Posted on 01/05/2003 5:06:37 PM PST by ContentiousObjector
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Is that the moon or a studio in the Nevada desert? How can the flag flutter when there's no wind on the moon? Why can't we see stars in the moon-landing pictures?
For three decades, NASA has taken the high road, ignoring those who claimed the Apollo moon landings were faked and part of a colossal government conspiracy.
The claims and suspicious questions such as the ones cited here mostly showed up in books and on the Internet. But last year's prime-time Fox TV special on the so-called "moon hoax" prompted schoolteachers and others to plead with NASA for factual ammunition to fight back.
So a few months ago, the space agency budgeted $15,000 to hire a former rocket scientist and author to produce a small book refuting the disbelievers' claims. It would be written primarily with teachers and students in mind.
The idea backfired, however, embarrassing the space agency for responding to ignorance, and the book deal was chucked.
"The issue of trying to do a targeted response to this is just lending credibility to something that is, on its face, asinine," NASA chief Sean O'Keefe said in late November after the dust settled.
So it's back to square one -- ignoring the hoaxers. That's troubling to some scientific experts who contend that someone needs to lead the fight against scientific illiteracy and the growing belief in pseudoscience such as aliens and astrology.
Someone like NASA.
"If they don't speak out, who will?" asks Melissa Pollak, a senior analyst at the National Science Foundation.
Author James Oberg will. The former space shuttle flight controller plans to write the book NASA commissioned from him even though the agency pulled the plug. He is seeking money elsewhere. His working title: "A Pall Over Apollo."
Tom Hanks will speak out, too.
The Academy Award-winning actor, who starred in the 1995 movie "Apollo 13" and later directed the HBO miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon," is working on another lunar-themed project. The IMAX documentary will feature Apollo archival footage. Its title: "Magnificent Desolation," astronaut Buzz Aldrin's real-time description of the moon on July 20, 1969.
While attending the Cape Canaveral premiere of the IMAX version of "Apollo 13" in November, Hanks said the film industry has a responsibility to promote historical literacy. He took a jab at the 1978 movie "Capricorn One," which had NASA's first manned mission to Mars being faked on a sound stage.
"We live in a society where there is no law in making money in the promulgation of ignorance or, in some cases, stupidity," Hanks said. "There are a lot of things you can say never happened. You can go as relatively quasi-harmless as saying no one went to the moon. But you also can say that the Holocaust never happened."
A spokesman for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington says there will always be those who will not be convinced. But the museum does not engage them in debate.
The spokesman acknowledges, however, that if a major news channel was doing a program that questioned the authenticity of the Holocaust, "I'd certainly want to inject myself into the debate with them in a very forceful way."
Television's Fox Network was the moon-hoax purveyor. In February 2001 and again a month later, Fox broadcast an hourlong program titled "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?"
Roger Launius, who agreed to Oberg's book just before leaving NASA's history office, says the story about the moon hoax has been around a long time. But the Fox show "raised it to a new level, it gave it legs and credibility that it didn't have before."
Indeed, the National Science Foundation's Pollak says two of her colleagues, after watching the Fox special, thought it was possible that NASA faked the moon landings. "These are people who work at NSF," she stresses.
The story went -- and still goes -- something like this: America was desperate to beat the Soviet Union in the high-stakes race to the moon, but lacked the technology to pull it off. So NASA faked the six manned moon landings in a studio somewhere out West.
Ralph Rene, a retired carpenter in Passaic, N.J., takes it one step farther. The space fakery started during the Gemini program, according to Rene, author of the 1992 book, NASA Mooned America!
"I don't know what real achievements they've done because when do you trust a liar?" Rene says. "I know we have a shuttle running right around above our heads, but that's only 175 miles up. It's under the shield. You cannot go through the shield and live."
He is talking, of course, about the radiation shield.
Alex Roland, a NASA historian during the 1970s and early 1980s, says his office used to have "a kook drawer" for such correspondence and never took it seriously. But there were no prime-time TV shows disputing the moon landings then -- and no Internet.
