By Mark Keenan
NASA claims that between 1969 and 1972 twelve men walked on the Moon. They supposedly travelled approximately a quarter of a million miles from Earth, landed on the lunar surface, walked and drove across it, and launched themselves back into lunar orbit and returned safely to Earth.
The most extraordinary visual evidence supporting that claim is the film and television footage itself. We see astronauts bouncing across the lunar surface. We see dust thrown into the air. We see the Lunar Roving Vehicle racing across the landscape.
But there is a remarkably simple question that can be asked of that footage:
Does the Apollo footage actually behave as footage recorded on the Moon should behave?
According to contempory physics and the theory of gravity the Moon’s gravity is puportedly approximately one-sixth that of Earth’s. That means objects falling or being thrown into the air should follow trajectories that are measurably different from those produced under terrestrial gravity.
If the Apollo footage really records men working on the lunar surface, then the movement of astronauts, falling objects and particles of dust should contain the physical signature of lunar gravity.
And that signature should be measurable.
Image from Amazon
I have examined the Apollo evidence for several years, including in my book Fake Moon Landings and the Lies of NASA. My conclusion is that NASA has not provided convincing evidence that men landed on the Moon during the Apollo programme.
The footage therefore presents an extraordinary opportunity. Rather than arguing endlessly about whether the astronauts “look” as though they are on the Moon, why not measure what the footage actually shows?
That is where the Apollo gravity question becomes particularly interesting.
In my previous article, If NASA Went to the Moon Six Times. Why Is Going Back So Difficult, I examined the extraordinary gap between NASA’s claimed six successful Apollo lunar landings and the difficulty NASA now faces in returning humans to the lunar surface. I also discussed the disappearance of the original Apollo 11 slow-scan television recordings. This article focuses on one much narrower question: what does the surviving Apollo footage actually tell us about the way objects fall and move?
The Strange Appearance of the Apollo Astronauts
Anyone who has watched Apollo footage will recognise its peculiar appearance. The astronauts seem to bounce and move in a conspicuously slowed manner. They appear almost as if they are walking underwater. One researcher puts it more bluntly:
“The Apollo ‘astronauts’ appear to move as if underwater, walking along the sea floor.”
The argument made by some Apollo sceptics is that terrestrial footage played back more slowly could create much of this appearance. Physics is harder to fool.
If the astronauts really were on the Moon, objects thrown into the air, falling objects and particles of dust should behave according to the purported gravitational effects that conventional physics attributes to the Moon.
That gives us something measurable.
Follow the Dust
According to contemporary science a falling or thrown object follows a trajectory determined by gravity. The Apollo footage therefore potentially provides something much more valuable than visual impressions. It provides data. If the footage is genuine, researchers should be able to take an object whose dimensions are known, track its movement frame by frame, establish the elapsed time, and calculate its acceleration.
If the result corresponds to the expected lunar conditions, that would seemingly support NASA’s account. If the result corresponds to Earth gravity, that would be a very different matter.
And this is not merely a hypothetical exercise. In 2012, Hsiang-Wen Hsu and Mihály Horányi published a paper in the American Journal of Physics examining dust kicked up by the Lunar Roving Vehicle during Apollo 16. They treated the dust as ballistic particles and used the Apollo video footage to estimate the gravitational acceleration at the lunar surface. Their calculated values were approximately 1.48 and 1.47 metres per second squared—reasonably close to the expected lunar value of approximately 1.62 m/s²[1].
Indeed, the University of Colorado laboratory associated with the researchers described the analysis as showing that the footage could not have been taken on Earth[2].
So does that settle the matter?
Not necessarily.
The Frame-rate Problem
The crucial issue is time. The researchers’ analysis depends upon determining how much real time elapsed between the frames being examined. Their paper identifies the Apollo 16 television camera as operating at approximately 29.97 frames per second[3].
That may appear straightforward. But there is a serious problem. The Apollo television system involved specialised transmission and conversion processes, and the surviving material available to researchers is not identical to the raw camera signal as it originally existed. Furthermore, the original Apollo 11 slow-scan television recordings—the raw signal supposedly transmitted from the lunar surface—are no longer available. NASA’s own investigation concluded that approximately 45 tapes containing the original Apollo 11 television signal were most likely erased and reused during a shortage of magnetic tape in the early 1980s.
This is an astonishing admission when we consider what Apollo 11 is supposed to have been. NASA says that human beings travelled approximately a quarter of a million miles to another world and, for the first time in history, walked upon its surface. Yet the original recordings of that historic event were apparently erased and the tapes reused. One of the most extraordinary events in human history, if the official account is correct, was recorded on magnetic tape—and those original recordings were subsequently lost.
What survives today is therefore not the original camera signal as it was transmitted from the Moon, but material that passed through the television conversion and recording process. This matters enormously because if we are trying to determine the physical acceleration of objects from the footage, we need to know precisely how the original frames relate to real elapsed time.
Suppose footage recorded under Earth gravity were subsequently slowed during playback. A falling object would appear to accelerate more slowly. The measured gravitational acceleration would consequently be lower.
The crucial question is therefore not simply:
“Can we fit a lunar-gravity trajectory to the footage?”
It is:
“Can we independently verify the speed at which the original footage was recorded and played back?”
That distinction is fundamental.
If the original recording rate, conversion process and subsequent handling of the footage are independently documented, then the physics can be tested. If the timing itself depends upon assumptions about the footage, the analysis becomes more complicated.
But what about the Apollo 16 dust analysis?
The Hsu and Horányi study should not be ignored. On the contrary, it should be examined carefully. That is evidence which supporters of Apollo can legitimately point to.
That is where the debate becomes much more interesting than the usual argument over whether astronauts “look slow.” A proper forensic examination should take the earliest and highest-quality surviving footage, establish its complete technical history, identify the original recording and conversion frame rates, identify objects of independently known dimensions, track their movement frame by frame and publish the calculations so that anybody else can reproduce them. That would be science.
This brings us back to the question raised earlier: what happens when the motion of objects visible in the Apollo footage is actually measured?
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John W. Young on the Moon during Apollo 16 mission jumping about 42 Centimeters high. Charles M. Duke Jr. took this picture. The LM Orion is on the left. April 21, 1972 (Public Domain)
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One independently produced analysis claims to have done precisely that[4]. By analysing the motion of falling objects in Apollo television footage, the analysis argues that the underlying acceleration is consistent with terrestrial gravity once the alleged slowing of the footage’s playback speed is taken into account, and maintains that the measurements are reproducible from publicly available source footage.
If correct, that would be an extraordinarily important finding. A falling object does not care about NASA’s reputation, historical consensus or public opinion. Its trajectory is governed by physics.
If the footage really records activity on the Moon, measurable objects should exhibit the acceleration expected in what contemporary science calls “lunar gravity”. If, on the other hand, the footage was recorded under what contemporray science calls “terrestrial gravity” and subsequently altered in speed, the same measurements should reveal that possibility.
This brings us back to the crucial question: how securely can the time scale of the surviving footage be established?
The Astronaut Movement Problem
Even setting aside the question of whether lunar gravity even exists (i.e., that the Moon even has the gravitational effects attributed to it by contemporary physics), there is another question that deserves examination. Even if we assume, for the moment, that the Moon has a gravitational acceleration approximately one-sixth that of Earth, this would not mean that everything on its surface should move at one-sixth normal speed. Gravity is supposed to affect the acceleration of falling objects; it does not simply slow every movement of the human body to one-sixth its terrestrial speed.
This is why the Apollo footage has fascinated sceptics for decades. They argue that the characteristic slow-motion appearance of the footage deserves quantitative analysis rather than dismissal by ridicule. One researcher argues:
“The Apollo “astronauts” appear to move as if underwater, walking along the sea floor. All in slow motion. Even when they jump upwards it’s all shown in slow motion. But there is no scientific basis for this. There is no reason that someone walking or moving on a low gravity planet or moon would be moving in slow motion like this. At least not while jumping upwards. What would slow them down?… The problem is that free falling objects in low gravity would move more slowly than on earth but other motions would move at normal or perhaps even faster-than-normal speed. This must have presented a technological nightmare for a 1960s film maker.
So, the probable solution was to create and release a major motion picture just prior to Apollo 11 showing men in space and on the moon, all moving in slow motion… That movie, of course, was 2001: A Space Odyssey.”
The underwater comparison becomes still more intriguing when other NASA footage is considered. Sceptics have circulated analyses of later NASA spacewalk footage, notably from the STS-118 mission, in which numerous small objects can be seen moving through the picture around the astronauts. The researchers argue that some of these objects emerge from around the astronauts’ equipment and helmets and behave remarkably like air bubbles rising through water.
This interpretation is particularly interesting because NASA openly uses enormous swimming pools to simulate spacewalks. Sceptical video analyses consequently argue that the supposedly space-based footage has actually have been filmed underwater and latergreen-screened or otherwise composited against a space background. The objects visible in these videos do not, by themselves, prove underwater filming. But the footage provides another testable question: are these simply particles moving in microgravity, or do their trajectories exhibit the characteristic behaviour of bubbles rising through water?
And Then There is Hollywood
The question becomes even more interesting when we remember what was already possible in the world of film. Hollywood had been experimenting with techniques for creating apparent weightlessness long before modern computer graphics. Actors could be suspended on wires. Sets could be constructed vertically. Cameras could be positioned to conceal the supporting equipment. Aircraft could fly parabolic trajectories producing brief periods of weightlessness. And, of course, film could be slowed down.
The point is not that these techniques prove Apollo was filmed on Earth.
They do not. The point is much simpler.
