I'm just trying to figure out how he worked ISS "guidance and control" when his cited work experience sounds like "computer repairman on USAF facilities". I guess we'll never know since he flounced off.
What I find amusing is how people don't realize that error can be distinctive.
There are only a few ways to correctly understand something. There are innumerable ways to
misunderstand something. That is, there is one right answer and an infinite number of wrong answers. So when someone comes along who has a particular brand of misunderstanding, and someone else comes along who has the exact same misunderstanding, how are we to believe that they aren't the same person? Some misunderstandings are like a fingerprint.
Now conversely while I was an educator, I encountered common misunderstandings. That is, when the truth tends to be counterintuitive, the same common mistake is made by nearly all beginning students. They rely on intuition, which gives them the same wrong answer. For example, when confronted with the "speed up to slow down" paradox in orbital mechanics, most students intuitively believe "speed up to speed up." It fits with their intuitive (and even educated) understanding of the world.
But in something such as spacecraft guidance the field of ignorant error is wide open. When fattydash comes along and says, "I'm a doctor, but I believe you need to know the exact position of the LM on the lunar surface in order to solve the orbital rendezvous problem," that's a fairly unique error. No one else before or since (except as follows) makes that error. You can see the broken model at work in his head. So when some other guy comes along and says, "I'm a USAF rocket engineer and I believe you need to know the exact position of the LM on the lunar surface to solve the rendezvous problem," the parsimonious explanation it's that it's the liar Patrick back to up the stakes on the same broken understanding. It's not a question of the theory being right or wrong. It's clearly wrong; the successful rendezvous does not depend on a precision liftoff from the lunar surface. It's a question of the chances of two different people being wrong in the same exact way, and the coincidence of the second claimant wanting people to think he's more expert than the previous claimant.