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Post by turbonium on Apr 14, 2006 8:01:32 GMT -4
What makes you imply that geologists have no idea what they are doing? Do you have something against them? Do you think geologists aren't 'real' scientists? [/img] LOL! My sediments exactly!
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lonewulf
Earth
Humanistic Cyborg
Posts: 244
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Post by lonewulf on Apr 14, 2006 9:34:00 GMT -4
Nice pun. So you're making the claim that geologists don't know their job, despite years of training and learning, and college degrees?
Do you have any way to back up this claim?
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Post by sts60 on Apr 14, 2006 9:42:56 GMT -4
Mine in italics, turbonium's in boldface. There are hundreds and hundreds of tons of flight hardware ..tons and tons of technical documentation.. There is the personal experience of tens of thousands of people..There are thousands of still images and motion imagery... There is all the data.None of this is physical evidence, which I said consisted only of the moon rocks.Which is wrong. You cannot simply exclude all the things that make up a genuine flight program intended to send men on a round-trip to the Moon from evidence! The record includes all the things that were done to characterize the challenge and to solve the challenge. It includes all the things necessary for engineers and scientists and historians to look at and say, "yeah, that would work" (or "no, it wouldn't work"), and it does so through all the years with their advances in knowledge. It includes all the imagery which matches the physical record, and in this particular context documents very carefully the collection of each and every lunar sample. Only a very small percentage of the entire collection will ever be released for analysis (the rest has been declared "Set aside forever for posterity", whatever that's supposed to mean).I'd like to see your reference for that.A total of 5.1 percent or 19.3 kilograms have been allocated for scientific study, the rest is archived untouched for posterity. www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q1019.htmlSo your authoritative reference is "The web site for the astronomically disadvantaged"? LOL! Why such a tiny percentage? What possible reason could there be for sealing off such a vast majority of the rocks from public access or study forever?They are not "sealed off forever". That is simply incorrect. I already showed you where you can request lunar samples for education or research - including destructive testing. As for the "tiny percentage", you have yet to show any reason why careful husbandry of such precious and limited resources is a bad thing, or suspicious, or why legitimate research should require large amounts. As a taxpayer, I sure as hell expect them to be careful with it. The total amount returned by the Soviet unmanned missions is about 300 grams. That's orders of magnitude less than that returned by Apollo, and less than that already distributed for analysis.That doesn't prove US unmanned missions could not have retrieved many times the amount of the Soviets, or that they are mostly lunites...Or are you proposing some other, secret, unmanned project for sample retrieval? Where exactly is your evidence for such a project?No evidence that I'm aware of. But we also now know that we detonated nuclear bombs in the 1950's without the public knowing.Pure, irrelevant handwaving. You have no evidence for such an unmanned program - a program that, with the unmanned sample retrieval technology of the day, would have required hundreds of launches. You might as well appeal to NASA's legion of invisible pink unicorns, who can hold their breath for several days while they fly to the Moon and back. Don't you see that you can't simply appeal to a mythical secret program to save your argument, when you are talking to people who actually study spaceflight, or do it for a living? If these studies weren't eventually published and released to the public, we would have no documented evidence that these events actually occurred. Would you not claim these events never took place, and call it a foolish "conspiracy theory", if the studies were never released? Wouldn't you also claim that the sheer number of people who worked on Project Argus would never have been able to keep it a secret?No, because there would be no good technical reason to doubt it. We had the technology to do such things then, and the number of people for this operation was far smaller than that needed for Apollo. Apples and oranges - or perhaps raisins and pineapples might be more apt. There are many other examples of secretly conducted projects which only became public knowledge because they decided to release the information about their existence (or is made too obvious to deny, like the Manhattan Project). We simply have no idea how many secret projects have not been revealed to the public over the years. It doesn't mean they did involve unmanned moon missions, but it does mean such projects could have been conducted and never revealed.Not projects the scale of Apollo, which would have required tens of thouands of people (we've already shown how ludicrous your "a few guys at the top pulling all the strings" model is) to keep secret a national fraud for the rest of their lives, as opposed to much smaller groups keeping secret something they actually believed in. Moreover, Apollo was open from the start, inviting public examination - and has done so ever since, which means that the "secret" must conform to all future discoveries, by investigators from every country on Earth. You're just making a handwaving appeal to the abstract notion of secret projects, but it breaks quickly down upon examination. But some of the lunites are said to be identical to, and virtually indistinguishable, from those collected during the Apollo missions. How can we be sure that the only "moon" samples available for analysis are actually lunites collected which match with samples collected by unmanned probes?Eh, I'm not really clear on what you mean by this. It looks like others have asked clarifying questions, so I'll wait to see your response. As for the rest, though, you're just waving your hands furiously appealing to secret programs for which you have not the slightest shred of evidence, with a frisson of "If I was the lunar sample curator..."
