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.
Ironic, isn't it? They also believe in Bigfoot, UFO's, crop circles, and other nonsense. They also support it financially, by purchasing the tabloids and books trumpeting these works.
There is quite a large cottage industry of people who make a living off selling these fairy tales as "conspiracies". The con men have had excellent support from, big surprise, Hollywood. Countless films and TV shows have, over the years, lent much false credibility to the stories.
It would be nice if most folks were the type who, when asked to believe some wild tale of "monsters" or "aliens", simply asked for some solid PROOF, and knew what, in fact, constitutes such proof. Hint: It ain't "eyewitness" accounts, nor is it a book by a carpenter in Jersey.
Yep, the same ones who made The X-Files a hit a few years ago. Believe it or not, a lot of people watched that show and said, "Yeah! They're RIGHT!"
There is, after all, more than one reason why Democrats are still taken seriously when they speak. P.T. Barnum's theory has held up well, no?
I met him at a convention once and he told us that he landed on the moon. Is that good enough for you? (not made up)
The House of Representatives wanted to do the moon landing, then JFK noted the support in Congress and announced the program.
Nixon lived in a different world, the legal world. For him that was the real world. He couldn't have pointed out the moon if he saw it over the Washington Monument. All the same, the race to the moon was over, and other problems arose--Vietnam, loss of faith in the Federal government, the Golden Fleece Award, the Oil Embargo, national introversion.
Mainly, though, the moon was found to be missing something important -- water.
The Moon makes a bad choice for a satellite platform because it is not in geosynchronous orbit. It does not stay in the same place above a given spot on Earth. If we were trying to receive a signal from a transmitter planted on the Moon, we would first have to find the Moon, and then constantly keep adjusting our dish to continue receiving.
Our current satellites are in an orbit that keeps them in the same spot above the Earth, even as it rotates on its axis (geosynchronous orbit).
I only have one statement about the Moon hoax/non-hoax: I want to believe.
July 20, 1969 happened to be my 9th birthday, and that has always been my claim to fame. I collect Moon landing memorabilia, I remember my grandmother crying as we watched Armstrong's boot step down onto the lunar surface, and I will be broken-hearted if the bastards faked the whole thing.
What is NASA's dilemma? Why don't they simply answer the questions? Tell us how they protected the vehicle from the radiation and the heat. Tell us about the retouched photographs. Tell us how they got the 35mm film back to Earth through the radiation field.
Lay it all out for us, NASA. I want to believe more than anyone.
The reason the NWO did this was quite simple. While the lunar landings did take place, as observed by any hundreds of sources, the satellites quietly began their epic first mission as a WMH (weapons of mass hypnosis).
Using an alien technology recovered from a UFO crash in New Mexico, the satellites beamed errant, subversive, and random though patterns down upon an unsuspecting world. Before long, clearly documented historical events were in doubt, social fabric unraveled like a cheap sweater, and Jimmy Carter was inaugurated.
So, it's all really quite simple. All these 'facts' you think you have are in fact the product of high tech thought beams, generated in space and radiated to Earth, to further the agenda of a secret cabal of vampires that rules the world.
I hope that cleared it all up for everyone.
They used Hasselblads. It's larger than the 35mm cameras. Custom-built for use while wearing spacesuits.
Doing a Q-and-A session on C-SPAN would draw the true whack jobs out, who would then clog the lines in their zeal to call Armstrong names, as that one imbecilic mark did to Aldrin, at the expense of his jaw.
These men achieved a place in history for an adventure of a lifetime, and one, it should be pointed out, that was not without risk of death. They also worked their entire lives for the chance.
Why, then, should they be subjected to the mudgobbing and deadcatting of idiots and losers that such a forum would doubtlessly attract?
He does not need to repeat it for me to believe him. I believed him the first time.
It's especially popular among islamic circles.
The teachers emailing NASA wanting a way of refuting the charges were probably responding to their islamic students.
Of course it's a sad commentary on the U.S. educational system that puplic school teachers don't have enough skill to do their own refuting.
Sounds harsh, but it is the sad truth.
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