Ok, I don't get it... here cosmicdave once again asks the same, virtually identical, questions he has asked before - and that has been answereed. As cosmicdave has posted in the answering threads *after* the answer, one must assume he has indeed read the answers - and he *still* asks the questions as if they have not been answered.

To ngant17 I'd like to say this: feel free to have different opinions than other people on this board. While they might be wrong, it is healthy to question information. But do not, and I must stress this to the extreme, do not make the same basic and embarassing mistakes that cosmicdave does. If you want to put some pressure behind your point when you argue it here, I'd suggest you read cosmicdaves earlier posts and other peoples answers to them, so you can see how you should *not* convey your arguments.

It's been MORE then a year since Johnno pointed out the error on Cosmicdave's site about the video camera footage from the moving rover, because I've been gone for 8 months, and that was long before then. I can't believe that is STILL on there.

How in the world are we suppose to take ANYTHING conspiracydave says seriously when he refuses to correct something so easily debunked? Why even bother with him???

Cosmic/conspiracy dave is one step up from a troll, and that is being generous...

_________________
"Ignorance has caused more calamity then malignity" H.G. Wells

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Rift on 2002-06-21 20:47 ]</font>

I remember it was definitely on the old forum. Johnno pointed out that there was no video taken from the moving rover, but there was 16mm movie film. CD even mentions this in the paragraph, passing it off as some great discovery on his part!

It is inconceivable to me that Dave can look at the clip, and then look at a diagram of the rover, which clearly shows the TV camera as the object in the frame of the clip itself, and STILL be unwilling to correct his mistake.

Of all the screw-ups on his site, this one is utterly bizarre. Just the fact that he's willing to undergo the ridicule from everyone for that one clip makes me wonder.

Sadly, considering the circles Dave seems to travel in, I doubt he receives very much ridicule from anyone outside forums like this one. You've seen his site. It's likely that the people who visit are about as interested in actual facts as he is. He's after headlines and attention and his visitors are after the thrill of thinking they're on the "inside" of the great conspiracy. Either that or they're just after pure amusement.

I take it you have also seen on his site how he has totally misrepresented his debates here? Go there in a month or so and I'll bet you'll read all about how he completely baffled the folks on the BABB concerning moon rocks, footage from the rover, well, you get the idea.

(grammer corr.)

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: pvtpylot on 2002-06-21 22:13 ]</font>

I think it's safe to say this site gets a lot of traffic. And any lurker here is going to look at his site, then look at the rover diagram, and laugh their heads off.

The fact that he continually ignores it makes it look even worse. Face it, CD isn't afraid to give us his expertise on just about anything, but he can't bring himself to defend a portion of his own website.

YIKES!

Agreed, but then I didn't say that his strategy was very bright, now did I?
[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

‘The thing that amazes me is that NASA's opponents seem to think that the money spent on the
space program was packed into a trunk and left on the moon. Don't you understand that it was
all spent here, on Earth, and that most of it went to the private companies (the contractors) that
you seem to alternately praise and revile? That it percolated through the entire economy like any
other government spending program? That it paid the wages of janitors, factory workers,
secretaries, and truck drivers as well as engineers and astronauts? “

‘Good heavens, man, how can you compare the Apollo program to the situation in Southeast
Asia? You might as well say that everyone who got an operation paid for by Medicare that week
has blood on her hands because the money to pay for it came from the government that was
napalming villages! ‘

It all boils down to a simple question of economics and priorities.

The aprox. cost of the Apollo lunar programme was around $25 billion dollars (actually, that’s not in real
today’s dollas, but even if it was, that’s not pocket change).

$25 billion dollars would have built a lot of hospitals and schools which, in addition to providing jobs to your
“janitors, factory workers, secretaries, and truck drivers”, it would have improved the overall quality of life
for people. The Apollo lunar program was an incredible waste of social resources in comparison to what could
have been accomplished for people here on Earth.

I would also argue (again) that there is no such thing as a private enterprise in the space business, otherwise
NASA would have been privatized a long time ago. Or at least operate itself as a self-financing government
agency like the US Postal Service. NASA knows it can’t support itself, so it has to go begging for money from
Congress all the time.

People gave me example of satellites which are manufactured economically by private space contractors. I do
not argue the cost of the manufacturing, but I do ask them to tell me how they capitalize the cost of putting these
“cost-effective” satellites into orbit. How do you suppose they do this, by meditation on top of a Mayan pyramid
and then the satellite magically levitates itself and appears in orbit? Voila! No one wants to bear the costs of
sending the darn thing into orbit, except the welfare recipients at NASA.

