What did the studio at Wonderland Avenue do?

[Magda Hassan]

Wagging the Moondoggie, Part IV
October 1, 2009
by David McGowan
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The issue that most of the Moon hoax and ‘debunking’ sites spend the most time on, by far, is the photographic anomalies. And that, I suppose, is to be expected, since with the original videotapes, telemetry tapes and blueprints all having conveniently disappeared, and with most of the Moon rocks missing and their legitimacy being unverifiable, there isn’t much else in the way of physical evidence to examine.

Skeptics have identified a number of problems with NASA’s official photographs of the alleged Moon landings, including; flags appearing to wave despite the lack of atmosphere; non-parallel shadows, suggesting multiple light sources; objects in the shadows that are clearly visible when they shouldn’t be, again indicating multiple light sources; the complete lack of stars in the lunar sky; identical backgrounds in photos that NASA has claimed were shot at different locations; and inconsistencies with the crosshair reference marks.

We will look at each of these in some detail – well, actually we will look at most of them in some detail. Because as it turns out – and I know that this will come as a huge disappointment to all the ‘debunkers’ – I don’t really give a shit whether the flag is waving or not. Many of the ‘debunking’ websites devote an inordinate amount of time to the issue, as though it were the primary plank on which the ‘conspiracy theories’ rested. They do this because the videos and photos are ambiguous and open to interpretation, and the ‘debunkers’ realize that people are going to see in them what they want to see.

The truth though is that it does not matter in the least whether the flag is waving. That is just one tiny drop of potential evidence in an overflowing bucket.

Some of the other problems with the images are considerably less ambiguous. But before we even get to those, we must first discuss the fact that the very existence of the photographs is a technical impossibility. Simply stated, it would not have been possible to capture any of the images allegedly shot on the Moon in the manner that NASA says they were captured.

Back in the day, you see (and younger readers may again want to cover their eyes), cameras weren’t all that smart, so everything had to be done manually. The photographer had to manually focus each shot by peering through the viewfinder and rotating the lens until the scene came into focus. The proper aperture and shutter speeds had to be manually selected for each shot as well, to insure a proper exposure. That required peering through the viewfinder as well, to meter the shot. Finally, each shot had to be properly composed and framed, which obviously also required looking through the viewfinder.

The problem for the astronauts is that the cameras were mounted to their chests, which made it impossible to see through the viewfinder to meter, frame and focus the shots. Everything, therefore, was pretty much of a guess. Focusing would have been entirely guesswork, as would the framing of each shot. An experienced photographer can accurately estimate the exposure settings, but the astronauts lacked such experience, and they were also handicapped by the fact that they were viewing the scenes through heavily tinted visors, which meant that what they were seeing was not what the camera was seeing.

To add to their troubles, they were wearing space helmets that seriously restricted their field of vision, along with enormously bulky, pressurized gloves that severely limited their manual dexterity. The odds then of getting even one of the three elements (exposure, focus and framing) correct under those conditions on any given shot would have been exceedingly low. And yet, amazingly enough, on the overwhelming majority of the photos, they got all three right!

A rather self-important gent by the name of Jay Windley, one of the most prominent of the NASA-approved ‘debunkers,’ attempts to spin all this away on his website, www.clavius.org. According to Windley, “The exposures were worked out ahead of time based on experimentation. The ASA/ISO rating of the film was known, and NASA photographers precomputed the necessary exposures … In many cases the camera settings for planned photos were given in the astronauts’ cuff checklists.”

No shit, Jay? Did they send an advance team to the Moon to do that “experimentation”? Because the lighting conditions on the Moon are pretty unique, as you well know, and nobody had ever been there before, so I’m not really seeing how NASA’s photographers were able to work the exposures out “ahead of time.” And what “planned photos” are you referring to? How did they know what they were going to photograph before they even knew what was there? They knew they were going to take photos of each other, I suppose, and of the flag and lander, but they would have had no clue how those things were going to be lit, and it’s the lighting, not the subject, that primarily determines the exposure settings.

Windley of course knows that, since he claims on his site that he is “an experienced photographer [who] has worked professionally in that area from time to time.” He must also know then that his comments about the unimportance of properly focusing a shot are intentionally misleading. He starts off on the right track, more or less, advising readers that an increased depth of field “means that when the lens is set to focus at a certain distance, objects somewhat nearer and farther from this ideal distance are also sharply focused. The narrower the aperture, the greater the depth of field.”

It is certainly true that the smaller the aperture, the greater the depth of field will be. And the greater the depth of field, the more of the background and foreground will be in focus, assuming that the subject is in proper focus. Windley, like the rest of the ‘debunkers,’ would like us to believe that all of the photos shot on the lunar surface were shot with a very small aperture setting (which supposedly explains the lack of stars in the lunar sky, but we’ll get to that soon enough), which would maximize the depth of field. And the greater the depth of field, according to Windley, “the sloppier the photographer can be about his focus settings.”

That last statement, for those who may have missed it, is the part that isn’t actually true. An increased depth of field most certainly does not mean that you can use the ‘close enough’ technique to focus your camera. Depth of field has nothing to do with whether your subject is sharply focused or not. If your subject is sharply focused, then depth of field determines how many of the other objects in the background and foreground of your photo will be in focus as well. If your subject is not sharply focused, however, then your photo is going to suck regardless of the amount of depth of field.

As for framing the shots, Windley claims that mostly wide-angle lenses were used, which meant that, “It was sufficient to point the camera in the general direction of the subject and you would be likely to frame it well enough.” So apparently all the fuss about framing, exposure and focus is much ado about nothing. All you need do is write the exposure settings down on your sleeve, ballpark the focus, and point your camera in “the general direction of the subject” and you’ll get great shots nearly every time!

Windley then adds (and this is my favorite part of his photography tutorial) that on the later missions, “a 500mm telephoto lens was also taken, and the cameras were modified with sighting rings to help aim them. Normally the camera would be mounted on the space suit chest bracket, but for telephoto use the astronaut would have to remove it and hold it at eye level in order to sight down the rings.”

As any photographer knows, getting a decent shot with a 500mm lens without the use of a tripod is a pretty tall order, even for a seasoned professional. Getting a decent hand-held shot with a 500mm lens while wearing bulky, pressurized gloves would be just about impossible. And the notion that you could come anywhere close to properly framing or focusing an image captured with a 500mm lens without looking through the viewfinder is laughably absurd.

The ‘debunkers’ will also tell you that it is not true that all the Moon landing images were keepers, and that NASA only released the best of the photos. The ‘debunkers,’ however, don’t know what they are talking about. The reality is that NASA has released all of the alleged photos taken during the Apollo missions, including indecipherable ones that are labeled “inadvertent shutter release” (which, I have to admit, is a nice touch). With the exception of what are most likely deliberate mistakes, the clear majority of the shots are pretty well composed, exposed and focused.

For those who don’t find that at all unusual, here is an experiment that you can try at home: grab the nearest 35MM SLR camera and strap it around your neck. It is probably an automatic camera so you will have to set it for manual focus and manual exposure. Now you will need to put on the thickest pair of winter gloves that you can find, as well as a motorcycle helmet with a visor. Once you have done all that, here is your assignment: walk around your neighborhood with the camera pressed firmly to your chest and snap a bunch of photos. You will need to fiddle with the focus and exposure settings, of course, which is going to be a real bitch since you won’t be able to see or feel what you are doing. Also, needless to say, you’ll just have to guess on the framing of all the shots.

You should probably use a digital camera, by the way, so that you don’t waste a lot of film, because you’re not going to have a lot of keepers. Of course, part of the fun of this challenge is changing the film with the gloves and helmet on, and you’ll miss out on that by going digital. Anyway, after you fill up your memory card, head back home and download all your newly captured images. While looking through your collection of unimpressive photos, marvel at the incredible awesomeness of our Apollo astronauts, who not only risked life and limb to expand man’s frontiers, but who were also amazingly talented photographers. I’m more than a little surprised that none of them went on to lucrative careers as professional shutterbugs.

Not that it probably matters much to the True Believers, but the designer of the Hasselblad cameras allegedly used on the missions has stated publicly that it would not have been possible for the astronauts to use the cameras in the manner that NASA claims they were used. But after performing the experiment, you already know that.

Even if our fine astronauts could have captured all of those images, the film would have never survived the journey in such pristine condition. Even very brief exposure to the relatively low levels of radiation used in airport security terminals can damage photographic film, so how would the film have fared after prolonged, continuous exposure to far higher levels of radiation? And what of the 540° F temperature fluctuations? That must have been some amazingly resilient film stock – and yet another example of the lost technology of the 1960s.

Even though the images are clearly not what NASA claims they are, we are going to play along and pretend as though Neil and Buzz and all of the rest of the guys could have actually taken them. The question then is: where did they take them?

Hoax theorists, ‘debunkers’ and NASA are all in agreement on at least one thing: conditions on the surface of the Moon are decidedly different than conditions here on the surface of planet Earth. For one thing, the Moon has no atmosphere. Also, there is only one source of light, which is, of course, the sun (NASA has verified that no other light source was available to the astronauts).

Due to the lack of atmosphere on the Moon, light is not scattered and travels only in a straight line from the sun and is reflected back in the same direction. What that means is that anything that falls in the shadows will be in virtually complete darkness. It also means that all shadows will be cast in the same direction. And it means that the sky is always black, and, with no atmosphere filtering the view, that sky will be filled at all times with a dazzling display of stars unlike anything ever before seen by man.

