Hey Pen,
Just back from six pages of Dave's Moondoggie. First up I gotta say I'm with him in toto. That is, I (and my little dog too!) agree with him that the Apollo missions were bullshit. Humans have never been to the moon and I expect he's right in saying that they never will.
But a couple of his arguments are bullshit and I reckon he'd be better off dropping them. Which is to say, on the subject of shadows, ambient light, and second light sources, he's completely wrong. He declares he knows a lot about photography, but regretfully I'm going to have to trump him with my ten years in 3D. A 3D heavy will understand light to a degree way beyond any photographer. Sorry if that puts any photographers' noses out of joint but it's the cold hard truth.
As an example, I'll ask the question - has anyone got a glass of water with them right now? If you don't, go get one. Now put the glass on the table. Now pick it up. Now put it down. Repeat this a few times and watch the play of light and shadow on the table. In amongst this is refraction, reflection, and shadow. Sure enough, a photographer can play with this: he can have more or less; he can light it from different angles; he can add mood: dramatic, gentle, whatever - and then he shoots it and bills the agency $5000. Lucky him.
What he does not have to do is figure out how to make the light do that thing. The effect as such, is pretty much done for him. In 3D nothing is done for you. If I want those pretty 'caustics' in my glass of water scene, I have to make them myself. Subsequently it is the lot of the 3D operator to spend a great deal of time contemplating the nature of light and how it is passed from object to object. If I don't tell the assorted objects within my scene how I want them to do this, then they ain't gunna - it's as simple as that. There is no default 'just-do-whatever-nature-does' setting. Instead there is 'incandescence', 'diffuse', 'specular roll-off', 'eccentricity', and an endless array of jargonistic concepts that are the lot of someone who has to define the laws of physics for every single shot.
Hmm... it's like re-inventing the wheel every time, except we also have to re-invent the earth, and then explain to both the earth and wheel the existence of the other, and how they should view that. Welcome to 3D.
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Now - the behaviour of light: Dave declares that light can only reflect back to where it came from. Oh dear - wrong answer. It is the nature of light that when it hits an object (regardless of what direction it comes from) the light then bounces in all directions. If it didn't we wouldn't see anything. If you see a thing it's because the light that has struck it (from the sun, say) has bounced into your eye. Whilst the light from the sun is effectively parallel, it does not likewise reflect in a single direction, ie. into your eye and your eye alone. It bounces in an infinite number of directions, and thus into everyone's eye. That's why 50,000 people can sit in a cricket ground and regardless of whether the sun is behind them, or in front of them, or wherever, they can all see the action in the middle of the field.
Clearly this reflected light does not go into our eye as some kind of go-nowhere-else one-way trip. Light is a 'lady of easy virtue' that will bounce around and around. Thus the people in the cheap seats on the hill who are in direct sunlight can still see the lah-di-dah sorts in the member's stand who are in shadow. They are lit by ambient light - the light that has bounced into them from the ground, the other stands, and yes, the atmosphere in the sky.
Now, before anyone pipes up with how the moon doesn't have any atmosphere, let me cut you off and say you've grasped the wrong end of the stick. Whilst atmosphere, or more precisely clouds, can produce soft, multidirectional light, in no way is this the be-all-and-end-all of ambient light. A photographer who knows the difference between the hard light that strikes a person on a sunny day and the soft ambient light that strikes them on a cloudy day, and thinks that 'cloud equals ambient' needs to think again. Ambient light is merely light that comes from all directions instead of one. Clouds make this happen, sure, but so do lots of things. When clouds intercede between the sun and the object being lit, the light passes through the clouds and loses its hard parallel nature. The clouds are now the light source and the light it puts out bounces around in every goddamn direction and is thus reduced, diffuse, and 'ambient'.
But the fact is, we don't need clouds to do this. Let's go into deep space, way beyond the moon, way beyond anything. It's just me and my camera and a white volleyball (um, which I've filled with black sticky rice and egg custard to, a) stop it exploding with differential pressure, and b) give me a delish last meal before I die of the radiation). Anyway, under Dave's photographer-logic of atmosphere-equals-ambient, the ball will be dazzling on the side lit by the sun and in perfect darkness on the side not lit. Or it would be if I wasn't floating next to it. Bugger! It seems like the light bounces off me and acts as a 'fill'. Sure enough, my white space-suit acts as a variety of mirror that reflects light back at the volleyball. In precisely the same way that light strikes the ball and bounces in all directions (one of which is into my eye), the light will also strike me and my white space-suit, and bounce in all directions (one of which is into the volleyball). The Dark Side of the Volleyball will be lit, and atmosphere ain't got nothin' to do with it. (Nor Pink Floyd, ha ha).
I will reflect light into the ball and the ball will reflect light into me. This would be vaguely directional sure, rather than truly ambient, but... if we had enough astronauts and enough volleyballs, and all floating in the middle of nowhere like some mad, drug-fuelled outer space sticky rice and egg custard wig-out... deep breath... in the centre of that would be true ambient light bounced in from all directions. And all without atmosphere.
And so! There we are on the moon, and we're shooting the other astronaut who happens to be standing in complete shadow. Beyond him in the background we can see the surface of the moon. Which is to say, direct light is striking it and bouncing in every direction, one of which is into our eye. If we see it, it must be so. Okay, and since it's bouncing in every direction it must bounce at him also. And of course, from him this weakened light must likewise bounce in all directions, one of which will be into our eye. It cannot be any other way. And yes, there is no atmosphere but it doesn't make any difference. Light does not need atmosphere to bounce around and behave in an ambient fashion.
With the surface of the moon acting as an ambient light generator, a matt black object will bounce (reflect, same-same) very little ambient light back at us, but a white object will reflect quite a lot. And of course a fully reflective metallic foil object will bounce nearly all of it back at us. And sure enough, it's all right there in the photo just as it should be. And whether we're on the moon, in the studio, whatever, it doesn't make any difference. The ambience is no proof of anything one way or t'other.
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And then there's the shadows, particularly those in the photo of the two landing pads on the 'lunar' surface. I'll happily concede that it isn't the lunar surface, and is in all likelihood cement dust sprinkled on the floor of the Lookout Mountain Studio in Laurel Canyon. But what I will absolutely not concede is that there are two light sources in this picture. Believe it or not, there is only a single light source and all the shadows accord with it. As head of 3D my job was precisely to look for errors of this nature and this picture hasn't got any. The foreground grey stick is square to us and about twenty degrees from the ground. The background leg is not quite square to us and maybe 75 degrees to the ground. Their shadows, along with those of the bumps in the extreme foreground are exactly right for a single light source, camera-right, and elevated at approximately 45 degrees.
I swear to God - professional reputation, the whole thing - this photo is halal. Without a shadow of a doubt (ha ha), I could build this scene in 3D and prove it utterly. It'd be the big don't-argue from hell. But to be honest, I couldn't be fagged. And besides what would I be proving? That the guys who faked these photos were smart enough to do the sensible and obvious thing and use a single light source? Shake my head - what a waste of time...
Besides that, if there were two light sources, we'd see one of two things: a) some of the objects would be lit from two directions and cast two shadows; or b) with the foreground objects and the background objects having each their own separate hard lighting, between them in the mid-ground there would be either a double lit area or a band of shadow - pick one. Blending two lights in this fashion is murderously difficult. I've tried to do it and it's a fool's errand. No one would waste their time.
And besides, take a look at this shot - what's the fucking point? Two landing pads occupying a small area of ground? Big deal. It's hardly a hero shot, and it could easily be lit by one light source, and so... why wouldn't you? Why bother with two lights? Sure enough, it is lit by a single light source. Me, I haven't got any kids but I'd be perfectly happy to swear on the lives of someone else's. Or is that too ghoulish? Hell, just take my word for it.
Oh! I tell you what - if anyone feels really confident on this shadow caper, like really, really confident, like 50oz of gold confident (all the money I have in the world), and wants to put their money where their mouth is, I'll take that bet! I'll dig up my 3D Maya license, clock up a day's labour, and Baby, I'm a Rich Man, Yeah!
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Mind you, I wouldn't feel good about taking that money. I'm not that cruel and besides, in the big discussion I agree with Dave. Previously I'd never had much time for the Apollo Hoax crowd and that was mostly due to the chronic nature of the wrong-shadow/ambient-light argument. Happily Dave attacked the whole Apollo question in his usual brilliant holistic fashion and I'm now on board. But as I progressed through his moondoggie piece, the head of steam that had built up (of the 'Go Dave Go!' variety) all came to a grinding halt once the dreary specifics of the lighting kicked in. Bugger! We were rocking and rolling and now it's all fallen flat!