Someone mentioned about the pathetically small number of countries the US has invaded. Since I know this is
totally OT, I will defer any further discussing and stick to the stated topic and only ask them to review the
following, and invite them to debate me via private messages or email, and avoid the wasted space in this topic
concerning the Lunar Conspiracy. Okay?
References below:

Bill Blum Author, "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II"
"Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower"
"West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Political Memoir"
Portions of the books can be read online: http://members.aol.com/superogue/homepage.htm
A recent interview of author is available in Real Audio at
http://www.blackopradio.com/archives.html
‘Nuf said!

As for the political implications of Apollo, it was once suggested that the publicity of Apollo missions were being
used to divert the public's attention from the war in Vietnam. This is not my original assertion. A commentary of
5 February 1971 by the Washington columnist Jack W. Germond mentioned this possibility, albeit briefly, and I
quote: "At the White House Wednesday, someone asked (Nixon) presidential press secretary Ronald Ziegler if
the news of the new military operations in Laos was being delayed to coincide with the news of a successful
Apollo 14 landing on the moon…[t]he implication was that the good tidings of another space spectacular might
bury the bad news of some wider involvement President Nixon was planning in Indochina…[t]he display of
journalistic cynicism wasn’t significant in itself; no one believes a widening of the war in Asia can be
overshadowed even by a moon landing. But it was symptomatic of a mood of general skepticism here about the
Nixon course in Southeast Asia…[t]he underlying cause of the skepticism is, of course, the incursion into
Cambodia Nixon ordered last May…".
Remember the so-called "Nixon Doctrine" originated from a public TV speech in which Pres. Nixon authorized
the military to pursue the enemy beyond the Vietnamese lines and into Cambodian territory, an extremely,
belligerent act which certainly helped to intensify the war on both sides. Date of Apollo 11 was.16 Jul - 24 July
1969. Date of Nixon Doctrine TV speech was 25 July 1969!!! Can you see Pentagon psy-ops at work here? I
certainly can.

BTW, has anyone seen the recent remake of the movie, “Conspiracy Theory”, starring Mel Gibson? It’s begins
with a man who is convinced that there is a plot by NASA to assassinate the President, but I won’t spoil the
ending for you, except to say that it turns out that the man isn’t so crazy after all.. Highly recommended by
yours truly.

“People withstand small amounts of harmful radiation...”
“When presented the ability to corroborate the data from Russian sources (as requested), why is there
nothing but silence...The dependence of high-energy charged-particle...?”
I know at least two people who died from melanoma, which is a form of skin cancer that comes from getting
sun-burned from the sunlight here in Earth. What does your quantitative data actually mean when we are
already at a serious health risk from simple, filtered sunlight, shielded already from the ozone layer, to say
nothing of the dangerous levels in outer space and the Van Allen belt where there isn’t any any ozone to protect
us? You think a sunburn on Earth is bad? Try getting a sun tan in the Van Allen belt! Do you really think I am
going to believe that wearing a hat made out of aluminum foil is going to protect me from atomic/cosmic
radioactive particles?

Okay, let’s assume your argument is valid. Why are we scared of a nuclear war then? The Sun is just a gigantic
nuclear explosion that will continue for the next 10 or 20 billion years, so since radiation is so harmless, let’s all
just mass-produce nuclear bombs for public use and keep them in our house for use against the occasional
common criminal who might burglarize our homes. Let’s make children’s toys out of depleted uranium and
other waste radioactive products so we can recycle our garbage appropriately.

Now if I were a cockroach or some kind of insect, I think your argument would be valid, as it is known that
lower animal life forms are much more resistant to radioactivity. You can experiment for yourself by putting a
cockroach in your microwave and observing how long it takes to kill it. It is amazing how much those little
buggers can take!!

__________________
Our welfare cheats aren't driving Cadillacs in the ghettos of New York. They are manuevering Space Shuttles through extra-terrestrial junkyards.

But did you even look at the non-NASA material that was pointed out to you? Evidently not, because you went on to say:

Having been a Nuclear/Biological/Chemical (NBC) Warefare Response Team Leader, I have pretty extensive training in the protective measures required in a post-nuclear attack environment. It's true that heavy shielding is required to protect against gamma rays but that's not the kind of radiation we're talking about in the Van Allen Belts. For instance, Alpha particles are quite easily blocked and Beta particles are only a little more difficult to shield against.

If you won't even look at reliable independent sources of information, then you'll wallow in willful ignorance. Remember, this is the science upon which successful protective measures are based...worldwide.

Irrational hyperbole apparently designed to give the opposing argument the appearance of implausibility...when in fact, you have no credible evidence to support your assertions.

Another point made over and over again, but never seeming to be read or understood. EVERY single expert in this forum has stated repeatedly that prolonged exposure to the radiaiton in the Van Allen belts is harmful and that the Apollo spacecraft did not spend very long in the belts. Not one single person other than yourself has said anything about the Van Allen belts being totally harmless. Seriously, what is so tough to grasp about the concept of something being hazerdous, but not instantly deadly, either? Why can't you seem to understand anything other than one extreme or the other?