As other skeptics have noted, none of the photos supposedly brought home from the Moon show a single star in the sky. ‘Debunkers’ have claimed that this is because the exposure settings on the cameras didn’t allow for the stars to be captured on film. In order to properly expose for the objects being photographed, ‘debunkers’ claim, shutter speeds had to be too fast and apertures too small to capture the stars. And that applies, according to the ‘debunkers,’ to every single photo taken on the Moon. Even all the ones that, according to those same ‘debunkers,’ were improperly exposed!

NASA’s own website has boldly stated that, “Astronauts striding across the bright lunar soil in their sunlit spacesuits were literally dazzling. Setting a camera with the proper exposure for a glaring spacesuit would naturally render background stars too faint to see.”

The problem with this claim, which should be obvious to any photographer, is that a variety of different exposure settings would have been required to shoot all the photos allegedly taken on the Moon (Windley acknowledged as much when he claimed that NASA “precomputed the necessary exposures”). All of the scenes below, for example, which are obviously not very well lit, would have required long exposures – exposures that would have definitely captured the brilliantly shining stars, since they would have been the brightest objects in the camera’s field of view.

One thing that I love about the ‘debunking’ websites, by the way, is how frequently they contradict themselves while working their way through their ‘debunking’ checklists. The ever-pompous Phil Plait, proprietor of the appropriately named BadAstronomy.com website, is a prime example. Fairly early on in his ‘debunking’ rant, he writes as follows: “I’ll say this here now, and return to it many times: the Moon is not the Earth. Conditions there are weird, and our common sense is likely to fail us.”

Plait does indeed return to it often, whenever it advances his argument to do so, but he just as frequently tosses his own cardinal rule aside when that is what serves his purposes – like, for example, just four paragraphs later, when he advises readers to “go outside here on Earth on the darkest night imaginable and take a picture with the exact same camera settings the astronauts used, you won’t see any stars! It’s that simple.”

Ever the coy one, Phil doesn’t tell us what those “camera settings” are, but he clearly implies that the same settings were used in every photo, which clearly is not the case. Phil also conveniently forgets that the view from the Moon is not filtered through an atmosphere, so the stars have many times the luminosity as here on Earth. Phil’s little experiment, therefore, is entirely invalid, since he forgot to take into account that conditions on the Moon “are weird.” And as with all the ‘debunkers,’ he also forgot to explain why it is that no one thought to expose a photo or two to specifically capture the brilliant display of stars.

Legend holds that a dozen astronauts walked upon the surface of the Moon for varying amounts of time. The Apollo 17 astronauts alone were purportedly there for three days. For the duration of their visits, each of the twelve would have been treated to what was by far the most dazzling display of stars ever seen by the human eye. What they would have seen was many times more stars burning many times brighter than can be seen anywhere here on planet Earth.

Collectively, the dirty dozen took thousands of photos throughout their alleged journeys. And yet, amazingly enough, not one of them thought it might be a good idea to snap even a single photograph of such a wondrous sight. Of course, endless photos of the lunar modules and the monotonous lunar surface are exciting too, but just one or two photos of that dazzling lunar sky might have been nice as well. It’s as if someone went to Niagara Falls and the only photos they brought back were of the car they drove sitting in a nondescript parking lot.

Now let’s turn our attention to the subject of shadows. As skeptics have noted, some of NASA’s photos seem to depict nonparallel shadows, indicating more than one light source. ‘Debunkers’ have claimed that all such discrepancies can be explained by “perspective” and topographical variations on the surface of the Moon. And truth be told, many of the images that I have seen on websites on both sides of the aisle are ambiguous enough that such explanations can be plausibly argued. But there are, as it turns out, images in NASA’s collection that aren’t quite so easy to debunk.

There are, in fact, images that demonstrate unequivocally that more than one light source was used. Take, for example, the image below of one of the landing pods of the Apollo 11 lunar module, allegedly parked on the surface of the Moon.

The primary light source, meant to simulate the sun, is obviously positioned to the right of the scene, as is clearly demonstrated by the shadows of all of the objects in the background. But there is just as obviously a secondary light source coming from the direction of the photographer. We know this because we can see in the foreground that the shadows coming off the small ‘Moon rocks’ point away from us. We know it also because we can see the light being reflected off of the gold foil wrap onto the ground in front of the pod. But we know it most of all because we can actually see the light reflected in the foil wrap on the leg of the pod!

The shadows in the foreground and in the background are at nearly right angles, a phenomenon that cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be explained away as a perceptual problem – especially when we can clearly see the reflection of the secondary light! One other question concerning this particular photo: how do you suppose you would go about capturing such a low-angle shot with a chest-mounted camera? Was the astronaut/photographer standing in a foxhole?

The other issue involving shadows concerns the fact that, in the majority of the photos allegedly taken on the Moon, objects lying in the shadows are clearly visible even though, due to the Moon’s lack of atmosphere and the fact that reflected sunlight does not scatter, those shadowed areas should be completely black. The Moon, you see, is kind of a black and white world. If something is in the direct path of the unfiltered sunlight, it should be well lit (on one side); if it’s not, it should be as black as NASA’s starless lunar sky.

The ‘debunkers,’ of course, have an explanation for this. Let’s turn once again to BadAstronomy.com for that explanation, since that seems to be the website that all the other ‘debunking’ websites consistently reference and link to, the one that all the major media outlets endorse, and the one that even NASA apparently refers skeptics to. According to the site, “The lunar dust has a peculiar property: it tends to reflect light back in the direction from where it came.” Before reviewing the rest of the argument, let’s pause here to take note of the fact that pretty much everything on the Moon has the peculiar property of reflecting light back in the direction from where it came, so given the lack of atmosphere, that’s not really such a peculiar property at all.

Plait them goes on to provide the following explanation of the lighted shadows phenomenon: “Let’s say the sun is off to the right in a picture. It is illuminating the right side of the lander, and the left is in shadow. However, the sunlight falling beyond the lander on the left is being reflected back toward the Sun. That light hits the surface and reflects to the right and up, directly onto the shadowed part of the lander.”

In the previously cited example, Plait managed to make it through four entire paragraphs before contradicting himself. Here he has easily shattered that record by, incredibly enough, contradicting himself in back-to-back sentences! And this, keep in kind, seems to be the best ‘debunker’ that NASA has to offer (it is unclear whether Plait is a paid shill or simply a useful idiot; it other words, it is unclear whether he actually believes the stuff he writes or whether he is knowingly lying his ass off, but the latter seems far more likely).

Plait is right on the money when he says that the light falling beyond the LM on the left would be reflected “back toward the sun.” Unfortunately, he then immediately contradicts himself by claiming that that same light would be reflected “to the right,” onto the module. The only way that that could happen, as Plait surely knows, is if the light were to shine through the lander and reflect off the shaded portion of the soil. But that makes no sense, of course, just as Phil’s explanation makes no sense.

Light does not reflect at an angle on the Moon and it does not disperse, as Plait himself notes elsewhere on his website. It only reflects back to the source, meaning that any light falling beyond the shadow line would reflect back to the sun, just as would any light falling in front of or to the side of the module. None of it would reflect onto the shaded portion of the ship, because light only reflects “back in the direction from where it came,” so in order for it to reflect back onto the lander, it would have to emanate from the lander.

Not too surprisingly, Plait once again invites readers to reproduce the effect right here at home, completely ignoring the fact that, as he himself has acknowledged, light behaves in entirely different ways here on Earth than it does on the Moon. Plait also claims that, “A nifty demonstration of the shadow filling was done by Ian Goddard and can be found here. His demos are great and really drive the point home.” In truth, Goddard’s “nifty demonstrations” are entirely dependent upon the effects of atmosphere causing the light to disperse, and thus they have no validity whatsoever.

I forgot to mention in the earlier discussion, by the way, that Plait also appealed to readers to conduct an Earth-bound experiment to ‘debunk’ the diverging shadows conundrum. According to Phil, “You can experience this for yourself; go outside on a clear day when the Sun is low in the sky and compare the direction of the shadows of near and far objects. You’ll see that they appear to diverge. Here is a major claim of the HBs that you can disprove all by yourself!”

Here is another experiment that Plait might want to try himself: go outside during the daytime on any day of your choosing and look up at the sky. If it is absolutely jet black, then feel free to continue advising your readers to conduct Moon simulations here at home. If it is blue, however (or gray, or white, or pretty much any color other than black), then stop pretending as though conditions on the Moon can be replicated here on Earth when we all know better (or we all should).

And when you’re done with that experiment? Give the camera-to-the-chest challenge a try and let everyone know how well that works out for you. And try to get some of those low-angle shots that NASA likes.

The truth is that even if Plait was correct about some of the light reflecting into the shadows, there is still way too much detail visible in the shadows in virtually all of NASA’s photos – if the arguments that NASA and Plait put forth earlier are at all accurate. As readers will recall, the earlier claim was that the lunar surface and the astronauts’ spacesuits were so dazzlingly bright in the unfiltered sunlight that very fast shutter speeds and very small apertures were required to avoid overexposing the shots.

