplane window!) so state funded media brainwashing everyone (now pushing men can have babies despite being diametrically opposed to basic biology) with fake curves and anti-Christ agendas for their keepers.
      You are correct.

  4. Think how much political capital would have been available to the Republican party had they wanted to show that the achievement of JFK's great dream was just an illusion? If it was not possible, would the Soviets (with their own programme) not have realised that and called 'foul'?

    How did they create all those samples of moon rock brought back? (Have they fooled all the laboratories that have examined samples, or are they all also part of the conspiracy?) How did they get the mirror there that was used to measure the earth-moon distance accurately (or are the observatories involved in that work also part of a conspiracy)?

    What about the tracking stations around the world that tracked the spacecraft – what was it they tracked going to and from the moon (or were people in these various countries, including the USSR, also part of the conspiracy?)

    As a scientist, I have to be prepared to believe I might be wrong on any scientific question, and that given enough new evidence I might have good reason to change my mind. So, I do not claim to be absolutely certain beyond all possible doubt that people went to the moon. It is even theoretically possible that there is an enormous decades-long conspiracy involving many thousands of people that has duped untold billions for some bizarre purpose. However, on the balance of evidence and probability, it seems people went to the moon and came safely home.

    All replies to these questions were answered over 20 years, so why do idiots keep spouting nonsense like this? They need to head over to:-
    apollofacts.atspace.co.uk

    Where the answers will be found.

    1. "…why do idiots keep spouting nonsense like this?"

      Well, this particular 'idiot' finds the arguments and evidence for the canonical view convincing, and the conspiracy theory views fantastic.

      But I cannot speak for all the other 'idiots'.

    2. Werner Von Braun Psalm 19:1(kjv)
      The Lunartick club
      Operation fishbowl
      Sir Admiral Richard Byrd
      Failed Orion mission
      Failed Artemis missions

      What do you need? A blue transgender unicorn LoL?
      Geocentric for the win, in it to win it!
      Moon travel is impossible as is passing the firmament, all glory to God!

  5. Yeah, it does logically SUGGEST that there's something very fishy going on (NASA currently lacks the technology to achieve a human Moon landing). I mean, it's a strong general argument that can't be cavalierly dismissed; a technology growing weaker over time seems rather implausible on logical and experiential grounds. Has it ever happened before? Has it ever happened that a great exploration of anywhere (or anything) stops for over fifty years? If that's unprecedented – which I believe it is – an honest intellectual inquiry should strongly engage that point.

    1. Interesting premise. I regularly hear news reports of ever greater technological advances in space exploration. And not just from the USA and NASA.

      1. yeah like men having babies and flu viruses exaggerated as plandemics LoL…what progress, stellar LoL!

    2. "Has it ever happened that a great exploration of anywhere (or anything) stops for over fifty years?"
      The answer to this is 'yes'. Take European exploration of the Americas, for instance. There is clear and documented evidence of a Norse presence in the early years of the last millennium (peer-reviewed and available for citation). The last recorded Norse presence in the region is from the start of the fifteenth century. As is public knowledge, it was not until 1492 that Columbus arrived in the Americas, providing us with an example of a 50-year+ gap. Or were these explorations faked too?

      1. ..and let us not forget what Sir Admiral Byrd said about the south pole and Werner Von Braun having his family put Psalm 19:1(kjv) on his headstone!!…or operation fishbowl!
        ..state funded media obfuscation is not new, now men are having babies LoL!!

  6. I am sick of hearing knot heads that ythink we went to the moon it is scientifically impossible. Check out the physics too. It is a lie from the bit of hell where by billions of dollars were bilked out of the American people. I lived back then and we did not have the technology to go to the moon. STUDY! Our corrupt dam government again bilked billions of dollar out of you. I am a chemist and a scientist. More B S for the stupid people. It is called the Greed of man.

