SPACE.com -- Men on the Moon as a Matter of Fact

The Moon Rover's movie camera films Apollo 16 Commander John Young dusting Charlie Duke's camera.

Dust flies as Apollo 16 Commander John young drives the Lunar Rover in April 1972. Click-to-Enlarge.

A chunk of the lunar highlands on display at the Johnson Space Center, Houston. credit: Andrew Chaikin. Click-to-Enlarge.

Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin photographed his boot and bootprint on lunar dust on Jluy 20, 1969. Click-to-Enlarge.

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	Men on the Moon as a Matter of Fact By Phil Plait Special to Space Illustrated Magazine posted: 30 June 2005 06:15 am

But if you want to see the best evidence that humans went to the Moon, go to any museum that has a Moon rock on display (the best exhibit is at Space Center Houston, located next to NASA's Johnson Space Center). A total of 840 pounds of rocks and dust were brought back by the astronauts. The thousands of scientists around the world who have studied the Apollo samples agree: They could not have come from Earth.

Unlike Earth rocks, the lunar samples are totally devoid of water, even within their crystal structures. Their chemical compositions, in particular the ratio of iron and manganese, set them apart from any of Earth’s native rocks. They are extraordinarily ancient, some almost as old as the solar system. Perhaps, most importantly, their surfaces show the effects of bombardment by high-speed micrometeorites and subatomic particles from the solar wind—neither of which can affect terrestrial rocks because our atmosphere screens them out. These so-called "zap pits" would have also been wiped out had the rocks fallen to Earth as lunar meteorites; the tremendous heat generated by their high-velocity passage through our atmosphere would have erased any such surface features. The Apollo samples must have been brought back from the Moon—and indeed they were hand-delivered.

The rest of the conspiracy theorists' claims—dozens of them—are just as easily debunked. Solid explanations are somewhat rarer on the Internet than the cries of the conspiracy theorists, but they can be found. And yet, with all this (and more) evidence against it, the conspiracy theory is flourishing. When I reviewed the Fox program on my own Web site, I received hundreds of thousands of hits from people who had seen the show—many accusing me of being part of the conspiracy, others grateful that someone had taken this problem on. I even got an e-mail from Apollo astronaut Charlie Duke thanking me for my efforts.

Some good may yet come of this. Clearly, this issue has touched many people, and it certainly has them thinking about space travel in general, and the Moon landings in particular. Hopefully, people who might be swayed by the skeptics will do a little research and learn the real story behind the Apollo missions. When they do, they’ll find out that the "Moon hoax" has no more substance than the vacuum of space.

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