The problem for NASA and its attack dogs is that you can’t have it both ways. If the camera is stopped down to avoid overexposing extremely bright highlights, it cannot simultaneously capture full detail in the shadows. And if the aperture and shutter speeds are set to capture detail in the shadows, the camera would necessarily also capture the brilliant stars, which would be far brighter than anything lying in the lunar shadows. Other planets would be pretty hard to miss in the lunar sky as well, though none can be seen in any of NASA’s photos.

Do you remember, by the way, what Windley told us earlier about the relationship between the aperture setting and depth of field? The basic rule is that the smaller the aperture setting, the greater the depth of field will be. With a wide aperture, conversely, the photo will have little depth of field. That is why portrait photographers tend to shoot with the lens wide open, to deliberately isolate the subject from foreground and background elements. Landscape photographers, on the other hand, stop the lens down to keep the entire scene in focus.

With that bit of basic photographic knowledge in hand, it is fairly easy to determine whether NASA’s photographs were, in fact, taken with a very small aperture setting. And a good place to start, I suppose, is with the very first photo allegedly taken by a man standing on lunar soil. Below is what is alleged to be Armstrong’s very first attempt at lunar photography, just after climbing down from the module.

First off, I think we can all agree that, under the circumstances, it’s a pretty damn good first effort. There are problems right off the bat, of course, with the fact that the shadows are obviously lit with a diffused secondary light source, or else we wouldn’t be able to see the top of the bag, or the United States sign, or the shadowed side of the landing strut, but what we’re really looking for here is depth of field, which this photo has very little of. The photographer has focused on the United States sign (and he did it blindly!), but little else is sharply focused. Hence we know, from the very first shot, that the ‘debunkers’ are lying about the exposure settings.

Moving on to Armstrong’s second alleged photo, seen below, we again find that there is very little depth of field. Both the foreground and the background are quite blurry, indicating that it clearly was not taken with a small aperture setting. And yet there is nary a star to be seen.

Before moving on, there is one more of Armstrong’s photos that I feel obligated to present here. It is, after all, his masterpiece, as well as being probably the most iconic of all the Apollo photos. I am talking, of course, about the so-called “Man on the Moon” shot of cohort Buzz Aldrin, seen below (which is probably not actually Aldrin; my guess is that the same two actors did all the Moonwalking in the videos and photos from all the alleged missions).

We must first, of course, compliment Neil on the awesome composition. It hardly looks staged at all. But there are problems here. Once again, I’m just not seeing the depth of field that Windley promised us. It’s also pretty hard not to notice that Buzz’s spacesuit isn’t pressurized. And then there is the noticeable lack of any shadowing on Buzz’s spacesuit. He’s casting a shadow on the ground, but there is no corresponding shadowing of his body. Even here on Earth, that is only possible with a secondary light source.

There are some photos in NASA’s collection that were taken without a secondary light source, so we do know what fake Moon landing pictures should look like. The action shot below of the lunar rover, for example, was taken without a secondary light to fill in the shadows. The shadows still aren’t quite as dark as they would be on the Moon, but the difference between a fake Moon shot taken with a fill light and a fake Moon shot taken without a fill light couldn’t be more obvious.

NASA liked the “Man on the Moon” image so much, by the way, that they essentially restaged it for the Apollo 12 mission. As can be seen below, a secondary light was used for that shot as well. Without the fill light, there is simply no way that a portion of the astronaut’s spacesuit would not be shadowed, as it is in the rover photo above.

Moving on then to the next issue, we have the mystery of the disappearing crosshairs. The problem, according to skeptics, is that the crosshair reference marks, which were etched into the camera’s lenses and therefore should always appear on top of any objects in the photos, sometimes disappear behind those objects.

Plait actually gets this one correct in explaining the phenomenon as a problem of overexposure and contrast. When some of the brighter objects in the photos are overexposed, the fine crosshairs tend to get washed out. That is in fact a reasonable explanation for the effect (by the way, I mentioned before that I was not a rocket scientist; I am, however, a photographer).

The claim that the crosshairs should be visible presupposes that NASA added objects to the photos, creating composites. I seriously doubt though that that would have happened. The scenes appear to have been very carefully staged before the photos were taken, so there would have been no need for cutting and pasting. And if NASA had planned on adding additional elements to the photos, I doubt that they would have complicated that process by using cameras with crosshairs; it would have been much easier to create the composites first and then overlay the grid marks on top of them.

However … the same can certainly not be said of the images that purport to show various parts of the ship flying through space. Take the image below, for example, which is supposed to be a two-dimensional rendering of a three-dimensional scene of the command and service modules in lunar orbit. If it were an actual three-dimensional scene, the spaceship would be 69 miles above the lunar surface – which would, I would think, make it difficult for a portion of that lunar terrain to obscure part of the ship’s S-band antennae assembly.

The shot, as can be seen in the enlargement below, is clearly a composite. And not even a very good one. So it is entirely possible that some of the photos allegedly shot on the Moon are composites as well. I obviously haven’t studied every one of them. I’m just saying that the ones that I have seen that have disappearing crosshairs do not appear to be composites.

The next problem with the NASA photos is that some of them seem to have identical backgrounds but different foregrounds. As Phil Plait explains, “In one [photo], they show the lunar lander with a mountain in the background. They then show another picture of the same mountain, but no lander in the foreground at all. The astronauts could not have taken either picture before landing, of course, and after it lifts off the lander leaves the bottom section behind. Therefore, there would have been something in the second image no matter what, and the foreground could not be empty.”

Plait begins his debunking by stating, rather hilariously: “As always, repeat after me: the Moon is not the Earth.” Plait goes on to claim that distances are very difficult to judge on the Moon and that the two photographs were actually taken from much different angles, and yet the background remains virtually unchanged because, despite appearances, it is a really, really long ways away. Either that, or one of the astronauts was really David Copperfield.

The two photographs appear below. I’ll leave it to readers to decide whether, as Plait claims, the ‘mountains’ are in fact many, many times further away from the lander than the lander is from the photographer. And I’ll do so while noting that Phil provides neither the photographs nor a link to them, but instead asks readers to accept what he says on faith. I wonder why he would do that if he were so sure of his conclusions? I also wonder why, in the final photo, the lander appears to be parked much closer to the 'mountains' than Plait would have us believe.

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[Magda Hassan]

Wagging the Moondoggie, Part V
October 1, 2009
by David McGowan
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Stars are not the only thing missing in the Moon photos. Also conspicuously absent is any indication that the lunar modules actually landed in the locations in which they were photographed. Specifically, there is no crater visible under any of the modules, despite the fact that NASA’s own artist renderings clearly showed the presence of a substantial crater. Also, not a speck of dust appears to have been displaced by the 10,000 lb reverse-thrust engine that powered the alleged descent.

NASA’s artist renderings also depict a considerable quantity of smoke and flames shooting out from the bottom of the modules, though nothing of the sort is visible in the purported video footage of the first landing of a lunar module, allegedly shot from inside the module as it set down on lunar soil. In addition, despite the ridiculously close proximity of the immensely powerful rocket engine, no noise from that engine can be heard on the video.

As can be seen in the photo above, the area directly under what is supposed to be the nozzle of the descent stage engine is completely undisturbed. Not only is there no crater, there is no sign of scorching and none of the small ‘Moon rocks’ and not a speck of ‘lunar soil’ has been displaced! And if you refer back to the earlier close-up of the module’s landing pod, you will see that not so much as a single grain of ‘lunar soil’ settled onto the lunar modules while they were setting down.

Your initial response to this may well be, “Well, duh! ... why shouldn't the surface of the Moon be undisturbed?”

Glad you asked. The answer is that the lunar modules were not placed upon the Moon by the hand of God. They had to actually land there. And in order for them to land there in one piece, they had to make use of powerful reverse-thrust rockets. If they hadn’t, they would have made landings roughly comparable to a piano falling off the balcony of a high-rise apartment building.

“But,” you say, “isn't the gravitational pull of the Moon considerably less than that of the Earth?” Of course it is, but that does not render objects weightless. A vehicle with a curb weight of 33,000 pounds here on Earth (what the lunar modules weighed, according to NASA) still weighs close to three tons on the Moon, so it’s not going to make a very soft landing without assistance. And the assistance options were necessarily limited.

NASA could not have used parachutes, such as were used with the returning command modules, because parachutes don’t really work without air, so that would have been a dead giveaway that the landings were faked. They also couldn’t use a helicopter-type rotor, because those also don’t work in an environment devoid of atmosphere. What they allegedly used then to provide the necessary ‘brakes’ was a powerful, reverse-thrust rocket engine.

That is why, in the artist renderings of the landings (the landings obviously couldn’t be filmed, because no one was supposed to be there yet), an enormous blast of flame and hot gas is seen shooting out of the bottom of the module. This massive reverse force would have served to counteract the effects of the Moon's gravitational pull, allowing the module to gently set down in the lunar dust, unharmed and intact. And needless to say, that is kind of important when that very same vehicle is your only ride home.



Given the manner in which the modules allegedly landed, the problem here is that – unless the landing surface was paved with, say, concrete – an inordinate amount of material should have been displaced by the force of the rocket blast as the module was setting down. As Plait likes to say, you can easily verify this yourself. All you have to do is get hold of a rocket with 10,000 pounds of thrust (there probably are some surviving members of the von Braun clan that can hook you up), and head out to the nearest desert location.

