Good books about the moon landings hoax?

[JayUtah]

Summary Review of Haunted by Neil Armstrong

A quick thumb-through of Burns' book indicates absolutely no verification of his claims whatsoever.  While there are mentions of David Chin and the guest book, there is no indication whatsoever that anyone or anything at the golf club validated in any way -- or indeed even knew about -- his beliefs and claims in this book.  All the "validation" comes entirely from his assertion to have been accompanied on his second golf trip by the ghost of Neil Armstrong.

Pages 11-13 contain his recollection of a paper he claims to have written on travel to the Moon in pursuit of a physics degree.  He claims to have received high marks for it, but it is an abysmally ignorant expostulation that displays almost no correct understanding of space flight.

The bulk of the book is a shamelessly self-congratulatory travelogue of an extended golfing excursion to several countries, largely irrelevant to the Apollo 11 crew, space flight, or his specific hoax claims.  The writing style alternates between pompous and numbingly tedious.  (Gillianren, you do not want to pollute your brain with this.)

On page 37 he addresses the claim of being able to play a military-only course, which is to say he mentions that he has been challenged several times that his claim cannot be true.  He offers absolutely no explanation on that page, but later claims that "the three men" whom he assumed to be the Apollo 11 crew signed him in "as their guest," which Armstrong's ghost seems to accept as a given.  In other words, Burns just sidesteps the facts by appealing again to the supernatural.  He also makes the mistake on the same page of asserting the mysterious 1960s Neil (presumably Armstrong) as "a military man," even though at that time he was no such thing.  He also gets Armstrong's age wrong.

His alleged second visit to the Navy Marine Golf Course occupies only pages 42-45.  As promised, a picture appears on page 43 of a man in a three-piece suit with white hair and facial hair standing next to a man who resembles David Chin just inside the entrance to the clubhouse.  The rug clearly displays the course emblem.  Only one other photo appears in this chapter, of the club's historical timeline.  This is significant because in the text he claims to have gone onto the course and taken photos, but no such photos appear in the book.  In contrast, he includes several photos of the public course at Mauna Kea.  Why no photos of Navy Marine except just inside the club house?

Contrary to his insinuations here and elsewhere, Burns presents no verifiable evidence that he golfed at this course either in 1969 or in 2013.  He presents no verifiable evidence that David Chin or anyone else at the course verified, or was even told about, any of the controversial aspects of his story.  And most telling, the chapter reveals that he did not find his name in any visitor's book, or indeed even looked for a book or his name.  His explanation is that his encounter with the ghost of Armstrong trumped any previous desire he might have had to confirm his visit or the presence of the Apollo 11 crew in any sort of guest register.

Let me repeat that.

There is no evidence whatsoever presented in this book that the author confirmed either his previous golf game at the Navy Marine course or the alleged presence of the Apollo 11 crew.  None whatsoever.

Burns documents in excruciating detail irrelevant parts of his story, such as his boarding pass to Honolulu and his bag tag at Mauna Kea.  But he provides no documentation or detail on the key thesis, or even such claims as that his golf game at Mauna Kea was the prize for winning the alleged competition at the Navy Marine course.

Pages 53-56 elaborate Burns' allegations of what Armstrong's ghost told him about the claimed hoax, and purports to explain what they were doing in Hawaii and why.  Needless to say it is chock full of verifiable detail, almost all of which is provably wrong.  In short, the crew were supposed to splash down soon after takeoff in a different part of the ocean but missed their landing point and had to be smuggled back to civilization.  As to why they appeared in public and risked ruining the hoax, Burns simply asserts the best place to hide was in plain site.  The whole chapter is filled with internal inconsistencies and completely fabricated layman's suppositions about Apollo operations, all passed off as posthumous testimony from Armstrong.

Not content with trampling Neil Armstrong's grave with his golf spikes, Burns adds a chapter with Ellison Onizuka's ghost who somehow knew about Burns' college physics paper and validated parts of it.  Something about using springs to get to orbit.  (I wish I were kidding.)

I'll read it through completely tomorrow and start on the formal review, just in case this brief summary missed a detail.  But from my brief skim it appears this book is indeed every bit the egotistical travesty we feared it to be -- and much, much more.  If I were [Andrew] Neil Burns, I would honestly feel terribly ashamed for alleging such obvious nonsensical fabrication as fact.

