Actually, Apollo brought back a lot of rocks but a small variety (only six sites)

This is why we were so eager to trade lunar surface samples with the Soviets, even during the Cold War. Their unmanned probes returned material from parts of the surface that Apollo never went to.

It seems to be common among HBs to use two or more different pseudonyms on the same board. Curious.

This is different. Karamoon announced his name change on the Apollohoax board where, at the time, he was concentrating most of his attention. He stopped using the name "Squirm" entirely, which he felt may have conveyed overtones he did not wish to convey. Unlike Carrot Cruncher a.k.a. Slime a.k.a. CC a.k.a. several "throwaway" pseudonums, Karamoon is not trying to appear as if he is different people.

even if there is any truth to the allegation that von Braun went to Antarctica in the 60's

I've always been puzzled by why von Braun would go or be sent to Antarctica to recover moon rocks. Why von Braun? Why not someone who wouldn't have been noticed? Why not a geologist? I suppose it's because the hoax believers only know of a few names associated with Apollo, so everything that's part of the alleged hoax has to be personally done by one of these prominent folks. Von Braun was a fine engineer, but I don't know if he would have recognized a lunar meteorite if one fell on him.

Thanks, Jay. I was probably on my sabbatical from Apollohoax when that happened. I didn't mean to imply anything sinister - it's just that it becomes hard to trace the discussion with an individual when their ID changes. I'm pleased that Karamoon avoided creating that problem - my oversight that I missed his announcement.

[q]Von Braun was a fine engineer, but I don't know if he would have recognized a lunar meteorite if one fell on him. [/q]

And if there were a plan to surreptitiously gather meteorites from Antarctica and pass them off as "Apollo rocks", why would NASA raise suspicion by having their chief rocket engineer go anywhere near Antarctica. The whole scenario fails on technical, logistical and "optics" grounds.

Because he wanted to go? I was recruited to go work down there (for a full year) [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_frown.gif[/img] but turned it down. If I had a chance to go for a few weeks, I'd jump at it. I'm sure he had the clout to make the decision for himself.



http://liftoff.msfc.nasa.gov/academy...spaceage2.html

http://www.southpolestation.com/trivia/igy2/igy2.html

Summer 1967-68
Summer visitors include Werner Von Braun who joins the 200 club



Edit to add link and image

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Karl on 2002-05-24 13:27 ]</font>
Edit to add another link

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Karl on 2002-05-24 13:50 ]</font>

Because he wanted to go?

I'm not disputing that he went. I'm questioning the allegation that he went there in order to pick up moon rocks. There's a big difference between going to Antarctica on vacation and going there -- either voluntarily or by assignment -- in order to collect specimens to pass off as samples obtained from the moon.

Hoax believers want to assign that purpose to von Braun's visit, but to me it makes no sense for him to have either decided to go, or to have been sent there, specifically in order to find and bring back lunar meteorites. Von Braun wasn't the best person for that job, and he knew it. Further, he was a closely-watched person.

When someone proposes something like this, you have to ask yourself, "Is this the best way to achieve the goal?" If, as in this case, there is a clearly superior course of action (i.e., quietly send a team of professional geologists), it is more plausible to suppose that the hoax believer's scenario is an attempt to tack a hypothetical ulterior purpose onto existing circumstances.

I think are a few things to consider when the HBs bring up the whole Antarctic meteoroid idea.

First of all, while 850 lbs of lunar material may have been returned from the moon, that equates to thousands of individual pieces (FYI the Apollo 17 sample catalogue is four volumes of approximately 500 pages each). There were many scoop up and bag some soil samples. Small little rocks were then taken out of these sample bags. For example, Apollo 16 brought back 112 samples with a mass greater than 25g (approximately 1 oz), the Apollo 16 crew collected 267 rocks (and more in the soil samples) and Apollo 17 return 330 greater than 1g.

The cataloging of the lunar samples continued into the 1980's for some of the missions and into the 1994 for the Apollo 17 samples. I would suspect that in those 22 years between the Apollo 17 mission and the final cataloging, that many people worked on these rocks.

Secondly, it wasn't until 1969 that researchers (from Japan) realized that Antartica contained a lot of meteorites.

http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/marslife/meteorit.htm

A few months doesn't leave a lot of time to find a whole bunch of rocks (about 100), make them look like surface rocks, add some solar gasses He3 (extremely rare and expensive) and create soil, all the time making sure that the samples weren't tainted with water or oraganics

I still don't see how an Antarctic lunar meteoroid could be confused with a real lunar rock or made to look like one taken from the surface. How would one remove the outer melted reentry surface and put on a new, but old looking surface.

The Aulis site recommened by Karamoon as usual doesn't provide any specifics on how it was done, just that it was done. The one suggestion I found there was that ball bearings were used to created a surface is laughable. While this process could rough up a surface, traces of the ball bearing materials would be on the surface. Materials like stainless steel, or pure aluminum do not occur naturally and would be a dead give away to a fake. Furthermore, this process could not create surfaces that are made when gasses bubble through a rock.

BTW, I got all my moon rocks data from my complete set of Apollo Preliminary Science Reports and Lunar Sample Catalogues.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: jrkeller on 2002-05-24 17:03 ]</font>

Summer 1967-68
Summer visitors include Werner Von Braun who joins the 200 club

Ol' Werner was one remakable dude!

