Today, June 27, Australian TV station SBS airs a 30 minute long Moon Hoax show featuring Patrick Moore, Bill Kaysing and David Percy.

From:

http://www.sbs.com.au/this/thursday.html

(The date being Thursday, June 27, 2002)

"8.00 DOCUMENTARY SERIES:

CONSPIRACIES – Outer Space –

Is there a story of conspiracy, cover-ups and even culpability surrounding the exploration of space? Astronomer Patrick Moore, former NASA contractor Bill Kaysing, and TV producer David Percy discuss whether the Apollo mission, and the footage, was faked. (From the UK, in English). G CC "


(I hope that Peter B has seen this show)


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Solar Flare on 2002-06-27 15:14 ]</font>

LOL! Kaysing a former NASA contractor? That's a good one. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_lol.gif[/img]

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~AstroMike

LOL! Kaysing a former NASA contractor? That's a good one.

It's technically true, but phrased misleadingly. He personally wasn't a contractor for NASA, but he worked for Rocketdyne while that company was working on NASA contracts. And the ability to call oneself a contractor for NASA (or the employee of a contractor) doesn't automatically make one an expert in all that NASA professes to do.

The fact remains that Bill Kaysing earned his degree in English and was employed as a librarian by Rocketdyne for a very brief period in the early years of Apollo. Yes, it's likely he had a security clearance. In order to be the custodian of classified documents he would obviously have been cleared to see them. But that doesn't mean he wrote or understood them.

The problem with Kaysing's case is that he claims "insider" status in order to establish credibility, but little of his evidence comes from this supposed inside knowledge. He can't, for example, say, "I saw people planning the hoax," or "I was handed documents that explained how the landings were going to be faked." His evidence is mostly what he infers from publicly available materials -- mostly photographic "anomalies". This makes his "insider" status largely irrelevant. He cites it only to impress his audience into thinking he knows what he's talking about.

Well, I're read Patrick Moore's written work, and watched "The Sky at Night" and have to say that, although Patrick looks like the Archetypal Mad Scientist, he is actually fairly sharp when it comes to debunking nutters, loonies and conmen (his xylophone-playing is not to be sneezed at, either). Don't expect him to let Bill and Ben to get away with much. If the host plays fair, anyway.

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Garlic Bread?!?!

Solar Flare, you ARE on the ball! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Yes, I watched the program, and took some notes (for the benefit of the Australian ABC's Self Service Science Forum). The program is one of a series made by the BBC in 2000.

Someone might be able to provide some background info on some of the other people who appeared on the program.

It was about what I expected: little time for either side to present many arguments, and the arguments of the Apollo hoax believers were old long-debunked ones.

James Oberg: He said Apollo was important as it was part of the efforts of the USA to appear superior to the USSR. In other words, Apollo was an aspect of the Cold War.

Nexus Editor [I missed his name]: Apollo was a prestige project, and couldn’t be allowed to fail, or seen to fail.

Bill Kaysing (NASA contractor[!]): Astronaut Gus Grissom was about to blow the whistle on Apollo. On the day he was killed in the Apollo 1 fire, he hung a lemon on the Command Module. NASA didn’t have the technology to send people to the Moon, so they had to fake it.

George Alexander (journalist): He was one of a few thousand journalists who covered the construction of all the Apollo support equipment on the ground. There was no way it could’ve been faked.

David Percy (TV producer): Various photos and video footage are encoded with deliberate mistakes. For example, there’s a case when a photo taken from the front of an astronaut shows a loose flap on his backpack. Yet video footage taken at the same time from behind doesn’t show it. Also, there’s a photo which shows a rock with the letter C inscribed on it.

Nexus Editor: It’s said that for every hour on a mission, 5 hours were spent on training. So how could one tell the rehearsal from the real thing? After all, no one had been to the Moon, so no one knew what it looked like.

Narrator: There are no photos of Neil Armstrong on the Moon. Why was this allowed to happen?

Oberg: A conspiracy theory is a plausible first hypothesis.

We get to see some footage taken on the Space Shuttle of strange objects streaking past. Astronaut John Glenn reported fireflies outside his capsule, and Shuttle astronauts often report similar things.

Oberg: These are particles of ice expelled from the Shuttle, moving from the Shuttle's shadow into sunlight.

Two British UFO investigators: NASA won’t talk about these phenomena, no matter how much people ask them.

