August 10, 2006

• I heard about the missing original tapes on NPR. Man, I would love to see crystal-clear footage of the moonwalk! Oddly, though, I also love the idea that the tapes are just mouldering in someone's closet somewhere.
• Antiques Roadshow EBAY!
• Maybe they're stored with Chimpy's service records...
• ...or the court files from his coke conviction...
• Theremin.
• The tapes are in row two hundred, aisle six, bin eight of that same warehouse that the Ark is in.
• The U.S. had plenty of motivation to fake the landing. Whether it was real or not was not as important as the public perception thereof; the considerable expense that a faked event and its covereup would entail would be more than justified, in light of the existing sociopolitical climate. Therefore, the U.S. has succeeded either in landing on the moon, or convincing everyone that they have. That said, I'm inclined to be dubious. I had a nasty old great-uncle who insisted the whole thing was "a Hollywood fabrication for the gullible masses," (a World War I veteran, he made this observation in 1970) and at the time I thought he was a bit loony. Now, I'm not so sure, given what has now been revealed about FDR's foreknowledge of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, and the disturbing possibility that Washington was aware of the impending 9/11 attacks on NYC. Secrets can be kept--consider the Greenbrier and its underground bunkers. I tend to believe that somewhere along the way, NASA encountered unforeseen problems, necessitating a dramatic change of plans at a time when to admit defeat would have been completely unacceptable. There remain many head-scratching details about the moon landings which haven't been adequately explained away to my satisfaction. Question all, suspect everything... believe at your own peril.
• There remain many head-scratching details about the moon landings which haven't been adequately explained away to my satisfaction. Please list them.
• Well, first of all... The Moon?!?! I mean, come on!
• Yes, do list them. I really like conspiracy theories. I have never heard anything about the moonlanding that said anything other than it would have been possible to fake it. That seems reasonable. But I have not heard of unanswered questions about the landing itself.
• Debunking of the Moon Hoax, at least from a photographic point of view.
• Dang it, didn't mean to hit post at that moment! Here it is: http://www.braeunig.us/space/hoax-jw.htm
• True story: Back in the mid 80's I met one of the men who walked on the moon. I was riding the VT Transit bus line down to my dad's in Winchendon MA, a man boarded in Keene NH, sat down next to me in the back row. We chatted a while about where we grew up, went to school and such. Apparently he was raised from about age 5 in the basement of the Pentagon, fed LSD daily. I know, I didn't believe him at first either. But then he pointed out that he was left handed, and that in the film of the landing, you can't see his face because of the helmet, but the guy waving to the camera waves with his left hand!
• I want to believe.
• Well, in some circles it's probably still fashionable to bring up the statistic that 30% of people believe the moon landing was a hoax. Wonder if Ye Olde Googole would have anything on that . . . Ahh Wikipedia you lazy academician's crutche! For those of you (99%) who won't CTFL, (Click the fine link) it says this many people think it's a hoax: 1999 Gallup poll: 6% 2001 Fox TV show: 20% 1999 James Oberg, NASA reporter: 10% And it includes this juicy bit: President Clinton in his 2004 autobiography, My Life, states (on page 156): "Just a month before, Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong had left their colleague, Michael Collins, aboard spaceship Columbia and walked on the moon, beating by five months President Kennedy's goal of putting a man on the moon before the decade was out. The old carpenter asked me if I really believed it happened. I said sure, I saw it on television. He disagreed; he said that he didn't believe it for a minute, that "them television fellers" could make things look real that weren't. Back then, I thought he was a crank. During my eight years in Washington, I saw some things on TV that made me wonder if he wasn't ahead of his time." Fun!
• You know, the Twin Towers never actually fell down--BECAUSE THEY WERE NEVER STANDING! They were merely holographic projections, and the millions of people who believe they entered and ascended to the tops of those buildings over the years were fooled by virtual reality technology. The government put the whole thing together based on alien technology studied at Area 51. Technology that was REVERSE ENGINEERED from a 24/7 PSYCHIC SHIELD.
