OT. Where they really on the moon?

[geoschmo]

Ok, I am going to respond to some of the glaring errors in judgment in Mr. Sibrels article here. Obviously Mr. Sibrel will never see this, but it's for the benefit of Allofi or anyone else in danger of being duped by him.

Originally posted by Aloofi:
"RESPONSE TO MICHAEL MEDVED'S USA TODAY ARTICLE BY BART W. SIBREL

After all, two decades later, with much improved and superior technology to that of 1969, a mission only 1/100th as complicated, the Earth orbit of a telescope (Hubble), was nearly as many years behind schedule as the entire duration of the lunar landing goal, and then, after its sixth launch attempt, didn't even work when it arrived at its destination which was 1/1000th the distance to the moon. In addition, it took another two years to make the necessary repairs to get it operational. Even today, an unmanned probe (to Mars), the size of a large toaster, requires nearly ten years to develop. Mr. Medved, where is the logic in this?

The mere fact that we went to the moon is not an indication that the missions were flawless or more easily done then the Hubble telescope. In terms of 1960's dollars a much larger investment in money and manpower was put into the Moon landing effort than into the Hubble space telescope. Systems were double triple, quadruple checked, and redunant systems were in place in case they still failed. All that being said errors still happend, mistakes were made, and equipment failed. Each moon landing had a multitude of objectives, some engineering, some pure science. Not everything that was planned to be done was done.

The Hubble was in total perhaps a less complex endevor, but the equipent was vastly more complex and sensitive than anything that was part of the Appolo missions. Most of the delays in the Hubble program were due to the Chalanger disaster pushing back the entire shuttle program. A fact that is not really indicitive of the Hubble program at all. With Hubble we were just not as lucky in that the one piece of the mission that failed was a critical piece of the whole project. Despite that though we have been able to deal with the problem and Hubble is producing images beyond the expectations of the astromomers even before the fault in the mirror was found.

The Mars failures again were due to programs not as well funded then the Appolo program. This fact led to errors that did not get caught by suficent cross checking.

This kind of faulty logic is the kind of stuff people throw out and say that aliens must have made the pyramids because we couldn't do it today. Of course we could make pyramids today, it would just be too expensive and we aren't all that interested in doing it. Apollo is the same kind of thing.

A little further investigation on Mr. Medved's part would have discovered that the NASA spokesperson on the program, Brian Welsh, definitely agreed with him in that he felt that his performance of impatient dismissive generalizations did not seem very convincing; rather, a point-for-point rebuttal would have been more appropriate. Apparently, in an effort to be better prepared in the future, Brian Welsh did his own off-the-record investigation with the special access privileges entitled to him in his position. Coincidentally, while his efforts were underway, he had a fatal heart attack in November 2000 at age 42.

When Fox pointed out that eleven Apollo astronauts all had non-space related fatal accidents within a twenty-two month period of one another, he failed to mention that the odds of this happening were 1 in 10,000. Oddly enough, these were the same odds given to a successful manned moon landing on its first attempt by a senior space program employee in the mid-1960's.

So now we've gone beyond accusing Nasa of a general coverup and lying to the public, and are saying that there is mass muder occuring?

42 year olds have heart attacks. And Astronauts are healthy active people, even into their old age. Active people sometimes have accidents. The odds given are not only suspect (How exactly were they calculated?) they are irrelevant. Odds don't tell you something didn't happen that you can see did.

In 1994, our own government's watchdog agency, the General Accounting Office, reported, "The Star Wars Missile Defense System rigged tests to make it seem more advanced than it really was. The aim was to fool the Soviet Union about US strategic capability during the Cold War." How much more so was there the need in 1969 when there was genuine concern that "Sputnik 3" might have nuclear missiles on it for a first strike that would put the weapons within less than ten minutes from major targets in America? Furthermore, if the Soviets discovered the cover-up, at that time or years later, would it really be in their best interest to announce their finding to the world and thereby further escalate the tension between the superpowers? Better, in my opinion, to hold on to such a juicy morsel and use it year after year to blackmail each succeeding US administration.

