Cowell wrote:But that doesn't mean I can't discus any of these things further. Even if you guys think I will not agree with you, this is a public forum, and others might agree with you. IMO, by not discussing some of these discrepancies for anyone's benefit, it seems to indicate that some of the things in these links do indeed raise questions that cannot be answered (besides with the answer that is seeming more and more obvious to me).
With the above in mind, I'll give it one last shot, but expect that you won't agree with me and hope you will at least be respectful of differing viewpoints.
Your questions were these:
1) Flags moving without being touched in a frictionless enviromnement (See 2:37
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1UEv2PIzl4)
We've addressed this before, and I believe that they can be possibly explained by either wiggling the flag pole as it's held, or brushing it as they walked by.
2) actor-nauts who look like they're on strings (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdMvQTNL ... re=related)
First of all, the guy in the video contradicts himself within the first 10 seconds. He says there's no evidence of astronauts jumping as high as they would be able to if they really weighed 1/6 what they do on earth, but then he talks about wires taking the weight off. He can't have it both ways. If they were too heavy and couldn't jump as high as they should have been able to, then their weight wasn't on wires.
Setting his obvious contradiction aside and looking at the video: at about 1:32, you can see there is some kind of antenna on the top of the "backpack". It's apparently metal, as it reflects light quite well. It appears to be the same thing causing the glint at about 1:15. The narrator makes a big deal about a "ping" which appears above the astronaut. This "ping" is easily explained by refraction in the camera lens. When viewing something like a car windshield through a camera lens, if the angle of the sun is right there is a glare or a glint. This frequently refracts in the lens as a line or sometimes a star shape. In both instances in the video (1:15 and 1:32), the "ping" is directly straight above the glinting object. This is approximately where a wire would be, but it is also where a camera refraction would be.
Also, if it is indeed a wire, then it appears to be only a single wire attached approximately in the center of the "backpack". This would be a highly unusual arrangement for someone on a wire, as there are usually two wires attached at the waist to be closest to center of gravity.
At 2:21, the astronaut gets up using only one foot and one hand being held by the other astronaut. The narrator only alleges that the wire took 5/6's of his weight, making the seemingly super-human feat possible. It is equally possible that he only weighed 1/6 of his normal weight because of the lack of gravity on the moon. This part of the video makes no argument whatsoever about wires, simply that he weighed less than normal. This is as much proof that we went to the moon as it is proof of a hoax.
3) obviously doctored photos (See 27:20
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... +fox&hl=en)
The lack of cross hair in white parts of the photographs is easily explainable. Light has the ability to bend slightly around objects. This is why when you hold up your finger in the sunlight, the shadow will be "crisp" if your finger is close to the surface, but gets fuzzy the farther away your finger gets. If you hold up something thin like a knife blade or a strip of paper, and align it precisely, it disappears and casts no shadow at all. Look at the shadow of some trees. If conditions are right it will appear that leaves are just floating because you can see the shadow of the leaf but not the stem.
In that same way, something like a fine crosshair etched onto a camera lens can be "washed out" with bright light - such as the image of something white.
Look at the picture at 27:59, which you also posted a still of earlier. The vertical part of the cross hair appears to be missing where his arm (which is white) is. But look closely at the horizontal part, particularly the part to the left, which is in the red portion of the flag. Is it there? To me it clearly is, but is it as crisp as the rest of the cross hair? No. It is slightly blurry. It is having the same blurred effect as the portions where it is over white, but since it is in the red portion of the flag the effect is lessened, and that part of the cross hair is not washed out entirely.
If, on the other hand, the photo was doctored - then how did the cross hair appear partly behind the astronaut and partly in front of the flag?
4) multiple light sources (See 23:00
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... +fox&hl=en)
This one frustrates me more than most of these theories. Can you see the moon at night? Yes. Why? Because its surface REFLECTS LIGHT. It's mostly grey, light grey, even white. When you are in a dark room at night, if someone comes between you and the lamp or other light source, can you still see their face? Try it some time. Turn on a single lamp in a corner, then have someone stand between you and the lamp. Can you see their face or the front of them, or is their front entirely black because the source of light is behind them? Obviously you can see the front of them. Why? Because light bounces off of the walls behind you and onto them. Your walls probably aren't entirely white or light grey either. It's "ambient light", not another light source.
edit: I'm not saying there were walls behind them, I'm saying that the light reflected off the surface of the moon, and onto the side of the astronaut opposite the light source.
5) dangling effects (See 1:46
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdMvQTNL ... re=related)
See the discussion of "wires" above.
6) The same area of the "moon" filmed twice and NASA claims they are two different locations (See 25:40
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... +fox&hl=en)
It's clearly the same location. NASA said it was a different location in a different day. It's just as likely to me that NASA was wrong/confused/whatever on when the footage was taken as it is that this is proof of a hoax. Actually, I don't see how this is proof of a hoax at all. Unless you subscribe to the "NASA was wrong about that so they must have been wrong and lied to us about the whole thing" theory, which I think is absurd as far as "evidence" goes.
7) Actor-nauts faking a distant image of the earth through their window (See 1:30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=crqbdjybYeE&NR=1)
She is basing this entire argument on his statement that the window is "filled up with the t.v. camera". What does that statement mean? It could mean that there is a camera filling a window, but it could also have been an awkward and backwards way of saying that the window is filling the camera frame at that time - meaning he was zoomed in on the window. At about 0:55, she even states that the lens was later zoomed out. It seems clear to me that he was on one side of the capsule zooming in on the window which was on the other side. At 1:15 she alleges that "they remove part of the crescent insert" and I have no idea what she is talking about, because I saw no change in the image. At about 1:33, she says "the iris is opened up" which I believe was the case, but I don't see any subsequent recognizable image of the earth being anywhere near the spacecraft. Cameras have settings to allow more or less light based on the conditions. If you have the camera set for low light and you "film" something bright, it will wash out and appear much larger than it would if you had the right setting for the bright object. I believe that is what happens here. I see something very bright in the area of the window, but I can't recognize it as being a near image of the earth at all.
It bears repeating: I don't KNOW if we really went or not. The laser reflector which is still in use today seems pretty convincing. I'm open to theories which say we didn't, but I have yet to see a single theory which in my mind is convincing "proof" of a hoax, or leaves only the explanation that we didn't go. The theories are interesting, but less than entirely convincing. Until I see some "evidence" that conclusively proves we didn't go there, I'm open to the possibility that we did.