Nope: http://www.clavius.org/gravleap.html here you have the explaination. They could actually jump higher than they did, but it wasn’t safe. The fact that they jump even for slow walks is a confirmation of the gravity, google for “froude number”.

You keep insisting that the lunar module could easily lift off with three astronauts and its own weight-

Really, do you come here demanding to teach us the physics involved with Apollo missions and you don’t even know how many astronauts were in the lunar module? However, about the liftoff from the Moon:
-No aerodynamic drag
-1/6 gravity – which implies 1,7 km/s orbital velocity instead of 8.
-about 100 km orbit height (1/3 of a typical Earth orbit)
-2 astronauts and an empty lunar module, without legs. Mass of 4,500kg, weight about 7,400 N (on the Moon). Just to compare, the lightest NASA capsule, the Mercury, had almost 2,000 kg, for 20,000 N of weight.

Now go calculate the delta V and consequent mass ratio and come back when you have clear ideas.

I was also disappointed at first by how much Constellation resembles Apollo, but after thinking about it I changed my mind. If you want to put humans into space and bring them back, Apollo was basically a pretty damn good design — and it still is. By all means, gut and replace the computing and communication hardware, add solar panels and make the command module reusable.

But with rocket propulsion essentially the same today as 40 years ago, the overall Apollo architecture is still pretty good. And it has two features whose importance didn’t become painfully obvious until we removed them from the Shuttle: a launch escape system and a protected heat shield.

The one aspect of lunar exploration that I think needs much more emphasis is in-situ resource utilization. We have to stop throwing away spacecraft just because their tanks are empty. Otherwise we just won’t be able to afford a sustained program.

The moon’s crust, like the earth’s, is about half oxygen by weight. If we can find ice at the poles, that could change everything.

I haven’t seen the episode relating to the WTC collapse, but if that’s what they said, then they’re absolutely right.

You obviously seem to think your intuition about what “should” happen is superior to experimental evidence and detailed analytical and numerical modeling. I’d say you need to get a clue.

Mythbusters are the same guys that solidly refute the twin towers being victims of controlled-demo. This drops their credibility to the ground. I’m surprised a PhD student is using Mythbusters as a good source of info.

I never said that man has never gone to the moon. I’m saying the Apollo missions were faked. Everything seen in pictures and videos is an elaborate NASA hoax. I have no doubt that man has gone to the moon.

I ask you: What evidence would you require to falsify your beliefs that we didn’t go? — if you can’t think of any, then I’d say you’re about as close-minded as is the definition of a “true believer.” I also want to point out point out that hoax proponents don’t supply independent evidence that we didn’t go, rather they (as I’ve stated) look for apparent anomalies in the NASA evidence instead of supplying their own.

You keep insisting that the lunar module could easily lift off with three astronauts and its own weight but also accept that these astronauts were doing the same little hops that a human could do with a 100 lbs suit right here on Earth. What kind of science background do you have, astrostu? Have you ever jumped inside a plane recreating anything between zero-G and 0.3 G?

Why aren’t showing videos of these low gravity experiments?

Attacking people because they don’t accept the propaganda, I think you should also be up for review at the psych’s office.

The moon hoaxers don’t believe we humans had the technical ability to go to the moon, while Hoagland doesn’t believe we humans were capable of inventing the everyday technologies now around us so we must have gotten them all from super-intelligent space aliens.

The common thread is a lack of confidence in the talent, intelligence, creativity and overall ability of humans to make major technical advancements. Why? Deep-seated personal insecurities. Your average conspiracy theorist can’t even begin to explain how Apollo (supposedly) worked. He wouldn’t have a clue how to design a moon mission himself. And he’s well aware of it.

About 400,000 people worked on Apollo at its peak. If it succeeded, that means an awful lot of people were a heckuva lot more talented and accomplished than our poor conspiracy theorist. And that really hurts. But there’s a way out: simply deny that it ever happened. There’s no need to feel inferior to 400,000 people who not only failed, but who had to lie to cover it up!

Our conspiracy theorist no longer has to feel like a loser. Now he’s one of the very few ultra-smart people who weren’t taken in by NASA’s diabolical trickery. Now he can become a morally superior hero for blowing the whistle on government wrongdoing. All in the comfort of his own mind.

So, first point, we spend today in (civilian) space far less as we were spending forty years ago. Second, you cite “tactical advantage”. Don’t you think that from a military point of view, to control the near space is far more important than patrolling the Moon? Look at GPS, Keyhole, NOSS and last but not least, the SDI. From my perspective, to go to the Moon meant also a great step for the missile technology that was useful to the military. But later, military needed something different from the science/civilian industry. And that conflict between NASA and the military has been one of the reasons for the failure of the Shuttle concept.

Third point: technology: IMHO, the rocket technology didn’t leap forward as electronics did. Surely, space travel knowledge is today almost the same as it was at those times. Orbital mechanics was well understood two centuries ago, hundred years ago Hohmann & co. took care of all the details, and Gemini missions explained everything that was needed for two weeks of space life. Yes, today our probes deliver much better pictures, with greater resolution and less noise, better bandwidth, but still they go in the space with the same technology Germans used to bomb London. Saturn V was “better”, in terms of thrust, than the Space Shuttle. It has been a great disappointment for me to discover that the new Constellation program is an evolution of the Apollo approach rather than something new, based on new concepts. But let’s face it: Space Shuttle has never been conceived as a vehicle for Moon missions, for the simple fact that you can’t reeenter with V2 without ablative protection: the ceramic tiles are capable only of V1 reentries, and, as Columbia showed, not even for that actually. So 30 years of Shuttle experience are next to useless for Moon missions. Same goes for the X-33 Spaceplane and the Delta Clipper: great visions that showed up as unfeasible.

So the actual situation isn’t that strange: we have an underpayed NASA that is trying to get the best out of the residual Shuttle fleet. Done that, they will complete a project that is 50% already done (I wonder if they will recall old retired engineers for the Ares-Orion ; they will just use better materials, get therefore greater efficiency, a glass cockpit and, of course, nice webcams with facebook plug-in all over.