Vent: I called the moon landing hoax crowd crazy until I saw that one anomaly in the Apollo 16 footage

I used to roll my eyes at anyone who brought up moon landing conspiracies. Like come on, we landed there six times. But then I was watching a breakdown of Apollo 16 and they pointed out how the rover tracks disappear abruptly near a rock shadow with no wind to cover them up. That got me digging for a weekend. Found photos from later missions where the dust on the lander legs looks totally inconsistent with how it should settle in low gravity. Not saying it's fake now, but I definitely don't laugh at the questions anymore. Has anyone else seen something in the NASA archives that gave them a moment of doubt?

3 comments

3 Comments

sage_green1mo ago

Whoa, hold on, you can't just drop that dust detail and move on. Ive seen the rover track thing but the lander leg dust inconsistency is new to me. What exactly looked off about it compared to how it should fall in low gravity? Because Ive watched those Apollo mission videos and the dust always kicked up in a way that looked weirdly heavy to me, but I figured thats just how it works with no atmosphere. But if youre saying the settled dust patterns are actually wrong, that sounds more concrete than just the rover track issue. Can you point me to a specific photo or timestamp for that? Im genuinely curious to see if it holds up to scrutiny.

wesleyb201mo ago

Wait, did you see that compressed air can thing from the MythBusters episode where they faked the moon landing?

sandra_bennett591mo ago

And that compressed air thing is exactly what got me looking closer. The way the dust settled in those videos... it doesn't bunch up right for low gravity. It clumps like it's falling in Earth's air. The rover tracks are the easy catch, but @sage_green is onto something with the lander leg dust. Compare the Apollo 11 footage to a vacuum chamber test with moondust simulant online. The patterns are totally different. The real stuff should puff and drift, not sit there heavy.