Fetzer/Burton Moon Landing Debate Finale

[James H. Fetzer]

Since Peter Dawson has been in a self-congratulatory mood ("resting on [his] laurels"), he may be supposing that, since I have yet to reply to this post, I have none. It has simply taken me a while to decide whether or not to bother, since the evidence the moon landings were a hoax that has already been presented more than makes the point.

What is going on here, I think, is indicative of Dawson's modus operandi, which involves the exercise of his imagination of conjure up some possible, if far-fetched, "explanation" of why the arguments that I have cited from Dave McGowan's work lack force. His pattern is one of treating possibilities as though they were probabilities or even certainties.

Since there are ten questions here and I am a (now retired) professor, I shall grade this on a 10-points-apiece scale to measure his performance in this course. I shall evaluate each of his answers, using likelihood measures of evidential support when they apply, and otherwise pointing out where he has gone wrong. Then my performance can be evaluated in turn.

(1) Let's start in the beginning with the quote from Wernher von Braun. What does he have wrong and how do you defeat his observations?

“It is commonly believed that man will fly directly from the earth to the moon, but to do this, we would require a vehicle of such gigantic proportions that it would prove an economic impossibility. It would have to develop sufficient speed to penetrate the atmosphere and overcome the earth’s gravity and, having traveled all the way to the moon, it must still have enough fuel to land safely and make the return trip to earth. Furthermore, in order to give the expedition a margin of safety, we would not use one ship alone, but a minimum of three … each rocket ship would be taller than New York’s Empire State Building [almost ¼ mile high] and weigh about ten times the tonnage of the Queen Mary, or some 800,000 tons.”

He wrote that in 1953. Is a guy allowed to change his mind? Is science allowed to advance at all? Or are we doomed to live with what Wernher von Braun thought possible in 1953?

Well, physics is not like the daily news in changing with recent events. He was the most knowledgeable rocket scientist in the world at the time. Laws of nature (of physics, chemistry, biology, and so on) cannot be violated and cannot be changed. Unless the laws of physics and engineering had altered in the meanwhile, which you have not proposed, there is no good reason to suppose what he said in 1953 would not remain true in 1968. Science does indeed advance, but you have no identified any change that matters here. (-10)

[B](2) Tell us about the fake Dutch Moon rock? And you might as well explain why the Soviet samples are so different in chemical composition from ours.[/B]

Maybe the real thing was given to the Dutch and the rock was later stolen and replaced with a substitute. That's actually the simplest explanation.

(And maybe this was all part of a plan to convince the masses that the landings were faked? See below.)

I'll put discrepancies with Soviet samples on my to-do list.

Fanciful speculation, but there is no evidence to support it. The very idea that the original was authentic but was taken and replaced with a substitute is certainly not a simple explanation. The simplest is that the Dutch were given a fake, which was exposed after it was put on display. See, for example, "'Moon rock' given to Holland by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin is fake", http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space...-fake.html You seem to have an active--even over-active!--imagination, but serious arguments are dependent upon proof. (-10)

(3) What differentiates your attitude from that Dave describes here? Is it your contention that you are being rational, even if many others are not?

A lot of people, in fact, pretty much shut down at the mere mention of the Moon landings being faked, refusing to even consider the possibility (Facebook, by the way, is definitely not the best place to promote the notion that the landings were faked, in case anyone was wondering). And yet there are some among the True Believers who will allow that, though they firmly believe that we did indeed land on the Moon, they would have understood if it had been a hoax. Given the climate of the times, with Cold War tensions simmering and anxious Americans looking for some sign that their country was still dominant and not technologically inferior to the Soviets, it could be excused if NASA had duped the world.

I have seriously considered the possibility that the moon landings were faked, and I found so many easily dismissed-arguments being seriously maintained by hoax believers, that I came to feel that the scorn they are greeted with in most circles is well-deserved.

Well, would you admit that, if you do not fare well on this quiz--which seems likely, given your performance on the first three questions--that perhaps you are over-estimating the power of your replies? Are you aware of the phenomenon known as "cognitive dissonance", which, in one of its manifestations, entails suppressing or denying information that threatens our most cherished beliefs, such as that the government of the United States--our government!--would not perpetrate a lie upon us? Is it possible that the psychology of the situation is overriding the logic of the evidence? (-5)

(4) Since Hitler knew a little about lying, if this really is a lie, what would it take as forms of proof to convince you that you are mistaken in your beliefs?

