Page 243 - Lunacy and the Age of Deception

The LLRV, however, seemed to be more of a proof-of-concept design to convince the public that
NASA had this technology well in hand, than an actual simulator of what the Apollo astronauts
would experience. The LLRV had guidance rockets mounted in strategic places on the frame to
control the motion of the craft. These guidance rockets were not powerful enough to lift the LLRV
off the surface of the Earth, so NASA chose to mount a jet engine in the bottom center of the craft,
mounted on gimbals which allowed it to move. The jet engine provided thrust to raise the vehicle
off the ground. Jet engines, however, cannot be used on the Moon for they operate by pushing
massive amounts of air at high speed through their turbines. The Moon has no atmosphere, so jets
cannot be used there.

The public may have been fooled into thinking that there is no essential difference between mounting
a jet underneath a vehicle and mounting a rocket in the same place, but the differences are in fact
many and significant. One of the critical differences is that a jet engine can be throttled up and down
easily to alter the amount of thrust it is producing. By contrast, at the time of the Apollo program,
no rocket had ever been designed that could be throttled up and down to vary its thrust. Rockets were
either on or off. They were pedal to the metal, or full stop. Yet, to land a craft on the Moon would
require a variable thrust rocket motor so that the thrust could be tapered off as the vehicle
approached the lunar surface.

One anomalous detail of the Moon landings that has been pointed out by many individuals is that
both the landing rocket and the launch rocket used to escape from the lunar surface are shown in
television clips and still images as having no visible rocket plume.

https://youtu.be/cOdzhQS_MMw

This is to me one of the most poorly faked parts of the Apollo missions. The omission of the rocket
plume and exhaust smoke seems to have been accepted by many people as authentic because they
had been previously plied with images of the LLRV flying in the Earth’s atmosphere without any
exhaust trail. Most of the public never understood that the LLRV used a jet engine, not a rocket.

LLRV Training Flight

NASA never built a prototype of the Lunar Lander using variable thrust rockets which the astronauts
could test on Earth. Consequently, the very first time the Apollo astronauts ever flew such a craft was