http://www.theonion.com/content/news/conspiracy_theorist_convinces_neil

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Understanding the structure of the universe
    via religion is like understanding the
     structure of computers via Tron.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> http://www.theonion.com/content/news/conspiracy_theorist_convinces_neil

  Wanna bet how many conspiracy theorists are going to completely ignore
the reliability of the source and quote that article as fact?-)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

>   Wanna bet how many conspiracy theorists are going to completely ignore
> the reliability of the source and quote that article as fact?-)

Umm... Most?

-- 
~Mike

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>>   Wanna bet how many conspiracy theorists are going to completely ignore
>> the reliability of the source and quote that article as fact?-)

I'm of the opinion that the landing was real, but that portions of the
footage were faked, and others staged, for cold-war PR reasons.
I was three years old when it happened, I watched it on my uncle's
TV. I also saw coverage of Apollo 12 and 13. I saw some of the 
launches from 14-17, but by then I was mostly in pre-school, and 
in places without TV.

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Tim Attwood <tim### [at] anti-spamcomcastnet> wrote:
> I'm of the opinion that the landing was real, but that portions of the
> footage were faked, and others staged, for cold-war PR reasons.

  And what makes you think they were faked? Do you have any evidence?
(Something better than the old tired "there are no stars" style "evidence".)

  There's not a single piece of evidence to insinuate that the footage was
faked. I don't understand why one would even think that they were.

  Before you present all the old, tired arguments, read this first (in its
entirety, preferably): http://www.clavius.org/

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>  And what makes you think they were faked? Do you have any evidence?
> (Something better than the old tired "there are no stars" style 
> "evidence".)

The lack of testable evidence is one of the reasons I think there
is some deception going on. It's my estimation that the people at
NASA and JPL aren't really dumb enough to have misplaced the
records of their biggest achievement.

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On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 16:58:03 -0700, Tim Attwood wrote:

>  It's my estimation that the people at
> NASA and JPL aren't really dumb enough to have misplaced the records of
> their biggest achievement.

Well, similarly, the people in the Pentagon shouldn't have lost records 
from WWII in a fire, but they did.

The BBC shouldn't have overwritten or otherwise lost early footage of 
many now cult classics, but they did....

Records get lost, especially when you have *lots* of them and no way of 
storing them digitally (and digital storage is no prevention for the loss 
of records, either....)

Jim

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Tim Attwood schrieb:
>>  And what makes you think they were faked? Do you have any evidence?
>> (Something better than the old tired "there are no stars" style 
>> "evidence".)
> 
> The lack of testable evidence is one of the reasons I think there
> is some deception going on. It's my estimation that the people at
> NASA and JPL aren't really dumb enough to have misplaced the
> records of their biggest achievement.

NASA is a bureaucracy after all. Stuff like that does happen in a 
bureaucracy.

Someone head guy decided that they needed more telemetry tapes, but hey 
- the archives are full of old telemetry tapes nobody has ever bothered 
to look at ever since. I mean, who would care about the telemetry tapes 
of some obscure spacecraft from 30, 40, maybe 50 years ago?

Head guy gives orders to some intermediate guy #1, "go ahead and recycle 
some of those old telemetry tapes from the archive nobody will miss".

Intermediate guy #1 gives orders to some intermediate guy #2, "recycle 
some of those old telemetry tapes from the archive; nobody will miss them".

...

Intermediate guy #N gives oders to some poor bloke working in the 
archives, "find some old telemetry tapes and prepare them for recycling".

That poor bloke, maybe 25 years of age, finds the Apollo telemetry 
tapes, and /does/ prepare them for recycling. After all, who would still 
care about that endless bulk of biomed and technical sensor data being 
streamed 24/7 to the earth? The glitches have been analyzed decades ago 
already, and nobody will ever bother about the rest.

How should that poor bloke, having started his work at NASA decades 
after the events, happen to know enough details about the Apollo mission 
to know that these very telemetry data reels also contained the original 
video footage from up there?


Don't assume bad intent where incompetence will do. And don't assume 
incompetence in individuals where flaws in a system will suit just as well.

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Tim Attwood <tim### [at] anti-spamcomcastnet> wrote:
> The lack of testable evidence is one of the reasons I think there
> is some deception going on. It's my estimation that the people at
> NASA and JPL aren't really dumb enough to have misplaced the
> records of their biggest achievement. 

  I really find it illogical that from two alternative explanations you
are convinced that the most implausible one must be the truth.

  Let's consider the two possibilities:

1) NASA faked the footage of the Moon landings. This means that all the
people who were involved in one way or another with this footage have been
keeping quiet for the last 40 years. Nobody who was aware of the fakery
has come forward, and nobody else who was working at NASA ever suspected
that the footage was fake. The astronauts themselves have kept quiet for
40 years, the people who were directly involved in creating the fakes have
been quiet for 40 years, people who decided that the fakes have to be
created have been quiet for 40 years, the people who knew the alleged
technical problems in creating the genuine footage have been quiet for
40 years, people working at NASA who may have had any suspicion that the
footage was faked have been quiet for 40 years. The people who were
involved in deliberately destroying the original material have been quiet
for 40 years.

  Moreover, the engineers who designed the cameras either knew that they
won't work and have been quiet for 40 years, or were somehow fooled that
they would work even though the couldn't, and they never suspected a thing.

  The engineers who designed the lunar lander and the lunar rover (who were
not NASA employees, btw) were also completely fooled by the fake footage
and never suspected their product was not really being used in vacuum in
1/6th of Earth's gravity, that the footage was so well done, that it fools
even the experts. Or, alternatively, they have been keeping quiet for 40
years.

  The fakes are so well done that photography experts can find no sign of
fakery in the photographs, which is a rather impressive feat, especially
taking into account they were made in the 60's.

2) NASA did lose some original footage of the first landing due to
oversight, carelesness or a mistake. Nobody working at NASA seems to have
a problem with this claim, and it's not unprecedent.

  Which possibility seems more plausible?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   Which possibility seems more plausible?

He *did* say "portions" of the footage were faked. That's far more plausible 
than everything being faked, and far easier to cover up.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Understanding the structure of the universe
    via religion is like understanding the
     structure of computers via Tron.

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