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NASA Wasting Time and Money on Moon Landing Doubters
Rob Miles writes "Yahoo! News has this article about how NASA is paying aeronautics engineer James Oberg $15,000 to write a monograph gathering up materials answering the skeptics of the 1969 Apollo Moon Landing, point by point. It's a shame that even $1 has to be spent to debunk these conspiracy theorists with too much time on their hands. And it's unfortunate that the nutters will see this as validation of their ridiculous claims ('if our charges weren't true, NASA wouldn't bother answering them' they'll snivel.)"
Then again, since when our network executives concerned about what is good or bad TV, let alone good or bad science?
The fact that we such an abundance of blue-cheese dressing to go with our wings is enough proof for me.
This is the best option for the money. The alternative would be to send them all up there in the cargo bay of a shuttle and then crack the bay doors for a second or two and see if they'll finally believe you.
This booklet is for educators, to help them address concerns brought up by students who might have stumbled on a True Disbeliever's website or seen that atrocious Fox program!
That's not a waste of time nor money.
Stefan Jones
Johnson, flag this message for section 721 investigation. Potential Conway incident - auth code 786C-1943.
from a recent news article...
:)
The controversy recently emerged from cyberspace in the person of Bart Sibrel, who has made a film questioning the Apollo Moon missions and who confronted astronaut Buzz Aldrin at a Beverly Hills hotel on Sept. 9 and demanded that Aldrin swear on a Bible that he had in fact walked on the moon.
The 72-year-old Aldrin, the second man ever to touch the lunar surface, punched the 37-year-old Sibrel in the face. Sibrel asked that assault charges be filed, but Los Angeles County prosecutors declined. A videotape of the incident showed Sibrel following Aldrin on the street with a Bible and calling him a "thief, liar and coward," one prosecutor said.
How's that for refutation?
-fester (Good for Buzz.. I'm sure he and the others who risked their ass at the top of that Saturn V are sick of this crap)
-'fester
It is too bad one of the astronauts did not trudge a gigantic NASA WAS HERE into the moon dust so that the image could be seen from a large telescope. That should silence the idiots.
On another note it always amazes me that a significant segment of a human population will believe the unbelievable and doubt the obvious.
Maybe they could just send Buzz Aldrin out. With a bat. Or his manly fists of iron. That should "silence" the doubters!
"Slashdot is about legos and staplers." -Cmdr. Taco
Yeah, or they can give the the naysayers (h04X0rz?) a telescope and they can watch the Chinese building a colony there.
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
I would think that given that the moon landings happened during the height of the cold war, the Soviets would have been watching them very closely and would've been all over them like a bad stink if they could've even come close to demonstrating that the moon landings were faked. By the same token, if you were NASA, would you put your and your country's "face" on the line by staging such a stunt and risking discovery?
You're using her as bait, Master!
Sadly that's not the case. You just can't convince somebody who truly wants to believe that it's all a conspiracy. They'll point out that this supposedly independent private company had to get government approval to do so, and that's proof that NASA got to themm and forced them to take part in the deception. It took me all of about 2 seconds to come up with that explanation. These are people who wouldn't believe that it was possible to go to the moon if you blasted them into space and landed them there. They'd still come up with some elaborate explanation about how it was all faked.
There are none so blind as those who will not see. Sadly this applies as much to physical proof as anything.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Unfortunately, with the current administration, we're a lot more likely to see our tax dollars going to religious schools that teach the reverse
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Money spent educating people is never a waste.
I don't believe these nutcases. However, I recently realized that one of my arguments against them is not as strong as I thought.
Here's the argument: Tens of thousands of people were involved in the Apollo program. There were thousands of them who would unavoidably know if the moon landings were faked. Several thousand people can't keep a secret for over 30 years.
What is wrong with this argument? Bletchley Park. For about 30 years, several thousand people kept the secret that the allies hand broken most of the axis codes during World War II.
(It is still a valid argument, however - there are differences between Bletchley Park and a hypothetically faked Apollo 11.)
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
This is just another attempt to hoodwink the public. I'd publish my point-by-point rebuttal but no one would understand the scientific terms that I'd need to use.
The government can already read our minds. Last year we saw that scientists have been able to have machines controlled by nothing other than thought by scanning brain waves. It's obvious that this is merely the tip of the iceberg. Moving machines with thought is only the part that the government allows these scientists to reveal to the public. Just as civilians aren't privy to top-secret military aircraft designs until years after they become completely outdated, so is the thought-reading apparatus hidden while it still is useful.
You think I'm mad? Even private corporations are not allowed to release technology without government approval. Remember the Hoverboards in Back to the Future? They're real. But they still have military applications so cannot be released to the public. We know that it can work because the Japanese have maglev trains that work on identical priciples.
You still think I'm mad? Turn your Television to a 'staticky' station. Watch the chaotic series of dots and blips. Do this for about six hours until your brain becomes attuned to the frequency. Soon you'll be able to decipher the 8,192 bit encoded datastream that the government is using to communicate with the L'kelialia from Pluto. You'll hear their voices. You'll see their devilish grins peering back at you.
People ask, why would the government want to fake the moon landing? It's easy. Staking a claim. In 2053 the Global Congress will debate the issue of ownership of mineral rights on Luna. The government is only making sure that it has the most prior claim. The actual technology for a moon shot won't be available for another 16 years (I think, this is 2002, right?) but time travel has been well understood since Einstein. It's very complicated and scientific (I'd have to use terms like Schwartzchild radius and eigenvalues to really explain it) but suffice it to say that it's true. I read it on Slashdot earlier this year.
Anyway, I hope my detailed, logical, and coherent analysis and convinces you that this upcoming paper is total fabrication.
This is EXACTLY RIGHT. Anyone who believes that the moon landings were fake to "win" the space race clearly believes that the Soviets, in spite of launching the first artificial satellite and first man into space, were too stupid to notice that:
No conspiracy theory concerning the lunar landing stands up to even five minutes of skeptical thought.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
With its 2.4 meter diameter mirror, the smallest object that the Hubble can resolve at the Moon's distance of around 400,000 kilometers is about 80 meters across. More info including cool pics here.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
Too bad the evidence for evolution as we know it isn't enough to bring it out of the 'theory' stage. Never mind the fact that a growing majority of schools teach the concept as fact.
Grumble. Nothing in science ever gets beyond the 'theory' stage. We still have the Germ Theory of disease and the General Theory of relativity don't we?
Theories are science's attempt to explain facts.
Fact: Things are attracted to other things.
Theory: Mass distorts spacetime and objects follow the shortest path in curved space.
Fact: Species change over time.
Theory: Traits are inherited from parents with occasional mutations. Environmental pressures cause certain traits to be more successful than others.
one of the reasons I prefer creationism (and the beliefs one can have with faith in God) is that evolution doesn't offer me much comfort in the face of depression, loss, hurt, uncertainty, death, etc.
What does evolution have to do with any of that? The truth of evolution doesn't preclude the existence of God.
Reminds me of one of my favorite sigs ever:
MORTAR COMBAT!