[geocentrism] Re: Did NASA do it?
- From: "Robert Bennett" <robert.bennett@xxxxxxx>
- To: <geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 14 Feb 2005 23:18:20 -0500
Dear Jack,
The $35 video is a pretty steep price for a blank (in content) tape. And
isn't this film easily confused with "A funny thing happened on the way to
the forum", another comedy? ~(:^)>
I have gotten all I need to know for free from the Internet, thank you very
much - as you can also.
Here are a few of the anti-hoax sites, all NASA independent:
www.clavius.org run by
Jay Windley, a Utah engineer
http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#poll run by astronomer
Phil Plait
http://www.redzero.demon.co.uk/moonhoax/ a consortium
http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/NOT_faked/ Jim Scotti,
Planetary Scientist, University of Arizona
http://pirlwww.lpl.arizona.edu/~jscotti/NOT_faked/FOX.html ditto
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast23feb_2.htm Warning: This one
is a NASA allegation
Bart Sibrel, the movie's producer, says he is a former television journalist
with NBC, when in fact he did no more than work once as a part-time editor
at NBC's Nashville affiliate for a couple of months. (NBC has disowned him
entirely.) His "never before seen footage" of the faked Moon landing turns
out to be a publicly accessible NASA tape of astronauts preparing, without
subterfuge, to go on television for an interview.
NASA's policy is not to respond directly to moon-hoax theorists, but the
airwaves and the Internet are full of scientists and others who offer
dismissive rebuttals of Sibrel's ideas. For example:
1. CLAIM: The videotape of the Earth in the ''window shot'' was taken from
Earth orbit
RESPONSE: Then the cloud cover would have been moving quickly, since an
orbiting spacecraft would have been traveling at 17,500 miles an hour.
2. CLAIM: The image of the Earth was created with the help of a photographic
transparency somehow attached to the porthole.
RESPONSE:So NASA spent billions on an elaborate hoax, then used a dime
transparency stuck on a window with Scotch tape!
3. CLAIM The moon landing was faked on a movie set. Proof: there are clearly
two sources of light in the movies and stills taken on the moon. Since there
is only one source of light in the sky (the sun) how can we explain the fact
that even in shadows there is obvious "fill" light that illuminates various
objects that, back lit from the sun, should be in near total darkness. Much
of the show was spent on this point as they showed photo after photo, film
after film, of "filled in" photos. Fill light is exactly what you would see
on a studio set.
ANSWER There were actually three sources of light on the moon the sun, the
earth that reflects the sun's light, and the moon itself, also reflecting
light. The albedo (reflectivity) of the earth is quite high because of the
amount of clouds, so the sun acted as the light filler via the earth. And
the moon was, to say the least, rather close, and also reflected light.
4. CLAIM The American flag was "waving" in the allegedly airless environment
of the moon. How can this be? Proof: film footage showing the astronauts
planting the flag, with the flag clearly waving.
ANSWER Of course the flag was "waving" while the astronaut was fiddling with
it back and forth as he jammed it into the ground. But the moment he let go
of the flag, it mysteriously stopped waving. Coincidence? I don't think so.
5. CLAIM There was no blast crater beneath the LEM lander. Proof:
photographs of the LEM with no blast crater and a NASA painting made before
the first landing, showing what a NASA artist thought might happen when the
LEM landed (big blast crater).
ANSWER (1) The LEM engine was variable--the astronauts could control the
thrust and, of course, as they eased their way down to the surface they
throttled back on the engine.
(2) There was only a couple of inches of moon dust on the surface, beneath
which was a solid surface that would not be effected by the blast of the LEM
engine. Before Apollo 11 landed, there was much debate among scientists
about the amount of moon dust that would have accumulated over billions of
years. Some speculated that there could be several feet of dust, into which
the LEM and the astronauts would sink. Others said just a few inches. The
latter were right.
6. After the blast crator from the LEM engine was created, all the lunar
dust around the LEM should have been displaced, yet there's Armstrong's
footprint clearly imprinted into the lunar dust just a foot away from the
LEM's landing pad.
ANSWER The moon is airless, so the LEM engine blast did indeed send dust
flying, after which it came back down because there is no wind to scatter
it. The blast of dust happened mainly directly underneath the LEM engine.
