September 7th, they're releasing to theaters a new movie about the Apollo missions.

http://www.intheshadowofthemoon.com/index.asp

Should be incredible.

Pity it was all faked.

Not complaining... but it'd be nice if they'd have a modern mission to the moon, if only to give the filmmakers fresh material.

Starting from now, we won't have the technology to make it to the moon for another 10-15 years.

And you believe they did it in 8 in the 1960s?

Well sure.  3 billion dollars went a LOT further in the 1960's than it goes now.

Oops, sorry, $20 Billion dollars.

http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/history/apollo/

Still, these days, $16 billion dollars is the ENTIRE yearly budget for NASA.  It took them 8 YEARS to spend $20 Billion dollars to go to the moon.

Well if they went before, it should be a lot cheaper this time: They don't have to practically invent modern computers, velcro, or a hundred other things this time.

As for the cost comparison, it's hard unless you do it in constant dollars.  But if we spend 34% of $16 billion on lunar flights, I think you'll find that you reach $20 billion in rather a lot less than 15 years.

Great news about the movie. Can't wait to see it.

We went to the moon and it didn't cost much because we WANTED to go to the moon.

We don't want to now.

Prediction: given $500 billion and 15 years, the US will NOT return to the moon with men successfully. The new program will be plagued with difficulty and cancelled.

Remember: everyone other than the US has failed in their moon attempts. And the US was existing in a tremendous bubble of skill, will and leadership.

Interesting analysis, PE, I think you have a point.

Also, when we WENT to the moon "the first time", our micro-processors were very feeble.  With today's processors and platforms, it might be possible to make reasonably sophisticated robotics platforms for a fraction of what manned flight would cost.

And you don't have to bring robots back to the earth.

Even before we've started, you're making excuses for why this attempt will fail. 

The alternate explanation is that we can't get to the moon now or in 60s, and you're desperately seeking a semi-plausable explanation for present day failure without admitting the fakery of the past.

Actually, once you are in orbit, getting to the moon is not that hard. Most of the energy cost is to get from ground level to orbital altitude. The Shuttle could take up components of a moon shot vehicle, assemble it in orbit and send it on its way. The problem is that Shuttle trips are vastly too complicated and expensive for such routine things. It's nothing like a "shuttle".

Fundamental technology has gone backwards since the 60's. Compared to the Saturn V, the Shuttle is an over-elaborated, over-complicated, highly expensive, unsafe waste of money.

You only have to look at what Scaled composites have done with SpaceShipOne on a fraction of the budget to realise this.

NASA should have evolved the proven rocket technology rather than abandoning it. The Shuttle ended up with too many compromises from an over ambitious vision that was inevitably cut back to meet schedule and cost constraints.

Those conspiracy shows about it do make some interesting points (like etchings on camera lenses obscured by stuff in the photo). It is still just unbelievable that it could be faked though.

This is the kind of movie I'd think would be on IMAX or one of thsoe 360-degree screens instead of regular theatres, but I don't see it mentioned.

> It is still just unbelievable that it could be faked though.

Because President Nixon or Johnson, nor the US government, would do something like that?

Because out of all the people that would have to be involved it just wouldn't be something you could keep quiet. It's quite an astronomical scale.

We definitely had sufficient motivation to fake it. Proving our penis was bigger than the communists' was very important.

But I think the fact is, it is probably easier to actually do it than it would be to fake it.

You were probably the kind of kid who kicked Santa in the nuts when you went to the mall.  No sense of wonder at all.

Wanting to go to the moon is the biggest requirement for getting there.  Mostly right now the country would just like to send the government on a one-way trip to the moon.

Now why in the world would they make the Apollo 13 disaster, if they were faking it?

Credibility.

People would expect them to screw up. Or did people have faith in government then?

Clay, you mean the blank guy? I was a good kid. Mostly.

I was speaking to the blank guy, yes.  I always figured you for punching the Easter Bunny.

> You were probably the kind of kid who kicked Santa in the nuts when you went to the mall.  No sense of wonder at all


Because I'm not a sucker?

To answer the questions:

Why? To show up the reds.

Apollo 13? Makes it more believable

How did they hide it?  Most people working on the program and in NASA, believed that they went.  The astronauts probably went into LEO, and perhaps they fired off an unmanned ship at the moon.

Okay, so having an "Emergency" on "Apollo 13" would have been a good idea, dramatically.  I mean, it's flight 13, something bad is supposed to happen.

Plus, after 11 and 12, America had started to treat the moon landings as routine.  That "Emergency" really perked people up, gave them something dramatic to watch, provided heroics and risk and excitement.  And provides a sense of suspense for the following missions -- would it happen again?!

However, having MET (and talked to) Sy Liebergot, the EECOM on the console during Apollo 13, I find it vanishingly unlikely that Apollo was faked.  The EECOM by the way was the station that, when Apollo 13 had its explosion, got to watch the oxygen tanks empty and the power busses go to zero.

Who is to say that he was in on the scam?

He could simply have believed the faked communications that he was receiving.

> The EECOM by the way was the station that, when Apollo 13 had its explosion, got to watch the oxygen tanks empty and the power busses go to zero.

TOday we would all be EECOMs. Snuff film EECOMs.

> got to watch the oxygen tanks empty and the power busses go to zero.

You mean that he watched a computer reading saying that these things were happening... and, as we know, computer readings can never be faked.

So they found the missing tapes?

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/one-giant-blunder-for-mankind-how-nasa-lost-moon-pictures/2006/08/04/1154198328978.html