Wagging the Moondoggie, Part I
October
1, 2009
by David McGowan
“It is commonly
believed that man will fly directly from the earth to the moon, but to do this,
we would require a vehicle of such gigantic proportions that it would prove an economic
impossibility. It would have to develop sufficient speed to penetrate the
atmosphere and overcome the earth’s gravity and, having traveled all the way to
the moon, it must still have enough fuel to land safely and make the return
trip to earth. Furthermore, in order to give the expedition a margin of safety,
we would not use one ship alone, but a minimum of three … each rocket ship
would be taller than New York’s Empire State Building [almost ¼ mile high] and
weigh about ten times the tonnage of the Queen Mary, or some 800,000 tons.”
Wernher von Braun,
the father of the Apollo space program, writing in Conquest of the Moon
I can see all of you
scratching your heads out there and I know exactly what it is that you are
thinking: “Why the hell are we taking this detour to the Moon? What happened to
*Sigh*
It all began a few
months ago, when I became very busy at my day job as well as with family drama
and with what turned out to be a very time-consuming side project, all of which
made it increasingly difficult for me to carve out chunks of time to work on
the remaining chapters in the series. Over the next two months or so, I pretty
much lost all momentum and soon found it hard to motivate myself to write even
when I could find the time.
That happens
sometimes. Though it sounds rather cliché, ‘writer’s block’ is a very real
phenomenon. There are many times when I can sit down at the keyboard and the
words flow out of my head faster than I can get them down on the page. But
there are also times when producing just one halfway decent sentence seems a
near impossible task. This was one of those times.
I found a new
source of inspiration, however, when my wife e-mailed me the recent story about
the fake Dutch Moon rock, which I and many others found quite amusing, and
which also reminded me that I had a lot of other bits and pieces of information
concerning the Apollo project that I had collected over the nine years that
have passed since I first wrote about the alleged Moon landings. After taking
that first look, back in 2000, I was pretty well convinced that the landings
were, in fact, faked, but it was perfectly obvious that the rather short,
mostly tongue-in-cheek post that I put up back in July of 2000 was not going to
convince anyone else of that.
So I contemplated
taking a more comprehensive look at the Apollo program. Toward that end, I
pulled up my original Apollo post along with various other bits and pieces
scattered throughout past newsletters, threw in all the newer material that had
never made it onto my website, and then combed the Internet for additional
information. In doing so, I realized that a far better case could be made than
what I had previously offered to readers.
I also realized that
a far better case could be made than what is currently available on the ‘net.
I was rather
surprised actually by how little there is out there – a couple of books by Bill
Kaysing and Ralph Rene, a smattering of websites and a variety of YouTube
videos of varying quality. Virtually all of the websites and videos tend to
stick to the same ground covered by Kaysing and Rene, and they almost all use
the same NASA photographs to argue the same points. So too do the sites devoted
to ‘debunking’ the notion that the landings were faked, and those sites seem to
actually outnumber the hoax sites.
While suffering
through the numbing uniformity of the various websites on both sides of the
aisle, it became perfectly clear that the hoax side of the debate was in serious
need of a fresh approach and some new insights. So I began writing again.
Feverishly. That does not mean, however, that I have abandoned the
And truth be told,
while the Apollo story may initially appear to be a radical departure from the
ongoing
I am very well
aware, by the way, that there are many, many people out there – even many of
the people who have seen through other tall tales told by our government – who
think that Moon hoax theorists are complete kooks. And a whole lot of
coordinated effort has gone into casting them as such. That makes wading into
the Moon hoax debate a potentially dangerous affair.
Remember when
Luther (played by Don Knotts) gets taken to court and sued for slander in The
Ghost and Mr. Chicken? And don’t try to pretend like you’ve never seen it,
because we both know that you have. So anyway, he goes to court and a character
witness is called and the guy delivers credible testimony favoring Luther and
it is clear that the courtroom is impressed and everything is looking good for
our nebbish hero, Luther. Remember what happens next though? On
cross-examination, the witness reveals that he is the president of a UFO club
that holds their meetings on Mars!
The courtroom, of
course, erupts with laughter and all of that formerly credible testimony
immediately flies right out the window.
I have already received e-mails warning that I
will suffer a similar fate (from people who heard me discussing the topic on
Meria Heller’s radio show). Not to worry though – I have somewhat of an
advantage over others who have attempted to travel this path: I don’t really
care. My mission is to ferret out the truth, wherever it may lie; if at various
points along the way, some folks are offended and others question my sanity,
that’s not really something that I lose a lot of sleep over.
Anyway, a whole lot
of people are extremely reluctant to give up their belief in the success
of the Apollo missions. A lot of people, in fact, pretty much shut down at the
mere mention of the Moon landings being faked, refusing to even consider the
possibility (Facebook,
by the way, is definitely not the best place to promote the notion that the
landings were faked, in case anyone was wondering). And yet there are some
among the True Believers who will allow that, though they firmly believe that
we did indeed land on the Moon, they would have understood if it had been a
hoax. Given the climate of the times, with Cold War tensions simmering and
anxious Americans looking for some sign that their country was still dominant
and not technologically inferior to the Soviets, it could be excused if NASA
had duped the world.
Such sentiments
made me realize that the Moon landing lie is somewhat unique among the big lies
told to the American people in that it was, in the grand scheme of things, a
relatively benign lie, and one that could be easily spun. Admitting that the
landings were faked would not have nearly the same impact as, say, admitting to
mass murdering 3,000 Americans and destroying billions of dollars worth of real
estate and then using that crime as a pretext to wage two illegal wars and
strip away civil, legal and privacy rights.
And yet, despite
the fact that it was a relatively benign lie, there is a tremendous reluctance
among the American people to let go of the notion that we sent men to the Moon.
There are a couple of reasons for that, one of them being that there is a
romanticized notion that those were great years – years when one was proud to
be an American. And in this day and age, people need that kind of romanticized
nostalgia to cling to.
But that is not the
main reason that people cling so tenaciously, often even angrily, to what is
essentially the adult version of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth
Fairy. What primarily motivates them is fear. But it is not the lie itself that
scares people; it is what that lie says about the world around us and how it
really functions. For if NASA was able to pull off such an outrageous hoax
before the entire world, and then keep that lie in place for four decades, what
does that say about the control of the information we receive? What does that
say about the media, and the scientific community, and the educational
community, and all the other institutions we depend on to tell us the truth?
What does that say about the very nature of the world we live in?
That is what scares
the hell out of people and prevents them from even considering the possibility
that they could have been so thoroughly duped. It’s not being lied to about the
Moon landings that people have a problem with, it is the realization that comes
with that revelation: if they could lie about that, they could lie about
anything.
It has been my
experience that the vast majority of the people who truly believe in the Moon
landings know virtually nothing about the alleged missions. And when confronted
with some of the more implausible aspects of those alleged missions, the most
frequently offered argument is the one that every ‘conspiracy theorist’ has
heard at least a thousand times: “That can’t possibly be true because there is
no way that a lie that big could have been covered up all this time … too many
people would have known about it … yadda, yadda, yadda.”
But what if your
own eyes and your innate (though suppressed) ability to think critically and
independently tell you that what all the institutions of the State insist is
true is actually a lie? What do you do then? Do you trust in your own cognitive
abilities, or do you blindly follow authority and pretend as though everything
can be explained away? If your worldview will not allow you to believe what you
can see with your own eyes, then the problem, it would appear, is with your
worldview. So do you change that worldview, or do you live in denial?
The Moon landing
lie is unique among the big lies in another way as well: it is a lie that
seemingly cannot be maintained indefinitely.
How many decades
can pass, after all, without anyone coming even close to a reenactment before
people start to catch on? Four obviously haven’t been enough, but how about
five, or six, or seven? How about when we hit the 100-year anniversary?
If the first
trans-Atlantic flight had not been followed up with another one for over forty
years, would anyone have found that unusual? If during the early days of the
automobile, when folks were happily cruising along in their Model T’s at a top
speed of 40 MPH, someone had suddenly developed a car that could be driven
safely at 500 MPH, and then after a few years that car disappeared and for many
decades thereafter, despite tremendous advances in automotive technology, no
one ever again came close to building a car that could perform like that, would
that seem at all odd?
There are
indications that this lie does indeed have a shelf life. According to a July
17, 2009 post on CNN.com,
“It’s been 37 years since the last Apollo moon mission, and tens of millions of
younger Americans have no memories of watching the moon landings live. A
2005-2006 poll by Mary Lynne Dittmar, a space consultant based in Houston,
Texas, found that more than a quarter of Americans 18 to 25 expressed some
doubt that humans set foot on the moon.”
The goal of any
dissident writer is to crack open the doors of perception enough to let a
little light in – so that hopefully the seeds of a political reawakening will
be planted. There are many doors that can be pried open to achieve that goal,
but this one seems particularly vulnerable. Join me then as we take a little
trip to the Moon. Or at least pretend to.
“If NASA had really wanted to fake
the moon landings – we’re talking purely hypothetical here – the timing was
certainly right. The advent of television, having reached worldwide critical
mass only years prior to the moon landing, would prove instrumental to the
fraud’s success.”
Wired Magazine
Adolph Hitler knew a
little bit about the fine art of lying. In Mein Kampf, he wrote that, "If
you're going to tell a lie, make sure it's a really fucking big lie."
Truth be told, I’m not exactly conversant in
the German language so that may not be an exact translation, but it certainly
captures the gist of what the future Fuhrer was trying to say. He went on to
explain that this was so because everyone in their everyday lives tells little
lies, and so they fully expect others to do so as well. But most people do not
expect anyone to tell a real whopper … you know, the kind of brazen, outlandish
lie that is just too absurd to actually be a lie. The kind of lie that is so
over-the-top that no one would dare utter it if it was in fact a lie.
That is the type of
lie, according to Hitler, that will fool the great masses of people, even when
the lie is so transparently thin that it couldn't possibly stand up to any kind
of critical analysis by anyone actually exercising their brain rather than just
blindly accepting the legitimacy of the information they are fed. Take, for
example, the rather fanciful notion that the
And anyone who
would dare question that ‘historical fact,’ needless to say, must surely be
stark raving mad.
Before proceeding
any further, I should probably mention here that, until relatively recently, if
I had heard anyone putting forth the obviously drug-addled notion that the Moon
landings were faked, I would have been among the first to offer said person a
ride down to the grip store. While conducting research into various other
topics, however, it has become increasingly apparent that there are almost
always a few morsels of truth in any 'conspiracy theory,' no matter how
outlandish that theory may initially appear to be, and so despite my initial
skepticism, I was compelled to take a closer look at the Apollo program.
The first thing that
I discovered was that the Soviet Union, right up until the time that we
allegedly landed the first Apollo spacecraft on the Moon, was solidly kicking
our ass in the space race. It wasn’t even close. The world wouldn’t see another
mismatch of this magnitude until decades later when Kelly Clarkson and Justin
Guarini came along. The Soviets launched the first orbiting satellite, sent the
first animal into space, sent the first man into space, performed the first
space walk, sent the first three-man crew into space, was the first nation to
have two spacecraft in orbit simultaneously, performed the first unmanned
docking maneuver in space, and landed the first unmanned probe on the Moon.
Everything the U.S.
did, prior to actually sending a manned spacecraft to the Moon, had already
been done by the Soviets, who clearly were staying at least a step or two ahead
of our top-notch team of imported
Nazi scientists. The smart money was clearly on the Soviets to make
it to the Moon first, if anyone was to do so. Their astronauts had logged five
times as many hours in space as had ours. And they had a considerable amount of
time, money, scientific talent and, perhaps most of all, national pride riding
on that goal.
And yet, amazingly
enough, despite the incredibly long odds, the underdog Americans made it first.
And not only did we make it first, but after a full forty years, the Soviets
apparently still haven't quite figured out how we did it. The question that is
clearly begged here is a simple one: Why is it that the nation that was leading
the world in the field of space travel not only didn’t make it to the Moon back
in the 1960s, but still to this day have never made it there? Could it be that
they were just really poor losers? I am imagining that perhaps the conversation
over in
Boris: Comrade
Ivan, there is terrible news today: the Yankee imperialists have beaten us to
the Moon. What should we do?
Ivan: Let's just
shit-can our entire space program.
Boris: But comrade,
we are so close to success! And we have so much invested in the effort!
Ivan: Fuck it! If
we can't be first, we aren't going at all.
Boris: But I beg of
you comrade! The moon has so much to teach us, and the Americans will surely
not share with us the knowledge they have gained.
Ivan: Nyet!
In truth, the
entire space program has largely been, from its inception, little more than an
elaborate cover for the research, development and deployment of space-based
weaponry and surveillance systems. The media never talk about such things, of
course, but government
documents make clear that the goals being pursued through space research
are largely military in nature. For this reason alone, it is inconceivable that
the Soviets would not have followed the Americans onto the Moon for the sake of
their own national defense.
It is not just the
Soviets, of course, who have never made it to the Moon. The Chinese haven’t
either. Nor has any other industrialized nation, despite the rather obvious
fact that every such nation on the planet now possesses technology that is
light-years beyond what was available to NASA scientists in the 1960s.
Some readers will
recall that (and younger readers might want to cover their eyes here, because
the information to follow is quite shocking), in the 1960s, a full complement
of home electronics consisted of a fuzzy, 13-channel, black-and-white
television set with a rotary tuning dial, rabbit ears and no remote. Such
cutting-edge technology as the pocket calculator was still five years away from
hitting the consumer market.
It is perfectly
obvious, of course, that it was not consumer electronics that allegedly sent
men to the Moon. The point here though is that advances in aerospace technology
mirror advances in consumer technology, and just as there has been
revolutionary change in entertainment and communications technology, so too has
aerospace technology advanced by light-years in the last four decades.
Technologically speaking, the NASA scientists working on the Apollo project
were working in the Dark Ages. So if they could pull it off back then, then
just about anyone should be able to do it now.
It would be
particularly easy, needless to say, for
Again, the question
that immediately comes to mind is: Why? Why has no nation ever duplicated, or
even attempted to duplicate, this miraculous feat? Why has no other nation even
sent a manned spacecraft to orbit the Moon? Why has no other nation ever
attempted to send a manned spacecraft anywhere beyond low-Earth orbit?
Is it because we already learned everything
there was to learn about the Moon? If so, then could it reasonably be argued
that it would be possible to make six random landings on the surface of the
Earth and come away with a complete and thorough understanding of this heavenly
body? Are we to believe that the international scientific community has no open
questions that could be answered by a, ahem, ‘return’ trip to the Moon? And is
there no military advantage to be gained by sending men to the Moon? Has man’s
keen interest in exploring celestial bodies, evident throughout recorded history,
suddenly gone into remission?
Maybe, you say,
it’s just too damned expensive. But the 1960s were not a particularly
prosperous time in U.S. history and we were engaged in an expensive Cold War
throughout the decade as well as an even more expensive ‘hot’ war in Southeast
Asia, and yet we still managed to finance no less than seven manned missions to
the Moon, using a new, disposable, multi-sectioned spacecraft each time. And
yet in the four decades since then, we are apparently supposed to believe that
no other nation has been able to afford to do it even once.
While we’re on the
subject of the passage of time, exactly how much time do you suppose will have
to pass before people in significant numbers begin to question the Moon
landings? NASA has recently announced that we will not be returning, as
previously advertised, by the year 2020. That means that we will pass the
fifty-year anniversary of the first alleged landing without a sequel. Will that
be enough elapsed time that people will begin to wonder? What about after a
full century has passed by? Will our history books still talk about the Moon
landings? And if so, what will people make of such stories? When they watch old
preserved films from the 1960s, how will they reconcile the laughably primitive
technology of the era with the notion that NASA sent men to the Moon?
Consider this
peculiar fact: in order to reach the surface of the Moon from the surface of
the Earth, the Apollo astronauts would have had to travel a minimum of 234,000
miles*. Since the last Apollo flight allegedly returned from the Moon in 1972,
the furthest that any astronaut from any country has traveled
from the surface of the Earth is about 400 miles. And very few have even gone
that far. The primary components of the current
(*NASA gives the
distance from the center of Earth to the center of the Moon as 239,000 miles.
Since the Earth has a radius of about 4,000 miles and the Moon’s radius is
roughly 1,000 miles, that leaves a surface-to-surface distance of 234,000
miles. The total distance traveled during the alleged missions, including Earth
and Moon orbits, ranged from 622,268 miles for Apollo 13 to 1,484,934 miles for
Apollo 17. All on a single tank of gas.)