And where is the evidence of this blackmail? To what purpose? There were many occasions during the cold war such evidence would be damaging to the US, yet it was never used. What was it being held back for? Was it supposed to keep us from launching a first strike? If the US felt the need to start a nuclear war and wipe out a goodly portion of the human race, we would care about being embarased when the charred remains of humanity found out we faked the moon landings?

Another overlooked intriguing fact is that NASA launched the TETR-A satellite just months before the first lunar mission. The proclaimed purpose was to simulate transmissions coming from the moon so that the Houston ground crews (all those employees sitting behind computer screens at Mission Control) could "rehearse" the first moon landing. In other words, though NASA claimed that the satellite crashed shortly before the first lunar mission (a misinformation lie), its real purpose was to relay voice, fuel consumption, altitude, and telemetry data as if the transmissions were coming from an Apollo spacecraft as it neared the moon. Very few NASA employees knew the truth because they believed that the computer and television data they were receiving was the genuine article. Merely a hundred or so knew what was really going on; not tens of thousands as it might first appear.

If this were happening, don't you think one of the thousands of Nasa engineers that were part of the program but weren't one of the hundred or so that knew it was fake would have realized it? "Hey, how come it takes us 32 seconds to get a response from the astronauts on the moon when it should only take 16?" All these Messages are time stamped. You can look at the recods and see for yourself. Oh, I know, Nasa couldn't land a man on the moon, but they figured out a way to send radio waves at exactly two times faster than the speed of light.

What about Apollo 13? When America allegedly put humans on the moon for the second time (Apollo 12), several TV viewers telephoned the networks and complained that reruns of I Love Lucy were being interrupted. What a coincidence that the very next mission to the moon involved "life and death" jeopardy. Peoples' interest in return trips to the moon was rekindled!

One of the reasons the Apollo 13 is so compelling is that the events that happened were so outrageous that nobody could have or would have imagined them. Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. If Nasa was going to fake a near disaster it would have been mroe "scripted", more believeable. It would have been one of the myriad of scenarios that everybody planned for and considered, rather then some off the wall set of circumstances that wouldn't even been considered by a Hollywood producer if it hadn't really happened.

It isn't an "utterly uncredentialed journalist" who is asserting that the Apollo 1 fire of January 27, 1967 that killed what would have been the first crew to walk on the moon just days after the commander, Gus Grissom, held an unapproved press conference complaining that they were at least ten years, not two, from reaching the moon. It is the dead man's own son, who is a seasoned pilot himself, and who has in his possession forensic evidence personally retrieved from the charred spacecraft (that the government has tried to destroy on two or more occasions), who is making this accusation. Mr. Medved, have you personally retrieved evidence from the space capsule to support your theory that this credible first hand assertion is unfounded?

More muders. My these Nasa guys are bloodthirsty bastards.

Recently, however, I had the good fortune to show this falsified mission footage to Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, Neil Armstrong's fellow crewmate. Quite startled and angry, he was most interested in how I attained this lost footage. He also threatened to sue me if I showed it publicly. Why? Because it is meaningless? If Mr. Medved is courageous, why not challenge me to a duel of the wits on his radio show for an open debate on this subject?"

Actually Mr. Sibrel, if he threatened to sue you it was not to stop you from showing your innocuous footage and error filled commentary. You threatened to press charges against him because he punched you in the mouth for being an obmoxious press hungy charlatan who lied about having press credentials so you could confront him with your "Swear on a bible" gag. But the local authorities decided you got what you deserved and wouldn't go through with it. He didn't care how you got public domain footage, all he cared about was why you were harrasing him and lying to the public to sell your 25 dollar movies.

Geoschmo

[ March 06, 2003, 15:17: Message edited by: geoschmo ]