8 hours ago, gamb00ler said:

Your grasp of the English language is indeed tenuous. Combine that shortcoming with extreme laziness and that's the result we see in your posts. 😳😂

Read the context instead of just searching for 'flat earth'. In the first quote you show... the context is that for the purposes of doing some complicated calculations the authors used a simplified model .... ie a flat earth. The simplification is done to make it easier to construct equations that will produce very accurate models of the REAL SITUATION... ie a rotating Earth.

The fact that the task of proving Earth's motion is 'remarkably difficult' also implies that for most situations, calculations made assuming a flat earth will still produce workable results for the true situation of a rotating Earth. Checkmate.

Your 'research' is completely laughable. Go directly back to grade school. Do not Pass GO. Do not collect $200.

I'm just glad I can keep you guys on your toes, keep you sharp as blades. And I always look forward to my daily gamb00ler insights, more colloquially referred to as gambsights.

3 hours ago, BritManToo said:

I never really understood why anyone would care if the moon landings where real of not.

It certainly doesn't make any difference to our lives.

Unlike COVID or climate change which governments use to destroy our lives, health, incomes and freedom to travel.

It is one of the foundational myths of the modern era. If it is exposed and understood as fake by the majority of the public, everything else, including the restrictive supranational 'health' and 'climate' policies, will collapse instantly as belief and compliance are essential to their viability.

8 hours ago, Red Phoenix said:

Gents, this thread is not about Flat Earth, but about whether you believe they put a 'Man on the Moon'

Indeed Red, sorry about that (though both topics are intrinsically related in my view).

Professor R. Foster said in 1965 that the Moon was a plasma body. This certainly seems to be confirmed by some of the real footage taken of it.

Real Moon, no CGI or enhancements:

On 1/18/2026 at 11:40 AM, richard_smith237 said:

Anti-vaxxers... Covid conspiracists... Moon-landing deniers... Flat-earthers.... Chemtrails...

Different costumes, same troupe.

They present themselves as brave iconoclasts, lone wolves howling truth into the void. In reality, they are astonishingly predictable. If a view is held by scientists, doctors, engineers, historians, or anyone who has spent more than five minutes studying the subject, they reflexively reject it. Not because they have counter-evidence - but because it is official.

The defining feature is not scepticism. It is contrarianism. Not independent thought, but oppositional identity.

If vaccines are recommended by every serious medical body on the planet, then vaccines must be poison.
If Covid killed millions, then it must have been “just the flu” - or a hoax - or a rehearsal for global mind control.
If the Moon landing is documented by telemetry, physics, photographs, mirrors still used for laser ranging, and the testimony of thousands of engineers… then obviously it was filmed in a shed by Stanley Kubrick.
If the Earth is demonstrably round, measurable, navigable, and observable from multiple independent systems, then clearly it is flat - because NASA exists and therefore lies about everything.

The pattern is painfully consistent.

Mainstream media says A - therefore A is false. Experts agree on B - therefore B is propaganda.

Consensus emerges after decades of evidence - therefore it’s a psy-op.

Notice what never happens: they never produce a better explanatory model. They do not replace germ theory with something more predictive. They do not replace orbital mechanics with equations that work. They do not improve epidemiology, astronomy, or physics. They simply sneer at them from the sidelines and declare victory.

This isn’t free thinking. Free thinking requires work. Reading. Maths. Method. The ability to say “I might be wrong”.... What we are seeing instead in threads such as this is epistemic vandalism - the tearing down of knowledge without the capacity or intention to build anything in its place.

Even better, these movements feed on each other. Fall for one, and the rest come bundled free. Anti-vaxxers drift effortlessly into Covid conspiracies, then into 5G paranoia, then into global cabals, then into “nothing is real unless I discovered it on a Telegram channel with a wolf avatar”. The worldview must remain internally hostile to authority at all costs, otherwise the entire self-image collapses.

And that’s the crux of it.

This is not about truth. It is about identity. Being “awake”. Being special. Being one of the few clever enough to see through the grand illusion that somehow fooled every airline pilot, civil engineer, virologist, and satellite system on Earth - but not Dave on YouTube.

What masquerades as radical scepticism is far closer to a psychological tic: an automatic rejection reflex. A kind of intellectual Tourette’s, where “they’re lying” bursts out regardless of context, evidence, or coherence.

At some point, this stops being an alternative viewpoint and starts looking like a shared cognitive pathology. Not dissent, but dysfunction. Not courage, but confusion. Not free thought, but a fear of reality so profound that fantasy feels safer.