Dave! Ditch those two photes mate! They ain't doing you any favours!
WinterPatriot related an interesting story about "the landing" a couple of years ago which you might find interesting-
ReplyDeleteDid NASA Start The 'Moon Landing Was A Hoax' Hoax?
I should have added this in with the last comment but. ..
ReplyDeleteJust to make clear what WinterPatriot's conclusion from it all was, he added this opinion,
"a NASA PR man introduced a man spreading the idea that the moon landings were a hoax,
and therefore
nothing NASA says about the moon landing or its critics can possibly be believed", here.
Good point noby. I havn't got farther than the half of the second part. Dave's bandwidth was exceeded and google doesn't cache the pictures. But what a lot of non sequiturs, physics ignorance, ad hominems, strawmen, appeal to autority and hand waving. We should maybe look also in a holistic way why Dave made seppukku here, may be he hit to close to something big with the pedophocracy and Laurel Canyon things and he was whacked. The friendly CIA agent is now doing his best to discredit the reputation of Dave (hell I was even able to convert my brother to the McGowan view on serial killers/ MKUltra and so on).
ReplyDeleteTwo factors most strongly affect my negative view on perhaps the most famous Laurel Canyon production of all time: Apollo on the moon.
ReplyDeleteFirst & foremost are the radiation issues. Second comes not the question of shadows and ambient light, which I was previously hip to (and this post is a first-class primer for the optically uninitiated, BTW), but what has supposedly become of all the data and the hardware from those most famous of American adventures.
Lost. Gone. Damned near ALL of it. Only scattered fragments remain, a few photographs and some physical props that have been hanging in museums for the last thirty years or so which don't stand up to rigorous physical scrutiny relative to their proposed function.
Now doesn't it stand to reason that the proudest technical empire on earth would go well out of its way to preserve the legacy of what is perhaps its most salutory technical achievement -- physically visiting another body in space?
Where's all the important data, surely piled in row upon row of boxes in large, secured government warehouses on military facilities? Every last sheet of it has simply gone missing?
GMaFB, he says.
I'm not buying the "it's all been classified" line either. They divvy'd up the museum props in the early seventies and let the rest slowly "disappear" from warehouses into private collectors hands, surely at only the most lucrative black market prices.
Like every other Hollywood production, there's not really much "there" there when you really start looking. A few lines on a resume, a few stage props to auction off for charity and a pile of leftover swag best squirreled away to maintain later market value as the brand nostalgia kicks in a few years later.
So, where are all the Apollo t-shirts?
To be honest, I'm still very VERY ambivalent about the whole moon thing, and you're not helping!
ReplyDeleteTo cut a long story short, just as your 3D expertise de-de-de-bunks the photo things... who else may pop up with other seemingly unrelated knowledge that pops the rest of the moon hoax arguments?
I feel quite certain myself that the moon landing was faked . . . so much easier to just orbit around earth as the pre-made movie clips are shown.
ReplyDeleteAs one of the people commenting on Penny's blog said, why would the US take the chance at failure? Especially when they really didn't have the technology back then . . . I mean, the shots of those guys in the 'control room' - those hundred or so screens with our brightest young men looking at them - they couldn't compete with the memory on my cell phone. What the hell were they looking at? Certainly not info being transmitted by the craft . . .
And, the simple fact that in 40ish years, no other flight up there. Not one. Does it seem suspicious to anyone that months ago they trumpetted that they would be sending back photos of the american flag planted in the moon, dispelling all the hoax rumours, and then . . . nothing? No word of it.
In fact, no word of the moon at all, until a supposed bomb let off there . . . makes one wonder whether they dropped a flag and some hardware on the surface so that could take a picture of it later.
Nice commentary on the shadows though.
my god, nobody, that is really an excellent bit of work you have done there.
ReplyDeleteI am going to have to take your word for it, because it is your gig, not mine.
When I got to the photography part, sadly, I tuned out, because it is not my forte, so to speak.
I read it, but....anyway.
It is funny when you said, this only means that someone lit the photo well, I chuckled.
This makes me think so much of 9/11, there are weaker arguements and stronger arguements, but, generally speaking, since the official conspiracy theory makes no sense, and all people can do is pick away at bits and pieces of it, you are bound to end up with weaker or stronger arguements.
But that doesn't make those that question the official story, incorrect, it only makes them questioners.
But, then like 9/11 we all saw the planes hit the building, and then they came down, so that must be what happened right?
Well, no, not necessarily.
Same for the moon missions, we know the rocket took off, that is for certain, and then we saw on tv, that men were on the moon, so that too, must have been what happened, but not necessarily so.
We have assumed in both cases the results were brought on by what we initially saw.
We were not present on the moon, so it is not actually knowable by us.
And the people who were present at the trade towers tell very different stories, then the official 9/11 story.
Yet,though they were actually present, they are discreditted, what does that say to us?
I have been thinking alot about what we see on tv, how is shapes our concept of "reality", and I am afraid it is not for the better.
I think this is why, as time goes on, I can only advocate more strongly for tossing the tube, from it, emanates more mind control then we are even aware of.
Thanks folks,
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks James. Ayah, as if it wasn't fucked up enough! NASA started it all eh? Hmm... what are the possibilities on this?
a) The moon shots are real in every respect and NASA started a Hoax conversation to... make the world's most absurd conspiracy theory that they could then at their leisure shoot down and thus tarnish all other conspiracy theories (a la JFK). Under this logic, it's not about man-on-the-moon at all - that just happens to be the vehicle of choice for attacking other conspiracy theories, or indeed conspiracy theories in general.
Problems - What are they waiting for? It's fifty years later. How long are they going to wait before they whip out their trump cards and win the argument?
b) The moon shots are real albeit with some funky military/UFO/alien secrets attached to them, and NASA started the Hoax angle to send all questions in a direction of their own choosing.
Problems - Well... does anyone know of any spooky space shit attached to the Apollo stories? Anything? Anything significantly better than the tons of UFO sightings by all those thirty year veteran pilots etc? Hell, there've been UFO sightings witnessed by tens of thousands. And? And nothing. So why would they bother here?
c) There was no moonshot and NASA started the Hoax line knowing that their story was tenuous and they'd eventually be sprung and that their best possible option was to 'poison the well' with idiot discussions of crosshairs and shadows.
Problems - I don't have any problems with this at all. Like I said earlier, I'd never had any time for the Hoax stories because their case seemed too weak. Bingo! Well-poisoning mission accomplished!
d) Winter Patriot is a bullshit disinfo merchant and there was no such expert and no such radio show. He did this to make NASA's case stronger. No wait... to make their case weaker. Um, wait, is it just me or does this theory disappear up its own arse?
Problems - it doesn't make a lick of sense.
Sure enough, as far as I'm concerned, the answer is C. Thus Winter Patriot's anecdote piles in with Dave McGowan's and in fact adds a lustre to McGowan's star for his refusal to think inside the pre-made disinfo box.
Otherwise I was reading over at Jeff Wells', and in a discussion of 'debunking' he floated the use of the word 'debugging'. ie. we're not throwing a theory out, baby and bathwater style, rather we're just sharpening it - like a debugger removes, or tweaks, errant lines of code to make an application, um, 'do its job better'.
And that's all I'm doing here. I'm pretty much down with Mir on this one. The loss of ALL the footage, ALL the telemetry data, and ALL of the plans (keeping in mind that this was the most singular event of the twentieth century, perhaps ever, and everyone knew it) is AN IMPOSSIBILITY.
The Apollo records were treated with less care than Barbi collectors treat a $10 doll. Honestly. The loss of this data is such a shockingly bad story that it beggars belief. Okay, done deal - I don't believe it.
Add to this NASA's own declarations about how it'll take 15 years to solve the problems of radiation, and also add the perpetual non-appearance of all those modern probe images that were to shut up those crazy hoaxers once and for all, and you have a three-stranded cable.
What you don't have is a chain. If some of McGowan's points are bullshit they are not links in a chain that have broken and severed the line. Rather they are superfluous strands that we didn't really need anyway.
Well laid out, Nobby. I gotta go with 'C', too. Never thought I'd be saying this.
ReplyDeleteJust to add to it, it is a well practised damage control play to 'get in first' with the media. If your opponent is going to go public, call a press conference first so that you have more control over the narrative; you establish the talking points and make your would be exposer respond to you rather than the other way round. You keep maximum control of the message this way. 'First impressions' and all that. This type of thing could have been part of NASA's thinking.
I suppose this is all another way of saying "poisoning the well". Oh, well . . . .