7. If there was so much moon dust all over the place, being kicked up by the
LEM engine, by the rover, by the astronauts, why is everything so clean?
ANSWER It wasn't. Moon dust was a problem because, in fact, it got all over
everything and the astronauts spent hours after their moon walks cleaning
their suits so as not to get the dust all over the interior of the LEM.
8. CLAIM When the top half of the LEM took off to return the astronauts to
the command module, leaving the lower half sitting there on the moon's
surface, there was no "blast" flame like we see on earth. The LEM just seems
to leap off the base like it was yanked up by cables.
ANSWER First of all, you can clearly see in the film footage of the launch,
that there IS quite a blast as dust and other particles go flying, even one
piece right toward the camera. Second, there is no air on the moon, so there
can be no blast "flame" like there is on earth. This is why rocket engines
in space have to carry their own oxygen (in liquid form). Unlike jet engines
that suck in air, rockets carry all the chemicals they need and mix them at
the time the "burn" is required. And "burn" is not quite the right term,
since it implies a "flame" should be present. In space there can be no flame
because there is no oxygen to fuel a flame tail coming out of the rocket
nozzle. All that is happening is that chemicals being stored in separate
containers are being released together to cause a reaction, the energy from
which flows out rapidly through a nozzle, after which Newton's law of "equal
and opposite reaction" takes over.
9. On earth, the LEM lander simulator used by the astronauts for practice
was obviously unstable. In fact, shortly before the Apollo 11 flight Neil
Armstrong barely escaped with his life as his simulator crashed and he
ejected just seconds before impact. Imagine how tricky it would have been to
land the actual LEM, with two astronauts shifting around inside and all that
additional weight. Fox even managed to find a physicist named Ralph Rene who
proclaimed that it would have been impossible to land the LEM because of its
inherent instability.
ANSWER Armstrong did indeed barely escape with his life in the simulator.
But practice makes perfect, and these guys practiced, and practiced, and
practiced until they got it down. A bicycle is also inherently unstable,
UNTIL YOU LEARN HOW TO RIDE IT! Plus, what happens on earth is not the same
as what happens on the moon. Air on earth, no air on the moon. Lots of
gravity on the earth, a lot less gravity on the moon. Things big and heavy
on earth will be big and light on the moon. And we can even calculate
exactly how much different! These NASA scientists were so good they even
calculated the effects of the gravitational pull from large and irregular
moon masses as the LEM flew closely over them.
10. There are no stars in the moon sky, yet when you look up at night from
earth you see lots of stars.
ANSWER How many stars do you see in photographs taken at night, on earth, of
terrestrial objects? That's right. None. Well, okay, MAYBE you'll see Venus,
but that's not a star. If you want to shoot stars in the night sky you have
to aim your camera and leave the shutter open for at least several seconds.
The astronauts were not there to take pictures of the sky. Also, since it is
very bright on the moon (no air to scatter the sunlight) and the astronauts
were wearing white space suits, the camera F-stop would have been set way
down, and the shutter speed quite fast. Stars are too faint to appear on the
film emulsion.
11. If you run the moon film footage at double speed it looks like it was
filmed on earth; ergo, it WAS filmed on earth.
ANSWER Double speed doesn't look at all like it was filmed on earth.
12. Why are the photographs so nicely framed and in focus, etc.
ANSWER Because these are the few photographs that we get to see from the
thousands of photographs taken. There is a beautiful book released last year
with some of the very best moon photographs. It is magnificent. One glance
through it makes it clear that these photographs were indeed taken on the
moon which was aptly described by Buzz Aldrin as "magnificent desolation."
13. The Van Allen radiation belts surrounding the Earth would have fried the
astronauts with a lethal dose of radiation.
ANSWER Wrong. If you blast right through the Van Allen belts it is no
problem, which is what the Apollo astronauts did. X-rays would be lethal
too, if you sat there soaking in them long enough. A very real problem,
however, are cosmic rays. They are not a problem on a short flight like to
the moon, but in long flights that might last years, like to Mars, they
could be a serious problem.
14. NASA murdered Gus Grissom and the other Apollo 1 astronauts, along with
a bunch of other astronauts in assorted other "accidents," because they were
about to go public with the hoax.
