[attachmentid=28944][attachmentid=28945]Hi!

Здравствуйте!

I am new here, but I`ve read your forum threads for quite a while.

Loads of fascinating material to indulge through here!

I have some pictures of the lunar rover without any slightest signs of tracks on the moon surface.

This escapes me.

Any experts that want to dive into this?

Photos 2 is a close up of the original. Try to compare with the two last photos(I will post the separately under in a new post) where tracks are clearly visible.

[attachmentid=28947][attachmentid=28948]

[attachmentid=28949]


And here is a close up of the right side of the original...

Welcome to UM.
Lets say it was a staged event, would they roll the vehicle on to the set or just crane it in and lower it down and lift it up without making a mark? But, they did drive it around as we all know, on the moon 'lunar set', either way there would be tracks around. Unless , the lunar set workers cleaned around it and erased the tracks, maybe those footprints are from them instead of the 'astronauts'. We're not even sure if those were the real astronauts either. Lot's of questions, still no answers.

Please provide the photo number - Thanks.

Well, the picture is looking away from the sun, which does tend to wash out the surface detail as the shadows are invisible. Tracks are most prominent looking towards the sun. In addition, there are a few footprints visible, so the astonauts could have kicked dust over the tracks, the dust kicked up by the wheels could have fallen on the tracks, the tracks could be hidden by a slight ridge in the ground, not itself noticable because of the sun angle, the astronauts could have manhandled the rover after driving into a position where it was difficult to turn.

In other words, plenty of possible explanations, nothing suspicious.

Just noticed that Metz started the same topic over on BAUT. The picture is AS17-133-20342. Someone has pointed out that in the previous picture, AS17-133-20341, which is centred to the left, to the rear of the rover, the tracks are visible.

Being that the rover could be driven onto the "moon set" easier than it could be craned or carried onto it, how is the presence or absence of tracks evidence of a hoax?

On another "moon landing real or not?"-thread there's this website here that excellently & comprehensively debunks conspiracy theorist's arguments.

Quote:"The conspiracists argue that the rover may have been lifted into place as a prop. They may be half right. In lunar gravity the rover is not especially heavy. An astronaut can lift one end of it with little difficulty. And since the rover's turn radius, like that of any four-wheeled vehicle, is limited, the astronauts sometimes found it easier to lift one end of the rover and turn it so it pointed in the direction they wanted to go, rather than maneuvering through a three-point turn. When this occurred, there would obviously be no track leading up to the wheels."

And:"Keeping in mind that dust flies great distances when the astronauts shuffle about, it is reasonable to believe that the tracks have simply been obliterated by the astronauts' feet during the hour of activity at Station 2.

In the full version of the long-distance photo available from the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal the rover tracks can be seen faintly on the right side of the image. Part of the problem with the conspiracist reasoning is the expectation that rover tracks ought always to be prominently visible. Even when there is no plausible reason for them being erased by subsequent activity, the tracks are simply not as visible to start with as people expect."

Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

However, lifting one or both ends of the vehicle would leave evidence that this had been done, unless the lifters wished to hide the fact they had done so. Also, I might ask who says the astronauts did this?
Dust flies great distances on the moon? First, whoever wrote that should look over the films again. But then with all that wind up there, it must fly all over the place.
My point is this: those people who wish to debunk at times (many times) come up with reasoning that is pretty stupid, even though they make claims of expertise. So when I see debunkers come up with their arguments, I find I must take those claims with as much question as the CT statements. If convincing arguments, provable by either side, eventually make themselves evident, I may change my opinion; that will remain that visitation to the moon was made, but inconcistencies imply that we were not allowed to see all that went on, nor were we told the full story.

RabidCat Oct 18 2006, 07:58 PM



Depends from which side the photograph has been taken. Lifting and turning a vehicle a few degrees will create a fan shaped trace in the dust on the "side" that has been turned. But only on one side of the wheels; if the photo was taken from the other side, no tracks would be visible, no?



Dust gets kicked up/is set into motion by the physical force of the Astronaut's feet, no wind involved, simple vector forces. And if I remeber correctly, moon's gravity is much smaller thab earth's, so dust will take longer to settle again, & therefore will drift further, no?

Every time I see this clip, I notice that the dust settles very quickly. The fine dust should be kick up a big cloud of dust. Ever drive behind someone on a dry dirt road? It takes a min or 2 for the dust to settle here on earth. It should take alot longer to settle on the moon, but it doesn't, Why is that ????


