Did we really go to the moon

Once America won the “space race,” which other rhan satellite capabilities, was almost entirely political, it stopped investing aarge amount into space travel. That’s why they didn’t campaign to reach mars or make additional moonwalks – it wasn’t necessary or very important from the government’s perspective.

I doubt that “we” went to the moon. First of all, very few frum Yidden would ever have “the right stuff” (heck, it is almost impossible for a frum Yid to serve in the American armed forces in any capacity), and there is no way one could be an astronaut even with the more absurd “modern” Orthodox heterim (remember there would no heter for training activites on Shabbos).

Furthermore, if the moon is in fact made of cheese, it would pose serious kashrus issues.

To akuperma: Why could a frum Yid not have “the right stuff,” even without training on Shabbos. Anti-semites share your opinion that frum and other Yids are weenies, notwithstanding the triumphs of the IDF.

Look at the sefer Tiferes Yonasan from Rav Yonasan Eibshutz, Bereishis (8, 21) on וירח ה’ את ריח נחח on the Dor Haflaga that they built a tower to go to the moon. They knew that it is inhabitable, so they wanted to escape another flood through creating a tower where the air is sparse and fly from there a space ship to the moon. They did not fully understand that there will be no other flood.

Sam Klein, are you for real, or are you just trolling?

Sam Klein,

“BOTH Rocket ships that blew up & killed everyone on board ( Shuttle Columbia with Israeli & Shuttle of 1986 with a lady ) had jews on it. What is Hashem’s message from this? Hashem says i put you here on Earth to do your job don’t go to another planet & try to see other worlds.”

There have been other Jews in space on missions that did not end in tragedy. Also, the space shuttles were never designed to leave low Earth orbit. They were intended to be reusable vehicles that could bring people into orbit at the same time as large payloads.

I think the Jews tricked us into thinking America went to the moon.

i bet you also don’t believe that jewish laser in outer space are zapping the california trees
this site is for the kookoo crowd

space race was not completely political. Capability to send satellites is equivalent to the capability to send nuclear intercontinental missiles from which there was no protection at the time. So, that lead to MAD … and to explosion of Americans learning maths. Growth was so fast that there were no qualified teachers, of course, so US ended up with generational plague of teachers who hate maths teaching next generation to hate it.

A frum Jew in orbit would have to constantly daven as it is always the zeman below him. The big problem would be saying Kiddush Levana on the Moon. How can he say that he cannot reach it even if he would jump?

@avi k
On the question of what does it mean in Kiddush Levana, כשם שאיני יכול לנגוע בך וכו׳ if today we can reach the moon.
The answer is, even an astronaut on the moon cannot touch the moon – he cannot touch the moon with his bare hand or any part of his body directly. The astronaut must always be fully encased in his space suit to survive.
– YMS
Lakewood

Reb E,

I heard that vort a number of years ago. Elon Musk gives his reason for working on colonizing Mars, as a backup plan for catastrophes that may occur on planet Earth.

It seems like something along the lines of Rav Yonasan Eibshutz’s explanation for the Dor Haflaga.

The Chacham Tzvi questions if the Maharal’s goilem can be counted for a minyan. Rava created one and Rav Zera destroyed it, why? Rebbi Elizer freed his eved, servant. Why did he not create one? Maybe Reb Moshe ztz’l says that a mechaleh shabbos can be counted but it does not make tefila betzibur.

and the moon is made up of green cheese. haven’t you seen the astronauts eat green lasagna ? no? then you must be of the lower class.
shtussim and mishigasim

For decades, Flat Earthers, Moon landing hoaxers, and anti-Semites were all one and the same. Unfortunately, these days we have to take the anti-Semites out of the three since too many Yidden have unfortunately fallen prey to unsavory forums on the Internet and questionable reading material.