First, he realizes that Apollo is destined to failure and a hoax will be necessary even before the first Apollo manned flight.

Second, he recognizes that "lunar rocks" will add authenticity to that hoax.

Then, before anyone else knew it, he determines that Antarctica is a great source of meteorites, some of which will be of lunar origin and could be passed off as lunar rocks.

Finally, in one short trip, he retrieves over 800 pounds of lunar meteorites... more than any other expedition managed of all kinds of meteorites. Not only that, he weeds out the Martian and other meteorites - apparently by Mark I Eyeball - and keeps only those of lunar origin.

And he does all this while running the Manned Space Flight effort at Marshall... and even finds time to scuba off Puerto Rico!

__________________
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

jrkeller: While this process could rough up a surface, traces of the ball bearing materials would be on the surface. Materials like stainless steel, or pure aluminum do not occur naturally and would be a dead give away to a fake.

Apollo Moon Rocks: Dirty Little Secrets

Interesting, but by no means conclusive.

Jim (McDade/Scotti?): Ol' Werner was one remakable dude!

Indeed. He got tangled up in some pretty awful business over there in Germany, for a while. Perhaps he was blinded by his passion. Either way, he was blinded.

Jim: First, he realizes ...

I guess this is my fault for mentioning squid.

Jim: Finally, in one short trip, he retrieves over 800 pounds of lunar meteorites...

Ah, don't get ahead of yourself now.


ps. So, who do you think will win the World Cup, then? I have Spain down as a dark horse.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Karamoon on 2002-05-24 21:18 ]</font>

Personally, I think there is a conspiracy to keep my active in debate.

It won't work, I tell you!

Apollo Moon Rocks: Dirty Little Secrets

The problem with this article is that it doesn't identify any mystery that's of use to conspiracy theorists. The contaminants in question are materials that the samples would have come in contact with during their collection, packaging, and transportation by Apollo astronauts, and during subsequent handling by LRL staff. It doesn't raise any issues that contradict advertised Apollo procedures.

It's all about falsifiability (in the epistemological sense). If you want to argue that the samples were textured by shooting substances at it, you have to show evidence of that substance, and also show that the presence of that substance can't be explained by anything reasonably arising out of the Apollo procedures. If all you have is something that can be explained either by a hoax theory or by the accepted Apollo story, then you have nothing. You can't texture a rock by shooting Teflon at it.

Karamoon,

Thanks for the link. I had seen that one before.

Are you suggesting that since the rocks are contaminated by trace materials that they are fakes?

I'll take the experts word on this that this is contamination instead of some unnamed source on Aulis or librarian Bill Kaysing that these are traces of some manufacturing process.

For more info see.

http://www.space.com/scienceastronom...00522_MB_.html

A nice quote from the article

The astronauts brought back 2,415 separate bits of the moon ranging in size from a grain of sand to nearly the diameter of a basketball.

and this one too,

Geologists also have found 19 fragments of lunar meteorites that were blasted off the surface by impacts and landed in parts of Antarctica, Australia, Morocco and Libya.

So if it is a hoax, in the years up to 1972, the Antarctic meteorite discovers would have had to find 2415 meteorites and alter them accordingly. I find that really hard to believe.




<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: jrkeller on 2002-05-24 21:43 ]</font>

Tektites, right? Only 19? I had thought that tektites were quite a bit more commonplace than that. I may be laboring under a misapprehension...

Oopsie! I just hit a textbook, and it said that tektites are from material ejected from impacts. i.e., nearby Meteor Crater in Arizona, tektites would be stuff that was thrown up and came down again...

What is the term for lunar material thrown up from impacts that lands on earth...and are there only 19 known such fragments?

(I'm so confused!)

Silas

Supposing, for a second, that the lunar samples were recovered on earth.
Surely it would take any amount of geologist many, many years to accumulate that many samples of former lunar surface material?
They'd need to plan well in advance to scour the earth for lunar surface material, and to do it in secret.
You could, of course, sidestep this by postulating that more surface material was recovered in the later missions than was admitted by NASA.

You could, of course, sidestep this by postulating that more surface material was recovered in the later missions than was admitted by NASA.

The problem with this hypothesis is that it's possible to request from LRL pieces of specific lunar samples. Someone making such a request would expect certain characteristics in the sample. Further, most requests for LRL samples are for pristine samples that have not been used for any prior research or even exposed to air or light. Contamination and damage from prior research would be immediately evident upon examination.

The problem therefore becomes how to stretch those precious real samples for so long under those circumstances. If people are asking for specific rocks that has never seen the light of day, and they would know if their stipulations had been met, then you can't say it's just the same rock being passed around.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: JayUtah on 2002-05-24 23:59 ]</font>

You're just not thinking like a conspiracist, Jay. Someone found a really big lunar meteorite (probably von Braun when he was in Antarctica in January, 1967) and NASA had it processed - removed the fused outer surface, busted it up into many small pieces, cooked it to drive out all traces of water and oxygen, used the pulverized outer layer to "sand blast" the surface of the remaining pieces of its core, subjected it to a bunch of radiation bombardment and simulated solar wind and BINGO - virgin moon rock. This, added to other similarly processed lunar meteorites provides the samples that fooled the world's geologists until the later Apollo missions returned different samples from different areas of the moon.

No problem - just invent the processes you need to make it happen. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]