Once you find a suitable spot to conduct this experiment, hold the rocket aloft (you might want to wear gloves and an asbestos suit for this part, but it’s up to you) and fire that son-of-a-bitch up, directing the blast towards the desert floor (it might also be a good idea to grab on to a stationary object with your free hand and hold on real tight). Let it rip for whatever you think would be a reasonable amount of time to complete a landing procedure, and then shut it off.

If you've done this correctly, the result will be a fairly large crater and a blinding dust storm. That dust will, of course, eventually settle, leaving a heavy coating of dust on you and your rocket. You may also notice that the blast has lent the desert floor a distinctive scorched look. If you run the experiment for too long, you may even find that the intense heat has fused the cratered sand into something resembling a large bowl of glass.

The point here, of course, is that nothing of the sort is evident in the pictures allegedly brought back from the Moon. The lunar surface is, as noted, completely undisturbed and the modules are as clean as if they had just rolled off the assembly line. It appears as though they did not land at all, but were rather set in place with a crane or other such device. And of course we all know that there were very few crane operators on the Moon in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

How then did the modules get there? Could it be that the lunar surface was so compact that even the considerable force of the rocket could not dislodge it? That might be a credible explanation were it not for the fact that the astronauts themselves, who with the Moon's reduced gravitational pull weighed in at about 30 pounds apiece (maybe 50 pounds each with the additional alleged weight of their packs), made readily identifiable footprints from the moment their feet hit the ground. It appeared, in fact, as though the lunar soil had roughly the same consistency as baby powder. And yet, amazingly enough, not a single grain of this soil seems to have been displaced by the landing of the modules.

The ‘debunkers,’ naturally enough, have an explanation for this. According to them, it’s all about throttle control. As Plait explains, “Sure, the rocket on the lander was capable of 10,000 pounds of thrust, but they had a throttle. They fired the rocket hard to deorbit and slow enough to land on the Moon, but they didn’t need to thrust that hard as they approached the lunar surface; they throttled down to about 3000 pounds of thrust.”

Plait also notes that originally on his site he had said “that the engines also cut off early, before the moment of touchdown, to prevent dust from getting blown around and disturbing the Astronauts’ view of the surface. This was an incorrect assertion.” The funny thing is though that he voiced that “incorrect assertion” just as forcefully and as arrogantly as he voices all the other assertions on his page – which makes sense, I guess, since everything else on his page is incorrect as well.

Phil has obviously never landed a lunar module. Or given much thought to how you would go about doing so. Actually, that’s probably not true. Phil is most likely just a shameless liar. Not a particularly good one, mind you, but you have to remember that he is working with a handicap – he has to weave all of his ‘debunking’ arguments around NASA’s lies.

Let’s try to inject a little sanity into this discussion, shall we? First of all, no one with an ounce of common sense is going to cut the engine and let their three-ton spaceship simply drop onto the lunar surface. Nor are they going to cruise on in while progressively easing up on the throttle, effortlessly setting the module down, as Plait claims, like “a car pulls into a parking spot,” as if they had been landing lunar modules since the day they were born. Because the reality is that the six astronauts who allegedly landed the six lunar modules hadn’t done it before and they only had one chance to get it right.

And do you know why, Phil? Because that module was their only ride home, and if they damaged it in any way, they weren’t going home. Ever. They weren’t going to do anything except die within days in the most desolate place imaginable. And that is why it is perfectly obvious that, if they had really gone to the Moon, they would not under any circumstances have landed the modules in either of the ways that Plait has suggested.

Has anyone ever seen a helicopter land? That is essentially how you would land a lunar module as well. The basic technique is to line yourself up with your landing site while hovering a fairly short distance above the ground (with the module, I presume, you would hold your position by utilizing those clusters of horns). Then, when you’re stabilized and lined up just where you want to be, you very slowly ease off the throttle so as to very gently set it down. And if you’ve never done it before, you’re definitely going to want to take your time.

And that is why there quite obviously should be blast craters under those lunar modules. That is why NASA itself indicated that there would be blast craters under the lunar modules. And that is also why it is fundamentally impossible for the modules to be as impeccably clean and dust-free as they are in all of NASA’s photos. And no amount of spinning from the ‘debunkers’ will ever explain that away.


As previously mentioned, there was much about the Apollo project to stand in awe of. Every individual phase of the missions was, in and of itself, a breathtaking technological achievement. Just blasting men into Earth orbit is a daunting task – so much so that in the nearly half-century that has passed since the first two nations did it (the US and the USSR), only one other (China) has managed to join that elite club. And China has only done it a few times. In the entire history of space exploration, just over 500 men and women have ever orbited the Earth.

And achieving Earth orbit was just the beginning. Then there was the 234,000-mile journey through the unknown to get to the Moon – on a single tank of gas in an unshielded spaceship. Then there was the main ship giving birth to the lunar module, and that untested lunar module then flying down and making a perfect landing on the surface of the Moon. Then there was that same untested lunar module blasting off from the surface of the Moon without the assistance of any ground grew and ascending 69 miles to attain lunar orbit. Then there was the ever-reliable lunar module finding, catching and docking with another ship while in lunar orbit, utilizing some more completely untested technology. Then there was the command module shedding the lunar module and then commencing that 234,000-mile journey back home, apparently still with a full tank of gas.

But as remarkable as it was to get the astronauts safely to and from the Moon, their survival while on the Moon was equally remarkable. To say that the Moon is an environment incompatible with the survival of humans would be a considerable understatement – which brings us to our next topic of discussion: those amazing NASA Moonwalking suits.

Those suits were able to provide the astronauts with everything they needed to stay alive in the Moon’s harsh environment. Remember NASA’s elaborate rendering of what a Moon work station protected from space radiation would look like? Neil and Buzz didn’t need any of that fancy stuff because they were wearing the magic suits. And those extreme temperatures of +260° F to -280° F? Not a problem when you’re wearing the magic suit. Not only could they provide the cooling needed to combat the searing temperatures in the sun, but they could also provide the heat to counteract those frigid shadows.

As can be seen in NASA’s photos, the egress side of the lunar modules (the side with the ladder and hatch) was usually in the shade (though almost always well lit). What that means is that, after traipsing around in the sun for a spell, the astronauts would have had to step into the shadows to reenter the spacecraft. And when they did so, those spacesuits were apparently smart enough to react instantly and switch over from turbo-charged air conditioning to blast-furnace heating in the blink of an eye. Awesome!

In addition to providing radiation protection that today’s technology is unable to match, and a climate control system that is beyond anything available in the twenty-first century, the magic suits also provided the astronauts with breathable air, which definitely came in handy. What the suits did, in essence, was provide the astronauts with their own little portable, climate-controlled, radiation-protected atmosphere.

Of course, to actually do that (if we’re pretending that it could be done at all), the suits would have had to have been pressurized. And it is perfectly obvious from all the photos that the suits were not, in fact, pressurized, because if they were, the astronauts would have looked like the Michelin Man bouncing around on the surface of the Moon.

The magic suits had to perform one other function as well: they had to serve as head-to-toe body armor. Because the Moon, according to NASA, has a serious problem with drive-by shootings from outer space. Seriously. I’m not making that up. I read it on NASA’s own website.

In the very same NASA post that discusses Moon rocks being constantly bombarded with absurdly high levels of radiation, another curious admission can be found: “meteoroids constantly bombard the Moon.” Our old friend from NASA, David McKay, explains that “Apollo moon rocks are peppered with tiny craters from meteoroid impacts.” NASA then explains that that “could only happen to rocks from a planet with little or no atmosphere … like the Moon.”

“Meteoroids,” NASA continues, “are nearly-microscopic specks of space dust that fly through space at speeds often exceeding 50,000 mph – ten times faster than a speeding bullet. They pack a considerable punch … The tiny space bullets can plow directly into Moon rocks, forming miniature and unmistakable craters.”

According to NASA, every square inch of every exposed surface of every rock allegedly gathered from the surface of the Moon shows this pattern. By extension then, we know that every square inch of the lunar surface is peppered with meteoroid craters. There really is no safe place to hang out. There you are minding your own business lining up your golf shot, and the next thing you know a meteoroid is ripping through your spacesuit at 50,000 mph. That has to sting a little bit.

Actually, what it would do is kill you. Almost instantaneously. Not the projectile itself, which probably wouldn’t be lethal after passing through the spacesuit, but ripping or puncturing your magic suit while on the Moon is certainly something that you would want to avoid. You know that old saw about how “nature abhors a vacuum”? How that applies here is that any penetration in your suit would result in all the air being immediately sucked out. Right out of your lungs even. And that can be rather unpleasant.

I guess the Apollo crews really, uhmm, dodged a bullet on that one. Not one of the astronauts was hit, nor any of the lunar modules, nor any of the lunar rovers, nor any of the equipment that was used. I have to say here, by the way, that those Apollo guys were studs of the highest magnitude. Did they know what they were signing up for? What did NASA’s ads say?

“Astronauts wanted. No experience necessary. Duties will include taking a trip to the Moon. Return trip cannot be guaranteed. Applicant must be able to withstand levels of radiation higher than anything that can be generated here on Earth. Applicant must also be able to work comfortably in heat in excess of +250° F, as well as in cooler conditions approaching -300° F. A continuous supply of breathable air may or may not be provided by employer. Snacks and water will necessarily be limited to what fits in employee-provided lunchbox. Rest room facilities will not be available. The ability to dodge 50,000 MPH space bullets is not required, but would be helpful. This is a great money-making opportunity! Paychecks can be picked up upon return to Earth.”