To briefly recap
then, in the twenty-first century, utilizing the most cutting-edge modern
technology, the best manned spaceship the
To put that into more Earthly terms,
“But wait,” you say,
“NASA has solid evidence of the validity of the Moon landings. They have, for
example, all of that film footage shot on the moon and beamed live directly
into our television sets.”
Since we’re on the subject, I have to mention
that transmitting live footage back from the Moon was another rather innovative
use of 1960s technology. More than two decades later, we would have trouble
broadcasting live footage from the deserts of the
As it turns out,
however, NASA doesn’t actually have all of that Moonwalking footage anymore.
Truth be told, they don’t have any of it. According to the agency, all the
tapes were lost back in the late 1970s. All 700 cartons of them. As Reuters
reported on August 15, 2006, “The U.S. government has misplaced the original
recording of the first moon landing, including astronaut Neil Armstrong’s
famous ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’ … Armstrong’s
famous moonwalk, seen by millions of viewers on July 20, 1969, is among
transmissions that NASA has failed to turn up in a year of searching, spokesman
Grey Hautaluoma said. ‘We haven’t seen them for quite a while. We’ve been
looking for over a year, and they haven’t turned up,’ Hautaluoma said … In all,
some 700 boxes of transmissions from the Apollo lunar missions are missing.”
Given that these tapes allegedly documented an
unprecedented and unduplicated historical event, one that is said to be the
greatest technological achievement of the twentieth century, how in the world
would it be possible to, uhmm, ‘lose’ 700 cartons of them? Would not an
irreplaceable national treasure such as that be very carefully inventoried and
locked away in a secure film vault? And would not copies have been made, and
would not those copies also be securely tucked away somewhere? Come to think of
it, would not multiple copies have been made for study by the scientific and
academic communities?
Had NASA claimed
that a few tapes, or even a few cartons of tapes, had been
misplaced, then maybe we could give them the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps some
careless NASA employee, for example, absent-mindedly taped a Super Bowl game
over one of them. Or maybe some home porn. But does it really seem at all
credible to claim that the entire collection of tapes has gone missing – all
700 cartons of them, the entire film record of the alleged Moon landings? In
what alternative reality would that happen ‘accidentally’?
Some of you are
probably thinking that everyone has already seen the footage anyway, when it
was allegedly broadcast live back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, or on
NASA’s website, or on YouTube, or on numerous television documentaries.
But you would be mistaken. The truth is that the original footage has never
been aired, anytime or anywhere – and now, since the tapes seem to have
conveniently gone missing, it quite obviously never will be.
The fact that the tapes are missing (and
according to NASA, have been for over three decades), amazingly enough, was not
even the most compelling information that the Reuters article had to
offer. Also to be found was an explanation of how the alleged Moonwalk tapes
that we all know and love were created: “Because NASA’s equipment was not
compatible with TV technology of the day, the original transmissions had to be
displayed on a monitor and re-shot by a TV camera for broadcast.”
So what we saw
then, and what we have seen in all the footage ever released by NASA since
then, were not in fact live transmissions. To the contrary, it was footage shot
off a television monitor, and a tiny black-and-white monitor at that. That
monitor may have been running live footage, I suppose, but it seems far
more likely that it was running taped footage. NASA of course has never
explained why, even if it were true that the original broadcasts had to be
‘re-shot,’ they never subsequently released any of the actual ‘live’ footage.
But I guess that’s a moot point now, what with the tapes having gone missing.
With NASA’s admission of how the original
broadcasts were created, it is certainly not hard to imagine how fake Moon
landing footage could have been produced. As I have already noted, the 1960s
were a decidedly low-tech era, and NASA appears to have taken a very low-tech
approach. As Moon landing skeptics have duly noted, if the broadcast tapes are
played back at roughly twice their normal running speed, the astronauts appear
to move about in ways entirely consistent with the way ordinary humans move
about right here on planet Earth. Here then is the formula for creating
Moonwalk footage: take original footage of guys in ridiculous costumes moving
around awkwardly right here on our home planet, broadcast it over a tiny,
low-resolution television monitor at about half speed, and then re-film it with
a camera focused on that screen. The end result will be broadcast-ready tapes
that, in addition to having that all-important grainy, ghosty, rather surreal
‘broadcast from the Moon’ look, also appear to show the astronauts moving about
in entirely unnatural ways.
But not, it should
be noted, too unnatural. And doesn’t that seem a little odd as well? If we’re
being honest here (and for my testosterone-producing readers, this one is
directed at you), the average male specimen, whether astronaut or plumber,
never really grows up and stops being a little boy. And what guy, given the
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend some time in a reduced gravity
environment, isn’t going to want to see how high he can jump? Or how far he can
jump? Hitting a golf ball? Who the hell wants to see that? How about
tossing a football for a 200-yard touchdown pass? Or how about the boys
dazzling the viewing audience with some otherworldly acrobatics?
And yes, Neil and
the guys did exhibit some playfulness at times while allegedly walking on the
Moon, but doesn’t it seem a bit odd that they failed to do anything that
couldn’t be faked simply by changing the tape speed? When I attended college, I
knew a guy on the volleyball team who had a 32” vertical leap right here on
Earth. So when I see guys jumping maybe 12”, if that, in a 1/6 gravity
environment with no air resistance, I’m not really all that impressed.
Am I the only one,
by the way, who finds it odd that people would move in slow motion on the Moon?
Why would a reduced gravitational pull cause everything to move much more
slowly? Given the fact that they were much lighter on their feet and not
subject to air and wind resistance, shouldn’t the astronauts have been able to
move quicker on the Moon than here on Earth? Was slow motion the only thing NASA
could come up with to give the video footage an otherworldly feel?
Needless to say, if
what has been proposed here is indeed how the ‘Moon landing’ footage in the
public domain was created, then the highly incriminating original footage –
which would have looked like any other footage shot here on Earth, except for
the silly costumes and props – would have had to have been destroyed. Perhaps
it’s not surprising then that NASA now takes the position that the original
footage has been missing since “sometime in the late 1970s.”
Unfortunately, it
isn’t just the video footage that is missing. Also allegedly beamed back from
the Moon was voice data, biomedical monitoring data, and telemetry data to
monitor the location and mechanical functioning of the spaceship. All of that
data, the entire alleged record of the Moon landings, was on the 13,000+
reels that are said to be ‘missing.’ Also missing, according to NASA and its
various subcontractors, are the original plans/blueprints for the lunar
modules. And for the lunar rovers. And for the entire multi-sectioned Saturn V
rockets.
There is,
therefore, no way for the modern scientific community to determine whether all
of that fancy 1960s technology was even close to being functional or whether it
was all for show. Nor is there any way to review the physical record, so to
speak, of the alleged flights. We cannot, for example, check the fuel
consumption throughout the flights to determine what kind of magic trick NASA
used to get the boys there and back with less than 1% of the required fuel. And
we will never, it would appear, see the original, first-generation video
footage.
You would think
that someone at NASA would have thought to preserve such things. No wonder we
haven’t given them the money to go back to the Moon; they’d probably just lose
it.
Wagging the Moondoggie, Part
II
October
1, 2009
by David McGowan
“Well,” you now say,
“what about all those cool Moon rocks? How did they get those? The Moon is, you
know, the only source of Moon rocks, so doesn’t that prove that we were there?”
No, as a matter of
fact, it does not prove that we were there, and as odd as it may sound, the
Moon is not the only source of Moon rocks. As it turns out, authentic Moon rocks
are available right here on Earth, in the form of lunar meteorites. Because the
Moon lacks a protective atmosphere, you see, it gets smacked around quite a
bit, which is why it is heavily cratered. And when things smash into it to form
those craters, lots of bits and pieces of the Moon fly off into space. Some of
them end up right here on Earth.
By far the best
place to find them is in
Some skeptics have
said that it is possible that Moon rocks could have been gathered from the Moon
with robotic probes. But while it isn’t being argued here that unmanned craft
haven’t reached the Moon, it seems virtually inconceivable that any unmanned
spacecraft could have landed on and then been brought back from the
surface of the Moon in the 1960s or 1970s. There is no indication that it can
even be done today. It’s been more than three decades since anyone has claimed
to do it, and that claim, by the Soviets, is highly suspect.
What is known for
sure is that even some of the ‘debunking’ websites have, albeit reluctantly,
acknowledged that meteorite samples gathered from
Such was the case
with a ‘Moon rock’ that the Dutch national museum has been carefully
safeguarding for many years now, before discovering, in August of 2009, that
they were in reality the proud owners of the most over-insured piece of petrified wood on
the planet. The ‘Moon rock’ had been a gift to the Dutch from the U.S. State
Department, and its authenticity had reportedly been verified through a phone
call to NASA. I’m guessing that NASA was probably running low on meteorite
fragments and figured the Dutch wouldn’t know the difference anyway. Or maybe
This is not to
suggest, of course, that all of the Moon rocks passed out by NASA and the State
Department are obvious fakes. Most, presumably, are of lunar origin – but that
doesn’t necessarily mean they were gathered by American astronauts walking on
the surface of the Moon; they could just as easily have come to Earth as
meteorites. It is also possible that they are of otherworldly origin but not
from the Moon at all – such as meteorites from other sources that have been
collected here on Earth. The only way to know for sure what NASA’s Moon rocks
are, of course, would be to compare them to a ‘control rock’ that is known to
be from the Moon.
The problem, alas,
is that the only known source for ‘authenticated’ Moon rocks is NASA, the very
same folks who are known to occasionally hand out chunks of petrified wood. The
other problem, it turns out, is that most of the Moon rocks are, uhmm, missing.
Does anyone see a pattern developing here?
Since the discovery
of the fake Moon rock in the Dutch museum, ‘debunkers’ have claimed that the
fact that no other Moon rocks have been declared fake proves that the Dutch
case is an isolated one. “After that announcement,” goes the argument,
“wouldn’t every other country in possession of a Moon rock have rushed to have
them authenticated? And since no other country has made a similar announcement,
doesn’t that prove that the Moon rocks are real?”
At first glance,
that would appear to be a valid argument. The problem, however, is that the
vast majority of those countries can’t test their ‘Moon rocks’ because,
shockingly enough, no one knows where they are! As the Associated Press
reported on September 13, 2009, “Nearly 270 rocks scooped up by U.S. astronauts
were given to foreign countries by the Nixon administration … Of 135 rocks from
the Apollo 17 mission given away to nations or their leaders, only about 25
have been located by CollectSpace.com, a Web site for space history
buffs that has long attempted to compile a list … The outlook for tracking the
estimated 134 Apollo 11 rocks is even bleaker. The locations of fewer than a
dozen are known.”
It appears then
that having a ‘control rock’ wouldn’t really be of much help after all, since
nearly 90% of the alleged Moon rocks that we would want to test don’t seem to
be around any more.
“But I have also heard,” you now say, “that photos have been taken of the
equipment left behind by the Apollo astronauts on the surface of the Moon, like
the descent stages of the lunar modules. How do you account for that?”
It is certainly
true that there have been numerous claims over the years that various
satellites or unmanned space probes or space telescopes were going to capture
images that would definitively prove that man walked on the Moon, thus settling
the controversy once and for all. And in recent years, the ‘debunkers’ have
openly gloated whenever such an announcement has been made, boldly proclaiming
that all the “hoax believers” will soon be exposed as the ignorant buffoons that
they are.
Despite all the
promises, however, no such images have ever been produced, a fact that the
‘debunkers’ seem to conveniently overlook while forever rushing to announce
that the hoax theories are about to be discredited.
For at least two
decades now, since the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope, we have been
promised dazzling images of the lunar modules sitting on the surface of the
Moon. The Hubble technology, needless to say, never managed to deliver. More
recently, in 2002, the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope
(whose inventor apparently coined the name while watching
In March of 2005, Space.com
boldly announced that a “European spacecraft now orbiting the Moon could turn
out to be a time machine of sorts as it photographs old landing sites of Soviet
robotic probes and the areas where American Apollo crews set down and explored.
New imagery of old Apollo touchdown spots, from the European Space Agency’s
(ESA) SMART-1 probe, might put to rest conspiratorial thoughts that U.S.
astronauts didn’t go the distance and scuff up the lunar landscape. NASA
carried out six piloted landings on the Moon in the time period 1969 through
1972. Fringe theorists have said … that NASA never really went to the Moon.”
I’m guessing that
most “fringe theorists” will continue to harbor “conspiratorial thoughts” for
as long as pompous websites like Space.com continue making arrogant
proclamations such as that and then not following them up with so much as a
single image in well over four years.
Who knew, by the way, that the European Space
Agency had the technology and the budget to send a spacecraft off to orbit the
Moon? Who knew that the Europeans even had a space agency? I wonder, given that
they obviously have the technology to send spacecraft to the Moon, why they
haven’t sent any manned missions there? I would think that it should be fairly
easy to send some guys to at least orbit the Moon … right? I mean, all
they have to do is add a couple seats to the spacecraft design that they
already have and they should be ready to go.
Here is another
thing that I sometimes wonder about: why it is that in the 1960s we possessed
the advanced technology required to actually land men on the Moon, but
in the 21st century we don’t even have the technology required to
get an unmanned craft close enough to the Moon to take usable photographs? Or
could it be that there’s just nothing there to photograph?
Just this year,
NASA itself boldly announced that it’s “Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO,
has returned its first imagery of the Apollo moon landing sites. The pictures
show the Apollo missions’ lunar module descent stages sitting on the moon’s
surface, as long shadows from a low sun angle make the modules’ locations
evident … ‘The LROC team anxiously awaited each image,’ said LROC principal
investigator Mark Robinson of Arizona State University. ‘We were very
interested in getting our first peek at the lunar module descent stages just
for the thrill – and to see how well the cameras had come into focus. Indeed,
the images are fantastic and so is the focus.’”
Sounds promising,
doesn’t it? The images, however, hardly live up to the billing. They are, in
fact, completely worthless. All they depict are tiny white dots on the lunar
surface that could be just about anything and that would barely be visible at
all without those handy “long shadows from a low sun angle.” And the weird
thing about those shadows is that, in the very same NASA article, it says that
“because the sun was so low to the horizon when the images were made, even
subtle variations in topography create long shadows.” And yet while it is
perfectly obvious that there are more than just “subtle variations” in the
lunar topography in the images, the alleged lunar modules are the only things
casting the long shadows.
title="In
this larger image, you can see lots of other lunar modules clustered around the
crater to the right" v:shapes="_x0000_i1035">
Even if we give
NASA every benefit of the doubt and assume that the images have not been
amateurishly Photoshopped and that the indiscernible white dots are indeed
something of man-made origin, the most likely culprit would be those Soviet
robotic probes mentioned by Space.com, which presumably did land on the
Moon. A number of those probes, which were part of the Apollo-era Luna Program,
were very similar in size and shape to the lunar modules – certainly enough so
that images of much higher resolution would be required to make a definitive
judgment.
Actually, after
studying the image above, of one of the alleged Luna probes, I’m going to have
to say that the Soviets were lying their asses off almost as much as NASA was.
There is no way I’m going to buy into the notion that the Soviets sent a
freeform abstract sculpture, which appears to have been constructed by Fred
Sanford and Granny Clampett, on a 234,000 mile journey from the Earth to the
Moon. Careful study of the central area of the photo, however, does reveal why
the spacecraft were known as ‘probes.’ I wonder if they were capable of
performing docking maneuvers?
According to NASA,
A ‘debunking’
article posted by ABCNews.com,
for example, quoted Val Germann, the president of the Central Missouri
Astronomical Association, as saying, “There’s no reason to go back … Quite
frankly, the moon is a giant parking lot, there’s just not much there.” I
wonder why it is then that just about everyone seems to want to send unmanned
probes there, or to train enormously powerful telescopes on the Moon’s surface?
What could they possibly learn about the “parking lot” from those distances
that our astronauts didn’t already discover by actually being there?
Some True Believers
also claim that what was dubbed the Lunar Laser Ranging experiment also proves
that we really went to the Moon. As the story goes, the astronauts on Apollo
11, Apollo 14, and Apollo 15 all allegedly left small laser targets sitting on
the lunar terrain (one of them can be seen in the official NASA photo
reproduced below), so that scientists back home could then bounce lasers off
the targets to precisely gauge the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
According to the
‘debunkers,’ the fact that observatories to this day bounce lasers off the
alleged targets proves that the Apollo missions succeeded. It is perfectly
obvious though that the targets, if there, could have been placed robotically -
most likely by the Soviets. It is also possible that there are no laser targets
on the Moon. In December 1966, National Geographic reported that
scientists at MIT had been achieving essentially the same result for four years
by bouncing a laser off the surface of the Moon. The New York Times
added that the Soviets had been doing the same thing since at least 1963.