Still, Roland would be inclined to "just let it go because you'll probably just make it worse by giving it any official attention."
Within NASA, opinions were split about a rebuttal book. Oberg, a Houston-based author of 12 books, mostly about the Russian space program, said ignoring the problem "just makes this harder. To a conspiracy mind, refusing to respond is a sign of cover-up."
Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell does not know what else, if anything, can be done to confront this moon madness.
"All I know is that somebody sued me because I said I went to the moon," says the 74-year-old astronaut. "Of course, the courts threw it out."
The authorities also threw out the case involving Apollo 11 moonwalker Aldrin in September.
A much bigger and younger man was hounding the 72-year-old astronaut in Beverly Hills, Calif., calling him "a coward, a liar and a thief" and trying to get him to swear on a Bible, on camera, that he walked on the moon. Aldrin, a Korean War combat pilot, responded with a fist in the chops.
Money.
It cost us many billions of dollars and took a lot of the Aerospace capability of the country.
Nobody else has that capability even now. Russia went broke, China is 40 years behind. Who else do you nominate?
You are incorrect...and owe an apology to Atlantin. Here is why:
An object at rest has an average speed of 0 (zero). An object accelerating at one g (32 ft/sec) has a velocity of 32 feet/sec at the end of one second. IF (which is what you are assuming) the object immediately goes from 0 to 32 ft/sec instantly and maintains that speed for one second...then it will have moved 32 feet in that second. However, that is not what happens. It accelerates from 0 to 32 feet/sec in a matter of one second. That gives the object an average speed of 16 feet/sec for that period of one second. You cannot average 32 feet/sec when you start from zero and accelerate. So...after one second, you are traveling at 32 feet/sec but have averaged 16 feet/second over the course of that second...so you ahve traveled 16 feet in that second. Understand?
As far as the second second goes (this is easier to see)...the object is traveling at 64 feet/sec at the end of the 2 seconds. So...it started at 0, ended at 64 after 2. So...the average speed is (0+32+64)/2 = Average 32 ft/sec*2=64 feet after 2 seconds.
After 3 seconds: Starts at 0, ends at 96. Average speed over 3 seconds is 48 feet/sec for 3 seconds = 144 feet.
The key to understanding this is to remember that acceleration of 32 feet per second is a linear process...and is not "stepped" every second. In other words, the start is not zero and then at 1/10th of a second you are going 32 ft/sec, at 2/10th of a sec you are going 32 ft/sec...etc etc...to 10/10ths of a second you are going 32 ft/sec then at 11/10ths of a second (1 1/10 sec) you are going at 64 ft/sec. It is a straight acceleration from zero to 32 and you can draw a 45 degree line connecting the points. Linear.
Actually, yes it does. It's just that the Sun is always producing yet more heat which it has to get rid of.
But if the sun were to be "turned off" tomorrow, it would cool, as its heat level was contantly being radiated away for the next few hundred years (at least).
Oh aye. But the sheer number of unreasonable people out there is stunning.
You're being HAD.
I'm not sure what you meant by that. I haven't bought anything and don't care about this issue that much. I find it amusing- that's about all. Why do you think I'm being had? Actually, skip it. I'm not overly interested in that either...
Whatever you say... I've been had. That's fine. You're 110% correct.
The applicable formula is:
for a body starting at rest, and subjected to acceleration "a" for "t" units of time.
Thus, the object travels only 16 feet in the first second.
They are because they are.
My, but you're getting a late-start on this thread with your NASA-bashing.
Buzz earned a PhD in Manned Space Rendezvous from MIT. What have YOU done that's worthwhile?
For anyone interested, here's a link to Buzz Aldrin's biography
We really don't want to get into THAT, do we?
I remember those times quite well. The challenge of beating the Russians to the moon. The optimism. The innovation and technology necessary to accomplish it.
What always seemed odd to me was that NASA and the government were "willing" to risk the possible deaths of two American "heroes" on a Lunar Lander that had never actually been "flown" except under controlled training conditions on earth.
This last statement always prompts multiple responses about how "advanced" the technology was (the onboard computers weren't powerfulful enough to toast bread in those days), and what excellent pilots they were etc,etc. All well and good, but still a highly dangerous assignment considering the "political" situation of the day.
Imagine the following. Through skill and luck, Armstrong manages to land safely on the moon (which he did.) But something then goes terribly wrong with one of the "return" systems. Aldrin and Armstrong are stuck on the lunar surface to await their eventual death with their last words reverberating around the world.
What would have been the fallout from such a mission? Probably it would have been said that NASA, in its zeal to beat the Russians, had placed these men in jeopardy by not taking enough time to insure their mission. Too hasty, insufficient research and technology development etc.
Now test pilots have always understood the risks of their jobs, but the average American, traumatized by the deaths, might have seriously begun to question the leadership of this country.
Imagine the political propaganda the Russians would have made of it. It would not have been a good time for the space program or its future development.
Now imagine that instead of landing safely, Armstrong (who was manually controlling it near the end and coming in pretty hot) had simply cratered it in. One squaak of static and it was suddenly all over. The recriminations would have begun immediately.
It was one thing to incinerate three astronauts here on earth during the days of earth orbits, but perhaps quite another thing to be reminded of Aldrin and Armstrong's graves everytime you looked up at the moon.
I must admit that had I been in on the planning of the lunar landing I would have felt very uncomfortable about these possible outcomes. Thank God it worked and they came home safely, but it was a very big political risk at the time.
OK. First, let me tender my apology to you. I see the world disentegrating before my eyes. The world I was born into and reared to survive in barely exists anymore. I see people praising murderers, sh!tting on everything that was good and basically saying up is down, black is white. I don't know if this is what the forces of evil have in mind for their end goal but I basically don't trust my fellow man- none of 'em (if I don't know 'em)- anymore. It seems, sometimes, as if people are trying to rip the actual fabric of existence apart. I only have to point you at the extremely obnoxious and pornographic images that some disruptor posted on FR earlier today as a proof. A child saw those images... Not God forbid, a child should see those images but a child did see them. I'm willing to fight for the things I hold dear but day in, day out- the battle seems like it was lost 20 yrs ago somehow.
Anyway... You caught me on one of my cynical days and I took your post in an extremely narrow way. Out of all the ways I could've taken it, I took it the way I liked least. In my own way I am simply adding to the problem I suppose. Sorry about that.
I see your point now, though, and it is an intriguing one.
The lunar landings were, to me, like the gold medal of humanity. They were the ultimate case of "hey y'all, watch this". Isn't that what the Olympic Games is all about? An opportunity for an athletic exhibitionist to say "put that bar up a little higher- I'll sail over it". Going to the Moon had no other point than to show the rest of the human race "This is what's possible- given the right circumstances". There is no reason to go back. It's a rock. There's nothing up there to justify the expense again.
When I was a child, I ran outside to gaze at the moon when the television said the men were on it. I wanted to see them. It was a magical event. Today's young generation never experienced that. I see many of today's youth spitting on everything that we have accomplished. The moon landing was, if you will, our ultimate event. By tearing it down, the "anti-life" are tearing down the best that we have managed and I am sensitive to that I suppose. I am eager to strike out against that and I suppose in this instance I struck in too much haste.
Again, my apologies.
Hmmm...interesting comment. I believe you stated in a previous thread that you "worked" with these individuals, and thus would be an authority. Musta been part of the Donut-and-Coffee Corp.
That's what fuel cells are for... ;-) All we have to come up with is H2 somewhere on the Moon, and there're plenty of oxides just lying around begging to be reduced.
No it isn't. Near the poles, there's over 10 BILLION metric tons of hydrogen. Even the soils elsewhere contain from 10 to over 100 part-per-million of solar wind implanted hydrogen.
There's plenty of hydrogen on the Moon for whatever purpose we would need it -- from water for life support to liquid fuel for rocket propellant.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.