It's only a mistake if Sibrel is consciously trying to pull something over on us.
Yes, that's what I meant by "mistake". I think Sibrel honestly believed no one else had ever seen his raw footage or would ever see it again. That gave him a sort of carte blanche to characterize it as he saw fit, whether out of deliberate malice or out of delusion. The slate frames identify it as a videotape made at Honeysuckle Creek during the first day of the Apollo 11 mission.
But if he believes what he's saying, then he's consciensiously citing his source, and validating that it's real film.
He did that by showing the disclaimer. The slate frames are meant to document when certain clips were taken (although Sibrel liberally cuts between different telecasts without warning). The argument goes, "See, this clip was shot on such-and-such a date when the astronauts were supposed to be tens of thousands of miles from Earth, but they were really in low Earth orbit." In other words, it's just an elaborately stated claim with little substantiation.
Later a different slate frame is shown for a later telecast, and Sibrel says, "A cutout was placed over the window and the camera moved to the back of the capsule to simulate photographing a distant Earth." Again, merely a claim -- a wild story -- with little substantiation.
The only attempt at substantiation comes when Sibrel points to the very bright Earthlight when Buzz opens up the f-stop to photograph inside the capsule (something he should understand, being a cameraman). He says the full glow in the window "reveals" that the capsule is in Earth orbit, and that other windows are glowing too (something that doesn't fit this theory either). He tells his viewer that only a few seconds of all this hour-long footage was ever broadcast, but that's just wrong. Either Sibrel is trying to reinvent history, or he honestly doesn't know that the telecast lasted 30 minutes and included the footage of the glowing window -- the "reveal". What Sibrel claims is "backstage" footage that "reveals" his theory, was instead broadcast live on television for millions of people!
Here's how that works.
The Honeysuckle tape contained about an hour of footage. The last thirty minutes of it was the live telecast that happened at about 34 hours into the mission, from an altitude of 130,000 miles. The previous portion of the tape is two or three telecasts, amounting to about half an hour, that were never sent live to Houston. They were recorded at Honeysuckle Creek because the microwave television link to Houston wasn't always set up. Each of those clips has the blue slate frame, documenting when it was recorded. In one of these legitimately behind-the-scenes videos, the astronauts discuss what they will say and what camera settings to use. There's a three-way conversation between the crew, the flight controllers, and the HSK ground controllers.
Sibrel either believes, or wishes to convey the notion, that almost all of this was raw footage and that very little of it made it to the air. He seems to believe, or wishes to convey, that the astronauts sent an hour of raw footage to Earth from low Earth orbit, that was to be edited together into the "live" telecast, using low-tech tricks to simulate the distant Earth. He seems to believe, or wishes to convey, that this "raw" footage reveals the way the trick was accomplished, by showing the full glowing window.
Yes, it would take someone either intentionally hiding the facts, or someone truly delusioned. Or both.
Yes. We can see on our monitors exactly what Sibrel saw on his monitor. He may have been fooled by the ominous (to him) disclaimer frame at the beginning, saying that the footage was not for public consumption.
Because the microwave link was only set up at certain times, the ground stations waited until the link was connected and then played their videotapes over it so that they could be recorded at Houston. HSK edited the telecast tapes together into a one hour "file" program which they transmitted afer the live telecast, or at some other time. NASA TV does that still to this day, broadcasting raw footage over its satellite link. At the time this would have been faster than trying to physically transport the videotape to Houston from Australia.
It's possible Sibrel simply assumed that all of his tape was backstage footage and didn't check to see how much of it was actually telecast. (Most networks carried the 34h GET transmission in its entirety, clipping at most a few seconds from either end.) Unfortunately his "backstage" footage with the glowing window went out live (or "live" as Sibrel phrases it). If what we saw on television was an edited version, why was the smoking gun left in? Sibrel either does not know or doesn't care that his understanding of who saw that footage is completely wrong.
But the most telling footage, which Sibrel ignores entirely, is the behind-the-scenes footage where the camera is very close to the window and you can see the window frame. And in the distance you see the small Earth. As you know, if you stand near a window and look at something in the distance through it, moving your head causes the distant object to change position with respect to the frame, or vice versa.
So two questions come to mind. Why doesn't Sibrel account for this evidence in his theory? He must have seen it because it was sandwiched between two clips from which he shows slate frames. It's possible he didn't notice it. It's possible he saw it and simply deluded himself into thinking it really wasn't there. It's possible he relied on his belief that no one else could get that footage to let him use only the bits and pieces he liked.
The other question is why that footage doesn't appear in the final telecast. If we accept for the sake of argument that the footage was faked, and that this reel of raw footage was intended to be edited together to make the telecasts, why not use it? It's much more convincing than any of the other "backstage" footage. Nobody who saw that footage could reasonably believe this was being done with darkened capsules and cutouts or transparencies.
When it comes down to it, Sibrel presents no real evidence. He just repeats his claims over and over again in different forms. "Here the astronauts claim they're 130,000 miles from Earth, but in reality they're still in Earth orbit." That's not an argument. That's just gainsaying. Doing it over and over again doesn't make it any more true. "The frame appears to show a distant Earth, but the Earth is really only a hundred miles away." Again, no evidence: just a statement.
This would fit the pattern of delusion. A delusion seems self-evident to the person making it, so stating a delusional claim as if it were fact is the same as a rational person saying, "The sky is blue," or "That train is loud." But we have to look at Sibrel's other behavior. Luring astronauts to interviews under false pretenses and deliberately provoking them into embarrassing behavior suggest to me malice and intent to deceive.
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