The Apollo guys didn’t have to worry about any of that, of course, because they were wearing the magic suits. Apparently those suits were yet another example of NASA digging deep into the well of lost 1960s technology.

A huge shout-out, by the way, is in order here for the guys at NASA for posting that article about the Moon rocks being bombarded with radiation and meteorites. It makes it so much easier for me when NASA has already done so much of the work of debunking the Moon landings.


When President George W. Jetson announced on January 14, 2004 that America was going to be returning to the Moon, we were quickly advised by NASA types and various television talking heads that such a goal would require about fifteen years to achieve. No one in the media thought to ask why it would take fifteen years to do with twenty-first century technology what it took only eight years to accomplish with 1960s technology. Not one voice was raised to ask how with the twin advantages of improved technology and prior experience it would still take twice as long this time around.

It’s not, after all, as if we have to reinvent the wheel here. Not only have we done this before, but we have done it safely and reliably. How could NASA possibly improve upon the record of the Apollo missions? What could they come up with that could outperform those vintage Saturn V rockets that made it to the Moon damn near every time, and made it home safe every time? And how do you improve upon a lunar module that not only performed flawlessly every time, but that was also the very model of lightweight, compact efficiency?

When you have a system that performs flawlessly on six incredibly technologically complex missions, and that delivers your astronauts home safely even on the one occasion that the system runs amok, why in the world would you toss it in the trash and start from scratch the next time around?

According to a Fox News report published the day after Bush’s announcement, “The effort to return to the Moon will require building new spacecraft and sending out robotic craft to provide materials to be used later by human explorers, say experts.” I wonder why they would need to do that? We didn’t have to do shit like that last time. Why does NASA keep insisting on reinventing the wheel here? Why do they seem to have forgotten that we are old hands at this sort of thing?

Other people have forgotten as well. Following Bush’s attempt to wag the Moondoggie, Republican Senator Sam Brownback sternly warned, “You’ve got the Chinese saying they’re interested – we don’t want them to beat us to the moon!” This may seem like a rather bizarre concern, until you realize that not only is China working on developing a Moon rocket, they are also rumored to be close to completing work on a time machine, which will allow them to transport their Moon rocket back to the mid-1960s and thus beat America to the Moon.

On a more serious note, I’m guessing that since China has managed, in the 50+ years of the space race, to put three whole spaceships into low-Earth orbit, there won’t likely be any Chinese flags waving on the Moon anytime soon.

Anyway, doesn't it seem just a little strange that experts would now suggest that if we get to work right away, we might be able to land men on the Moon by the year 2020? Isn't that like saying that with a lot of hard work and a little luck, we might be able to develop a video game as technologically advanced as Pong by the year 2025? Or that by 2030, the scientific community might produce a battery-operated calculator small enough to fit into your pocket?

And do you think that, if we do ‘go back,’ the voice actors will be given a better script? Will we be given something to replace Armstrong’s cheesy “One small step” line and Aldrin’s poetic “magnificent desolation” line? Have I mentioned, by the way, that Donald Bowman, who worked at the Houston Space Center, has said that Armstrong was indeed handed a script before embarking on the alleged mission? That obviously does not prove that the Moon landings were faked, merely that Washington was very concerned with how the alleged missions were presented.

A NASA statement released in July of this year contained a rather curious assertion: “Conspiracy theories are always difficult to refute because of the impossibility of proving a negative.” It is not, of course, NASA that is being asked to prove a negative, but rather those pesky ‘conspiracy theorists.’ NASA is merely being asked to prove a positive, which should be a relatively easy task. All they have to do is produce some actual evidence, beginning with all those reels of tape containing the telemetry data, the biomedical data, all voice communications, and all the original videotape. They could also release the plans and specifications for all that fancy space hardware. And maybe offer some kind of reasonable explanation for why so many of the official photographs are demonstrably fraudulent.

Alternatively, they could just send some guys back there, to prove that it can be done. It’s been thirty-seven years and counting since the last guests on the Moon checked out. NASA allegedly filmed that final lift-off from the Moon, by the way. In case you haven’t seen the historic film footage, you can view it here. It’s a very short clip and it’s actually quite funny, so be sure to check it out.

I can’t be 100% certain of this, of course, but I have a very strong hunch that NASA picked up the footage off the cutting-room floor after Ed Wood had finished editing Plan 9 From Outer Space. Actually, I probably shouldn’t joke about the clip because I do feel kind of bad for the guy that they had to leave behind to operate the camera. I wonder how he’s doing these days?

Actually, NASA claims that the camera was mounted on the abandoned lunar rover (even in space, Americans are arrogant litterbugs), and that the pan and zoom functions were operated remotely by the ground crew back on Earth. You couldn’t control your television from across the living room in those days, but NASA could pan and zoom a camera from 234,000 miles away. Awesome! And there apparently either wasn’t any delay in the signal or NASA had the foresight to hire a remote camera operator who was able to see a few seconds into the future.

You really have to hand it to the NASA boys – those guys think of everything.

George W. Jetson’s visionary proposal envisioned the Moon as a steppingstone for manned travel to Mars. How that works though is a bit of a mystery to me. The distance between the Earth and Mars varies depending upon where the planets are in their respective orbits, but the minimum distance astronauts would have to travel to reach Mars from Earth is 36,000,000 miles. And the minimum distance astronauts would have to travel to reach Mars from the Moon is, uhmm, also 36,000,000 miles. So I guess what I’m wondering is: what exactly would be gained by making a pit stop on the Moon?

Are there gas stations there to fill up the tank? Some nice hotels maybe where the astronauts could get some R&R? A couple of hot space hookers? How would making a technologically complex landing on the Moon, followed by a lift-off that would require an excessive amount of additional fuel, help get our boys to Mars?

Let’s take a big bite out of the reality sandwich here, shall we? The human animal is quite simply not equipped for space travel beyond low-Earth orbit. There is virtually no chance that we are ever going to send men to the Moon. Despite what NASA would like you to believe, the combination of lethal space radiation, lethal temperatures, a complete lack of breathable air, and a lower gravitational attraction that produces serious health problems, including rapid tissue and bone degeneration, is simply not compatible with human existence. Neither is getting pelted with “space bullets.”

And as for Mars? A roundtrip ticket there would earn you about 75,000,000 frequent flyer miles. I wouldn’t count on that happening anytime soon.

Astronaut Steve Lindsey, after being chosen to command the final planned mission of the space shuttle, had this to say: “Everybody at NASA feels the same way. We’re in favor of taking the next step and getting out of low-Earth orbit.” So while technology in every other realm of human existence continues to take giant strides forward, everyone at NASA appears to want to take a big step backwards. To 1969.

Before bidding adieu, I have one final note to add: a certain Dr. Thomas Gold was an early skeptic of the feasibility of landing on the Moon. He made headlines prior to the alleged flight of Apollo 11 when he predicted that any attempt at a Moon landing would be disastrous. NASA, of course, purportedly proved the good doctor wrong.

Longtime readers will remember that Dr. Gold was America’s most prominent proponent of the abiotic theory of oil and gas production, and that he went and dropped dead just before the ‘Peak Oil’ propaganda started to heat up. Dr. Gold was recently proven to be correct on the origins of so-called ‘fossil fuels.’ The article, curiously enough, refers to the research as “revolutionary” – which it is, I suppose, if you ignore the fact that the Soviets and Ukrainians did the same research and drew the same conclusions some fifty years ago.

We all know that that can’t be true, however, because it would be impossible to keep a secret of that magnitude from the entire Western world … right?

[Magda Hassan]

Wagging the Moondoggie, Part VI
Last Updated: October 13, 2009
by David McGowan
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“It took pilots 50 years to progress from scarf-and-goggles barnstorming to setting down footprints on the Sea of Tranquility; it will have taken another half-century for us to return to the moon.”
David Nolan writing in Popular Mechanics, March 2007 (according to the latest from NASA, we won’t be returning even after another half-century has passed)

It was to be such a big event that NASA decided to throw an all-night party at its Ames Research Center to celebrate. There were guest speakers, Moon-themed movies, and a big screen set up for the main event – what NASA billed as the “Spectacular LCROSS Lunar Impacts.”

According to a media advisory, “NASA’s Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission will come to a dramatic conclusion at approximately 4:30 a.m. PDT (7:30 a.m. EDT) on Friday, October 9, 2009, with the impact of the LCROSS Centaur upper stage rocket and four minutes later, the impact of the LCROSS Shepherding Spacecraft into Cabeus crater near the moon’s south pole. To mark the event, NASA Ames Research Center is hosting ‘LCROSS Impact Night.’ News media are invited to cover the three-part event that is open to the public and free of charge.”

The news media, the scientific community and amateur astronomers were all suitably excited. Clear back in June, when the mission was launched, Scientific American explained to readers how “Scientists expect the blast to be so powerful that a huge plume of debris will be ejected.” The second impact, the magazine further explained, would produce “a spectacular explosion that should be visible in amateur astronomer’s telescopes.”

The plan was that the first impact would send up a huge cloud of lunar dust and debris, and the larger spacecraft would then follow the same course, directly through the cloud, before necessarily crashing into the surface of the Moon. It would only have four minutes to gather data and transmit it back to Earth. As the LA Times explained the day before the big event, “if all goes according to plan, the spacecraft will fly through the cloud of debris that will rise above the lunar surface and linger there briefly. As it passes through the cloud, the satellite’s nine instruments will analyze the dust and debris for evidence of water, before crashing itself.”

