单选题
The First Arrival on the Moon
On the 20th of July 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon and it was the most monumental feat in modern history. His words "This is one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" have probably become the most famous words of the Twentieth Century. 1) Skeptics, however, refuse to believe that man set foot on the Moon at all and argue that the film footage was the ultimate camera trick.
In 1962 John F. Kennedy announced that Americans would put a man on the moon by the end of that decade. One year before, however, Russia had already launched rockets and sent astronauts into space. This meant that America was actually lagging behind Russia who took the lead in the so-called space race. 2) This space race, between the USSR and the United States embodied the principle of the Cold War, and for over a decade the two countries were engaged in heated competition. Both countries wanted to win to prove their scientific superiority and to show their military strength.
The race began in 1957 when the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik. The American counteroffensive, the Apollo Program started in 1963 and was designed to land humans on the Moon and bring them back to Earth. During its nine years, six missions (Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17) landed a total of twelve men on the moon. The first spacecraft to land a man on the moon. Apollo 11 spacecraft, was launched on July 16, 1969 atop the very powerful Saturn V rocket. It took three days to reach the Moon, but history was made when the Eagle, the Apollo 11 landing module, touched down and Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the Moon.
3) The argument that it was an elaborate trick to save face and win the space-race against the Russians lies mostly in the still photographs the astronauts brought back with them. All of the photographs were perfectly focused and none were blurred. Skeptics say that this would be impossible to achieve on the surface of the Moon especially since none of the cameras the astronauts used had any special adaptations to deal with the special conditions of the Moon"s atmosphere. Also it seemed that the film was unaffected by radiation, which under normal circumstances might have been damaged.
Probably the most compelling argument is the fact that the astronauts were able to adjust their cameras and take pictures when in reality it should have been almost impossible to lift a finger. Moreover, in the pictures, there were shadows at the place where their only light source was the sun and there were not other powerful spotlights. Skeptics argue that the Apollo films are not genuine but fake. To back up their argument they suggested that instead of traveling to the Moon"s surface, astronauts stayed within the Earth"s magnetic field. The other side of this argument purported that because the astronauts passed through the belt at very rapid speed, they spent less than 15 minutes in the danger zone, which means that exposure over that amount of time would have been about I percent of a fatal radiation dose, not completely safe but survivable.
Even though skeptics argue that the photographs could have been a forgery, these were not the only evidence the astronauts brought back with them. As proof of their trip to the Moon, the Apollo astronauts brought about 900 pounds of Moon rock to Earth. Scientists say that the Moon rocks provide absolute proof that the astronauts did land on the Moon because Moon rocks are unique and differ from Earth rocks in many respects. Also, common substances such as clay minerals, including limestone and glass, for example, that are ubiquitous on Earth are totalsly absent on the Moon and from the samples gathered by astronauts.
4) Today, many years later, an answer to this controversial argument might be just around the comer. European scientific astronomers have announced that they will use the latest, and most powerful, telescope ever made to search for equipment NASA astronauts left on the Moon. The Very Large Telescope (VLT) is capable of imaging a human hair from 16 kilometers away and is hoped to provide visual confirmation of one or more of the six lunar modules that landed on the Moon.
Glossary
footage:
an amount or length of/film or videotape
astronaut:
a person trained to travel in a spacecraft
Sputnik:
any of a series of Soviet satellites sent into Earth orbit, especially the first, launched October 4, 1957.
module:
detachable compartment of a spacecraft
viewfinder:
a device on a camera that indicates, either optically or electronically, what will appear in the field of view of the lens