FB
ReplyDeleteDave’s web site is back up today but I have not had a chance to read it yet. In the meantime I will ask a question about the shadows or rather one in particular. I am not questioning your work in 3D or what you said about the single light source in the pickies particularly the second one. This is more in the nature of when there is something you don’t understand then you ask someone who knows more about it than you. My question goes over the small sticky thing in the top right of the second picture which looks a bit like one of those things bull fighters stick into bulls. From the shadows of the stones on the ground the lighting source seems to come from the South East and that sticky thing may be vertical but the top appears to go away from us into the page or screen. In that case I would have expected the shadow to bisect the stick and the existing shadow. Perhaps you can throw some light on this shadow :-)
Sometimes people who have knowledge on a particular subject use examples to clarify a certain point they are making and on occasions these side examples just muddy the waters instead of illuminating things. Such was the case with Dean Warwick, the guy who was taken out on stage when he was giving a lecture to a packed auditorium. In an interview with Dave Starbuck a week or so before the lecture he was talking on the subject of infra sound beam weapons being used to bring down the twin towers. And to ‘clarify’ a point he was making regarding energy beams, he said the following.
“There is no such thing as light from the sun, it is electromagnetic radiation and in the event of light for example, that electromagnetic radiation enters the atmosphere of the Earth it agitates the gas and that is daylight. We don’t have to look at photographs and analyse them – Aldrin and Armstrong walking on the moon, they didn’t take photographs on the moon we know they didn’t take photographs on the moon because there is no such thing as light on the moon. We see the moon because we see a reflection of the electromagnetic field heightening boulders and mountains and it comes back down to our atmosphere where it is then lit up and then becomes like going to the cinema.”
I make no comment on this; I merely put it up as a discussion point.
Here is the link:
http://www.checktheevidence.com/audio/Dave%20Starbuck%20Interviews%20Dean%20Warwick%20-%20Oct%202006.mp3
The relevant bit comes between 5 – 10 minutes into the interview.
i dunno.
ReplyDeleteeven w/its problems.. i've always been proud of our space program. even if kennedy's reasons for going amounted to winning a pissing contest w/the soviets.
in fact, the space program has been the singular source of pride i have had left as an american.
ya know.. the one decent, noble thing we 'appeared' to do.
i've never really entertained the idea, that the moon landing was faked.
absolutely heartbreaking to consider.
ah well. my dream of space exploration for noble purposes continutes...no matter how false and militarized the reality is.
here's lookin at you, sagan...
A Glorious Dawn
http://www.youtube.com/user/melodysheep#p/a/u/0/zSgiXGELjbc
James - and we saw that in 9/11. I can't remember the precise timing, (forty minutes after the towers came down?) but the first rumours about 9/11 on the internet was the one about Jews having all taken the day off. Sure enough without any examples, or proof, this was an absurd statement and easy to dismiss as outrageous anti-Semitism. Later when we find out that yes, Odigo staff had been given warnings, and yes, Larry Silverstein and his daughter had failed to go to work, and yes, Zim shipping had bailed two weeks early, these were easy to dismiss as the whole idea had been established as an anti-Semitic furphy right at the get go. Bravo Mossad!
ReplyDeleteHey FB. Sorry mate, but binaries and such are a bit beyond my connection. As is, does that make any sense? What's he saying? That there's no such thing as light? What comes out of a light-bulb? And how come they can take photos in near earth orbit? Is that light or some other thing? And where does it come from? The sun? How can it if there's no atmosphere? And what does the Hubble see? Is that light? Or something else?
As for shadows, here is the precise moment you lost me - "In that case I would have expected the shadow to bisect the stick and the existing shadow." As is, that thing looks okay to me. Not forgetting of course the nature of perspective. Perhaps this picture is closest to the mark in terms of what we're talking about. Thus the shadows of the little bumps at the front will be nearly vertical whilst those in the top right corner will be 'leaning in'. Truth is they're not leaning in and are actually parallel, just like the lines in the perspective picture are also parallel.
Oh look, here's a flipped around version but the principle is the same. The trees are vertical, the light striking them is parallel, and their shadows likewise are parallel. But watch that perspective do its thing! It's mad isn't it? Well, not if you did two units of perspective at university like I did. (that photo, by the way is from an anti-hoax site shooting down the 'shadows-are-wrong' chestnut.
Hmm... I wonder what that NASA sponsored cove's moon hoax talking points were? What's the money that they were 'mismatched crosshairs', 'ambient-lit astronauts', and 'impossible shadows'.
And Kikz, you're telling me! I was an Apollo nut. I had the famous poster of Aldrin on my wall, I had the model kits of the Saturn V, the lunar module, and Apollo-Soyuz, and as a kid I actually got to see the last Apollo lift-off. I have as much reason to hate Dave McGowan as anyone. And I do! Curse you Dave, you swine! Screw with a fellow's memories will you! What a bastard!
Further thoughts - I was thinking about the absence of the stars in any of the photos. I'm pretty sure McGowan has a strong point there. That not one of the astronauts thought to point their camera upwards and grab a frameful of stars is, cue the caps - IMPOSSIBLE.
ReplyDeletePretending for a moment that, yes, not a single one of them thought to do this: we're now meant to get bogged down in a discussion of apertures and exposures. The line being that with a bright foreground and dark background you inevitably have to pick one or t'other. Either you overexpose the foreground so you can see what's going on in the background, or you get the foreground right and crush the background. The counter-argument goes that stars in space are waaaaay brighter than stars on earth and that's why they put Hubble in space and why it takes such great pix.
But bugger that, let's skip the whole argument! Let's attack it arse-about. If you were faking the photos, why wouldn't you just whack in some stars? It's not like it's difficult. I personally have dropped starfields into more 3D shots than I could even count. It's a piece of piss.
And then the thought struck me: it's a piece of piss as long as you don't have a bunch of astronomers poring over each starfield figuring out PRECISELY what part of the sky the camera was pointed at. And they would, you know. That's what astronomers do.
And that's why there's no stars in any of the photos. Had they put them in there they'd have provided a bullet-proof, cannot-be-dismissed pointer to fakery. Can you dig it?
And yeah, they could have clocked up long hours painstakingly getting every starfield right, but as we used to say in 3D (excuse the heavily technical jargon here) - 'HOLY FUCKING JESUS WHAT A NIGHTMARE!!!!'
And so between: the near impossibility of getting the starfields right; and just leaving them out and arguing the case on exposures etc. they chose the latter. Well, you would wouldn't you?
PS. Not only would a starfield tell you precisely where the camera was pointed, but it would also tell you 'when' it was pointed there. If you were faking it, the word nightmare doesn't do it justice. It would be to nightmares what C² is to E, if you can dig it.
ReplyDelete"As is, does that make any sense? What's he saying? That there's no such thing as light? What comes out of a light-bulb? And how come they can take photos in near earth orbit? Is that light or some other thing? And where does it come from? The sun? How can it if there's no atmosphere? And what does the Hubble see? Is that light? Or something else?"
ReplyDeleteOr as I might reply to Mr. Trebek, "what is a photon, Alex?"
I know this is a Wikipedia source, but it will suffice for the sake of clarifying the talking point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunlight
FYI, my experience with optics and "light" are based on eight years working with laser and laser diodes.
Yes, "sunlight" is effectively the sum total of the EM energy emitted by our nearest solar body, but the conclusions that follow miss the mark...
"The spectrum of the Sun's solar radiation is close to that of a black body with a temperature of about 5,800 K. About half that lies in the visible short-wave part of the electromagnetic spectrum and the other half mostly in the near-infrared part. Some also lies in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum.[7] When ultraviolet radiation is not absorbed by the atmosphere or other protective coating, it can cause a change in human skin pigmentation.
The spectrum of electromagnetic radiation striking the Earth's atmosphere is 100 to 106 nanometers (nm). This can be divided into five regions in increasing order of wavelengths..."
As for Hubble, it sees all manner of things, from visible spectrum on up to infrared, as well as RF and the like. If you read the fine print under many of those colorful images available from NASA, you'll discover the captions often reveal the shot was taken in a particular "frequency", most often to reveal objects otherwise masked by parallel phenomena visible in other frequency bands. For example, separating out the IR signal from an image to isolate specific gas formations, et al.
"It would be to nightmares what C² is to E, if you can dig it."
A co-efficient that "matters"? =)
It should also be mentioned that, if we are to believe official scientific sources anyway, that the lunar body does possess a very thin atmosphere, therefore it would also "generate light" via the withering blast of the suns EM field according to this fellow's theory.
ReplyDeleteNow I'm no scientist, but as near as I can tell, the ideas in play are mostly a poor interpretation of actual phenomenon.