• That's right. David Copperfield helped engineer it all.
• Conspiracy theories are soooo lame. E.g. the moon landings were fake. C'mon you theorists, gimme something I can use! Or the 9/11 thing. The secret is that Bush and company did it? Truly hilarious for an administration that cannot find two buns in a bakery. On the hand, Walt Disney's frozen body is why gas prices are going up.
• Yeah, that's what i said: "on the hand" and I meant it. Not "on the other hand", "on the hand". Yeah go figure it out, you smarty typists.
• All I saw was On the hand...going up. Doing a great job there, StoryBored. Keep up the good work.
• On 9/11 no jews were killed because at 8:00 AM all of their secret Jew Phones rang, and they either exited the buildings or just stayed mired in traffic. The Pentagon "attack" was a coverup for Donald Rumsfeld's considerable flatulence problem.
• Damn, I want a Secret Jew Phone too.
• ..or just stayed mired in traffic. Well, now you know why the Jews invented traffic jams.
• The matrix has you all.
• It's easy to find reasons why this thing may have been faked. Just run a Google on "Moon Landing Hoax" and sift through the pile. Here's one: http://www.apfn.org/apfn/moon.htm. I stand by my skepticism. Why the heck haven't we returned, I'd like to know? And what happened to all the (unmanned) planned moon landings announced for the early 2000s? I recall at least one, I believe it was Japanese, (http://www.space.com/news/spaceagencies/japanese_moonshot_000425.html) that would have verified, one way or the other, human souvenirs on the moon's surface. Why has none of this made the news? Seems like it'd be huge if it happened. (I apologize for my inability to embed links).
• Japan is having trouble with their rockets. It's delayed things a bit. See article here. We landed men on the moon a total of 6 times, so we have "returned." So I'm still having trouble figuring out why you're skeptical, kinnakeet. Is there something specific that bothers you? Is it a distrust of the government, or the science?
• > Conspiracy theories are soooo lame. > E.g. the moon landings were fake. i read a great book years ago that posed a nice juicy conspiracy around the faking moon landings. i can't remember the name, but it went something like: 1. the brain drain in britain in the 1970s - lots of top scientists and engineers leaving to go to australia. 2. but they all left the same post office box as a contact address down under! 3. why? because they were secretly working on a project to colonize mars!! 4. from a group of bases on the moon!!! 5. so the reason the moon landings had to be faked in the nevada desert was because there was so much infrastructure there already and they couldn't send video back or you'd all see the towers and buildings and mcdonalds's in the background!!!! 6. the infrastructure had been put in place by the u.s. and ussr since the 1950s. in fact the cold war was a big scam to distract everyone!!!!! 7. some time in the 50s it was decided that earth's environment was going to hell in a handbasket so colonisation or mars (creating atmosphere via nuclear explosion a la total recall) was a necessity!!!!!! 8. iirc, the conspiracy was going to ship off all the clever bods to mars and leave the rest of humanity to perish!!!!!!!
• "How can the flag be fluttering?" the 47 year old American kept asking himself That was addressed by the twisting of the flagpole when they stuck it in the ground, IIRC For a start, he says, the TV footage was hopeless. The world tuned in to watch what looked like two blurred white ghosts throw rocks and dust. Part of the reason for the low quality was that, strangely, NASA provided no direct link up. So networks actually had to film man's greatest achievement from a TV screen in Houston - a deliberate ploy, says Rene, so that nobody could properly examine it. By contrast, the still photos were stunning. Yet that's just the problem. The astronauts took thousands of pictures, each one perfectly exposed and sharply focused. Not one was badly composed or even blurred. As Rene points out, that's not all: The cameras had no white meters or view ponders. So the astronauts achieved this feet without being able to see what they were doing. There film stock was unaffected by the intense peaks and powerful cosmic radiation on the Moon, conditions that should have made it useless. They managed to adjust their cameras, change film and swap filters in pressurized suits. It should have been almost impossible with the gloves on their fingers. Well, they worked out the mechanics of taking pictures with the gloves on before they left, I would expect. I'm not hanging the "hoax" on whether or not they provided satellite feed to everybody in 1969 vs. film of it. TV timeline
• That sounds plausible.
