back to article Moon landing was real and WE CAN PROVE IT, says Nvidia

It's only a product promo, but it's a smart one: Nvidia reckons the judicious application of its graphics technology can debunk one of the world's favourite “moon landing was a hoax conspiracies”. As a demo of the VXGI – voxel based global illumination – technology included in the company's new Maxwell graphics architecture, a …

  1. Evil Auditor Silver badge
    Trollface

    To all conspiracy muppets out there

    So, Nvidia was bought by NASA.

    1. Just Enough
      Alien

      Re: To all conspiracy muppets out there

      Showing proof to a conspiracy theorist just demonstrates to them that the conspiracy goes even deeper.

      I don't think we needed Nvidia's input. Apollo hoax theorists don't need debunking, because every theory they dream up has already been shown to be total hogwash based on ignorance.

      1. Simon Harris

        Re: To all conspiracy muppets out there

        "Showing proof to a conspiracy theorist just demonstrates to them that the conspiracy goes even deeper."

        Of course nobody ever landed on the moon. Someone just sent some Nvidia chips back in time to 1967 and the whole Apollo programme was simulated in a graphics workstation.

      2. i like crisps
        Alien

        Re: To all conspiracy muppets out there

        Dear Just Enough,

        Why are there no STARS in space?....Not a single spec of light anywhere on the NASA photos?

        As regards the 'Fluttering Flag' a NASA mouthpiece, a few years ago, claimed that the flag was "Designed" to Flutter as though it was being blown by the wind....the interviewer didn't press the mouthpiece about the mechanism that would have been needed to do this or ask to see the original engineers drawings that NASA should still have on file in their archives. This would have been quite a 'feather in the cap' of the individual or group of people involved in producing this object, which was bespoke and would have had to have been designed and fabricated from scratch...but the thing you're all forgetting is that the reason they didn't land on the Moon is that there is NO CONCRETE on the Moon.......i shall explain my pet theory later on....maybe

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
          Headmaster

          Re: To all conspiracy muppets out there

          Why are there no STARS in space?....Not a single spec of light anywhere on the NASA photos?

          Because NASA was totally fecking clueless and got some cheap black-painted dome installed by barely-literate chinese migrant workers instead of properly hiring Stanley Kubrick to do full-star awesome super-effects like he did a year earlier with "2001 - A Space Odyssey".

          It's simple really. Then they had to set up O.J. Simpson for murder because the Mars Landing Project bombed when the Face on Mars was discovered (and what was underneath) and whistles got blown out of proportion, but that is another horror story involving Agent Orange and Oswald.

          1. ian 22
            Pint

            Re: To all conspiracy muppets out there

            Well done that man! I'd call that joined up thinking!

            'Ave an upvote on me.

        2. nobody really

          Re: To all conspiracy muppets out there

          "Why are there no STARS in space?....Not a single spec of light anywhere on the NASA photos?"

          This is actually a good argument against it being faked...stay with me champ...

          If you were faking it, what is one thing you would fully expect to show in a photo taken from the moon - stars. So a fake would completely have stars 'cos who in their right mind pretending to be taking a photo on the moon would leave out stars?

          Frankly I don't care either way but I do love watching the action. Continue.

        3. Just Enough

          Re: To all conspiracy muppets out there

          Dear i like crisps

          Thank you for demonstrating exactly what I meant.

          There are no stars on the photos because they were taken during daytime and consequently exposed for very bright sunlight. See, because you are used to the sky being black at night on Earth, and you can see the stars at night, you make the erroneous assumption that black sky = night = visible stars.

          The flag was designed to extend, as if being blown by the wind. That, of course, doesn't make the flag move. What makes it move is being attached to a springy aluminium post that is being moved by an astronaut.

        4. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: To all conspiracy muppets out there

          no concrete but lot of green tinged cheese Wallace

        5. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          Re: To all conspiracy muppets out there

          there is NO CONCRETE on the Moon

          How do you know? Have you been there?

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: To all conspiracy muppets out there

        > Showing proof to a conspiracy theorist just demonstrates to them that the conspiracy goes even deeper.

        Of course, the landing was faked! Governments are simply too inefficeint to actually pull off something so big. Ever wonder why BRICs haven't done it after so many years ?

        And it was possible to do it, free market would've done it years before any govt could, even if it was at the behest of a govt.

      4. cortland
        Alien

        Re: To all conspiracy muppets out there

        "The lack of evidence proves the conspiracy is working."

        https://www.etsy.com/listing/172097328/lack-of-evidence-proves-the-conspiracy

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nvidea, did you also manage to explain

    the flag blowing in the wind :-)

    1. PassiveSmoking

      Re: Nvidea, did you also manage to explain

      Clue: Tie a tea towel to a broom handle and wiggle the broom handle back and forth. Observe what happens.