As such, they are likely one of two things: the hopeful rantings of a poorly informed soul, or worse, yet another salvo in an ongoing NASA disinfo campaign as described in our fearless leader's "Option C".
Yes, the planetary atmosphere that sustains our fragile envelope of existence here on Earth DOES interact with the inbound EM energy from the sun in numerous ways, but it is not the "source" of the photons that are responsible for what we think of as "light".
I can only hope my little ramble here has illuminating.
He mingles nonsense and ignorance with some interesting points. Rocket motors only fire briefly at pre-planned points in their trajectory - most of the time the spacecraft is 'falling' rather than being driven, so all the stuff about the amount of fuel being impossible is hooey. Newton: a body will continue at rest or in uniform motion unless acted upon by a force.
ReplyDeleteAnd why does he get into abiotic oil? That is just so stooopid.
The "10 inch" reference to telescopes is not to their length but to the diameter of their primary objective - in a reflecting telescope that's the diameter of the big mirror at the bottom, in a refractor the big lens at the top. I have a 10.5 inch reflector, so plenty of amateurs do have them.
He has two telling points: the space technology of the time was primitive, with an approximately 80% failure rate before the Apollo missions - but then it suddenly worked perfectly, and for a long period. Curious. The absence of stars in the photographs is also beyond absurd - the night sky would have been ablaze with starlight and I cannot think of any camera setting that could have so utterly concealed that.
Incidentally a starfield seen from the moon would not be distinguishable from the same starfield seen from earth, as relative to the enormous distance of the stars, earth and moon occupy the same point in space.
A propos starfield, look at the pictures on the apollo archives
ReplyDeletehttp://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo_gallery.html
look at the pictures taken in flight (Earth orbit, moon orbit or whatever) pictures noone disputes as being fake. What do you observe? No stars, not one.
As an experiment, try with a standard camera to take a picture of a starlit night and look what you have to do to get them (long exposition, very long exposition, even tracking can be necessary to compensate for earth rotation).
nobody, that is another interesting point about the stars, easier to explain away the absence then to fake them. It does make sense.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about the astronauts?
Would we have ever known, that who it was claimed to be in the space suits, were actually in the space suits?
I went to look at the pictures from the moon landings, and the ones I saw, you couldn't identify the people.
Then I was thinking did any astronauts that went to the moon claim they hadn't?
Not that there would be any incentive to do that.
Fame, money, notoriety, adulation, are pretty good silencers, still I wonder.
And, then there is another thought that lurks around in the brain, could they have been subjected to mkultra type experimentation?
As part of the rigors of training?
Hello! This is a lurker from Hellas, initially captured by those rare movie reviews for which I would like to thank the kind host. I would also like to thank you for being able to attract perceptive visitors and host their views.
ReplyDeleteWell, I have occasionally been tempted to pop in, so here it goes in three parts, in order to cover the lost ground! Okay, I am kidding; there is a 4096 characters limit in posting so I will have to split the message (if, of course, I am not abusing your hospitality).
Part 1 of 3:
Firstly, I find reasonable the indirect illumination explanation of the dark sections of the theme, though optics is not part of my field. So, I cannot argue with that, even though I have the feeling that indirect illumination as a light source should be very dim respectively to give so bright results, especially with the exposure set for a bright environment.
But again, even if that theory is valid there is a lot work more to be done to validate the whole story, since there are lots of questions that arise from the official position’s claims; and the burden of proof is laid upon the side that initially makes a statement. If, for example, I claim that there is a green horse on the second floor and you have an objection on that, it is my responsibility to prove my initial claim; not yours to disprove it. A lot of logical fallacies have been based on the wrong interpretation (or on attempts to shift) the burden of proof.
Question: What do the "Lost in Space", "Combat!" and "The Six Million Dollar Man" titles have in common with the Manned Moon Landings (TM)?
Before attempting to answer that question, let me open a small parenthesis: I would be cheating if I claimed that this was an original thought, even though this thought is mine actually, because back in July I compiled a 3500 words rant on the Manned Moon Landings subject matter (having an obvious issue with the "Manned" part), and posted it in an Electrical Engineering discussions board I participate in. Of course, I expected better responses from people who are trained to be searching for information and, consequently, connecting the dots; but it seems that they have also been thoroughly trained not to think outside the box: Conspiratorial view of history? Naah, only the nuts do that...
There was a reply where a firm belief was obvious, according to which, the fifteenth century Occam's razor method is more than enough to "shave" the twentieth century advanced mind controlling techniques, like the infamous and widely used Hegelian Dialectic (the Thesis-Antithesis-Synthesis method, better known to the public as "problem-reaction-solution").
In my opinion, the Occam's razor is the excuse for anyone who is comfortable with his beliefs to allow the possibility of another proposition. A way to keep the mind closed.
Anyway, the full text is in this page, the ninth message from the top.
In this attempt, since I do not dare calling it an "essay", I tried to touch the taboo of the mass conditioning of human perception, which is being transparently enforced to the general public by the media institutions. I did it using vivid paradigms to make my views become easier to digest. I also asked some of the questions my technically inclined mind is unable to swallow that easily. Of course, since we do not have the original plans and the full documentation of the manufacturers we cannot prove anything, either way… Congratulations, NASA; that was a smart move from your side, to “lose” everything connected to the “mankind’s grater achievement”…
Anyway, here are a few of the questions I have:
End of Part 1
Part 2 of 3:
ReplyDelete- What kind of air-conditioning unit was able to lower the ambient temperature of 125deg.C to 25deg.C (250deg.F due the Sun’s heat radiation outside the protection of the Earth, down to a humanly safe temperature of 80deg.F) for the LEM, back then? Where was its (huge) radiator located at the LEM? Does such a magic device exist, even today? And, if it did, for how long could it be powered "by batteries", as Alan Bean was caught on tape claiming about the magic air-conditioning units they had on board during those ten-days trips? For the sake of the argument, a huge marine battery rated at 12V/100Ah, that is twice as powerful as a car's battery, holds less than 1.2KWh which can power my room's small air-conditioning unit (12KBTU) for less than half an hour; and that unit is only able to lower a maximum ambient temperature of 45deg.C down to 25deg.C at the best.
- Why was the deafening sound of the LEM's rocket engine not even heard in the footage, while the astronauts' voices were calm, clear and loud during the landing and take-off? Why were the rocket engine's strong vibrations totally absent from the film, also? There is footage of the extreme vibration and the loud sound of the Shuttle’s thrusters, that were toys compared to the big LEM rocket engine…
- Why it was unable to be found any blast crater, created right under the LEM's thruster engine, after landing? Or, any amount of dirt blown away or melted by the thruster's exhaust? It was alright though for the astronauts to be leaving footprints while walking on the dirt of the moon, right under the LEM itself...
- Where was this huge cloud of thick red smoke & dirt mess during the LEM landing and departure? In other footage it is shown that, when ignited, the hypergolic fuel of the LEM's rocket engines leaves a mountain of dark red opaque gas smoke.
Did it really need an atmosphere to manifest itself, even if it is a self-oxidizing fuel?
- Why did NASA destroy the documentation of the LEM and the ROVER? Was that because the latter ones would instantly be proved unable to be flown/ be driven or be fitted the one within the other?
- Why has the Moon sky always been reported to be black and starless from up there, even though there is no atmosphere to interfere with the observation of the Moon sky? There were absolutely no stars, even in the photos of the Earth! Were they afraid of any possible conflicts of their "lunar starry skies" with planetarium simulations, or it was too complicated for the pictures to have stars, which any amateur astronomer could identify as wrong and false?
Did they add starry skies to the moon in their 2008 anniversary cartoon, which officially replaces their conveniently "lost archives" footage, to prevent any further annoying questions?
- The Van Allen radiation belts, with maximum particle energy in the GeV range (for reference purposes, the “soft” X-Ray machines are rated at 10KeV max. and the “hard” ones at 100KeV) are highly deadly. Humans could endure a quick passage through them if they were protected inside a sealed chamber having 15cm (6 in) thick solid lead walls, for protection from the <450MeV charged particles. But, what protection could offer the shielding of the extremely thin aluminum walls of the Apollo crafts, that were made as thin and light as possible using 3mm (<1/8 in) thick light aluminum sheets, since even today we are unable to put that much lead shielding into orbit?
- Why, 20 years after those successful expeditions of ‘69, did it take the same agency seven long and costly years to put a mere space telescope (the Hubble) into lower earth orbit, using a new, more expensive, less efficient with high failure rate launching vehicle (the Space Shuttle instead of the trusted Saturn V)? Did they not already have the technology and the tools to be safely sending humans to the Moon and bringing them back alive and well, since in their first attempt (!) in '69?