Oberg: Conspiracy theorists often cover up facts.

Steve Troy: He’s discovered 44 anomalies in photos and video footage of the Moon. These include alien bases inside craters, buttressed ruins and glass domes.

Narrator: Did the astronauts see anything on the Moon?

Patrick Moore: Conspiracy theorists have all the hallmarks of crackpots. He’s studied the Moon all his life, and he’s never seen the things people claim are there.

Ken Johnson: While working for NASA, he saw people deliberately altering photos taken on the Moon. They said they were blacking out the stars, but he thinks they were removing evidence of alien bases. One day, he saw film of alien bases, but when he saw the same film the following day, the bases were absent.

Moore: Why would NASA hold anything back?

Mark Carlotto: He’s analysed the Face on Mars using computer techniques. It’s clearly a humanoid face. There are also angular objects nearby. It’s probably tens or hundreds of millions of years old.

Geologist: Yes, those first pictures show something that looks like a face.

Narrator: But later NASA photos showed it was just a pile of rocks.

Carlotto: Nobody has questioned his methodology.

Troy: The Face on Mars is probably related to the things he found on the Moon.

Geologist: The closest we’ve come to finding life on Mars is that Martian meteorite found in Antarctica a few years ago, but that would be very simple forms of life.

Oberg: Mars is fascinating. It makes us wonder where else there might be life.

Narrator: NASA commissioned a report into how people might react to reports of life elsewhere. It concluded there would be mass panic.

Two UFO investigators: NASA was always going to hide the truth. They’re managing the release of information for our consumption.

Hi Peter B ! Or should I say: G´day Mate !

Thank you for the notes !

The Nexus editor is probably Marcus Allen.

Steve Troy and Ken Johnson are from the Richard Hoagland camp. Steve Troy did the very neat debunking of the C-Rock picture.

Yeah, Marcus Allen sounds vaguely familiar.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Peter B on 2002-06-28 00:27 ]</font>

... and the arguments of the Apollo hoax believers were old long-debunked ones.

But your average viewer doesn't know this. All they have to do is dangle the hook, even though they know their stuff will never stand up to any sort of rigor.

Nexus Editor [I missed his name]: Apollo was a prestige project, and couldn’t be allowed to fail, or seen to fail.

... or be exposed as a forgery. Conspiracy theorists make a big point of the political aspect of Apollo. Apollo defenders fully acknowledge it; it's a red herring. But the conspiracists go on to assume that only a falsified program would work, or that it there was no need to actually do the job.

Of course a real live moon landing would fulfill all the political goals mandated by Kennedy and Johnson. In addition, actually producing superior aerospace technology would be an even better political win.

Conspiracists love to speculate on how much easier it would have been to fake the landings. (Until, of course, you enumerate all that would have to be done.) But they ignore the drastic consequences of getting caught. Don't they think other countries have photo analysts? Don't they think the Soviets would have said, "Hey, why is the flag waving in the breeze?" or "Why didn't we track anything actually going to the moon?"

The political advantage of appearing to have landed on the moon is indeed great. But the political disaster of being caught having faked a moon landing would be far worse than anything the U.S. had dealt with.

Astronaut Gus Grissom was about to blow the whistle on Apollo.

No proof of that. Kaysing loves to tell everyone about all these dead people who can't defend themselves, but who called him up on the phone and said they were about to spill the beans.

On the day he was killed in the Apollo 1 fire, he hung a lemon on the Command Module.

Nope. The lemon was hung on the simulator, not the spacecraft, and that happened long before the fire.

NASA didn’t have the technology to send people to the Moon, so they had to fake it.

Kaysing has no idea what technology NASA had, and can't speak intelligently about it either way. His argument comes from a Rocketdyne feasibility study done in 1959 (before Apollo funding levels were known) that would have needed to assume a lot of unknowns about travel to the moon. Since Kaysing won't produce the actual report, we have only his word.

David Percy (TV producer): Various photos and video footage are encoded with deliberate mistakes.

... although Percy has no evidence that any of these alleged whistle-blowers actually exist, much less that any of them would behave as he says they would behave. These "anomalies" are the same ones people have attributed to NASA's carelessness. Now they're attributed to deliberate sabotage carried out thousands of times right under NASA's nose.

For example, there’s a case when a photo taken from the front of an astronaut shows a loose flap on his backpack. Yet video footage taken at the same time from behind doesn’t show it.

