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BS FAQs
Aug 15, 2005 15:50:50 GMT -4
Post by Sticks on Aug 15, 2005 15:50:50 GMT -4
I have looked at JayUtah's excellent ripping to shreds of the BS BS (am I allowed to use that double acronym here - let me know if it is deemed a violation of obscenity rules) Any hue, wonderful though they are, they did not cover all of the points raised hereJust a few to quote here. Bart seems to love insinuation and inuendo in such a way that for a moment you start to think he may have a point. He truely missed his vocation as a political spin doctor. On discussing moon rocks Discussing the imaging of the moon to see leftbehind Apollo gear About lack of USSR tracking ability JayUtah does point out if the CM was in LEO astronomers would have spotted itI liked they way that he uses evidence of a quiz show cheat and those complicit to prove that all NASA employees are liars, what a deductive leap. Mind you I use a similar argument sort of to show that crop circles are the results of fraudsters and hoaxers and not LGM (Little Green Men NOT the Lesbian and Gay Movement - apologies for any confusion) One other question I have for the moment about BS In his interview clip he talks about some unnamed NASA official in the 1970's tipping him off that the moon landings were falsified. Do we assume, this guy never existed and is just a figment of Bart's imagination. Since BS is a liar, it is hard to believe he actually existed. One theory I have, just off the top of my head as I type, if the guy was real, that he was from another arm of the forces other than the Airforce. since most of the early astronauts were from the Airforce, would someone besotten with interservice rivalry and jealousy plant the hoax idea to rubbish the achivements of the airforce, which in a British Comedy sitcom, Yes Minister, was described as a bunch of garage mechanics by a naval officer.
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Aug 15, 2005 16:53:54 GMT -4
Post by Bob B. on Aug 15, 2005 16:53:54 GMT -4
Discussing the imaging of the moon to see leftbehind Apollo gear If Japan launched such a mission, I missed it. The only Japanese moon missions I know about have been delayed several times due to technical and financial problems and are still waiting to get off the ground. The latest information I’ve heard has Lunar-A launching sometime in 2006 and Selene by 2008. Sibrel is either lying or wrong. Besides, what is Sibrel insinuating with this comment? Did NASA zap it with their ray guns to disabled the cameras or something?
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BS FAQs
Aug 15, 2005 17:14:30 GMT -4
Post by JayUtah on Aug 15, 2005 17:14:30 GMT -4
Those are new; I haven't gotten around to adding them.
I discovered that, in fact, very few people were involved in the actual faking.
He "discovered" no such thing. He rather came to that conclusion after realizing that's what would have to be the case in order for his claims to be true. Therefore it "must" be the case.
...yet the evidence recently uncovered proves that they never left Earth orbit.
Except for the shots Bart doesn't show you, from his "secret" footage, that clearly shows the distant Earth and can't have been made by the cheap cut-out tricks he proposes.
With Cold War tensions running high, those who knew the truth went along with the deception to fool the Soviets that we had technological superiority.
And now that the Cold War is over?
If they really went to the moon, then anyone who says otherwise is an idiot.
No. Someone who says otherwise might be a very clever con artist trying deliberately to deceive people for his own notoriety and profit.
Why then are there so many Web sites, which took thousands of hours to construct, in existence to refute the rantings of morons?
Because the truth is worth the effort.
While it is possible that the moon rocks were manufactured...
Not according to qualified geologists.
...in reality these rocks are probably just meteorites that were retrieved on Earth.
Qualified geologists know how to distinguish samples from meteorites.
Sibrel is handwaving here. He cannot explain the moon rocks.
Von Braun, the director of the program, visited Antarctica a few months before the missions to retrieve these meteorites.
W. von Braun was the head of the engineering aspects of the program. He was not in charge of the entire Apollo project. Why would you send an engineer and not a geologist to recover lunar meteorites? In fact, von Braun went to Antarctica on vacation; there is no evidence whatsoever he was there to get moon rocks. And his visit predates the discovery of lunar meteorites in Antarctica.