There was much about
the Apollo flights that was truly miraculous, but arguably the greatest
technological achievement was the design of the lunar modules. Has anyone, by
the way, ever really taken a good look at one of those contraptions? I mean a
detailed, up-close look? I’m guessing that the vast majority of people have
not, but luckily we can quickly remedy that situation because I happen to have
some really good, high-resolution images that come directly from the good
people at NASA.
While what is
depicted in the images may initially appear, to the untrained eye, to be some
kind of mock-up that someone cobbled together in their backyard to make fun of
NASA, I can assure you that it is actually an extremely high-tech manned
spacecraft capable of landing on the surface of the Moon. And incredibly
enough, it was also capable of blasting off from the Moon and flying 69 miles
back up into lunar orbit! Though not immediately apparent, it is actually a
two-stage craft, the lower half (the part that looks like a tubular aluminum
framework covered with Mylar and old Christmas wrapping paper) being the descent
stage, and the upper half (the part that looks as though it was cobbled
together from old air conditioning ductwork and is primarily held together, as
can be seen in the close-up, with zippers and gold tape) being the ascent
stage.
The upper half, of course, is the more
sophisticated portion, being capable of lifting off and flying with enough
power to break free of the Moon’s gravity and reach lunar orbit. It also, of
course, possessed sophisticated enough navigational capabilities for it to
locate, literally out in the middle of fucking nowhere, the command module that
it had to dock with in order to get the astronauts safely back to Earth. It
also had to catch that command module, which was orbiting the Moon at a
leisurely 4,000 miles per hour.
But we’ll get to
all that a little later. I think we can all agree for now that such a sleek,
stylish, well-designed craft would have no problem flying with that kind of
power, precision and stability.
There is one thing
that appears to be a problem though: how did they get everything on board the
modules that they were going to need to successfully complete their missions?
According to NASA, the modules were (excluding the landing pads) only about
twelve feet in diameter. That is obviously not a whole lot of space to work
with, so let’s try to think of everything that we would need if we were
astronauts venturing off on a little journey to the Moon.
First of all, of
course, we have to account for the space taken up by the various components of
the ship itself. There is the framework and the, uhh, let’s call it the
‘fuselage’ of the craft. And we will need a lot of very sophisticated
navigation and guidance and communications equipment, all of which took up a
whole lot more space back in the ‘60s than it would today. And then, needless
to say, there is the power supply – or rather multiple power supplies. For the
descent stage, there is the reverse-thrust rocket that allegedly allowed the
craft to make a soft landing on the Moon. And then for the ascent stage, there
is a powerful rocket to propel the random bundle of sheet metal into lunar
orbit. There are also additional rockets to allegedly stabilize the vessel in
flight (the random clusters of what look like bicycle horns).
Next up is the
massive amount of fuel that will be required to power all of those rockets, for
both the ascent and descent stages of the mission. The ascent stage in
particular is going to be a bit of a fuel hog, as ascending 69 miles and
breaking free of the Moon’s gravity is a formidable challenge, to say the
least. Though it may only have 1/6 the gravitational pull of Earth, keep in
mind that it is still a force strong enough to create the tides here on Earth,
234,000 miles away.
I’m not a rocket
scientist, by the way, so I am sure that there are quite a few components that
I am leaving off of my lunar module – but that’s okay, because our spaceship is
already feeling really cramped just with the stuff listed so far. And we’re
just getting started.
Next we have to
include everything required to keep ourselves alive and well. We aren’t going
to be there very long, of course, and space is obviously limited, but we will
still require some basic amenities. We will, after all, have to sleep somewhere
in the ship, won’t we? Or will we just unfold cots on the lunar surface? We
will also require a sanitation/septic system of some kind. Or did those
missions bring about another ‘first’ that NASA has been reluctant to brag
about? Was Neil Armstrong, unbeknownst to the American people, the first man to
take a dump on lunar soil? Or was it Buzz Aldrin? Which astronaut has the
distinction of being the first to soil the lunar landscape?
Anyway, getting
back to our packing list, in addition to a sanitation system, it is imperative
that we bring along an adequate supply of food, water and oxygen – and not just
enough to last for the planned duration of our visit, but enough to supply a
small safety cushion should anything go wrong. Because from what I have heard,
running out of food, water or oxygen while on the Moon can really fuck up an
otherwise perfectly good trip. The oxygen is especially important, so we’re
going to need a really good, reliable system to deliver that oxygen, and to,
you know, recharge the oxygen tanks in our spacesuits so we can walk around on
the Moon and jump like 8” or 9” high like the Apollo guys did. And a back-up
oxygen system probably wouldn’t be a bad idea.
We are also going
to need to install a top-of-the-line heating and cooling system. Probably
several of them, actually. Because the ‘weather’ on the Moon, so to speak, can
be a bit unpleasant. According to the experts over at NASA, daytime highs
average a balmy +260° F, but it cools off quite a bit at night, dropping to
an average of -280° F. If you’re looking for anything between those two
extremes, you won’t really find it on the Moon. It’s pretty much one or the
other. If you’re in the sun, you’re going to be boiled alive, and if you’re out
of the sun, you’re going to be flash frozen.
I’m not at all sure how the air conditioning system is going to work,
come to think of it, since air conditioning requires a steady supply of – and
please stop me if I am stating the obvious here – air. And the Moon doesn’t
really have a lot of that.
It would help, of
course, if our spacecraft was heavily insulated in some manner, but that
doesn’t appear to be the case, so we’ll need a really, really good heating and
cooling system, and plenty of freon or whatever it is that we’ll need to keep
it running. So now we have to add all of the following to our already crowded
spacecraft: ourselves; a minimal amount of room to sleep and otherwise take
care of the basic necessities of life; some type of plumbing and sewage system;
a really good heating and cooling system, and a considerable supply of food,
water and oxygen. And we’re still not done packing for our trip.
Now we have to add
all of the equipment that will be required to maintain the ship and complete
our planned missions. First of all, we are definitely going to need to pack an
exhaustive supply of spare parts and a wide variety of tools. That is an
absolute must. From what I have heard, there are a few stores on the Moon that
do stock spaceship parts, but they tend to close on certain days of the week.
And orders from the mainland can take a frustratingly long time to arrive, so
it’s always best to be prepared for any emergency. There are a lot of things
that can go wrong with our spaceship and the only thing harder than finding a
good mechanic here on Earth is finding one on the Moon.
And then, of
course, we’ll have to bring all the fancy testing equipment that we will use to
pretend to conduct experiments. Some of it is quite bulky, so we’ll need to set
aside some storage space for all of that. And we’re going to need some
additional storage space to bring back all those petrified wood samples, but we
should have room for that after we jettison most of the fake testing equipment.
Our spaceship is
now so ridiculously overloaded that we may have had to add a roof-rack and we
still aren’t quite done yet. We still have a couple more items to pack, and we
probably should have gotten them on sooner because they are going to require a
lot of space. Since this is one of the later Apollo flights, you see, we also
have to pack a dune buggy, otherwise known as a lunar rover. And the rovers,
according to NASA, are a full ten feet long, just two feet less than the
diameter of our craft. But not to worry – according to NASA, the rovers
(pictured below) folded up to the size of a large suitcase. When
released, they would just sort of magically unfold and snap into place, ready
to roam the lunar terrain.
To be perfectly
honest, I’m not really sure why we have to pack the damn rover. There is no
real compelling reason to take it to the Moon … except for the fact that they
make for good TV, and that seems to be of paramount importance. And as can be
seen below, it should easily fit into our spaceship.
One last thing
we’re going to need is a whole lot of batteries. Lots and lots of batteries.
That’s going to be the only way to power the ship while we’re on the Moon, and
we’ll definitely need to run the communications systems, and the oxygen supply
system, and the heating and cooling system, and the cabin lights, and the
television cameras and transmitters, and all the testing equipment, and our
spacesuits, and that damn rover. And we won’t be able to recharge any of the
various batteries, so we’re going to need a lot of back-ups. Especially of the
really big batteries that run the ship. We may need a separate ship just to
carry all the batteries we’re going to need.
By the way, I can’t
possibly be the only one who is disappointed that we never followed up on that
breakthrough folding-vehicle technology. If we had folding Moon buggies back in
the early 1970s, then how far behind could folding automobiles have been had we
chosen to stay the course? Had NASA’s pioneering vision been followed up, we
could all be folding up our cars and tucking them away under our office desks.
But as with all the Apollo technology, it existed only in that specific period
of time and has now, sadly, been lost to the ages.
NASA has done
something very odd, by the way, with the lunar module that it has on display
for museum visitors to marvel at: it has staffed it with miniature astronauts
wearing miniature space suits (the module may also be scaled slightly larger
than the ‘real’ modules that allegedly landed on the Moon). I wonder why they
would do that? I’m pretty sure that Buzz and Neil were of normal stature, so
the only reason that I can think of that they would use miniature astronauts
would be to portray the modules as larger than what they actually were. And in
better condition too. Did they pick up the ones they sent to the Moon at a used
car lot?
Before moving on, I
need to emphasize here just how sophisticated the lunar modules actually were.
These remarkable spacecraft – and I understandably get a little choked up here
talking about this, because I am just so damn proud of our team of Nazi
scientists – managed to make six perfect take-offs from the surface of the
Moon! And understand here people that they did that, amazingly enough, with
completely untested technology!
You can’t duplicate the conditions on the Moon
here at home, you see, or even provide a rough approximation. And since no one
had ever been to the Moon, they didn’t know exactly what to replicate anyway,
so this part of the mission was pretty much of a crapshoot. Conditions on the
Moon are, to say the least, a bit different than here on Earth. The
gravitational pull is only about 1/6 of what it is here. And then there is that
whole ‘lack of atmosphere’ thing. And the decidedly unearthly temperatures. And
then, of course, there are the high levels of space radiation.
I’m quite sure that
we had the best minds available working on the Apollo project, but none of them
could have accurately predicted and compensated for how all those unearthly
conditions would combine to affect the flight potential of the lunar modules.
So the ability of the modules to actually blast off from the Moon and fly was,
at best, a theoretical concept.
It is also
important to remember that, unlike the initial blast-off from Earth (seen
above), which involved the collective efforts of thousands of people and the
use of all types of peripheral equipment, the astronauts taking off from the
Moon had only themselves and a strange vessel that looked like it had been
salvaged from the set of Lost in Space. What would you be thinking, by
the way, if you suddenly found yourself on the surface of the Moon with what
looked like a cheap movie prop as your only way home? Would you feel
comfortable hanging around for a few days doing experiments, confident that,
when the time came, the untested contraption behind you would actually get you
back home from the Moon? Or would the words “bad career choice” be running through
your head?
But as it turns
out,
On Earth, it took
many long years of trial and error, many failed test flights, many unfortunate
accidents, and many, many trips back to the drawing board before we could
safely and reliably launch men into low-Earth orbit. But on the Moon? We nailed
that shit the very first time.
Today, of course,
we can’t even launch a space shuttle from right here on planet Earth without
occasionally blowing one up, even though we have lowered our sights
considerably. After all, sending spacecraft into low-Earth orbit is
considerably easier than sending spacecraft all the way to the friggin’ Moon
and back. It would appear then that we can draw the following conclusion:
although technology has advanced immeasurably since the first Apollo Moon
landing and we have significantly downgraded our goals in space, we can’t come
close to matching the kick-ass safety record we had in the Apollo days.
The thing is that,
back in the frontier days, we didn’t need all that fancy technology and
book-learnin’ to send Buzz and the boys to the Moon and back. Back then, we had
that American can-do spirit and we just cowboyed up and MacGyvered those
spaceships to the Moon. All we needed was an old Volkswagen engine, some duct
tape and a roll of bailing wire. Throw a roll of butt-wipe and a little Tang on
board and you were good to go.
And how about the
speed with which we cranked out those Apollo spacecraft? Once we figured out
how to make them, we were stamping them out like Coke cans. We fired off seven
of them in just under three-and-a-half years, or about one every six months.
Given the extreme complexity of those vessels, and the fact that every
component had to perform flawlessly under largely unknown conditions, that is a
pretty impressive production schedule.
Wagging the Moondoggie, Part
III
October
1, 2009
by David McGowan
If the Moon landings
were faked, then one question that naturally arises is: why would any
government go to such extreme lengths to mount such an elaborate hoax?
The most obvious
answer (and the one most frequently cited by skeptics) is to reclaim a sense of
national pride that had been stripped away by
Could so many
people have really been duped into believing such an outrageous lie, if that in
fact was what it was? To answer that question, we have to keep in mind that we
are talking about the summer of 1969 here. Those old enough to have been there
will recall that they – along with the vast majority of politically active
people in the country – spent that particular period of time primarily engaged
in tripping on some really good acid (most likely from the lab of Mr. Owsley).
How hard then would
it really have been to fool most of you? I probably could have stuck a fish
bowl on my head, wrapped myself in aluminum foil, and then filmed myself
high-stepping across my backyard and most of you would have believed that I was
Moonwalking. Some of you couldn't entirely rule out the possibility that everyone
was walking on the Moon.
In truth, not
everyone was fooled by the alleged Moon landings. Though it is rarely discussed
these days, a significant number of people gave NASA’s television productions a
thumbs-down. As Wired
magazine has reported, “when Knight Newspapers polled 1,721
When Fox ran
a special on the Moon landings some years back and reported that 1-in-5
Americans had doubts about the Apollo missions, various ‘debunking’ websites
cried foul and claimed that the actual percentage was much lower. BadAstronomy.com,
for example, claims that the actual figure is about 6%, and that roughly that
many people will agree “with almost any question that is asked of them.” Hence,
there are only a relative handful of kooks who don’t believe that we’ve ever
been to the Moon.
All of those
websites fail to mention, of course, that among the people who experienced the
events as they were occurring, nearly 1-in-3 had doubts, a number
considerably higher than the number that Fox used. And, needless
to say, the ‘debunkers’ also failed to mention that 1-in-4 young Americans, a
number also higher than the figure Fox used, have doubts about the Moon
landings.
Returning then to the question of why
such a ruse would be perpetrated, we must transport ourselves back to the year
1969. Richard Nixon has just been inaugurated as our brand new president, and
his ascension to the throne is in part due to his promises to the American
people that he will disengage from the increasingly unpopular war in
In short, he needs
to wag the dog.
This has, of course, traditionally been done by embarking on some
short-term, low-risk military endeavor. The problem for Big Dick, however,
is that a military mission is exactly what he is trying to divert attention away
from. What, then, is a beleaguered president to do? Why, send Neil and Buzz
to the Moon, of course! Instead of wagging the dog, it's time to try something
new: wagging the Moondoggie!
Nixon's actions
from the very moment he takes office belie his campaign pledges to the American
people (not unlike that Barry Obama guy, who also led the American people to
believe that he opposed an unpopular war). In May of 1969, with Nixon just a
few months into his term, the press begins publicizing the illegal B-52
carpetbombing of
In truth, however,
only 25,000 of the 540,000
Just in time to
save the day, however, Apollo 11 blasts off on July 16th on its
allegedly historic mission, and – with the entire nation enthralled – four days
later the Eagle purportedly makes its landing on the pristine lunar surface.
The honeymoon is
short-lived, however, for just four months later, in November of 1969, Seymour
Hersch publishes a story about the massacre of 504 civilians in the
All is well again until March of 1970, at which
time a U.S.-backed coup deposes Prince Sihanouk in
Meanwhile, it's
time for yet another Moon launch. But this one is not going to be just any Moon
launch. This one, you see, is going to introduce the element of danger. With
the first two having gone off without a hitch, the American people – known for
having notoriously short attention spans – are already adopting a 'been there,
done that' attitude. The problem, in a nutshell, is that it looks just a little
too damn easy. In order to regain the attention of the American people, it has
to be impressed upon them that our brave astronauts are placing themselves in
grave danger.
And so it is that
on April 11th, 1970, Apollo 13 blasts off with Tom Hanks and a couple of
somewhat lesser known actors on board, but unlike the first two missions, this
Apollo spacecraft fails to reach the Moon and instead drifts about for the next
six days with the crew in mortal danger of being forever lost in space! Now that
gets our attention! So much so that when three
Awaiting news of
the fate of the Apollo 13 crew, we all have our eyes glued to our TVs as though
we are watching postmortem coverage of Michael Jackson. When our heroes somehow
make it back alive, defying seemingly impossible odds, we are all so goddamned
proud of them that we decide to award Tom another Oscar. And all is well again
for the remainder of the year.