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D81hZ8HcFf0

Ummh...It does say double speed though...

And the clip is pretty grainy; maybe the finer particles can't be seen properly & actually do take longer to settle? Evidently, I'm no specialist on lunar surface environments, but surely dust on the moon must have diffeent properties than terrestrial dust?

What inconcistencies do you see in the Apollo record?

The reference to the speed being doubled is to show that the footage was shot on earh and that it was slowed down for public view to enhance the look of the lesser gravity on the moon. Still does not explain why the dust settled so quickly. The dust is discribed as a fine powder, There shoud be alot more dust being kicked then we see IMO. Watch the slowed down virsion created for us

When you double the speed of them walking on the moon, that to looks like it could have been filmed on a sound stage and what we saw or have seen is the slowed down virsion to yet again enhance the 1/6 earths gravity.

I'm not saying man didn't go to the moon, just that some things don't quit fit

To a dust particle, air is very viscous (thick). This is also why a dandelion seed or a feather floats to the ground. Add in stray air currents and it is no wonder that dust kicked up on a dirt road on earth may take many minutes to settle.

With no air on the moon, the time it takes dust to fall is dependent only on its momentum and gravity. Kicked dust travels in ballistic arcs, such as you may see if you kicked a pile of BB shot. The dust stays in the "air" only as long as it takes to travel under lunar gravity - Which is longer than earth's gravity but not as long as it would be up if there was air supporting it.

I know that the lack of any atmosphere, would give the dust no resistants in it's decent, but I would have thought the dirt being shot up and out by the tires would travel alot further.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mTsrRZEMwA

The lack of atmosphere is demonstated here.

It's just the outword velocity of the dust from the tires not going all that far.

I remember watching one of the guys throw a hammer and it went forever


EDIT:
Opps didn't mean to do this

Double the speed of this clip:

Apollo 15 Dave Scott picking up and carrying a rock

Can you tell me that a double speed this clip looks like it could have been filmed on a sound stage?


And why, if you believe that Apollo went to the moon, that they would bother to fake footage rather than use the real stuff they undoubtledy shot?

And why would they repeat this fake photography for six missions?

This dust business is like that old thing about which weighs more, a pound of feathers or a pound of gold. Obviously, a pound of feathers.
So if dust is kicked up on a planet with no atmosphere, as was stated, it travels ballistically, and will go so far as the angle of the initial trajectory and the acceleration due to gravity will allow. As the particles decrease in size, there will be no visible or measurable difference in the trajectory, since there is no atmospheric impedance, as was stated.
However, if someone actually picked up one end of the vehicle, we would not look for slide marks of the tires still on the ground: we would look for the footprints of the person or persons doing the moving, and in the pictures at the beginning of this thread, there are none.
As to what we saw and/or didn't see, as in other threads, I state once again that there was technology used we were not allowed knowledge of, and once again I question the validity of the radio transmissions from the moon. If one goes back to the originals, the normal voice channels were cut off after some statements by the astronauts, one asking "what the hell is that?" and another stating that something makes ours look like a horse and buggy, or something similar to that. Communications between the nauts and Houston was then patched coded through the physical monitoring channels.
Some of the photography does not line up, which implies that it has been fooled with. Remember that in 1969 photoshop did not exist. I will not say that this indicates support for conspiracy that we didn't go: I will say that with my limited knowledge of photography, it appears that the photos were patched, perhaps to hide something that shouldn't be there.
I would also like to see the mathematics regarding the capability of the lunar lander rocketry, and whether it was in fact capable of liftoff, so I would ask the thrust of the rocketry and the total mass of the lander/cargo, and the fuel available to make such a liftoff. There does seem to be some question about that.
Now, understand that I do not make these statements in support of the theory that the landing was staged. I do make these statements to open the question of the technology available at the time. My entry into aerospace was a couple years later, but I guarantee that I worked on technology that was well in advance of the Apollo mission, and it would be very hard to convince me that such technology was not available for the mission. So I state that technology was used that was kept thoroughly secret (Cold War, remember), and some, if not all, of the anomalies are due to the necessity of the secrecy.
There is also the UFO question, but I won't get into that here, since it is off this subject.
So, just for kicks, how about if the tire tracks aren't there because some form of antigravity device was used? This would explain the lack thereof, and also would put to rest the question of how the lander actually was able to lift off, if in fact the rocketry was incapable of doing same.
That should throw a wrench into the gears.

Okay. Simple question. do you have any evidence of an antigravity device? How does this explain the lack of tire tracks any better than the explanations given?

