When the lunar module blasted off back to Earth at the end of the mission, the event was filmed. But strangely the camera smoothly followed the path of the vehicle in its upward and then diagonal flightpath. Almost as if someone was stood there holding the camera?
I do not believe that remote control cameras of today's standard were in existence back then.
And you'd be correct. The camera was attached to the lunar rover, and operated - allowing for the delay - by a technician on Earth, so - in effect - someone was holding the camera. On Apollos 11, 12, and 14, on which no rovers were taken to the Moon, there were no pictures taken of the lunar surface ascent. Because of the signal delay between the moon and the Earth, the camera operator had to start sending the command to "tilt" to the camera a couple seconds (1.3) before the module actually launched. He missed the ascent almost entirely on Apollo 15, got a lot better on Apollo 16, and nailed it almost perfectly on Apollo 17. If you ever see footage of the module ascending, it's probably from Apollo 17.
Quite a significant number of NASA officials have come out over the years, and stated that all might not have been as it seemed on several Apollo missions. However, due to an equally high number of convenient 'car accidents' ... none of those people survived long enough to give much detail.
Not one single reputable and documented source has ever - to the best of my knowledge - seriously and conclusively disproved the moon landings. There are plenty of
nut jobs conspiracy theorists who do, but not one scrap of verifiable evidence has ever been produced. It's also worth remembering that some time after the Berlin wall fell vast archives of files from the KGB and the USSR government detailed the landings. Independent tracking stations in Spain, Australia and Chile also tracked the missions in their entirety.
Over several days, the Apollo 11 mission visited several craters, and named them.However, when you look at the footage they are absolutely identical in every respect, down to the last little rock. Almost like a film-set, one might argue.
The Apollo 11 mission only spent 2 hours - not several days - on the Moon's surface (they were landed for about 16 hours in total), and - given the shortage of transport (no rover, either) - they had to walk everywhere. I have thousands of the moon shots and I agree that once you've seen one crater, you've seen them all. Impact craters tend to look very similar when they exist in a largely stable environment, without weather and where the light is constant and unwavering.
Fester - the reality is that the wealth of academic documentation, the huge body of independent verification and the results of both the Chinese photography of the Lunar surface which has revealed the lunar modules, the flags and footprints and the discovery of the USSR's archive concerning what was arguably the most scrutinised endeavour of all time relegates those who wish to exploit people's paranoia for their own financial reward to the deserved category of malicious and mendacious malcontents.
For more balanced perspectives:
http://www.space.com/Wiki