      I don't know why conspiracy theorists still think they're being really clever by pointing this one out. They're actually being really really dense.

    2. illiad

      Re: Nvidea, did you also manage to explain

      Mythbusters did a special on the moon ages ago!

      remember, there is NO air on the moon, also gravity is very low.. this is what slows things down, air resistance, and the weight of the cloth..

      so on the moon, the flag has to be held up by a bar on the top of the flag - and while they were planting the flag, of course it would move a lot - - it kept moving by itself, due to NO air resistance!!

      1. LesC
        Happy

        Re: Nvidea, did you also manage to explain

        Mythbusters is good edutainment. Have an upvote.

        LC

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Mythbusters ...

          Kari Byron. Ding dong !

        2. DropBear
          Mushroom

          Re: Nvidea, did you also manage to explain

          Mythbusters is good edutainment

          It used to be, before the only thing they started caring about became what can they shoot and/or blow up this time. Nowadays it's just targeted to the glorious new ADHD squirrel-brain generation...

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Nowadays it's just targeted to the glorious new ADHD squirrel-brain generation...

            WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY... oh, a butterfly!

            1. Long John Brass

              Re: Nowadays it's just targeted to the glorious new ADHD squirrel-brain generation...

              ***Squirrel***

          2. Darryl

            Re: Nvidea, did you also manage to explain

            Yeah, I used to be like that. I was all "Their earthquake special was just an excuse to show Kari Byron being jiggled on an earthquake simulation table." Then I remembered seeing Kari Byron being jiggled on an earthquake table, and I forgot what I was thi

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Nvidea, did you also manage to explain

      I presume (and hope) that was sarcasm! It's my understanding that if the flag was set in motion by handling, then, because it is in a vacuum (i.e. no air or drag, for the uninitiated), it will just keep moving.

      Being a bit of a photographer, the lack of stars is easily explained by the exposure required to capture the astronauts and the surface. There is no way that any minuscule light source such as stars would have effectively been seen in the same frame. The contrast range is just too great. I fail to understand why this seems to have been quoted as definitive proof by the conspiracy theory mob. They don't seem to have done their homework on rudimentary photography.

      1. Dave Bell

        Re: Nvidea, did you also manage to explain

        They used film in those days, didn't they?

    4. Wyrdness

      Re: Nvidea, did you also manage to explain

      When they shot the moon-landing photos in a studio, not only did they forget about the stars, but they also brought in a huge fan to make the flag flutter.

      That's the only possible explanation ;)

  3. John Robson Silver badge

    The Russians are still the best evidence...

    (I mean aside from the stuff up there)

    Since they never called NASA out on it, and they would have been tracking it pretty carefully...

    1. Zog_but_not_the_first
      Black Helicopters

      Re: The Russians are still the best evidence...

      The very best argument against the "didn't happen" brigade.

      Unless the Ruskies were in on it too, of course...

      1. Vladimir Plouzhnikov

        Re: The Russians are still the best evidence...

        It was a tit for tat agreement - the Russians kept schtum about the hoax Moon landings in return for the Americans not revealing that Sputnik was in fact a balloon.

        Oh, and about that International "Space" Station...

        1. Mark #255

          Re: about that International "Space" Station...

          No, I know the ISS is real: I've seen it on The Big Bang Theory.

          1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge

            Re: about that International "Space" Station...

            The ISS is real, I have seen it with my binoculars (solar panels visible), but then maybe I am part of the conspiracy too (wish NASA would pay me, in that case).

            1. DropBear

              Re: about that International "Space" Station...

              Oh come on, it's common knowledge there are permanent black ops teams in all major cities tasked solely with launching high-altitude flares every time a "visible ISS pass" would be due...

            2. Allan George Dyer
              Black Helicopters

              Re: about that International "Space" Station...

              Hey, don't complain; you're still alive, aren't you? What more payment do you want?

        2. Charles 9

          Re: The Russians are still the best evidence...

          "It was a tit for tat agreement - the Russians kept schtum about the hoax Moon landings in return for the Americans not revealing that Sputnik was in fact a balloon."

          But that would imply the Russkies threw the Space Race at a time when a lot of national pride was on the line in the middle of the Cold War (not to mention less than a decade after the Cuban Missile Crisis). IOW, the Soviets were competing with the Americans. If the landing was fake all the Russians had to do to deflate the Americans was to film themselves first. Why throw the race if the solution was so simple? If they pulled it off, Sputnik could be safely ignored or simply blown off as American lies.

    2. Graham Dawson Silver badge

      Re: The Russians are still the best evidence...

      In fact the best evidence against the hoax is the recording technology available at the time. It was physically impossible to do what the hoaxers claim was done.