    1. Thank you for your comment, Jeanna.

      I am sure you are not a 'knothead' (like me, apparently) and even if I thought you were, I would not consider an ad hominem argument to be useful in attacking your position. It would be unlikely to persuade anyone that I had a strong position to argue from. However, I am also a (chartered) chemist (Fellow of the RSC) and (chartered) scientist, and for that matter a (chartered) physicist (Fellow of the IoP), and I was also alive back then (if too young at the time to be an expert on the moonshots); so, I am afraid those qualifications are not sufficient of themselves to turn your opinion into a persuasive argument.

      On one point I am pretty sure you are wrong. I do not think your government defrauded me: we have our own government here which raises taxes for the National Health Service and social care and education and so forth – but as far as I am aware it did not pass on any substantial funds to support the U.S. Apollo programme.

      I would actually have much more sympathy with the position that the moon programme was not the best use of public money and that a programme to, say, combat cancer, would have been a better use of the resources. However, simply denying history without good grounds is dangerous. Perhaps it does not matter that much if there really was a successful moonshot, but what about holocaust deniers? What if people wanted to deny the slave trade? The opium wars? The crusades? Peterloo? The Amritsar massacre? The assassination of Dr King? The rioting at the Capitol in Jan.2021? What if the Japanese government decided to deny the Pearl Harbour attacks?

      In the USSR, history was regularly edited to be more convenient to evolving politics. And in Russia today, people are already being prepared to believe there was not a war in Ukraine, but a special military operation akin to a peace-keeping mission. So, you will need to excuse me if I prefer to go along with the historical account unless and until I see good reasons (i.e., not just opinions accompanied by insults) to think otherwise.

      1. Your response is riddled with crass malfeasance!
        Subliminal programming is rampant in our state funded brainwashing news, just look at the Covid farce!
        Operation "Fishbowl" proved nobody can penetrate the firmament around earth(falsely called Van Allen Belts), if nuclear warheads aren't getting through no tin foil covered rocket ship will make it.
        Everything is a lie..gravity is asinine and even Newton admitted it was untenable, evolution is proven defunct by […*] Erasmus & Charlie(free mason Baal sucklers), Copernicus […*] as was Georges Cuvier who all "got bought"( ISS is in a heliocentric orbit)(( Heliocentric orbit is impossible and will not work in star mapping or GPS))….
        The obfuscation of reality began with the satanic Sun God Baal sucklers/cult members of 33right free mason cult aka knights of Templar. Now their satanic push of manipulation is making the public so confused that they believe there are 58 genders and men can have babies even though these satanic agendas are diametrically opposed to biological realities.
        Nobody went to the moon. A snellen eye chart is only 20 feet away for good reasons and proves the moon is <600 miles away! Earth is no more than 11,000 years old and was formed by catastrophic geology. No curve would be observable from ISS, simple math reveals a maximum viewing surface of 2.8% standing on the deck of ISS 200 miles away from a 25,000 mile around earth with a maximum viewing surface of 12,500 under ideal conditions.
        Atheism is weak and based on morbid satanism, Geocentric for the win!
        [*edited by the moderator to remove unsubstantiated, potentially libellous, ad hominem defamations]

  7. This convo is absolutely HILARIOUS. Keith,my sweet… you are faced with piece of evidence upon piece of evidence and you still sp out the same response that you do not find it convincing. I have reviewed every piece of evidence I have found on this so far after having believed all this Moonlanding stuff since I was a child, and as an Oxbridge scholar just like you it is absolutely staggering to me that anyone can possibly believe that the Americans actually did it. If they did achieve what they say they did they have been back in a heartbeat since.

    Your example of the Arc, the Oxford to Cambridge line is risible. This line has not been built for a variety of reasons, economic mainly… But generally all based on decision-making and not human capability. We KNOW we can build a line from Oxford to Cambridge , but the factors that prevent us doing so can certainly not be aligned with those that have prevented us from going to the moon again. Are you seriously telling me that in 53 years we would not have been back to the moon, with all our interest in the space race, advancing humanity and discovering more about our solar system than that we would NOT have been back? The Very suggestion is utterly ludicrous.