I really have to
repeat here, by the way, that in the late 1960s and early 1970s,
That was just an
awesome time to be an American and especially to be an American astronaut …
well, except for the three guys (Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Ed White and Roger
Chaffee) who were burned alive during a test procedure in the command module of
what was to be the Apollo 1 rocket. But they were troublemakers anyway who
probably wouldn’t have wanted to go along with the Moon landing fable. And then
there was that Thomas Baron guy who was a safety inspector for NASA and who
delivered highly critical testimony and a 1,500-page report to Congress, only
to then be killed a week later. That report seems to have been sucked into the
same Black Hole that swallowed up all the other Apollo evidence.
Anyway, returning
now to our timeline, the dawn of 1971 brings the trial of Lt. William Calley on
charges that he personally ordered and oversaw the mass murder of the
inhabitants of the
A few months after
that, the
Back on Earth, the
astronauts return on August 7th and the rest of the year passes uneventfully.
On March 30, 1972, North Vietnamese troops mount a massive offensive across the
DMZ into
By the end of the
year, a ceasefire is finally looming on the horizon. Beginning in October,
Kissinger and David Bruce (a member of the infamous Mellon family) are secretly
negotiating peace terms with Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam. In December, however,
those talks break down – but not before Apollo 17 is launched on December 7th
in a most spectacular way: it is the first night launch of a Saturn V rocket.
With the latest Apollo mission still a few days away from returning, the talks
cease and Dick and Henry unleash a final ruthless carpetbombing campaign
against
Just five weeks
later, the talks having resumed, a peace agreement is announced. Within a few
days a ceasefire is in effect, thereby officially ending
In addition to
restoring national pride and providing a diversion from the savage colonial war
being waged in
There is no shortage
of Moon hoax ‘debunking’ sites out there on the wild and wooly World Wide Web.
The majority of them are not particularly well written or argued and yet they
tend to be rather smug and self-congratulatory. Most of them tend to stick to
‘debunking’ the same facts and they use the same arguments to do so.
One thing they like
to talk a lot about is the Van Allen radiation belts. The Moon hoax sites talk
a lot about them as well. The hoaxers will tell you that man cannot pass
through the belts without a considerable amount of radiation protection –
protection that could not have been provided in the 1960s through any known
technology. And the ‘debunkers’ claim that the Apollo astronauts would have
passed through the belts quickly enough that, given the levels of radiation, no
harm would have come to them. The hoaxers, say the ‘debunkers,’ are just being
girlie men.
As it turns out,
both sides are wrong: the ‘debunkers,’ shockingly enough, are completely full
of shit, and the hoaxers have actually understated the problem by focusing
exclusively on the belts. We know this because NASA itself – whom the
‘debunkers’ like to treat as a virtually unimpeachable source on all things
Apollo, except, apparently, when the agency posts an article that implicitly
acknowledges that we haven’t actually been to the Moon – has told us that it is
so. They have told us that in order to leave low-Earth orbit on any future
space flights, our astronauts would need to be protected throughout the
entirety of the flight, as well as – and once again, this comes directly
from NASA – while working on the surface of the Moon.
On June 24, 2005, NASA made this
rather remarkable admission: “NASA's Vision for Space Exploration calls for a
return to the Moon as preparation for even longer journeys to Mars and beyond.
But there's a potential showstopper: radiation. Space beyond low-Earth orbit is
awash with intense radiation from the Sun and from deep galactic sources such
as supernovas … Finding a good shield is important.” (http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/24jun_electrostatics.htm)
You’re damn right
finding a good shield is important!! Back in the 1960s, of course, we didn’t
let a little thing like space radiation get in the way of us beating the
Ruskies to the Moon. But now, I guess, being that we are more cultured and
sophisticated, we want to do it the right way so we have to come up with
some way of shielding our spaceships. And our temporary Moon bases. And
figuring out how to do that, according to NASA, could be a real “showstopper.”
As NASA notes, “the most common way to deal
with radiation is simply to physically block it, as the thick concrete around a
nuclear reactor does. But making spaceships from concrete is not an option.”
Lead, which is considerably denser than concrete, is actually the preferred material
to use for radiation shielding, but lead also isn’t very popular with spaceship
designers. In fact, word on the street is that one of the main reasons the
Soviets never made it to the Moon was because their scientists calculated that
four feet of lead shielding would be required to protect their astronauts, and
those same scientists apparently felt that spaceships wouldn’t fly all that
well when clad in four feet of lead.
Now NASA is
thinking outside the box and contemplating using ‘force fields’ to repel the
radiation, a seemingly ridiculous idea that, whether workable in the future or
not, certainly wasn’t available to NASA in the 1960s. Below is NASA’s own
artist rendering of a proposed ‘force field’ radiation shield that would allow
astronauts to work safely on the Moon. As you may have noticed in the earlier
photos of the lunar modules, our guys didn’t bring anything like that with them
on their, uhmm, earlier missions to the Moon. And you may have also noticed
that the modules did not have any type of physical shielding.
How then did they
do it? My guess is that the answer lies in that gold foil wrap. While it may
look like an amateurish attempt to make the modules appear more ‘high-tech,’ I
have a hunch that what we are looking at is another example of the lost
technology of the 1960s – this time in the form of a highly-advanced
superpolymer that provided maximum radiation shielding while adding virtually
no weight. So all we have to do is track down a few leftover rolls of that
stuff and we should be well on our way to sending guys back to the Moon.
According to Charles Buhler, a NASA scientist
currently working on the force field concept, “Using electric fields to repel
radiation was one of the first ideas back in the 1950s, when scientists started
to look at the problem of protecting astronauts from radiation. They quickly
dropped the idea though because it seemed like the high voltages needed and the
awkward designs that they thought would be necessary … would make such an
electric shield impractical.”
What a real
journalist would have asked here, of course, is: “After dropping the electric
shield concept, exactly what did they decide to use to get our astronauts
safely to the Moon and back on the Apollo missions? And why can’t we do the
same thing now, rather than reinventing the wheel? Don’t you guys have some of
that gold foil in a closet somewhere?” No one in the American media, of course,
bothered to ask such painfully obvious questions.
The 2005 report from NASA ends as follows:
“But, who knows, perhaps one day astronauts on the Moon … will work safely.”
Yes, and while we’re dreaming the impossible dream, let’s add a few more things
to our wish list as well, like perhaps one day we’ll be able to listen to music
on 8-track tape players, and talk to people on rotary dial telephones, and
carry portable transistor radios, and use cameras that shoot pictures on
special film that develops right before our eyes. Only time will tell, I
suppose.
The Van Allen
belts, by the way, trap most Earth-bound radiation, thus making it safe for us
mortals down here on the surface of planet Earth, as well as for astronauts in
low-Earth orbit (the belts extend from 1,000 to 25,000 miles above the surface
of the Earth). The danger is in sending men through and beyond the
belts, which, apart from the Apollo missions, has never been attempted … well,
actually there was that one time, but I think we all remember how badly that
turned out. In case anyone has forgotten, the astronauts returned to a world
dominated by extremely poor acting, apes speaking with British accents, and a
shirtless Charleton Heston. And I don’t think anyone wants to see that happen
again.
The 2005 report was
not the first time that NASA had openly discussed the high levels of radiation
that exist beyond the Van Allen belts. In February 2001, the space agency
posted a ‘debunking’ article that argued that the rocks allegedly brought back
from the Moon were so distinctive in nature that they proved definitively that
man had gone to the Moon. The problem though with maintaining a lie of the
magnitude of the Moon landing lie is that there is always the danger that in
defending one part of the lie, another part will be exposed. Such was the case
with NASA’s ill-conceived The Great Moon
Hoax post, in which it was acknowledged that what are referred to as
“cosmic rays” have a tendency to “constantly bombard the Moon and they leave their
fingerprints on Moon rocks.”
NASA scientist
David McKay explained that “There are isotopes in Moon rocks, isotopes we don’t
normally find on Earth, that were created by nuclear reactions with the
highest-energy cosmic rays.” The article went on to explain how “Earth is
spared from such radiation by our protective atmosphere and magnetosphere. Even
if scientists wanted to make something like a Moon rock by, say, bombarding an
Earth rock with high energy atomic nuclei, they couldn’t. Earth’s most powerful
particle accelerators can’t energize particles to match the most potent cosmic
rays, which are themselves accelerated in supernova blastwaves and in the
violent cores of galaxies.”
So one of the
reasons that we know the Moon rocks are real, you see, is because they were
blasted with ridiculously high levels of radiation while sitting on the surface
of the Moon. And our astronauts, one would assume, would have been blasted with
the very same ridiculously high levels of radiation, but since this was NASA’s
attempt at a ‘debunking’ article, they apparently would prefer that you don’t
spend too much time analyzing what they have to say.
How exactly are we
to reconcile NASA’s current position on space radiation with the same agency’s
simultaneous claim that we have already sent men to the Moon? There are a few
different possibilities that come to mind, the first of which is that, in the
late 1960s and early 1970s, we simply threw caution to the wind and sent our
boys off to the Moon with no protection whatsoever from space radiation. If
that were true, however, then the question that would naturally be raised is:
why not just do it again? After all, all of our Moonwalkers made it home safe
and sound and most all have lived long, healthy, cancer-free lives. So why all
the fuss over space radiation?
NASA could, I
suppose, take the position that space radiation is a recent problem. Perhaps in
the ‘60s and early ‘70s, space was relatively free of radiation, allowing
unshielded Apollo rockets to cruise about without a care in the world while
crew members primarily busied themselves with such important tasks as trying to
capture all the stems and seeds that were floating around the command module as
a result of cleaning their stash of low-grade ‘60s marijuana. It was just a
different solar system back in those days. As aging hippies like to say, if you
remember the solar system of the sixties, you weren’t really flying around in
it.
If it proves not to
be the case that this space radiation “showstopper” is a new development, then
I suppose that the only explanation that we are left with is that we did indeed
have the technology to shield our astronauts from radiation back in the 1960s,
but at some time during the last four decades, that technology was simply lost.
What probably happened was that an overzealous night custodian simply threw the
data away. The conversation around the NASA water cooler the next day probably
went something like this: "Holy shit! Has anyone seen that folder that I
left on my desk last night? It contained the only copy of the secret formula
that I devised for building a weightless space radiation shield. It could be
forty years or more before someone else can duplicate it! My ass is so fired!”
Wagging the Moondoggie, Part
IV
October
1, 2009
by David McGowan
"Once on the Moon, on the lunar surface in the dress, in the life
support system, you couldn't see the camera. They couldn't bend their head that
far down to see the scale ... They had no viewfinder - they had to aim by
moving their body."
Jan Lundberg, chief designer of the
Hasselblad cameras allegedly used by the Apollo astronauts
"They had to effectively guess where they were pointing the
camera."
HJP Arnold, the Kodak executive who supplied the Ektachrome film for the
missions
The issue
that most of the Moon hoax and ‘debunking’ sites spend the most time on, by
far, is the photographic anomalies. And that, I suppose, is to be expected,
since with the original videotapes, telemetry tapes and blueprints all having
conveniently disappeared, and with most of the Moon rocks missing and their
legitimacy being unverifiable, there isn’t much else in the way of physical
evidence to examine.
Skeptics have
identified a number of problems with NASA’s official
photographs of the alleged Moon landings, including; flags appearing to
wave despite the lack of atmosphere; non-parallel shadows, suggesting multiple
light sources; objects in the shadows that are clearly visible when they shouldn’t
be, again indicating multiple light sources; the complete lack of stars in the
lunar sky; identical backgrounds in photos that NASA has claimed were shot at
different locations; and inconsistencies with the crosshair reference marks.
We will look at
each of these in some detail – well, actually we will look at most of
them in some detail. Because as it turns out – and I know that this will come
as a huge disappointment to all the ‘debunkers’ – I don’t really give a shit
whether the flag is waving or not. Many of the ‘debunking’ websites devote an
inordinate amount of time to the issue, as though it were the primary plank on
which the ‘conspiracy theories’ rested. They do this because the videos and
photos are ambiguous and open to interpretation, and the ‘debunkers’ realize
that people are going to see in them what they want to see.
The truth though is
that it does not matter in the least whether the flag is waving. That is just
one tiny drop of potential evidence in an overflowing bucket.
Some of the other
problems with the images are considerably less ambiguous. But before we even
get to those, we must first discuss the fact that the very existence of the
photographs is a technical impossibility. Simply stated, it would not have been
possible to capture any of the images allegedly shot on the Moon in the
manner that NASA says they were captured.
Back in the day,
you see (and younger readers may again want to cover their eyes), cameras
weren’t all that smart, so everything had to be done manually. The photographer
had to manually focus each shot by peering through the viewfinder and rotating
the lens until the scene came into focus. The proper aperture and shutter
speeds had to be manually selected for each shot as well, to insure a proper
exposure. That required peering through the viewfinder as well, to meter the
shot. Finally, each shot had to be properly composed and framed, which
obviously also required looking through the viewfinder.
The problem for the
astronauts is that the cameras were mounted to their chests, which made it
impossible to see through the viewfinder to meter, frame and focus the shots.
Everything, therefore, was pretty much of a guess. Focusing would have been
entirely guesswork, as would the framing of each shot. An experienced
photographer can accurately estimate the exposure settings, but the astronauts
lacked such experience and they were also handicapped by the fact that they
were viewing the scenes through heavily tinted visors, which meant that what
they were seeing was not what the camera was seeing.
To add to their
troubles, they were wearing space helmets that seriously restricted their field
of vision, along with enormously bulky, pressurized gloves that severely
limited their manual dexterity. The odds then of getting even one of the
three elements (exposure, focus and framing) correct under those conditions on
any given shot would have been exceedingly low. And yet, amazingly enough, on
the overwhelming majority of the photos, they got all three right!
A rather self-important
gent by the name of Jay Windley, one of the most prominent of the NASA-approved
‘debunkers,’ attempts to spin all this away on his website, www.clavius.org. According to Windley,
“The exposures were worked out ahead of time based on experimentation. The
ASA/ISO rating of the film was known, and NASA photographers precomputed the
necessary exposures … In many cases the camera settings for planned photos were
given in the astronauts’ cuff checklists.”
No shit, Jay? Did
they send an advance team to the Moon to do that “experimentation”? Because the
lighting conditions on the Moon are pretty unique, as you well know, and nobody
had ever been there before, so I’m not really seeing how NASA’s photographers
were able to work the exposures out “ahead of time.” And what “planned photos”
are you referring to? How did they know what they were going to photograph
before they even knew what was there? They knew they were going to take photos
of each other, I suppose, and of the flag and lander, but they would have had
no clue how those things were going to be lit, and it’s the lighting, not the
subject, that primarily determines the exposure settings.
Windley of course
knows that, since he claims on his site that he is “an experienced photographer
[who] has worked professionally in that area from time to time.” He must also
know then that his comments about the unimportance of properly focusing a shot
are intentionally misleading. He starts off on the right track, more or less,
advising readers that an increased depth of field “means that when the lens is
set to focus at a certain distance, objects somewhat nearer and farther from
this ideal distance are also sharply focused. The narrower the aperture, the
greater the depth of field.”
It is certainly
true that the smaller the aperture, the greater the depth of field will be. And
the greater the depth of field, the more of the background and foreground will
be in focus, assuming that the subject is in proper focus. Windley, like the
rest of the ‘debunkers,’ would like us to believe that all of the photos shot
on the lunar surface were shot with a very small aperture setting (which
supposedly explains the lack of stars in the lunar sky, but we’ll get to that
soon enough), which would maximize the depth of field. And the greater the
depth of field, according to Windley, “the sloppier the photographer can be
about his focus settings.”
That last statement,
for those who may have missed it, is the part that isn’t actually true. An
increased depth of field most certainly does not mean that you can use the
‘close enough’ technique to focus your camera. Depth of field has nothing to do
with whether your subject is sharply focused or not. If your subject is
sharply focused, then depth of field determines how many of the other objects
in the background and foreground of your photo will be in focus as well. If
your subject is not sharply focused, however, then your photo is going to suck
regardless of the amount of depth of field.
As for framing the
shots, Windley claims that mostly wide-angle lenses were used, which meant
that, “It was sufficient to point the camera in the general direction of the
subject and you would be likely to frame it well enough.” So apparently all the
fuss about framing, exposure and focus is much ado about nothing. All you need
do is write the exposure settings down on your sleeve, ballpark the focus, and
point your camera in “the general direction of the subject” and you’ll get
great shots nearly every time!
