What public evidence? If it was so public it shouldn't be hard to find some to back that statement up.
You're seriously asking for evidence that the Apollo program was styled as a race to beat the Soviets to the Moon? Are you blind?
Do have any evidence to show it has been discredited?
Actually yes, but it's not really a going concern. See also below. The only people who still consider the Majestic documents authentic anymore are a very few of the wackier UFO authors. Even many of the authors who once considered them authentic have now changed their minds. Among the factual evidence suggesting forgery are the many errors in the Truman document.
However I should back up and concede that the Majestic reference is something of an inadvertent red herring. There is a version of the Kennedy memo "No. 271" that circulates with the Majestic documents. It bears some resemblance to the actual memo and contains some of the same language, but has been doctored to include references to UFOs and has some mysterious handwritten annotations. It is also heavily redacted, which is a technique used by many UFO enthusiasts to suggest that the redacted portions support their claims.
Wrong, it does bear his signature!...See the second page of the memorandum here:
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/qVncp893wEmJFplIn1AlHA.aspx
Well no, that's not Kennedy's signature. That's a memo to the file, which is why it has the "S/" annotation rather than a signature. However the memo itself is an authentic document, and the version you link here is
not part of the Majestic documents. Therefore if that's the version of the memo to which you refer, then my reference to the Majestic documents was a misdirected rebuttal and I withdraw it.
But there may have been a degree of cooperation between the US and Soviets on space exploration soon after the date of the memorandum.
No "may have been" about it. The Apollo-Soyuz program was a direct result of it, as was the exchange of lunar samples between the Soviet and American scientists. "A degree of cooperation" does not substantiate your claim that the Soviets flew missions to the Moon in secret cooperation with NASA. If you argue that a different "degree of cooperation" existed beyond that which the record shows, you bear the burden to prove it.
This would have given the Soviets ample motive to try and hide the fact that the US may have been perpetrating a hoax
Nonsense. The entire civilized world believed the U.S. had beaten the Soviets to the Moon and the Soviets graciously, but begrudgingly, acknowledged that. You're telling me they put forth effort under a supposed secret agreement but got no public credit for it.
...It cannot be ruled out.
Shifting the burden of proof. You have no credible evidence that the Soviets participated actively in Apollo operations. You may not assert they did and then sit back lazily and expect everyone else to try to prove you wrong.
Yes it had, space has always been governed by the same rules as "international waters".
No, it had not. It was so governed later as a
result of those discussions, but there had been no prior agreement.
"Space," at least in terms of Earth orbit, includes a volume of space above rival nations. A nation's airspace is considered part of its sovereign territory, as is its territorial waters. The altitude at which a spacecraft could fly over another nation and not be considered to violate its airspace was a matter of some concern. Similarly while international waters exist and while space could be considered equivalent to international waters, the law of conquest still applies. If you, sailing in international waters, first reach unclaimed land, you may claim it as part of your sovereign territory. Hence there was some question about whether the first person to reach the Moon would be able to claim it as the sovereign territory of his particular nation.
The overflights of Sputnik gave the U.S. some indication that the USSR did not consider Earth orbit to be any nation's sovereign territory and gave rise to orbital surveillance, which is lawful compared to surveillance by covert aircraft. Only in subsequent negotiations did the U.S. and USSR agree to extend the legal principles of the "high seas" to space, and further to refrain from claiming sovereign territory over the Moon or any other celestial body.
Yes, and this disproves your earlier claim that there was no US Soviet cooperation on space exploration during the time of the Apollo missions!
Your claim is that the photo in question is not from Apollo-Soyuz but from an earlier Apollo mission, ostensibly one that went to the Moon. Showing that an American astronaut was aboard a Soviet spacecraft at some point in history does not prove that American astronauts and Soviet cosmonauts collaborated on missions to the Moon.
I don't have the book here so no, I can't.
I skimmed the book and found no such photograph or reference. That doesn't mean it's not there, but it does mean I'm not going to expend any more effort to provide the evidence for your claims. The onus is on you.
What evidence have to to prove "His blatant intellectual dishonesty"?
My entire web site, which has been up for more than 10 years and is very well known and commonly cited by others to third parties whenever Percy's claims are mentioned. Do you really know
anything about this debate?
Perhaps he just doesn't want to talk to you because you may have insulted him at some point during or after your invitations?
Desperate speculation.
Yes, I know, but doesn't the author of the book in question claim the photo was taken on a earlier Apollo mission?
That's what he claims. And since his claims regarding the Apollo record have proven so disastrously wrong and misrepresentative in the past, we cannot take his word for it.