So in addition to providing a spectacular show, the mission was also going to feed the American public’s need for instant gratification by providing relatively quick results. In that short four-minute span of time, we would gather all the data needed to determine within days if there is water frozen in deep craters on the Moon. The Times noted that, “Scientists preparing for the collision could hardly contain their excitement over what might turn up in that short time.” The crowd at Ames was expected to number in the thousands, possibly even as many as 10,000, all there to see “a dust cloud rising as much as six miles above the lunar surface, providing a rare show for amateur astronomers with telescopes 10 inches or longer.”

I would have guessed that very few, if any, amateur astronomers have telescopes 10 inches or longer, but I could be wrong. Or maybe I’m thinking of something else.

In addition to the gathering at the Ames complex, countless other viewing parties were organized around the country and around the world to view NASA’s live footage. Amateurs were dutifully lined up at their telescopes awaiting the show. And, as the Times noted, “observatories around the world will be watching, along with the Hubble Space Telescope and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.” Steve Hixson, vice-president of Advanced Concepts at Northrop Grumman, the manufacturer of the spacecraft, assured reporters that the craft was “looking great. I don’t think we could miss the Moon now if we tried.”

I would hope not. How hard, after all, could it possibly be? A full forty years ago we were able to set a manned spacecraft gently down on the Moon – and then fire the engine back up and fly home! Now, with four decades of additional experience and vastly improved technology, all we had to do was send an unmanned spacecraft on a one-way mission to crash into the Moon. How could NASA possibly screw that up?

The media kept referring to the LCROSS mission as the “bombing” of the Moon. Given that NASA is essentially an arm of the US Department of Defense, this should have been a cakewalk. The last time I checked, no one knew more about dropping bombs and firing missiles than the U.S. military. No other country on Earth has come anywhere close to dropping as many bombs on as many parts of the world as Uncle Sam has. The Moon may well be the only landmass within reach of the United States that we haven’t bombed before.

With the United States having long led the world in both lunar exploration and blowing shit up, this mission couldn’t have really been any easier, so it came as no surprise that everyone seemed to be brimming with confidence. President BlackBush, Nobel Peace Prize in hand, was reportedly heard to say: “How do you like me now, motherfuckers?! I’m going to bomb the motherfucking Moon! You all thought that punk-ass bitch that preceded me was arrogant? Watch how I roll!”

As it turned out, the front-page space that all the major media outlets had undoubtedly set aside for the dazzling images wasn’t needed after all. With all eyes on the Moon, what all those viewing parties and all those amateur astronomers and all those giant telescopes saw was … absolutely nothing. The first impact, which was supposed to be captured on live video beamed back from the second spacecraft, never materialized. As the LA Times politely put it, “the plume failed to show on screen.” There is an explanation, of course: “Some scientists suspect the camera settings on the second spacecraft were incorrect, preventing it from spotting the plume.”

Yes, that must be it. You would think though that, what with the importance of the second craft being able to see the plume so that it could then fly through it, they would have gotten that detail right. But apparently they just don’t have the quality control over at NASA that they had back in 1969. As for why none of the amateur or professional telescopes aimed at the Moon captured the first plume, or the allegedly even larger second plume, NASA is going to have to get back to you on that. But probably not right away.

The Times was quick to reassure readers that “scientists might still pluck success from the mission’s anticlimactic ending … At a news conference more than two hours after the crash, mission scientists confirmed that the Centaur rocket made a crater when it hit, and that crater was about the expected size of more than 60 feet across.” There is no way to confirm that claim, of course, since the ship allegedly impacted inside a two-mile deep, pitch-black crater that hasn’t seen daylight for millions of years – which is exactly why it was targeted.

And how pointless, by the way, was this mission? The goal was supposedly to discover if there are large deposits of frozen water on the Moon that could be mined to provide water, breathable oxygen and rocket fuel for future lunar exploration and colonization. The water, if it exists, is at the bottom of deep, permanently dark craters where the temperature is said to hover at around -400° F. At those temperatures, the scientific community tells us, the water would be frozen as hard as rock.

Even if we assume that NASA could overcome all the problems with getting astronauts to the Moon and guaranteeing their survival while there, how exactly would they recover that water? Toss bombs in the craters and then try to run around and gather all the chunks of ice before they melt in the +280° F heat of the sun? Drive down into the craters in one of those folding dune buggies with floodlights, a couple of battery-powered jackhammers, some warm clothes and a shitload of batteries? Or are we going to build a giant, mechanized water-extraction facility of some kind with parts brought up one-at-a-time from Earth? How long do you suppose that will take?

It’s anyone’s guess what the real purpose of this mission was, but whatever goals were being pursued, it doesn’t seem to have gone so well. All that can be said for sure is that NASA appears to be but a shadow of its former self. Once upon a time, we were able to blast men off into space and then turn on our televisions and watch them, just four days later, stroll around on the Moon! Nowadays we send off an empty spaceship, wait patiently for nearly four months, and then watch as NASA fails to successfully crash that empty ship into the Moon.

Since the news media fell asleep at the wheel and failed to bring you the spectacular images that had been promised, I dropped by NASA’s website to pick up a few and bring them to you. The following three photos were labeled as “LCROSS Impact Images.” Following that is a link to NASA’s thrilling live video footage. Enjoy the show. It’s quite dazzling.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndZ483ztduE

Did anyone notice, by the way, all the other ‘lunar modules’ that are recognizable in the larger image captured by NASA's LRO? As will be recalled, they are recognizable by the long shadows they cast. There are, most notably, probably nearly a dozen of them clustered around the crater to the right of the image. I wonder how the boys at NASA figured out which one was the ‘real’ lunar module?

[Helen Reyes]

Additionally, I wonder, not being familiar with or fond of Kubrick's films, if there are any references to Dallas in his work?

Sort of a roundabout reference:

A first test screening of the film was scheduled for November 22, 1963, the day of the John F. Kennedy assassination. The film was just weeks from its scheduled premiere, but because of the assassination the release was delayed until late January 1964, as it was felt that the public was in no mood for such a film any sooner.

One line by Slim Pickens – "a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas with all that stuff" – was dubbed to change "Dallas" to "Vegas," Dallas being the city where Kennedy was killed. The original reference to Dallas survives in some foreign language-dubbed versions of the film, including the French release.

The assassination also serves as another possible reason why the pie-fight scene was cut. In the scene General Turgidson exclaims, "Gentlemen! Our gallant young president has been struck down in his prime!" after Muffley takes a pie in the face. Editor Anthony Harvey states that "[the scene] would have stayed, except that Columbia Pictures were horrified, and thought it would offend the president's family."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove

Also, I remember someone calling Slim Pickens "Tex" in the film, but wiki isn't backing me up here.

Slim Pickens as Major T.J. "King" Kong, the B-52 Stratofortress bomber's commander and pilot. His name is a reference to the character 'T.J.' in the popular children's TV show Tom Corbett, Space Cadet and obviously King Kong.

Tom Corbett was also a radio serial and probably a comic book too (I forget). Also, Slim Pickens was born Louis Burton Lindley, Jr. in "The Swedish Village" of Kingsburg, Fresno County, California.

In Strangelove Kubrick is poking some fun at William Shirer as well as everyone else. Jack D. Ripper is a parody of Shirer's concerns about both fluoridated water and Project Paperclip. He's also parodying the US government's involvement with the Nazi scientists, obviously, in the person of Dr. Strangelove.

There are some other wild interpretations of The Shining, colorful and spacey, touching on the borders of mind control, see Physical Cosmologies: The Shining (very long, very cryptic, in six installments in poor English)

One rather amazing thing Kubrick, or probably Stephen King, did was to pick up on the children's meme of redrum while it was still current in the first half of the 1970s. It was connected with mirror games such as Bloody Mary and Marco Polo, which involved verbal repititions in darkened rooms to cause an hallucination in a mirror of a bloodied human head. The last link goes into the theme of mirrors in what it calls the glyph language Kubrick invented for The Shining.

[Jan Klimkowski]

One rather amazing thing Kubrick, or probably Stephen King, did was to pick up on the children's meme of redrum while it was still current in the first half of the 1970s. It was connected with mirror games such as Bloody Mary and Marco Polo, which involved verbal repititions in darkened rooms to cause an hallucination in a mirror of a bloodied human head. The last link goes into the theme of mirrors in what it calls the glyph language Kubrick invented for The Shining.

Helen - whenever you have time, pray tell more....

[Helen Reyes]

It's interesting to note Eyes Wide Shut can be abbreviated EWS. This is a military acronym for Early Warning System, as in BMEWS, Ballistic Missile Early Warning System, or DEW, Distant Early Warning.

It's also interesting to note that the author of 2001: A Space Odyssey the book, was Arthur C. Clarke, credited with having invented satellites, rumored to be a pedophile, known to be an expatriate in Ceylon/Sri Lanka and shortly before his death, on record as saying there was life on Mars, and even that he'd seen photos of things like sand dollars there. The odd thing is, Clarke wrote the book after the movie was released. Clarke's ending makes the star child vengeful, returning to Earth to destroy it. As in EWS, I believe Clarke's ending to the novel was chopped by the publishers.

Helen - whenever you have time, pray tell more....