Windley then adds
(and this is my favorite part of his photography tutorial) that on the later
missions, “a 500mm telephoto lens was also taken, and the cameras were modified
with sighting rings to help aim them. Normally the camera would be mounted on
the space suit chest bracket, but for telephoto use the astronaut would have to
remove it and hold it at eye level in order to sight down the rings.”
As any photographer
knows, getting a decent shot with a 500mm lens without the use of a tripod is a
pretty tall order, even for a seasoned professional. Getting a decent hand-held
shot with a 500mm lens while wearing bulky, pressurized gloves would be just
about impossible. And the notion that you could come anywhere close to properly
framing or focusing an image captured with a 500mm lens without looking through
the viewfinder is laughably absurd.
The ‘debunkers’
will also tell you that it is not true that all the Moon landing images were
keepers, and that NASA only released the best of the photos. The ‘debunkers,’
however, don’t know what they are talking about. The reality is that NASA has
released all of the alleged photos taken during the Apollo missions,
including indecipherable ones that are labeled “inadvertent shutter release”
(which, I have to admit, is a nice touch). With the exception of what are most
likely deliberate mistakes, the clear majority of the shots are pretty well
composed, exposed and focused.
For those who don’t
find that at all unusual, here is an experiment that you can try at home: grab
the nearest 35MM SLR camera and strap it around your neck. It is probably an
automatic camera so you will have to set it for manual focus and manual
exposure. Now you will need to put on the thickest pair of winter gloves that
you can find, as well as a motorcycle helmet with a visor. Once you have done
all that, here is your assignment: walk around your neighborhood with the
camera pressed firmly to your chest and snap a bunch of photos. You will need
to fiddle with the focus and exposure settings, of course, which is going to be
a real bitch since you won’t be able to see or feel what you are doing. Also,
needless to say, you’ll just have to guess on the framing of all the shots.
You should probably
use a digital camera, by the way, so that you don’t waste a lot of film,
because you’re not going to have a lot of keepers. Of course, part of the fun
of this challenge is changing the film with the gloves and helmet on, and you’ll
miss out on that by going digital. Anyway, after you fill up your memory card,
head back home and download all your newly captured images. While looking
through your collection of unimpressive photos, marvel at the incredible
awesomeness of our Apollo astronauts, who not only risked life and limb to
expand man’s frontiers, but who were also amazingly talented photographers. I’m
more than a little surprised that none of them went on to lucrative careers as
professional shutterbugs.
Even if our fine astronauts
could have captured all of those images, the film would have never survived the
journey in such pristine condition. Even very brief exposure to the relatively
low levels of radiation used in airport security terminals can damage
photographic film, so how would the film have fared after prolonged, continuous
exposure to far higher levels of radiation? And what of the 540° F temperature
fluctuations? That must have been some amazingly resilient film stock – and yet
another example of the lost technology of the 1960s.
Even though the images are clearly not what NASA claims they are, we
are going to play along and pretend as though Neil and Buzz and all of the rest
of the guys could have actually taken them. The question then is: where did
they take them?
Hoax theorists,
‘debunkers’ and NASA are all in agreement on at least one thing: conditions on
the surface of the Moon are decidedly different than conditions here on the
surface of planet Earth. For one thing, the Moon has no atmosphere. Also, there
is only one source of light, which is, of course, the sun (NASA has verified
that no other light source was available to the astronauts).
Due to the lack of
atmosphere on the Moon, light is not scattered and travels only in a straight
line from the sun and is reflected back in the same direction. What that means
is that anything that falls in the shadows will be in virtually complete
darkness. It also means that all shadows will be cast in the same direction.
And it means that the sky is always black, and, with no atmosphere filtering
the view, that sky will be filled at all times with a dazzling display of stars
unlike anything ever before seen by man.
As other skeptics
have noted, none of the photos supposedly brought home from the Moon show a
single star in the sky. ‘Debunkers’ have claimed that this is because the
exposure settings on the cameras didn’t allow for the stars to be captured on
film. In order to properly expose for the objects being photographed,
‘debunkers’ claim, shutter speeds had to be too fast and apertures too small to
capture the stars. And that applies, according to the ‘debunkers,’ to every
single photo taken on the Moon. Even all the ones that, according to those
same ‘debunkers,’ were improperly exposed!
NASA’s own website
has boldly stated that, “Astronauts striding across the bright lunar soil in
their sunlit spacesuits were literally dazzling. Setting a camera with the
proper exposure for a glaring spacesuit would naturally render background stars
too faint to see.”
The problem with
this claim, which should be obvious to any photographer, is that a variety
of different exposure settings would have been required to shoot all the
photos allegedly taken on the Moon (Windley acknowledged as much when he
claimed that NASA “precomputed the necessary exposures”). All of the scenes
below, for example, which are obviously not very well lit, would have required
long exposures – exposures that would have definitely captured the brilliantly
shining stars, since they would have been the brightest objects in the camera’s
field of view.
One thing that I
love about the ‘debunking’ websites, by the way, is how frequently they
contradict themselves while working their way through their ‘debunking’
checklists. The ever-pompous Phil Plait, proprietor of the appropriately named BadAstronomy.com
website, is a prime example. Fairly early on in his ‘debunking’ rant, he writes
as follows: “I’ll say this here now, and return to it many times: the Moon is
not the Earth. Conditions there are weird, and our common sense is likely to
fail us.”
Plait does indeed
return to it often, whenever it advances his argument to do so, but he just as
frequently tosses his own cardinal rule aside when that is what serves his
purposes – like, for example, just four paragraphs later, when he advises
readers to “go outside here on Earth on the darkest night imaginable and take a
picture with the exact same camera settings the astronauts used, you won’t see
any stars! It’s that simple.”
Ever the coy one,
Phil doesn’t tell us what those “camera settings” are, but he clearly implies
that the same settings were used in every photo, which clearly is not the case.
Phil also conveniently forgets that the view from the Moon is not filtered
through an atmosphere, so the stars have many times the luminosity as here on
Earth. Phil’s little experiment, therefore, is entirely invalid, since he
forgot to take into account that conditions on the Moon “are weird.” And as
with all the ‘debunkers,’ he also forgot to explain why it is that no one
thought to expose a photo or two to specifically capture the brilliant
display of stars.
Legend holds that a
dozen astronauts walked upon the surface of the Moon for varying amounts of
time. The Apollo 17 astronauts alone were purportedly there for three days. For
the duration of their visits, each of the twelve would have been treated to
what was by far the most dazzling display of stars ever seen by the human eye.
What they would have seen was many times more stars burning many times brighter
than can be seen anywhere here on planet Earth.
Collectively, the
dirty dozen took thousands of photos throughout their alleged journeys. And
yet, amazingly enough, not one of them thought it might be a good idea to snap
even a single photograph of such a wondrous sight. Of course, endless photos of
the lunar modules and the monotonous lunar surface are exciting too, but just
one or two photos of that dazzling lunar sky might have been nice as well. It’s
as if someone went to
Now let’s turn our
attention to the subject of shadows. As skeptics have noted, some of NASA’s
photos seem to depict nonparallel shadows, indicating more than one light
source. ‘Debunkers’ have claimed that all such discrepancies can be explained
by “perspective” and topographical variations on the surface of the Moon. And
truth be told, many of the images that I have seen on websites on both sides of
the aisle are ambiguous enough that such explanations can be plausibly argued.
But there are, as it turns out, images in NASA’s collection that aren’t quite
so easy to debunk.
There are, in fact,
images that demonstrate unequivocally that more than one light source was used.
Take, for example, the image below of one of the landing pods of the Apollo 11 lunar
module, allegedly parked on the surface of the Moon.
The primary light
source, meant to simulate the sun, is obviously positioned to the right of the
scene, as is clearly demonstrated by the shadows of all of the objects in the
background. But there is just as obviously a secondary light source coming from
the direction of the photographer. We know this because we can see in the
foreground that the shadows coming off the small ‘Moon rocks’ point away from
us. We know it also because we can see the light being reflected off of the
gold foil wrap onto the ground in front of the pod. But we know it most of all
because we can actually see the light reflected in the foil wrap on the leg
of the pod!
The shadows in the
foreground and in the background are at nearly right angles, a phenomenon that
cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be explained away as a perceptual
problem – especially when we can clearly see the reflection of the secondary
light! One other question concerning this particular photo: how do you
suppose you would go about capturing such a low-angle shot with a chest-mounted
camera? Was the astronaut/photographer standing in a foxhole?
The other issue
involving shadows concerns the fact that, in the majority of the photos
allegedly taken on the Moon, objects lying in the shadows are clearly visible
even though, due to the Moon’s lack of atmosphere and the fact that sunlight
therefore does not scatter, those shadowed areas should be completely black.
The Moon, you see, is kind of a black and white world. If something is in the
direct path of the unfiltered sunlight, it should be well lit (on one side); if
it’s not, it should be as black as NASA’s starless lunar sky.
The ‘debunkers,’ of
course, have an explanation for this. Let’s turn once again to BadAstronomy.com for that
explanation, since that seems to be the website that all the other ‘debunking’
websites consistently reference and link to, the one that all the major media
outlets endorse, and the one that even NASA apparently refers skeptics to.
According to the site, “The lunar dust has a peculiar property: it tends to
reflect light back in the direction from where it came.” Plait them goes on to
provide the following explanation of the lighted shadows phenomenon: “Let’s say
the sun is off to the right in a picture. It is illuminating the right side of
the lander, and the left is in shadow. However, the sunlight falling beyond the
lander on the left is being reflected back toward the Sun. That light hits the
surface and reflects to the right and up, directly onto the shadowed part of
the lander.”
In the previously cited example, Plait managed
to make it through four entire paragraphs before contradicting himself. Here he
has easily shattered that record by, incredibly enough, contradicting himself
in back-to-back sentences! And this, keep in kind, seems to be the best
‘debunker’ that NASA has to offer (it is unclear whether Plait is a paid shill
or simply a useful idiot; it other words, it is unclear whether he actually
believes the stuff he writes or whether he is knowingly lying his ass off, but
the latter seems far more likely).
Plait is right on
the money when he says that the light falling beyond the LM on the left would
be reflected “back toward the sun.” Unfortunately, he then immediately
contradicts himself by claiming that that same light would be reflected “to the
right,” onto the module. The only way that that could happen, as Plait surely
knows, is if the light were to shine through the lander and reflect off
the shaded portion of the soil. But that makes no sense, of course, just as
Phil’s explanation makes no sense.
Light does not
disperse on the Moon, as Plait himself notes elsewhere on his website. And the
surface of the Moon (or at least what passes for the surface of the Moon in
NASA's photos) is not a very reflective surface, as can be clearly discerned in
the photographs. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that the Moon is a
very selectively reflective surface, with the light choosing to reflect only on
the astronauts and on flags and other patriotoc symbols.
Not too
surprisingly, Plait once again invites readers to reproduce the effect right
here at home, completely ignoring the fact that, as he himself has
acknowledged, light behaves in entirely different ways here on Earth than it
does on the Moon. Plait also claims that, “A nifty demonstration of the shadow
filling was done by Ian Goddard and can be found here. His demos are great and
really drive the point home.” In truth, Goddard’s “nifty demonstrations” are
entirely dependent upon the effects of atmosphere causing the light to
disperse, and thus they have no validity whatsoever.
I forgot to mention
in the earlier discussion, by the way, that Plait also appealed to readers to
conduct an Earth-bound experiment to ‘debunk’ the diverging shadows conundrum.
According to Phil, “You can experience this for yourself; go outside on a clear
day when the Sun is low in the sky and compare the direction of the shadows of
near and far objects. You’ll see that they appear to diverge. Here is a major
claim of the HBs that you can disprove all by yourself!”
Here is another
experiment that Plait might want to try himself: go outside during the daytime
on any day of your choosing and look up at the sky. If it is absolutely jet
black, then feel free to continue advising your readers to conduct Moon
simulations here at home. If it is blue, however (or gray, or white, or pretty
much any color other than black), then stop pretending as though conditions on
the Moon can be replicated here on Earth when we all know better (or we all
should).
And when you’re done
with that experiment? Give the camera-to-the-chest challenge a try and let
everyone know how well that works out for you. And try to get some of those
low-angle shots that NASA likes.
The truth is that
even though a limited amount of light would reflect into the shadows, there is
still way too much detail visible in the shadows in virtually all of NASA’s
photos – if the arguments that NASA and Plait put forth earlier are at all
accurate. As readers will recall, the earlier claim was that the lunar surface
and the astronauts’ spacesuits were so dazzlingly bright in the unfiltered
sunlight that very fast shutter speeds and very small apertures were required
to avoid overexposing the shots.
The problem for
NASA and its attack dogs is that you can’t have it both ways. If the camera is
stopped down to avoid overexposing extremely bright highlights, it cannot
simultaneously capture full detail in the shadows. And if the aperture and
shutter speeds are set to capture detail in the shadows, the camera would necessarily
also capture the brilliant stars, which would be far brighter than anything
lying in the lunar shadows. Other planets would be pretty hard to miss in the
lunar sky as well, though none can be seen in any of NASA’s photos.
Do you remember, by
the way, what Windley told us earlier about the relationship between the
aperture setting and depth of field? The basic rule is that the smaller the
aperture setting, the greater the depth of field will be. With a wide aperture,
conversely, the photo will have little depth of field. That is why portrait
photographers tend to shoot with the lens wide open, to deliberately isolate
the subject from foreground and background elements. Landscape photographers,
on the other hand, stop the lens down to keep the entire scene in focus.
With that bit of
basic photographic knowledge in hand, it is fairly easy to determine whether
NASA’s photographs were, in fact, taken with a very small aperture setting. And
a good place to start, I suppose, is with the very first photo allegedly taken
by a man standing on lunar soil. Below is what is alleged to be Armstrong’s
very first attempt at lunar photography, just after climbing down from the
module.
First off, I think
we can all agree that, under the circumstances, it’s a pretty damn good first
effort. There are problems right off the bat, of course, with the fact that the
shadows are obviously lit with a diffused secondary light source, or else we
wouldn’t be able to see the top of the bag, or the United States sign, or the
shadowed side of the landing strut, but what we’re really looking for here is
depth of field, which this photo has very little of. The photographer has
focused on the
Moving on to
Armstrong’s second alleged photo, seen below, we again find that there is very
little depth of field. Both the foreground and the background are quite blurry,
indicating that it clearly was not taken with a small aperture setting. And yet
there is nary a star to be seen.
Before moving on,
there is one more of Armstrong’s photos that I feel obligated to present here.
It is, after all, his masterpiece, as well as being probably the most iconic of
all the Apollo photos. I am talking, of course, about the so-called “Man on the
Moon” shot of cohort Buzz Aldrin, seen below (which is probably not actually
Aldrin; my guess is that the same two actors did all the Moonwalking in the
videos and photos from the alleged missions).
We must first, of
course, compliment Neil on the awesome composition. It hardly looks staged at
all. But there are problems here. Once again, I’m just not seeing the depth of
field that Windley promised us. It’s also pretty hard not to notice that Buzz’s
spacesuit isn’t pressurized. Furthermore, the surface of the 'Moon' is quite
unevenly lit, indicating that the light source used was much closer than the
sun. And then there is the noticeable lack of any shadowing on Buzz’s
spacesuit. He’s casting a shadow on the ground, but there is no corresponding
shadowing of his body. Even here on Earth, that is only possible with a
secondary light source.
There are some
photos in NASA’s collection that were taken without a secondary light source,
so we do know what fake Moon landing pictures should look like. The action shot
below of the lunar rover, for example, was taken without a secondary light to
fill in the shadows. The shadows still aren’t quite as dark as they would be on
the Moon, but the difference between a fake Moon shot taken with a fill light
and a fake Moon shot taken without a fill light couldn’t be more obvious.
NASA liked the “Man
on the Moon” image so much, by the way, that they essentially restaged it for
the Apollo 12 mission. As can be seen below, a secondary light was used for
that shot as well. Without the fill light, there is simply no way that a
portion of the astronaut’s spacesuit would not be shadowed, as it is in the
rover photo above.
Moving on then to
the next issue, we have the mystery of the disappearing crosshairs. The
problem, according to skeptics, is that the crosshair reference marks, which
were etched into the camera’s lenses and therefore should always appear on top
of any objects in the photos, sometimes disappear behind those objects.
