Question

Hello Rabbi,

In your capacity as a physicist—do you accept without question the story of American astronauts landing on the moon more than 50 years ago?

I’m asking because recently I was exposed to doubts regarding the truth of the story, from people of science who are considered serious.

I won’t bring all the arguments, only one strong one, in my humble opinion…

It concerns the problem of rendezvous of the landing craft that landed on the moon with the main craft at the return stage to Earth.

The scenario is that the landing craft detaches from the spacecraft on its way to the lunar surface while the latter is orbiting the moon at a speed of about 5,500 km/h, about two hours per orbit, at an altitude of 60 km.

The landing craft has to activate fairly enormous deceleration in order to cancel out those 5,500 km/h and reach the surface at zero speed. Let’s assume that up to this point everything is fine.

What isn’t understood is how, without a really powerful digital computer (in 1969 there were no such digital computers on spacecraft) and without a really powerful radar (of which there is no sign whatsoever on the landing craft), including a strong digital imaging system for the final docking stage, the landing craft manages to synchronize with the precision required to perform the rendezvous in the near-zero time frame of this scenario.

In filmed interviews with NASA they say that the technology that made this possible back then is no longer in their possession today….

My questions are:

1. Has the Rabbi ever doubted the accepted story until now?

2. Is the Rabbi open to doubting the story from now on?

3. If the answer to the above questions is yes—does the Rabbi agree that this may be an example (I don’t know whether a precedent-setting one) of institutional/media fraud on an enormous scale?

4. If the answer to question 3 is yes—could it be that even in our own day there are enormous institutional/media frauds?

Thank you in advance for a substantive answer