Wednesday 16 September 2009

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon

This year has seen the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landings. While there was some media coverage, there was not as much as one might have expected, which is quite surprising for such a major, history changing event.

When President Kennedy announced to the world that America would send a man to the moon and return him safely before the end of the decade, it sent a shockwave through not only the world in general, but NASA in particular. They had no idea that Kennedy was going to make such a rash promise – one that they would have to keep.

At that time they had only had moderate success with their rocket launches, and now, in front of the entire world, it was being promised that they would be able to do something which many of their own staff believed was impossible, and in a ridiculously short time frame.

Sure enough, they did it, landing Apollo 11 on the moon in July 1969. Or did they? Much evidence throws doubt on the validity of their claims. They went from thousands of individual faults on every Apollo rocket to none by the 11th. That is some feat – if only Microsoft could do this with their products!!

Recently, it was discussed about them going back to the moon, to use it as a stepping stone towards a mission to Mars. However, one of the chief NASA designers claimed that it would take 15 years to be ready to go back to the moon. Now this is a little strange – back in the 1960’s with very limited technology and knowledge by today’s standards, they went from not being able to reliably launch an unmanned rocket to walking on the moon in well under 10 years. How come with modern technology and a whole lot more experience it is going to take 50% longer to do it again?

Right from day one, the Van Allen belt was cited as a major problem. This is a belt of intense radiation that surrounds our planet. Here on the ground we are protected from it by the Earths atmosphere, once you get beyond our atmosphere, there is no protection from it, certainly no protection that could be offered by a few millimeters of aluminium skin on a space craft. It would take several FEET of lead to protect man from this deadly radiation, making the space craft so heavy that it would not be able to take off in the first place.

It is a record of fact that since the Space Shuttle missions began, none of these missions have gone beyond the Van Allen belt, most in fact staying well below it. One mission that did get closer to it had the astronauts reporting that they could see “tiny flashing lights” even with their eyes closed – these would be caused by the radiation passing through the skin of the shuttle and the astronauts themselves.

So, if a man had in fact gone to the moon, the severe radiation he would have been subjected to would have killed him. Strange then that most of them are still alive up to 40 years later.

Anyone who has more than a passing interest in photography can easily see the anomalies in the photos from the Apollo missions. The cameras they used were made by the Swedish company Hassleblad, and were just minor modifications of the ones they sold to the public. They had no viewfinder and no exposure meter, and the only addition to them to try to repel radiation was a layer of silver paint inside the body.

It is strange then that every photograph is perfectly framed, perfectly focused and perfectly exposed. Most of us find that hard with a modern auto everything camera! The films suffered no effect whatsoever from either the radiation (try taking your films through a few airport X-Ray machines and see what happens to them!) or the extreme temperature changes. By rights, the films should have been fogged by the radiation, and the sprocket holes torn or at least distorted. (The temperature difference between areas of shade and sunlight on the moon was reported to be 300 degrees!! -100 in the shade to +200 out of the shade) The films should have alternated between being frozen and melted!

Neither Hasselblad or Kodak (who supplied the film) can explain the above – Kodak certainly don’t produce a film that they would claim to be able to withstand such abuse, and never have done.

Then, when you look at some of the photographs and see shadows that run in different directions when the only light source was the sun itself, you have to have doubts. This is impossible without extra lighting. The fact that in certain photos areas are well lit that should be in total shadow throws up more doubts.

Add into the mix that there is a rock in one photo that has a letter seemingly written on it that also crops up in photos from a different mission to a different part of the moon, and the fact that in some photos the cross hairs which were etched into a screen inside the camera go BEHIND objects in the photo, you really do have to start worrying about what is real and what is not.

I could go on about the mysterious deaths of some people involved with the early Apollo missions who voiced doubt about the possible success of the project, and journalists who have tried to investigate the truth. The very odd behaviour of some of the astronauts involved (Armstrong will not even talk about it, and Aldrin broke down in tears and stormed off when asked what it was like to walk on the moon during one interview) but this would become a book rather than a blog entry, and there are already plenty of those on the subject.

Suffice it to say that if you care to Google the subject, or better still, watch some of the You Tube videos, you will begin to have doubts yourself. It is not easy to come to terms with a lie of this enormity, and it is all too easy to dismiss it as rubbish spouted by conspiracy theorists, but the photographic evidence is something that cannot be easily explained away.

Of course governments have to keep some things secret from the general public, maybe even lie a little, but this lie has gone on too long and too far. The moon landings were the biggest single historic event in human existence, and yet they were probably faked. Will we ever know the truth? I doubt it, but one can hope.

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