Plait actually gets
this one correct in explaining the phenomenon as a problem of overexposure and
contrast. When some of the brighter objects in the photos are overexposed, the
fine crosshairs tend to get washed out. That is in fact a reasonable
explanation for the effect (by the way, I mentioned before that I was not a
rocket scientist; I am, however, a photographer).
The claim that the
crosshairs should be visible presupposes that NASA added objects to the photos,
creating composites. I seriously doubt though that that would have happened.
The scenes appear to have been very carefully staged before the photos
were taken, so there would have been no need for cutting and pasting. And if
NASA had planned on adding additional elements to the photos, I doubt that they
would have complicated that process by using cameras with crosshairs; it would
have been much easier to create the composites first and then overlay the grid
marks on top of them.
However … the same
can certainly not be said of the images that purport to show various parts of
the ship flying through space. Take the image below, for example, which is
supposed to be a two-dimensional rendering of a three-dimensional scene of the
command and service modules in lunar orbit. If it were an actual
three-dimensional scene, the spaceship would be 69 miles above the lunar
surface – which would, I would think, make it difficult for a portion of that
lunar terrain to obscure part of the ship’s S-band antennae assembly.
The shot, as can be
seen in the enlargement below, is clearly a composite. And not even a very good
one. So it is entirely possible that some of the photos allegedly shot on
the Moon are composites as well. I obviously haven’t studied every one of them.
I’m just saying that the ones that I have seen that have disappearing
crosshairs do not appear to be composites.
The next problem
with the NASA photos is that some of them seem to have identical backgrounds
but different foregrounds. As Phil Plait explains, “In one [photo], they show
the lunar lander with a mountain in the background. They then show another
picture of the same mountain, but no lander in the foreground at all. The
astronauts could not have taken either picture before landing, of course, and
after it lifts off the lander leaves the bottom section behind. Therefore, there
would have been something in the second image no matter what, and the
foreground could not be empty.”
Plait begins his
debunking by stating, rather hilariously: “As always, repeat after me: the Moon
is not the Earth.” Plait goes on to claim that distances are very difficult to
judge on the Moon and that the two photographs were actually taken from much
different angles, and yet the background remains virtually unchanged because,
despite appearances, it is a really, really long ways away. Either that, or one
of the astronauts was really David Copperfield.
The two photographs
appear below. I’ll leave it to readers to decide whether, as Plait claims, the
‘mountains’ are in fact many, many times further away from the lander than the
lander is from the photographer. And I’ll do so while noting that Phil provides
neither the photographs nor a link to them, but instead asks readers to accept
what he says on faith. I wonder why he would do that if he were so sure of his
conclusions? I also wonder why, in the final photo, the lander appears to be
parked much closer to the 'mountains' than Plait would have us believe.
Wagging the Moondoggie, Part V
October
1, 2009
by David McGowan
Stars are not the
only thing missing in the Moon photos. Also conspicuously absent is any
indication that the lunar modules actually landed in the locations in which
they were photographed. Specifically, there is no crater visible under any of
the modules, despite the fact that NASA’s own artist renderings clearly showed
the presence of a substantial crater. Also, not a speck of dust appears to have
been displaced by the 10,000 lb reverse-thrust engine that powered the alleged
descent.
NASA’s artist
renderings also depict a considerable quantity of smoke and flames shooting out
from the bottom of the modules, though nothing of the sort is visible in the
purported video footage of the first
landing of a lunar module, allegedly shot from inside the module as it set
down on lunar soil. In addition, despite the ridiculously close proximity of
the immensely powerful rocket engine, no noise from that engine can be heard on
the video.
As can be seen in
the photo above, the area directly under what is supposed to be the nozzle of
the descent stage engine is completely undisturbed. Not only is there no
crater, there is no sign of scorching and none of the small ‘Moon rocks’ and
not a speck of ‘lunar soil’ has been displaced! And if you refer back to the
earlier close-up of the module’s landing pod, you will see that not so much as
a single grain of ‘lunar soil’ settled onto the lunar modules while they were
setting down.
Your initial response
to this may well be, “Well, duh! ... why shouldn't the surface of the Moon be
undisturbed?”
Glad you asked. The
answer is that the lunar modules were not placed upon the Moon by the hand of
God. They had to actually land there. And in order for them to land
there in one piece, they had to make use of powerful reverse-thrust rockets. If
they hadn’t, they would have made landings roughly comparable to a piano
falling off the balcony of a high-rise apartment building.
“But,” you say,
“isn't the gravitational pull of the Moon considerably less than that of the
Earth?” Of course it is, but that does not render objects weightless. A vehicle
with a curb weight of 33,000 pounds here on Earth (what the lunar modules
weighed, according to NASA) still weighs close to three tons on the Moon, so
it’s not going to make a very soft landing without assistance. And the
assistance options were necessarily limited.
NASA could not have
used parachutes, such as were used with the returning command modules, because parachutes
don’t really work without air, so that would have been a dead giveaway that the
landings were faked. They also couldn’t use a helicopter-type rotor, because
those also don’t work in an environment devoid of atmosphere. What they
allegedly used then to provide the necessary ‘brakes’ was a powerful,
reverse-thrust rocket engine.
That is why, in the
artist renderings of the landings (the landings obviously couldn’t be filmed,
because no one was supposed to be there yet), an enormous blast of flame and
hot gas is seen shooting out of the bottom of the module. This massive reverse
force would have served to counteract the effects of the Moon's gravitational
pull, allowing the module to gently set down in the lunar dust, unharmed and
intact. And needless to say, that is kind of important when that very same
vehicle is your only ride home.
The ‘debunkers,’ by
the way, like to pretend as if the hoax theorists made those artist renderings
up themselves, as if to say, “Hey, look over here! I just made up this drawing
of what I think the landings should look like and NASA’s landings looked
nothing like my drawing!” The reality though is that NASA’s own artists
provided those images, based on the way that NASA claimed the modules would
perform. What the ‘debunkers’ are telling you, in other words, is that NASA
didn’t really understand how their own technology was supposed to work.
Given the manner in
which the modules allegedly landed, the problem here is that – unless the
landing surface was paved with, say, concrete – an inordinate amount of
material should have been displaced by the force of the rocket blast as the
module was setting down. As Plait likes to say, you can easily verify this
yourself. All you have to do is get hold of a rocket with 10,000 pounds of
thrust (there probably are some surviving members of the von Braun clan that
can hook you up), and head out to the nearest desert location.
Once you find a
suitable spot to conduct this experiment, hold the rocket aloft (you might want
to wear gloves and an asbestos suit for this part, but it’s up to you) and fire
that son-of-a-bitch up, directing the blast towards the desert floor (it might
also be a good idea to grab on to a stationary object with your free hand and
hold on real tight). Let it rip for whatever you think would be a reasonable
amount of time to complete a landing procedure, and then shut it off.
If you've done this
correctly, the result will be a fairly large crater and a blinding dust storm.
That dust will, of course, eventually settle, leaving a heavy coating of dust
on you and your rocket. You may also notice that the blast has lent the desert
floor a distinctive scorched look. If you run the experiment for too long, you
may even find that the intense heat has fused the cratered sand into something
resembling a large bowl of glass.
The point here, of
course, is that nothing of the sort is evident in the pictures allegedly
brought back from the Moon. The lunar surface is, as noted, completely
undisturbed and the modules are as clean as if they had just rolled off the
assembly line. It appears as though they did not land at all, but were rather
set in place with a crane or other such device. And of course we all know that
there were very few crane operators on the Moon in the late ‘60s and early
‘70s.
How then did the modules get there? Could it be
that the lunar surface was so compact that even the considerable force of the
rocket could not dislodge it? That might be a credible explanation were it not
for the fact that the astronauts themselves, who with the Moon's reduced
gravitational pull weighed in at about 30 pounds apiece (maybe 60 pounds each
with the additional alleged weight of their packs), made readily identifiable
footprints from the moment their feet hit the ground. It appeared, in fact, as
though the lunar soil had roughly the same consistency as baby powder. And yet,
amazingly enough, not a single grain of this soil seems to have been displaced
by the landing of the modules.
The ‘debunkers,’
naturally enough, have an explanation for this. According to them, it’s all
about throttle control. As Plait explains, “Sure, the rocket on the lander was
capable of 10,000 pounds of thrust, but they had a throttle. They fired
the rocket hard to deorbit and slow enough to land on the Moon, but they didn’t
need to thrust that hard as they approached the lunar surface; they throttled
down to about 3000 pounds of thrust.”
Plait also notes
that originally on his site he had said “that the engines also cut off early,
before the moment of touchdown, to prevent dust from getting blown around and
disturbing the Astronauts’ view of the surface. This was an incorrect
assertion.” The funny thing is though that he voiced that “incorrect assertion”
just as forcefully and as arrogantly as he voices all the other assertions on
his page – which makes sense, I guess, since everything else on his page is
incorrect as well.
Phil has obviously never landed a lunar module.
Or given much thought to how you would go about doing so. Actually, that’s probably
not true. Phil is most likely just a shameless liar. Not a particularly good
one, mind you, but you have to remember that he is working with a handicap – he
has to weave all of his ‘debunking’ arguments around NASA’s lies.
Let’s try to inject
a little sanity into this discussion, shall we? First of all, no one with an
ounce of common sense is going to cut the engine and let their three-ton
spaceship simply drop onto the lunar surface. Nor are they going to cruise on
in while progressively easing up on the throttle, effortlessly setting the
module down, as Plait claims, like “a car pulls into a parking spot,” as if
they had been landing lunar modules since the day they were born. Because the
reality is that the six astronauts who allegedly landed the six lunar modules
hadn’t done it before and they only had one chance to get it right.
And do you know
why, Phil? Because that module was their only ride home, and if they damaged it
in any way, they weren’t going home. Ever. They weren’t going to do anything
except die within days in the most desolate place imaginable. And that is why
it is perfectly obvious that, if they had really gone to the Moon, they
would not under any circumstances have landed the modules in either of the ways
that Plait has suggested.
Has anyone ever
seen a helicopter land? That is essentially how you would land a lunar module
as well. The basic technique is to line yourself up with your landing site
while hovering a fairly short distance above the ground (with the module, I presume,
you would hold your position by utilizing those clusters of horns). Then, when
you’re stabilized and lined up just where you want to be, you very slowly
ease off the throttle so as to very gently set it down. And if you’ve never
done it before, you’re definitely going to want to take your time.
And that is why
there quite obviously should be blast craters under those lunar modules. That
is why NASA itself indicated that there would be blast craters under the lunar
modules. And that is also why it is fundamentally impossible for the modules to
be as impeccably clean and dust-free as they are in all of NASA’s photos. And
no amount of spinning from the ‘debunkers’ will ever explain that away.
As previously
mentioned, there was much about the Apollo project to stand in awe of. Every
individual phase of the missions was, in and of itself, a breathtaking
technological achievement. Just blasting men into Earth orbit is a daunting
task – so much so that in the nearly half-century that has passed since the
first two nations did it (the
And achieving Earth
orbit was just the beginning. Then there was the 234,000-mile journey through
the unknown to get to the Moon – on a single tank of gas in an unshielded
spaceship. Then there was the main ship giving birth to the lunar module, and
that untested lunar module then flying down and making a perfect landing on the
surface of the Moon. Then there was that same untested lunar module blasting
off from the surface of the Moon without the assistance of any ground grew and
ascending 69 miles to attain lunar orbit. Then there was the ever-reliable
lunar module finding, catching and docking with another ship while in lunar
orbit, utilizing yet more untested technology. Then there was the command
module shedding the lunar module and then commencing that 234,000-mile journey
back home.
But as remarkable
as it was to get the astronauts safely to and from the Moon, their survival
while on the Moon was equally remarkable. To say that the Moon is an
environment incompatible with the survival of humans would be a considerable
understatement – which brings us to our next topic of discussion: those amazing
NASA Moonwalking suits.
Those suits were
able to provide the astronauts with everything they needed to stay alive in the
Moon’s harsh environment. Remember NASA’s elaborate rendering of what a Moon
work station protected from space radiation would look like? Neil and Buzz
didn’t need any of that fancy stuff because they were wearing the magic suits.
And those extreme temperatures of +260° F to -280° F? Not a problem
when you’re wearing the magic suit. Not only could they provide the cooling
needed to combat the searing temperatures in the sun, but they could also
provide the heat to counteract those frigid shadows.
As can be seen in
NASA’s photos, the egress side of the lunar modules (the side with the ladder
and hatch) was usually in the shade (though almost always well lit). What that
means is that, after traipsing around in the sun for a spell, the astronauts
would have had to step into the shadows to reenter the spacecraft. And when
they did so, those spacesuits were apparently smart enough to react instantly
and switch over from turbo-charged air conditioning to blast-furnace heating in
the blink of an eye. Awesome!
In addition to
providing radiation protection that today’s technology is unable to match, and
a climate control system that is beyond anything available in the twenty-first
century, the magic suits also provided the astronauts with breathable air,
which definitely came in handy. What the suits did, in essence, was provide the
astronauts with their own little portable, climate-controlled,
radiation-protected atmosphere.
Of course, to
actually do that (if we’re pretending that it could be done at all), the suits
would have had to have been pressurized. And it is perfectly obvious from all
the photos that the suits were not, in fact, pressurized, because if they were,
the astronauts would have looked like the Michelin Man bouncing around on the
surface of the Moon.
The magic suits had
to perform one other function as well: they had to serve as head-to-toe body
armor. Because the Moon, according to NASA, has a serious problem with drive-by
shootings from outer space. Seriously. I’m not making that up. I read it on
NASA’s own website.
In the very same
NASA post that discusses Moon rocks being constantly bombarded with absurdly
high levels of radiation, another curious admission can be found: “meteoroids
constantly bombard the Moon.” Our old friend from NASA, David McKay, explains
that “Apollo moon rocks are peppered with tiny craters from meteoroid impacts.”
NASA then explains that that “could only happen to rocks from a planet with
little or no atmosphere … like the Moon.”
“Meteoroids,” NASA
continues, “are nearly-microscopic specks of space dust that fly through space
at speeds often exceeding 50,000 mph – ten times faster than a speeding bullet.
They pack a considerable punch … The tiny space bullets can plow directly into
Moon rocks, forming miniature and unmistakable craters.”
According to NASA,
every square inch of every exposed surface of every rock allegedly gathered
from the surface of the Moon shows this pattern. By extension then, we know
that every square inch of the lunar surface is peppered with meteoroid craters.
There really is no safe place to hang out. There you are minding your own
business lining up your golf shot, and the next thing you know a meteoroid is
ripping through your spacesuit at 50,000 mph. That has to sting a little bit.
Actually, what it
would do is kill you. Almost instantaneously. Not the projectile itself, which
probably wouldn’t be lethal after passing through the spacesuit, but ripping or
puncturing your magic suit while on the Moon is certainly something that you
would want to avoid. You know that old saw about how “nature abhors a vacuum”?
How that applies here is that any penetration in your suit would result in all
the air being immediately sucked out. And then your blood would begin to boil.
And that can be rather unpleasant.
I guess the Apollo crews
really, uhmm, dodged a bullet on that one. Not one of the astronauts was hit,
nor any of the lunar modules, nor any of the lunar rovers, nor any of the
equipment that was used. I have to say here, by the way, that those Apollo guys
were studs of the highest magnitude. Did they know what they were signing up
for? What did NASA’s ads say?
“Astronauts wanted.
No experience necessary. Duties will include taking a trip to the Moon. Return
trip cannot be guaranteed. Applicant must be able to withstand levels of
radiation higher than anything that can be generated here on Earth. Applicant
must also be able to work comfortably in heat in excess of +250° F, as well as in
cooler conditions approaching -300° F. A continuous supply of
breathable air may or may not be provided by employer. Snacks and water will
necessarily be limited to what fits in employee-provided lunchbox. Rest room
facilities will not be available. The ability to dodge 50,000 MPH space bullets
is not required, but would be helpful. This is a great money-making
opportunity! Paychecks can be picked up upon return to Earth.”
The Apollo guys
didn’t have to worry about any of that, of course, because they were wearing
the magic suits. Apparently those suits were yet another example of NASA
digging deep into the well of lost 1960s technology.
A huge shout-out,
by the way, is in order here for the guys at NASA for posting that article
about the Moon rocks being bombarded with radiation and meteorites. It makes it
so much easier for me when NASA has already done so much of the work of
debunking the Moon landings.