    Your references to COVID-19 tell me everything I need to know about your position to be honest, Keith. You are a man who wants and NEEDS to believe that governments and authorities would never lie to you. Your sensibilities, ego and mental state would simply not be able to deal with the fact that mankind DOES actually lie, conspire, cheat, do you what it can to get ahead of its adversaries, competitors and enemies. It’s happened since mankind was walking the earth and always will. People cover up their sh*t and quite frankly the Americans are absolutely crapping themselves about the truth of this being revealed because if this particular illusion is shattered it opens the floodgates to literally everything else anybody has ever had any doubt over and it certainly does prove that our authorities lie to us … just as they’re doing every minute of every day right now for anyone with the ability to critically think. Anyone who thinks a bunch of people who openly admit there should be less people in the world actually want to save us with life-saving medical treatments so we reproduce more of ourselves and increase the population needs their head reading. But there are millions of them queueing up to believe the nonsense every single day…and ironically they’re the ones who the planet would be better off without so the genius of the current zeitgeist is that it’s self-selecting.

    You claim you are a critical thinker, but there is absolutely nothing here that indicates you are. You have not even paid lip service to a single valid evidence based point that anyone contesting has made here, let alone acknowledge the irrefutable physical facts they’ve provided. You don’t believe it, Keith because you actually don’t want to. And if you really are the scientist you claim you’d have the mouse to look beyond Google now and then. Anyone that wishes to do so may want to read the latest campaign signed by 1000 scientists stating categorically that they do not believe global warming is anthropogenic… Yet have all been censored for the past 15 years to make up a statistic that apparently “97% of scientists agree”. More utter rubbish propagated by Google and those with an agenda.

    I will leave by saying this: There is none so blind as the man who will not see. And for anyone trying to convince Keith of the facts of this matter should probably save their fingers and energy, for as long as he is on this planet he will never believe that the televised event he watched set in the desert in America as a boy did not happen. Like covid, climate panic and most other modern day manufactured Armageddons these things are used to CONTROL the population. As soon as you understand that you’ll understand the world.

    1. Thank you for your comments Mrs Fox.

      So, you asign the moon landings, the COVID-19 pandemic and anthropogenic climate change similar epistemological status. Fair enough, at least we agree on something.

      I actually also agree with you on the need to be on the look out for lying and conspiracies. The tobacco industry trying for years to hide the risks of smoking would be a good example. Most governments have covert operations, and they lie (for 'the greater good' they would suggest) in times of war. Or they are "economical with the truth" as the UK government conceded in the Australian Supreme Court in the 'Spycatcher' case. Or powerful people make idiosyncractic use of terms as with Bill Clinton's use of "sexual relations" or euphamisms (Putin's 'special military operation' to invade his neighbour). Or they just lie or make things up (D.J. Trump – fill in your own choice of examples). Or people do not look further than the mooted reasons that best align with their values and so are comfortable to believe in – thus the racist misinterpretation of IQ data from the US draft in WW1. So, one should always be sceptical of claims. (If you look at some of the other postings here, you will find examples of my critiquing research publications with flawed argumentation.)

      But the Apollo missions were followed by a catalogue of more impressive technical acheivements such as Skylab, the ISS, the Voyagers, the reusable shuttle, Mariner, Rosetta, Hubble, James Webb ST, the Mars Rover etc, etc, (or perhaps these are all also figments of some international conspiracy). Remember, the Apollo missions were largely responding to a political imperative: space science and technology did not stop progressing when the public lost interest and the same scale of budget was no longer forthcoming.

      As you say about that rail line, there has been no return to moon for manned missions "for a variety of reasons, economic mainly… But generally all based on decision-making and not human capability". Quite so.