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Post by scooter on Apr 14, 2006 11:26:00 GMT -4
Last time I checked, looking for landing sites on the Moon, or even looking at the Moon, was at best a very low priority of the VLT program. It is planned as a deep space system, much along the lines of Hubble. Valuable scope time looking for little things that we already know are there is a waste of resources. It may be an interesting test of capability, but there are far more valuable targets more worthy of the effort. Would it be open minded of me to question the "established" record of the creation of the Rocky Mountains? Do the Pyramids really exist? (never seen em myself, and I'm not certain of the credibility of those who say they have...) Openmindedness and thinking "outside the box" are fine, but you are questioning only one side of the argument. Perhaps if you learned exactly WHY the HB crowd is ignorant in their arguments, you would understand our frustration. Besides, if the LM isn't a classic example of thinking outside the box and open minded mission oriented design, I don't know what is...
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Post by sts60 on Apr 14, 2006 11:41:15 GMT -4
I agree that turbonium is seriously overplaying the whole VLT thing. Intentionally or not, he's making it sound like imaging the Apollo landing sites was, if not the primary purpose, at least a major goal of the thing. But it's not; it's a nice-to-have, a PR stunt. To anyone reasonably familiar with the way such projects work, it's simply not suspicious that such an incidental goal would be deemphasized, especially since the VLT interferometric capabiliites appear to be a work in progress.
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Post by JayUtah on Apr 14, 2006 12:13:53 GMT -4
None of this is physical evidence, which I said consisted only of the moon rocks.We know what you said. We just don't agree with your definition of "physical evidence". Physical evidence to me means something I and others can see or touch, and which we can examine to our heart's content. If someone said he went to the moon and brought back moon rocks, I'd consider the spacecraft he said he used physical evidence along with the rocks themselves. My rebuttal is that you are applying an artificially restrictive definition of "physical evidence" solely so you can argue that there isn't any, or at least not enough. And then on that basis you want to say that Apollo was suspicious because it lacks appropriate physical evidence. Very well, if the spacecraft themselves and the other equipment don't constitute "physical evidence" according to your definition, what does? What should NASA put forth as "physical evidence" -- according to your definition -- that they have not offered? You claim that the only "physical evidence" we have are the moon rocks, but the way you talk sounds like the only "physical evidence" we can possibly have is the moon rocks. And there they are! What else should the astronauts have brought back from the moon other than pieces of it? What else but pieces of the moon can they have brought back? A total of 5.1 percent or 19.3 kilograms have been allocated for scientific study, the rest is archived untouched for posterity. www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q1019.html I think you grossly misunderstand what Dr. Odenwald is saying. He is not saying the samples will be untouched forever; he is saying that they are currently untouched so that our posterity will have pristine samples with which to conduct their scientific research. What possible reason could there be for sealing off such a vast majority of the rocks from public access or study forever?How about the reason I stated earlier and repeated above, which happens to be fully congruent with NASA's stated proposals and policies for sample-handling from both manned and unmanned sample-return missions? Since the Apollo samples are currently the only specimens we have of lunar surface material recovered in situ, they may be all we have for the foreseeable future. It is essential to preserve such unique samples from the risk of contamination and mete them out only upon sound scientific merit. Since you have opted for the indirect argument (i.e., "It must be my reason because what other reason can there be?") you have the burden of proof to show that the reason I give cannot possibly be the reason why NASA is preserving lunar samples. That doesn't prove US unmanned missions could not have retrieved many times the amount of the Soviets...It most certain does. Your argument is equivalent to saying that since you have evidence that a person is able to carry a ten-pound object, that proves it's possible for him to carry a 1,000-pound object since people can carry things. ...or that they are mostly lunites.The lunite argument is separate. As has been shown, the existence of lunites was not established until Apollo samples were already in hand. Further, the qualitative differences between lunites and Apollo samples has been discusssed ad nauseam. Your only response seems to be that you heard somewhere that lunites were identical to Apollo samples: wishful thinking until proven otherwise. No evidence that I'm aware of.Thank you. Come back when you have some. Until then, I do not accept your vague handwaving elsewhere as the "solid evidence" you say is required to challenge history.
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Post by JayUtah on Apr 14, 2006 12:57:51 GMT -4
An open mind means the ability to change one's opinion if the evidence is compelling enough to warrant it.
But changing one's opinion when the evidence does not warrant it is simply gullibility and that has little to do with open-mindedness.
Of course, your reply is "What evidence?"
Yes, and that's not only a valid question under your argument; it's the only valid question.
You've been asked to present the evidence you found so compelling. Your response boils down largely to your opinion that there isn't enough evidence in favor of Apollo's authenticity to convince you. That isn't "compelling evidence" to make one change his mind.
And so the remainder of the argument reduces to your attempts to erode faith in Apollo evidence using little more than opinion and conjecture.
How does that equate to being open-minded? If you're open-minded, doesn't that mean you're open to the notion that the conclusion you bolster through fallacious means might also be false? I seriously doubt that you are open to the possibility that these moon hoax theories might just be garbage.
...it was a general statement that people will only naturally tend to believe that what they are taught to be the facts are indeed the indisputable facts.
Fine, then, but irrelevant. People will also believe that which has come to them through hard work, diligent study, and careful experimentation. If that belief happens to coincide with the belief of the "sheeple", you can't discount those conclusions simply by saying that sheeple believe it on faith.
How do you propose one would be able to provide "solid" enough evidence to conclusively prove to you it was a hoax?
The same way other hoaxes in the past have been uncovered. It hasn't required cooperation from the hoaxsters.
"It's not entirely impossible that it could have been done some other way" is not solid evidence. Of course not, and I certainly don't claim it as such.
But that's the only argument you provide.
When asked to explain the moon rocks, you say it "could" have been through unmanned missions although the facts say no and you have no evidence. You say they "could" be lunites, although all you have is some vague notion of their similarity. In fact you have no evidence at all.
You say you changed your mind. You say open minds can be changed by "solid evidence". We ask for that "solid evidence" and the above is what we get. I don't see any reason to believe that your mind has been changed by "solid evidence". Now you're graciously admitting that what you have provided is not solid evidence nor that you ever intended it to be. So then quit wasting our time and present the "solid evidence" you believe convinced you!
The point made is to counter the claim that "It must have been done that way", which is also not supportable as solid evidence.
That is not our claim, although many conspiracists wish it were.
Our claim is that of these three hypotheses
1. Apollo astronauts 2. Lunites 3. Unmanned probes
only the first has any actual evidence in favor of its being the way in which the samples were actually obtained.
Until you can establish "solid evidence" (not just handwaving and conjecture) for either of the other two, or for some as-yet unconsidered hypothesis, then the only rational conclusion at this time remains #1.
You make the standard conspiracist mistake of assuming that we intend to prove the evidence can only say a certain thing, not simply that it does say a certain thing.
I have never responded to you or others here by claiming any arguments are based on emotional frailties or attachments.
Then your discussion of why other people may believe whatever it is they believe is really irrelevant to our debate here. Why bring it up?
Yes, I happen to concede that there are people who believe the status quo simply because it is the status quo and they have not been exposed to anything different. I will also stipulate that some people who hold beliefs thus will respond emotionally to challenges.
But that's all a red herring. I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in why you believe what you believe and whether you understand why we believe what we believe. You don't seem to appreciate that our position on Apollo derives not from simply having been told it repeatedly, but from having engaged in considerable professional-level personal research and experience. You don't seem to appreciate that our objection is not motivated by emotion but rather by the desire to portray things accurately.
You seem to be trying to justify your approach to Apollo by saying that in the abstract people believe untrue things lazily for the wrong reason. But if the specific conclusion you're challenging is believed by conscientious and qualified people on the basis of expertise and appropriate information, then your argument really doesn't work, and the justification of your behavior falls flat.
You don't get to say that it's appropriate to question Apollo just because some people believe in it without knowing why.
I disagree. For one, the VLT project was a dedicated effort to image the landing sites.
No. The stated goal of the VLT team was to test the instrument. One proposal for doing that was to image the Apollo landing sites.
The purpose was explicity not to obtain images of the landing sites, but rather to validate the instrument. That their plan for doing so in late 2002 was to photograph the Apollo sites does not mean they can't have decided on some other way later.
If I propose to test my new camera by photographing my neighbor's prize-winning but reclusive dog, and Dog Fancy magazine gets wind of it and trumpets that photographs will soon be available, and I start getting e-mail from dog-lovers all over the world, I might just decide to test my camera instead by photographing flowers in my backyard.
Your notion that VLT is interested in participating in the moon hoax debate is entirely pasted on.
The program was begun and publicized as "most probably" the final nail in the coffin for Apollo HB's.
No. It was begun by VLT as an attempt to test the instrument. The subsequent connection to the conspiracy theory was most likely made by Robert Matthews, who wrote the Telegraph article reporting the group's activities. I see nothing in the article that says VLT had any intention of providing any evidence whatsoever in the conspiracy theory debate, and in fact a clear statement that such was not their intent.
I'm not claiming this "proves" a hoax because nothing was found or mentioned, but it does make me curious....
You can be as curious as you like. But curiosity is not "solid evidence" and I require the latter before I will consider that it is not open-minded to reject the moon hoax theory.
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reynoldbot
Jupiter
A paper-white mask of evil.
Posts: 790
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Post by reynoldbot on Apr 14, 2006 15:41:54 GMT -4
I don't know for sure but it sounds like VLT would not be capable of getting high resolution photos of the landing sites. Earlier it was stated that they were working with a 400 ft resolution and that they were striving to improve it. How much better could the resolution become? Would it be much better than what has already been photographed of the landing sites? Would that be conclusive evidence for you Turbonium? My guess is no.
I'm particularly insulted by your claim that we AB's are close-minded. I was initially convinced that the moon landings were faked but after judging all the arguments on either side I decided that the AB side is much more conclusive. I kept an open mind and chose the best option based on the evidence and arguments made.
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Post by BertL on Apr 14, 2006 17:54:46 GMT -4
Man, this is like reading a book that keeps getting longer and longer.
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Post by JayUtah on Apr 14, 2006 18:16:46 GMT -4
I'm particularly insulted by your claim that we AB's are close-minded.
And Turbonium will carefully point out that it isn't his claim that we are.
But if you look at the redux argument it's a little telling.
A: I believe Apollo was real. T: You know, some people are closed-minded and believe in things just because they've been told to. A: That's insulting; I believe Apollo was real because I've studied it carefully -- more than you even. T: Quit jumping to emotional conclusions; I wasn't talking about you.
It's really the standard innuendo argument. The argument doesn't strictly claim to be applicable, but the fact that Turbonium brings it up in this context suggest he considers it relevant. Since he can plausibly deny relevance and make it sound like he's just making pleasant conversation, we're the ones who look like we're suspiciously contentious. It scores cheap rhetorical points.
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Post by sts60 on Apr 14, 2006 19:34:15 GMT -4
And discussing it has the positive outcome for the HB that it diverts from the real issues.
Speaking of real issues, I hope turbonium drops in on the radiation thread and specifies what problems with radiation were insurmountable for Apollo. I trust he will not simply go the "searing radiation hell" path :-)
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Post by turbonium on Apr 15, 2006 3:01:27 GMT -4
Nice pun. So you're making the claim that geologists don't know their job, despite years of training and learning, and college degrees?No, I'm playing along with the post from twin, who was putting some levity into this thread - I found "Do you have something against them?" quite amusing..
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Post by turbonium on Apr 15, 2006 3:41:19 GMT -4
Jay - stop it already! When I said...
..it was a general statement that people will only naturally tend to believe that what they are taught to be the facts are indeed the indisputable facts.
You replied...
Fine, then, but irrelevant.
Now you decide to flop back to your first assumption - that I must have had some sort of devious, underlying motive......
But if you look at the redux argument it's a little telling.
A: I believe Apollo was real. T: You know, some people are closed-minded and believe in things just because they've been told to. A: That's insulting; I believe Apollo was real because I've studied it carefully -- more than you even. T: Quit jumping to emotional conclusions; I wasn't talking about you.
Basically, you were correct when you said "Fine, then, but irrelevant", as to my comments. It was an aside about historical events as written and emotional attachments some people may have to them. That's it. End of story. Period.
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Post by PhantomWolf on Apr 15, 2006 6:00:28 GMT -4
It still begs the question of do you believe that geologists could be fooled into believing that an artifical moonrock or a Lunaite was really the real pristine thing, selected, photographed in position, collected and then transported back to Earth? And if so, why?
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Post by turbonium on Apr 15, 2006 6:35:28 GMT -4
It still begs the question of do you believe that geologists could be fooled into believing that an artifical moonrock or a Lunaite was really the real pristine thing, selected, photographed in position, collected and then transported back to Earth? And if so, why?
No, I can't see a method of convincingly faking the chemical composition and other distinct features of moon rocks well enough to fool any competent geologist. Either they are lunites or unmanned mission samples collected from the moon, or a combination of both. Imo, of course.
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