“If NASA had really wanted to fake the moon landings – we’re talking purely hypothetical here – the timing was certainly right. The advent of television, having reached worldwide critical mass only years prior to the moon landing, would prove instrumental to the fraud’s success.” Wired Magazine

Adolph Hitler knew a little bit about the fine art of lying. In Mein Kampf, he wrote that, "If you're going to tell a lie, make sure it's a really fucking big lie."

If the arguments which hoax theorists advance consistently turned out to hold water, then I would become convinced that I was mistaken to believe the trips to the moon actually occurred.

Most Americans are familiar with little lies, which they make all the time. But a really enormous lie, such as the claim that we sent men to the moon, lies beyond their comprehension. David Guyatt has suggested that you should elaborate the proofs that you take to be most convincing as evidence that we went to the moon. The claim that we actually went to the moon is an extraordinary claim, even in light of what von Braun told us back in 1953! So the next stage in this exchange, I submit, ought to be for you to present your arguments for why anyone should believe we actually went to the moon, which we can then appraise. Because you are displaying a degree of open-mindedness, you earn points here. (-5)

(5) How is it that, at that point in the history of science and technology, the Soviets were far ahead in the "space race", yet we were first to the Moon?

Everything the U.S. did, prior to actually sending a manned spacecraft to the Moon, had already been done by the Soviets, who clearly were staying at least a step or two ahead of our top-notch team of imported Nazi scientists. The smart money was clearly on the Soviets to make it to the Moon first, if anyone was to do so. Their astronauts had logged five times as many hours in space as had ours. And they had a considerable amount of time, money, scientific talent and, perhaps most of all, national pride riding on that goal.

They put in an extra big effort.

Peter, this is not a serious answer. You claim to be a serious person who is doing his best to deal with the issues that Dave McGowan has raised. But I see no indication that that is the case here--even remotely! This is like the question of the order in which the Twin Towers were destroyed. Since the North Tower was hit first, why did it "collapse" (which is a mislabeling, since it, like the South Tower, is being turned to dust from the top down)? According to the official account, the fires from the jet fuel were so intense that they caused the steel to weaken. Since the planes were the same and the fires were similar, why didn't the one hit first--whose fires, after all, burned longer, "collapse" first? How can we have overcome the Soviets when they were so far ahead in the space race? (-10)

(6) Why, if we have already mastered the technology, have we not exploited it to replicate our achievement? Having done it before, why no do it again?

It would be particularly easy, needless to say, for America to do it again, since we’ve already done all the research and development and testing. Why then, I wonder, have we not returned to the Moon since the last Apollo flight? Following the alleged landings, there was considerable talk of establishing a space station on the Moon, and of possibly even colonizing Earth's satellite. Yet all such talk was quickly dropped and soon forgotten and for nearly four decades now not a single human has been to the Moon.

Cost. Why spend lots of money sending a few people to live on a lifeless moon when we have a wonderful living earth right under our feet which can be ripped apart and sold for a profit? Also, there are no people to exploit on the moon. What interest would the people who run the world have in sending a few people to the moon on a permanent basis if there are no other people up there to exploit, and no practical way to mine for minerals on the moon?

This is one of your better answers, but if cost really were an issue, then it is all the more peculiar that NASA and Northrop Grumman did not preserve their designs and engineering specs for the moon lander, the moon rover, and other equipment, which cost a small fortune to produce. Isn't it far more likely that cost was not an issue--either before the alleged landings or after--but that concealing what hadn't been done and what, if our information about the Van Allen radiation belts is correct, could not have been done had to be concealed? Have you noticed that President Obama has taken funding for future moon flights out of his budget, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0119181920100201? (-5)

:
(7) Isn't it the least bit anomalous that we keep putting off and putting off doing again something we purportedly accomplished back in the late 1960s?

To briefly recap then, in the twenty-first century, utilizing the most cutting-edge modern technology, the best manned spaceship the U.S. can build will only reach an altitude of 200 miles. But in the 1960s, we built a half-dozen of them that flew almost 1,200 times further into space. And then flew back. And they were able to do that despite the fact that the Saturn V rockets that powered the Apollo flights weighed in at a paltry 3,000 tons, about .004% of the size that the principal designer of those very same Saturn rockets had previously said would be required to actually get to the Moon and back (primarily due to the unfathomably large load of fuel that would be required).

The space shuttle was only designed to orbit the earth, that's why it never went further than 200 miles. It's a cheap debating tactic to blame something for lacking qualities that it was specifically designed not to possess. To go further than earth orbit means to do something big like go to the moon, or Mars, and as I say, no one wants to pay for that kind of thing these days.