End of Part 2
Part 3 of 3:
ReplyDelete- Why, back in 1998, the Space Shuttle's crew (even though they were protected by modern and better radiation shielding than the Apollo crews were 30 years ago) was "seeing flashes of light with their eyes shut", described as shooting stars, while flying to an altitude of 560 km (350 mi), one of Shuttle's highest altitudes ever, as was exactly reported by CNN? Is that because they merely touched --not entered but touched-- the low radiation inner Van Allen belt from the inside?
The public CNN report according to documentary “A funny thing happened on the way to the Moon (Bart Sibrel, 2001)” was this: "The radiation belt surrounding Earth may be more dangerous for space-walking astronauts than previously believed. The phenomena, known as the Van Allen belts, spawn killer electrons when the Earth's magnetic field changes. These electrons could have an important effect not only on satellites, which has happened in the past, but could also affect the astronauts by creating large doses of radiation that could influence their health."
Why did this observation not make it to the public before the 1998 Shuttle's expedition? Was that the very first time any astronauts actually touched any of the Van Allen radiation belts and made it back alive to tell?
EDIT: While compiling this very message before submitting it, I just found out a cached page of an "Associated Press" mirror of the initial article described above, which seems to have been released in "December 7, 1998 3:27 p.m. EST" by “Nando Media” (www.nandotimes.com), one of the very first Internet newspaper sites since the early '90s.
- Why, 40 years later, almost all the Apollo astronauts are still alive after having been repeatedly exposed to the lethal radiation fields of the Van Allen belts plus the highly lethal Sun flares (that were in the peak of their 11-year sunspot cycle activity in '69 and '70), without really having any actual radiation protection back then? Despite the recent fact of the Chernobyl death toll, which is no less than a quarter of its initial population (and counting), merely 23 years after the tragic incident…
- Why is the archived material of this ultimate human achievement activity no longer available? According to NASA it has been entirely lost along with its backups (Yeah! Compile that!), since 2005. Is this because the mainstream personal computers of that time had enough power to tear this material apart for those looking for any possible evidence of NASA foul play?
In my opinion, this is the most blatant indication, if not a proof, that something is very wrong with their whole story.
- What really was that Apollo project, with the incalculable cost to the U.S. taxpayers? Is there any plausibility in some people's assertions that this project was designed, among other things probably, to be secretly financing an illegal atomic facility in a foreign country using American tax-money?
In that reference I was talking about Dimona, which I believe was one of the two reasons JFK was assassinated for; the other one was his Executive Order 11110 that could have abolished the FED, if it was ever implemented thoroughly.
Personally, I would like to believe that we walked on the Moon in ’69, as I would also like to believe that we did have the knowledge and the means needed to create ‘Steve Austins’; but I think that we did not -and we still don't…
Closing, let me try to answer the question I initially posed: The common ground the Manned Moon Landings (TM) share with the other three televised series I mentioned, is their heroes: They cannot die, no matter what the plot is, following the winning formula of every Hollywood-made fairytale intended for mass consumption.
Myths need vast amounts of support to survive; support and frenetic repetition.
End of Part 3
FB
ReplyDeleteIt sure makes no sense to me but since it came from an authoritative source who was taken out presumably for making his opinions public, then I thought it was worth putting up for discussion, even though I dissociated myself from it.
There were a few things mentioned that made me laugh, too . . . the fact that not one of the astronauts jumped high enough in low gravity to let everyone know they were on the moon. I mean, it would be easy to se . . . you prepare your legs and flex your calf and thing muscles as if you are about to jump a measly foot in the air, and instead you come up 5 or 6 feet with little effort. It'd be fun, and one of the first things any human would do, guaranteed.
ReplyDeleteMade me laugh because I hadn't even thought of that, and it was so comically obvious. Dave is a smart cookie, I give him a lot of respect.
He brings up a good point in terms of when the issue comes full circle, though - when is the tipping point where people scratch their heads and begin to see they were duped, that it was all a lie? 50 years later, 60 years? 80 years?
Somehow, I have a nagging feeling that this "moon bomb" has something to do with everything in the future, but I can't put my finger on it . . . it's either related in the military sense, or psy-ops/propaganda sense.
Here's hoping you live long enough to find out, Nobody! ;)
Thanks All! That was tops!
ReplyDeleteI do love people who know what they're talking about. Speaking of which, over at lPenny's Silverfish piled in with his not inconsiderable tuppence worth on the nature of human flesh, radiation, and the cooking thereof (he being an expert on all that). Er... now that I think about it: Silv, you're not a cannibal are you? God knows what they get up to in the backwoods of Manitoba...
FB - no problems and thanks for the pointer to Dean Warwick. Interesting guy... And thanks Mir for pointing it out. And no thanks to that rotten party-pooper Gallier! It's a good thing you're so pretty mate otherwise we'd coat you in chocolate and tie you to an ant's nest. Grrr.... but as it is, there are lots of holes in Dave's theories. I shot down two and you shot down a heap more but as is, I think the cable holds. Just.
And an Hellene! Thank you for dropping in and for making me feel guilty about ignoring the cinema blog. I like your final points particularly. In amongst the endless stream of lies about every goddamn thing it pays to assume the worst and start from there. It certainly saves time.
And to show up those rotten Euros who speak English better than most natives, let me just dazzle everyone by spouting a bit of Greek - "Ī Ī±ĻĪ±ĪŗĪ±Ī»Ļ Ī¶Ī·ĻĪ®ĻĻĪµ Ī±ĻĻ ĻĪ± ĻĪ±Ī¹Ī“Ī¹Ī¬ ĻĪ±Ļ Ī³Ī¹Ī± Ī½Ī± ĻĻĪ±Ī¼Ī±ĻĪ®ĻĪµĻĪµ ĻĪ·Ī½ ĪŗĻĪĪ¼Ī± ĻĪµ Ī¼Īµ" Ha ha ha, very good. And Hellene feel free to pop in anytime.
Did I miss anyone? Vronsky - another of those really handsome bastards who should feel free to pop in any time. And hello Slovo - and yep, what you said. Oh, and Pen! God, can you imagine a likelier bunch of mind-control candidates than the astronauts? And regardless of whether it was all fake, or all real, I don't see how they could avoid some variation of what was done to Brice Taylor.
So only for people to stop babbling nonsense about the non-fitting Rovers in the LEM and about the loss of the data from Apollo here some links that I brought up at Penny's site:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo/gallery/KSC-71PC-224_t.jpg
http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo/gallery/KSC-71C-2210_t.jpg
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a15/ap15-S71-31409.jpg
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a15/ap15-KSC-71P-281.jpg
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a15/ap15-KSC-71P-282.jpg
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a15/ap15-71-HC-682.jpg
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a15/ap15-71-HC-684.jpg
and here from Apollo 16 in hires
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a16/AS16-118-18894HR.jpg the LRV is visible at the right of ladder
Pictures taken from
http://www.apolloarchive.com/apollo_gallery.html
with tons of footage and pics of all phases of the program.
Here you can download facsimiles of the original handbooks of the rovers
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/lrvhand.html
impressive work from the 'forgers'...
Here another archive with the data from all missions (even the test missions)
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo.html
There are the references where the datasets for all experiments can be ordered. On the Apollo 15 page there are the complete scans of all the pictures taken during the mission.
http://www.history.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/a15menu.html
Don't miss the anaglyphic (3D) pictures and all the bad pictures (cut heads, blurred, overexposed) showing that it was indeed difficult to operate correctly the cameras.
Don't miss also the hammer/feather drop proving that they operate in a vacuum
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo_15_feather_drop.html
A lot of stuff for people who have lost 'all data'.
You see that's one problem I have with Dave's article, he claims a lot but does not define the claim, when he says they lost everything he doesn't say exactly what they lost: did they lose everything? Obviously not the links above show otherwise. So they lost something, so what did they lose exactly?
Oh I btw, Hellene stop comparing mass market technology and super high-tech with no price limit. You made the same fallacy as Dave does throughout his article when you compare your AC unit with the one of the space capsules. They could use the best technology available at the time, the price didn't matter. For example the LEM used Silver-Zinc batteries on the whole LEM there were 7 of them weighing about 50kg each, which puts it at 350kg of batteries, nearly half of that weight is composed of silver, a cheap metal for mass market, not!
ReplyDeleteSo you cannot compare mass market technology with what was used on space missions.
I follow your thinking Gallier, and you'll notice in my original comment that my reference was "damned near all". Of course, every single object that does remain is held up reverently for the faithful to adore.
