Difference between revisions of "Project Apollo"

Revision as of 04:33, May 29, 2022

Apollo 17 on the launchpad.

Project Apollo is the pride of American spaceflight. It began when United States President John F. Kennedy proposed that America put a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. In 1969 his dream came true with Apollo 11 when Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. However, this success was not without costs. Less than a year later, the aborted mission Apollo 13 almost resulted in the death of the crewmembers. Only extraordinary measures by the flight team on the ground and in the spacecraft prevented it from becoming a tragedy. But tragedy was not fully avoided; three astronauts, Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee, had been killed three years earlier in a fire on Apollo 1 while the rocket was on the launch pad.

Beginning with Apollo 15, a small electric car was used to transport the astronauts across the surface of the moon. A total of twelve men walked on the moon, but after Apollo 17 in 1972, the program came to an end. The Saturn 5 booster constructed for Apollo 18 carried Skylab, America's first space station, into orbit.

Conspiracy Theories

There has been speculation that began with Rocketdyne technical writer Bill Kaysing that the Apollo moon landing missions never actually took place, that it was a hoax filmed in a Hollywood studio. Supporting this interpretation is the fact that the American flag placed on the Moon should not wave, though it appears it does. Also, no stars appear in the lunar sky in photographs supposedly taken on the Moon, as they would be expected to do. Moreover, the shadows in the photographs run in different directions, rather than parallel, as if the sun were not the source of light.^[1]

There are many other strange elements in the footage such as astronauts who seem to be being manipulated by external forces such as wires, as used in stage and theater productions.^[2]

NASA officially denies this, claiming that it can be conclusively demonstrated scientifically that the astronauts really went to the moon, for example, by analyzing the ages and composition of the rocks brought back by the astronauts.^[3] However many rocks that were originally supposed to be from the Moon have been found to be fakes such as petrified wood which was given to the Dutch Prime minister.^[4] There is also an odd law that forbids the possession of Lunar rocks from the Apollo missions which states that the material belongs to the US Government. ^[5] Some have cited that this is because if such rocks were professionally analyzed such as in the case of the rock gifted to the Dutch would call into question their true origin.

Curiously many NASA astronauts speak about going to the Moon and beyond low Earth orbit in the future tense, including Dr. Kathleen Rubins^[6] and Col. Terry Virts ^[7] Some cite this as the most conclusive admission that the Apollo programs did not really land men on the moon.

It has been stated that faking the Apollo moon-landings would require the cooperation of thousands of individuals involved, something highly unlikely due to the potential marketing opportunity for any person who does come forward, however there are cases of US development were production is compartmentalized such as in the case of the Atomic bomb where each unit only works on a small part of the plans to minimize the potential of sensitive information leaking to enemy nations either by word of mouth or by espionage. Bill Kaysing a Rocketdyne employee openly came out and claimed the Moon landings could not have happened as he had full clearance to see all the plans together and questioned their capabilities but was largely ignored or slandered. Many cover stories could have been made as to why they filming on a fake moon landing site was taking place without revealing the true reason. There are many cases were NASA openly performed training exercises such as in Cinder Lakes where they recreated the Lunar surface by creating craters with explosives. ^[8] NASA also openly created exact replications of the Moon with satellite imagery on large scale models which they claimed was for research purposes. Staff at the Honeysuckle creek satellite dish in Australia who were the only ones to pick up the Moon landing broadcasts, expressed concern over the alleged transmissions they were receiving from the Moon and believed there were discrepancies that led them to believe the signal they were receiving actually was originating closer to Earth and only being relayed to them from a satellite orbiting the Moon. NASA staff who work at Houston have stated that simulation training data is not discernible from real data and Houston could have been presented simulation data when the real moon-landing missions were supposedly taking place.