Someday
I’m not sure if you were serious but clearly that isn’t a good pshat
You can certainly touch the moon. All you need is a pressurized tent.
You could even farm the moon given the right botanical conditions. After all Mark Watney grew potatoes on mars.

not

@mentch1
I was very serious. Even a pressurized tent would require a floor which would be choitzetz between the man and the moon.
Farming could be done by pouring ground-soil on top of your tent floor. However, you would still not touch the actual ground of the moon. The tent floor would still be in the way.

So many logical and factual errors…

1) The flag is waving in the wind. There is no wind on in the moon.

The flag didn’t wave. It moved when Armstrong and/or Aldrin moved the pole it was attached to.

2) Any slight degree of deviation of target in 238,900 miles, would result in missing the moon by hundreds of miles. There was no such powerful computing power in 1969 to do that. A cell phone today has much more computing power than a computer the size of a large building had in 1969.

You are correct that today’s computers are far better than what they had in 1969. But so what? How does that prove it was impossible to do in 1969?

That’s like saying today’s ovens are much better than they were a century ago, so my great-grandmother must not have been able to bake a cake.

3) Every video tape today of the first moon landing is proven to be a copy, not the original tape. If cutting and pasting was actually done (to produce a forgery,) it can only be proven on the original. The original is gone. Nasa says they accidentally taped something else over the original video tape. What was this? Someone’s bar mitzvah video that someone accidentally taped a football game over it?? It cost 355 million dollars, and billions in today’s money, and they weren’t careful???

I don’t know if this is true or not, but so what? Because someone may have done something stupid with the tapes after the fact proves that it didn’t happen?

If I tape over my wedding video to record a football game, does that prove that I was never married? After all, who would do something so stupid?

4) President Kennedy vowed to beat the Russians and that the USA would land on the moon before the end of the decade. They had to show something by 1969. The pressure was enormous.

So, the argument here goes: Kennedy promised something, they had to get it done, there was pressure to get it done, so therefore it wasn’t done and the whole thing is a fake???

5) They were no where near the technology in that time to do this.
This is a repeat of the argument above in #2. And completely without evidence.

6) Everyone involved in this hoax on the world, including the 3 original astronauts, could never ever reveal it, without becoming the most hated charlatans in history.

So, the proof of the hoax is that no one ever snitched?

One would wonder, however, if it were fake, why didn’t the Soviets scream it to the heavens? Or were they in their arch-rival’s scheme?

7) There was never evidence found of a USA flag post left on the moon.

I don’t know what evidence you’re looking for. None of the landing sites have been revisited, and none of the satellites in orbit around the moon can resolve an object as small as a flag.

However, satellites in orbit have been able to resolve larger items, such as lunar rovers that have been left on the lunar surface. In addition, mirrors attached to the lunar surface by Armstrong and Aldrin are used regularly by scientists.

The Wolf

Someday,

I know others have already provided answers, but here’s some additional thoughts:

“1) The flag is waving in the wind. There is no wind on in the moon.”

It didn’t wave in “wind”. It had a pole along the top to hold it out, and the bottom was free. It moved when Armstrong and Aldrin were moving it around. This is pretty clear to see in the videos. There’s a really neat video from the Apollo 15 mission where David Scott dropped a hammer and a feather simultaneously, and the fell to the ground at the same rate.

“2) Any slight degree of deviation of target in 238,900 miles, would result in missing the moon by hundreds of miles. There was no such powerful computing power in 1969 to do that. A cell phone today has much more computing power than a computer the size of a large building had in 1969.”

And the Romans built massive aqueducts and the Egyptians built the pyramids without computers at all. Yes getting the trajectories required considerable calculations, but it wasn’t beyond the skill of humanity in the 1960s. Also, you may be overstating the slight deviation = massive miss problem. Keep in mind that both the Earth and the Moon are large, massive objects and had large gravity wells utilized in the trajectories.

“3) Every video tape today of the first moon landing is proven to be a copy, not the original tape. If cutting and pasting was actually done (to produce a forgery,) it can only be proven on the original. The original is gone. Nasa says they accidentally taped something else over the original video tape. What was this? Someone’s bar mitzvah video that someone accidentally taped a football game over it?? It cost 355 million dollars, and billions in today’s money, and they weren’t careful???”