      1. Whenever I read about people who defend the governments position that we went to the moon, I know right away that person is throwing out common sense,
        basic human behavior, and sound research because of their pride. It kind of seems like you want to lump flat earthers, 911, and any other so called conspiracy neatly in a pile ready to dismiss. I will admit it does help get readers to nod to themselves "yeah, thats right, i know the earth is round, so we must have went to the moon". I suggest you watch the first interview by Apollo 11 astronauts when they returned and ask yourself if thats normal behavior by 3 grown men that just got back from the moon. Then go find video of Apollo 16 astronauts skipping and singing on the moon. Would you be skipping and jumping around, swinging golf balls, or hot dogin around in a dune buggie, if all that separated you from instant death was a thin pressurized space suit? One tare or rip from falling or anything would be certain death. Yet these guys dont even concern themselves with such matters. Personally I wouldnt be able to focus on driving a buggie around, but how I hope this aluminum foil lunar lander will launch me off the moon surface and dock with the main ship with zero issues, to return home. Please note, this was never done before. This country had the audacity to put this first time moon landing on live tv for the Russians to see. Im sorry, only a government 100% confidence of full success, and no humiliation and reproductions could even consider this idea. I never ever heard one person on film that thought the success of this mission was at 100%, yet it still went live. So, yes, it is hard for me to by the official nonsense just because I saw some grainy footage. The fact we never went back is just another example. We had 100% confidence in 1969, where did it go? There would have been manned trips by the Russians if it were possible. Then there is Dr. Van Allen and his 1959 article in American Science on his findings. I happen to be a Christian and I dont think God intended for man to leave this planet. Anyway, there is just to much evidence of shenanigans to text on here. You can dismiss all the facts i listed at your convenience, it still will not change common sense in most people. The truth will come out one day, and you might be hard to find. People need to consider that if the U.S. government lied about the moon landing, and had the capability to cover it up this long, what else are they lying about.

        1. Thank you for your comments, PJ.

          Should I be PROUD of humanity reaching the moon (when I was just a school child with no input), and achieving that before finding cures for cancers, malaria, etc., and preventing famines, etc.? If so, how ASHAMED should I be by our continued wars, violence, abuse of the weak, environmental vandalism, racism, and inequality?

          I do entirely agree with you about the risks. I know that I could never be so brave (= stupid depending on viewpoint?) to be an astronaut. I would like to think I might be brave in a situation that actually demanded it, but I certainly would not go looking to put myself in danger. I am risk-averse, do not enjoy an adrenalin rush, and think life has enough challenges without looking to climb mountains, or jump out of planes, or crawl through tiny channels in underground caves. I find it hard to understand why people would deliberately do such things when they could stay at home with their music, tea, and an interesting book.

          It is a little different when the risks are taken for genuine advancements in human knowledge, but even so, that would not be me. But, vive la différence! I think the early astronauts for Mercury and Gemini and Apollo (and the Soviet programmes) were mostly recruited from military jet pilots and test pilots and similar roles – people who had already chosen careers where a small mistake or a small technical fault was likely to almost instantly lead to disaster. (I think in America they were said to have 'the right stuff'. Like you, perhaps, I definitely have 'the wrong staff' in that regard!)

          You note that you are a Christian and do not think God intended for man to leave this planet. I can respect that, but when younger I was a Sunday School teacher, and I do not recall anything in the ministry of Jesus which would suggest that. I certainly do not pretend to know what God intends, but can see no reason why He would have wanted people not to fully explore His whole creation. (Though you might appreciate from my comments above, that in my own view {for what little that is worth} a close following of Jesus's teaching might have suggested that there were other priorities here on Earth in terms of human caring and welfare that were more immediate than getting people to the moon.) If our early ancestors had considered that God did not want us to stray too far from home, humanity might never have spread out from Africa.

          I am not defending a government's position. I am not even sure MY government has a position on this (and I certainly do not support its position on a number of other matters). I certainly have no reason to defend the USA government (which has not always been a strong moral actor on the world stage and should be openly criticised and held to account for some of its misbehaviour). I am simply accepting the canonical position adopted in science, and expect to continue to do so unless and until the scientific community reaches a different consensus based on robust evidence.

      2. But the Apollo missions were followed by a catalogue of more impressive technical acheivements such as Skylab, the ISS, the Voyagers, the reusable shuttle, Mariner, Rosetta, Hubble, James Webb ST, the Mars Rover.

