July 21st, 2009
Best Faked Moon Landing... Ever!
They faked the Moon landing! The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum’s and AOL’s WeChooseTheMoon.org site is perhaps one of the coolest applications of Adobe Flash I’ve ever seen.
40 years ago this week, Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin (assisted by Command Module pilot Michael Collins) stepped foot on the surface of the Moon. But even with all the overwhelming amount of evidence that we really did send men to that lonely barren world in late July of 1969, many people still believe we never went there.
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Well, now the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in cooperation with AOL has given the conspiracy theorists something to sputter about again. WeChooseTheMoon.org is a real-time simulation of the entire Apollo 11 mission, including 103 hours of streamed audio from the actual NASA tapes.
The simulated mission, accompanied by some of the coolest Flash 10 animation I’ve ever seen, is divided into 11 phases — Launch, Orbital Insertion, Earth Orbit, Trans Lunar Injection, S-IVB Separation and LEM docking, Service Module Ignition, Lunar Orbit Insertion, LEM separation, LEM descent, LEM landing approach, and finally, the landing of the LEM on the Moon and the return to Earth. On Friday of last week, the site ran the simulation in actual real time, so you had to be present to see each stage. Starting today, you can watch it at your own pace and jump forward to the next section, reducing several days of travel time to just a few minutes of really cool Flash animation.
Also Read: To the Moon: How We Built the Technologies
At every stage of the simulated mission, there is interactive content including videos and beautifully restored hi-res photos of the actual historical mission. And at the end of the mission, you will receive your very own personalized Moon Landing certificate you get to print out afterward and display proudly in your office cube.
In July of 1969, we chose to go to the Moon, and it was real. But if you really insist on faking it, just fire up your web browser.
Did you choose to go to the Moon? Talk Back and Let Me Know.
Jason Perlow is a technologist with over two decades of experience integrating large heterogeneous multi-vendor computing environments in Fortune 500 companies. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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