ANSWER The FOX show began by saying that the moon conspiracy was hatched
late in the game when NASA realized they would never make it, yet we are to
believe that years before they had been planning the hoax, Grissom caught on
to it and decided to go public, and then they killed him. But that's not the
real answer here. The real answer is that, like most conspiracy theories,
there is no positive evidence in support, only negative evidence in the form
of "they covered it up." Like the curse of the mummy, anyone who died within
20 years of the discovery of Tut's tomb, died because of the curse, not
because people die. Let's face it, being a test pilot and an astronaut is
not the safest job in the world. People died because it is an inherently
dangerous job.
15. NASA managed to keep all this a secret for all these years with tens of
thousands of people keeping their mouths shut. This from the same NASA folks
who were too stupid to remember to set up the movie set properly so as to
account for the proper light, blast crater, etc.
ANSWER G. Gordon Liddy was asked about conspiracy theories. He said three
people can keep a secret as long as two of them are dead. To think that
thousands of people would keep their mouths shut is too ridiculous to
consider.
16. NASA STUPIDITY Going to the moon is very, very hard. Look at all those
rockets that blew up in the 1950s and early 1960s, and all those other
problems to solve. Space travel is an insoluble problem. Ergo, NASA could
not have solved it.
ANSWER There is no question that NASA, as a gigantic bureaucracy, is capable
of mistakes and flubs, and perhaps even a few cover-ups. Some say the
Egyptians were too inept to have built the pyramids. Their reasoning goes
like this: "If I can't think of how they did it, then they couldn't have
thought of it either; ergo, they didn't do it." It is really an indictment
of the claimants' own limited thinking skills.
17. CLAIM Apollo 14 astronaut Allen Shepard played golf on the Moon. In
front
of a worldwide TV audience, Mission Control teased him about slicing the
ball to the right. Yet a slice is caused by uneven air flow over the
ball. The Moon has no atmosphere and no air.
ANSWER The functional word here is "teased". Mission control was, as said,
merely teasing him. There is no way for anyone to be able to tell
exactly which way the ball went. And even if you could, maybe he wasn't
holding the club straight, so the head hit the ball on an angle.
18. CLAIM "A camera panned upwards to catch Apollo 16's Lunar Landerlifting
off
the Moon. Who did the filming?"
ANSWER Mission Control. If you watched the miniseries "From the Earth to
the
Moon", you would know that there was a guy in mission control,
controlling the pan/tilt functions on the tv camera tripod. If you want
to bring up the 7 second radio delay due to distance, he actually sent
the command to tilt up with the ascending lander 7 seconds before it
happened, and it all worked out.
19. CLAIM One NASA picture from Apollo 11 is looking up at Neil Armstrong
about to take his giant step for mankind. The photographer must have
been lying on the planet surface. If Armstrong was the first man on the
Moon, then who took the shot?
ANSWER A lack of knowledge is a dangerous thing. There was an arm attached
to the lander that
was deployed just before Neil Armstrong opened the hatch. This arm had
a television and a still camera mounted to it.
20. CLAIM "The pressure inside a space suit was greater than inside a
football.
The astronauts should have been puffed out like the Michelin Man, but
were seen freely bending their joints."
ANSWER Were they just sent them up there in an airtight
jumper? NO. From the NASA Kids Web site: The space suit is made of
hard materials with jointed sections to allow
movement. The upper and lower torso sections are put on separately. The
two pieces are connected at the waist to allow the flow of water and gas
lines. Gloves and helmet create a sealed protection against meteoroids
and radiation. On Earth, the space suit weighs about 100 pounds. In
space, the suit weighs much less. Under normal conditions, a space suit
should last about 8 years.
There is a hard layer of plastic, among many other things,
protecting the astronauts from the vacuum of space.
21. CLAIM The Moon landings took place during the Cold War. Why didn't
America
make a signal on the moon that could be seen from earth? The PR would
have been phenomenal and it could have been easily done with magnesium
flares."
ANSWER What's the point? Because they didn't put a massive flare on the
moon,
they never actually went? (btw: have fun igniting a
magnesium flare without oxygen).
22. CLAIM Text from pictures in the article said that only two men walked
on
the Moon during the Apollo 12 mission. Yet the astronaut reflected in
the visor has no camera. Who took the shot?