Were you being ironic here, because I can find no sign of it if you were?

A pound of feathers and a pound of gold both weigh the same (and for that matter have the same mass). However the gold has a vastly higher density. The feathers occupy a vastly higher volume.

As to the antigravity question, there are numerous devices that could be considered antigravity. Find a book called "The Death of Rocketry" for one example. Other possibilities exist, though there is some question of these. If such a device existed, and was available, it could have been used to simply lift the machine up, set it down, and so on. Voila! No tire tracks.

As to the feathers/gold question, No. A pound of feathers weighs more than a pound of gold, since feathers are weighed by conventional Av. measurements and gold is measured by Troy ounces. Av. measurements have 16 ounces/pound, Troy has 12. While the Troy ounce is heavier, slightly, than the A ounce, the difference is in the 4 extra ounces in the Av. system.
Sorry about that. I thought that was common knowledge. I promise I won't do it again.

I walked into that didn't I? My excuse is I live in a country that has moved into the 21st century and gone metric.

However most of my chemistry lecturers would have deducted marks from your answer for mixing measuring systems without being specific.

And if elves existed, they could have been used to simply lift the machine up, set it down, and so on.

If you are bringing antigravity into this discussion it is up to you to bring evidence of it. Sorry, mentioning a book title is not evidence.

Silver:

The explanation for your question is that dust clouds are impossible on the Moon.
This is because the Moon has no atmosphere, and atmosphere is required for a cloud of dust which takes a while to settle.

The fine particles of dust are actually suspended by the atmosphere...they are, in other words, interacting with the air, which holds them aloft for a time and swishes them all around.


On the Moon, no such thing can happen. Dust moves in direct response to the impulse applied to it, and moves in predictable ballistic arcs.


It actually takes dust much less time to settle on the lunar surface because of this. It will go up, and out, as the case may be, but will fall based upon the gravity present, without any atmospheric interference.

How far up, or out the dust is actually propelled is a function of the force applied to it by, in this case, the wheels (in other words, the average initial velocity of the dust mass being examined). One needs to know that and the angle of the trajectory in order to make an accurate calculation of how far something should go in a 1/6 gravity field.

With a bunch of dust, whose particles are being propelled at different angles, by wheels with titanium chevrons for treads which impact the soil and move across it, catching a certain amount of the dust and tossing back and up at varying rates of speed, that's pretty tough to calculate.

The actual proof of lunar gravity is in watching the dust fall from its peak height. Measuring this shows rather clearly that the dust is falling in a 1/6 gravity field, and, its behavior clearly indicates that it is also in a vacuum.

We only know of one place where this can happen: the Moon.

One thing I never understand. Why most skeptics use a scientific method, but for an explaination to be qualified as the "final explaination for something", all they have to do is make an educated guess?

In my opinion an explaination should not be qualified to be THE explaination unless it is scientifically proven to be the case.

What technology was it that we were not aware of?

"What the hell is that," was stated more than once during an Apollo mission (Apollo 12's launch, for one!). What transmissions are you talking about (identify mission, event, etc.)? I can supply the conversation in context and make its meaning clear. Ohterwise, there's no point in talking about transmissions.

"Patched coded through physical monitoring channnels..."?

Please show some substantiation for this contention.





Please explain what this means as well. Examples, etc. (Identified, again). I have previously shown many times that there are no anomalies in Apollo photographs. There have been extensive threads regarding small snippets of video which are actually rather clear in what they show (to the knowledgable), and a lengthy, obtuse illustration of pareidolia regarding reflections in helmet visors.


I trust we're not going to delve into the unprovable again here?




Liftoff from the Moon?

Well, that's pretty simple stuff in principal. More thrust than weight lifted does the trick in a gravity field.

3500 pounds of thrust, 1650-1700 pounds of spacecraft (about 10000 pounds of mass). That implies about a 2 g push...up.


The engine was propelled by Dinitrogen Tetroxide and Aerozine 50, at a mixture ratio of approximately 1.6 (Oxidizer to Fuel). There were approximately 5200 pounds of propellant loaded in the Ascent Stage tanks (870 pounds lunar weight), which burned at a rate of ~11 lbs./sec. during an approximately 7.25 minute ascent burn.


About 90% of the APS propellant was consumed during this burn.


I don't think there's any question about this (at least there shouldn't be), as it is all published in detail for each Apollo mission, and has been since the mission reports were written. Given the voluminous nature of Apollo documentation, what question is there about this vehicles capabilities to do what it was designed to do...?

