Why are NASA astronauts (still) lying?

[raven]

Ugh.  Thanks, Smartcooky.  Thanks a lot.  Not being familiar with all of those places you mentioned, especially cluesforum, I decided to go take a look at them the other day.  I've had a splitting headache and a case of nausea ever since.  The ignorance that runs rampant on those forums is unbelievable.

I just don't understand some people.

*gets Morgul a fluffy blanket, a happy puppy or kitten and a nice warm cup of tea* Welcome to the Internet, I am sorry you had to experience that.

[smartcooky]

Rather they only frequent the conspiratorial "yes man" forums like David Icke, Cluesforum, Above Top Secret and Godlike Productions, where they will find like-minded conspiritards only too willing to be devoted disciples who hang on their every word.

Ugh.  Thanks, Smartcooky.  Thanks a lot.  Not being familiar with all of those places you mentioned, especially cluesforum, I decided to go take a look at them the other day.  I've had a splitting headache and a case of nausea ever since.  The ignorance that runs rampant on those forums is unbelievable.

I just don't understand some people.

"You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy!"

[Noldi400]

I was re-reading Heinlein's Have Space Suit - Will Travel the other day (yes, it's a juvie; wanna make something of it? ) and came across an interesting passage.

The speaker is a young man rather lost on the lunar surface, trying to orient himself by the stars.

"They say you can see stars from the Moon even when the Sun is in the sky. Well, you can - but not easily. I had the Sun over my shoulder but was facing Earth, almost three-quarters full, and had the dazzling ground glare as well. The polarizer cut the glare - and cut out the stars, too."


Pretty close, for sci-fi published in 1958.

[raven]

A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke  also explicitly mentions and gives the reasons for the difficulties, as well as the common conception they should be there. 
"The public expected to see stars in the lunar sky even during the daytime, because they were there. But the fact was that the human eye could not normally see them; during the day, the eye was so desensitized by the glare that the sky appeared an empty, absolute black. If you wanted to see the stars, you had to look for them through blinkers that cut off all other light; then
your pupils would slowly expand, and one by one the stars would come out until they filled the
field of view. But as soon as you looked at anything else--”phut”, out they went. The human eye
could look at the daylight stars, or the daylight landscape; it could never see both at once."
Not bad for 1961.

[Zakalwe]

Pretty close, for sci-fi published in 1958.

Yeah, but NASA was formed in 1958 so CLEARLY Heinlein was one of the first on the payroll.

[ChrLz]

"They say you can see stars from the Moon even when the Sun is in the sky. Well, you can - but not easily. I had the Sun over my shoulder but was facing Earth, almost three-quarters full, and had the dazzling ground glare as well. The polarizer cut the glare - and cut out the stars, too."

Pretty close, for sci-fi published in 1958.

{warning - silly technical quibble follows }
Polarising, by nature, only works at a limited range of glare reflection angles, plus it doesn't reduce glare by more than an f-stop or 3 - not very significant when we are talking about the difference in eye adaptation for stars versus a brightly sunlit landscape-or-anything-else-in-the-f-o-v.  If by 'over his shoulder' he means his back was to a low-ish Sun then there would be little polarising effect anyways - it works best at 90 degrees-ish to the lightsource (unless heiligenschein is polarised, and I can't think why it would be....).

However, perhaps he was referring to a crossed-polariser method of reducing light levels, in which case I withdraw the quibble.

This, and Clarke's later effort, are admirable predictions nevertheless.

I am now wondering at what point we can refer to Allan's post as a fine splat example of seagullery?

Allancw/Allan C Weisbecker, are you there??  You got some 'splaining to do..

tap, tap, tap.. is this thing on?

[Zakalwe]

All the hallmarks of a seagull poster.
he's not been on the board for a number of days now.




Another wilfully ignorant fool. Why are some people so afraid to learn new stuff?

[dwight]

Because it means giving up their lives as they know it. They have to dress differently, drive different cars, move to a respectable part of town, change friends. It's just not that easy I tells you.

[Abaddon]

Allancw is baaaack.

Funny. He didn't even get that part right.

[smartcooky]

All the hallmarks of a seagull poster.
he's not been on the board for a number of days now.

