No Delay in Communication Between Astronauts and Mission Control

Communicating Faster Than the Speed of Light

If you watch the Apollo videos you will find that NASA doesn't even put an appropriate delay between the astronauts in the LEM and mission control to account for the moon's distance. The astronauts and Huston are communicating faster than the speed of light.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6Tku-CgNnI

    "The Moon is 350-400,000km away from Earth, that is 1.25-1.4 Light Seconds. 
    Yet the Communications Between Earth & The "Moon" have no Perceivable Delay. 
    If they were really on the Moon there would have been a delay of 2.5-2.8 
    seconds between Ground Control and the Astronauts on the Surface of the Moon."

Apparently NASA astronauts are trained in the art of talking over other people. They know exactly what ground control is going to say, as they rehearsed so many times!

Allegations of Clip Editing

"LunarTuner" says that the sound clips we hear were edited to remove the delay:

    You have simply found edited video/audio. Apollo video and audio has been copies 
    perhaps more than any events in history. It is very often edited for time, so the 
    edited versions don't reflect the delays correctly. However, the delays WERE heard 
    in the original broadcasts (as I and millions others can attest). You can find more 
    dependable, unedited audio. Go to the "Lunar Surface Journal" website. What you've 
    discovered is hardly 100% proof of anything. 
    -- LunarTuner

But if you go to the Lunar Surface Journal website we see the same no-delay videos: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/video11.html#Lan

See the 15 minute video for instance. It's the third video clip down on the page. In many cases the astronauts and mission control are saying "Roger that," "Copy," and responding to each other's questions almost immediately.

The snippet from the original video "Huston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." "Roger that Tranquility, we copy you on the ground." occurs at the 15:18 mark and is without delay.

CBS Broadcasts

YouTube user zelco321 was kind enough to upload recordings of the original live broadcasts of the CBS News Coverage of the 1960's and 1970's Apollo missions. There are several hundred CBS recordings on his channel.

Here is the "The Eagle has landed" snippit at 6:01

Feel free to watch his other videos as well. You will hear the same no-delay communication as seen in the YouTube video in the first post, and as seen in the Lunar Surface Journal.

Is NASA editing the live CBS footage from 1969 as well?

Recorded at Mission Control

Forum poster Markjo suggests that it is explained by the recordings being made at mission control.

He quotes and bolds the following from a hoax debunking page:

    Claims that the delays were only half a second are untrue, as examination of the original 
    recordings show. It should also be borne in mind that there should not be a straightforward, 
    consistent time delay between every response, as the conversation is being recorded at one 
    end - Mission Control. Responses from Mission Control could be heard without any delay, 
    as the recording is being made at the same time that Houston receives the transmission 
    from the Moon.

But if we watch the 15 minute video third down on the Lunar Surface Journal we see that the astronauts are clearly communicating with mission control without delay, and that mission control is communicating with the astronauts without delay. It cuts both ways. Each are saying "Roger," "Copy That," and answering each other's questions almost immediately.

The first "The Eagle has landed" example in the first YouTube video shows mission control responding immediately to the astronauts. The second "What does the moon look like?" example in the YouTube video shows the astronauts responding to mission control without a 2.8 second delay.

The claim that this is explained by the feed being recorded at mission control does not account for what we hear. This is what should have happened if it were recorded at mission control:

    Mission Control: "What does the moon look like? Over."

    [1.4 second delay should happen here as signal goes to the moon]

    Astronauts: "Okay, Houston. The moon is essentially gray, 
    no color; looks like plaster-of-paris or sort of a grayish 
    beach sand."

    [1.4 second delay should happen here as response arrives from the moon]

    Mission control: Roger that

The recording at mission control should have picked up 2.8 seconds of silence before hearing the response. But it did not.

Additional Delay by Land Lines

Additionally, the speed of light calculations do not account for the fact that Apollo 11 signals were allegedly received at a dish in Australia, which was then relayed to Huston on land lines (significantly slower than speed of light as anyone who has made an international phone call across an ocean can attest), causing an even greater delay than 2.8 seconds.