Re. the Saturn rockets, I'm not a rocket scientist, but as I say, I'm pretty sure a few technological advances were made between the early 50s and the late 60s. Plus, I have a sneaking suspicion that von Braun's calculation was for a mission which differed in significant technical aspects to the actual Apollo missions.

Neither of us is a "rocket scientists, but if that is your "suspicion", then why not substantiate it? This answer, like many of your other replies, is long on speculation and short on proof. The state of current technology seems to be far removed from what it should be if we actually were capable of the scientific and technological feats we claim to have accomplished many decades ago. Surely the likelihood that we actually went to the moon but do not have technology comparable to what we had then is overwhelmingly less than the likelihood that we did not actually go to the moon, which is why we do not have technology that is comparable to what would would have had had we actually gone. (-5)

(8) Do you actually believe that NASA "lost" the Moonwalking footage "back in the 1970s", which was surely the world's most precious strips of videos?

As it turns out, however, NASA doesn’t actually have all of that Moonwalking footage anymore. Truth be told, they don’t have any of it. According to the agency, all the tapes were lost back in the late 1970s. All 700 cartons of them. As Reuters reported on August 15, 2006, “The U.S. government has misplaced the original recording of the first moon landing, including astronaut Neil Armstrong’s famous ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’ … Armstrong’s famous moonwalk, seen by millions of viewers on July 20, 1969, is among transmissions that NASA has failed to turn up in a year of searching, spokesman Grey Hautaluoma said. ‘We haven’t seen them for quite a while. We’ve been looking for over a year, and they haven’t turned up,’ Hautaluoma said … In all, some 700 boxes of transmissions from the Apollo lunar missions are missing.”

(9) Did you realize that none of the footage broadcast was actually "live" but that it was all "displayed on a monitor and re-shot by a TV camera" first?

The fact that the tapes are missing (and according to NASA, have been for over three decades), amazingly enough, was not even the most compelling information that the Reuters article had to offer. Also to be found was an explanation of how the alleged Moonwalk tapes that we all know and love were created: “Because NASA’s equipment was not compatible with TV technology of the day, the original transmissions had to be displayed on a monitor and re-shot by a TV camera for broadcast.”

So what we saw then, and what we have seen in all the footage ever released by NASA since then, were not in fact live transmissions. To the contrary, it was footage shot off a television monitor, and a tiny black-and-white monitor at that. That monitor may have been running live footage, I suppose, but it seems far more likely that it was running taped footage. NASA of course has never explained why, even if it were true that the original broadcasts had to be ‘re-shot,’ they never subsequently released any of the actual ‘live’ footage. But I guess that’s a moot point now, what with the tapes having gone missing.

(10) Do you realize that this means the scientific community does not have data to verify the authenticity of the flights that NASA claims to have made?

Unfortunately, it isn’t just the video footage that is missing. Also allegedly beamed back from the Moon was voice data, biomedical monitoring data, and telemetry data to monitor the location and mechanical functioning of the spaceship. All of that data, the entire alleged record of the Moon landings, was on the 13,000+ reels that are said to be ‘missing.’ Also missing, according to NASA and its various subcontractors, are the original plans/blueprints for the lunar modules. And for the lunar rovers. And for the entire multi-sectioned Saturn V rockets.

It all sounds very strange, doesn't it? I can't explain it.

Well, as least I appreciate your candor. But these are extremely telling indications that the moon landings were faked. I am having a hard time taking your claim that you have given serious answers to the questions I have raised when, in relation to these three--which are among the most telling!--your answer is, "I can't explain it"! Just ask, what is the probability of these developments--that the footage was lost, that the landings were not broadcast live but transmitted by a monitor after being redone, and that the evidence to provide conclusive disproofs that we actually went to the moon is missing. Surely you can see that these considerations are devastating to your position and that the rest of your comments are weak replies that do not offset the argumentative force of (8), (9), and (10). Your admission of ignorance, however, is not an acceptable answer (-10 x 3)

Have we all seen Bart Sibrel's Astronaut's Gone Wild documentary? Where he gains access to 9 former astronauts, one by one, and asks them to swear on a bible that they went to the moon?

How can an organisation which allegedly is fiercely protecting one of the biggest secrets in the history of the world - that the moon missions were faked - be so incompetent as to let some guy off the street - some guy who apparently is fast chasing down the stinking lies surrounding their big old secret - have access, one after the other, to these retired astronauts? And how did he get his hands on the "smoking gun" footage in the first place?

How could they have kept the secret for so long, if they are so incompetent at protecting their retired astronauts from hostile questioning?