This is essentially an argument from ignorance fallacy. The absence of the tapes does not necessarily mean that they were forged. There were other Apollo missions as well. And after this many decades the original tapes would have degraded by now anyway.

“4) President Kennedy vowed to beat the Russians and that the USA would land on the moon before the end of the decade. They had to show something by 1969. The pressure was enormous.”

Absolutely, and ridiculous amounts of money got thrown at NASA to get it done. Money that NASA does not have now.

“5) They were no where near the technology in that time to do this.”

What technology was missing? Thousands of eyewitnesses saw the Saturn V rocket launches.

“6) Everyone involved in this hoax on the world, including the 3 original astronauts, could never ever reveal it, without becoming the most hated charlatans in history.”

Was only Apollo 11 a fake, but the other moon landings were real? Or were they all fake? Thousands of people were engaged in the Apollo program. Not a single one of them could be bribed by Russia or China to dish dirt?

“7) There was never evidence found of a USA flag post left on the moon.”

There are multiple landing sites with flags. These landing sites have been observed via telescopes and lunar landers. China has the capabilities to observe this as well. These sightings showed that, as suspected by the Apollo 11 astronauts, the flag planted at the first lunar landing site fell down. It’s also been bleached by the sun. Footprints are still there.

Computations were not that hard. After you shoot an object, trajectories follow laws of physics, there is no wind or rain to confuse in the space.

Trajectories of the planets were computed so precisely a couple of centuries ago, so that the planets that were not yet seen were predicted by the variations of the paths of the visible planets.

@Lostspark Don’t try and sidetrack the conversation that you brought up. Multiple users, myself included, have gave very detailed and reasonable responses to your Gish Gallop list of questions. Are there at least two or three that you would consider good answers to your arguments? Yes or no?

I was on the moon for the entire month of July 1969, and can personally affirm that no one else was there. I don’t know about the later alleged landings.

Yes, humans have indeed gone to the moon. The Apollo program, conducted by NASA in the 1960s and 1970s, successfully landed astronauts on the lunar surface multiple times. The first manned moon landing took place on July 20, 1969, during the Apollo 11 mission, with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin becoming the first humans to walk on the moon.

The notion that the moon landings were faked is a conspiracy theory that lacks credible evidence. The Apollo missions were extensively documented through photographs, videos, and data collected during the missions. Independent verification, including tracking data from multiple countries, has confirmed the authenticity of the moon landings. Additionally, moon rocks collected during the missions have been analyzed by scientists from around the world and are distinct from any known Earth samples.

Regarding the prints for the Saturn rockets, it is a common misconception that NASA destroyed the blueprints or plans for the Saturn V rockets. In reality, NASA has retained the technical documentation for the Saturn V, which was the powerful rocket used to launch the Apollo spacecraft into space. The Saturn V’s blueprints and manufacturing information are preserved and available for reference.

As for the perceived regression in space travel capabilities, it’s important to note that space exploration has progressed significantly since the Apollo era. After the Apollo program, NASA shifted its focus to the Space Shuttle program, which aimed to develop reusable spacecraft. While the Space Shuttle was a remarkable technological achievement, it had limitations and high operational costs. After retiring the Space Shuttle in 2011, NASA redirected its efforts towards developing new capabilities, including deep space exploration and facilitating partnerships with commercial space companies.

In recent years, there has been a resurgence in space exploration with the emergence of private companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, and others. These companies have made remarkable advancements in space technology and have successfully developed reusable rockets and spacecraft. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, for instance, have significantly reduced the cost of reaching space and have made it possible to launch satellites and resupply the International Space Station.

Overall, space travel capabilities have not regressed but rather evolved, with advancements in technology and a diversification of players in the space industry leading to exciting developments in space exploration.