When President
George W. Jetson announced on January 14, 2004 that
It’s not, after
all, as if we have to reinvent the wheel here. Not only have we done this
before, but we have done it safely and reliably. How could NASA possibly
improve upon the record of the Apollo missions? What could they come up with
that could outperform those vintage Saturn V rockets that made it to the Moon
damn near every time, and made it home safe every time? And how do you
improve upon a lunar module that not only performed flawlessly every time, but
that was also the very model of lightweight, compact efficiency?
When you have a
system that performs flawlessly on six incredibly technologically complex missions,
and that delivers your astronauts home safely even on the one occasion that the
system runs amok, why in the world would you toss it in the trash and start
from scratch the next time around?
According to a Fox
News report published the day after Bush’s announcement, “The effort to
return to the Moon will require building new spacecraft and sending out robotic
craft to provide materials to be used later by human explorers, say experts.” I
wonder why they would need to do that? We didn’t have to do shit like that last
time. Why does NASA keep insisting on reinventing the wheel here? Why do they
seem to have forgotten that we are old hands at this sort of thing?
Other people have
forgotten as well. Following Bush’s attempt to wag the Moondoggie, Republican
Senator Sam Brownback sternly warned, “You’ve got the Chinese saying they’re
interested – we don’t want them to beat us to the moon!” This may seem like a
rather bizarre concern, until you realize that not only is China working on
developing a Moon rocket, they are also rumored to be close to completing work
on a time machine, which will allow them to transport their Moon rocket back to
the mid-1960s and thus beat America to the Moon.
On a more serious
note, I’m guessing that since
Anyway, doesn't it
seem just a little strange that experts would now suggest that if we get to
work right away, we might be able to land men on the Moon by the year 2020?
Isn't that like saying that with a lot of hard work and a little luck, we might
be able to develop a video game as technologically advanced as Pong by the year
2025? Or that by 2030, the scientific community might produce a
battery-operated calculator small enough to fit into your pocket?
And do you think
that, if we do ‘go back,’ the voice actors will be given a better script? Will
we be given something to replace Armstrong’s cheesy “One small step” line and
Aldrin’s poetic “magnificent desolation” line? Have I mentioned, by the way,
that Donald Bowman, who worked at the
A NASA statement released in July of
this year contained a rather curious assertion: “Conspiracy theories are always
difficult to refute because of the impossibility of proving a negative.” It is
not, of course, NASA that is being asked to prove a negative, but rather those
pesky ‘conspiracy theorists.’ NASA is merely being asked to prove a positive, which
should be a relatively easy task. All they have to do is produce some actual
evidence, beginning with all those reels of tape containing the telemetry data,
the biomedical data, all voice communications, and all the original videotape.
They could also release the plans and specifications for all that fancy space
hardware. And maybe offer some kind of reasonable explanation for why so many
of the official photographs are demonstrably fraudulent.
Alternatively, they
could just send some guys back there, to prove that it can be done. It’s been
thirty-seven years and counting since the last guests on the Moon checked out.
NASA allegedly filmed that final lift-off from the Moon, by the way. In case
you haven’t seen the historic film footage, you can view it here.
It’s a very short clip and it’s actually quite funny, so be sure to check it
out.
I can’t be 100%
certain of this, of course, but I have a very strong hunch that NASA picked up
the footage off the cutting-room floor after Ed Wood had finished editing Plan
9 From Outer Space. Actually, I probably shouldn’t joke about the clip
because I do feel kind of bad for the guy that they had to leave behind to
operate the camera. I wonder how he’s doing these days?
Actually, NASA
claims that the camera was mounted on the abandoned lunar rover (even in space,
Americans are arrogant litterbugs), and that the pan and zoom functions were
operated remotely by the ground crew back on Earth. You couldn’t control your
television from across the living room in those days, but NASA could pan and
zoom a camera from 234,000 miles away. Awesome! And there apparently either
wasn’t any delay in the signal or NASA had the foresight to hire a remote
camera operator who was able to see a few seconds into the future.
You really have to
hand it to the NASA boys – those guys think of everything.
George W. Jetson’s
visionary proposal envisioned the Moon as a steppingstone for manned travel to
Mars. How that works though is a bit of a mystery to me. The distance between
the Earth and Mars varies depending upon where the planets are in their
respective orbits, but the minimum distance astronauts would have to travel to
reach Mars from Earth is 36,000,000 miles. And the minimum distance astronauts
would have to travel to reach Mars from the Moon is, uhmm, also 36,000,000
miles. So I guess what I’m wondering is: what exactly would be gained by making
a pit stop on the Moon?
Are there gas
stations there to fill up the tank? Some nice hotels maybe where the astronauts
could get some R&R? A couple of hot space hookers? How would making a
technologically complex landing on the Moon, followed by a lift-off that would
require an excessive amount of additional fuel, help get our boys to Mars?
Let’s take a big
bite out of the reality sandwich here, shall we? The human animal is quite
simply not equipped for space travel beyond low-Earth orbit. There is virtually
no chance that we are going to send men to the Moon anytime soon. Despite what
NASA would like you to believe, the combination of lethal space radiation,
lethal temperatures, a complete lack of breathable air, and a lower
gravitational attraction that produces serious health problems, including rapid
tissue and bone degeneration, is simply not compatible with human existence.
Neither is getting pelted with “space bullets.”Neither is a lack of food and
water.
And as for Mars? A
roundtrip ticket there would earn you about 75,000,000 frequent flyer miles. I
wouldn’t count on that happening anytime soon.
Astronaut Steve
Lindsey, after being chosen to command the final planned mission of the space
shuttle, had this to say: “Everybody at NASA feels the same way. We’re in favor
of taking the next step and getting out of low-Earth orbit.” So while
technology in every other realm of human existence continues to take giant
strides forward, everyone at NASA appears to want to take a big step backwards.
To 1969.
Before bidding
adieu, I have one final note to add: a certain Dr. Thomas Gold was an early
skeptic of the feasibility of landing on the Moon. He made headlines prior to
the alleged flight of Apollo 11 when he predicted that any attempt at a Moon
landing would be disastrous. NASA, of course, purportedly proved the good
doctor wrong.
Longtime
readers will remember that Dr. Gold was America’s most prominent proponent of
the abiotic theory of oil and gas production, and that he went and dropped dead
just before the ‘Peak Oil’ propaganda started to heat up. Dr. Gold was recently
proven
to be correct on the origins of so-called ‘fossil fuels.’ The article,
curiously enough, refers to the research as “revolutionary” – which it is, I
suppose, if you ignore the fact that the Soviets and Ukrainians did the same
research and drew the same conclusions some fifty years ago.
We all know that
that can’t be true, however, because it would be impossible to keep a secret of
that magnitude from the entire Western world … right?
Wagging the Moondoggie, Part
VI
October
13, 2009
by David McGowan
“It took pilots 50 years to progress from
scarf-and-goggles barnstorming to setting down footprints on the
David Nolan writing in Popular Mechanics,
March 2007 (according to the latest from NASA, we won’t be returning even after
another half-century has passed)
It was to be such a big
event that NASA decided to throw an all-night party at its
According to a media
advisory, “NASA’s Lunar CRater Observation and
Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission will come to a dramatic conclusion at
approximately 4:30 a.m. PDT (7:30 a.m. EDT) on Friday, October 9, 2009, with
the impact of the LCROSS Centaur upper stage rocket and four minutes later, the
impact of the LCROSS Shepherding Spacecraft into Cabeus
crater near the moon’s south pole. To mark the event,
The news media, the
scientific community and amateur astronomers were all suitably excited. Clear
back in June, when the mission was launched, Scientific
American explained to readers how “Scientists expect the blast to be so
powerful that a huge plume of debris will be ejected.” The second impact, the
magazine further explained, would produce “a spectacular explosion that should
be visible in amateur astronomer’s telescopes.”
The plan was that
the first impact would send up a huge cloud of lunar dust and debris, and the
larger spacecraft would then follow the same course, directly through the
cloud, before necessarily crashing into the surface of the Moon. It would only
have four minutes to gather data and transmit it back to Earth. As the LA
Times explained the day before the big event, “if all goes according to
plan, the spacecraft will fly through the cloud of debris that will rise above
the lunar surface and linger there briefly. As it passes through the cloud, the
satellite’s nine instruments will analyze the dust and debris for evidence of
water, before crashing itself.”
So in addition to
providing a spectacular show, the mission was also going to feed the American
public’s need for instant gratification by providing relatively quick results.
In that short four-minute span of time, we would gather all the data needed to
determine within days if there is water frozen in deep craters on the Moon. The
Times noted that, “Scientists preparing for the collision could hardly
contain their excitement over what might turn up in that short time.” The crowd
at
I would have guessed that very few, if any,
amateur astronomers have telescopes 10 inches or longer, but I could be wrong.
Or maybe I’m thinking of something else.
In addition to the
gathering at the
I would hope not.
How hard, after all, could it possibly be? A full forty years ago we were able
to set a manned spacecraft gently down on the Moon – and then fire the engine
back up and fly home! Now, with four decades of additional experience and
vastly improved technology, all we had to do was send an unmanned spacecraft on
a one-way mission to crash into the Moon. How could NASA possibly screw that
up?
The media kept referring to the LCROSS mission
as the “bombing” of the Moon. Given that NASA is essentially an arm of the US Department
of Defense, this should have been a cakewalk. The last time I checked, no one
knew more about dropping bombs and firing missiles than the
With the
As it turned out, the front-page space that all the major media
outlets had undoubtedly set aside for the dazzling images wasn’t needed after
all. With all eyes on the Moon, what all those viewing parties and all those
amateur astronomers and all those giant telescopes saw was … absolutely
nothing. The first impact, which was supposed to be captured on live video
beamed back from the second spacecraft, never materialized. As the LA Times
politely put it, “the plume failed to show on screen.” There is an explanation,
of course: “Some scientists suspect the camera settings on the second
spacecraft were incorrect, preventing it from spotting the plume.”
Yes, that must be it. You would think though
that, what with the importance of the second craft being able to see the plume
so that it could then fly through it, they would have gotten that detail right.
But apparently they just don’t have the quality control over at NASA that they
had back in 1969. As for why none of the amateur or professional telescopes
aimed at the Moon captured the first plume, or the allegedly even larger second
plume, NASA is going to have to get back to you on that. But probably not right
away.
The Times
was quick to reassure readers that “scientists might still pluck success from
the mission’s anticlimactic ending … At a news conference more than two hours
after the crash, mission scientists confirmed that the Centaur rocket made a
crater when it hit, and that crater was about the expected size of more than 60
feet across.” There is no way to confirm that claim, of course, since the ship
allegedly impacted inside a two-mile deep, pitch-black crater that hasn’t seen
daylight for millions of years – which is exactly why it was targeted.
And how pointless, by the way, was this
mission? The goal was supposedly to discover if there are large deposits of
frozen water on the Moon that could be mined to provide water, breathable
oxygen and rocket fuel for future lunar exploration and colonization. The
water, if it exists, is at the bottom of deep, permanently dark craters where
the temperature is said to hover at around -400° F. At those temperatures, the scientific
community tells us, the water would be frozen as hard as rock.
Even if we assume that NASA could overcome all
the problems with getting astronauts to the Moon and guaranteeing their
survival while there, how exactly would they recover that water? Toss bombs in
the craters and then try to run around and gather all the chunks of ice before
they melt in the +280° F heat of the sun? Drive down into the craters in one of those folding
dune buggies with floodlights, a couple of battery-powered jackhammers, some
warm clothes and a shitload of batteries? Or are we going to build a giant,
mechanized water-extraction facility of some kind with parts brought up
one-at-a-time from Earth? How long do you suppose that will take?
It’s anyone’s guess what the real purpose of
this mission was, but whatever goals were being pursued, it doesn’t seem to
have gone so well. All that can be said for sure is that NASA appears to be but
a shadow of its former self. Once upon a time, we were able to blast men off
into space and then turn on our televisions and watch them, just four days
later, stroll around on the Moon! Nowadays we send off an empty spaceship, wait
patiently for nearly four months, and then watch as NASA fails to successfully
crash that empty ship into the Moon.
Since the news media fell asleep at the wheel
and failed to bring you the spectacular images that had been promised, I
dropped by NASA’s
website to pick up a few and bring them to you. The following three photos
were labeled as “LCROSS Impact Images.” Following that is a link to NASA’s
thrilling live video footage. Enjoy the show. It’s quite dazzling.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndZ483ztduE
Did anyone notice, by the way, all the other
‘lunar modules’ that are recognizable in the larger image captured by NASA's
LRO? As will be recalled, they are recognizable by the long shadows they cast.
There are, most notably, probably nearly a dozen of them clustered around the
crater to the right of the image. I wonder how the boys at NASA figured out
which one was the ‘real’ lunar module?
Wagging the Moondoggie, Part
VII
November
21, 2009
by David McGowan
“The LEM (Lunar Excursion Module) was coated in
Mylar. To many engineers, the final vehicle was an insult to every notion of
what a spacecraft should look like … It was one of the weirdest and most
improbable flying machines ever conceived.”
Moon Machines: The Lunar Module, Science
Channel, 2008
While idly flipping through the channels the
other day, I noticed that the Science Channel was planning to air a
couple of Moon landing documentaries. Luckily, I was a bit bored that day so I
decided to tune in, though I was not really expecting much beyond the standard
claims that have been made in numerous other documentary films focusing on the
alleged Apollo missions.
I was pleasantly surprised, however, to find
that the two hours that I spent watching the Science Channel spin the
Moon landings was time well spent, seeing as how I picked up quite a few facts
that I had not previously come across in other source material. The most
important thing that I learned was a lesson, of sorts: never attempt to mock
the Apollo missions – for the simple reason that all such efforts will be in
vain, since no claim made in jest, no matter how absurd, can ever top the
lunacy of actual claims made by NASA and its subsidiaries.
The better of the two televised documentaries
was Moon Machines: The Lunar Module, which turned out to be part of a
series which, as luck would have it, is readily available on Netflix (with all
six hours conveniently packaged on a single DVD). Netflix seemed to think that
I might also enjoy Nova’s two-hour To the Moon and the Discovery
Channel’s multi-part When We Left Earth, so I added those to my
queue as well. Having now absorbed everything that Moon Machines, To
the Moon, When We Left Earth and First on the Moon: The Untold
Story have to offer, I realize that my debunking of the alleged Moon
landings wasn’t really as thorough as it could have been, so another chapter is
on order. Or maybe two. Or possibly three. Perhaps even four.
Moon Machines: The Lunar Module began by having a talking-head
named Josh Stoff explain to viewers that when JFK delivered his historic speech
on May 25 of 1961 – the one in which he boldly proclaimed that Americans would
walk on the Moon by the close of the decade – “The United States had a total of
fifteen minutes of space flight experience … and now we were committed to go to
the Moon … We knew nothing about the Moon.”
Indeed, if Kennedy had delivered that speech
just three weeks earlier, Stoff’s statement would have to be modified to: “The
United States had no space flight experience at all, and now we were
committed to going to the Moon!” On May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard had become the
first American in space when he took a 15-minute ride in a Mercury capsule that
basically went up and then came right back down. That mission was a hastily
assembled “Hey, look! We can do it too!” response to the USSR having put the
first man in space on April 12, 1961.
Shepard’s accomplishment didn’t even come close
to what the Soviets had achieved. Yuri Gagarin had ridden the Vostok 1 into
low-Earth orbit, completing a single orbit in 1 hour and 48 minutes. In
comparison, Shepard had essentially taken a short ride aboard an oversized
bottle-rocket. It would take another four months, until September 13, 1961, for
the United States to get its first unmanned spacecraft to complete an
Earth orbit. It would not be until near the end of February 1962, nearly a year
after Gagarin’s flight, that NASA would claim to have gotten an American (John
Glenn) into orbit.
On the day of Gagarin’s historic flight, a
clearly uncomfortable President Kennedy fielded questions from a concerned
press corps. Asked if we intended to beat the Russians to the Moon, Kennedy
testily replied that “we first have to make a judgment, based on the best
information we can get, whether we can be ahead of the Russians to the
Moon.” Asked a follow-up question about the Saturn rockets already under development
by the von Braun team, an obviously annoyed Kennedy replied that “Saturn is
still going to put us well behind.”
Konrad Dannenberg, a rocket propulsion engineer
who worked alongside von Braun for some 33 years, first in Nazi Germany and
then in Huntsville, Alabama, readily agreed that “They [the Soviets] were
really in all areas way ahead of us.” So despite the frequent claims of
‘debunkers’ that it was actually a close race, or that the Soviets weren’t
really leading at all, everyone from the President to the scientists who
actually designed and built the machines that allegedly took us to the Moon
agreed at the time that the Soviets were far ahead of the U.S. in virtually all
aspects of the space race.
