Fun "on the Moon"
I really haven't spent too much time thinking on the moon landings in recent years, but with all the conspiracy stuff popping up in the election season, and the media constantly mocking conspiracy theorists as moon hoax believers, I was getting periodic reminders of my thinking on this issue. Then looking up something recently on youtube, I stumbled on this video from 2012 where this sgcollins guy claims that the astronaut footage from the moon could not have been faked by slow motion:
Sgcollins' argument seems fair enough, and he seems to be a reasonable guy. Jarrah White did debate a bit with him back and forth on this, but let's just say ultimately that the footage wasn't faked to slow motion speed using any sort of normal video technology available then.
But I have been thinking about this a bit more, and the whole slow motion fakery argument is just dumb. Because in 1/6th gravity, men walking on the moon wouldn't be walking slowly (even with a heavy bulky suit on), they would be zipping around fast because they have so much strength. This oddly is NOT what the footage of astronauts on the moon shows! Sometimes they kind of run and skip, but a lot of the time they do seem to be walking kind of slowly. But really, the only time slow motion would be useful is when someone or something is falling. Interestingly, there's no footage where they ever jump really high on the moon, as would be natural to try. At the same time, another oddity of the moon footage is we rarely if ever see anything falling on the moon WAY slower than it should. Slow motion could be used effectively for these short parts where they want to show something falling slowly. But overall, saying they faked moon gravity using slow motion is just dumb.
I realized (or remembered) that the easiest way to fake the low gravity of the moon would not be slow motion video, but to have the astronauts (they are on a movie set anyway) hung by suspension wires with some play or give to them, so that much of the astronaut's weight is eased but they still contact the ground. I know I've seen this proposed elsewhere and some examples of it in footage. For instance this:
Note, I don't agree with everything in the video, but the basic point is there.
Wires are certainly the obvious solution to faking low gravity, rather than slow motion video.
So look at this example of an Apollo 16 astronaut falling on the moon:
Would this guy really fall like that and have such trouble getting up in 1/6th gravity? The backpack is not that much weight relatively, to throw his balance off, and even if the whole suit is 200 pounds, he's still 1/3 lighter than on earth if we assume he's about 200 pounds. So, he should still be 3 times stronger than on earth, and be able to jump up very easily.
There are many odd issues with this clip, for instance after his first leaning fall, and he tries to get up, then he falls again-- more quickly than expected. Also when he falls, he's sort of suspended above the ground (which fits the suspension wire footage). There's also some dirt that gets kicked up that falls down veryy quickly-- like earth gravity speed. So it's just weird footage. I think the key oddity is the way his whole center of gravity seems off-- which doesn't really make sense for being in 1/3th gravity and wearing a backpack. His center of gravity COULD be thrown off by suspension wires though, if they are positioned away from his natural center of gravity, such as on his backpack.
The same sort of problems are seen in two different scenes of falling Apollo 17 astronauts here at 10 minutes and 15 minutes in:
A really convincing example of unnatural weight shifting at 2:30 in this video:
Also see here:
There are a bunch of related videos from this last one, showing all manner of obvious fakery.