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GI4RSI > NASA 05.10.03 02:59l 20 Lines 4526 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 31107-GB7FCR
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Subj: Moonlanding - true or false?...............
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Sent: 021130/1832Z @:GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU #:31107 [Blackpool] FBB-7.03a $:31107-GB
From: GI4RSI@GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU
To : NASA@WW
A recent poll has disclosed that one in five Americans, up to 60 million people, now believe that the United States did not land a man on the moon in 1969, nor at any time since. A lot of people here in Ireland very highly sceptical at the time of the Apollo landings, mostly elderly folk who could not, nor did not want to, grasp the physics, or who felt that for people to leave the planet was not quite in the scheme of things.
Today's sceptics point out that in all the footage and stills of Armstrong and Aldrin cavorting about on what is allegedly the surface of the moon, there are no stars visible. NASA has responded that the reflected light on the occasion was so powerful as to render the stars invisible, in the way that 'light pollution' destroys the chance of getting a well-defined view of the heavens from the centre of a well-illuminated city. Other refuseniks ask how it comes about that the stars and stripes is fluttering and rippling in what is a vacuum without wind or atmosphere. Ah yes, replies NASA, the flagpole has to be secured into the soil - I was nearly going to say the earth - with a degree of force, thus it was still vibrating slightly for a time after its insertion. A question often asked is how could the astronauts, 27 in all, have avoided the lethal levels of radiation in space, when none of the Apollo craft carried lead or other protective shielding. NASA announced earlier in the month that it intended to publish a 30,000 word account of the six moon landings in the period from 1969 to 1972. They then changed their minds at NASA, so as not to give the sceptics credibility. The latter, naturally enough, seized upon this about turn as a confirmation of the fact that NASA did not have plausible answers to the questions that have been raised.
The first Apollo landing, if such it were, took place in the first year of the presidency of Richard M Nixon, already known as 'Tricky Dicky' after his many shifty doings as Vice President in the 1950s. Those who remember the television coverage on that August morning (Our time) will recall the President congratulating the astronauts over a radio link. Nixon resigned in the middle of his second term, rather than face impeachment, following upon a series of bizarre disclosures after Nixon loyalists conducted a burglary at the Democrat Party offices in the Watergate Hotel, Washington DC, and made off with documents which allegedly were a help to the Committee to re-elect the President (Creep) in 1972.
Conspiracy was in the air. Hollywood movies such as The Parallax View, Three Days of the Condor and Capricorn One reflected the distrust, and also fed into it. In these pictures the hero was to find that his life was threatened (and on occasion ended) by agents of the State itself, albeit rogue agents. There was no overt criticism of agencies such as the CIA, but the point was made nevertheless. In the 1978 film 'Capricorn One' a landing on Mars was faked in a television studio, and a gullible public were none the wiser. When the 'astronauts' attempted to expose the fraud the CIA, or some such, came after them. One of the whistle-blowing astronauts was played by O J Simpson. When O J later had his own troubles, the conspiracy theorists had a field day to themselves.
It was the atmosphere of distrust and suspicion that the scepticism about the moon landings was nurtured. The latest move is the employment of the most powerful telescope in the world, operated by European astronomers, located in the Andes, and capable, we are told, of spotting a single human hair at a distance of ten miles. This will be brought to bear, simply as an exercise you understand , to focus on whatever fittings may have been left on the moon by the astronauts. This will prove nothing, say the sceptics: objects can be fired at the moon and robots on the moon can be controlled from the earth. The real trick is to put a man onto the moon, and bring him back safe.
So there you have it. I do not believe that aliens landed in Indiana in 1947. Neither do I believe the findings of the Warren Commission about the assassination of John F Kennedy in 1963. All we know is what they want us to know. Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin, in the history books, as the second man on the moon, recently punched a guy in Beverley Hills for asking the intrepid astronaut if he really landed on the moon.
73 - Kenny, GI4RSI @ GB7FCR
Message timed: 18:35 on 2002-Nov-30
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