In short: if everything official is fake, nothing true is knowable - and that isn’t enlightenment. It’s stupidity.

Richard, can you tell me where Saddam's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are hidden. They never found them. 🤣

On 1/18/2026 at 6:12 PM, Red Phoenix said:

Bart Sibrel has spent over thirty years working to expose the Apollo moon landings as a hoax.

This guy along with the op who posted this is your typical MAGA voter. A metaphor for the poor state of US schooling in the rural backwaters I suppose.

8 hours ago, BuffaloRider said:

Have to be quite a nut job to even consider the moon landings were real while we still never revisited nor SpaceX being able to do right now in 2026. Oh yeah we just went there once and then we magically forgot how we did it and never came again, we saw all already.

To then add to the distraction a new goal: Mars! Now they can delay truth for a few decades more.

I wonder if they will ever be able to find the luna roving vehicle and the American flag that was left there. 🙂

On 1/19/2026 at 5:42 PM, richard_smith237 said:

Each of your comments is a small but sobering reminder of how low the bar can be....

Maybe he lying on the floor of the bar he is in, hence the drunken asinine comments!

35 minutes ago, KhunHeineken said:

I wonder if they will ever be able to find the luna roving vehicle and the American flag that was left there. 🙂

It's lunar module pic time!

Courtesy of NASA, I bring you the one and only giant barbecue wrapped in tin foil.

1 hour ago, KhunHeineken said:

Richard, can you tell me where Saddam's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are hidden. They never found them. 🤣

Indeed... No active WMD programmes found.

The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) - the post-invasion US-led inspection team - concluded in 2004 that:

- Iraq had no nuclear weapons programme

- Iraq had no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons

- Iraq had not restarted WMD production after the 1990s

Inspectors did find:

- A small number of old chemical munitions, mostly from the 1980s Iran-Iraq War

- These were abandoned, corroded, unusable, and not part of any active arsenal

Why did intelligence say otherwise? Intelligence failures came from:

- Bad sources

- Assumptions based on Saddam’s past behaviour

- Political pressure shaping conclusions

The ISG found that Saddam Hussein:

- Wanted the illusion of WMDs to deter Iran

- Had dismantled programmes years earlier but never clearly admitted it

In Summary - The US and UK acted on poor intelligence that involved, assumptions to do something that sadly was necessary - unfortunately public opinion took over and the job could not be finished leaving a power void leading to ISIS.

1 hour ago, KhunHeineken said:

I wonder if they will ever be able to find the luna roving vehicle and the American flag that was left there. 🙂

It would require an extraordinary stroke of luck.

Imagine leaving a car somewhere in the middle of the Sahara, then expecting someone aboard the International Space Station - travelling at roughly 27,600 km/h - to spot it through a telescope as they pass overhead. The odds of even catching a glimpse would be vanishingly small.

That said, the precise lunar coordinates of the equipment left behind during the Apollo missions are known, so in principle those sites could be located and imaged with sufficient resolution.

But the deeper issue remains: would it make any difference?

For committed Moon-landing deniers, it would not. Any photographs or physical evidence would simply be dismissed as fabricated.

The objection of the Moon-landing-deniers is not about absense of evidence, but about an unwillingness to accept it.

1 hour ago, KhunHeineken said:

I wonder if they will ever be able to find the luna roving vehicle and the American flag that was left there. 🙂

Yes!

The rover used on Apollo 15 was left at Hadley-Apennine (26.10°N 3.65°E). The rover used on Apollo 16 was left at Descartes (8.99°S 15.51°E). The rover used on Apollo 17 was left at Taurus-Littrow (20.16°N 30.76°E) and was seen by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter during passes in 2009 and 2011

Just one of many links!

https://www.universetoday.com/articles/look-its-a-moon-buggy-lros-best-look-ever-at-the-apollo-15-landing-site

2 hours ago, rattlesnake said:

It is one of the foundational myths of the modern era. If it is exposed and understood as fake by the majority of the public, everything else, including the restrictive supranational 'health' and 'climate' policies, will collapse instantly as belief and compliance are essential to their viability.

Total rubbish.. The Moon landings are not some “foundational myth” upon which modern society depends.

Governments, laws, economies, health systems, and environmental policy do not derive their authority or legitimacy from Apollo. Modern civilisation is built on industry, energy, law, enforcement, economics, and institutions that existed long before NASA ever put a man on the Moon.

Even IF the Apollo programme had never happened, none of those systems would suddenly stop functioning.

The idea that exposing the Moon landings as fake would cause everything else to collapse is a classic conspiracy cascade - the belief that one hidden truth, once revealed, brings the whole system down overnight.

