The Race to the Moon
President John F. Kennedy publicly announced in May 1961 that -landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to earth- would be a Number One priority for the US, an accomplishment that was to instil pride in Americans and awe in the rest of the world.
No one would argue that the mission succeeded.
President John F. Kennedy publicly announced in May 1961 that -landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to earth- would be a Number One priority for the US, an accomplishment that was to instil pride in Americans and awe in the rest of the world.
No one would argue that the mission succeeded.
There were six Moon landings costing upwards of US $25 billion. Proving to the world that not even the Soviets could come close to the US when it came to space exploration. After a slow start, the Americans won the space race. However, according to many sources, when Armstrong got down from his ladder, proclaiming that it was only a small step for him but a giant leap for mankind, he was merely setting foot on a dust-covered sound stage somewhere on Earth. NASA-s -cold warriors and spin-doctors- faked this Moon landing. In a war, and especially a cold war, the truth is the first casualty.
For JFK and his government, image was everything. The relevance to WYSINWYSHG is obvious, but the consequences on popular culture were, and still are, huge. For starters, this was a watershed in the power of TV. -If television ever had a killer app, the Moon landing was it. We bought new sets in droves, flicked them on as zero hour approached, and, miraculously, felt ourselves being locked into an intangible but very real oneness with a billion other people. It was our first taste of a virtual community, of cultures docking. It felt good.- States Bill Kaysing, formerly of Rocketdyne.
Secondly, the Apollo missions and space exploration in general elevated science to God status. The repercussions of this are still being felt globally. The cold war was not only about consumerism vs. Communism, it was a war of science. How could it all have been a fake? How could NASA possibly have pulled it off? What about the TV pictures that billions of people saw over the course of six successful missions; the rocket lifting off from the Cape Kennedy launch pad under the watchful eye of hundreds of thousands of spectators; the capsule with the crew returning to earth; the Moon rocks; the hundreds of space-program employees in the know who would have to be relied upon to take the incredible secret to their graves?
The Conspiracy
Writer Bill Kaysing is one of the prime movers in the conspiracy: -NASA couldn-t make it to the Moon, and they knew it... In the late -50s, when I was at Rocketdyne, they did a feasibility study on astronauts landing on the Moon. They found that the chance of success was something like .0017 percent. In other words, it was hopeless.- As late as 1967, Kaysing says, -three astronauts died in a horrendous fire on the launch pad... Its also well documented that NASA was often badly managed and had poor quality control. But as of -69, we could suddenly perform manned flight upon manned flight? With complete success? Its just against all statistical odds.-
It is fairly easy to send an empty rocket into the depths of space in front of the watching world. It is also easy to drop the crew in an ocean & have them picked up in front of cameras. It is also possible to create a lunar film set - even in -69. Much of the Astronauts training occurred in front of cameras on glorified sound sets. The lighting of this -set- is one of the puzzles of this affair. There are many anomalies in the TV and still pictures that came from the Moon. To be fair to NASA and western society in general, some of these irregularities are fairly easy to explain. For example, there are no stars in many of the photographs taken on the lunar surface. With no atmosphere to diffuse their light, wouldn-t stars have to be clearly visible? This could be explained by the sun-s overpowering the light of the stars, billions of miles away.
There are, however, some more difficult to explain photographic anomalies:
There is no crater beneath the Lunar Lander, despite the jet of its 10,000 pound thrust hyperbolic engine. Nor is there any evidence of dust from the landing - surely the lander would be dusted from the blast but it is actually as shiny as a showroom car. Movies of the astronauts walking show dust flying, while we can see the famous footprint photos - again imprinted in dust (see left). The legs of the lander would be either covered with dust, or the surface in the touch down area would be wiped clean. What we see on the photos is contradictory - there is enough dust in which to make footprints but yet not enough for the engines to create a dust cloud.
