I once did an analysis of all the Apollo Splashdown sites, and only one of them came anywhere close to being on a direct route to anywhere. I don't remember which one it was, but I think it was A15. I think I posted it on the old board before the changeover.

I wish I'd kept my notes from then. They would have been helpful now.

In any case, the best infor on splashdown coordinates for Apollo 15 I could find was latitude: 26.7° North, longitude: 158.8° west, which is about 530km north of Honolulu. Any plane from SF is going to go directly to Honolulu and would not travel so far north of it. Any plane going to Japan is going to travel a straigt line path that approaches the Aleutian islands and will be even farther away.

I suppose there is a very outside chance that a plane would come close enough to see something like that, if it were going to Hawaii, but I find it highly unlikely. Besides, Kaysing claims it was en route to Tokyo, which would never even come close to the landing site.

IIRC, all the other missions splashed down south of Hawaii or in the Atlantic. None of them would have been near a Tokyo-SF route. So I would call his claim very unlikely at best.

Here's a really cool overview of the Apollo missions I ran across while double-checking the coordinates:

http://zebu.uoregon.edu/~js/space/lectures/lec17.html

_________________
David Hall
"Dave... my mind is going... I can feel it... I can feel it."

<font size="-1">(made a correction)</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: David Hall on 2002-04-24 12:51 ]</font>