History shows the opposite. Institutions survive scandals, exposed lies, and public mistrust all the time. Power does not rely on universal belief; it relies on incentives, enforcement, and material reality.

At the point where any evidence is dismissed as fabrication, the discussion stops being about evidence and becomes about belief itself.

1 minute ago, richard_smith237 said:

Total rubbish.. The Moon landings are not some “foundational myth” upon which modern society depends.

Governments, laws, economies, health systems, and environmental policy do not derive their authority or legitimacy from Apollo. Modern civilisation is built on industry, energy, law, enforcement, economics, and institutions that existed long before NASA ever put a man on the Moon.

Even IF the Apollo programme had never happened, none of those systems would suddenly stop functioning.

The idea that exposing the Moon landings as fake would cause everything else to collapse is a classic conspiracy cascade - the belief that one hidden truth, once revealed, brings the whole system down overnight.

History shows the opposite. Institutions survive scandals, exposed lies, and public mistrust all the time. Power does not rely on universal belief; it relies on incentives, enforcement, and material reality.

At the point where any evidence is dismissed as fabrication, the discussion stops being about evidence and becomes about belief itself.

I have very often heard the phrase "it's just too crazy to be true". Bart Sibrel, who is mentioned in the OP of this thread, also said in a recent interview with Candace Owens that people have told him, whilst not denying the evidence he provides, that they are basically incapable of entertaining the idea that they could have been lied to in such a colossal manner. People, Americans of course but this applies more broadly to the entire Western civilisation, have forged their identities on this purported accomplishment, and realising it was all false will lead them to ask a devastating question, from which there is no turning back: if our governments have lied about this, then what else have they lied about?

Bart Sibrel on Candace Owens' show:

26 minutes ago, scottiejohn said:

Yes!

The rover used on Apollo 15 was left at Hadley-Apennine (26.10°N 3.65°E). The rover used on Apollo 16 was left at Descartes (8.99°S 15.51°E). The rover used on Apollo 17 was left at Taurus-Littrow (20.16°N 30.76°E) and was seen by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter during passes in 2009 and 2011

Just one of many links!

https://www.universetoday.com/articles/look-its-a-moon-buggy-lros-best-look-ever-at-the-apollo-15-landing-site

Good sources - there’s plenty of evidence there, and especially here:
https://lroc.im-ldi.com/image_tags/Apollo

That said, I think Moon-landing deniers are looking for something far more explicit - something absolutely perfect and beyond dispute. And even then, there’s a strong likelihood they would simply claim the images are fabricated anyway.

12 minutes ago, rattlesnake said:

if our governments have lied about this, then what else have they lied about?

... Then clearly everything is a lie. Gravity, satellites, GPS, electricity, medicine, weather forecasts - all just part of the grand illusion.

In which case we’re no longer questioning governments; we’re questioning reality itself....

... IF the Moon landings were faked, then presumably everything else is fabricated too. Gravity, satellites, GPS, medicine, physics - all just outputs of some vast digital construct we’re plugged into, fed a carefully curated version of reality while believing we’re observing the real thing.

Governments aren’t lying anymore... they’re system administrators maintaining the illusion.

59 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Indeed... No active WMD programmes found.

So, governments all around the world, including mine, lied to their citizens.

No possibility it's happened on other occasions????

I remember Bonking Billy stating, "I did not have sexual relations with that women." 😂

What about the JFK assassination? A bullet that can turn corners, really? 😂

What about the Vietnam War? "The Domino Effect." Communism was going to sweep across the world if not stopped in Vietnam. 😂

The list goes on and on.

So, at the height of The Cold War, and the space race is on, no possibility the moon landing was BS?

I keep an open mind because I know government lie to their people and to the world.

56 minutes ago, scottiejohn said:

Yes!

The rover used on Apollo 15 was left at Hadley-Apennine (26.10°N 3.65°E). The rover used on Apollo 16 was left at Descartes (8.99°S 15.51°E). The rover used on Apollo 17 was left at Taurus-Littrow (20.16°N 30.76°E) and was seen by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter during passes in 2009 and 2011

Just one of many links!

https://www.universetoday.com/articles/look-its-a-moon-buggy-lros-best-look-ever-at-the-apollo-15-landing-site

That's some great photoshop work. 😂

27 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

That said, I think Moon-landing deniers are looking for something far more explicit - something absolutely perfect and beyond dispute. And even then, there’s a strong likelihood they would simply claim the images are fabricated anyway.

I am not a denier. I just keep an open mind.

