…America faked the first moon landing.
And I say: well done them. That can’t have been easy. What other country has faked a moon landing, eh? Take that Russia! And what about the Chinese? They can fake anything but not putting a man on the moon. Only America can do that. And not once either but, er, several times. Including one moonshot that “didn’t get there”. Now that’s attention to verisimilitude.
But seriously, consider what an impossibly complicated and expensive exercise faking the moon landing was. You need a big fucking rocket. And it’s got to go up. Quite a long way in fact. And in a straight line. And not blow up.
And then you’ve got to get people to talk about all the little details: command module, lunar module, re-entry, space suits.
Oh, and spare a thought for Hollywood’s contribution. People in space. People bouncing around on the “moon”. All done in an age before CGI. And making the Earth round just to keep the Spherical Earth lobby happy. And note how they got all the radio delays right. And they even mangled Armstrong’s “one small step” speech just so that 30 years later they could claim that transmissions were subject to “interference”.
But what’s really impressive is how they kept everybody quiet. 1969 America was a place where you couldn’t even drive off a bridge and kill your secretary without it being front page news. Home of the brave? Home of the blabbermouth more like. But they kept the faked moon landing hushed up. Neil Armstrong kept the secret to his grave. And the other astronauts, and the people at Mission Control, and the gazillions of engineers who “worked” on the rocket, the life-support systems, the navigation, the computers, the software. The material scientists. To buy all these people’s silence? Now, that must have cost a fortune.
Sometimes I think it would have been cheaper to have done it for real.
On a sound stage no one can hear you taking a dump
“And making the Earth round just to keep the Spherical Earth lobby happy.”
😆 😆 😆
“Sometimes I think it would have been cheaper to have done it for real.”
That reminds me of the first reader comment to a Biased BBC piece I did in 2005 complaining about the BBC giving house-room to conspiracy theories about the US having deliberately created the devastating tsunami of that year. A Mr Bob Gleason of Virginia replied,
“But what’s really impressive is how they kept everybody quiet.”
Mind control rays – that we got from the Roswell aliens. The ones we were returning to their orbiting mothership in that big and very obvious rocket, that we were using the ‘space race’ and ‘moon landings’ as cover for. Fortunately, the Roswell aliens have excellent CGI!
There’s sufficient evidence that Stanley Kubrick directed the fake moon landing film, but being a perfectionist he did it on location.
and all the Australians, at Parkes and Honeysuckle creek…
I’m just disappointed they didn’t proceed to then fake a manned mission to Mars. That would have kept the naysayers busy for centuries.
It had to be done.
The Chinese and the Russians were on the verge of figuring out that the moon is a man-made creation of the CIA, studded with cameras and antennas, sweeping over both of those countries every day.
So, we “spent” billions of dollars, created an entire new industry and science, and “traveled” there. (It’s only 53 miles up.) Once we made it and showed the feat to be challenging and expensive, Russia and China both studiously ignored it from then on.
Money well spent.
Brilliant. I rename you Sir Balspune.
Aside, all of this is premature. We’ll all know the truth come 21st September anyway.
Of course, Tranquility Base is a cardboard stage-set reeking of backlights, deus ex machina props, scampering stagehands.
How else explain that the Lunar Aliens who greeted Armstrong and Aldrin are never mentioned; that their capital Star City has been erased from panoramic backgrounds; above all, that the Command Module is manifestly not sitting on the lunar surface but dangling from a rubbed-out skyhook crane?
To those who ask, “What aliens, what city, what dangling crane?” we make reply: Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Since no-one can prove a negative, who’s to say we’re wrong? In any case, JFK’s chauvinistic self-glorification would better credit Senegal, Zimbabwe, mayhap Bangladesh, Brunei, or Suriname, for their profound socio-cultural/economic contributions to this enterprise.
Well done, sir!!
They directed Terminator 2. I have this on good authority.
Let’s hear the other side of the story from Buzz Aldrin.
And watch out, because Buzz punches above his weight! (And less than half his age.)
So, we agree that it’s ok to Punch A Denialist?
And they even mangled Armstrong’s “one small step” speech just so that 30 years later they could claim that transmissions were subject to “interference”.