      Good outline of the technological issues involved. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_loUDS4c3Cs

      1. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
        Black Helicopters

        Re: The Russians are still the best evidence...

        Given the spate of downvotes I see on even the most innocuous comments, I can only conclude:

        Houston, we have a conspiracy theorist!

      2. Charles 9

        Re: The Russians are still the best evidence...

        "In fact the best evidence against the hoax is the recording technology available at the time. It was physically impossible to do what the hoaxers claim was done."

        What about black tech. No one knew the Americans had a practical and flying stealth fighter for decades. Even the SR-71 (which was still low-radar) was black tech. Under the auspices of black tech, it may have been possible to have tech beyond anything possible in the civilian world.

  4. Rustident Spaceniak
    WTF?

    That last Daly comment is a joke, or what?

    Since when did NVIDIA get access to the original negatives?

    1. Sir Runcible Spoon

      Re: That last Daly comment is a joke, or what?

      I think they rendered some stars in sky which were not visible under the projected lighting conditions.

      They then changed the exposure on their render to the point where they became visible.

      That's how I understood it anyway.

      1. Rustident Spaceniak
        Paris Hilton

        Re: That last Daly comment is a joke, or what?

        Ya know, put that way it almost makes sense. Will let it stew brainside for a while.

  5. eJ2095

    Helipads being installed at the Nvidia Offices?

    Makes it easier for the black helicopters to land ;-0

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So, this photo must have been also shot in studio (according to "moon landing was a hoax consipiracies" fans):

    http://pix.avaxnews.com/avaxnews/91/9a/00019a91.jpeg

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "this photo must have been also shot in studio"

      Of course it was, but this time "they" used Abrams instead of Kubrick.

      You can tell by the lens flare!

    2. dr john

      They forgot to add the stars yet again!

      When will they learn.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Hoax" is not same as "Faked".

      > "moon landing was a hoax consipiracies"

      Moon landing was faked, but it wasn't a hoax.

      Think about it, if it was really possible with the 60s technology, someone would have done it before any redtape laden institute could - they simply don't have the incentive to complete the project and be out of a job! Sheesh, you sheeple have no grasp of how macro-economics works! So you just talk about obscure details which can be argued in 10 different ways as long as the result is what people want to hear. Flag waved or not waved, shadow was right or wrong - all that is irrelevant!

      Another way to think about it is: NVidia is not going out on limb to prove world war 2 was real. Why ? Because it was, there is no need to prove it. But there is an entire industry ("mythbusters", books, blogs), based on proving the moonlanding. Why ? Because it was a coverup and whenever the wind blows, there are people who have to put the cover back.

      Still don't believe me ? Read 1925 Yakov Perelman's explanation on why Newtonian physics renders it impossible.

      If you still think I am a not job, open your ipad and try to find a valid explanation for why to project was "shutdown". Because there is nothing to shutdown! If moon landing was possible someone would've invented it for billionaires liesure by now - that's how market forces work!

  7. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Alien

    Good effort but alas

    nVidia will not convince the conspiracy theorists, because none are so deaf as those who do not want to hear.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Good effort but alas

      Yeah, conspiracy theories are the mental equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "nanananana I can't hear you na na na na".

      People conspire on a daily basis - from surprise birthday parties to price-fixing amongst competitors - hoodwinks at this scale are implausible for all sorts of reasons, from motive to execution.

      Sidenote: The first *hardback* edition of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy has blurb for Capricorn One on its back cover (and not a plain blue back cover). Capricorn One is film and novel about a faked manned mission to Mars.

      1. DropBear
        Joke

        Re: Good effort but alas

        Oh please - next you'll be telling me "Hangar 18" wasn't a completely truthful "live-leaked" historical document either?!?

  8. EddieD
    Joke

    Debunk this...

    http://stuffucanuse.com/fake_moon_landings/moon_landings.htm

  9. bdam
    Holmes

    David Icke says the moon is hollow

    Coz it rings like a bell

    Anyway, so now the stars are visible. Hold on, the tin hat brigade said the reason they were blacked out was because at the time NASA hadn't got the tech to show their correct positions from such a different perspective, so would be caught out and had no option. So now we *can* compare them lets get on with it!

    Unless...drat, they could be digitally inserting them today at the positions they are known to have been in back in '69. Oh my head hurts...

    1. no-one in particular

      Re: David Icke says the moon is hollow

      > NASA hadn't got the tech to show their correct positions from such a different perspective

      Well, naturally: the stars are painted on Nut's tummy and and we'd have to calculate the parallax shift, but we don't know if her belly button is an innie or an outie.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Practice, Practice, Practice

    When you need to fake the upcoming Mars landings, the first thing you'll need to buy is a really good computer graphics outfit.