Pictures of astronauts on the Moon show the astronauts- sides and backs lit as well as the fronts of their spacesuits - which is inconsistent with the deep, black shadows the harsh sunlight should be casting, and indeed does elsewhere. If you take a picture of an object in the direction of the light source, then the object will appear as a silhouette. This again is not what we see on the moon photos. And why is there a line between a sharp foreground and a blurry background in some of the pictures, almost as if special-effects makers had used a so-called -matte painting- to simulate the farther reaches of the Moonscape? According to Gene Rene, -Most of what NASA was claiming about the Moon shots - and what was supposedly discovered on the Moon - appeared to be diametrically opposed to present text book physics.-
Another major point made is that the astronauts filmed walking on the Moon looks very much as if filmed at half speed. Play the videos at double speed, and everything is as normal - down to the dust kicked up by the astronauts (Dust in a vacuum does not form a cloud but forms an arc, unlike the Moon images). At this play back speed the big jumps and slow movement of the walking astronauts look like a normal stroll. Would this be what is expected? An alternative suggestion is the Peter Pan approach, one favoured by the James Bond film -Moonraker-. In other words, wires suspended the astronauts from an overhead crane and had them leap gaily across what actually was a moonset. This was also part of the astronauts legitimate training - perhaps this footage was spliced in? Its relatively easy to show astronauts taking big leaps, or even to put them in a simulated command capsule and have them go through an anti-gravity curve - but perhaps more difficult to film.
If you examine the images from different lunar missions - supposedly shot on different parts of the Moon, you find other, more convincing anomalies. Some of the videos are shot from the same camera position, in the same landscapes, despite supposedly being filmed on different missions and at different positions around the Moon. Overlaying these films reveals that the landscape, and rocks within them are exactly - exactly - the same, down to the rocks that litter the foreground. Moreover, one tape shows the Lander in place within the landscape, yet a different subsequent mission-s film of the Lunar Rover has no Lander, but the same scenery, the same rocks. Overlay the images and the landscape is exactly the same, minus the lunar lander. Remember that when the Lunar Lander takes off, half of the craft stays behind, jettisoning the manned section into space. Either the debris of the lander has been removed, or the mission dates and positions are a fiction, or it is not the Moon at all. This evidence alone is enough for the videos of the moon landings to be discredited.
Quality
The quality of the photos is amazing, perhaps too amazing. The still shots were taken with cameras mounted on the astronaut-s chest. There was no viewfinder, a manual focus, very little shielding for radiation, and a very limited number of shots. Copies of the negatives given to VIPs, supposedly in the original sequence, do not match the planned mission timetable, and more importantly, all the shots are perfect. When you or I take photos with our much more advanced cameras, with the use of auto focus and a viewfinder, how many shots will not be up to scratch? Upon closer inspection, most of the released photos reveal converging shadows and backlit shadows. Take a photo towards the Sun and your subject will be in stark shade, and all the shadows from a light source as far away as the sun will be parallel. If however your source of light is nearby, then the light, and therefore the shadows, will fan out from this point. The shadows have too much perspective. We can judge from the photos of the Moon landings that the light source, supposedly the sun, was not more than 200 yards away from the astronauts.
Additionally, many of the photos are taken from the wrong angles. Remember that the photos were mounted on the chests of the astronauts. Many of the more famous shots are taken at eye level. Think of the famous shot where the photographer is reflected within the subject-s visor. We can see that the reflected photographer is not jumping off the ground to get more height, and that the shot is not blurry from this action. If the photographer was pointing the camera slightly upward, then his reflection should be squeezed to the bottom of the astronauts curved visor. The reflection is at the centre of the visor, so the camera is at the subject-s eye level, which means that the reflection is not that of whoever took the photo. The image is perhaps THE Apollo Moon landing shot, and it tells of a cleverly orchestrated fake.
I have been a designer for years now, and my chief tool is Photoshop, a program that has now entered the dictionary as a verb. Touching up images, to try and make them more realistic, is a big part of what I do. As such, as does a classical painter you learn the rules of light shade - in short reality. I believe that the shadows, reflections and light on some of the Moon images do not add up, especially when certain filters are used. The Moon images were a very good Photoshop job, achieved with the paint and glue technology of the 60s.
Speech
The NASA transcripts of the communication between the astronauts and mission control read as if they-re carefully scripted. The accounts all have a very strange flavour to them, as if the astronauts weren-t really there.- For example when Houston Control said, -Well, its a good show-, and then the command service module replied, -Fantastic-, Armstrong replied, -Yeah, I-ll second that.- Of course you can read layers into any conversation. There were also moments such as this when it seems as if the script was not being kept to - to the annoyance of mission control. There was, of course, long cuts in the transmission, and conspiracy theorists have put forward many conjectures as to the reason. If the Moon landings were faked, then they certainly weren-t faked live, but its good economics to insert breaks.
Books such as Paper Moon supposedly present the latest scientific findings regarding the Moon landing. It suggests, amongst other things that without an impractical shield of perhaps lead, about two metres thick, the spacemen -would have been cooked by radiation- during the journey. Ergo, the lunar endeavours were impossible, and were -cynically faked at the expense of gullible people everywhere.- Scientists also doubted that communication to the Moon would be possible, because of the radiation belts that occupy the space between the Moon and the earth. The Van Hallen belts, which themselves protect the Earth from harmful radiation, would be lethal to humans. Paper Moon suggests that astronauts could survive short periods of time in these belts, but would suffer from radiation sickness. Put simply, the chances of successfully Moon walking, and generally accomplishing the set mission plan would have been slight. If the astronauts did survive then they would be in a poor state. The Van Hallen belts are, to me, the most convincing reason for faking the Moon landings, and why manned spaceflight has probably not ventured beyond our immediate orbits. The radiation belts in space, and the extremes of temperatures found on the surface of the Moon, would have conspired to destroy any film taken there and possibly any humans. If the Apollo missions were real then perhaps NASA is only guilty of faking the holiday snaps?
There are also concerns about the main component builders. Historical paperwork has been destroyed, key personnel have disappeared, and some of the plans simply do not add up. For example the Lunar Rover could not have fitted into the Lunar Module on some missions. Another way NASA could prove they went to the Moon, were the rocks they brought back. Since nobody has any Moon rocks to compare them with, some scientists have speculated that the rocks were indeed made in a laboratory on earth.
The studio that the landings were faked in were implied in the films Diamonds are Forever and Capricorn One, yet no one has ever seen these sets. There is a growing belief that -NASA is kind of a lethal organisation-, with examples of people being allegedly killed to keep secrets. Of course there is a lot that the US government keeps a secret - could this one have been kept for so long? A simpler option is that the footage was spliced together using films taken throughout training. Thus the Moon landings videos were faked under the noses of unsuspecting employees, from many different locations. Many hours of training missions from hundreds of different sites could well have been spliced together to create what we know as the Moon landing videos.
Man, or at least objects created by man, has been to the Moon. We know this because of data that is sent back, for example to measure the distance from the Earth. The videos and images we know as the Moon landings are not however real.
The era of the Moon landings
If NASA had really wanted to fake the Moon landings, the timing was 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; in this case, seeing really was believing. The magic of satellites, with their ability to enable live global communication, fascinated and awed millions of people, much like anything atomic had caught the public-s fancy in the previous decade. Also, space research and rocket science had advanced far enough to make a trip to the Moon likely - or, at the very least, remotely feasible.
The Moon landings bred a culture of science in the -60s. Anything would be possible with the new God - that of science. Science would one day render nuclear reactors safe, we would holiday on Mars, and colonise the solar system. The belief of the Moon landings and our superior technology also took away flak from the growing anti-bomb movement - this was positive science.
This Idea has been eroded over the years, with the environment - which was to be controlled by science - concerning us more than reaching to the galaxy. We now have a more passive regime of science. We map our genes; we gaze into the depths of the universe with powerful telescopes. The more we learn about our cosmos and the particles all matter is made of, the less we know. Strands of science such as quantum physics, and superstring theory require leaps of un-testable faith not normally required for old school science.
Perhaps more importantly, Watergate hadn-t happened yet, and people still trusted their elected officials. The Cold War, with the unseen, faceless enemy, made politicians at home seem a lot more believable - people are easier to lead when there is an external enemy to unite against. After Vietnam and Watergate, people have become less trusting, and to some people it doesn-t matter what the government says.
The distrust continues to be fed by the mass media, especially in the film and TV business. It is rare to find a movie in which a government agency is actually depicted as a collection of fairly efficient, competent people who serve their country to the best of their ability. Dramatically speaking, an elite of sinister, evil bureaucrats is much more appealing.
So why continue? NASA had good reason to stage Moon landing after Moon landing - both NASA and Rocketdyne wanted the money to keep pouring in. Exploration of the Moon stopped because it was impossible to continue the hoax without being ultimately discovered. And of course they ran out of pre-filmed episodes. If man has set foot on the Moon, then we have not seen the images, and the chances are, if he returned to this planet he would not have been able to tell the tale.
Myths
Even if the Americans, and possibly the Russians, had faked their Moon landings, there can be no denying that orbital space travel has been achieved. Satellites can be seen orbiting even with the naked eye, and the network of communications would not be possible without the hundreds of satellites we, as a race, have littered space with. The launching of such satellites implies manned space flight. Probes are on the Moon - they return laser beams via mirrors so that we can measure the distance. It is also possible that man has been to our rocky satellite. -Every age of exploration- from the time of the Phoenicians... to Marco Polo, and including mermaids and unicorns and all these mythological creatures that lurk at the edge of our exploration. To me, its extremely humanising to have this typically human reaction - this denial, this myth making - to our lunar adventure. I-m not at all surprised that these stories or interpretations exist. Actually, I-m surprised they aren-t more widespread.- Says James Oberg, who conducted research into Soviet space technology. According to Oberg, Cuban children are officially taught that Yankee space technology failed miserably and that NASA was reduced to pitifully faking every single lunar landing.
What You See Is Not What You Should Have Got
So were the Moon landings faked? I think there has to be some kind of cover up. The Moon landings could NOT have failed, so it seems perfectly reasonable that either the Americans had big odds of success, or a back up plan. The former wasn-t true, ergo NASA faked the programme.
The medium of this misconception is clearly Television. Indeed the Moon landings could mark the first great success of TV. The live broadcast was a PR holy grail. If the live broadcast didn-t occur, and there were only stills, not only would there be more conspiracy theories, but, for JFK et al, the mission wouldn-t have been so successful.
The Original Idea here is that of space travel, especially related to the Moon. Man frequently journeys outside of our planet-s atmosphere, and returns to earth. This is an amazing feat, which takes the concerted effort of Nations. The Original Idea is also that man has at some point been to the Moon. Probes and scientific equipment has been left on the surface of the planet, so for example we now know the Moon is almost undetectably creeping away from the earth. Whether man has been to the Moon and back, or been on frequent sorties during the Apollo missions, is debateable. If this was the case then why lie about the pictures?
The WYSINWYSHG, or changed Idea is the documentary evidence that we see relating to the Apollo missions. If man did go to the Moon, then the photos and video we see of the event do not tally.
The Gatekeepers of this misconception are the American Agencies responsible - predominantly NASA. The problem is that even if there is a conspiracy, we don-t know who is responsible. To this end, JFK started this whole thing off, and so he, probably unknowingly, is our Gatekeeper.
The Reasons depend on how much truth we give to the Moon landings. The most charitable case is that the imagery was faked because people wanted so much to see the Moon, that the grainy, blurry images brought back were not good enough. The worst-case scenario is that no one went to the Moon because it was impossible. Either way, the underlying reason is the Cold War, which gripped the world, and indeed started the whole space race, along with JF Kennedy-s rash speech.
The Consequences of this WYSINWYSHG are enormous. I cannot imagine the psyche of western society without the Moon landings. It was America-s crowning achievement, a chance to beat the Russians and show that capitalism was the way forward, on this planet and others. One of the biggest consequences was that our Idea of science collectively changed. It was science that was to save us all and our environment that would carry us to Mars and control the weather. People forgot about the old sciences of archaeology, and started believing that which is new must therefore be good. This line of thinking was nothing new - the Victorians were particularly fond of progress at the expense of history - man always believes himself better than his ancestors. Maybe the Apollo years were the apex of this way of thought. We have now come full circle, preserving our heritage, and now see science as a threatening Frankenstein-s monster - out of control by its master, and no longer having any of the answers we thought it would have.
The meme that is the Moon landings was particularly liable to be copied and to exert strong emotions all around the world. This era saw a proliferation of spaceman artefacts, from stamps to comics to films. The meme convinced us that science was going to save us all, and that we were masters of our universe. The meme, incidentally, looked fantastic in its glorious Technicolor - and we know that looks sell and idea fast.
Another of the Consequences is a historical one. The Moon landings came at a point when the public could be duped. Part of this was the success of science, part of it a strong government, or a strong enemy to unite against. Mostly there was not the cynicism of later decades. This was pre Watergate, pre Vietnam. People in power were to be believed. Most of all, people wanted to believe, to beat the Russians, and to unite as a country. Compare the Pathfinder mission to Mars of recent years. NASA sent a robot to the planet surface to scoop up material, and survey its surroundings. There was nothing like the excitement of the lunar landings. For a start there wasn-t a human angle, the expedition was pretty much a static one, and most importantly, this wasn-t a race, or if it was, it was a one sided one. The conquest of Star Trek on TV is much more enjoyable.
There is a way of testing the hypothesis that we did not go to the moon as we have been told. On the moon visits, all the equipment rocketed to the surface is still there, just like the footprints that were also left on the windless planet. All we need to do is train a telescope away from the stars, and try to find this debris. I do not know if this is possible, but I suspect that it is - if so why has this not been done before?
–Ω–
O We visited the Moon
W The Moon landings were faked
G United States / kennedy
R Cold War
C Science as god / Dominance of usa.
Posted: Mon - April 26, 2004 at 01:59 PM