By the way, it is a federal crime for a civilian to be in possession of a moon rock, so how can there truly be independent verification?
Hogwash. It is against the law to own an Apollo sample. Obtaining one for the purpose of scientific study -- such as to verify its authenticity -- is simply a matter of some paperwork.
Sibrel completely ignores the fact that the Soviets -- who had independently obtained samples of their own -- authenticated the Apollo samples. You can have no better verification than that of your arch enemy.
Further disappointment is the fact that the most recent European lunar probe can not see the moon's surface in enough detail to answer this persistent question . . . or so they say.
Innuendo.
In addition, the Soviets did not have the capability to track deep spacecraft until late in 1972...
Blatantly false. They did not have 24-hour coverage, but they were quite able to track their own space ships through deep space.
...immediately after which, the last three Apollo missions were abruptly cancelled.
The last three missions were canceled in 1970.
Even if the Russians did suspect the landings were not authentic, the act of calling us liars of this magnitude at the height of the Cold War could have instigated a global thermonuclear holocaust...
Hogwash. It would have been the propaganda coup of the century. The Soviets had no problem publicly ridiculing America's earlier failures in space; thus it is improbable they would suddenly change their attitude. They crippled their own economy trying to keep up with the United States. Why would they keep doing that if they could prove the U.S. had been lying?
Who would listen [to any whistle-blowers], and who would believe them?
The same people who buy Bart Sibrel's videos.
This illusion is so pridefully ingrained in everyone’s mind that it isn’t even questioned.
Hogwash. People have been arguing at least since 1974 that the moon landings were fake. It remains a minority opinion because it's factually bankrupt, not because people are used to hearing only one explanation.
Furthermore, would you want to be the one to ruin the international reputation of America?
Then isn't that what Bart Sibrel is trying to do?
It is one thing to ruin your own life and reputation, yet what about others who are not willing to do so?
Irrelevant. If one is upset about having lived a lie, what would make him continue to protect others living the same lie. That's the problem with conspiracies: once someone gets cold feet, he seizes the moral high ground. In Bart Sibrel's universe, the astronauts have exactly the right amount of integrity to keep the question ambiguous. Not enough to come clean, but too much to risk outing their companions. How convenient.
The fact is scientists have been bouncing lasers off the moon's surface without mirrors since the 1950's.
No. Lasers weren't invented in the 1950s.
If there is anything there, it was left by an unmanned probe.
An unmanned probe for which Sibrel has no evidence.
When scientists fail to require independent duplication of such an outlandish claim...
Science requires independent verification, not duplication.
What is fact today, is folly tomorrow.
No, only some of it. Newtonian physics, for example, has been serving mankind on a daily basis largely unchanged for 400 years. Nothing science has uncovered since 1969 has changed how we think about the Apollo missions.
The leading scientists today who say that the Van Allen Radiation Belt is not lethal (who were generally in preschool at the time of the first alleged moon landing)...
No. Dr. Van Allen himself specifically repudiates Bart Sibrel's conclusion. And in fact it was Bart Sibrel -- not Dr. Van Allen -- who was in preschool at the time of the Apollo missions.
As to whether the next generation of engineers simply accepts the strength of the Van Allen belts through implicit belief in Apollo's success: that's just absolute fantasy. We engineer far more these days for work inside the Van Allen belts than engineers 30 years ago did. We need to know accurately and explicitly what that environment is like. It just so happens our understanding coincides with what we learned from Apollo. Billions of dollars in modern global commerce depends on that data being right, and that data bears out the feasibility of Apollo.
The leading scientists are wrong. Has this ever historically happened?
People with no appreciable education or experience are wrong. Doesn't that happen more often than error from leading scientists?
If all these people were willing to lie for a little money, how much more for alleged national security?
Irrelevant. Those people were discovered.
It's relatively easy to lie about things only you and few others would know, like whether you cheated on a quiz show. It's quite hard to lie about the fundamental nature of the universe and building machines to operate in it.
The fact is, Time Magazine was wrong.
Only temporarily.