[beedarko]

If I were [Andrew] Neil Burns, I would honestly feel terribly ashamed for alleging such obvious nonsensical fabrication as fact.

British humour?

[JayUtah]

If I were [Andrew] Neil Burns, I would honestly feel terribly ashamed for alleging such obvious nonsensical fabrication as fact.

British humour?

No, I typically get British humo(u)r.  This is just sick and sad.  We haven't even gotten to his claims of time travel.  I can see that portions of the book are meant to be taken as factual, aside from claims to the supernatural.  Other portions are alleged as facts disclosed by ghosts.  The latter are comically wrong.  They contradict well known facts, despite their "authoritative" source, and can't even stay consistent with themselves.

Whatever it claims to be, it is fiction -- and abysmally bad fiction:  poorly researched, meandering, pompous, and pointless.  I've seen Twilight fan fiction that reads better than this.  In order to discern what Burns (i.e., Jockndoris) wants to claim regarding Armstrong and Apollo, you have to wade through his insufferable biography -- endless self-praise for his prowess at golf and computer-based accounting.  And after you've stomached that egoist orgy, he announces that "Modesty" prevents him from disclosing the facts by which you can verify his biographical claims.

So I poured myself a drink -- Dubonnet and gin, in honor of HM Elizabeth Regina II -- and read the whole thing cover to cover.  It is the most tedious, ill-researched book of any kind I can remember reading in quite a while, and I've read Percy's book.

[dwight]

Jay, may I recommend playing "Yakety Sax" whilst reading the tome? I think it will greatly assist in your immersive experience.

[JayUtah]

Jay, may I recommend playing "Yakety Sax" whilst reading the tome? I think it will greatly assist in your immersive experience.

Nope, not working -- no scantily-clad ladies dancing about, and I'm out of gin.

I wish I could persuade Mr. Burns to draw the curtain aside, take a bow, and accept his bouquet (or is it "Bucket"?) with a flourish for his performance.  But no, the personal letter he tucked inside the front cover makes it pretty clear this isn't a joke.  In it he alludes to the physics thesis he wrote in 1963 detailing why a manned lunar mission was impossible, which is summarized early in the book.  And he praises himself on having the "courage" at the time to claim it was faked.

What a coincidence then, that a scant year after Armstrong passed away (thus rendering himself unable to defend his honor), this clown comes along and claims that two dead astronauts confirm his admitted pre-existing belief that the Moon landings were fake.  He doesn't even really try to explain the evidence.  He just asserts it's a hoax, that Ghost Armstrong told him that, and that it all somehow works out.  His explanation for the film and video, for example, is that Armstrong told him he was instructed to "hop about" so that, according to the fictional producer, it would "look realistic."  Good heavens, even the Blunder from Down Under at least tried to claim they fiddled with the video frame rates, etc.

We're in Sam Colby country, if you ask me.

[gillianren]

You know, I wouldn't expect the astronauts themselves to know every detail of the hoax, but there are some they'd have to know, like why they were allowed to be anywhere anyone could see them when they were supposed to be on the Moon.  (I do not accept "hide in plain sight," because that's stupid.)  I don't claim to know the level the astronauts would have to know, but I can guarantee they'd know at least some details and would be able to explain them.

[Tedward]

As valid as my cup of tea claim then, I should write a book. It was Gunpowder Tea and the biscuits were Garibaldi and in case they were not around in 1969 I built a time machine and took a packet back.

[Zakalwe]

As valid as my cup of tea claim then, I should write a book. It was Gunpowder Tea and the biscuits were Garibaldi and in case they were not around in 1969 I built a time machine and took a packet back.

You had me up to the Garibaldi bit. Now if you said custard creams then I would be a believer......
 

[smartcooky]

You know, I wouldn't expect the astronauts themselves to know every detail of the hoax, but there are some they'd have to know, like why they were allowed to be anywhere anyone could see them when they were supposed to be on the Moon.  (I do not accept "hide in plain sight," because that's stupid.)  I don't claim to know the level the astronauts would have to know, but I can guarantee they'd know at least some details and would be able to explain them.

