Smoking gun #1: Dirt on the footpad
This is the first of many pronouncements Rasa’s made on the Surveyor probe, a probe which (you’ll be delighted to know) he accepts is genuine and did land on the moon and send back photos. He has to accept that, or several of his smoking guns are totally fucking pointless.
His basic premise is this: photos taken by Surveyor 3 of its own footpad don’t match those taken by Apollo 12 astronauts. You can watch him mumble his way through this claim here.
His evidence comes from here, a document showing the photos taken by Surveyor during its mission, and the key ones are those showing dirt deposited on the footpad by its scoop arm, so that scientists back on earth could assess the nature of the material on which it had come to rest. Here’s a screenshot of the three images he’s chosen to illustrate that process (a contributor comment has been obscured to protect the stupid). The green highlights are his own, and show the date the photographs were taken: day 116 for the first, day 118 for the other 2.
Just for fun, the photos taken by the camera were done using red, green and blue filters, which allowed the creation of colour composites. Only the first pad photo has that colour sequence, and this is the result.
So, what’s his beef? His claim here (and it’s one made by others of his ilk -
Here’s the pad in close up from both.
There are some important things to note here. The most obvious one is that the photographs are not from the same angle as the Surveyor one. We’re not comparing like for like. It’s impossible to say with any certainty that the area of footpad exposed by the scoop is clearly visible in either of them.
We can try and squeeze some more detail out by rotating and stretching the images to make them more akin to the Surveyor’s view, and also by adjusting the contrast.
The precise location of the area in question isn’t easy to get, and we need to rely on structural elements of the footpad. One interesting part is the existence of several clear white lines caused by what looks like a wire. It;s very evident in both the surveyor photo (right) and the image in the centre. We can also make out two larger lumps of material below and slightly to the right of the exposed footpad, and they can be seen in both Apollo photos. A shadow is being cast by material across that area by a ridge of material above where I believe the exposure to be.
Is this definitive? No. Rasa’s case isn’t helped by the fact that after the photograph was taken on day 118, surface operations continued, and we examine the view taken on day 120, there has been a distinct change in the amount of exposed footpad visible.
On the right I’ve adjusted the later image to make it clearer. It should be obvious that there is a substantial amount of the exposed area missing, occluded either by movement of material already there, or by accidentally dropping more material as it continued its trenching and impact testing.
Rasa has no evidence to suggest that there could not have been further changes to the exposed footpad as a result of Surveyor’s activities.
He also makes the claim that “they purposely left the camera out of focus” just demonstrates how little he knows about this. The Hasseblads had no focus ring. They had an aperture adjustment that determined depth of field, which determines how much of the photograph is in focus.
In short, the best he can conclude here is that it is inconclusive. He can’t demonstrate with any certainty that the Apollo photos show what he claims, they’re at the wrong angle, and he can’t say with certainty that there was no further alteration of the exposed area of footpad after it the last image available was taken.
Pretty sure that won’t stop him though.
Here are what I believe to be the same images from the document he’s used as his source.
According to the Surveyor 3 preliminary report (a copy of which I own), the third photograph resulted from the scientists spotting an object of higher albedo than others on the pad and they used the scoop to dislodge other material to see if it was solid. While Rasa claims these are the only ones available, two more photos exist taken on day 120.
The photo on the right is a close up of the one on the left, and it’s hopefully clear that it is different when compared to the earlier photos. More from that shortly.