    1. Dave 126 Silver badge

      Re: Practice, Practice, Practice

      Really? I thought that the team Stanley Kubrick assembled for 2001 did a better job of faking space travel with models than many who have tried since with CGI.

      Even the StarWars prequels used a large quantity of miniature physical models (in addition to the CGI stuff).

      The director Christopher Nolan tries to use physical model as much as he can, as well. He also used David Bowie to fake Nikola Tesla, too!

      1. Rustident Spaceniak
        Stop

        Re: Practice, Practice, Practice

        Bit of a thread drift here, but DON'T use anything Star Wars related as an example of orbital motion, or illumination, or anything at all related to actual physics! It's so bad it's beyond laughing.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Practice, Practice, Practice

          Yea, exactly, could anyone here point out where the illumination is coming from, it's obviously fake? Millenium Falcon

          1. lampbus

            Re: Practice, Practice, Practice

            Not sure about lighting, but it seems to be a flipped image.

            Anyway the millennium falcon scenes in star wars were probably faked : there is a chap who is trying to build a full size one but there is no way he can fit all the separate internal scenes from the 'star wars' documentary together inside the outer envelope.

            THere are similar problems with 2001 ships.

        2. Omgwtfbbqtime
          Trollface

          Re: DON'T use anything Star Wars related as an example of orbital motion

          No, use Kerbal Space Program!

      2. MacroRodent

        models

        Sorry, but to my eye the models in the space scenes in "2001" do look a bit clumsy now, like put together from an Airfix kit. (Despite this, it still is the best science fiction film I have ever seen).

        Speaking of models, I recently learned that the "Eagles" (flying moon transporters) in the "Space: 1999" TV series from the 1970's were filmed in part using full-size models that could actually fly! Take that, Star Wars!

        One of them is still kept in working order by an enthusiast (http://www.scifiairshow.com/ships-eagle4.html)

        1. LesB
          Thumb Up

          Re: models

          Those of a certain age will remember the Buckinghamshire crash mentioned on the site. Not to mention the yearly flights to the moon...

        2. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
          Happy

          Re: models

          MacroRodent,

          Now you're really pushing it. There's still room for debate about whether all the moon landings were genuine or not. But there's certainly no further discussion possible about that so-called documentary Space 1999. We know that was faked, to try and fool the families into still believing there was hope. There's no way those silver mini-skirts would have worked in the moon's low-gravity for a start...

          1. TheProf
            Happy

            Re: models

            Silver miniskirts? You're thinking of UFO. And so am I.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: models

              what's with the purple hair,

        3. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: models

          I met the chap who designed the eagle models outside a toyshop in somerset, where one of them was being displayed. he said there is a terrible mistake in it - if you sat where you were supposed to in the model, you wouldn't be able to see out of the windows, so they had to mess about with the life size mockups to get them right. I don't know if this is true or not, but was a nice story.

          1. TRT Silver badge

            Re: models

            There's more than one mistake. For example, the "airlock" space between the detachable command module and the also detachable mission module is missing in most of the Eagle interior filming - the bit where the hexapod landing and manoeuvring thrusters attach to the lifting body... in most of the interior shots the cockpit is directly behind the module forward door.

            But what a space ship!

          2. RobotGuy

            Re: models

            It would certainly explain the number of times they crashed during the series though.

        4. 4ecks
          Joke

          Re: models

          I call fake ;(_ The shadows are wrong!

          http://www.scifiairshow.com/images/ships/boneyard/BY05A_large.jpg

          1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
            Windows

            Re: models

            > I call fake ;(_ The shadows are wrong!

            Damn, this looks like a shot from a movie version of "The Martian Chronicles".

            Oh, melancholy.

        5. MOH

          Re: models

          Given that Eagle article claims "In a yearly (albeit expensive) ritual, Simpson flies Eagle 4 to the Moon every year on September 13th", I'd suggest it may not be entirely factual.

  11. PassiveSmoking

    Nothing on Earth (or the moon) is going to convince a True Believer because to them it's a religion. They worship their pet theories like house gods and woe betide anybody that attacks the theory. A former 9/11 conspiracy theorist has recieved death threats for the heinous crime of changing his mind about the conspiracy.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Your story reads to me like that you are saying that Nvidia shows the stars in the original photos:

    Mark Daly, leader of the demo team, says the stars aren't absent, they're just not visible to the naked eye. “But they’re there. And our demo team was able to find them by digitally changing the exposure on the shots to reveal them.”

    But they only showed the stars in their rendering **not in the original photos**.

    [ Of course we did land on the moon, even discussing the hoax bullshit is a disservice to science. ]

    1. TRT Silver badge

      No stars up there?

      Excellent! In space, no one can hear Simply Red.