Nor do I.

Even in far away New Zealand, where we didn't see any live coverage at all of Apollo 11, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin were household names and were seen just about every night on the 6pm news in the last few weeks before launch. They would have been immediately recognised in public. This would surely have been even more the case in Hawaii, let alone at a golf course on a Naval Base.

[Zakalwe]

The claim in this pamphlet is so ridiculous that it reminds me of spam email tactics, where the spam is so bizarre or badly-constructed that only the most gullible would be drawn into it. This makes the success rate for the spammer much higher as he/she only interacts with the most gullible of targets. In effect, the most susceptible to spamming in society self-identifies by responding to the most ridiculous claims.

Microsoft did some research on this (http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/167719/WhyFromNigeria.pdf).
"Since gullibility is unobservable, the best strategy is to get those who possess this quality to self-identify. An email with tales of fabulous amounts of money and West African corruption will strike all but the most gullible as bizarre. It will be recognized and ignored by anyone who has been using the Internet long enough to have seen it several times. It will be figured out by anyone savvy enough to use a search engine and follow up on the auto-complete suggestions such as shown in Figure 8. It won’t be pursued by anyone who consults sensible family or fiends, or who reads any of the advice banks and money transfer agencies make available. Those who remain are the scammers ideal targets. They represent a tiny subset of the overall population." (emphasis mine)


Burns' claims are so ridiculously embedded in the land of Woo-Woo that in order to sell any of these books he would have to get it under the noses of the most gullible. I fear that he has picked the wrong demographic by posting on this forum.....

[twik]

Interesting that he has a picture of David Chin (presumably), but not anything dating back to the period in question. It's quite possible he could have gone to the course club house and met Mr. Chin (depending on how strict they are about military personnel). But that has absolutely nothing to do with him being there in 1969 with Armstrong.

May I entertain myself with the idea that Jock did, indeed, write a paper in the early 60's saying a moon landing was impossible, and his book is a flimsy attempt to justify that he was actually right?

[JayUtah]

You know, I wouldn't expect the astronauts themselves to know every detail of the hoax...

Chapter 12 of the book, continuing into Chapter 13, is a monologue purporting to be Ghost Armstrong telling Burns something of how the hoax was done.  But the "ghost" can't make up its mind whether the crew knew even knew about it or not. In ch. 12 the story is that the crew had trained extensively for a fake splashdown and clandestine rescue, to be sequestered and then produced later for a staged splashdown.

But in ch. 13 the story is that the crew is taken to "Lot 151 in Nevada" so that "a Hollywood film crew" can film what the crew are told are training and publicity films.  Ghost Armstrong says he is shocked later to discover what those films were really used for.  The recollection of Burns' physics thesis is presented early in the book, ostensibly to suggest that by 1963 any competent physicist would have known that travel to the Moon would be impossible.  So we're left wondering how Armstrong (a fully qualified engineer, suborbital astronaut, and test pilot) wouldn't have also known this.  In the personal letter he added, he underscores that supposedly ubiquitous understanding and suggest he is one of the few to have the "courage" to voice his disbelief.

And you'd expect an astronaut to know something of space.  I've already mentioned Burns' disastrously erroneous physics thesis.  (He attributes the genesis of orbital mechanics to Arthur C. Clarke, for example.)  And you've seen in his threads here how utterly incapable Burns is of conversing knowledgeably about space science and engineering.  Predictably enough, Ghost Armstrong displays exactly the same brand of ignorance as Burns.  Where Burns gets orbital mechanics and spacecraft dynamics wrong, so does Ghost Armstrong.  A layman reader will likely take Burns' boasts of physics prowess (which, again, he is too "modest" to substantiate) at face value.  But as I wrote above, it displays almost no correct knowledge.

A strong underlying premise of the book is that Ghost Armstrong is substantially the way he was in life, circa 1960.  It has to be that way, else how could Burns recognize him in 2013?  But just as Burns puts all the wrong technical words into Ghost Armstrong's mouth, he puts a completely wrong character into his incorporeal entity.  It's one thing to claim to meet ghosts from the distant past and fill those fictional conversations with plausible texture and detail.  But when you do this to a recently deceased person who met and interacted with quite a lot of people, you have to be spot-on in your character research.  To those of us who knew Armstrong and have met and worked with real astronauts, Burn's Ghost Armstrong is a flimsy, one-dimension caricature of what a mediocre author might conceive an astronaut to be.  The real Armstrong bears as much resemblance to Burns' laughable one-off as Atticus Finch does to Daffy Duck.