I maintain that this was a dialect/pronunciation issue, rather than a technical one. Armstrong simply “swallowed” the “a” in Midwestern fashion: “step fura man”.
Pure genius, they got you to debunk the fakery in a way that is designed to be convincing…
Buzz Aldrin’s punch was in self-defence, the loon attacked him first, and although Buzz was 72, the recipient said it was a good punch he didn’t see coming. So Buzz fooled him twice!
From Mr Ed’s link (with thanks!)
Good to know that he doesn’t believe that violence settles arguments!
I see that i was wrong: Buzz punched slightly more than half his age. Still, way above his weight, as you will have noticed.
It just goes to show that, if you have been to the Moon, nobody can scare you.
I submit that the most compelling evidence against a conspiracy theory, is the claim that the conspirators went to exceptional lengths to provide evidence that a conspiracy happened.
You can see this also in JFK assassination theories, and in 9/11 theories.
Snorri: What an excellent clip! I particularly enjoyed the bit about whether it’s too cold to walk on the sun. As for the 2nd clip, I heard a lot of *bleep*s. Mr Aldrin’s language, tsk! 😆
Mr Ed, kindly tell me why you’ve blocked the video in my country! What, you think we Yanks are all too nuts to be allowed to watch even more controversial stuff than what we create ourselves??!! *grin*
Patrick, the first sensible defense for those of us who actually watched the fake “moon landing” in 1969 — at the home of our Objectivist Study Club leader, yet — and spotted it at once for a fraud.
BRILLIANTLY DONE !!! 😆
And I gots to say, we got a hyper-intelligent bunch of commenters strutting their smarts and continuing the theme in this here discussion. Best one we’ve had in a long, long time.
Nominated for Samizdata Discussion of the Decade.
Thanks to all. Made my day!
Julie: if this can make you feel better, the video is blocked over here, as well.
But i guess that it’s just another cut of Buzz punching above his weight.
Snorri, thanks for the info. But truthfully, this whole discussion makes me feel so good that even Mr Ed’s blocking my video, ON PURPOSE! *g* couldn’t bring me down! ;>)
Seriously, would love to know who & why the blockage. Pure curiosity.
Well, I think we agree it’s ok for Buzz to punch a Denialist.
(In legal terms, he had standing.)
Don’t forget about the Soviet spacecraft Luna 15 which was orbiting the moon at the same time and changed its orbit to overfly close to the Apollo 11 landing site at low altitude while the astronauts were in the Lunar Module after their moonwalk and before liftoff. Luna 15 had both radio receivers and a camera linked to a primitive fax-machine to send the photos back to Earth. Folk at Jodrell Bank were monitoring the transmissions from both Apollo 11 and Luna 15 and were able to both keep track of Luna 15’s orbital changes and also receive and decode some of the images it sent back to the USSR.
The Soviets didn’t have any doubts about the landing, and were in a very good position to know.
Guys, there is a lot of truth that the Americans were the first on the moon, but back in WW2:
https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5226/5683785190_45962b83f9_b.jpg
However, they tried to hide the fact and removed the evidence:
http://www.anorak.co.uk/wp-content/gallery/sunday-sport/bomberonmoonsundaysport1.jpg
But all that is irrelevant. What I want to know about and and have explained by experts is why there is a statue of Elvis on Mars? Or is it the REAL Elvis covered in red Martian dust, eh? People want to know, you know.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/62440303@N04/5683219847/in/photostream/
If it appeared in the Sunday Sport, you KNOW it was true … >};oD
What puzzles me most is why they then bothered to fake the following five landings.
Leave aside the legality of his action and ask yourself: is there any chance that a jury would find Buzz Aldrin guilty of assault on a man half his age and twice his size, who called him “a coward and a liar and a thief”??
And all this time i thought that the Fantastic Four were the first Americans on the Moon!
So, the “He needed punching” defense.
They even built a working computer and wrote software that can verifiably land a lunar module: https://www.livingspace.earth/home/2019/7/an-apollo-computer-lands-on-the-moon-in-naples-fl
And let’s not forget the still-unexplained triangulation of fake VHF signals by thousands of amateur radio operators all over the world.