• Capricorn One
• You're not going to fool me with that astrology stuff.
• Why the heck haven't we returned, I'd like to know? First reason: It's freakin' expensive to go back when there doesn't seem to be any $ payback. Second: The original space race started as a Cold War competition with the Soviet Union. When the Cold War ended, the political rationale disappeared. We'd have to wait until China starts making some serious noises before the race resumes. Bottom line: To make governments spend billions on space, you need either fear or greed. Fear that someone will get there first or greed for some resource.
• Wasn't one of the past re-election promises made by Bush the colonization of Mars?
• If anyone really wants to prove that the moon landings were faked all they need to do is find about $50 million funding to create an observation satellite to orbit the moon, get ESA to launch it and then see if you can see the moon buggy and all the other stuff they left there from the images.
• You guys are a bunch of doubting sputniks.
• Here's one: http://www.apfn.org/apfn/moon.htm. kinnakeet, every single issue raised on this webpage is specifically and thoroughly refuted on the site linked in the FPP. In fact, a lot of it is even refuted right there on the webpage, with no counterargument offered.
• Interesting... I repeat my original statement. What really matters is the perception, and based on what I'm seeing here, the U.S. Government has succeeded in convincing most people, and I'm sure that's enough for many. However, I do not feel compelled to trust, but rather to question, when it comes to the government. I'm not saying man has or has not been to the moon. What matters is the perception. Period. I am fascinated by how emotional people get about this topic, and how personally they take it. ANYBODY can be deceived, folks. Just be aware of the possibility. Always.
• This deception would be the greatest con ever pulled. It takes more than distrust of the American government. The whole cold war has to be a hoax, and every country on Earth that was watching it must be playing along., Fooling the people watching the TV is easy, fooling hundreds of skeptical scientists in hostile countries is not.
• Wasn't one of the past re-election promises made by Bush the colonization of Mars? *incoherent angry sputtling*
• I am fascinated by how emotional people get about this topic The emotion I used to feel was exasperation but now I don't. I feel a vague sorrow instead. The ability to assess evidence and probabilities, knowledge of cognitive biases, critical thinking -- these are all teachable things. Unfortunately, our educational system still isn't as good as it should be ....
• Yup, we're gettin' dumber!
• I do not feel compelled to trust, but rather to question FDR's foreknowledge of the attacks on Pearl Harbor You know what, kinnakeet, I for one applaud your insistence on questioning. Absolutely, you should question everything. But I do want t stress that you should follow up your questions with attempts to find answers to them, or at encourage and listen to other people working on the answers. Simply questioning isn't enough. You have to research, to come to a better understanding. Otherwise, your questions are just a mirror image kind of ignorance: reflexively believing nothing rather than reflexively believing everything. For example, you seem to accept as a given that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor. This is a well understood bit of history and all the evidence we have indicates that he didn't. The conspiracy theory has been around for more than sixty years now and every inch of ground has been gone over not in the least by the US intelligence services who are still deeply embarrassed by their failure to warn the president of the attack. I think conspiracy theories are a valid and interesting way of looking at history, but there's a reason they aren't used very often by professional historians: most often the truth is just vaguely disappointing. You go in there with guns blazing, out to catch the bad guys, and before long you've just got a bunch of vaguely incompetent people who made bad decisions. After a while, you even get a nose for when a plan seems too overcomplicated to be pulled off. Even very simple plans can be completely prone to derailing. For example, one high intelligence official once told me that his/her agency avoids planting false stories in the press. Reporters are just too prone to mucking up the details and derailing the whole plan.
• what was the evidence that FDR knew, anyway. Wasn't it a telegram that an attack was imminent? But there weren't any details? I'm not going to wikipedia for this one . . .