Criticism and Conspiracies for Apollo Mission

 Criticism and Conspiracies for Apollo Mission

The Dark Side of Apollo

Introduction

When we think of space exploration, the first words that come to our mind are the moon, mars and, of course, a human in a stuffed white suit wearing a yellow-shielded helmet known as an astronaut. Going even deeper, we think of the picture of Buzz Aldrin on the moon. But is it all real? Was the moon landing real? Did it ever even happen? Or was it just a cabal by the American Government to show that they were greater than the Russian Government? Let’s check out all these conspiracy theories and criticism that this mission is facing after 50 years of it being successful. 

    

The Apollo 11 mission patch

Problems during the mission

So before starting, you should know what the Apollo mission is exactly. For that, I would recommend one of my earlier blog posts on this mission and you can see it here. So the first problem we know about is that unlike the Moon Lander, which would land on the moon. The Command and Service Module or the CSM also known as Columbia kept circling the moon with Michael Collins who was a Module Pilot. The thing about Michael Collins is that though he played a critical role, he is not as famous as the other two (Neil Armstrong, and Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin) as he did not land on the moon but kept circling in the CSM. Now, Aldrin and Armstrong detached themselves from Columbia and started accelerating towards the surface of the moon in the Eagle. Now is the time when the problem occurred. Before landing, an alarm went up. The system said it was Alarm 1202. No one on the module knew which alarm it was. They contacted Mission Control which replied by asking them to keep moving. This alarm actually meant that the guidance computer’s processing system had been overloaded and could function no more. But thankfully, the essential parts kept working. Another problem was that at the height of 150m from the moon, Neil Armstrong, who was a commander, realised that the automatic landing system was landing the module at a dangerous place where it was not safe as it had large boulders. He took the control into his hands and landed the module almost 4 miles from the planned landing site. Just after this Buzz Aldrin noticed that only 5% of the fuel was left which was not enough for the landing. Then mission control gave a timer that if the module was not landed within a minute then the mission would be aborted. Abortion would mean………death. Death to all the crew members except Michael Collins who could come back safely in the Columbia Module. But after the 30-second call, Neil Armstrong said to Mission Control that he had landed on the moon. Now when they were coming back, Aldrin hit his life support backpack on the ARM switch. Now it would have been fine if the switch would have been some unnecessary switch. But it was the switch that was necessary for them to liftoff and rendezvous the CSM.

    

The ARM switch was in this panel

              

Now, if Aldrin was the one to cause the problem, he was the one to solve it. They had a pen, a felt-tipped pen. And a switch is nothing but a material made of a conductor material that joins the two ends of a circuit allowing the current to pass through and thus completing the circuit. So they used that pen to complete the circuit thus coming back safely from the moon.

The pen and the broken switch it replaced

Criticism and conspiracies

But as I told you in the beginning, 50 years after the success people have started to question the authenticity of the landing. Here are the mysteries and their debunked versions.

• Why is the flag straight even though the air is not there on the moon?

Answer: Well, that’s because the pole for this flag was not a normally |-shaped pole instead to keep the flag raised the pole was |¯ shaped so that the flag could be supported. 

• Well then, what about the ripples on the flag? They are there due to waving air, right?

Answer: Again, there was some problem in opening the flag so due to that it could not be fully opened and so the ripples. 

• Okay, but there are no stars in the sky in any of the photos, why?

Answer: See, the moon landing took place in the morning and the morning blue colour cannot be seen as there is no atmosphere.

                   

Buzz Aldrin

                   

• Hm, let’s get precise the shadows are inconsistent and are not angled where they should be. Do you have an answer?

Answer: That’s because the sun there is not the only source of light. Just like we receive reflected light from the moon on earth, we get reflected light from the earth on the moon. Other, sources include scientific instruments, the Eagle, and also the astronauts.

But, what were the consequences of this? Was there no criticism? Well, actually there was. People were thinking that this was an actual waste of money. Almost all states of America could have their own Harvard if the money was diverted to it. But, you see the promise that humans could rely on computers to go even to the moon and the intense improvement in technology could not have been brought about by the Harvard Universities in such a short time. But due to the pressure of the public and the Vietnamese war the money had to be diverted towards public welfare. But now, after decades of the moon landing, NASA again plans to go to the moon with the all-new Artemis whose first attempt is successfully complete. 

Let us wish for the success of this all-new milestone…

Image credits:

Apollo patch: nasa.gov

ARM switch panel: abcnews.go.com

Pen and broken switch: sothebys.com

Buzz Aldrin in spacesuit: commons.wikimedia.org