Re: for BMJ and all other parochial lot re moon landing


Straydog wrote:
On Fri, 3 Aug 2006, Kamal R. Prasad wrote:


BMJ wrote:
Joseph the Skeptic wrote:
Kamal R. Prasad wrote:


.The flag couldn't have
fluttered in an air-less atmosphere. At the most, it would have been
drooping.


An excellent example of why I should have ignored your post. Kamal,

I am not interested in forcing my opinion down anybody's throat.

On the contrary: you have submitted several times in the last year the
idea that the moonshot never took place. You stated recently that you
agreed with this conclusion. I had a serious look at those images you sent
me. I spent maybe 1-2 hours using Google to examine a few websites on this
subject and in reading your posts and composing my posts. With my
scientific background and familiarity with photography, physics, etc., I
did not find anything seriously inconsistent with the majority
understanding that this event really did take place (the only exception
might be, at most, the one sequence of the LM ascending which could have
been a "visual aid" produced on a stage for the benefit of totally innocent PR
purposes) and you did not say from where or who these images came from and
thus all the images you sent me could be fake, too!


and the fact that both astronauts have been pictured on a landscape
with nobody else being present on the moon? Pl look at my other post re
adjusting zoom and aperture in a field view rermotely and then saying
cheese on the lunar surface.

this point has already been addressed, and you deal with that
inconvenient reality by doing what so many other netloons have done

how can you categorize a person with a difference of opinion as stupid?
Isn't one entitled to think different? I just posed questions about the
landing -but haven't dismissed the landing as a fake.

You said, several times, farther in the past, that "it was a fake because
of technical reasons." Now it is OK with me if you want to revise your
opinion or if you want to express some level of doubt or express some

yeah -I would like to revise my opinion from saying "it couldn't have
happened and if your govt lied -there is nothing unusual about it" to
"I do not have conclusive evidence that it did not happen -but I would
like to understand more about these questions that were circulated by
email".

difficulty in understanding or even ask for responses to questions (and I
gave my responses, my qualifications, and speculations). But don't try to
say, now, that you "haven't dismissed the landing as a fake" because you
actually did declare in the past that it was a fake and you talked about
technical reasons. In addition, there is this crazy idea showing up in
Google searches that because there has not been any more moon landings in
the last 35-40 years, that therefore, the first one was a fake. From all
that I ever saw, that project was a very very expensive and risky
and complicated project. I am not at all surprised, and considering that

they sent the Rover to mars twice. In both cases, it was unmanned and
the robot had to be programmed to do some AI work like backing off a
steep descent. It would have been easier to let a human use his brain
than program the dumb processor with intelligvence.

the emphasis (at least to me) on shuttle flights would be more practical
(since it could place into orbit more robot scientific instruments per
budget buck, and even do commercial satellite launches and repairs) and
much cheaper robot missions, that plans for more moonshots were abandoned.


You mean the US govt cut down spending? I think, they increased funding
and spent a lot more than the apollo mission. They had one cassini to
fly all the way to saturn and jupiter (really far compared to the
moon).

before you - by developing a convenient case of amnesia.


I am not at all uncomfortable with the landing having taken place.

Are you sure? What changed your mind? Sure seems like a switch in thinking
to me. You sure had a lot of doubt in the past.


Just to be politically correct, let me state that I have no conclusive
evidence to say it did NOT happen (and that the uS has achieved a lot
in S&T besides landing on the moon). Now, let us see if the evidence
being circulated by email has some merit.

There is no sense in trying to reason with somebody like you.

you don't need to reason with me or convince me of it coz I am not all
that religious about concluding whether it did or did not take place.

I'll be quiet about this one.

Regrettably, Google does not offer killfiles; if it did, I'd put you in
mine. But I can have the sense to ignore you in the future, as you post
on this and all other topics.