ANSWER Astronauts didn't hold cameras like you do when you're taking a
picture of your
grandmother. The camera was attached to their suit at the chest. Most
small tools used by astronauts were attached to their suits, so they
would not be lost.
23. CLAIM The flags shadow goes behind the rock so doesn't match the dark
line in the foreground, which looks like a line cord. So the shadow to
the lower right of the spaceman must be the flag. Where is his shadow?
And why is the flag fluttering if there is no air or wind on the moon? &
How can the flag be brightly lit when its side is to the light? And
where, in all of these shots, are the stars?
ANSWER Speaking of conspiracies, consider that somebody (not NASA) has
doctored this photo badly to make a stronger case
against NASA. The astronaut was copied and pasted into that photo.
And as for the flag... that shadow goes to the side with the face clearly
lit because it's not exactly parallel to the sun's rays! It's on a bit
of an angle, which anybody will tell you, is enough to clearly light the
flag. And as for the fluttering... it's not
moving at all. As for the stars. in photography, to
prevent an over-exposure you must close
the iris a bit, or in this case, a lot. The sun is much brighter here
than the brightest day on earth. With the iris down far enough to
prevent over-exposure, there is no way you would ever see ANYTHING
in the sky other than the sun and the earth.
24. CLAIM "We are 100 per cent convinced that there has been a cover-up by
NASA," the authors Richard Hoagland and Michael Bara wrote in a recent paper
published at their Star Trek-themed website www. enterprisemission.com.
ANSWER From the same authors! "That said, one thing they did not do,
unquestionably, was fake the Moon landings. In fact, most of the charges
made... are so absurd, so easily discredited, so lacking in any kind of
scientific analysis and just plain common sense that they give legitimate
conspiracy theories like ours a bad name."
They go further: the only possible explanation for Kaysing and his hoax
followers, they argue, is that they are themselves government agents
publicizing the hoax theory as a smokescreen to mislead the public and
prevent people from asking questions about the real scandal and the real
cover-up.
It's a dizzying concept. Hoagland and Bara are careful to point out that
this is only their suspicion; they don't have any evidence to back it up.
But who cares? They've stumbled upon a conspiracy within a conspiracy. And
in this Moon business, that's as good as it gets. Double agents??! Spy vs.
counter-spy?! Maybe even alien spies?!
25. CLAIM If the Moon landings were successful, why haven't we returned in
30 years?
ANSWER A real head in the sand. Who would fund billion dollar programs that
repeat old missions? Not the US public/Congress.
26. CLAIM NASA silence implies a hoax:
If there were a cover-up of the fake Moon landings, NASA would be silent.
But NASA is silent
So there is a NASA cover-up
ANSWER The most popular of the logical fallacies among the paranoid: the
effect produces the cause !
Perhaps the only convincing hoax evidence........
CLAIM A speech reversal can be found on Neil Armstrong's legendary 'One
small step for man, one giant leap for mankind' statement. When the tape is
played backwards Neil seems to say 'Man never space walk.'
ANSWER In the face of this overwhelming scientific proof, what can possibly
be said?
Enough time has been wasted on this off-topic side-trip. Let's return to
geocentrism or else relabel this list as 'Moon hoax paranoia'.
For me the MH topic has reached closure. That means FINIS.
Pax Christi,
Robert
> -----Original Message-----
> From: geocentrism-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:geocentrism-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Jack Lewis
> Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005 6:44 PM
> To: geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [geocentrism] Did NASA do it?
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Robert Bennett" <robert.bennett@xxxxxxx>
> To: <geocentrism@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>; "Mike Boyd" <mboyd@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2005 10:59 PM
> Subject: [geocentrism] Re: Can we realy say for certain?
>
>
> > But until there is hard evidence that there are or were no space probes
> > beyond LEO range, in a massive cover-up involving thousands that boggles
> the
> > mind, I will be like you, from Missouri (means "show me!" in USA).
> >
>
>
> Dear Robert,
> You need to watch a video called 'A funny thing Happened on the way to the
> Moon'. In this video it mentions the secrecy that was maintained for the
> 'Manhattan Project' and also Kennedy's assassination.
>
> Jack
>
>
>
>
Other related posts:
