Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from ...

172 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
The same thing is happening in the lunar photographs. The
shadows don’t appear to be parallel because of perspective. When
comparing the directions of shadows from two objects at very different
distances, perspective effects can be quite large. I have seen
this myself, by standing near a tall street lamp around sunset and
comparing its shadow to that of one across the street. The two
shadows appear to point in two very different directions. It’s actually
a pretty weird thing to see.
Again, this is something that can be investigated quite literally
in your front yard, and is hardly evidence of a multibillion-dollar
conspiracy.
PPP
There’s an interesting lesson here about the claims of the hoaxbelievers.
In many cases they use simple physics and common sense to
make their points. Usually their initial points make sense. However,
they tend to misunderstand physics, and common sense may
not apply on the airless surface of an alien world. Upon closer
inspection, their arguments invariably fall apart.
I could go on and on with more examples. Debunking the
hoax-believers’ claims could fill a book. That’s not surprising, considering
several books have been written by them. I have no doubt
the books sell well. Conspiracy books always do. I also have no
doubt that a book dedicated to debunking them would not sell
well. A whole book pointing out the believers’ errors would be
tedious, and it isn’t necessary. The examples above are the strongest
they can muster, and they fall apart easily when shaken. Their
other arguments are even weaker.
But the interesting part is the seeming simplicity of their claims.
Not seeing stars in the Apollo pictures is so obvious, so basic a
mistake. The other arguments they make seem obvious as well.
But let’s a have small sanity check here. Let’s say NASA knew
it couldn’t put men on the Moon, and knew it would lose all its
money if it didn’t. They decided to fake the whole lunar project.
They built elaborate sets, hired hundreds of technicians, cameramen,
scientists knowledgeable enough to fake all this, and eventually
spent millions or billions of dollars on the hoax. Eventually,