JimO
22-February-2003, 03:04 PM
February 22:
Dear Mr. René:
I wanted to send you another copy of this in case the first was lost in the mail, or your reply was lost. I’ve tried to raise rational, technical questions related to my investigation of some of your charges. I intend to discuss this exchange of letters in my forthcoming book and want to make sure that your views and actions are reported accurately.
If there are any questions you sent to me that you feel were inadequately answered, please ask me again and I promise to make another response.
I hope you can respond constructively because there are more specific topics I’d like to pursue with you, once we’ve established a workable dialog. For example, your discussion of your calculations of the thermodynamics of a lunar spacesuit describes how you interpret the cooling system as dumping waste heat (and solar-induced heat) by cooling a water supply and then freezing it. I believe you have this entirely backwards: the suit cools itself and its contents by heating water and then evaporating it, a process in which each gram of water carries off several times as much heat as the way you described it, and with the correct plus/minus sign as well. Whoever taught you physics apparently didn’t do a very good job, I’m afraid.
And in the final ‘gotcha’ of your book – the strongest argument ("I saved this for last because it is the greatest ‘Gotcha’ of them all" (page 150), you appear to make the assumption that the Moon’s gravity is inadequate all by itself of turning the Apollo-13’s trajectory back towards Earth, and that the Apollo-13 would have needed to brake itself into lunar orbit, then fire engines again to return to Earth. "I am having a problem with NASA’s analysis... If you skim by the Moon you are still going away from the Earth. If your velocity is high you will then go a damn long way past the Moon before you will lose all velocity and then be sucked back toward it... How the hell did they rub off all that velocity? ... GOTCHA, NASA!" Do I understand the essence of your complaint accurately?
Awaiting your response, and ready to accurately and fully describe it in my book,
Jim Oberg
------------------------To: Ralph René, 31 Burgess Place, Passaic, NJ 07055------------------------
January 30, 2003
Dear Mr. René:
This letter supplements the one I mailed two days ago, but concentrates on the single issue of the "Collins EVA Image". I am focusing on this issue because YOU chose to make it your lead-off argument in your book, and to establish that NASA has a policy of falsifying photographs, of ‘lying’. In the book you returned to it several times later, and have mentioned it during interviews.
I have been able to confirm your assertion that the undeniable altered zero-G airplane training image – reversed and with background blacked out – is indeed in the photo insert of the 1975 Ballantine paperback of Collins' 'Carrying the Fire'. There is one photo insert, 8 pieces of paper (16 sides), between 238 and 239. I have the 1974 hardcover edition from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, which has an 8-page photo insert between pages 196 and 197, a 4-page insert between pages 358 and 359, and another 4-page photo insert between pages 422 and 423. The altered image there is on the ‘second frontispiece’, just after a two-page spread of moon craters out the window.
You had written: "I will bet you $10,000 that I can produce these photos in situ in an 8 page photo section (16) photos between pages 238 & 239. But maybe I not only lie, cheat and steal but I bluff too." There is no need for such a bet because I can verify your statement about finding the images.
The very first picture in the Ballantine photo insert is an EVA suit against a complete black background. It has no caption and no description. 4 pages later there is a very similar picture, but only the bottom is black and above him you can see the zero G airplane interior. The caption of this one is "The zero-G airplane - sickening". The suit looks exactly the same. The first image is unquestionably derived from the second image.
First question: Where does Collins or anyone else allege that this image shows him on his EVA, as you state that he does and is this "a liar". Please provide citation to the book’s text or to any public statements made by Collins in discussing his book. You write that the picture was "allegedly taken during a space walk". Please cite that allegation. Would you be willing to bet $10,000 that you can find such explicit evidence?
Second question: where does NASA present this image as portraying the Gemini-10 EVA? Is there any press release photograph, any publication, any non-NASA publication citing NASA as source of this image, any website, that presents this image with NASA’s explicit description of it as showing the Gemini-10 EVA. You claim they have done so, and your exact words: "Why did NASA feel it necessary to fake pictures and lie to us as early as July 1966?" Please cite exactly where this lie originally occurred. Would you be willing to bet $10,000 that you can find such explicit evidence?
Third question: If in fact there is no documention for either Collins or NASA asserting that this image is an actual photograph of the Gemini-10 EVA, how can you allege that they IMPLIED it when in fact Collins explicitly states (on page 254 of the Ballantine edition) that there WERE no photographs of his EVA: "One of the great disappointments of the flight was that there were no photos of my spacewalk. [...] All we had was the film from one movie camera, [...] which recorded an uninterrupted sequence of black sky [...] I was really feeling sorry for myself, unable to produce graphic documentation for my grandchildren of my brief sally as a human satellite [...]" Therefore, by Collin's own account, can’t we conclude that any picture of him in a spacesuit is not that of the Gemini EVA?
What do you see that is sinister in this? Presumably they wanted an illustration of what the EVA looked like for the front of the original book, and since no photos of the real EVA were available, somebody at the publisher’s office re-touched the training photo they had, and mirrored it to make it look better given its position in the book. I can find not one single attempt to pass this off as an in-flight photograph, and in fact the text explicitly states that there *are* no flight pictures. Honestly, if they *were* trying to pass it off as real, it would be really stupid to include the training picture from which it was derived just a few pages later.
Can you clarify and defend your allegations and accusations about deliberate lies about this image? If not, as a man of intelligence and integrity, can you alter your judgment on this particular historical issue, based on verifiable evidence, or lack thereof? Or do you want to accept some wagers regarding such evidence?