        So you are saying the achievements you mention above, are more impressive than the Apollo (fake) Moon landings. So basically you are contradicting yourself.

        Keith dear boy, do you not realise just how stupid you make yourself appear to a worldwide audience by supporting the Apollo fairy story? That worldwide audience are now on the side of the Apollo disbelievers.

        1. {No, I am NOT saying the Apollo landings were faked ("more impressive than the Apollo (fake) Moon landings").}

          Yes, I am suggesting that Skylab, the ISS, the Voyagers, the reusable shuttle, Mariner, Rosetta, Hubble, James Webb ST, the Mars Rover, etc., demonstrate how technical competence has built upon, and increased since, Apollo.

          I do not see the contradiction. The Apollo missions were impressive at the time. Since then, missions have gone further away; achieved sequences of multiple planetary rendezvous; undertaken, by remote control, actions that had to be manually achieved on the moon landings (e.g., collecting and analysing samples of 'soil' {regolith}} on another world); achieved docking between vehicles launched from different nations; built vehicles that can be extended and developed in space; put people in space for much, much longer than Apollo; employed multi-use vehicles; undertaken maintenance and repair of instruments in space; collected evidence of exo-planets (and in some cases their composition); undertaken real science in almost zero gravity conditions; offered a proof of method for deflecting near earth objects, …so, yes, since Apollo we have witnessed some more complex, sophisticated, nuanced, and even distant activity.

          Thank you for your comments, Derek. I am happy to approve comments that seek to make a serious point, even if I do not think they are well argued or well grounded.

          However, please note I have NOT approved your other comment (submitted a few minutes before the one I am replying to here) which does not offer any substantive argument, but rather simply seeks to be abusive to those who disagree with you. Profanity may reflect the strength of your commitments, but it does not helpfully explain your position. Simply insulting people who take a different view is hardly likely to persuade them of the strength of your position – rather it is more likely to reinforce a view that many 'deniers' are insecure in their reasoning. I reserve the right not to publish submitted comments that are intemperate and discourteous.

    2. Bingo!
      The obfuscation of reality dates back to free mason satanic sun God Baal sucklers and the Lunartick club that only met on full moons!
      Subliminal MK Ultra style programming by state funded media has lead the crass majority into a "cult like trance". The Covid control agenda proves how faking moon travel was not too hard on a society dominated by mob mentality and media lies!
      Nobody can get past the firmament, operation fishbowl blasted the firmament with nuclear warheads so no tin foil covered rocket will penetrate it..the government knows this! The climate change is another hoax with the warmest days in Canada being in 1921 and 1936! It is all designed to "herd and control the sheep"
      Man has never left lower orbit(as they put it) and there are no real pictures of earth because nobody has been far enough away to take one. From ISS 200 miles from earth simple math reveals a maximum 2.8% viewing area so no curves! It would be the same as looking out a airplane window despite fake news showing CGI farces of such things as a curved or ball earth. ( I am not saying it is flat but it does seem Geocentric orbit is correct))
      We live in a lie, government is the enemy of the people and democracy is a lie! Stooges are everywhere… [edited by the moderator to remove ad hominen references]

      1. The lunar Society of Birmingham indeed met on the evenings of full moons. In the eighteenth century there was no street lighting, so it was common sense (often to be recommended) to choose to meet on the evening when there was most likely sufficient light to return home safely after dark.

  8. Unless you're going to find a way to take me to the moon and see it for myself I'm skeptical being is believing

    1. This seems to reflect the thinking of Descartes, who at his most sceptical decided the only thing he could be absolutely certain of was his own being.

      Of course, he then decided (and presumably it would have been hard to function in the world otherwise) that he would start admitting other things.

      The Royal Society's motto was 'take no one's word for it' and they did set up tests or demonstrations of many of the ideas reported to them by correspondents. Simpler times. No one could make a contribution in science today if they needed to go back and prove all the foundational knowledge to their own satisfaction first. 'No man is an island', as John Donne wrote – we should not ask for whom the bell tolls, each toll diminishes each of us.

