Gethen Wrote:

Gee Gethen, sorry to hear that.

I was going to ask if a facial tick means that someone is lying, what does that mean about my friend with Parkinsons Disease? His whole body shakes at times.

You strike me as nothing but a troll, trying to come in here stirring up trouble.

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Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.

--Niels Bohr, Danish Physicist.

You mean Houston not gethen right?

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Light is faster than sound. "That's why some people appear bright until they speak"

WWGD (What Would GLP Do)

Inspected by #13

The one and the only answer BS wants to hear is that we didn't go to the Moon. He wants our astronauts to lie. Since that is the truth that BS does not want to hear, he continues to pursue and harass astronauts like Aldrin and catching on to something as stupid as seeing Aldrin's mouth tic/twitch a bit. Yeah, so what. If I get a tic/twitch, it may be because of anger.

I guess this is going to be an endless chase for BS. Everybody has a right for his/her opinions, so does BS. But when it becomes a constant irritation, constant annoyance, that's when I will have problems.

BS, go get a life.

Yes, I meant that person who has besmirched the name of the city where I live. I love gethen--she is a wonderfully insightfull funny lady. If I sounded like I was attacking her, I beg her forgiveness.

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Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future.

--Niels Bohr, Danish Physicist.

Just to clarify, the Buzz Aldrin interview was not conducted by Bart Sibrel. It was taken from the Aron Ranen documentary "Did We Go?" Ranen was trying to prove in a non-technical fashion that the Apollo missions *did* go to the moon as advertised.

I've seen the entire documentary. The information about Nazi war criminal Wernher Von Braun heading the space program at the time does not reflect well on NASA. They certainly knew of his wartime work using slave labor to help build his Nazi rockets. Ranen questions why Von Braun went to Antarctica two years prior to Apollo 11. He also admited that the lunar reflector could have been placed by an unmanned probe.

Ranen questions why Von Braun went to Antarctica two years prior to Apollo 11.

And what was his answer?

He also admited that the lunar reflector could have been placed by an unmanned probe.

But was it?

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

I don't recall what the explanation was, if any.

The point was, he thought the reflector would be absolute proof, when it isn't.

He also interviewed some NASA eyewitnesses who saw the astronauts enter the launcher and leave the reentry capsule. But current hoax theories assume they were in low earth orbit the whole time, so this doesn't prove much either. He should have done more homework on the current hoax theories before interviewing the former astronauts Aldrin and Cernan. He could have asked more probing questions.

I don't recall what the explanation was, if any.

Von Braun's explanation was that he was on vacation. Is there something fishy about that?

The point was, he thought the reflector would be absolute proof, when it isn't.

There's never "absolute proof" in history. You look at the observations you're able to make and come up with the simplest theory that explains those observations while leaving the fewest loose ends. You can never be 100% sure of your theory, but you can certainly say it's the best among all those than anyone has come up with. And for historians that's good enough.

And authenticity never stands or falls on one point alone. The Russians put their reflector on the moon with an unmanned spacecraft. But they can show us the spacecraft, introduce us to the people who designed and built it, tell us how they launched it, etc. Heck, they've even got pictures of it before they sent it up there. What if someone were to claim they really sent cosmonauts up there to set up the reflector personally? Wouldn't we want to know which cosmonauts did that? Wouldn't we want to see the spacecraft they used, or at least pictures of it?

You can see where I'm going with this. If we were to claim cosmonauts did it, that theory would leave a whole lot of loose ends. It wouldn't be the best explanation among all those explanations that are available. We'd get a lot more mileage out of a theory that an unmanned Russian spacecraft did it because that's where all the available evidence points.

Similarly all the evidence for Apollo points to the conclusion that America's LRRRs were placed personally by human astronauts who flew there in the spacecraft designed for the task. If you say the Americans did it with an unmanned spacecraft, we'd want to see some kind of evidence that such a spacecraft was designed, built, and used. There isn't any of that kind of evidence, so the conclusion that America's LRRRs were placed by unmanned ships leaves loose ends.

The conspiracy theory is based on the notion that a historical hypothesis can stand as proof only if it's the only possible explanation for some set of observations. That's an incredibly unfair standard of proof. Not only do you have to show that your pet hypothesis is better than all the others -- even way better, you have to show that all the other hypotheses are, in fact, impossible. That doesn't seem unreasonable until you start thinking of all the things that might be conceivably, abstractly, possible. Pixies? The ghost of J. Edgar Hoover?

He should have done more homework on the current hoax theories before interviewing the former astronauts Aldrin and Cernan. He could have asked more probing questions.

My impression is that Ranen was more interested in charges of racism and anit-Semitism at NASA than whether Apollo was authentic.

__________________
"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Well, yes it does, because the idea that the spacecraft was in LEO for the duration of the mission is frankly ludicrous. Firstly, transit times for objects in LEO are ~5 minutes, which makes it impossible for ham radio operators to have monitored comms for hours at a stretch (as they did).

Secondly, even though HB's rarely seem to go outside and look up at night, other people certainly do. A spacecraft of that size in LEO would most certainly have been seen.

The problem is that had he done more homework on the current hoax theories, his whole reason for doing the documentary disappears like dew in the morning sun. His program would be terribly short - imagine trying to pad out "Did we really go to the moon? Yes." to an hour and then selling it to the networks! :wink:

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"I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams