Whitey Grandad

It's my plot, I'll take it wherever I like.

Such zealotry cannot be for real, unless he is an 'elf & safety inspector.

So, as far as the film is concerned the only way to find out is to send it out and back. It does not seem unreasonable to me for the film and its photos to have survived such a journey. The dosimeters did and these normally work on the same principle. Clavius do (does?) explain the difference between intensity and strength of radiation and between particles, whihc are straightforward to screen, and rays which are less so.

Quite a good chance. We know this because the film went to the moon and back. Nukes in outer space have a very short-term effect. There is an instantaneous (almost) burst of radiation but no blast and no radioactive fall-out (or fall-up).

Quite true. I wasn't actually thinking of looking for evidence of moon landings, rather that a high resolution earth-based telescope would have been used for other astronomical purposes such as mapping the moon, or indeed Mars or Mercury which have very thin atmospheres.

No earth-based telescope can give results sufficiently detailed of the moon's surface. If they could have, they would have, but they haven't.

I wouldn't call them pristine, but that report doesn't say that they would be ruined, just that colour negative films were more likely to be affected that positives, which I believe was the type used on Apollo? At the time of the landings there was a lot of talk about monitoring solar flares and maybe having to abort the mission or EVA if there were an eruption. They tell us that airport x-rays won't affect your photographs but I don't believe that. All radiation will have some effect but the real question is how significant. It would have been easy for a faker to have stuck the slides in an x-ray for a few minutes if they had wanted to.

Yes, I built it and I am in total control. It explains a lot.

I haven't seen any lies, yet.

Just in case your comment is not tongue-in-cheek: There is a mini newspaper produced by The Independent and called simply 'I' The Guardian is notorious for spelling mistakes and was nicknamed 'The Grauniad' by Private Eye.

I would leave out the second part about not being driven all day. They may have a photo somewhere.

I watched that programme last night and wasted another hour of my life. Noting but a load of dimwits saying 'believe me, it was all faked' and 'ooh, it was ever so difficult, far too difficult for me to understand'. The crosshairs appear to 'disappear' when they are swamped by saturated white surfaces. It's nothing other than overexposure off the photographic emulsion in those areas. Ok then Pap. We've spent long enough on this, let's take the conspiracist points one at a time and we'll try to convince you. Please pick one to start.

That's a good point. Speaking the language is good training for the mouth and its muscles and uses a different part of the brain which helps to memorise the words and phrases.

There is no cheese on the moon. I think we can all agree on that?

It might have been someone taking a photo of their wife/girlfriend/dog/tortoise or all four?

But he doesn't know what he did, only what he didn't which was to be driving the car at 11:00 am.

I don't hold with the conspiracy theory in the slightest, but aren't the reflectors designed to reflect light back the way from which it came, a bit like the three-cornered mirrors or indeed a bicycle reflector?

Not technically a crime, is it?

Well, if the time is wrong then the speed may be wrong too.

All very good points. And what about the 381 Kg of moon rock that has been brought back, of which 19.3Kg has been used for scientific study? This can be compared with the 130g returned by the Russian Luna missions.

Presumably the photo would be in daylight, and show who was driving?

Thanks. So basically you should use 'the appropriate lane'. In the case of the junction we were discussing earlier it hardly counts as a roundabout, what with all the traffic lights and separate controlled sections, but why would anybody be in the left lane if they wanted to turn right?

Exactly. Driver awareness and training are what's necessary but that involves a whole new attitude.

Spanish is straightforward. I am of the generation that did Latin at school as well as French. My wife did A-level French and German and I wanted to catch up with her so I learnt it at evening classes when I was in my thirties. Then some ten years ago we both started learning Spanish in the evenings and if you already have the grammatical structure from your other studies then it's just a matter of hanging the correct words on to it and learning the pronunciation. The same goes for Italian which I'm working on at the moment but that's only useful for holidays there. I would love to have a working knowledge of Chinese, Russian and Arabic one day but I'm getting a bit old for that. From a business or travel point if view I would recommend giving Spanish a try for a while and see how you like it. Just think of all those señoritas that you can impress. :-)

Six months, I believe.