  13. Khaptain Silver badge

    Return journey

    Honest question : Why have we never returned ?

    1. Sir Runcible Spoon

      Re: Return journey

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_the_Moon

    2. Trevor_Pott Gold badge

      Re: Return journey

      Because there's no reason to. Anything we want to learn about the moon we can do with a rover or a satellite. And there isn't much we care about up there. There's Silicon, Nickel, Iron and fuck all else. We've got lots of both here.

      Remember: when Theia hit Earth, both bodies liquified and all the interesting bits sunk to Earth's core. Some return to the surface from time to time, but the cost of finding and extracting the pitiful few resources the moon has to offer are so astronomically high, you might as well try catching Apophis when it swings by next and pull the goodies out of that candy surprise. There's more of them per volume, and they aren't such a pain to get at.

      There's no point putting much in the way of people up there, because the Moon's got a big gravity well, and pitiful resources. You want to explore/colonize/etc? Try Vesta or Ceres. All the resources you could want, all the volatiles you need. Bonus: not much of a gravity well so leaving and going to points more interesting is easy.

      Build yourself a nice whirly ship for gravity. Mine resources as you expend them. Travel from rock to rock and consume the volatiles. Don't bother trying to make perfectly closed ecosystems; consume resources and spread across the stars like a plague. That's the human way.

      There's nothing to consume on the moon but a few paltry dregs that make living in the Sahara look easy.

      1. Khaptain Silver badge

        Re: Return journey

        Surprising that the Richard Bransons, Elon Musks et al have not found a valid business case. I'ts difficult to imagine the some of the world's billionaires have never wanted to go just for the hell of it.

        1. Frankee Llonnygog

          Re: Return journey

          There is definitely a case for sending Branson to the moon.

      2. DropBear

        Re: Return journey

        There's nothing to consume on the moon but a few paltry dregs that make living in the Sahara look easy

        Well, we already know the Sahara is nothing but a giant warehouse of hourglass spare parts (granted, demand has been sluggish for those lately - people just don't seem to boil all that many eggs anymore). It's just a matter of finding out what moon dust is good for - I reckon "producing painted-on abrasive surfaces by powder-coating" might have a shot here... ;)

        1. Charles 9
          Joke

          Re: Return journey

          " It's just a matter of finding out what moon dust is good for"

          I hear a rather kooky "scientist" who built a weird laboratory some 5km under a salt mine just happened to notice that mixing it into a gel and painting a surface with it made it quite conductive to quantum spatial portals. Unfortunately, the same man also discovered moon dust is not meant to be taken internally...

        2. Tom 13

          Re: Sahara is nothing but a giant warehouse of hourglass spare parts

          That's simply not true as El Reg has already informed us:

          http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/31/rainforest_dust_link/

          Moreover, I think I can point to conclusive evidence that we did land on the moon: the Red Spot on Jupiter has been shrinking ever since. I suspect that like the Amazon, the Red Spot has been getting vital materials from the Moon via the solar wind. Our landings have disturbed this vital link, and now the Red Spot is dying.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Sahara probably more interesting than the Moon

            Quite likely ancient civilizations thrived there before it slowly turned to desert after the last ice age ended. If we knew where to dig, we might find civilizations older than anything we currently know. Not likely on the Moon, unless magnetic anomalies helpfully show us the location of alien artifacts.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Return journey

        If asteroids (etc) mass is/are reduced via mining, could that affect their trajectory (especially in regards to gravitational pull from other masses) and therefore endanger the earth? I'd hate to be paying the insurance premiums for that....

        1. Sir Runcible Spoon

          Re: Return journey

          Considering the logistics of asteroid mining, I don't think it would be too much additional overhead to ensure that the resulting hulks are left in a non-threatening orbit.

          Bear in mind that the mined asteroids are probably already in a stable orbit (otherwise we might have trouble finding them).

        2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
          Pint

          Re: Return journey

          If asteroids (etc) mass is/are reduced via mining, could that affect their trajectory (especially in regards to gravitational pull from other masses) and therefore endanger the earth?

          Evidently, you need to blast chunks uniformly at random in all directions to keep the vector sum of momentum changes at 0. This is also called "goan fish curry mining".

      4. Stevie

        Re: Bonus: not much of a gravity well so leaving and going to points more interesting is easy

        Agreed. It's just that gravity is so thunderously useful most of the times it is helpful to have some around. Microgravity makes a case for less human occupation of space, not more.

        Its such a shame that Neil and Buzz weren't taken prisoner by Selenites. There'd have been a fleet of Heinleinesque proper space rockets c/w fins sitting in launch cradles around Luna City as we type.