ReplyDeleteBut where's all the rest? NASA themselves have admitted to vast amounts of data being "lost" in their own press releases, most critically the original "slow scan" tapes of the actual Apollo 11 moon landing. Which is being restored by Hollywood from multiple low-Q sources, no less. Talk about your irony.
And what about the Van Allen belt radiation issues? I'm truly curious how you're going to explain that nasty little detail away.
I'm not disputing that NASA burnt through gazillions designing and firing ballistic objects up into the sky in the name of Apollo. I'm just not convinced that anyone genuinely landed/walked/drove/took pictures on the actual lunar surface.
Like the Greek fellow above, I would like to think it all happened exactly as the PTB insist it did, but life and experience tend to dictate otherwise in this regard. As such, I retain a healthy level of skepticism.
Nobody,
ReplyDeleteThank you for the nice reception! Please, ignore the tangents of my comments about the movie reviews because I enjoy something more when it is original; if I needed movie reviews in quantities I could always tune to the ABCNNBCBS nonsense to tell me whom I should like and whom I should not.
By the way, it never ceases to impress me when I see non-Greek speakers using this powerful but difficult also language, with the very nasty grammar. You cannot imagine how sorry I feel when I see educated fellow countrymen being unable to use right or efficiently their own native language…
Gallier,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your efforts to give me those official links, some of which I just visited. I will also thank you for the battery figures you cared to share. But I am afraid that, what I did not tell about myself is that I design electronic devices; both the hardware and the firmware. So, when I use terms like "manufacturer's data" I am not talking about nice pictures of all the team together or white papers or parts of the user’s manuals; instead, I am talking about specifications and datasheets. An operator will need the user's manuals to get familiar with the device and the controls. An electronics designer will need very different tools to make the controls talk to the subsystems and make them all function safely, effectively and as a whole
You accused me (not deliberately, probably, but the term "fallacy" implies accusation of malice or deliberateness, in contrary to the term "mistake" that shows error or lack of knowledge; do not worry, I know it was not intentional) of comparing different things, since the layman's goods cannot be compared to the "best technology available" ones. You were partly right on that, not because I compared different things, which I did not. What I did was to compare a layman's good, meaning my common air-conditioning unit (of 12KBTU and 230VAC/8.0A, which automatically means that I will need the energy amount of up to 1.84KWh for every hour of its operation) against a magic air-conditioning unit, meaning an imaginary device that has the unique ability to be able to work in an 125°C environment and to achieve a temperature difference of 125°C-25°C=100°C, something rather impossible to exist even today –not only back then, in ‘69. And this magic device will have to be running on the vehicle's batteries (as Alan Bean said on film) for a few days.
You said that the batteries were 7 pieces of Ag-Zn chemistry weighting 350kg. Not having their specific electrical characteristics in hand, I can see that they were primary cells of about 100Wh/kg, and I can estimate that 350kg of those batteries could form an energy cell of about 35KWh in total, which, assuming an energy conversion efficiency of 80%, can power my room’s air-conditioning unit for up to 52 hours, which is 2 days and 4 hours, which, in turn, is less than 1/5 of the whole trip duration. I am not implying that they had my own device on board; I just use it as a parallel example, since these are the amounts of energy required today to transfer 12KBTU of heat out of the room in a way more friendly environment than the space is. By the way, I could not find any official pictures of the huge radiators of that magic device!
But, the problem is that the very same batteries would also have to power all the other subsystems of the vehicle, like the cabin pressure, illumination and ventilation systems, the water and oxygen pumps and valves, the communications equipment, the trip computer, etc. So, if the air-conditioning unit drained the batteries in the middle of the trip, the crew would probably die from asphyxiation before the cabin was heated up to the 250°F of the ambient temperature. And, as far as I know, there were no hangars with spare batteries or chargers available in open space, in order to "fill them up", do the windshield and go! :-)
I do not claim I know better because I do not have all the data needed to see the whole picture. I can only see what I am allowed to; or, maybe, a little more than that. Neither I am trying to convince anyone when I speak my mind out; I am just sharing the way I see a certain thing and the reasons why. For example, I can see that you have started a crusade at Penny’s blog, trying to convince people that governments never lie to their subjects! Personally, I hope the reasons you do that are of pure ideology and not some sort of personal gain; but it’s your life, my friend, and you should never listen to others telling you what to do.
Anyway I am wishing you luck in your endeavors.
Phwooar! Immoveable object and unstoppable force! Magneto and the Titanium Man! Gallier and Hellene! The knock-down dragout all-in from hell!
ReplyDeleteAnd both with such nice manners! Mind you, I'd expect nothing less given that both of you obviously have your heads in the right place. Because if you didn't you wouldn't be dicking around on a blog where 911 as an inside job is the rock-bottom starting point, ha ha.
To be honest, in amongst all the shit where we've departed from the conventional lies, Apollo qualifies as what? An also-ran? A curiosity?
Between every war being fake, the con of fractional reserve banking, and the insane scale of the satanist, mind-control, paedophocracy, if a fellow is on board for those, then I really don't care what view he has on Apollo. Can we all dig it?
I'm prepared to concede that Apollo could be precisely what they said it was on the TV. But given that EVERYTHING else is fake, the thought of 'Well why not Apollo too' is a perfectly valid one.
Anyway those my are my thoughts on the matter.
gallier2
ReplyDelete"As an experiment, try with a standard camera to take a picture of a starlit night and look what you have to do to get them (long exposition, very long exposition, even tracking can be necessary to compensate for earth rotation)."
I can point an old 35mm SLR at the night sky and get a photograph of the stars using f/8 at 1/125 - the usual 'guesstimate' exposure for a family snap. Longer exposures produce 'smearing' of the star images unless the camera is mounted and driven to compensate for the earth's rotation. An exposure of more than about 30 seconds will result in background light pollution (I live in town) washing out everything to a featureless brownish-yellow unless I use some fancy filters.
Since the astronauts (we are told) used small apertures to maximise depth of focus, they must have used correspondingly longer exposure times. However the objects in direct sunlight would have been extremely bright, and perhaps the combination of small aperture (low light gathering) and relatively fast shutter speed eliminated the stars from the shots. Still, their absence is very striking.
@Mir
ReplyDeleteI addressed the Van Allen belt thing over at Penny's site. I used figures I found on the net. If you have other numbers let me know.
http://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.com/2009/10/van-allen-belts-waggin-moon-doggie.html?showComment=1256131688906#c4879227276912285061
I will only accept real calculations with explanations of the method.
That's the main problem I have with Dave's piece, he waffles a lot making analogies, comparing things but lacks real hard numbers (and demonstrates repeatably that he doesn't understand the maths/physics/engineering involved).
As for the lost slow scan tapes of the first landing, I will not try to donwplay the gravity of the loss, but would only offer an idea that will surprise you. That NASA admits that it has lost those tapes (and some original documentation and data) is in fact a good clue that they didn't fake it. If Apollo had been this incredible elaborate hoax moondoggy waggers pretend it was, you can bet your ass that they wouldn't have forgotten such "crucial" piece of evidence.
How's that for an alternate non mainstream explanation ? ;-)
Have you been on the site I gave the link of in the preceding comment, the image libray of Apollo 15 is especially interesting
http://www.history.nasa.gov/alsj/a15/images15.html
it contains all pictures taken during the mission and if you look at them you will see a lot of pointless, missed shots, blurred, underexposed, overexposed, framing errors, but also some truely beautiful pics. Guess what, only the beautiful one were published for wide circulation, why is that?
What's the point of faking hundreds of uninteresting/boring misshots.
Hellene
ReplyDeleteOh so we are collegues, in my former work I also worked on electronic design for industrial purposes. Hardware/firmware/API/library design, even with excursions to plastic case design and a lot more.
You were right to not take it personaly with the fallacy accusation because for me using a fallacious argument doesn't imply a deliberate will to mislead. Furthermore it was more directed to Dave's article where he uses this argumentative device (comparing super high-tech to mass market technology) throughout the pages.
As for the batteries I got my data from the wikipedia page and they concerned only the LEM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Lunar_Module
The point I wanted to make was not to explain how they managed the air conditionning and such, but the fact that for a one-time high-tech solution you can use different things than you would for mass market purpose. You couldn't use Ag-Zn batteries for mass market because of the extreme high cost of silver. For Apollo it was no problem, who cares for 100000$ (made up number) for batteries if you're gonna spend billions of dollars anyway.
If I have a little time, I will try to find more data on the atmospheric control of the space ships.
Yous said:
"For example, I can see that you have started a crusade at Penny’s blog, trying to convince people that governments never lie to their subjects! "
What? You should stop taking LSD. I never hinted at something even close to that, governments lie, they almost lie always, I work myself in a government like structure and know how it works.
