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New Theories / Re: Did we land on the moon?
« on: 26/06/2003 21:53:39 »
A couple of points
Arthur C. Clarke addressed all these issues in his book "A Fall of Moon Dust", written in the early sixties (?) well before the moon landings. The (very good) book was about a daring rescue of some tourists on the moon. One sub-plot was the TV reporters covering it. In it the reporter, who got the scoop, debated as to whether or not to show the stars in the TV picture. The true picture was was to not show the stars, because to the eye the sunlit moon is so bright you can't see the stars. But viewers expect them, and the camera could be set to pick them up. (Being a good cynical reporter, he did what the public wanted.) The reasoning still applies, except the cameras haven't gotten that good yet. The other thing is that after the rescue (sorry for giving the plot away) when the new tourist bus heads out, they have flags waving on the dock-side, moved by electric motors.
The flag issue was actually a well known one. The folks who put a man on the moon actually knew that there was no wind on the mood (how clever they were) and also that people wanted to see it. If you really look at the picture, there is a horizontal rod on the top of the flag. The flag came with the rod folded down, and they unfolded it on the moon (also note the wrinkles in the flag from being folded up). Due to the low gravity on the moon, the joint for the rod didn't have to be very strong. If you do want to see the flag wave, go to the NASA web site. One of the downloadable movies is from a automatic camerea left on the moon that took a TV picture of one of the acsents from the moon. The rocket blast of the ascent engine turned the flag around and made it wave. (And yes to send the signal to the camera to look up and watch the ascent stage go up, they had to factor in the three second time delay it took for the signal to get there). And yes, I am old enough to have seen that live on TV.
The bigger point is that poeople would rather believe a big lie than a small one (Hitler actually said that). So the theory is that the moon landing was all staged. OK. And the poeople involved were clever enough to do that, but unfortunately were stupid enough to film it on a set where the wind was blowing. OK. And it was blowing hard engouh to make a flag stand straight, but not enough to blow any dust up. First you cross a probability and credibility barrier. Then you cross an impossibility barrier. Then you cross an ridiculous barrier. And the further you go out in that direction, the more (not less) people are willing to believe it. It's a superiorty thing. The trick is to claim that by reaching a state of stupidity that is almost physically impossible to reach, you can prove that you are smarter than people who actually work for a living. The point is to be so dim as to not to be able to figure out to put a rod on top of the flag so people could see it, but to still be smarter than the entire moon project put together. Well, its sentiment like that that Bush got elected and got his war.
The point of "if they could put a man on the moon..." was that for once in history you had a lot of people all pushing the same way to get something done, and look what a great thing they did. Outside of that,however, most people choose to be ignorant, and push against making things better.
One of the engineering managers at one of the airplane companies that built the command module, when asked why he was so excited about it said "we finally get to build something without guns in it". Arthur C. Clarke was right in his broader message : the world needs a challenge. There has got to be more to life than watching wars on TV and buying dog food on-line. Without it, we are the exact same people who brought the world the Dark Ages. We need something to build that "doesn't have guns in it". The moon project was actually done for all of the wrong reasons, and NASA has never recovered, but it proved it could be done. It's either that, or burn witches.
Arthur C. Clarke addressed all these issues in his book "A Fall of Moon Dust", written in the early sixties (?) well before the moon landings. The (very good) book was about a daring rescue of some tourists on the moon. One sub-plot was the TV reporters covering it. In it the reporter, who got the scoop, debated as to whether or not to show the stars in the TV picture. The true picture was was to not show the stars, because to the eye the sunlit moon is so bright you can't see the stars. But viewers expect them, and the camera could be set to pick them up. (Being a good cynical reporter, he did what the public wanted.) The reasoning still applies, except the cameras haven't gotten that good yet. The other thing is that after the rescue (sorry for giving the plot away) when the new tourist bus heads out, they have flags waving on the dock-side, moved by electric motors.
The flag issue was actually a well known one. The folks who put a man on the moon actually knew that there was no wind on the mood (how clever they were) and also that people wanted to see it. If you really look at the picture, there is a horizontal rod on the top of the flag. The flag came with the rod folded down, and they unfolded it on the moon (also note the wrinkles in the flag from being folded up). Due to the low gravity on the moon, the joint for the rod didn't have to be very strong. If you do want to see the flag wave, go to the NASA web site. One of the downloadable movies is from a automatic camerea left on the moon that took a TV picture of one of the acsents from the moon. The rocket blast of the ascent engine turned the flag around and made it wave. (And yes to send the signal to the camera to look up and watch the ascent stage go up, they had to factor in the three second time delay it took for the signal to get there). And yes, I am old enough to have seen that live on TV.
The bigger point is that poeople would rather believe a big lie than a small one (Hitler actually said that). So the theory is that the moon landing was all staged. OK. And the poeople involved were clever enough to do that, but unfortunately were stupid enough to film it on a set where the wind was blowing. OK. And it was blowing hard engouh to make a flag stand straight, but not enough to blow any dust up. First you cross a probability and credibility barrier. Then you cross an impossibility barrier. Then you cross an ridiculous barrier. And the further you go out in that direction, the more (not less) people are willing to believe it. It's a superiorty thing. The trick is to claim that by reaching a state of stupidity that is almost physically impossible to reach, you can prove that you are smarter than people who actually work for a living. The point is to be so dim as to not to be able to figure out to put a rod on top of the flag so people could see it, but to still be smarter than the entire moon project put together. Well, its sentiment like that that Bush got elected and got his war.
The point of "if they could put a man on the moon..." was that for once in history you had a lot of people all pushing the same way to get something done, and look what a great thing they did. Outside of that,however, most people choose to be ignorant, and push against making things better.
One of the engineering managers at one of the airplane companies that built the command module, when asked why he was so excited about it said "we finally get to build something without guns in it". Arthur C. Clarke was right in his broader message : the world needs a challenge. There has got to be more to life than watching wars on TV and buying dog food on-line. Without it, we are the exact same people who brought the world the Dark Ages. We need something to build that "doesn't have guns in it". The moon project was actually done for all of the wrong reasons, and NASA has never recovered, but it proved it could be done. It's either that, or burn witches.