India put a rover on the moon a few years ago. I would like one of these rovers to land near the lunar rover from the Apollo 15 mission one day and remove all doubt for everyone.

2 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

Then clearly everything is a lie.

Not at all. But if a conspiracy so massive were to be publicly acknowledged, it would undoubtedly lead the general public to question a lot more things, especially the vastly diseminated, pervasive ideas which form the bedrock of many political and cultural trends and evolutions. Because the one gauge they always thought they could rely on unquestionably – the authoritative assurances of the media, political apparatus and experts – would be removed.

This doesn't mean they would reject everything as a lie, but they wouldn't blindly accept anything as true either. It is what we conspiracists have been referring to as 'The Great Awakening' for the past few years. The Overton window is moving fast, with increasing momentum, on a number of issues and it is an irreversible process. There is no going back to sleep once awake.

19 minutes ago, KhunHeineken said:

So, governments all around the world, including mine, lied to their citizens.

No possibility it's happened on other occasions????

I remember Bonking Billy stating, "I did not have sexual relations with that women." 😂

What about the JFK assassination? A bullet that can turn corners, really? 😂

What about the Vietnam War? "The Domino Effect." Communism was going to sweep across the world if not stopped in Vietnam. 😂

The list goes on and on.

So, at the height of The Cold War, and the space race is on, no possibility the moon landing was BS?

I keep an open mind because I know government lie to their people and to the world.

9/11 is a big one which is currently being exposed. Tucker Carlson used to defend the central narrative with all his might and faith until recently. Now he rejects it. It doesn't matter what one thinks of him, he is one of the top podcasters in the world and his reach is massive.

12 minutes ago, KhunHeineken said:

I am not a denier. I just keep an open mind.

India put a rover on the moon a few years ago. I would like one of these rovers to land near the lunar rover from the Apollo 15 mission one day and remove all doubt for everyone.

From that perspective, consider what other space agencies are actually doing right now. China National Space Administration is running the Chang’e programme, landing probes and returning samples. Indian Space Research Organisation has Chandrayaan orbiters mapping the Moon in detail. Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and European Space Agency are flying instruments, landers, and joint missions.

None of these agencies rely on NASA for their data, and none of them have any incentive to protect a decades-old American programme if it were fraudulent.

Now imagine you’re responsible for allocating the budget of one of these agencies. Would you seriously prioritise spending billions on a mission designed purely to “put conspiracy theories to bed” knowing full well that the very people you’re trying to convince will simply claim the evidence is fabricated anyway?

There is no scientific, political, or economic upside to doing that.

At that level, agencies don’t need to appease deniers. There is no cost-benefit justification for it, and no strategic gain. In practice, attempting to “prove it again” doesn’t resolve anything - it just feeds the narrative more attention and oxygen, while diverting resources from actual science and exploration.

21 minutes ago, KhunHeineken said:

That's some great photoshop work. 😂

As usual you cannot accept the truth!

PS; No matter the topic/subject!

24 minutes ago, KhunHeineken said:

That's some great photoshop work. 😂

I could do better using Gimp.

1 hour ago, richard_smith237 said:

Indeed... No active WMD programmes found.

Agreed.

And most ex leaders of that time now agree and make excuses for "their mistake(s)".

That does not mean that other so called "fake news" is fake!

Read the recently published;

My Life, Our Times; Gordon Brown's Memoirs where he claims that "even" he was misled and believed the WMD claims!!

22 minutes ago, rattlesnake said:

Not at all. But if a conspiracy so massive were to be publicly acknowledged, it would undoubtedly lead the general public to question a lot more things, especially the vastly diseminated, pervasive ideas which form the bedrock of many political and cultural trends and evolutions. Because the one gauge they always thought they could rely on unquestionably – the authoritative assurances of the media, political apparatus and experts – would be removed.

This doesn't mean they would reject everything as a lie, but they wouldn't blindly accept anything as true either. It is what we conspiracists have been referring to as 'The Great Awakening' for the past few years. The Overton window is moving fast, with increasing momentum, on a number of issues and it is an irreversible process. There is no going back to sleep once awake.

We already have a real-world example that puts this idea to the test, and it doesn’t support the conclusion you’re drawing. The Iraq WMD claims were among the most heavily promoted, expert-endorsed, and media-saturated narratives of the modern era - and they turned out to be false.

That was eventually acknowledged. Investigations took place, reports were published, and the original justification collapsed in full public view.

And yet… nothing like a “Great Awakening” followed. There was no mass collapse of trust, no widespread rejection of authority, no permanent shift into some enlightened state. Trust took a hit, cynicism increased, and scepticism grew in certain areas, but institutions carried on, governments stayed in power, media outlets kept operating, and most people simply moved on. That’s how real systems behave.