  9. Mr. Keith,

    Good on you for your patience and clarity.
    I accept the evidence for humans visiting the moon because it fits in with the framework of knowledge that I have accumulated over the years, and with my watching of the events at the time they were happening.
    I did not participate, but with my own knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology and politics, I believe it did happen. My own father brought home photos of the splashdown, the recovery and some astronauts in a quarantine chamber from when he served on a recovery ship.
    Also, faking the moon landings seems to me to be more expensive than doing the real thing. Continuing to fake it requires coordination between people who HATE each other and want to remove each other from the planet, but hey, they'll get along for more than 40 years to pretend it didn't happen.

    If someone says they will never believe unless they stand on the moon themselves, then I don't know how the conversation can continue. It's pretty dishonest to waste people's time with objections one doesn't actually believe oneself if a person is just going to play that trump card at the end.
    For my part, I don't believe the Earth is flat because I have never stood on a flat planet.

  10. Well, we all know Stanley Kubrick filmed it.

    Stanley Kubrick could have been asked to fake the moon landings. But as he was such a perfectionist, he would have insisted on shooting it on location. Therefor, it's rumored that he said it would be cheaper to actually go to the moon.

  11. You are really drawing the lunatics here.

    Anway, in case you were wondering. The story about the fake moon rock: https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna32581790

    We find it particulary hilarious though and this of course does not prove we never went to the moon. The other moon rocks can attest to that.

    Cheers!

  12. The declaration that Starship's latest 4 minute flight was a success should make anybody pause for thought.
    Bear in mind that the Saturn V had roughly the same specs as Starship (140+ ton payload) and yet allegedly took astronauts to the moon 240,000 miles from Earth. Several times. 50+ years ago.
    Meanwhile Starship managed a measly 24 miles, 1/10000 of the distance. Not really much of a success.
    As a matter of fact, apart from Saturn V, nobody has successfully launched a rocket carrying more than 100 tons. Ever. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_heavy-lift_launch_vehicle.
    The problem with those who naively believe that the moon landings happened, is simply that they have no idea of the sheer scale of the technological requirements necessary to take human beings safely to the moon and back.

  13. Dear Sir,
    Thankyou for posting all this balderdash from all parties and all beliefs.
    Let us make this perfectly clear from the outset.
    The Earth, yes our nice little planet that we all seem to want to destroy, is the Galactic asylum for the lunar-tics of this star system.
    I would love to follow this conversation till the irrational end, but my little green, yellow eyed warder limits my time reading insults and theories with no proofs.
    Ah, I have been informed that my therapy session is due.
    So tara, and may the Goddess save you all.

  14. Interesting how people cling to this subject. On 1 hand we have the people who say the landing happened. What is the purpose of winning the argument? So they landed and haven't done it again yet. End of story.
    On the other hand we have those who disbelieve. I think the majority of the disbelievers will tell the story of the US government tricking the Russian government into spending insane amounts of money to keep up and that this adventure increases patriotism from the day it was announced, to the return of astronauts to earth. After all that hoopla, what was the substantial gain from this mission for the people? The claims of misdirection and lies can be justified by the outright propaganda tactics that America has used AGAINST Americans since at least 1900.
    So what is their goal? I think it is to prove that we are being lied to on a great scale.

    What do I believe? It's never been about if they did or didn't, will or won't, truth or lies. You are being distracted by controlled efforts to talk, think and share information on anything but what the true agenda really is. Even though that agenda is known and proven. Let's face it, we are so distracted on the thought of moving to another planet in our lifetime and off to heaven or reincarnation in death that we don't focus on the right agenda. Living in the now.
    Every great magician or trickster (or politician) uses 3 primary methods to get their way. Slight of hand, deception and distraction.
    The technology and abilities do not exist for a human to go to the moon and back. One day?….yes. Aliens did it!