You could do without a killfile, meaning Im not interested in harassing
anyone with my posts. There was no bait from my side -just questions
for which i wanted answers. All of the questions that I received were
from the US -and I am outside the US.

Well, I hope you might someday be more satisfied with space project
reports from all countries that spend signficant budgets on them. Farther
in the past, the old USSR could be criticised for one thing: keeping its
space project failures a big secret from everyone. We (the USA) had some
big failures, too (many deaths [old oxygen fire that burned 3 guys to
death] on the ground, and two shuttle destructions [on takeoff and
re-entry], to name the more serious ones).

There were 8 astronaut deaths before the mission. One of the mysterious
ones Ed Givens -probably filed a court case against inhuman treatment
just before he was killed in a car accident. (This isn't mentioned in
the link below, but I saw this on Discovery channel).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_moon_landing_hoax_accusations


* PLONK *


This issue's been discussed time and again on the various space
newsgroups I subscribe to. The moon landing hoax disciples are best
ignored as there's no reasoning with them.

It turns out that Im trying to reason if it did take place and how the
shots have so many questions around them.

Fine. I think it is OK to ask for some opinions about anything and those
opinions. I gave my opinions, and, if you paid attention, I'm sure I
never said that it was absolutely true that US guys really landed on the
moon; I just have such little doubt because there is such a large body of
evidence that they really did. Its too big of a project and too public of a
project. If it was a secret CIA mission, or like the U-2 spy plane flight

it could have been orchestrated -if that is your question. Whether they
did orchestrate it -I do not know.

over the Soviet Union that got shot down and our president Eisenhour said
it was a simple, poor weather research plane that accidentally flew off
course and the next day the Soviet government shows pictures of the
crashed plane, the pictures of the spy camera, the pilot still alive, and
they had the court case on Soviet television for months, then its better
to just face the truth and not lie. So, I am not afraid to talk about

whats the harm in facing the truth assuming the truth is that the
landing didn't take
place? Mankind keeps pushing the envelope, sometimes to be overwhelmed
by challenges, sometimes to lose lives in trying. Nobody is jeering at
NASA for all of those astronauts that have been killed in shuttle
crashes.

failures and lies even from my own government. I don't want to be part of
any life or job where I have to limit my thinking to political or
religious dogma. That is why I went into science.


...and since there are so many that think that people in other countries
cannot continue from where they left off aka offshoring -they ought to
switch careers and do something trivial.

But the wise ones wouldn't
want to waste their time doing so coz they just voted to categorize me
as a moose.

To me, you are not a moose. You are not stupid. You do know some things.
But, at least if you have one view and some other people have another
view, then maybe you need some time to think about the difference.
However, there is nothing wrong--and it is polite, too--to just say "Let
me think about this some more" or "I need some time to think about this."

yeah -but sometimes I tend to extrapolate based on their
nationalistic/racial jingo-ism and not look at their pov on account of
that. Its my fault -so instead of declaring it didn't happen -I will
just say that im trying to gather proof that it did happen for sure.

Today, I think differently about a few things than I thought about the
same things 10-20-30 years ago. Am I right, now, and wrong back then? Or,
vice versa? OK, I'll say there is very little truth in the world, and
just a little more fact, and a whole lot of opinions, viewpoints,
misunderstandings, dogma, and quite a bit of stupidity, too (my idea is
our US war in Iraq is stupid, and I had that idea since before it
started).


To quote 1 republican politician (think Chuck Hagel) -this is our 2nd
vietnam
To quote 1 democrat before the 2004 election -this is W's Vietnam
To quote John Edwards in 2004 -they aren't telling you the whole
truth, Its a collosal error.
To quote Anthony Zinni [ex naval chief Centcom] -its vietnam all over
again
To quote Colin Powell - "don't go in there if you don't know how to get
out of there"
To quote Bill Clinton - "I wish I had taken out Saddam Hussein -but
then its a tough neighbourhood"

and to quote Labour MPs in Britain as quoted on NDTV India - "its a
political blunder"

Its actually not much different from rednecks categorizing
their competition in India as incompetent so that they can retain high
paying jobs. The bad news for such people is that their vote doesn't
count as much as evidence does.