        That's why the general public hates space. It is boring to anyone not involved in post graduate science because there is nothing to excite the popular imagination. They haven't the faintest idea how cable TV, worldwide communications or weather reporting works and NASA et al have made no effort to educate them.

        Try "It costs less than a penny per person per day to ensure you get Game of Thrones and an early warning of any hurricanes coming your way".

        A bit more punch than wittering on about the cost of a space craft you won't get to ride taking people you won't know to places you won't get a chance to visit so they can do things you don't understand.

      5. John H Woods Silver badge

        Re: Return journey

        "Build yourself a nice whirly ship for gravity". Whirlyness not needed, just a constant acceleration of around 1g -- maybe that magical microwave propulsion system. You could get almost anywhere in the Universe within about 60 years - 30 years at 1g to get to (near enough) the speed of light, travel as required with barely any time passing then decelerate for 30 years at 1g (with the crew compartment rotated 180, of course).

        1. DropBear
          Boffin

          Re: Return journey

          If asteroids (etc) mass is/are reduced via mining, could that affect their trajectory (especially in regards to gravitational pull from other masses) and therefore endanger the earth?

          The thing is, as long as the starship doing the mining would use its own engines to pull the mined part away (as opposed to, say, "kicking off" the remaining part is some way), it wouldn't affect the trajectory of the remaining part in the slightest. Think of it this way: if the part you're planning to take away would already be split from the part that remains in orbit, both parts would still fly in the same orbit alongside each other (assuming we neglect the gravity of the part we take away, which we might as well - it's TINY...). So, no issues there...

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Return journey

            "The thing is, as long as the starship doing the mining would use its own engines to pull the mined part away (as opposed to, say, "kicking off" the remaining part is some way), it wouldn't affect the trajectory of the remaining part in the slightest."

            Indeed, but not quite what I meant.

            I appreciate the act of mining can be done in such a way that the trajectory is unaffected. My point, though, was that the reduced mass of the object means that despite being on the same trajectory it would now behave differently, being subject to lower attraction during it's travels.

            The resulting *future* path could therefore vary from previous perambulations and the orbit change notably over time as the minor difference accrues.

        2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

          Re: Return journey

          "You could get almost anywhere in the Universe within about 60 years - 30 years at 1g to get to (near enough) the speed of light, travel as required with barely any time passing then decelerate for 30 years at 1g"

          And you just can't wait to get back and tell all your friends about the wonderful sights you saw...oh wait....they're all dead.

  14. Shaun 2

    The Mythbusters already did it!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtWMz51eL0Y

  15. Stuart 22

    Desmondia

    if it was real why are Nvidia are keeping quiet on the WW2 bomber airbrushed out of the scene. ;-)

  16. King Jack
    Boffin

    Mirrors, Reflectors

    I had a lengthy and tiresome argument with a conspiracy theorist. It ended when I asked how the mirrors got on the moon. What are scientists pointing lasers at to measure the returned laser? He didn't admit defeat, as believing in crap in his eyes makes him intelligent and nobody is going to willingly shave off IQ points.

    You will never convince an idiot of any thing as they don't need any evidence to believe.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Mirrors, Reflectors

      Reminds me of my godson at university. He went to the Christian society to debate against the evangelists. He found that his best efforts were always countered with a smile and the phrase "The Devil sends clever agents to test us". Which I had already advised him would be their inevitable reaction.

      When someone has built their identity round a belief in anything - then there is a lot at stake when it looks like it is falling apart.

      1. Peter Simpson 1
        Windows

        Re: Mirrors, Reflectors

        Sounds like the right-wing Catholics who claim the Church got it right and Galileo was wrong. They have worked out all kinds of crazy explanationsfor stuff like geosynchronous satellites (they just sit there, because the Earth dowsn't rotate). The proof, they claim, is some perceived structure in the map of cosmic background radiation...

    2. Duffy Moon

      Re: Mirrors, Reflectors

      Although he could have pointed out the fact that you could place mirrors on the moon with a robotic lander - no astronauts needed.

      1. King Jack

        Re: Mirrors, Reflectors

        Not in 1969 and the early 70s. But that's another conspiracy. We had miniature radio controlled robots in the 60's but chose to wait until 2010 to make them main stream. And where did the micro chips come from? ....Aliens.

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
          Alien

          Ayyy lmao

          Humanity is pretty good at covering up the existence of aliens and feeding goats to aliens who also mutilate cows in alien ways, meanwhile conspiring with aliens to modify human DNA, possibly via bees carrying alien nanovirus, and re-electing politicians controlled by aliens and having aliens take honorary seats at the trilateral commission while unfairly stealing and reverse-engineering the technology of creative aliens as well as crashed alien craft where we hide the alien corpses in nitrogen-cooled fridges, so that even the aliens do not notice that they are being taken for an alien rickroll.