[W]hy they were allowed to be anywhere anyone could see them when they were supposed to be on the Moon.  (I do not accept "hide in plain sight," because that's stupid.)

Burns offers no excuse.  He simply asserts it was the best way to hide, and even adds the damning detail that they should hide at the golf course where they frequently played.  Even worse, the bulk of the second and third pages of Ghost Armstrong's narrative of being rescued by local fishermen after landing off course is the obsession over not being seen or recognized and how imperative that was to the hoax's success.  But less than a page later he abandons that and has the crew frolicking all over Oahu.  Even worse, a "military man" comes from "the base" and, in full view of this civilian, reminds them that they have to get back.

Like I said, it's obviously fiction, and it's unbelievably bad fiction.  Even kids writing fan fiction grasp enough of the process to realize they have to create (or extend) believable characters and they have to pay attention to consistency of plot and accuracy of detail.  And when they add detail, it has to be well researched and reasonably credible.

[JayUtah]

Interesting that he has a picture of David Chin (presumably), but not anything dating back to the period in question.

He presents no artifacts of any kind to substantiate that he played golf at Navy Marine Golf Course in 1969.  Burns claims to be an avid, expert golfer and a member of the Royal and Ancient.  Golfers are enthusiastic souvenir keepers, and Burns seems to be no exception.  If I travel from here in Utah to play at St. Andrews, you can bet I'll be keeping my scorecard.  Yet here is Neil Burns, the golfers' golfer, being invited to play unexpectedly in a competition at an exclusive Hawaii golf course, and even winning the competition.  Yet he didn't keep the scorecard, or anything else.

He alludes to artifacts that supposedly could be produced, but aren't.  The infamous visitor's book, into which the "three military men" signed him in as a guest, is mentioned a few times.  But Burns never sees it.  In fact, Burns never asks to see it.  Nor does he even ascertain that any such book exists.  He says Armstrong gave him some of his monogrammed golf balls, but he apparently cannot produce them today.  He says one of the crew paid for a new pair of golf shorts for him, charging it to his account.  Burns would later discover in his golf bag a scorecard from Mauna Kea signed by his three friends.  But he cannot produce this either.  Something like an authenticated set of signatures on an official course scorecard would not only substantiate Burns' story but also be worth something north of $5,000 on the autograph market.

The only substantiation he produces for visiting the golf course in 2013 are the two photographs.  One purports to be him with David Chin.  I'm reasonably certain the person identified as Chin really is him.  The other person is somewhat credible as the author.  The About the Author section at Jockndoris contains a photograph of Burns at evidently a substantially younger age.  The man in the book's photo is considerably older and has facial hair.  General features, pattern baldness, and so forth are reasonably congruent.  They are standing just inside the door of a modern facility, on a rug showing the course seal.  Some aspects of the seal as depicted in the photograph suggest it may be a digital modification, but it is difficult to separate those artifacts from ordinary spatial quantization -- I would need to see the original photo in order to validate it.  Secondary characteristics such as photos of navy officers in the background and desk paraphernalia suggest this is a military office.  Based on that, it's reasonable to conclude Burns met Chin at a building associated with the course.

The second photo is of a plaque giving what appears to be an historical timeline of the course.  The green awning along the top edge matches the green awning seen in the posed photo.  This suggests it was taken in the same room.  The name of the course is barely visible in the photo.  No people or distinctive scenery appear in this photo to identify where and when it was taken.

Burns claims to have taken photos of golfers teeing, but he does not reproduce them.  We know from modern reviews that non-military people are allowed on some premises of the course, if only to ascertain that it is not public and that they will not be admitted.  Hence it is reasonable to believe that Burns was in one such building associated with the club, that Chin met him there and posed for a photo, but that Burns was not permitted any further.

Most of the narrative Burns proposes for his 2013 visit to the course is in the form of a time-travel episode back to 1969, guided by Ghost Armstrong.