People didn’t suddenly reject medicine, abandon science, or walk away from political structures altogether. What emerged was selective distrust, not total disbelief. History shows that even when a major lie is exposed, authority isn’t dismantled - it’s absorbed, reframed, and compartmentalised.

That’s the core flaw in the “Great Awakening” narrative. It treats trust as if it’s all-or-nothing, as though pulling out one issue brings the whole structure down. In reality, trust is uneven, situational, and resilient. The Overton window shifts slowly and unevenly, not through some unstoppable surge of collective enlightenment. People don’t “wake up” once and stay awake forever - they adjust, recalibrate, and carry on in the same world, perhaps with just with a bit more scepticism than before.

If there was no irreversible awakening after the Iraq WMD debacle, there’s no reason to believe one would suddenly occur over Apollo. Which is why the argument that it’s now “too late” or “too dangerous” to admit the Moon landings were faked - and that the lie must therefore be maintained indefinitely - doesn’t hold up.

History shows that even significant deceptions, once exposed, don’t trigger societal collapse. They get absorbed, rationalised, and eventually normalised. The idea that Apollo has to be protected at all costs to prevent chaos simply doesn’t match how trust, power, or institutions actually function.

2 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

We already have a real-world example that puts this idea to the test, and it doesn’t support the conclusion you’re drawing. The Iraq WMD claims were among the most heavily promoted, expert-endorsed, and media-saturated narratives of the modern era - and they turned out to be false.

That was eventually acknowledged. Investigations took place, reports were published, and the original justification collapsed in full public view.

And yet… nothing like a “Great Awakening” followed. There was no mass collapse of trust, no widespread rejection of authority, no permanent shift into some enlightened state.

Yes there was, the post 9/11 'War on Terror' and the scepticism which ensued marked the beginning of the advent of 'conspiracy theories' and their associated issues. It was a slow process, but it was steady. It progressed slowly over two decades and culminated with Covid. We are currently in an acceleration and propagation phase, there is no doubt about that.

10 minutes ago, richard_smith237 said:

History shows that even significant deceptions, once exposed, don’t trigger societal collapse. They get absorbed, rationalised, and eventually normalised. The idea that Apollo has to be protected at all costs to prevent chaos simply doesn’t match how trust, power, or institutions actually function.

The scope varies, though. Your example narrative of Iraqi WMDs is not on the same scale as 'the Man on the Moon' one. The former always had its share of sceptics and opponents, from the anti-war crowd to the Demcrats (still largely the party of peace at the time), with 'mini-conspiracy theories' within the broader one (such as the movie Loose Change which targeted the Bush clan but left out Mossad, etc.) to dilute and divert the issue.

The belief in the latter narrative, around the Apollo missions, is all-encompassing and goes far beyond politics. Everybody accepts it as an incontrovertible truth, as certain as the sky is blue. It isn't even open to opinion. Destroying this would be akin to removing the foundations of a house (whereas destroying the Iraqi MWDs narrative only equated to removing one wing).

3 minutes ago, rattlesnake said:

Yes there was, the post 9/11 'War on Terror' and the scepticism which ensued marked the beginning of the advent of 'conspiracy theories' and their associated issues. It was a slow process, but it was steady. It progressed slowly over two decades and culminated with Covid. We are currently in an acceleration and propagation phase, there is no doubt about that.

Do you not think this has far more to do with the rise of social media - effectively giving everyone a megaphone, collapsing traditional gatekeeping, and rewarding outrage, certainty, and simplicity over nuance?

While conspiracists like to frame themselves as having “opened their eyes” in contrast to the supposedly blind sheeple, the trusting masses, the reality is rather less flattering. Much of society is either too busy to engage with every speculative claim, or sufficiently informed to recognise how conspiracy narratives cherry-pick facts, quote-mine sources, and strip context to manufacture doubt.

When facts are examined in full - uncherry-picked, un-memed, and subjected to proper investigation rather than Facebook or TikTok-driven pattern hunting - falsehoods tend to collapse, as they did with WMD. At that point, reality has a chance to reassert itself.

The UK, imperfect as it is, was at least able to reach that reckoning without completely bending to partisan tribalism in unearthing the WMD falsehoods.

3 hours ago, WorriedNoodle said:

This guy along with the op who posted this is your typical MAGA voter. A metaphor for the poor state of US schooling in the rural backwaters I suppose.

I am not an American, let alone a 'typical MAGA voter'.

You got your noodles mixed up...