And as for the goal of Apollo, they were far from being about pure science. The science instruments and experiments had to be fought through because management didn't want to take too much stuff up there and risking failure because of that. As Silv stated somewhere at Penny's blog, there was certainly a big military component underlying that mission (trajectory calculations, rocket motors, rendez-vous manoeuvres, board computers are all usefull stuff for militarizing space). What was the real purpose, who profited from it, what power shift was achieved through it, what geostrategic consequences did it have, those are interesting questions on which I waited from McGowan. But instead he delved on the old canards thoroughly debunked over and over (the bad astronomy site he derides in his article made really a good case when I read it 10 years ago. I purposely did not consult that site when I tried to make my points here and at Pennys)
I don't even try to convince anybody to "believe" in the moon landing. What I try to do is to distinguish good arguments from bad ones and so far there was not a lot of good things in Dave's article.
And the semi-jokingly said hypotheses given in my first comment here, looks more and more plausible.
Nobody,
ReplyDeletethe wars aren't fake, the excuses for them are. The Irakis and Afghans or the viets didn't pretend to be killed. The WMD story, the incubators and the Tonkin incident were lies. But you knew that.
As for the "everything is a lie" attitude, it is in my opinion neither useful nor true.
The worst is, there are in fact less lies than one thinks. The "axis of evil" if I'm allowed to use that expression, operates in the open and tells often the things as they are, but with crucial details missing or drawned in a see of irrelevant details or side issues.
"To be honest, in amongst all the shit where we've departed from the conventional lies, Apollo qualifies as what? An also-ran? A curiosity?"
ReplyDeleteNobby, I think it is much, much more than a curiosity or even "a relatively benign lie" as Dave McGowan describes it at one point". It may even be the key to unlock the death grip on the world. Okay, bit of theatrical overstatement there, I'll grant you, but it could have far ranging ramifications.
Consider this further from Dave-
"For if NASA was able to pull off such an outrageous hoax before the entire world, and then keep that lie in place for four decades, what does that say about the control of the information we receive? What does that say about the media, and the scientific community, and the educational community, and all the other institutions we depend on to tell us the truth? What does that say about the very nature of the world we live in?
And what does this say about the audience, the Joe the Plumbers, to themselves? Do they start to see themselves as most of the rest of the world see them .... as dupes.
The notion of "American Exceptionalism" has enabled the constant stream of wars over the last 60 years to be waged against the rest of the world.
Technology forms much of the justification for holding this view and without this physical evidence of God's favour on them, they just might in their own eyes, go from "Godzone Nation" (apologies to Kiwis) to "Mushroom Nation"? And i'm not talking nookular bombs here; I'm talking fungi kept in the dark and raised on bullshit. Then all the steam goes out of this thing. No more support for American Exceptionalism . . . . no more war.
I think if I were head of "Intelligence" of some country under direct threat from the US, I'd be going all out to establish the truth of the situation and if it proves to be a hoax (as it certainly looks like, imho) I would then spread the information as far and as wide as I could.
Nothing undoes power like ridicule.
Hmm... very, very good. These last couple of comments seem to have finally sparked my scrambled, nicotine-starved brain back into something resembling normality.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to disagree with all of the last couple of comments. But I'm not going to do it here, ha ha. And nor to any great degree neither.
See you on the front page.
Just a question for the good people here:
ReplyDeleteI've found several photos of which these 3 were the best, where there are some faint white dots on the black background
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a15/AS15-84-11238HR.jpg
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a15/AS15-84-11239HR.jpg
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a15/AS15-84-11240HR.jpg
what are these dots? Stars, space debries, dirt?
And another point where Dave was talking ridiculous bullshit in his
article look at that picture of Apollo 10, look at the shape of the high-gain antennas
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a410/AS10-28-4165HR.jpg
in his fourth part, where he says that the CM pictures are composites, where a piece of moon picture hides parts of the high-gain antenna.
http://davesweb.cnchost.com/Apollo_CSM_lunar_orbit2.jpg
So look at the other pictures from Apollo 8 on to Apollo 17, you will see that it is the shape of the antenna.
With bullshit like that, how are we supposed to take seriously any other point he makes, even if it has merrit. The hypotheses I made in the first comment here seems more and more likely, Dave made (or had to make) credibility hara-kiri.
I'm looking at that last photo that Nobby has deconstructed and found kosher as far as the light source and shadows are concerned, and I'm wondering if the shadow stuff is to distract us from something far more obvious, something that is missing - the dog that didn't bark sorta thing.
ReplyDeleteThere's no dust on that shiny landing pad and it's attendant leg. The surface of the moon appears to have a layer of fine powdery dirt and if this landing craft came down from on high then the rocket would have blown all that dust to the shithouse. This has been said before. So an argument might be that it all resettled back down after the boys shut off their hot rocket. But if that were the case then that landing pad would be covered in dust but there's not a speck on it.
So it could only be that there is no dust in the immediate vicinity (because it got blown away) or there's dust there but it is also over the landing pad as well.
What can't be the case is dust on the ground to leave footprints in and no dust on the pad. But that's what we've got.
Good God Gallier, it's seems your eagle eyes are matched only by the cleanliness of your monitor. Me with my grotty laptop screen, I was wondering what the hell you were talking about right up until the moment I put them in photoshop and blew out the levels to 1 and 0 with nothing in between. There are definitely dots there. I wonder if any astronomers have done the math and figured out where the camera was pointing at, and when?
ReplyDeleteI say Gallier, you seem to be into this above and beyond the call of duty - could you pop off to university for a couple of years, get yourself a degree in astronomy, and figure it out for us?
Just joking mate. And that thing I said I was going to put on the front page? It all fell in a screaming heap. It started brilliantly but went nowhere. 1500 words chucked. Never mind. Hopefully some other thought will occur to me. Yoroshiku.
Oh no, me going again to University, no thanks. I've got a degree in CS (MaƮtrise d'Informatique as it is called here) and I wouldn't like to have to pass it again (the computer part was relatively easy but the rest (maths, physics, chemistry) was pure pain. This said, when I was at the military, my room mate was a amateur astronomer, a real passionate one and I decided then that it wasn't something for me. As you have probably noticed, I'm a real geek and take interest in all things scientific, but this guy (nice guy btw) was always making really boring things, like verifying ephemerides calculations, checking numbers, writing programs to check numbers. He was a brilliant guy and had already a job promise at that time from the SNECMA (the big french jet engine motorist) where he started after accomplishing his duty. I had to continue University after mine. So, no thanks, no real astronomy for me.
ReplyDeleteWell done everyone... You've all made a great article, well, brilliant!
ReplyDeleteSo entertaining. Give yourselves a pat on the back!
Now, back to more mundane issues.
Gallier, which 'government department' do you work for? I'm curious.
How I love word verification = hisses
"Dave made (or had to make) credibility hara-kiri."
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting thought, and one that's not slipped me by either.
What's been obvious from discussion here, and over at Penny's blog is that Dave has made some elementary mistakes in his research.... Now personally, I'm gutted about this, because my initial reaction to that is to ask the question, "why?". Why Apollo, why now?
I hate to admit it, but maybe Gallier has a point. It was the Laurel Canyon stuff I've been waiting with baited breath to read to its conclusion... The Apollo stuff came out of the blue.. Why?
Why Dave? (if you're watching?)
All that said... The radiation issue, the battery issue, that wacky press conference with 3 very uncomfortable looking astronauts... I still smell bullshit.
i nobody, I was waiting for your next blurb, as I wait for Dave I will wait for your next post
ReplyDeleteThanks folks,
ReplyDeleteI thought that that was all very groovy. And in spite of Gallier's best efforts, I reckon I'm down with Edo. There's something odiferous about the whole caper. Mind you, this one and every other one, ha ha.
I know that it's poor of me to apply the legal concept of falsum in uno, falsum in omnibus (false in one, false in all) to an entity rather than a single individual, but the US government has an abysmal track record with the truth. I understand that it's impossible for them to lie ALL the time and that sometimes they do tell the truth, but I'm thinking that it's only when it doesn't make any difference.
Aside from that, I can dig wishing that Dave would stick with Laurel Canyon, but I also can't blame the guy for grinding to a halt on it. These things happen. You should see me! I used to be able to write in spite of Fox Sport screaming at me all day. And now I no longer can. I might have won a few battles with them but they won the war.
Otherwise, the insistent line of thought that drove everything I wrote here (writing this blog used to fill my dreams you know) seems to be, um... less. I expect it's the yoga. And to be honest with you, the yoga is more fun.