That is a good point, unless the rock is not really a rock !

I do want to point out, that I do believe man went to the moon, thanks for explaining some more of the landings validity

Not sure what to make of the antigrav suggestion, seems a bit out there to me. The no tracks though is wierd ! and why would they ever want to lift the rover? just curious, did they ever lift the rover on video or in transcript?

How do you define "skeptic"?
Are you perhaps referring to those of us who actually know something about Apollo, and who attempt to explain it to those who don't?

You seem to be referring to those of us who explain...


If that is the case, I should say this:

"The" explanation is relatively simple when knowledge is present in a strictly technical matter (I, at least attempt to keep it simple). The aspects of Apollo discussed by hoax theorists are basically technical matters, of which the proponents have little understanding.

The real point here is that it is common for hoax believers to insist upon "proof" that we did this thing. That is an untenable position to hold to, and is irrelevant to my position in such threads.

The scientific substantiation for the Apollo program is more voluminous than anything human kind has ever engaged in. Further, it has been reviewed, verified, and been substantiated by the scientific community world-wide.


There is nothing for us to prove. On the contrary, the hoax believer contends that, or accuses NASA of faking this thing. The burden of proof is on them to prove their contentions. It is not on those of us who were around for this thing, and who know how it was done.

To date such attempts at proof have not been sucessful, and of course, they cannot be successful.

Thus, I have always approached this topic as an educational opportunity. Hoax beliefs are all based upon supposition, speculation, and a lack of knowledge of the subject matter. I seek to educate people.

Thus, I will not "prove" that we did this thing. We did. That is established. I will merely illustrate how it was done, based upon the questions that people ask.


That's why I ask for questions, and advise against argument. Phrase things as questions, and alot more fun can be had.

Silver...

Yes, they did in fact lift the rover. Often, during deployment, they would manually pick the thing up and move it away from its intitially deployed position (after all, it only weighed about 80 pounds empty on the lunar surface).

Apollo 15's telecast from EVA 1 clearly showed Jim Irwin and Dave Scott doing just that.

You can probabaly find clips of this taking place at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal site.

Thanks MID that does make sense, for sure !!!

I know this was covered in the other very lengthy thread, but would not this explanation of the dust settlement taking very little time mean, taking a closer look as to why there was no dirt/dust on the lunar landers landing pads. They are almost bowl shaped and should have captured some of this "dust" but yet they look like a brand new car just off the showroom floor?

I know that there is no atmosphere on the moon but would not the blast from a landing kick alot up and that blast would create almost a bit of swirl, considering that gas's where being burnt and possibly creating a swirl around the legs themselves and or imperfections in the ground? There had to be some off gassing upon landing creating a very temporary gas like swirl? as these gases or vapor's fired out of the LEM. ??? IMO i think there should be dirt/dust on or in the landers pads? just curious..

Thanks again

If thats the case for lack of tracks, why the lack of footprints? I saw how hard it was to pick up and carry that rock. His feet shuffled all over. I would think there would be a lot more foot prints concidering they would have been taking baby steps, and not jumping with the rover in hand. Again just an observasion.

EDIT:
Sorry I will try to find the video thx

I wonder if this is a drive-by...
Anyhoo, just wanted to comment that this photo is of the front tyre of the rover.... and therefore is a bit cheeky to use it to illustrate that no tracks are behind the rover. Also, this topic (and many, many others) has been raked over thoroughly at BAUT. I'm not sure if the OP used the same image as the one examined over there, but in the full res version, there are tracks - they are just difficlt to make out.

I could be wrong but I remember the pics you are taking about, and yes some tracks were found and some very hard to see. These pics are new to me, I hope I didn't miss them in the other thread

Here we go a cool vid of them having a bit of testdrive and some fun. Man I would love to do that !!!!

http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=150...p;q=lunar+rover

MID I see what you were saying earlier

I know you do. I hope I didn't come across as snippy in my reply; I was just trying to explore the reasoning behind faking some photos and not others.

As MID said, we're all here to learn. I've followed Apollo for nearly 40 years now and I still learn new stuff every day.

I'm referring to those skeptics who will think up an explaination, back it with a little bit of logic and toss it out there, then call the believer unscientific and leave. They're being unscientific as well, and it pisses me off. Believe me, I don't believe in a moon landing hoax, I'm just talking about things in general, and mostly about Ghosts.