May I entertain myself with the idea that Jock did, indeed, write a paper in the early 60's saying a moon landing was impossible, and his book is a flimsy attempt to justify that he was actually right?

I don't get that impression.  "Jock" (i.e., Andrew Neil Burns) writes mostly about ghosts from history.  This time I think he just got too close to history that too many of his readers know well enough.  Ghosts are his thing.  There's a feeble disclaimer at the bottom of page 8:  "Those of you who do not believe in ghosts should stop reading now because you will only become cross and frustrated."  The problem is that even if you do believe in ghosts, the ghosts in this book are obviously, clumsily fabricated.

I think it's likely that the "physics thesis" is largely fabricated as well, meaning there may be a nugget of truth behind it but it has been fairly evidently inflated.  It's conceivable that Burns believed at the time that travel to the Moon was impossible, but this "Physics degree" claim lands like a blob of icky tar in the middle of an otherwise pristine meadow of chartered accountancy.  After studying physics at St. Andrews for a number a years and allegedly earning a degree in it, suddenly his father apprentices him to an accounting firm and this becomes his entire life thereafter.  Kennedy's challenge came, he says, during his "final year of his BSc" degree, but then he describes 1963 being his final year of the "Physics degree."  Barring some obscure British educational practice of which I'm unaware, his timeline doesn't fit.

I don't think the book was written to justify the thesis.  I think the thesis was fabricated or embellished in order to justify the book.  Ghost Armstrong still needs a premise for the hoax, and the standard premise is that Moon missions were impossible.  But how to establish that?  Voilà, the suddenly brilliant physics thesis he must have written.

In one scene, Burns the brilliant student writes (what he claims is) a masterful expert analysis of the U.S. space program.  But in a subsequent scene he has abandoned all interest in U.S. space travel, is busy writing Quick Basic programs to revolutionize the art of accounting, and is living in Cape Town, South Africa where -- "naturally" -- he is completely cut off from television or international news and thus completely unable to recognize the three most famous people in the world in 1969 as they step onto his airliner in Fiji.

Nor, upon arriving in Hawaii, does he take a moment to sit down with 600 million other people the first Moon landing on television.  You know -- that thing a scant 6 years before he said could never happen, and for which saying he was awarded a Physics degree.  Well, it was happening, and we have to believe Burns was uninterested.  Even Ghost Armstrong said that on the day they (he, Aldrin, Collins, and our author) arrived in Hawaii, "everybody who had access to a television was watching."  Everyone, of course, except Burns.

All that has to be the case so that you believe he doesn't recognize the Apollo 11 crew as they cavort freely around the Hawaiian islands playing golf.  You have to believe that Burns emerges from his African sequestration to discover that the brilliant cornerstone of his Physics degree is now being overturned, and he doesn't do what Ghost Armstrong says everyone else was doing.

Well, Burns needs to think carefully before writing personal letters to critics.  In his letter he writes, "We all held our fingers and cheered when it was shown on television..."

So now he says he did watch it.  And yet somehow it took him 40 years to figure out that the people he was watching on television that day claim to land on the Moon were the people he says he was playing golf with, that day.

[twik]

Whatever it claims to be, it is fiction -- and abysmally bad fiction:  poorly researched, meandering, pompous, and pointless.  I've seen Twilight fan fiction that reads better than this. 

OK, who else has a vision of JayUtah with a secret passion for Twilight fan fiction?

[Jockndoris]

Summary Review of Haunted by Neil Armstrong

A quick thumb-through of Burns' book indicates absolutely no verification of his claims whatsoever.  While there are mentions of David Chin and the guest book, there is no indication whatsoever that anyone or anything at the golf club validated in any way -- or indeed even knew about -- his beliefs and claims in this book.  All the "validation" comes entirely from his assertion to have been accompanied on his second golf trip by the ghost of Neil Armstrong.

Pages 11-13 contain his recollection of a paper he claims to have written on travel to the Moon in pursuit of a physics degree.  He claims to have received high marks for it, but it is an abysmally ignorant expostulation that displays almost no correct understanding of space flight.