          We are actually the masters of Soviet-Style "technology transfer". Just pray there is no alien WIPO out there, otherwise that's gonna be costly.

          Humans fuck year!

    3. Long John Brass

      Re: Mirrors, Reflectors

      Never argue with idiots

      They will drag you down to their level & beat you with experience

      1. Graham Dawson Silver badge

        Re: Mirrors, Reflectors

        Depends if you want to beat them with intellect (something they have no experience of) or pull a Buzz Aldrin and just beat them senseless.

        The latter is far more satisfying.

  17. pewpie

    I was gonna write a book about this 'conspiracy'

    I was gonna call it 'Potatoes don't grow on the Moon'.

    But then I found something worthwhile to do, instead of wasting my time trying to communicate with idiots.

  18. ratfox

    Why don't they just…

    …check the GPS data of the pictures?

    1. I ain't Spartacus Gold badge
      Devil

      Re: Why don't they just…

      Even better. Eventually someone will hack NASA and find all the naked selfies the astronauts took on the moon, and that'll remove all doubts.

  19. imanidiot Silver badge

    Interesting render engine, silly topic

    Trying to "debunk" the " moonlandings were faked" myth by digitally faking it is not really going to convince any conspiritards.

    The render engine used however is quite a clever bit of coding and modeling. It's quite capable of generating some truly stunning results. (If you have enough time on a render farm to spit out results.)

    1. HighTech4US

      Re: Interesting render engine, silly topic

      Quote: The render engine used however is quite a clever bit of coding and modeling. It's quite capable of generating some truly stunning results. (If you have enough time on a render farm to spit out results.

      My understanding was that the Nvidia demo of the Moon landing was done in real time on a pair of GTX 980's not a render farm.

      Watch the video and really look at the part where they pan the camera away from the L.E.M. camera view (with the bright light at the base of the ladder) to see that that light was from the sun bouncing off of Armstrong's space suit.

      Demo was way cool.

  20. Winkypop Silver badge
    Facepalm

    Nice work Nvidia

    But you've only provided more oxygen for the lazy conspiracy nuts.

    They are like the god-of-the-gaps idiots.

    It's ironic that there's no perceptible oxygen on the Moon.

  21. hammarbtyp
    Happy

    All they needed was the evidence

    All those conspiracy theorists must be kicking themselves now

  22. The Bit Wrangler

    Best evidence against conspiracy theorists for me...

    http://youtu.be/P6MOnehCOUw

    Mitchell & Webb - you can keep Mythbusters

    1. DropBear

      Re: Best evidence against conspiracy theorists for me...

      Oh please - Ve haff ze proof...

  23. TheProf
    Trollface

    They're fake!

    I don't believe conspiracy theorists exist.

    1. Tom 13
      Black Helicopters

      Re: They're fake!

      Conspiracy theorists are a counter-intel op run by a joint NSA and MI6, .

  24. Benchops

    Wouldn't it be even easier

    to fake the nvidia video?

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Laser Ranging Retroreflector ..

    "The Laser Ranging Retroreflector experiment was deployed on Apollo 11, 14, and 15. It consists of a series of corner-cube reflectors, which are a special type of mirror with the property of always reflecting an incoming light beam back in the direction it came from." ref

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    +1 to NVidia product marketing. Cool, interesting, entertaining demo of their technology without ridiculous over-hyping.

  27. Carbon life unit 5,232,556
    Pint

    'course its not a hoax

    Klargon-epfinkkyxxq from Planet X told me about it, in a dream.

  28. Red Bren

    Buzz shows the way

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2272321.stm

  29. Chris G
    Alien

    Proof

    Nobody would have guessed that in the last years of the 1960s that Americans were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than theirs yet as mortal.

    Tha5 as America bustled busily with its concerns for dominating space we scrutinised and studied them as they might study their bugs under a microscope, swarming and multiplying in a drop of water.

    We watched and laughed at their pitiful attempt to visit another planet and were surprised when they succeeded in landing on their moon.

    But we won't let them get to Mars as WE are the true masters of the Solar System fans Mars is ours!

    1. graeme leggett Silver badge

      Re: Proof

      Good to know we are not alone.

      now is there any chance of meeting those 7ft-tall silver-painted superwomen that Charles Chilson pretended were fictional?

  30. Zorbec le Gras
    WTF?

    "No detail was too small to overlook"

    2'20"... Huh?

    In the words of Inigo Montoya: "...I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means"

  31. Frank Rysanek

    radiosity rendering? HDR?

    When was the first time that I read about "radiosity rendering"? Deep in the nineties maybe? Though at that time, it was mentioned as "the next level after raytracing"... This seems more like texture mapping (not proper raytracing) but with additional voxelized radiosity-style upgrade to "hardware lighting". There are probably several earlier "eye candy" technologies in the mix - objects cast shadows, did I see reflections on the lander's legs? Not sure about some boring old stuff such as multiple mapping, bump mapping etc.