On children's lore, I've read children have their own worldview that is passed along from child to child, but forgotten by adults. It includes vocabulary and, the owner of the ethnobotanical seed company J. L. Hudson says, even ethnobotany. I happen to remember "redrum" from before the Stephen King novel was published in 1975. Oddly enough, I remember a cousin used that fake Halloween vampire blood to write it on the back of a chair in a movie theater. It seemed to me it came from the Marco Polo and Bloody Mary mirror games. You repeat Marco Polo or Bloody Mary three times in the dark in front of a mirror, then turn on the lights. For a split second you're supposed to see a bloody head. I never saw it.

Ray Bradbury used the idea children have their own worldviews in The Veldt and Zero Hour to great effect.

[Helen Reyes]

This just as easily fits the Strange Timing in Polanski Arrest and MKULTRA Naval Intel Hippie threads..

Object of study: Suspense radio series episode The House in Cypress Canyon, first aired December 5, 1945 (?).

Synopsis:

Real estate agent Jerry calls friend and private detective Sam Spade over to Cypress Canyon outside Los Angeles to discuss a strange manuscript found in a half-finished house. The house now has a number: 2256. It was one of those houses from before the war, never finished, just a foundation and some beams. Now it's finished and ready to rent.

Sam initially asks Jerry if he needs protection from the mafia, at which point Jerry tries to explain the nature of the manuscript.

Mr. James Woods and his wife Ellen (they were married 7 years ago in Indiana) need to rent a house. They've been living out of one of those California motels for 3 months, ever since Woods's employer (he's a chemical engineer) moved him out to work on "a minor project in Los Angeles, Hollywood to be exact," from Indiana. Serendipitiously, as they're driving up and down Cypress Canyon, they spot a sign at a realtor's advertising a small house. James doesn't think they have a chance, but his wife persists, and soon they're talking to the realtor and moving in. James says they don't have a chance because the sign is out in "plain sight" already.

The house is dusty, it's been standing empty for a year. As they move their boxes of stuff from the motel in, they find one door is locked, and none of the keys fit it. It's apparently a door to a closet. Ellen makes a passing remark about the severity of the current housing crisis, and how odd it is that a woman moves into a house without knowing all the closets first. Ellen then wants to discuss getting red curtains, but Jim is tired and convinces her to go to bed. As they prepare, a strange sound is heard, like a wildcat.

They retire, and a more horrible sound is heard. Jim thinks it might be a bobcat or mountain lion. Ellen thinks it came from inside the house. Jim doesn't understand where it could come from inside the house. Ellen reminds him of the locked closet.

They go to investigate. In the dark, Ellen sees there is a liquid coming from underneath the door of the closet. Despite Jim trying to stop her, she touches it. In the light they see it's blood.

They call the police and an officer comes by. The blood is gone from the floor and Ellen's hand, and the closet is unlocked now. The officer remarks they are from the east, and warns there are strange things in the canyon at night. They sleep poorly.

The next day, Ellen scratches the spot on her hand that came in contact with the blood. That night Jim and Ellen take sleeping pills to sleep. Jim awakens to find Ellen missing. He searches, but knows she's in the closet. He opens the door finally to find her in a fierce pose. He tries to reach out to her, but she bites him on the arm, then collapses. She sleeps soundly but Jim can't. The next morning she remembers nothing. Jim tries to lose himself in work the next day, and sees a doctor about the bite. The doctor has never seen an infection spread so quickly. Jim then realizes it's late, and will soon be dark. He races home, but Ellen is gone. In the middle of the night he turns on the shortwave for some reason. He hears a police call about a murder nearby. He rushes to the scene and sees the corpse, with the neck ripped out. Bystanders call him Frank the milkman.

This is a crucial part: the police radio says the murder took place in the 4000 block of Laurel Canyon. The responding officer is the same who came to the Woods's home the night before. He recognizes Jim, but Jim explains anyway that he lives "right down the street." Cypress Canyon is Laurel Canyon. This is confirmed at the end of the story with the newspaper clippings.

Ellen eventually comes home, and then it cuts back to Jerry and Sam Spade discussing the manuscript. Sam thinks maybe a writer lived next door and misplaced a story. Jerry says there are newspaper clippings paper-clipped to the manuscript as well.

Dated December 26, byline Hollywood: murder/suicide in Cypress Canyon, Jim and Ellen are dead. This is the second tragedy to be reported in Cypress Canyon in the last 24 hours, the other being the unexplained death of Frank Polanski, milkman.

Sam and Jerry's conversation turns to the paradox of the story being written before construction on the house was complete. Sam leaves and a pair stop by the realty office to rent the now finished one-storey California bungalow, named Jim and Ellen Woods.

This is considered a classic Old-Time Radio episode and can be found in numerous places on the internet, in varying quality. Suspense also redramatized it several times, in 1946 and later. Every version I've heard has the same elements: Laurel Canyon, action taking place between the winter solstice and Christmas, and Frank Polanski, milkman.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Helen - thanks for posting that radio play and the plot summary.

Have you ever seen a movie called The Mothman Prophecies, which explores some of these themes, precursors, synchronicities, in what might loosely be termed a Hollywood Jungian manner?

Fundamentally, I believe that art comes from the subconscious and unconscious. The artist tries to create form (or anti-form) from those subconscious impulses. The sophistication and degree of crafting of the resulting work of art depends upon both the skill and the self-awareness of the artist.

The next stage of interference arises when the work of art comes to be distributed, and here I will concentrate on books, films, TV and radio.

If it is a self-published novel, then the artist's work may reach the public pretty much in the form the artist intended. Nearly all other literature or cinema or television is subject to the interference of the publisher or the broadcaster.

A major director like Ridley Scott has suffered major recuts at the hands of his funders, as the director's cut of films from Bladerunner to Kingdom of Heaven demonstrates. His intended work of art as compared with that originally broadcast have been radically, fundamentally, different.

Authors of novels may have slightly more control, but at the very least they have to work with an editor.

TV and radio programmes are always subject to interference from those funding the project.

In conclusion, the published or broadcast form of a work of art may be substantially different from the original product of the artist's mind.

Kubrick, until the alleged recutting of Eyes Wide Shut, is one of the very rare exceptions to the rule.

The other exception is those rare artists whose work is so strange that it is very hard for the studio or publisher to sanitize it. The films of David Lynch are an example. For instance, Fire Walk With Me and Mulholland Drive appear almost pure forms of Lynch's subconscious.

Most works of art though have suffered fundamental alteration between conception and distribution.

The next stage is the manner in which these works of art affect readers, viewers, listeners.

This introduces the feedback loop involving art and the subconscious.

Once art is out there, for example works such as Bluebird or the Wizard of Oz, where subconscious elements have been shaped into form and narrative, this art starts to shape and influence the subconscious of all those who experience it.

It is in this sense that the repeated allegations that Bluebird or the Wizard of Oz have been used as programming tools have some credibility for me. I find it unlikely that their authors wrote them as "programming tools". However, once these works of art existed, and were performed, and became part of the imagination of millions of people, then their form could potentially be used and subverted.

The Mothman Prophecies is an example of the addition of a metaphysical or archetypal dimension to this process.

Now, to return to the example of the 1945 radio play featuring Frank Polanski in those synchronous locations. I find it highly implausible that the artist or artists who created the work of art, in a studio framework, were knowingly preparing us for Rosemary's Baby and the Manson family slaughter of Sharon Tate, Mrs Roman Polanski, in Cielo Drive, more than two decades into the future.

That said, there is no particular reason in 1945 for the studio to decide to change a seemingly minor detail such as the name of the character "Frank Polanski".

From what part of the scriptwriter's unconscious did that name come from?

Was it simply that the notion of a stupid "polack" milkman, signalled by the use of a name like "Polanski", would help make this brutal character believable for an American audience?

Or did the scriptwriter receive the name from the aether of the personal or collective unconscious? Where space and time twist and swirl in more than three dimensions?

[Helen Reyes]

Have you ever seen a movie called The Mothman Prophecies, which explores some of these themes, precursors, synchronicities, in what might loosely be termed a Hollywood Jungian manner?

I saw it, watched it half-distractedly on television once. Funny you should mention that. John Keel half-wrote, half-collected the Mothman stuff as I recall. His book Our Haunted Planet goes into some of the connexions between Men in Black and elementals. The problem as I see it is the Suspense! radio plays prefigure this phenomenon again, as the first modern mention of The Man in Black, who introduced episodes prior to the first modern Man in Black, who contacted Dahl in the Maury Island case in 1947. To connect MIB with the Black Man, a witches' black sabbath name for Satan, is fine, but there's a more obvious and current candidate in the Suspense! announcer.

The broadcast posted was probably first broadcasted in 1946, not 45. Even so, it's prior to the stated time for the establishment of the studio on Wonderland Avenue, which is 1947. Since it's called a unit of the Army Air Corps, that means before June 1947 when the Air Force was commissioned as a separate branch of the military, just around the time the CIA and NSC were created by presidential decree. In 1946 Roman Polanski would have just been reunited with his father in Cracow after his return from Mathausen in Austria.

The episode I posted is more of a coincidence than it seems at first glance. It's not just the surname Polanski and Laurel Canyon. It's prefiguring all the blood later spilt in the canyon in the classical murder/suicides and it's telling us it is prefiguring it, and it is tying it to the specific location. It is also saying there is a mysterious force at work, akin to lycanthropy, that turns people bestial.

