In article <stu03-E3A4B9.14521416022004@news.verizon.net>, Stu Gotz wrote:

A week before Apollo 11 was launched, NASA launched an unmanned
probe which was placed in lunar orbit.  It was explained that the probe 
was for the purpose of training the Mission Control folks.

The same probe could have easily been used to relay radio signals from
the Apollo craft which was in low earth orbit.  Since the signals were
coming via the lunar probe the propagations delays would have been
correct.

Ah, yes; a probe which was so critical to the plan that, despite
explaining it away at the time, it's been carefully removed from the
record since. Cunning, that.

There was a lunar orbiter launched the week before, but unfortunately
for this theory it came from Baikonur, and wasn't - we can, I assume,
postulate - being operated for the benefit of NASA.

We have to go back a fortnight for a US launch - Biosatellite 3 - which
re-entered a week before A11 and never left LEO. The last thing NASA had
sent to lunar orbit was, in fact, Apollo 10... maybe this is some
garbling regarding Explorer 41? It was about a month earlier, placed in
HEO (80-100,000 km), but still not what the theory would need.

Incidentally, the delays wouldn't have been correct; the spacecraft
would have heard any transmissions from Earth with little lag, then put
twice the normal lag into their response. I'm sure that'd show up
somewhere... not to mention the problems of using a lunar relay when
you're on the other side of the planet, which would be nontrivial to
engineer out or explain away.

-- 
-Andrew Gray
 shimgray@bigfoot.com