    I.e. how to make it look like a razor-sharp raytraced image with radiosity lighting, while in fact it's still just a texture-mapped thing, the incredible number crunching horsepower (needed for raytracing+radiosity) has been worked around, approximated by a few clever tricks. Looks like a pile of optimizations. Probably the only way to render this scene in motion in real time, on today's gaming PC hardware. BTW, does the "lander on the moon" seem like a complicated scene? Doesn't look like a huge number of faces, does it?

    I forgot to mention... that bit about "stars missing due to disproportionate exposure requirements for foreground and background" might point to support for "high dynamic range" data (in the NVidia kit). The picture gets rendered into an HDR raw framebuffer, and the brightness range of the raw image is then clipped to that of a PC display (hardly even an 8bit color depth). To mimick the "change of exposure time", all you need to do is shift the PC display's dynamic range over the raw rendering's dynamic range... Or it could be done in floating point math. Or it could get rendered straight into 8bits per color (no RAW intermediate framebuffer needed) just using a "scaling coefficient" somewhere, in lighting or geometry...

    Seems that the buzzwords like HDR, radiosity or raytracing are not enough of an eyewash nowadays. The NVidia PR movie is clearly targetted at a more general audience :-)

    BTW, have you ever flown a passenger jet at an altitude of 10+ km, during day time? Most of us have... at those altitudes, you typically fly higher than the clouds. There's always the sun and enough of your normal blue sky towards the horizon... but, have you tried looking upward? Surprise - the sky looks rather black! And yet there's not a hint of stars.

  32. Zog_but_not_the_first
    Angel

    Mitchell & Webb's take on it.

    Excellent!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5muY64Oyp10

  33. CmdrX3

    Since when did conspiratards ever let facts get in the way of a good conspiracy.

  34. Terry 6 Silver badge

    They are out there

    making sure we don't find their supplies of instant mashed spuds.

  35. Come to the Dark Side

    It's obvious innit?

    The main way to tell it's a fake is that you can't see the elephants or turtle in the background...

  36. Dr Patrick J R Harkin

    NASA never landed on the moon. There is no moon.

    It's like a rainbow - you can see it in the sky, but it isn't really there. It's just an optical effect.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: NASA never landed on the moon. There is no moon.

      How can an optical effect eclipse the Sun? And please don't say it's a dark matter planet since the body seen during the eclipse matches that of the moon based on the lunar geology.

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I think the moon landings weren't faked but I think the photos might have been - they're just too good. Having said that, I remember a science teacher back in the late fifties telling us that space travel to the moon would be impossible. Because of the radiation of the Van Allen belt and the radiation hitting the moon from the sun, he reckoned that spacemen would have to wear five foot thick lead suits for protection.

    There was also the danger of meteorite storms on the moon's surface, similar to hailstorms experienced on earth. The difference was, he said, that the moon's storms would prove lethal to any spaceman caught in one. That's because although the small meteorites would be the size of hailstones, the similarity would end there. These small stone meteorites would be traveling at anything up to a thousand miles an hour, probably faster, and would cut through the spacemen and their spacesuits like a hot knife through butter.

    That teacher's two comments stayed with me during and forever after the moon landings, and to this day, I've never heard an explanation of how these problems were overcome.

    1. Talmyr

      Both of those so-called 'risks' are massively overstated. Just dealing with them quickly, the Van Allen belt radiation, while certainly dangerous, was minimised by rapid transits of thinner portions of it as well as the construction of the command module (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Allen_radiation_belt#Implications_for_space_travel).

      As for 'meteorite hail storms' on the Moon, this seems to be a highly unlikely event, and if that common (and/or dangerous!) would have had a very noticeably bad effect on any equpment left on the Moon, not to mention during the missions. Where do these storms come from? If they are the same as the meteorite showers we see on Earth, those are predictable and avoidable. How come they are not mentioned anywhere for satellites around Earth or the Moon being knocked out by them?

      This all sounds like early-60s thinking, in line with some of the Creationist straw-clutching claiming that the Moon should be covered in tens of feet of dust if billions of years old.

  38. pmartin66

    Please don't feed the trolls, er, morons.

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Radiation?

    Saw a program which explained all these oddities flag moving, shadows in wrong place, stars missing etc. Only thing they couldn't explain was why more of the astronauts didn't develop cancer and other issues due to radiation.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Radiation?

      They forgot that NASA took radiation into consideration and minimized the astronauts' exposure, by shielding the Command Module and by timing the trip so that the rocket passed through a weak part of the Van Allen Belts.

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