The bulk of the book is a shamelessly self-congratulatory travelogue of an extended golfing excursion to several countries, largely irrelevant to the Apollo 11 crew, space flight, or his specific hoax claims.  The writing style alternates between pompous and numbingly tedious.  (Gillianren, you do not want to pollute your brain with this.)

On page 37 he addresses the claim of being able to play a military-only course, which is to say he mentions that he has been challenged several times that his claim cannot be true.  He offers absolutely no explanation on that page, but later claims that "the three men" whom he assumed to be the Apollo 11 crew signed him in "as their guest," which Armstrong's ghost seems to accept as a given.  In other words, Burns just sidesteps the facts by appealing again to the supernatural.  He also makes the mistake on the same page of asserting the mysterious 1960s Neil (presumably Armstrong) as "a military man," even though at that time he was no such thing.  He also gets Armstrong's age wrong.

His alleged second visit to the Navy Marine Golf Course occupies only pages 42-45.  As promised, a picture appears on page 43 of a man in a three-piece suit with white hair and facial hair standing next to a man who resembles David Chin just inside the entrance to the clubhouse.  The rug clearly displays the course emblem.  Only one other photo appears in this chapter, of the club's historical timeline.  This is significant because in the text he claims to have gone onto the course and taken photos, but no such photos appear in the book.  In contrast, he includes several photos of the public course at Mauna Kea.  Why no photos of Navy Marine except just inside the club house?

Contrary to his insinuations here and elsewhere, Burns presents no verifiable evidence that he golfed at this course either in 1969 or in 2013.  He presents no verifiable evidence that David Chin or anyone else at the course verified, or was even told about, any of the controversial aspects of his story.  And most telling, the chapter reveals that he did not find his name in any visitor's book, or indeed even looked for a book or his name.  His explanation is that his encounter with the ghost of Armstrong trumped any previous desire he might have had to confirm his visit or the presence of the Apollo 11 crew in any sort of guest register.

Let me repeat that.

There is no evidence whatsoever presented in this book that the author confirmed either his previous golf game at the Navy Marine course or the alleged presence of the Apollo 11 crew.  None whatsoever.

Burns documents in excruciating detail irrelevant parts of his story, such as his boarding pass to Honolulu and his bag tag at Mauna Kea.  But he provides no documentation or detail on the key thesis, or even such claims as that his golf game at Mauna Kea was the prize for winning the alleged competition at the Navy Marine course.

Pages 53-56 elaborate Burns' allegations of what Armstrong's ghost told him about the claimed hoax, and purports to explain what they were doing in Hawaii and why.  Needless to say it is chock full of verifiable detail, almost all of which is provably wrong.  In short, the crew were supposed to splash down soon after takeoff in a different part of the ocean but missed their landing point and had to be smuggled back to civilization.  As to why they appeared in public and risked ruining the hoax, Burns simply asserts the best place to hide was in plain site.  The whole chapter is filled with internal inconsistencies and completely fabricated layman's suppositions about Apollo operations, all passed off as posthumous testimony from Armstrong.

Not content with trampling Neil Armstrong's grave with his golf spikes, Burns adds a chapter with Ellison Onizuka's ghost who somehow knew about Burns' college physics paper and validated parts of it.  Something about using springs to get to orbit.  (I wish I were kidding.)

I'll read it through completely tomorrow and start on the formal review, just in case this brief summary missed a detail.  But from my brief skim it appears this book is indeed every bit the egotistical travesty we feared it to be -- and much, much more.  If I were [Andrew] Neil Burns, I would honestly feel terribly ashamed for alleging such obvious nonsensical fabrication as fact.

JayUtah
I am delighted you have received the book and clearly have enjoyed reading it from cover to cover.    The whole purpose of writing is for someone else to read and enjoy what you have written.

You have written about 2000 words of critique and I am most grateful. You are telling your pro Apollo colleagues how interesting the book must be.   Possibly they will all want to buy or request a copy now!

In your case of course you have the added bonus of having learned something new-  furthering your education about Space flight which seemed to be sadly lacking.  All your facts seem to be based on computer simulations handed out to you by NASA.

I hope you have now had the courage to ring David Chin and get confirmation from him and then realise that you have been wrong about Apollo for all these years.   Jockndoris