But I'll write something soon. ish.
Good to see you and the rest of the "irreverent" ones still at it ;)
ReplyDeleteThe Moon Landing? oh, har de har har
Though I've read plenty on this subject, I really don't need no stinkin' "proofs" that it didnt' happen. For me it was always the fact that they didn't go back...to Colonize the place! Who are they fuckin' kidding.
Anyhow, adieu. Y hasta luego... write on mite,
AM! Yay - big grin on the face of yours truly. Glad to see you're as feisty as ever. Onya mate.
ReplyDelete"there is no such thing as light from the sun, it is electromagnetic radiation...."
ReplyDeleteUm....electromagnetic radiation IS light. There is a tiny frequency range of that spectrum that our eyes can detect, with or without an atmosphere. I'll quote from my physics book "Maxwell, on the basis of the calculated speed of electromagnetic waves, argued that light must be an electromagnetic wave." p528 "Physics" by Douglas C. Giancoli.
hmmm. found this on lewrockwell this am..
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lewrockwell.com/spl/the-wrong-stuff.html
glad yer physically feelin bettr noby :)
I come at Dave from a different angle then some of you may.
ReplyDeleteThe moon is a subject dave has touched on before.
Both in his works and in his interviews.
Maybe, he hasn't really dug into it, like the Laurel canyon stuff, but, he has written on it previously.
As nobody points out he doesn't dig into other topics often discussed by some of us.
Nobody also pointed out before that WRH doesn't dig into all the things that many others have.
I made a comment way back that these people cannot be all things to us.
We have to decide for ourselves, wether what they write/post/talk about resonates with us.
Like 9/11 which has it's stronger and weaker arguements, the gist of the situation is the official story isn't true.
And sadly like Apollo we will never know THE TRUTH, because we weren't there.
Nobody points out, rightly so, there have been sooo many lies, it is very nearly impossible to take anything as it has been told to us.
That is where the real problem lies, not with Dave McGowan or Micheal Rivero, the rampant lies that create our reality.
Nobody, yoga?!
ReplyDeleteYou downward dog, you!
lol!
namaste
i get that from rodney yee
Woof Woof Meow!
ReplyDeleteFB
ReplyDeleteTim, I agree – see my comment of 21:10 7:12
Hey, Nobby, mate, yer famous! This animator or somethin' says you could've faked the moon landings; true - "Nobody could have faked that." It's from the link Kikz gave. Here's a fuller quote -
ReplyDelete". . . . says Dennis Muren. Muren, an eight-time Oscar winner, is the senior visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light & Magic, a division of Lucas Digital. He was responsible for making the Jurassic Park monsters come alive and for key scenes in Terminator 2, Star Wars, and The Abyss.
"A moon landing simulation might have looked pretty real to 99.9 percent of the people. The thing is, though, that it wouldn't have looked the way it did. I've always been acutely aware of what's fake and what's real, and the moon landings were definitely real," Muren stipulates. "Look at 2001 or Destination Moon or Capricorn One or any other space movie: everybody was wrong. That wasn't the way the moon looked at all. There was an unusual sheen to the images from the moon, in the way that the light reflected in the camera, that is literally out of this world. Nobody could have faked that."
So how'd you do it? The sheen thing, that is.
You didn't know I was famous mate? Put my name into google and you'll get 96,000,000 results. Never mind John Lennon and Jesus, I'm bigger than that guy who played Mini-Me. What was him name again? Exactly! QED.
ReplyDeleteOh look, in searching to see how famous I am I found a bunch of sexy Korean girls singing about me. God knows what they're saying but I was definitely 'me' I thought.
Otherwise if you're really interested in me faking the moon landings, here's a photo of me and Kevin 'Grunty' McTrouser standing next to one of the models I built. Looks pretty real don't it? As for the secret... pipe smoke! Blow it at the camera lens and Bob's your uncle. Stanley Kubrick eat your heart out!
Oh wait! It gets better! Here's a bunch of Philippino drag queens entertaining an entire prison with a cover of that Korean song. God, that's perfect!
ReplyDeletePipe smoke, eh?! Anya even got the pipe in the pic! Hidden in plain sight,eh. Yer a cunning bastard, I'll give ya that.
ReplyDeleteWhen ya headin back to Korea? I reckon that yoga practice is a good move, mate.
Hello boyz and girlz. I hope I'm still allowed to take part at the nice conversation here and there (there being at Penny's blog), feeling a little bit lonely defending the position that the moon landing wasn't faked.
ReplyDeleteThis said, I don't have definitive answers but everything I checked seemed OK and if ones wades through the archives (obviously the parts that were put on the web), that "they" would have put in a tremendously lot of effort to make it look genuine. There are thousands of pictures, movie clips, measurements, digitized handbooks for every part of the missions with all schematics (see at http://www.cs.indiana.edu/sudoc/image_30000061709352/30000061709352/pdf/techdata.htm) , really, really a lot of stuff. This doesn't prove much, it only shows that there were a lot of people (and companies) involved and that these people thought what they were doing.
This said I would like to rise the debate at a higher level, we could argue each detail of the hoax/genuine for hours without bringing more to the debate.
On Penny's blog someone brought a link to an entry of winter patriot (http://winterpatriot.blogspot.com/2007/02/did-nasa-start-moon-landing-was-hoax.html) stating that the hoax stories were started by NASA itself.
That's something interesting, a good stick to discredit anyone having a too close look at what NASA is up to. Because, we should not forget, that NASA is part of the military industrial and scientific complex Eisenhower was warning people about, in his farewell address.
That NASA has a lot to hide is quite obvious (11 from 134 shuttle missions were classified DoD missions) and the industry collusion is undeniable (especially after results of the Challenger disaster commission). And that even the scientific mission is fraught with political shenanigans can be seen when one looks closely (look at James Hansen's frauds concerning the data NASA-GISS about global warming, best blog to see what I'm talking about is http://wattsupwiththat.com/)
PS: for full disclosure and because I was asked several times (Edo), I am an EU commission official and nobody can confirm it by back-tracking the IP address. This said, now I have to put a disclaimer that all my point of views are only mine and do in no way whatsoever represent the views of the commission or of the hierarchy.
Right you are Gallier. I don't know about anyone else but for me everything's up for grabs no matter how cherished. I cherished the moon landings? Chuck it out! I cherish the moon hoax? Chuck THAT out! I don't care what it is: if it's false it can go. Not forgetting of course that if it's hard to determine if a thing is one or t'other, then fine! I hold no firm opinion. But either way, the question is always worth asking.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of asking questions, for me Dave McGowan is like some crazy stuntman, or wing-walker, or something. He doesn't give a fuck what anyone thinks, he's going to push that envelope regardless. And whether this line fails, or that one, it doesn't matter - I'm going to cheer the guy regardless. Fearless!
As for him committing seppeku, it just looks that way. Sure he's got a blade in his hand, and yep there's blood all over the tatami, but you know... that's knife fights for ya. And besides, that blood is mostly the other guy's...
gallier:
ReplyDeleteyou are always welcome at my blog, you disagreed fairly, I find no fault in that.
We all have our opinions, and that is not bad, as long as we don't belittle others that hold different opinions then ourselves, and you didn't.
IMO that is good.
Penny :)
Hey Nobby, have you seen ?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.space.com/12835-nasa-apollo-moon-landing-sites-photos-lro.html
New photoshops of the moon ;-)
Gallier! Lovely to have you pop in. How are you?
ReplyDeleteThanks for this mate. All good grist for the mill, as we say. They're certainly good photes, far and away better than those laughable pix that the European Space Agency released with the arrow pointing at a dot that pretty much looked like every other dot on the moon's surface. It's the source of these, NASA, that's the problem. You and I know they're well and truly a part of the MKULTRA gag. I don't know that they could ever quite be trusted with anything.
Or to put it another way, in any trial, were the accused to testify to his own innocence, we wouldn't give him the time of day. And here's NASA, who are effectively the accused in this case, providing the proof of their innocence of the charges of fakery.
Ha! Metaphor time! Imagine a trial wherein a fellow was accused of murdering his wife by a convoluted method of poisoning involving, I don't know, feeding her a DNA attacking GMO blutwurst or something, and then taking the stand on account of being the world expert in GMO DNA attacks and declaring that such a thing was impossible. Can you dig it?
As things stand, in this world of photoshop and other such trickeries, I vote we sit tight and wait for those mad bastards out there who spend hours comparing photes to see what errors they can find. Perhaps they won't find any. It's possible. If this one has them stumped then it's a tick for the believers.
Still, it's interesting isn't it?