  15. Keith I am astounded by your tolerance and patience. I will understand astrophysics beforeI understand how you manage to field such ill-tempered quackery in such good humour. Well done.

    1. That is very kind. I bin the comments which are simply abusive name-calling, but I do not like to close down discussion where people seem to genuinely hold views – even if these seem bizarre to me. Part of this is the ex-school teacher in me (that was a long time ago now, but I think for some of us, 'once a school teacher, always a school teacher'), never wanting to give up on 'learners'. It is also having done quite a bit of research into 'alternative conceptions' (misconceptions) where you find that sometimes even the brightest and most studious students still hold ideas contrary to science and what they have been taught.

      It is also reading a little of the history of science, and knowing that even great scientists were sometimes committed to ideas that can seem to us very strange. Priestley was just one of many scientists who explained chemical reactions through a substance, phlogiston, that possibly had negative weight (which might seen a cause for levity now, if you pardon the pun); Newton was probably as active (even if secretly) in alchemy as in physics; and there is an extensive history of great scientists who believed in some version (and there were many) of an all-pervading ether. Halley, of comet fame, seriously proposed that the earth was hollow with a quite separate population living on the inside. So, I try to remember that people must have their reasons for what they commit to, even when those reasons look flaky to me. The other side of the history of science is people like Giordano Bruno whose ideas were so bizarre and unacceptable that they were put to death for them for the perceived good of the wider society. He was foolish enough to believe {inter alia} that there might be other earth-like planets out there around other suns in an infinite universe.

    1. Typo in previous comment. Should read "less than 5%."
      Harry W Jones, the author of the aforementioned article is a NASA scientist working in the area of safety in space science.
      He actually quotes 3 estimates; <5% ("During Apollo, NASA conducted a full Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) to assess the likelihood of success in “landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.” The PRA indicated the chance of success was “less than 5 percent.” The NASA Administrator felt that if the results were made public, “the numbers could do irreparable harm.” The PRA effort was cancelled and NASA stayed away from numerical risk assessment as a result.")
      10% chance – ("Joseph Shea, the Apollo program manager, chaired the initial Apollo systems architecting team. The “calculation was made by its architecting team, assuming all elements from propulsion to rendezvous and life support were done as well or better than ever before, that 30 astronauts would be lost before 3 were returned safely to the Earth. Even to do that well, launch vehicle failure rates would have to be half those ever achieved and with untried propulsion systems.”") and the astronauts who claimed it was 50/50.

  16. I know this is someone trying to be ‘scientific’ about moon landings etc but you used the Straw Man argument in your opening paragraph; Covid was made in a lab. You need to rewrite your paragraph if you want to be considered serious.

    Otherwise you are just a hack. It is now proven beyond reasonable doubt that Covid was not a wet market virus but manipulated in a lab and released. To drag those of us who thought it was from the beginning into the myriad of Straw Men you mention and didn’t mention is just fraud now.

    It was written back when the liars dominated, so you get a pass. But now you should go back and redo every article written to scientifically update them. That’s how science works.

    1. I referred to the alternative hypothesis that SARS‐CoV‐2 (the coronavirus associated with COVID-19) was the result of laboratory manipulation. This possibility has been taken seriously by many scientists, although from what I have read/heard the general view is still, as I suggested back in 2020, that SARS‐CoV‐2 had an origin in the natural environment. It is in the nature of science (as opposed to conspiracy theories) that a consensus can shift as new evidence becomes available, so I am happy to accept that at some point scientists may generally come to believe that the virus was produced in a lab. (Just as we now know Wittgenstein was wrong in his example about space exploitation.)

      Darren, you suggest "It is now proven beyond reasonable doubt that Covid was not a wet market virus but manipulated in a lab and released". I would have thought that if that was the case, I would have heard about such convincing work. But, perhaps not. Could you provide a citation to the work in the scientific literature which makes you so confident?

      I am more than happy to accept such a change – that's in the nature of science. However, I would not want re-write the article as it represented my understanding of the situation when I was writing. New evidence can change our minds, but not the past.

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