Jim Oberg, Rt 2 Box 350, Dickinson, TX 77539
Dear Mr. René:
I wanted to send you another copy of this in case the first was lost in the mail, or your reply was lost. I’ve tried to raise rational, technical questions related to my investigation of some of your charges. I intend to discuss this exchange of letters in my forthcoming book and want to make sure that your views and actions are reported accurately.
If there are any questions you sent to me that you feel were inadequately answered, please ask me again and I promise to make another response.
I hope you can respond constructively because there are more specific topics I’d like to pursue with you, once we’ve established a workable dialog. For example, your discussion of your calculations of the thermodynamics of a lunar spacesuit describes how you interpret the cooling system as dumping waste heat (and solar-induced heat) by cooling a water supply and then freezing it. I believe you have this entirely backwards: the suit cools itself and its contents by heating water and then evaporating it, a process in which each gram of water carries off several times as much heat as the way you described it, and with the correct plus/minus sign as well. Whoever taught you physics apparently didn’t do a very good job, I’m afraid.
And in the final ‘gotcha’ of your book – the strongest argument ("I saved this for last because it is the greatest ‘Gotcha’ of them all" (page 150), you appear to make the assumption that the Moon’s gravity is inadequate all by itself of turning the Apollo-13’s trajectory back towards Earth, and that the Apollo-13 would have needed to brake itself into lunar orbit, then fire engines again to return to Earth. "I am having a problem with NASA’s analysis... If you skim by the Moon you are still going away from the Earth. If your velocity is high you will then go a damn long way past the Moon before you will lose all velocity and then be sucked back toward it... How the hell did they rub off all that velocity? ... GOTCHA, NASA!" Do I understand the essence of your complaint accurately?
Awaiting your response, and ready to accurately and fully describe it in my book,
Jim Oberg
------------------------To: Ralph René, 31 Burgess Place, Passaic, NJ 07055------------------------
January 30, 2003
Dear Mr. René:
This letter supplements the one I mailed two days ago, but concentrates on the single issue of the "Collins EVA Image". I am focusing on this issue because YOU chose to make it your lead-off argument in your book, and to establish that NASA has a policy of falsifying photographs, of ‘lying’. In the book you returned to it several times later, and have mentioned it during interviews.
I have been able to confirm your assertion that the undeniable altered zero-G airplane training image – reversed and with background blacked out – is indeed in the photo insert of the 1975 Ballantine paperback of Collins' 'Carrying the Fire'. There is one photo insert, 8 pieces of paper (16 sides), between 238 and 239. I have the 1974 hardcover edition from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, which has an 8-page photo insert between pages 196 and 197, a 4-page insert between pages 358 and 359, and another 4-page photo insert between pages 422 and 423. The altered image there is on the ‘second frontispiece’, just after a two-page spread of moon craters out the window.
You had written: "I will bet you $10,000 that I can produce these photos in situ in an 8 page photo section (16) photos between pages 238 & 239. But maybe I not only lie, cheat and steal but I bluff too." There is no need for such a bet because I can verify your statement about finding the images.
The very first picture in the Ballantine photo insert is an EVA suit against a complete black background. It has no caption and no description. 4 pages later there is a very similar picture, but only the bottom is black and above him you can see the zero G airplane interior. The caption of this one is "The zero-G airplane - sickening". The suit looks exactly the same. The first image is unquestionably derived from the second image.
First question: Where does Collins or anyone else allege that this image shows him on his EVA, as you state that he does and is this "a liar". Please provide citation to the book’s text or to any public statements made by Collins in discussing his book. You write that the picture was "allegedly taken during a space walk". Please cite that allegation. Would you be willing to bet $10,000 that you can find such explicit evidence?
Second question: where does NASA present this image as portraying the Gemini-10 EVA? Is there any press release photograph, any publication, any non-NASA publication citing NASA as source of this image, any website, that presents this image with NASA’s explicit description of it as showing the Gemini-10 EVA. You claim they have done so, and your exact words: "Why did NASA feel it necessary to fake pictures and lie to us as early as July 1966?" Please cite exactly where this lie originally occurred. Would you be willing to bet $10,000 that you can find such explicit evidence?
Third question: If in fact there is no documention for either Collins or NASA asserting that this image is an actual photograph of the Gemini-10 EVA, how can you allege that they IMPLIED it when in fact Collins explicitly states (on page 254 of the Ballantine edition) that there WERE no photographs of his EVA: "One of the great disappointments of the flight was that there were no photos of my spacewalk. [...] All we had was the film from one movie camera, [...] which recorded an uninterrupted sequence of black sky [...] I was really feeling sorry for myself, unable to produce graphic documentation for my grandchildren of my brief sally as a human satellite [...]" Therefore, by Collin's own account, can’t we conclude that any picture of him in a spacesuit is not that of the Gemini EVA?
What do you see that is sinister in this? Presumably they wanted an illustration of what the EVA looked like for the front of the original book, and since no photos of the real EVA were available, somebody at the publisher’s office re-touched the training photo they had, and mirrored it to make it look better given its position in the book. I can find not one single attempt to pass this off as an in-flight photograph, and in fact the text explicitly states that there *are* no flight pictures. Honestly, if they *were* trying to pass it off as real, it would be really stupid to include the training picture from which it was derived just a few pages later.
Can you clarify and defend your allegations and accusations about deliberate lies about this image? If not, as a man of intelligence and integrity, can you alter your judgment on this particular historical issue, based on verifiable evidence, or lack thereof? Or do you want to accept some wagers regarding such evidence?
Jim Oberg, Rt 2 Box 350, Dickinson, TX 77539