The existence of techniques capable of producing convincing illusions means that the appearance of the footage cannot by itself establish where it was filmed.
That is particularly relevant today, when computer graphics and virtual production can create images that would have been unimaginable in 1969. Seeing is no longer necessarily believing. Perhaps it never should have been.
There is, however, another question that has always struck me as curious. If the Apollo missions were genuinely scientific expeditions to another world, why was so much attention devoted to spectacular visual demonstrations, such as driving around in a Moon buggy and hitting golf balls on the Moon, while comparatively little emphasis appears to have been placed on simple, independently verifiable demonstrations of the lunar environment within the photographic and television record itself?
Personally, I find it curious that nobody thought to make greater use of high-magnification photographic equipment during the Apollo missions. A telescope or telephoto camera lens capable of producing detailed, independently scrutinisable images might have provided a very different kind of evidence from a televised game of golf.
So what does the footage actually prove?
This is where I think the Apollo debate has become confused.
NASA supporters can point to the Apollo footage and say:
“Look at the astronauts. They are moving in lunar gravity.”
Apollo sceptics can respond:
“Look at the astronauts. The footage looks slowed down.”
Neither statement, by itself, is sufficient. If the result consistently produces approximately 1.62 m/s² using independently established timing, that would appear to support NASA´s lunar explanation.
Even that result, however, would not by itself prove that the footage was recorded on the Moon. A measured acceleration of approximately 1.62 m/s² would demonstrate that the objects in the footage behave consistently with the gravitational acceleration that conventional physics attributes to the Moon. It would not, by itself, establish where the footage was recorded or independently prove the existence of the Moon’s supposed gravitational field, since the interpretation of the measurement would still depend upon the assumptions underlying the analysis.
If, however, the lunar result depends upon assumptions about the temporal characteristics of the footage, and the lunar result changes depending on how the footage was recorded, or if properly calibrated footage shows acceleration like that found on Earth, then we would need to consider a very different explanation. That is the experiment I would like to see performed openly.
Not ridicule. Not appeals to authority. Not “everybody knows Apollo happened.”
Physics.
My book Fake Moon Landings and the Lies of NASA examines this issue as part of a much wider investigation of Apollo’s photographic and television record, engineering questions, missing original material, simulation technologies and the documentary evidence surrounding the programme.
I do not expect everybody to agree with my conclusions. Nor should anyone accept them simply because I have written them. But the Apollo footage can be tested.
We can examine the objects. We can examine their trajectories. We can examine the frame rates. We can examine the surviving recordings and their technical history. We can ask whether the measurements genuinely require lunar conditions—or whether another explanation fits the evidence better. That is the point. The footage needs to be measured.
If NASA really put men on the Moon, then the physical evidence should be there.
If the Moon’s gravity exists and if it is what we are told it is, the footage should reveal it.
And if the evidence does not withstand examination, we should be prepared to ask why.
The question is what the evidence actually shows.
So let us measure it.
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Mark Keenan is an independent writer and former Science Adviser at the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change and former Environmental Affairs Officer at the United Nations. His work examines the intersections of science, history, technology, finance, religion and institutional power.
He is the author of Climate CO2 Hoax – How Bankers Hijacked the Environment Movement, The Debt Machine, Transcending the Climate Deception – Toward Real Sustainability, The AI Illusion and Fake Moon Landings and the Lies of NASA. His articles and books are available through his Substack markgerardkeenan.substack.com and RealityBooks.co.uk.
Notes
[1] Hsu, H.-W. and Horányi, M., “Ballistic motion of dust particles in the Lunar Roving Vehicle dust trails,” American Journal of Physics (2012). View the research paper at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258606632_Ballistic_motion_of_dust_particles_in_the_Lunar_Roving_Vehicle_dust_trails
[2] University of Colorado, Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, “Weighty video gives new understanding of Moon’s gravity,” 7 May 2012. View source at
https://lasp.colorado.edu/2012/05/07/10143/
[3] H.-W. Hsu and M. Horányi, “Ballistic motion of dust particles in the Lunar Roving Vehicle dust trails,” American Journal of Physics, 2012. Research paper at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258606632_Ballistic_motion_of_dust_particles_in_the_Lunar_Roving_Vehicle_dust_trails
[4] See Make Believe: Smoke & Mirrors, an independently produced analysis of NASA’s Apollo footage which examines the movement of falling objects and particles and argues, using frame-by-frame measurements, that their motion is consistent with footage recorded under terrestrial gravity and subsequently slowed.
Part 1, archived at http://krishnatube.com/video/1502/Make-Believe-NASA-Moon-Missions-Part-1
Part 2, archived at http://krishnatube.com/video/1505/Make-Believe-NASA-Moon-Missions-Part-2
See also “Slow Motion Astronauts on the Moon?”: https://krishna.org/proof-of-faked-apollo-footage/
Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons
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