The best way to fool the world was to fool the media.
But they didn't fool the world or the media. They were eventually found out.
The question still stands why this hasn't seen the light of day outside of a few malicious and/or misguided individuals clearly aimed at their own profits.
The film is Earth-shattering evidence, indeed.
Hogwash. It's a selective smattering of video with a conspiratorial interpretation tacked onto it stewed liberally in fire-and-brimstone Christianity.
The fact is, it cost five hundred thousand dollars to produce over five years.
Then someone got ripped off. A Funny Thing is 40 minutes of stock footage. Anyone could have put it together in a week or two on a personal computer having paid only for licensing fees.
The largest contributors of the project were wealthy patriots. They put up half a million dollars and would like to recoup a little of it.
Unfortunately those "wealthy patriots" made the mistake of hiring an independent fact-checker without putting him under a non-disclosure agreement. The investigator gave a scathing review of the film, and when the "wealthy patriots" went ahead and released it anyway, he went to Jim McDade and told his story.
If the financiers had wanted to get their money back, then shouldn't they have paid attention to the fact-checker they hired? Why would anyone risk money on a venture that is demonstrably factually incorrect? Perhaps because they wanted the story told no matter whether it was true or false.
I think Mr. Sibrel's shadowy bankrollers are the ones we should really be investigating here.
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BS FAQs
Aug 15, 2005 17:21:00 GMT -4
Post by JayUtah on Aug 15, 2005 17:21:00 GMT -4
Do we assume, this guy never existed and is just a figment of Bart's imagination.
Until he can substantiate the identity and the revelation, it is anonymous authority.
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BS FAQs
Aug 15, 2005 17:33:50 GMT -4
Post by Sticks on Aug 15, 2005 17:33:50 GMT -4
Many thanks JayUtah I knew I could rely on you BS has very slick arguments and he sounds quite believeable at times, why he did not go into being a spin doctor he would have been better served there. What about this mysterious figure that tipped him off, did he actually exist? Edit Just saw JayUtah's post on Mr X just after I hit submit
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BS FAQs
Aug 15, 2005 22:49:58 GMT -4
Post by scooter on Aug 15, 2005 22:49:58 GMT -4
Watching BS's director's comments video was enlightening... Who was this unknown informant who said landing on the Moon was "impossible"? What was his position at NASA, and if it were so, why did so many thousands stick with the program and not quit in frustration and dispair? Bob B's link above shows the very many unmanned launches aimed at the Moon...many failed to leave the planet, others failed to leave orbit, several missed the Moon by varying degrees...some crashed...but some succeeded in landing. Every one of these missions were small stepping stones in the path to the Moon, refining the techniques and necessary hardware. We learn from our failures, and there have been very many since the early days of spaceflight. BS says he spent a great deal of time researching the Moon landings and spaceflight. Was this time spent studying the technology, hardware, and science? Or was it spent poring over pictures looking for "anomalies" which, with no basic understanding of the situation, he was "unable to explain"... why is he so dependent on "out of context" snippets and film clips? It is a tremendous leap to go from "what is this in this picture" to "there must have been a vast conspiracy"...without taking the time to try to understand other possibilities, and the science behind them? Unfortunately, BS, and so many others, make this jump without a second thought. Just a brief read in any "intro to orbital mechanics" website would reveal the real simple beauty of how things work "up there". Technically challenging, yes, but hardly "impossible".
Bart aims his videos at the ill informed and the uneducated. He hopes you don't understand the technical side of spaceflight, for if you do, his slick, simplistic presentation is revealed as pure and utter nonsense. The slightest application of real critical thinking, common sense. and curiosity shreds his "theory"...but it all speaks volumes of his devotees...
Dave, bus driver and space fan
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BS FAQs
Aug 16, 2005 0:00:49 GMT -4
Post by PhantomWolf on Aug 16, 2005 0:00:49 GMT -4
Well I'm pretty sure that if you want quotes about trips to the moon being impossible the Head of NASA, or what was to become NASA stated it in about 1958. Of course there are quotes by emminate scientists about the impossiblily of lot of other things that were outside the technology of the time the statment was made to, including the claims that a heavier than air craft could never fly.
