Surely this is every kid’s fantasy – to be able to drive an awesome buggy not just off-road, but off the planet. The driver of the buggy (or Lunar Roving Vehicle as it’s more properly called) is Fred W. Haise, Jr., Commander of the Apollo 16 mission to the moon.
From the footage, you can tell it was taken on another world for a number of reasons. Firstly, the scale of the environment the LRV is driving in – it goes on for miles in every direction. So, either NASA built the world’s largest set to film this in or it actually did take place on the surface of the moon.
Secondly, look at the dust that flies out from under the vehicle. Notice how it falls much slower than it normally would. That’s because the moon’s gravity is sixth of that on Earth. Also look at the way the dust behaves. On Earth, dust kicked up from a vehicle would fall back to the ground in an expanding cloud. This is because the particles of dust are interacting with the moving air in our atmosphere, forming a chaotic pattern. Because the moon is a near vacuum, falling dust has nothing to interact with, so falls just like Newton’s theories of motion would indicate – in parabolic curves. If the moon landing was faked, the set NASA would have to film in would also have to be a vacuum. That, or they would have had to have CGI better than we have currently.
This amazing footage is just a fraction of the evidence we have showing man’s physical presence on the moon. It’s very sad that, even today, there are some people unwilling to accept the evidence. A pity for them, because surely there’s nothing more amazing than knowing a fellow human has, for at least a short time, escaped the bonds of Earth and taken a small step towards the stars.