Quote:

“Well, I don't know about anybody else, but this sounds to me like pure paranoid
conspiracy-mongering. What on earth (or off it) would the point be? And if there were such a covert mission, how has it been covered up so thoroughly for so long? There would have been hundreds of people involved. This argument can also be applied to the standard "moon hoax" theory, and it's equally powerful here. “

The government runs covert ops all the time. The CIA, FBI, SS, NSA, etc, all secrecy based
organizations. NASA launches classified missions abord the Shuttle frequently. They tend to use the Atlantis by the way. It’s smaller, lighter, faster, higher flying. They announce them as classified. They don't say what's aboard. It’s not “conspiracy-mongering” to point out that an Apollo mission could have been used for one. That a covert op couldn’t have happened because hundreds of people couldn’t have kept a secret Is flawed logic. They sign
security oaths. They would land in jail if they spilled the beans. Do they sign those oaths for fun?

Quote:

“The problem is, your proposed conspirators are both too smart (clever enough to organize a huge coverup and keep it secret for 40 years) and too dumb (not smart enough to figure out whether the cabin should get hot or cold).”

If it was a covert operation it would have been run by that organization that is the classic definition of contradiction of terms “Millitary Inteligence.”

Quote:

“So the idea of a vague conspiracy to do something-or-other isn't very persuasive to me. “

Not knowing what they did doesn’t make it vague. If they admited (or it was proven) that it was a covert op but did not say what was done, doesn’t make it vague.

Quote:

“And you got to this because you have an intuitive suspicion (with no supporting evidence) that it got too cold in the spacecraft? Sorry, no sale.”

Plenty of supporting evidence. No intuition required. Just system analysis.

Just because it may have been a covert op doesn’t meen it was evil. Sure, it could have been a nuclear weapons platform or it could have just been a high powered telescopic camera.

SAMU