Did Armstrong tell you if Gemini 8 was faked or not?
Burns gives no indication he knows what Project Gemini even was, and therefore -- predictably -- the ghost of Armstrong is entirely silent on the topic. The ghost of Armstrong knows no more about space than Burns does, talks like Burns, and indeed exhibits all the misconceptions about NASA and the United States that Burns does.
You claimed that this had minimal chance of success in your 1963 physics thesis.
While Burns was writing his little study in ignorance for Prof. Allen, without the benefit of a proper education behind it, another person across the Atlantic was also finishing his doctoral dissertation that same year entitled "Line-of-sight guidance techniques for manned orbital rendezvous." It was at a little school Burns may have heard of -- the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. And its author is Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr, Sc.D. Yet another expert in orbital mechanics that Burns brushes aside in favor of a science-fiction author.
Instead of focusing on the golf Aldrin
doesn't play (neither does Collins) and his short-lived boxing career, perhaps Burns should have spent his college days reading the subject for which he purports to have received his degree. That way, perhaps Burns' books in the future, putatively on the subject of the space race, wouldn't sound like the senile ramblings of a pensioner on the subject of golf, ghosts, and accounting. I'm sure Burns had a great time playing golf all through college, but I spent my college years studying how to build and fly air- and spacecraft.
And so did the men he accuses of lying about their achievements and whom he selfishly thinks are somehow now on the verge of validating his little pamphlet.
Gemini had a less powerful computer than the Apollo spacecraft had onboard.
Which, ultimately, was not always needed. On his Gemini 9A [ETA: 12] mission, Aldrin proved what he had written in his thesis, namely that line-of-sight and a few computations he could do on his slide rule in the cockpit were all that were needed to rendezvous.
Unlike Burns, Aldrin is able to show the "highly complex" methods he used and explain how they work. Unlike Burns, Aldrin is able to list and describe the "basic information" needed to perform these calculations -- e.g., the out-of-plane velocity change for non-coplanar orbits, computable according to his method from only two timed target position observations. Unlike Burns, Aldrin's claims are spelled out in enough detail to have allowed even the Soviets to use a variant of his technique to rendezvous with one of their uncooperative space stations.
That's what it means to "stand by" something, Mr Burns. Aldrin stands by his claims. You do not.