Basically, a jet hits a solid surface and spreads out as a radial sheet from the impingement point. If the surface is loose, the radial flow can entrain particles and carry them along. This happens on earth, eg the jets of a Harrier, but on earth the radial flow is slowed down by mixing with the surrounding air, and in turn drives the surrounding air into swirling flows. In a vacuum, it just keeps going, getting less dense with distance, due to both the greater circumference it fills and the greater depth of the sheet as it expands away from the surface.

The LM footpads are clean because they are outside of the sheet until the last second, and even then in vacuum the sheet does not turn round the raised lip of the pad but travels straight across it. In other words, both the sheet flow and the dust it carries travel in basically a set of straight lines away from the impingement point, and the top of the footpad is shadowed by its lip.

The only point where the flow is deflected is around solid objects like the legs, but the flow only washes one side of such objects, leaving the far side in vacuum. There is no reason why dry dust should stick to smooth metallic surfaces, any particles will just bounce off and be carried away by the gas flow. The only dust that gets onto the pads will be that kicked on to them later by the astronauts' activities.

Well there is something totally unbelievable about this thread....no sign of Straydog yet..spooky.

Atomic

you hit the nail on the head there, I have learned more here on u.m. about this and many other things to boot by asking questions and having people here who can answer them !! thx


Flyingswan

You do sound like you know what you are talking about !! I may have some more questions but damn it's to early and I have only had 1 cup of joe so far Talk soon.


Ya Where is Straydog ?

However, in the real world, your chemistry lecturers would have been wrong to do so. In the real world, Troy is used worldwide as a measure on the markets. Unfortunately. It would be nice to have it all under one system. I agree that it's a bit idiotic and makes for confusion: if you buy gold commodities, it comes in 100 ounce packages, Troy. Would make it easier and more sensible to use metric.
'Nuff said.
Don't want to sway this interesting thread to dumb stuff.

Good explanation but I think you missed another factor that will greatly reduce the dust on the footpads... didn't they cut the engines while they were still a few feet off the ground?

Hi Everyone!

Sorry not to have followed up here.

I posted the same issue here; http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php?t=48175


But I will have a look at the replies here now to see if anyone have a different aproach.

If you want to see my own comments on different arguments about this topic, please click on the link above.

Did I hear someone call my name ? ... I thought no more threads were going to be allowed on the subject of Apollo on this site , but here we go again !

I know this site absolutely abhors copy paste text but I just don't have the time or the inclination to put this into my own words ... So please forgive me the indulgence of using someone else's words who is in a far better position than I to explain why the video footage of the lunar buggy and the astronauts cavorting about on the 'lunar' surface was all faked and filmed in Earth's gravity .

This is only a small excerpt from a very long and extremely fascinating article on why the Apollo moon missions could not possibly have occurred as NASA's official record claims they did .
.......................................

"NASA, I Think We Have A Problem (with the Moon landings). Do You Read Me?"

I have made an observation about the astronaut’s movements while on the Moon (and in the old space walks of the 1960s). I have often wondered why they moved so slowly on the Moon. The answer is generally due to reduced gravity.

In the mid 60s the astronauts were supposedly performing space walks, and they too moved in slow motion. Well, something is a little screwy here. You see, when you are underwater your body weight becomes relatively less due to the density and weight of the water. Relative to the atmosphere you are in, being water, the body weight is less than the atmosphere. Water is heavy, so the body floats in water, similar as one would float in space. However, due to water being dense this causes more resistance to movement then normal air does, so that when one is under water he/she will move slowly. The slowness is due to the fact that the body strength hasn't changed, but the atmosphere around it, in this case from normal air to dense water, has become much heavier and thus puts up a higher resistance against movement.

What is different in space is that rather than there being a more dense and heavy atmosphere, there is no atmosphere. There is no resistance caused by either water or air, therefore there is much greater freedom of movement. The body has the same strength and there is no resistance from the atmosphere to slow down or resist that movement, as there would be under water. Movement in space or on the Moon presents LESS RESISTANCE then on Earth, so the movements should not be SLOW, but if anything as fast or FASTER.

Therefore, I have always been puzzled why the astronauts moved around in slow motion on the Moon. And it is interesting to note that when I have watched video of space walks from the shuttle, they do not seem to have this same problem. The clumsy suits make movements a bit more restricted, if you move your arm quickly you may find your whole body spinning around, but there is no atmosphere to slow movement down. I have concluded is that NASA blew it by photographing movement on the Moon in slow motion. This may have been totally miscalculated, springing from the earlier space walks that were probably photographed underwater in large water tanks. The underwater movements were slow, so someone may have concluded movement on the Moon would be slow also.

