Square image with a dark background, with an illustration of a multi-stage rocket depicted horizontally in the center. Above the rocket, white text reads, "the moon landing was staged?" Below the rocket, more white text reads "yeah that's how all orbital rockets fucking work dude"
Even SSTO has the single stage. To orbit.
Me, coming to the comments about to ask "what about SSTO?"
I looked into this a long time ago, it would've been more expensive to fake it than it was to just do it.
We would've needed to somehow convince Russia to lie on our behalf. We would've needed to convince the dictatorship of australia to also lie on our behalf.
The rooskies came out and said we beat them to it, and the aussies claimed they recived the camera feed and the audio feed from space and then echoed it to their TV network
That Mitchell and Webb sketch where they discuss faking the moonlanding to save money, and the only real savings was on catering....
The dictatorship of Australia?
Shhh. We don't talk about that anymore.
I too feel like I'm missing context on a joke here.
This was before the fateful Whitlam dismissal by the monarchy / potentially the CIA.
Right? It was the Cold fucking War, why would the Czar of Russia or whoever was in charge work with the US on the US' propaganda against Russia?
Cold fucking War
Czar of Russia
The Czar wasn't around during the Cold War for ... reasons.
Plus you still need to launch a bunch of massive Saturn V rockets since so many people saw them launch. Unless they paid off everyone who said they were there? Building a moon rocket that doesn't go to the moon isn't that much cheaper than building one that does.
obligatory Mitchell&Webb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw
Landing on the moon was such a huge PR event. Everything that could be controlled was controlled.
What if a backup TV broadcast was created in case of broadcast equipment failure?
Ya, Russians are noobs tbh.
Objectively silly statement given the entire history of the space race.
Yeah they were kicking our teeth in for a while there.
Thanks to OP for reminding me to check my staging
This guy kerbals
I still prescribe to the theory that we tried to fake the moon landing, but Stanley Kubrick being a perfectionist kept insisting they shoot on location prompting us to do it for real anyway.
How many times are people going to post this nonsense?
Kubrick notoriously hated filming on location.
He of course did have NASA send astronauts to the moon to shoot background and reference pictures, he was a perfectionist, after all, but the official landing was filmed in Shepperton, England.
Also, no one's going to believe this unless you tell them about the practically unique Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7 lens NASA gave him as payment, which allowed him to shoot the candlelit scenes in Barry Lyndon.
The moon landing wasn't staged, the launch was...
The lander did have a stage separation though, It left the landing gear and motor on the moon, and the accent stage took it back into lunar orbit.
Also, wouldn't leaving the command module in lunar orbit before landing count as staging..?
I had two middle aged coworkers the other day talking about how it was staged. I should have showed them both this today. But I didn't want to engage lol.
You could also have staging in model rocketry. The largest we ever had was a 3-stage running on G-size engines. The "Red, White, and Clusterfuck". If all three stages ignited and properly, you got a solid boom outta her. The frame outlived several nosecones from the friction they had to endure.
That sounds, intense.
Blue blistering bell-bottomed balderdash, you blabber-mouthed vegetarian pithecanthropus!
The Atlas rocket was single stage to orbit.
But yeah, every Gemini and Apollo rocket was staged, as was the space shuttle.
It was partially staged. The main benefit of staging is dropping dry mass during the burn, and the Atlas I dropped engines
Good luck making a single stage to lunar surface rocket.
I just need more struts.
Oh yeah uh... what about SSTOs huh? I bet we'll have some sick aerospike powered vehicles any day now!
spoiler
RIP Rocketdyne XRS-220
SSTO enthusiasts in shambles
is this the fucking N1 rocket?
Damn bro, the US fucking died with this post.
N1 had 30 engines on the first stage
Nuh uh. They snuck the astronauts into the Star Trek sets at night and used the transporters obviously. They knew the props wouldn't have been convincing enough…
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