The most consistent story of how the Apollo Moon landings were faked was simply that they were sent up on a rocket powerful enough to reach low earth orbit, at which point the astronauts orbited the Earth for 8 days and eventually crashed down in the sea. All the rest of the mission was created in a film-studio using a variety of film-making methods including miniatures and rear-screen projection, except for the famous footage of Earth from a distance which was filmed inside the astronauts capsule through a circular porthole in low-earth-orbit with the lights blocked out which made the close Earth filling up the whole view look like it was far away. ^[9]

The major reasons that have been cited that NASA could not go to the Moon are the Van Allen belts, which during Operation Starfish Prime, megaton bombs were sent into to try and clear a hole in the belts for the Apollo missions to safely pass through.^[10] To this day NASA is still studying the belts with the Orion missions which is collecting radiation data. ^[11] This data is classified which is highly suspicious as it is merely an observation of data, unless NASA was trying to cover up the fact that the Van Allen belts were too deadly after-all for humans to have safely passed through them during the Apollo missions. Many experts also cite the reliability of the rocket-dyne F1 engines supposedly used on the Saturn V which meant that they could never have safely used them for the Apollo program without a high probability of catastrophic failure due to a reverberation effect that occurred inside the nozzle repeatedly in testing.^[12] Other reasons include lack of computing power as when Space X attempted vertical landings with multiple super-computers to direct the output and orientation of the engine nozzles they failed 6 times whereas the Lunar Landing Module successfully landed on the Moon with a single direction rocket on the first attempt with 1 millionth the computing power of the average cellphone.^[13][14]Compared to modern smartphones, that number could be orders of magnitude greater.

The reasons why they may have decided to fake it instead of admitting to the public their failure were tensions with the Soviet Union and maintaining an image of technical superiority and also not to disappoint and disenchant the American public who were greatly moved by John F. Kennedy's 1962 speech.^[15] It could have also spelled an end to the space program or even NASA in its entirety in its entirety, as tax payers would have wanted the money to be spent elsewhere after such a disappointment.

In a public appearance at the Apollo's 25th anniversary press conference, Neil Armstrong, who is widely known as the first man on the moon, stated these words: "To you we say we have only completed the beginning. We leave you much that is undone. There are great ideas undiscovered, breakthroughs that are available to those of you who can remove one of truth's protective layers." Many have cited this as being a cryptic admission by Armstrong who was known to be a man of high integrity and was the only way he could safely try and tell the public the truth about the moon landings.^[16]

It can be hard for some people to admit there are discrepancies in the official moon-landing story due to cognitive dissonance and normalcy bias, and a desire to believe in the good of the American government. The most significant discrepancy is that the Apollo moon-landing missions were never repeated after the final mission Apollo 17, in 1972. Ever since then no manned mission has gone beyond very near Earth orbit even though technology has significantly advanced. For comparison no other human achievement whether it is climbing Mt Everest, traversing Antarctica, the plane, the computer and more have not been repeated and improved upon and been significantly developed since there first success. Many have stated there is simply no reason to go back to the Moon. However in impossible conditions on the remote Antarctica with below freezing temperatures and hurricane speeds winds bases have been created and maintained yet on the Moon no such thing has ever been attempted, and such a base would undoubtedly bring invaluable insight for scientific progress and economic investment, even tourism. Others have stated that the problem is merely funding and NASA simply doesn't have the resources it did in 1969 but this is simply not true as global partners as well as private companies have always worked together on space projects including the International Space Station which cost over 150 billion US dollars.^[17]

Fictionalizations

• Operation Avalanche directed by Matthew Johnson
• Capricorn One directed by Peter Hyams

Documentaries

• A funny thing happened on the way to the moon by Bart Sibrel
• Astronauts gone wild by Bart Sibrel
• American Moon by Massimo Mazzucco

External websites

• Aulis.com
• americanmoon.org

Books

• Moon Man (2021) by Bart Sibrel
• We Never Went to the Moon (1976) by Bill Kaysing

References

1. ↑ http://primeline-america.com/moon-ldg/
2. ↑ [1]
3. ↑ , The Great Moon Hoax (NASA)
4. ↑ [2]
5. ↑ https://www.monroecountylawyers.com/blog/2020/05/can-you-legally-own-lunar-rocks-in-the-united-states/#:~:text=It%20is%20illegal%20to%20own,the%20states%20and%20other%20nations.
6. ↑ [3]
7. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gJ0DfULLGU#t=16m0s
8. ↑ [4]
9. ↑ [5]
10. ↑ [6]
11. ↑ [7]
12. ↑ [8]
13. ↑ [9]
14. ↑ [10]
15. ↑ [11]
16. ↑ [12]
17. ↑ [13]