It is also extremely interesting to note that when I have taken NASA video coverage of Moon walking and the rover riding on the Moon and speeded it up 1.8 to 2 TIMES FASTER then normal something very remarkable happens. All of a sudden everything looks 'NORMAL'. These guys simply look as though they are hopping around in some big, over-sized suits. And the rover looks completely normal as well, like any little dune buggy on soft sand. They simply FILMED EVERYTHING ABOUT 2 TIMES SPEED, then played it slower so that it appears everyone is moving around slowly. But that was a very big mistake, as the movements should not be slow in the first place.

And what about the dust that gets kicked up by the wheels of the rover? According to my friend the dust should fall back down extremely quickly, as there is NO AIR or ATMOSPHERE in which it can suspend itself, and there is NO AIR PRESSURE to counter its fall. But the dust appears to MAGICALLY FALL IN HALF SPEED SLOW MOTION .

The Space Age Tower Of Babel

Let me go back a little and fill in some things about the 'real' space program, the space shuttle. If you recall originally I started talking about the X-rockets and the space shuttle. According to the documentation Robby showed me, this was America's 'real' space program. Werner Von Braun is credited with developing this plan in the 1950s and according to my research, this was, always has been, and still is the backbone of our space program.

The mission of the shuttle was to travel up to at least several 1,000 miles or further and carry with it cargo to build an orbiting space station at as high an altitude as possible. The main purpose of the space station was to serve as a research lab for further investigation of the [Van Allen] radiation belts and how to get around them or through them. Part of the purpose of the space station was to act as an orbiting launch pad and re-fueling station.

Once the first space station was complete, space shuttles between Earth and that first station would continue to carry more loads, but now a new type of shuttle would be built. One that did not have to travel into the Earth's atmosphere and therefore had no wings. This shuttle would launch from the first space station at several thousand miles up and would travel out to a much higher orbit.

In that higher orbit the next level of shuttles would construct a second space station. Thus, the first ground level shuttles would be ferrying loads from Earth to the first station, then another shuttle ferrying loads to the next station. The second space station would then be at the edge of the radiation belts with the mission to find holes in it, or find a way through it. Once that was done, then another space station could be built even further out. This time 50,000 miles, or on the other side of the radiation belts. The plan that I saw for the space program was to reach the Moon by building about seven such space stations as a modern 'stairway' to the Moon. The Space Age Tower of Babel.

And here's the rest of the article.
http://www.aulis.com/moonshadows.htm

At the bautforum I came to this conclusion;

Check the original big scan of the picture.
My question is about how the tracks were covered in this speciffic location. Is there a video of the activities the astronauts did on this spot?
Was there any astronaut activity between the rover and the point where the photos was taken?
You can see bootprints behind the rover, and bootprints in the front of the rover. I personally, cannot see any bootprints inside the triangle shaped by the two facing wheels and the camera. There is some marks there actually, between the wheels. Marks, not bootprints. And that just confirms the fine nature of the dust as well.
I am sure the tracks were visible there when the rover parked. They were then covered by dust. I agree. But the astronauts does not seem to have been around that area. The bootprint concentration is in front and back of the rover.

(after this other users insisted the marks were actually footprints)

I off course know that light dirrection plays a critical role in figuring out any footprints or tracks in this picture.

But still the footprints are there. Mostly in front of the rover and in the back. Maybe there are some between the wheels too. It is open to speculations. If these few sporadic footprints(or other marks) covered the tracks, or if the tracks were covered by the dust spread by the weels themselves. The high back-light conditions can also be the reason they are not visible in the first place.

I am clearly aware of the fact that the two other pictures I posted in the bautforum to comparison have a completely different lightning. Both footprints and tracks are more visible with side-light or front-light. I posted them to show that tracks can be as visible on the moon surface as the footprints.

Maybe some lightning conditions favors both footprints and track-marks, and others just the footprints.

straydog, no one has a problem with cutting and pasting when it is relevant. The problems are when people open large numbers of threads on a single subject with cut and paste articles that they never respond to or when people post very long articles which have nothing to do with the topic being discussed.

When you aren't seeing the sun, the tracks or footprints for that matter become incredibly hard to see, you can find loads of information to sway you or make you a believer. Personally I believe we did land on the moon, what would did we get out of it?

Being the first people to land on the moon, ok and? It didnt really help our economy, or the wars we were fighting. So why would we fake it?

Read the book.