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BS FAQs
Aug 16, 2005 0:30:11 GMT -4
Post by bazbear on Aug 16, 2005 0:30:11 GMT -4
No. Lasers weren't invented in the 1950s. A very small nitpick, Jay, the laser was actually invented at Bell Labs in 1958 (though I don't believe anyone actually built a functional model until 1960).
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BS FAQs
Aug 16, 2005 0:37:51 GMT -4
Post by JayUtah on Aug 16, 2005 0:37:51 GMT -4
I guess it depends on what you mean by "invent". As an engineer, I don't consider it invented until it works, and for the laser that wasn't until 1960. Until you have a working model you can't bounce laser beams off the moon.
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BS FAQs
Aug 16, 2005 1:18:32 GMT -4
Post by Sticks on Aug 16, 2005 1:18:32 GMT -4
Well I'm pretty sure that if you want quotes about trips to the moon being impossible the Head of NASA, or what was to become NASA stated it in about 1958. Of course there are quotes by emminate scientists about the impossiblily of lot of other things that were outside the technology of the time the statment was made to, including the claims that a heavier than air craft could never fly. and that splitting the atom had no practical use ;D
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BS FAQs
Aug 16, 2005 3:19:17 GMT -4
Post by gwiz on Aug 16, 2005 3:19:17 GMT -4
Japan, however, sent a probe to the moon about six years ago that did have this capability. Unfortunately, as soon as it entered lunar orbit all five of its cameras simultaneously malfunctioned. The only Japanese lunar mission to date was this one: nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/tmp/1990-007A.htmlIt was basically an engineering mission designed to develop orbital mechanics and navigation techniques. It certainly didn't have five cameras. Its two cameras were for optical navigation and wouldn't have had the capability of mapping the lunar surface in any detail or detecting Apollo hardware. I haven't heard that the cameras failed. The sub-satellite which also entered lunar orbit had no instruments, just a radio tracking transponder. Japan applied the orbital mechanics techniques developed to two later missions, but neither was intended to observe the moon, just to use lunar gravity to modify their orbits.
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BS FAQs
Aug 16, 2005 3:58:28 GMT -4
Post by bazbear on Aug 16, 2005 3:58:28 GMT -4
I guess it depends on what you mean by "invent". As an engineer, I don't consider it invented until it works, and for the laser that wasn't until 1960. Until you have a working model you can't bounce laser beams off the moon. Fair enough, and I was certainly not implying anyone was bouncing lasers off the moon back then.
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Aug 16, 2005 9:04:59 GMT -4
Post by Bob B. on Aug 16, 2005 9:04:59 GMT -4
Thanks, I have to add that one to my list.
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BS FAQs
Aug 16, 2005 9:06:53 GMT -4
Post by gwiz on Aug 16, 2005 9:06:53 GMT -4
Japan, however, sent a probe to the moon about six years ago that did have this capability. Unfortunately, as soon as it entered lunar orbit all five of its cameras simultaneously malfunctioned.Just found this: pages.preferred.com/~tedstryk/Hiten.htmlLooks like the cameras were working right up to the final lunar impact.
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BS FAQs
Aug 16, 2005 10:06:32 GMT -4
Post by gwiz on Aug 16, 2005 10:06:32 GMT -4
the Soviets did not have the capability to track deep spacecraft until late in 1972, immediately after which, the last three Apollo missions were abruptly cancelled. The Soviets launched their first moon probe attempt in 1958. By 1972 they had the first lunar impact, first pictures of the far side, first soft landing, first probe in lunar orbit, first vehicle on the surface and an automated sample return to their credit. To do all this without a tracking capability is amazing. How did they manage? Stick pins in a sky atlas? A few days ago I posted to another thread this link: www.novosti-kosmonavtiki.ru/content/numbers/271/03.shtmlwhich describes how the Soviets used their own lunar manned programme tracking system to follow Apollo from 1968.
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