Point 1: NASA claims to have erased much of the telemetry data from the landings during a budget crisis in the 70s when they reused the tapes.

Owen makes a joke about how it seems unlikely that they would have 'erased those tapes because there was a FRIENDS marathon'. His typical level of humor. I would class this as a throwaway-grade non-evidence.

'They've never not had a GIANT budget'--very subjective, but IMO this is just not true. NASA does not have what I would call a giant budget today and has never made up a significant fraction of the federal budget that I'm aware of since the Apollo program.

Point 2: 'You can't do a live broadcast from the Moon *now*'

The claim is that the technology and power requirements to broadcast a television program 60 miles means that it would have been impossible to broadcast the video signal from the Moon.

This claim would be true if that's what they were doing, but any halfway decent engineer can come up with the correct answer to that one in 2 seconds. They didn't *broadcast* from the Moon, they almost certainly *tightcast* from a parabolic dish antenna on the Moon to a much larger parabolic receiver on Earth. The broadcast was then sent using the normal TV broadcast system. The idea that everyone's TV set was picking up a live feed directly from the Moon, yeah, that would be dumb.

Point 2A: 'they have no power source' and 'they had to transmit through the Van Allen Belt'. Well, as pointed out above, they don't need a huge amount of power because they would be using a shaped antenna and a very high-gain receiver on the Earth side. And the Van Allen Belt is irrelevant for transmission because cosmic rays don't block radio signals.

Point 3: 'The Moon rocks are petrified wood/contain manmade metals or radioisotopes'

This one, I don't have a direct answer to. I'd have to look into it.

I doubt it's true basically because it's Owen Benjamin saying it, but that doesn't mean it's actually false. Even pathological liars with delusions of genius sometimes say true things.

Point 4: 'no other country ever went back' and 'it would be great for science because you could study space without an atmosphere' and 'I would sell all my possessions to go to the Moon':

There was no economic incentive to go back at the time, we can do zero g and partial-g science on the space station, and the status incentive is gone once the US made it there first. And until very recently there was no individual on Earth who could possibly hope to fund a private venture to the Moon. That is starting to change, and lo and behold, all of a sudden people are talking about space tourism and Moon bases, just as you'd expect.

We can study space from orbital telescopes for *far* less money than a Moon telescope and there is no benefit offered by being on the Moon.

Point 5: There was a lot of incentive to fake the landing because of Russia, etc.

This is equally good evidence that there was a lot of incentive to *actually land on the Moon*

lol yeah especially if the Russians go and be able to contradict us in detail about what they observed

that would be awkward

I find none of this convincing and I am not in any way ideologically wedded to the idea of the moon landing.

I just sense that some people want it to be fake lol

I wouldn't be shocked if the US lied about it. The Govt lies all the time. I just have to have good evidence before I believe such a thing.

Yes it is very clear that some people want to believe in just about anything. Conspiracy theorists like to feel smart and clued in and like they are superior to the sheeple. I get it. I like conspiracy theories too.

But I'm pretty sure we went to the Moon.

I've had it

......twice

>.>

The best kind of market.

#Murica

Yes, because child based drag shows is fundamentally flawed.

https://tenor.com/view/bart-no-problemo-gif-8124527

I'm pretty sure that's a good platform to run on

Not only is it a cancerous LGBTQ+ based news site, but it's based in the UK. That's a double whammy if I've ever seen one.

Jesus Christ, I've never seen my intelligence drop so precipitously as I have during an argument about whether or not the moon landing actually happened.

Aside from the fact that no one that was alive to see it seems to have any doubt that man landed on the moon, even though some of them seem to be pretty suspicious of the government, there is also the technological issues: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_loUDS4c3Cs

My biggest problem with the moon landing being fake requires that literally 90% of Astro physics and science fiction is based on flat out lies.

I'm sorry, I believe cults can get big, but not THAAAAAT big. You would need literally every single mainstream and credible physicist to be onboard with the lie, otherwise they would point out the flaws in the math.

Also idk why people are so obsessed with colonizing Mars and the moon. It would be a hell of a lot easier creating an orbital habitat on the dark side of the moon than it would be to build an actual base on the moon itself. Same for Mars.

Not only would you be able to mimic Earth's Gravity with centrifugal force, but you would have better protection from radiation, and you wouldn't constantly be having the fine dust of both planets wearing away at seals and filters. You also wouldn't have to deal with some of Mars's gnarly storms.

It's the same idea as the flat earth crap. In spite of everything I've seen with my own eyes over the years, you want me to believe that all the world's major governments are hypercompetent and in cahoots? Sorry, I have a lot of faith in a lot of things, but I don't have that much faith.

As for your question about living on the moon or Mars, I don't really know a whole lot about the details involved in living in space, and I suspect most people don't either, but I figure most people have this expectation that they would feel safer with solid ground under their feet.

Even if that solid ground is on a place with no atmosphere, or where they can't breath.

@DJ_Anuz Isaac Arthur agrees with you that building O'Neill cylinders makes way more sense than colonizing other bodies, and so do I.