Wikipedia says: "Polański himself escaped the Kraków Ghetto in 1943 and survived the war using the name Romek Wilk with the help of some Polish Roman Catholic families."

Romek Wilk. Little Roman the Wolf.

While the Wonderland Avenue studio wasn't there until 1947, we are told (but there were film crews present for the nuclear tests, tasked with filming them for the military, in 1945 at Port Chicago and later Trinity), even before World War II there was a strange secure compound behind Laurel Canyon in what is now called Rustic Canyon. What it was, who ran it, no one knows, or isn't saying. The story it was a Nazi base inside America makes for sensational journalism but probably isn't true.

The next stage of interference arises when the work of art comes to be distributed, and here I will concentrate on books, films, TV and radio.

William Spier was the driving force behind Suspense at that time. Orson Welles was affiliated. Spiers married Gypsy Rose's sister. The script didn't change in the ensuing redramatizations over the years. They always even included the gratuitous product placement for Peterson Brothers furniture, whatever that is.

TV and radio programmes are always subject to interference from those funding the project.

Back then radio series usually had but one spnsor. At that time Suspense had Roma Wines. Suspense didn't shy away from violent deaths but it's safe to assume Roma wanted to cultivate a wholesome and decent reputation for the product.

http://www.oldandsold.com/articles02/fresno2.shtml

Roma Wine Company, Fresno

The largest winery in California, with a correspondingly large production. The Roma Wine Company was established when J. Battista Cella and his brother Lorenzo came to California in 1915 and acquired the small Roma Winery established at Lodi. The move to Fresno occurred in 1933, when the Roma Wine Company acquired the Santa Lucia Winery, which had been founded a few years earlier by N. D. Naman. Roma then began an expansion program which resulted in its becoming the world's largest and most modern winery of its time. In 1942 Schenley Industries, Inc., acquired Roma Wine Company and all wineries and physical assets of the company and embarked upon a further expansion and modernization program.

Colonel Albert H. Burton is in charge of over-all production of the Roma Wine Company and other Schenley wine interests. Richard Auerbach is in charge of production control, while William Shonkwiler is the chief chemist and quality-control supervisor. Sales and merchandising are handled through CVA Corporation of San Francisco under the direction of its board chairman, Harry G. Serlis.

The Roma winery at Fresno has a crushing capacity of 80,000 tons of grapes a season, while total storage capacity is over 16,700,000 gallons of wine. The Roma winery at Kingsburg has an additional capacity of 7,800,00o gallons.

Winery buildings and operating areas cover some fifty-five acres. With minor exceptions all Roma dessert wines are produced from grapes grown in the San Joaquin Valley within a radius of sixty miles of the Fresno winery. White grapes represent about 70 per cent of the total volume crushed and include chiefly Muscat of Alexandria, Feher Szagos, Palomino, Malaga, and Thompson Seedless, the last two varieties being used principally for the production of brandy and grape concentrates. The most important dark grapes used are Zinfandel, Petite Sirah, Mission, Grenache, Carignane, and Salvador.

Roma produces sound standard-quality wines which are nationally distributed and also exported to various foreign countries, including the Orient. Roma Reserve is the basic brand, with Roma Estate and Roma Select the two principal variations, conforming to the demand in various parts of the country.

Under the various Roma brands the following wines are available, most of which are bottled in the exclusive Roma dripless bottle, a new merchandising development:

Table wines:
RED: Burgundy, Claret, and Zinfandel; Red Chianti and Vino di Roma (vino rosso type); WHITE: Sauterne, Chablis, and Rhine Wine; White Chianti; ROSE: Vin Rose. ...

Now, to return to the example of the 1945 radio play featuring Frank Polanski in those synchronous locations. I find it highly implausible that the artist or artists who created the work of art, in a studio framework, were knowingly preparing us for Rosemary's Baby and the Manson family slaughter of Sharon Tate, Mrs Roman Polanski, in Cielo Drive, more than two decades into the future.

Or for a secret military studio to be located according to a radio play. The foundations were laid before the war, but only finished after.

That said, there is no particular reason in 1945 for the studio to decide to change a seemingly minor detail such as the name of the character "Frank Polanski".

No, Jan, the point was only that the script didn't change over the years, which means the details weren't mistakes, they were following the original script. It would've been easy for a Hollywood actor or radio star to insert "Laurel" for "Cypress" and to have it go out over the air, and even be transcribed (recorded for later rebroadcast). The first version has the cop say "Palanski" but later versions say "Polanski." The first actor simply didn't enunciate the O, he gave it the good old American schwa.

From what part of the scriptwriter's unconscious did that name come from?

Was it simply that the notion of a stupid "polack" milkman, signalled by the use of a name like "Polanski", would help make this brutal character believable for an American audience?

First, his character wasn't brutal. He was victimized, his throat was ripped out by Cathy Lewis/Ellen Woods, James A. Woods's wolfgirl wife. Second, "milkman" had a certain ring to it immediately following World War II, something like "postman," a male who has contact with women whose husbands are absent, abroad or dead, who might sometimes have access to the domicile. The Freudian implications of milk are obvious.

Or did the scriptwriter receive the name from the aether of the personal or collective unconscious? Where space and time twist and swirl in more than three dimensions?

Yes, I believe so. "Roma" Wines, Frank "Polanski" murdered in the canyon... In fact I'll wager the script writer lived in or near Laurel Canyon, and the story came to him as he contemplated unfinished construction next door over, late one night, when a wild animal was heard to howl somewhere nearby.

The Cypress Canyon address is a real one, if you transplant it to Laurel Canyon Boulevard:
2256 Laurel Canyon Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90046
An internet search of that shows it listed on http://www.orange-systems.info/usa/ as the business address of ORANGE SYSTEMS USA
An almost exact replica of the webpage exists at http://www.orange-systems.co.uk/ which lists the business address of ORANGE SYSTEMS Ltd as ORANGE SYSTEMS Ltd, UNIT F, THE SCOPE, WILLS ROAD, TOTNES TQ9 5XN

For more on why this radio drama is a bigger coincidence than it seems at first glance, read all the krazy kalifornia stuff beginning at http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr93.html if you haven't done so already.

I'm guessing there's something behind the secret studio and the murders in Laurel Canyon, and it has something to do with the compound in Rustic Canyon and something to do with local elemental spirits whispering in suggestible ears and something to do with MKULTRA and earlier projects aimed at shaping public opinion.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Helen - lots of fascinating material in your post.

I think we also got our wires crossed a few times there, entirely unintentionally.

Fwiw I have an insider's view on editorial interference in the process of filmmaking because I've spent almost two decades making documentaries for the BBC, NatGeo, Discovery etc. I'm also very interested in movies in all their aspects - from technical minutiae to insider gossip to ongoing impact on audiences.

By gossip, I don't mean who's shagging whom. I'm talking more of the shifting creative evolution of the project.

An obvious example is the evolution of Apocalypse Now, from the original right-wing, Kurtz-loving, extreme Nietzschian, script of John Milius - inspired by tales of the Phoenix Program and, allegedly, Tony Poshepny - through rewriting by FF Coppola, the casting and filming of Harvey Keitel as Willard, his firing and replacement by the much blander Martin Sheen who goes malarially mad on location, onwards to the climactic scenes in the Montagnard/Hmong Laotian compound, TS Eliot & Joseph Conrad spirited through a seer, a very edgy Marlon Brando, back to California for Walter Murch to make editing decisions so fundamental that a radically different work of art, only dimly present in the original scripts, emerged.

Etc etc.

Apocalypse Now was only ever given solid form when the celloloid prints were made. And even these were altered days after release. Yes - I once saw the airstrike called in and blow Kurtz's compound, and its inhabitants, to smithereens. For years afterwards, I thought must have hallucinated it. Until I learnt that Coppola withdrew those prints and had them destroyed.

Enough.

The broader point is that a form of this creative process takes place in the production of every radio and television programme, every film or play. That process is driven primarily by the key creative personnel - director, actors, editor, DoP etc.

This creative evolution is not malign, and is usually a good thing.

Fighting that creative evolution is editorial interference by the funders of projects. This may be the studio or broadcaster, who are usually driven by the bottom line. They want to make money, and will demand changes that they believe will make a work more popular. Ie put more bums on seats.

An example is the original studio cut of Kingdom of Heaven. As is often the case, the film did badly at the box office precisely because the studio thought they were changing the movie to make it more populist, and in fact they just made it more crap.

This editorial interference has a more malign form, which is changes demanded in the service of a political agenda. I have a friend who was working on a major series for Discovery about the Vietnam War. He wrote a script line stating that America lost the Vietnam War. It was struck out, and he was told to avoid that notion in its entirety if he wanted to keep working on the project.

Any MSM documentary with "conspiracy" in the title or blurb will have as its raison d'etre the "debunking" of the "conspiracy" at all costs.

So, there are many layers of interference.

And interference is rather a good word for moving into the John Keel/Mothman territory.

Keel/Mothman reveals interference at the literal and material level. Men in Black. Deliberate distortions.

However, there is also interference at the metaphysical level.

As if some numinous figure is twirling the radio dial, and channels are bleeding into each other.

And the radio itself is, for want of a better phrase, able to receive intra-dimensional signals.

This is also David Lynch territory.

Polanski, rather like Lloyd the barman, exists in many forms.