Well, they certainly don't ACT as if they had gone to the moon. The absence of the "splashdown" footage and the 18-day quarantine are powerful indications that they were being deliberately kept out of the public eye until the false impression that they had gone to the moon was firmly implanted in the ind of the public by massive publicity. The embarrassment they would have shown had then directly confronted questions from reporters and adoration from the masses was skillfully finessed. And you really need to take a closer look at the fates that were endured by those who were not sufficiently "enthusiastic" about the program and its prospects, such as Gus Grissom, who was dry-roasted during a training op. Think about how many things went wrong on Earth during training yet went flawlessly right on the purported "trip to the Moon".

And how can these retired astronauts, after all these years, prove to be so poorly trained in fielding hostile questions? One after the other they got caught looking stoopid, or guilty, or stoopid and guilty. Only three of them would swear on a bible. Allegedly, their whole professional life has been a lie, so what's stopping them from swearing on a bible that they did go to the moon when they actually didn't? We're supposed to believe that guys who have been lying to their countrymen and the world for decades would be reluctant to swear on the bible about their lie, in case they should be sent to hell? I find that very hard to believe.

And this scenario gives me a few ideas. As I said in an earlier post, it seems likely to me that the retired astronauts intentionally allowed themselves to look stoopid and guilty, in order to promote the moon hoax theory. And this sets a precedent: It is now not unheard of that those involved in the moon missions should be found encouraging people to believe that the landings were faked.

So I'm left with the question at the back of my mind: is this dramatically announced loss of tapes another scheme to encourage the belief that the moon landings were faked?

The timing of the announcement of the lost tapes seems poignant. 2006, Iraq war blazing away, the 9/11 truth movement rumbling along. What would it hurt the American establishment if a few more people started thinking that the landings were faked? There's been great use of UFO stories, in a similar fashion, to distract people's attention away from important issues, and instead focus their minds on flakey matters which make them look like nutters if they dare discuss serious issues (like illegal wars justified by false flag terror attacks) in a public forum.

As McGowan himself observes:

Remember when Luther (played by Don Knotts) gets taken to court and sued for slander in The Ghost and Mr. Chicken? And don’t try to pretend like you’ve never seen it, because we both know that you have. So anyway, he goes to court and a character witness is called and the guy delivers credible testimony favoring Luther and it is clear that the courtroom is impressed and everything is looking good for our nebbish hero, Luther. Remember what happens next though? On cross-examination, the witness reveals that he is the president of a UFO club that holds their meetings on Mars!

The courtroom, of course, erupts with laughter and all of that formerly credible testimony immediately flies right out the window.

Yet none of this, I take it, shakes your confidence that we really went to the Moon. There are hundreds of arguments, photographs, and other proofs that the landings were a hoax. So, just to humor me, since you have long-since read this series and apparently dismissed them in your own mind, would you be so kind as to enumerate what you take to the the dozen strongest counter arguments that are presented here and explain what McCowan has wrong? It would reassure at lot of us that you actually do know what you are talking about and not simply faking it yourself. And in the course of discussing them, you might also explain which of them, if any, were they true, would be enough to convince you that the moon landings were a hoax, after all, even though you have found it virtually impossible to believe in the past. Because if there isn't anything that could ever convinced you, that tells us that, as I suspect, you have long since abandoned rationality of belief for other ends.

Jim

I've already made serious challenges to claims you have presented - e.g. re. how high an astronaut can jump on the moon - and was content to rest on my laurels until you posted again. You don't seem capable of recognising that what I have argued is a serious challenge to the claim you have made. Why don't you demonstrate to me and others that you are capable of reasoning through a practical scientific problem, as opposed to rattling off disconnected assertions, or feigning that it is beneath you to continue to address the issue due to my "lack of comprehension"?

Reread my last quote, which you have cited. There is nothing here to justify your claim that you have "made serious challenges to claims have presented" and the idea of "resting on your laurels" is simply absurd. Here are the totals for your quiz on the moon landing hoax: (1) -10; (2) -10; (3) -5; (4) -5; (5) -10; (6) -5; (7) -5; (8) -10; (9) -10; and (10) -10. What that means is that, on an exam worth 100 points, you only eared 20. That, of course, does not even qualify for a "D" on a normal grading scale. This tells me, as it should tell you, that you have yet to demonstrate that you are not simply fantasizing to suggest you are "serious" about any of this. If you want to disabuse us of this conclusion--which, alas, is abundantly clear!--then follow Dave Guyatt and my suggestion that you present your best case for moon landings.