I've read a lot of the "hate" posts over on a.c.c over the last few years,
myself. First, you need to understand that when you have anything taken
away from a person (their job, career, a theft, we even have crime in the
USA where a wife or husband gets killed somehow), then that person is
going to be mad. I, myself, am mad about a few things in life. Second,

Fine. But have you made any effort to understand that wealth doesn't
originate in the US and the bill of rights doesn't guarantee one a job,
a dream house etc..?

I've read a lot of posts authored by Indians who have no hesitation to
taunt and tease all these US guys who lost their jobs and are mad; those
Indians are not helping the situation, either. They are making it worse.


well -I wouldn't jeer on anyone who has lost his job. But I would say
it is incumbent on the worker to price his services competitively. Who
on earth is forcing americans to live the kind of life they do and
price themselves out of the competition?

I blame both the US CEOs and I also blame the India lobby, just like there
are lobbys all over the world, trying to get business, money, military
aid, or some other favor or deed from the USA just because we are big,
have money, and sometimes fight some wars for good reasons (eg. WWII and
Kuwait). So, don't look at all of life as if India is nothing but heaven

Have you forgotten that money != wealth? Your govt prints money to
transact in wealth (goods/services). It doesn't generate infinite
amounts of goods/services from a fountain to help everybody live the
american dream. Increasing money supply does not lead to an increase in
wealth -just the amt of paper to transact in wealth.

and the USA is nothing but hell. I have read a few books on economics and
one on globalization by a guy who is _for_ globalization but he is an old
guy who studied it all his life and he's not sure it will work. Now, I am
reading about a backlash in China: many people there are now protesting
the selling of Chinese companies to foreigners (just like in the US, some
people did not want to sell an oil company to China, or a port
administration to Dubai). And, there are going to be more people who lose
their jobs and businesses in the USA. And, a lot of Chinese farmers are
not happy with everything in China, either.


Globalization is like tectonic plates shaking and merging togeher to
form a single landmass. Initially, there will be massive upheaval -and
then gradually the dust settles down. The US witnessed social upheavals
when it started free trade with Japan, Germany, S Korea etc.. but those
upheavals didn't last forever.

Even if, say, it was
possible to take pictures of the landing sites with a telescope, they're
bound to claim that it was faked.


*they* doesn't necessary include me. I have dealt with cameras
sufficiently to know that a remote timed shot is v difficult to explain
-but if it can be taken by a person, that would be easier to explain.

I have dealt with cameras, too. To me, its not a big deal.


Sure? I know some pros who would sweat to take a moon shot with an SLR
camera today. I doubt if those astronauts that went up there knew much
about aperture, illumination etc.. and even if they did manage it, they
wouldn;t be in a mood to say cheese to the camera.

Does the technology to take a shot by a telescope from earth of 2 men
on the moon exist or existed then? I doubt it.

In my opinion, based on telescope resolution and atmospheric disturband,
there could not be enough resolution to take pictures from the earth of 2
guys on the moon.

so that means the pic had to be taken from the moon itself. I have an
antiquated yashica camera at home and don't think it would have yielded
such good pics.

Some of them know no shame. A few years ago, one, a chap named Bart
Sibrel, cornered Buzz Aldrin and badgered him to admit that he was part
of the grand conspiracy. Take a look at websites such as:

http://www.csicop.org/articles/20021018-aldrin/
http://www.insideksc.cjb.net:8081/moonshot/punch.htm

not a v scientific explanation - really.

Fine, you guys can keep arguing about the moonshot. I'm about tired of
reading and talking about this problem.

His attitude is to dismiss the argument, so its mostly a chat between
you and me.

regards
-kamal

.

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