...Neil Baker, I'd be grateful if you could respond to this email from page 5 of the thread.
Thank you.
I don't know about rocks. But I will say this. I was ten years old when the Apollo 8 Christmas mission took place. It was spectacular. The first ever photos were taken of the Earth from the orbit of the moon or so I thought. I wonder if you had to be alive then to understand how radical those photos were. In my memory, Apollo 8 was more exciting than Apollo 11. They were the first to get close. There had been nothing like it. But there had. NASA allegedly sent five lunar orbiters in 66 and 67 and they took photos of the Earth from moon orbit. Why didn't they release them to the public in 1966? Were they holding them so they could say the astronauts faking the Apollo 8 mission took them in 1968?
According to this article (
http://www.space.com/12707-earth-photo-moon-nasa-lunar-orbiter-1-anniversary.html) the images
were released at the time.
"NASA took the image and they created a poster of it which was given as gifts to everybody," said Friedlander. "Senators and congressmen would give it out as presents to constituents and visiting dignitaries."
The Lunar Orbiter photos were black and white. Apollo 8 produced colour photos of the Earth. NASA would hardly distribute B&W photos from Lunar Orbiter when colour Apollo 8 photos were available, so the statement quoted above must mean the photos were distributed before Apollo 8.
The NASA lunar surveyor program allegedly sent seven landers to the moon between 1966 and 1968. Could they have been used to retrieve rocks robotically so it could be claimed later that astronauts gathered them?
Let's do the maths. The Apollo rocks total ~380 kilograms. With seven landers that would require each to return an average of about 55 kilograms of material. Now, the Surveyor spacecraft were launched using Atlas rockets. Perhaps you might like to calculate whether an Atlas rocket could launch a spacecraft large enough to itself launch 55 kilograms of material off the surface of the Moon in a container which could itself survive re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere.
For comparison, we know the Soviets brought back ~400 grams of material on three sample return missions. In other words, enough to fill a can of soup - in three missions. And you're suggesting NASA could return nearly a thousand times the mass on seven spacecraft. NASA might be good, but I don't think they're that good.
In any case, to repeat what I said in my original post:
We know they're not Moon rocks collected by unmanned sample retriever missions. The Apollo rocks include quite a few rocks weighing more than a kilogram each, as well as core samples up to two metres long, and also clods of lunar soil. There is no evidence that NASA ever had the technology to build unmanned sample retriever spacecraft capable of collecting such samples; in fact there isn't even any evidence that these sorts of things could be done today, more than 40 years later. What we do have is photos of astronauts standing near rocks which now sit in storage facilities.
In other words, there's no record of anyone designing, building or operating these legendary unmanned sample retriever spacecraft.
Yes, it's pure speculation but if it's all a hoax, would they have gone to such a length to make the hoax convincing? If it's a hoax, it wouldn't be surprising that black ops came into play at some time during the prelude to the alleged landings.
Black ops might be good for doing stuff in secret. But it doesn't mean they can break the laws of physics or suddenly invent technology decades ahead of what is otherwise available.
Even if it turns out that it was hoax, what a spectacular hoax! Legendary!
And if it's real, what does that say about American technology and can-do attitude, and the bravery and skill of those who were involved? (Just for the record, I'm Australian, so I feel no patriotic loyalty to the USA.)
Taguba and Fallon are recommended due to their gravitas and exemplary integrity at a time when it's apparent that it's extremely rare.
They are well educated and I'm confident they would be capable of quickly acquiring the requisite knowledge to understand what they needed to observe. Besides, it's expected that one or more other independent witnesses with engineering backgrounds would be present.
And if Taguba and Fallon attest to the reality of the sublimator system will you accept what they say, or will you shift position again and suggest the government got to them?
In any case, if the sublimator system can't possibly work, why didn't the Soviets say something back in 1969? Or are you skeptical of the reality of the Cold War too?