In any case, comparing the radiation in the Van Allen belts to a nuclear blast or a microwave oven is just downright silly! Communications satellites can't survive a nuclear blast either, but they're parked in geosyncronous orbit in the Van Allen belts right at this very moment sending HBO to my cable box.

You really don't have a clue, do you???

I'll go you one better. My brother died of malignant melanoma from too much sun. All of which is irrelevant to the van Allen belts.

Lets try this O N E - M O R E - T I M E:

Ultraviolet radiation (UV) is electromagnetic radiation with a shorter wavelength (more energetic) than visible light but longer (less energetic) wavelength than X-rays.

The radiation in the VAB is particulate not electromagnetic. It consists of electrons (also known as beta particles or beta rays) and protons. Being charged particles, they interact with any matter they encounter. They are easily stopped by fairly thin layers of "tin foil" or polyethylene plastic.

_________________
When all is said and done - sit down and shut up!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Kaptain K on 2002-06-22 06:18 ]</font>

Well, it tells us that a simple layer of aluminum foil would completely protect us from a sunburn, either on the earth or in orbit. You should try it.

Well, we could take you into a lab, and demonstrate shielding effectiveness for various type of radiation, but I somehow don't think you would even believe that.

Look at it this way, if you were to jump off of a 1 foot, 3 foot, 30 foot or 300 foot ledge, we can predict with physics how fast you will be hitting when you hit the ground, and statistically how likely you are to get hurt.

Likewise, we can look at the nature and intensity of the different types of radiation, and determine how much will get through a given amount of shielding, and statistically how damaging to you it would be. Exactly the same principle, just different physics. And the physics is the same for everyone in the world, whether you choose to believe it or not.

[alpha and beta particles] are easily stopped by fairly thin layers of "tin foil" or polyethylene plastic.

What about the VAB causes potentially harmful radiation inside the space ship? Is the ship not fully shielded against particle radiation?

The high energy particle in the trapped radiation are quite capable of penetrating the fairly thin shielding of the Apollo spacecraft, this has never been disputed. The point has been that the exposure times were short, so that the total absorbed dose was low enough to not be a significant hazard.

The thin layers of sheilding that were present were quite sufficient to reduce the total dose to an acceptable level, since the majority of the particle radiation present is of relatively low energy, therefore having a small penetration depth.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Karl on 2002-06-22 10:37 ]</font>

NASA would have been privatized a long time ago. Or at least operate itself as a self-financing government agency like the US Postal Service. NASA knows it can?t support itself, so it has to go begging for money from Congress all the time. ??The thing that amazes me is that NASA's opponents seem to think that the money spent on the agency like the US Postal Service. NASA knows it can?t support itself, so it has to go begging for money from
Congress all the time.
Of course NASA isn't supposed to support itself. It's primarily a research agency. NIH (National Institutes of Health) doesn't support itself; the Naval Observatory doesn't; NIST (Nat'l Inst. for Science & Technology) doesn't; very few government agencies do. Do you characterize them all as "welfare recipients"? And, whether or not your characterization is accurate, exactly how does this serve as evidence to support your assertion that Apollo was faked? If you cannot answer this question, then your "welfare" argument is irrelevant to the alleged hoax.

People gave me example of satellites which are manufactured economically by private space contractors. I do not argue the cost of the manufacturing, but I do ask them to tell me how they capitalize the cost of putting these
?cost-effective? satellites into orbit. How do you suppose they do this, by meditation on top of a Mayan pyramid and then the satellite magically levitates itself and appears in orbit? Voila! No one wants to bear the costs of sending the darn thing into orbit, except the welfare recipients at NASA.
Well, no, actually, we get the people who want the satellites in orbit to pay for the cost of building the booster and launching it, plus some extra to make a profit. That's what my company does; we make satellites and boosters both, and provide launch services, and we make a profit doing it. That's what our commercial competitors do, too. Pretty nifty, huh? No pyramids required.

You really might want to study some of these topics just a little before making such proclamations.

By saying things like this, you are exposing your ignorance on this subject.

Do you understand the difference between particle radiation and electromagnetic radiation? Getting a tan (or melanoma from sunlight) is entirely different than the radiation in the van Allen belt. If you were to actually find a website or a book on radiation you could find this out for yourself.

You need to educate yourself on radiation (and indeed, on every topic on which you have posted here) before making sweeping conclusions. From what I have read in this thread, everything you think you know is wrong.

Yes. The particles which comprise the Van Allen belts are not atomic or radioactive, because they don't contain any atomic nuclei, just protons and electrons.

Go read http://www.clavius.org/envradintro.html before you come back here. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

__________________
~AstroMike

AstroMike,
FWIW, protons are hydrogen nuclei. Just a (very) minor nitpick that does not change what you said.

__________________
Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Ah, good point. Thanks. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

__________________
~AstroMike