Another wilfully ignorant fool. Why are some people so afraid to learn new stuff?

Because it impacts on their worldview; often-times, its a worldview that they cannot bring themselves to give up because so much of their self-esteem is invested in it. They simply cannot bring themselves to learn new stuff that might show their conspiracy is ill-founded, because of the fear that their world-view will be shown to be the house of cards that it is, and that it will collapse, bringing them down with it.

I am convinced that the majority of conspiracy theorists (and I'm not talking about the casual ones here, but the ones who have an obviously paranoid obsession such as "he who shall not be named") suffer from some pretty severe psychological problems. They seem to share a lot of characteristics; low self-esteem, an underlying distrust of authority, a cynical view of politics, argumentative and difficult to get on with.

These traits tend to support the idea that they mostly have a “monological belief system,”, the basis of which is that all events the world over can be explained by a web of government and big-business conspiracies.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-people-believe-conspiracy-theoies/

http://conspiracypsychology.com/2013/01/17/alex-jones-and-the-monological-belief-system/

[Zakalwe]

Because it impacts on their worldview; often-times, its a worldview that they cannot bring themselves to give up because so much of their self-esteem is invested in it. They simply cannot bring themselves to learn new stuff that might show their conspiracy is ill-founded, because of the fear that their world-view will be shown to be the house of cards that it is, and that it will collapse, bringing them down with it.

I'm sure that the irony is completely lost on them....after all, they are always banging on about "closed minds" when in reality they have the most closed, blinkered minds in town. That Mr Weisbecker for a start. Look at his Apollo 13 thread where he "guaranteed" that no documents existed that could contradict his view. In a very short space of time he was presented with copious, contemporaneous documents that did just that. Yet he point-blank refused to even acknowledge them. Similarly with this thread. He rapidly saw which way it was going and he hot-tailed it out of here.

I'd normally say that this mindset is more to be pitied than laughed at, but I struggle to understand why someone would be so wilfully ignorant and entrenched that they cannot even consider learning. As someone else has pointed out, once you stop being able to learn you really are at a dead-end.

[JayUtah]

In addition to the valid reasons given, people don't want to learn because learning is hard.  Learning something that is correct and complete often requires one to learn something that is difficult and boring.  Conspiracy theories are neither difficult nor boring.  So they would rather learn them instead.  In other words, conspiracism is a shortcut to the illusion of erudition.

[smartcooky]

... conspiracism is a shortcut to the illusion of erudition.

Oooh, I like that!!

[Noldi400]

"They say you can see stars from the Moon even when the Sun is in the sky. Well, you can - but not easily. I had the Sun over my shoulder but was facing Earth, almost three-quarters full, and had the dazzling ground glare as well. The polarizer cut the glare - and cut out the stars, too."

Pretty close, for sci-fi published in 1958.

{warning - silly technical quibble follows }
Polarising, by nature, only works at a limited range of glare reflection angles, plus it doesn't reduce glare by more than an f-stop or 3 - not very significant when we are talking about the difference in eye adaptation for stars versus a brightly sunlit landscape-or-anything-else-in-the-f-o-v.  If by 'over his shoulder' he means his back was to a low-ish Sun then there would be little polarising effect anyways - it works best at 90 degrees-ish to the lightsource (unless heiligenschein is polarised, and I can't think why it would be....).

However, perhaps he was referring to a crossed-polariser method of reducing light levels, in which case I withdraw the quibble.

This, and Clarke's later effort, are admirable predictions nevertheless.

My impression was that he was talking about some sort of automatic cross-polarizing system, with an effect something like a high-speed photochromatic lens.

Like most sci-fi writers of the 50s, he got some things right, but a lot of things wrong, too...  he projected breathing an oxy-helium mix at 4 psi "to prevent the bends" (which doesn't explain how you avoid them without pre-oxygenating), and basically free flow breathing to provide cooling, something like the emergency mode for the OPS.

Still, he clearly understood the difficulty of seeing dim points of light when there are bright light sources all around, which a lot of people evidently STILL don't.

[Glom]

... conspiracism is a shortcut to the illusion of erudition.

Oooh, I like that!!

It's also the title of the Asylum films take on the Road to Perdition.