The ‘debunkers’ are right about one
thing though: the list of Soviet firsts that I included in an earlier post in
this series is not entirely accurate. Truth be told, I appear to have sold the
Soviets short by leaving out a number of the early accomplishments of their
space program, including a couple of firsts that the United States was unable
to match for decades. Here then is a more complete list of Russian firsts in
the years leading up to and during the alleged Apollo missions:
May 15, 1957 – The
Soviet Union tests the R-7 Semyorka, the world’s first intercontinental
ballistic missile.
October 4, 1957 – The
Soviets launch Sputnik 1, Earth’s first manmade satellite.
November 3, 1957 – A
dog named Laika becomes the first animal to enter Earth orbit aboard Sputnik 2.
Unfortunately for Laika though, she isn’t booked for a return flight.
January 2, 1959 – Luna
1 becomes the first manmade object to leave Earth’s orbit.
September 13, 1959 –
After an intentional crash landing, Luna 2 becomes the first manmade object on
the Moon.
October 6, 1959 –
Luna 3 provides mankind with its first look at the far side of the Moon.
August 20, 1960 –
Belka and Strelka, aboard Sputnik 5, are the first animals to safely return
from Earth orbit.
October 14, 1960 –
Marsnik 1, the first probe sent from Earth to Mars, blasts off.
February 12, 1961 –
Venera 1, the first probe sent from Earth to Venus, blasts off.
April 12, 1961 – Yuri
Gagarin, riding aboard the Vostok 1, becomes the first man in Earth orbit.
May 19, 1961 – Venera
1 performs the first ever fly-by of another planet (Venus).
August 6, 1961 –
Gherman Titov, aboard the Vostok 2, becomes the first man to spend over a day
in space and the first to sleep in Earth orbit.
August 11 & 12,
1962 – Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 are launched, the first simultaneous manned space
flights (though they do not rendezvous).
October 12, 1964 –
Voskhod 1, carrying the world’s first multi-man crew, is launched.
March 18, 1965 –
Aleksei Leonov, riding aboard the Voskhod 2, performs the first space-walk.
February 3, 1966 –
Luna 9 becomes the first probe to make a controlled, ‘soft’ landing on the
Moon.
March 1, 1966 –
Venera 3, launched November 16, 1965, becomes the first probe to impact another
planet (Venus).
April 3, 1966 – Luna
10 becomes the first manmade lunar satellite.
October 30, 1967 –
Cosmos 186 and Cosmos 188 become the first unmanned spacecraft to rendezvous
and dock in Earth orbit. The United States will not duplicate this maneuver for
nearly four decades.
January 16, 1969 –
Soyuz 4 and Soyuz 5 become the first manned spacecraft to dock in Earth orbit
and the first to exchange crews.
November 17, 1970 –
Lunokhod 1, the first robotic rover to land on and explore an extraterrestrial
body, lands on the Moon. Twenty-seven years later, the United States lands it’s
very first robotic rover on Mars.
December 15, 1970 –
Venera 7 becomes the first probe to make a soft landing on another planet
(Venus).
April 19, 1971 –
Salyut 1 becomes the world’s first orbiting space station.
August 22, 1972 –
Mars 2 becomes the first probe to reach the surface of Mars.
I feel much better now that we have set the
record straight on all of that. And I’m sure that the ‘debunkers,’ who in the
past have described much shorter lists of Soviet firsts as ‘padded,’ will feel
much better as well.
The Soviets achieved the first fly-by of the
Moon, launched the first craft to impact the Moon, were the first to make a
soft landing on the Moon, put the first object into lunar orbit, and remain, to
this day, the only nation to land and operate a robotic vehicle on the Moon. It
should now make perfect sense to everyone then why the Soviets, who were ahead
of us in virtually all aspects of space exploration, in some cases by decades,
never landed a man on the Moon. Or even sent a man to orbit the Moon. Come to
think of it, they never even sent a dog to the Moon.
It would be difficult to argue that the
Russians didn’t have adequate funding for their space program, or that they
didn’t have some of the finest scientific minds on the planet working for that
space program, or that they didn’t have the will and desire to succeed. What
they were lacking, I’m thinking, is access to Hollywood production facilities.
Returning then to our prior topic of discussion …
On April 14, 1961, two days after Gagarin’s historic flight, a
panicked Kennedy reportedly inquired of NASA what goal in space we might be
able to attain before the Soviets. According to legend, Kennedy was told that
America’s best hope to beat the Russians was with a manned Moon landing. The reasoning
was that the Soviets were so far ahead of us that they would surely trounce us
in achieving any milestones attainable in Earth orbit (space-walks, prolonged
flight, rendezvous and docking maneuvers, etc.), so our best bet was to shoot
for a far-off goal.
The problem, however, was that none of the
technology required to attain such a goal existed at that time. We did not have
the rocket technology to power such a mission, nor the navigation system to
guide such a journey, nor the digital computer technology to control that
navigation system, nor the spacesuit technology to protect our astronauts, nor
the technology to rendezvous or dock in space, nor the technology to create a
dune buggy capable of operating on the Moon, nor the technology to design and
create a lunar landing vehicle. NASA had been in existence for less than three
years, having been created in 1958 as a direct response to the USSR’s launch of
Sputnik.
Nevertheless, just eight summers later, we
allegedly did indeed land men on the Moon. In just eight short years, starting
essentially from scratch, we designed, built, tested, refined and perfected
every piece of technology required to put men on the Moon, and we did it so
well in that brief period of time that by July of 1969, every cog in the wheel
performed nearly flawlessly. And yet now, with a half-century of space
exploration now under our belts, and with all the necessary technology long
perfected, NASA advises us that it would take twice as long to put a man on the
Moon. But I may have already pointed that out.
Following Kennedy’s bold declaration, nobody
really had any clue how to get astronauts to the Moon and back. One school of
thought held that what was needed was a humongous rocket ship that would fly all
the way there, land, and then fly all the way back. The main drawback to this
proposal was that it was completely preposterous. The biggest problem was that
it would require somehow landing a 300-foot tall cylinder in a perfectly
upright position. But that wasn’t the only problem. Getting in and out of a
capsule mounted atop a tall rocket ship can be a bit of a problem as well. And
re-launching that rocket without a launch pad and ground crew can be a real
bitch.
Another idea called for the launch of two large
rocket ships, one primarily carrying fuel and the other carrying our fearless
astronauts. The idea was that the two vehicles would rendezvous and dock in
Earth orbit, the manned ship would refuel from the other ship, and our boys
would then leave for the Moon. Why this was deemed necessary is anyone’s guess,
given that the ‘debunkers’ generally claim that you don’t really need much fuel
once you leave Earth orbit since you just kind of fall through the vacuum of
space until you get to the Moon.
Amidst all the preposterous ideas on how to get
our guys to the Moon ahead of the Russkies, one lone voice in the wilderness,
an “obscure engineer” by the name of John Houbolt, had been promoting a
radically different plan: build a second lightweight spacecraft, to be carried
aboard the larger mother ship, that would be capable of shuttling down to the
Moon and back while the larger ship remained in lunar orbit!
As Moon Machine’s narrator solemnly
intoned, “There was only one massive drawback: to get back to Earth
would require the lunar shuttle to rendezvous with the mother ship in lunar
orbit.” As Stoff added, “What scared everybody about it was you had to
rendezvous and dock around the Moon. You’re a quarter of a million miles
from Earth! And he’s proposing this in 1961, when we had no space flight
experience and just rendezvousing in Earth orbit concerned everybody.”
Needless to say, everyone scoffed at Houbolt’s
radical suggestion. The very vocal opposition at NASA was led by Mr. von Braun,
who categorically and heatedly dismissed the notion of completing a lunar orbit
rendezvous (the idea, by the way, appears to have been cribbed from an early
Soviet study). But Houbolt was allegedly a tenacious sort who wasn’t about to
give up easily, even going so far as to write directly to Bob Seamans at the
top of the NASA food chain on November 15, 1961. Houbolt was, of course,
immediately taken seriously by the NASA brass, who promptly decreed that his
ideas should get a serious hearing.
A major turning point was supposedly reached
when a meeting was convened in June of 1962. During that historic meeting, we
are informed by the narrator of Moon Machines, “von Braun took everybody
by surprise.” Wernher’s own team gave a detailed presentation to the assembled
scientists, after which von Braun thanked and profusely complimented them –
before telling them that he was going to recommend that NASA not go with
his own team’s concept. Instead, he was going to recommend the so-called LRO,
or lunar orbit rendezvous, option!
As yet another authoritative talking-head named
Bill Causey explained, “It was such a surprise to everybody that even his own
staff people, several days later, had a private meeting with him and they said,
‘Why in the world did you say that?’” Why indeed? My guess is that
someone finally passed Wernher the memo explaining that he needed to get over
the silly notion that the plan was to actually go to the Moon. What was
needed, instead, was a plan that could be feasibly sold to the American people.
Curiously, Mr. Houbolt, who we are led to
believe was single-handedly responsible for selling NASA on the lunar module
concept, and without whom we would have probably never allegedly sent men to
the Moon at all, has been all but forgotten. That seems a rather strange way
for history to treat the man whose brilliant mind allegedly opened the door for
man to walk on the Moon.
The man whose name is most commonly referenced
when discussing the lunar module, by the way, is a gent by the name of Thomas
Kelly, who served as the project manager for the design, construction and
testing of the LEM. Kelly happened to be a member of the Quill and Dagger
Society, Cornell University’s answer to Yale University’s notorious Skull and
Bones. I just thought maybe I should mention that.
In July of 1962, NASA announced that it was
fully committed to the lunar shuttle concept and began shopping around for a
contractor to build it. As fate would have it, a small aircraft company on Long
Island, the Grumman Corporation, had already been working on the design of an
independent lunar shuttle vehicle, cleverly anticipating the market demand.
Grumman thus was able to submit a much more detailed proposal than other
competitors, sealing the deal with NASA.
In November of 1962, Grumman was awarded the
contract to build what Moon Machines described as “the most complicated
and sophisticated spacecraft ever conceived.” Soon after, we are also informed
that the LEM was “what many regarded as the first true spaceship.” In other
words, America’s “first true spaceship” was also America’s “most complicated
and sophisticated spacecraft.” To this day, no other spacecraft has been built
that is capable of landing men on a planetary body. To this day, no other
spacecraft has been built that is capable of taking off from and flying home
from a planetary body. To this day, no other spacecraft has been built that is
capable of performing rendezvous and docking maneuvers in lunar orbit. To this
day, no spacecraft has been built that can protect astronauts from the hazards
of flying through space outside of the Van Allen belts.
When you think about it, of course, it makes
perfect sense that America’s first true spacecraft, coming as it did during the
infancy of the Space Age, would also stand to this day as the most complicated
and sophisticated spacecraft “ever conceived.” After all, didn’t Henry Ford
build the most complicated and sophisticated automobile ever conceived? And didn’t
Orville and Wilbur build the most complicated and sophisticated aircraft ever
conceived? And didn’t Alexander Graham Bell invent the IPhone?
From the outset, Grumman envisioned a two-stage vehicle, with as much
of the weight as possible carried in the lower half, or descent stage, of the
spacecraft. Eliminating excess weight was of paramount importance. Early
designs included no ladder, for example, as a ladder was considered unnecessary
weight. In 1/6 gravity, it was assumed, the astronauts would be able to climb
in and out of the capsule using just a rope. Of course, the modules never came
anywhere close to being in a reduced gravity environment, which is probably why
a ladder was added to the landing vehicle.
According to the Science Channel, the only
constant in Grumman’s drive to design the modules was change. So much so that,
“Finally, in the spring of 1965, NASA, worried design changes would never stop,
imposed a freeze.” NASA had apparently decided that two-and-a-half years,
working with the knowledge and technology of the early 1960s, was plenty of
time to design the “most complicated and sophisticated spacecraft ever
conceived.” Whatever the Grumman team had come up with to that point would have
to be good enough to get our flyboys from the mother ship to the Moon and back.
It was now time to go to work actually building
what was described as “an entirely independent spacecraft, with its own motors,
fuel, life support system and navigation equipment. To some at the time, it
seemed excessive.” To many others at the time, it just seemed ridiculous.
I happened to stumble across, by the way, an
image depicting a 1963-era LEM prototype parked on the surface of the Moon. As
has been the case throughout this series, the image comes directly from NASA’s
web pages, where it was proudly presented as the “Image of the Day.” It
shouldn’t be too hard to figure out what it is that I love about this image –
even if it does prove me to be a liar, given that I previously claimed that
none of NASA’s Moon photos depict any stars in the lunar sky.
According to the folks at the Science
Channel, the lunar module “was built in one of the world’s first clean-rooms.
In zero gravity, any floating foreign body would be a hazard.” A hazard, that
is, to both the astronauts’ health and to the ship’s delicate on-board
electronics. Workers were required to wear gowns, masks, hairnets and booties,
technicians meticulously cleaned the interior with camel hair brushes and
filter paper, and the modules were robotically lifted, inverted and shaken to
rid the cabin of any debris.
Although the narrator forgot to mention it, I’m
pretty sure that the astronauts were also instructed not to shed any hair or
skin during the missions. On a more serious note, NASA did, in fact, reportedly
consider requiring the astronauts to shave from head to toe. That never
happened, of course, probably due to the fact that hairless and eyebrow-less
astronauts wouldn’t have been as warmly embraced by the American public, and
the Apollo missions were more about appearances than they were about science.
Left unexplored by the makers of Moon
Machines was the obvious question of how those clean-room conditions could
have been maintained once the lander set down on the Moon. The astronauts
couldn’t shed their protective suits until they were back in the safety of the
pressurized capsule, so how exactly did they keep from tracking copious amounts
of that lunar dust back into the allegedly sterile LEM cabin? As is revealed in
the Lunar Rover episode of the Moon Machines series, “The
astronauts quickly learned that the dust adhered to everything it touched.”
Everything, that is, except the outside of the
lunar module, which, as we have already seen, remained as clean as if it were
sitting on the showroom floor. And the dust apparently also didn’t adhere to
the astronauts’ boots or spacesuits, even if Apollo astronaut Charlie Duke did
say, while describing what it was like to ride in the lunar rover, that “Moon
dust was pouring down on us like rain, and so after a half of a Moon walk, our
white suits turned gray.” None of that dust, of course, was introduced into the
sterile interior of the cabin.
We know that with absolute certainty because we
have already been told that in order for the lunar module to operate safely and
correctly, the cabin had to be kept dust-free. One of the best-kept secrets of
the Apollo program, it turns out, is that there was actually a third passenger
along for the rides to the Moon and back: Neil Armstrong’s mother. Her primary
responsibility was to make sure the boys properly wiped their feet before
entering the capsule.
Astute readers, by the way, may have noticed
that Duke’s comments about driving the rover directly contradict another of the
fables sold by the ‘debunkers.’ According to Phil Plait, if you
watch the video footage allegedly shot on the Moon, “you will see dust thrown
up by the wheels of the rover. The dust goes up in a perfect parabolic arc and
falls back down to the surface. Again, the Moon isn’t the Earth! If this were
filmed on the Earth, which has air, the dust would have billowed up around the
wheel and floated over the surface. This clearly does not happen in the video
clips; the dust goes up and right back down. It’s actually a beautiful
demonstration of ballistic flight in a vacuum.”
As would be expected, we find Jay Windley making essentially the same claim:
“dust will fall immediately to the lunar surface. The behavior of the dust in
the video and film taken on the lunar surface is one of the most compelling
reasons we have for believing it was shot in a vacuum. The dust is clearly dry,
but it falls immediately to the surface and does not form clouds.”
Who then are we to believe? The guy who
actually operated the rover, allegedly on the surface of the Moon, and said
that the dust was raining down on he and his partner from all directions, or a
couple of self-proclaimed ‘experts’ who directly contradict NASA’s
man-on-the-scene?
There is a reason,
I might add here, why NASA defers to these two clowns while not officially
endorsing their ‘debunking’ arguments. It’s called plausible deniability. NASA
knows that ‘debunking’ the fact that the Moon landings were hoaxed requires a
lot of twisting of facts and the promotion of a lot of dubious science, and
they choose not to be directly involved in such endeavors. That is also, no
doubt, why the agency withdrew its sponsorship of a ‘debunking’ book that is
said to be in the works.