This was the first argument I debunked on Percy's web site. Conclusively. I showed other photos of the flap in question that proved it was on the front of the PLSS, not the back. I showed close ups of the PLSS that showed the raised flap in relation to the rear flap Percy claimed. I showed that the video footage most certainly depicts this front flap exactly where you would expect to see it.

How did Percy respond? He deleted the proof and now pretends it never existed. In other words, Percy knows full well his theory is full of holes and that there are perfectly legitimate explanations for what he says is anomalous.

Also, there’s a photo which shows a rock with the letter C inscribed on it.

The C-rock argument was never very strong, and now it's been thoroughly and conclusively refuted.

So how could one tell the rehearsal from the real thing?

Because the visual records of the rehearsals quite obviously show them to have taken place on earth.

After all, no one had been to the Moon, so no one knew what it looked like.

But we know the moon doesn't have engineers standing around in white shirts and ties. We know the actual landing sites wouldn't have trees and tour buses in the background.

On the positive end of the argument, we know enough about the moon to know that the photos show us what we expected.

Narrator: There are no photos of Neil Armstrong on the Moon. Why was this allowed to happen?

First, there was only one camera and one roll of film. We know what Armstrong looks like; we want to know what the moon looks like. We didn't spend billions of dollars to get pictures of a pilot.

Second, Armstrong was a better photographer than Aldrin. We have a dozen or so pictures of Aldrin to satisfy the "tourist" expectations.

The answer to the narrator's question is another question: Why would that be expected to happen?

Oberg: A conspiracy theory is a plausible first hypothesis.

This is a point I make often. Conspiracy theorists, even those who speak and write elegantly, seem to have no clue what is involved in proving a proposition. I find this astounding. At the risk of getting on Phil's bad side, I say it's brainless.

A conspiracist sees a set of observations. He believes they're anomalous -- contrary to expectation. He formulates a hypothesis that fits those observations. And then he stops, thinking his work is done. When you ask for proof of his hypothesis, he points out that it would produce the observations. No kidding! It was intentionally constructed to do so! That's how a hypothesis is made.

Oberg: These are particles of ice expelled from the Shuttle, moving from the Shuttle's shadow into sunlight.

Debris happens. As I mentioned elsewhere, in the Imax ISS film you get to see deployment debris in 3D. It's way cool.

Two British UFO investigators: NASA won’t talk about these phenomena, no matter how much people ask them.

So far the only "asking" I've seen from conspiracy theorists are loaded questions like, "When are you going to admit they are actual alien spacecraft?"

NASA quite astutely realizes that anything they say on these conspiracy theories will be either dismissed as disinformation or spun to support the conspiracy. It's a no-win situation for NASA. Conspiracy theorists can demand explanations when they demonstrate they know what to do with them.

Steve Troy: He’s discovered 44 anomalies in photos and video footage of the Moon. These include alien bases inside craters, buttressed ruins and glass domes.

Troy is one of Richard Hoagland's minions. The "glass domes" are merely lens flares, easily seen in other photographs from the late 1960s and early 1970s taken with comparable equipment and lighting.

The "alien bases" are Piperesque attempts to impose order onto essentially random patches of terrain.

Ken Johnson: While working for NASA, he saw people deliberately altering photos taken on the Moon.

Public affairs people alter the Apollo photos all the time to remove lens flares, crop and flip them for presentation. Deliberate alteration is a daily occurrence. Deliberate alteration for the purpose of passing off the alterations as originals is unproven.

They said they were blacking out the stars, but he thinks they were removing evidence of alien bases.

Ah, but if you know anything about the photographic film, you realize that correctly exposing the sunlit lunar surface and stars with the film they used is utterly impossible. Mr. Johnson has tipped his hand. He says the cover story was that they were removing stars, but the cover story is itself implausible.

One day, he saw film of alien bases, but when he saw the same film the following day, the bases were absent.

Deeper and deeper. This is no better than the janitor who says he accidentally walked onto the live moon set during a "take".

Mr. Johnson's testimony is another of those that claims to be the insider smoking gun, but has no way to corroborate or disprove it, and is implausible at prima facie. It's one of those things that's just too good to be true.

Mark Carlotto: He’s analysed the Face on Mars using computer techniques.

The tool is largely irrelevant. The skill in the analysis derives from the methodology and rigor and relative lack of bias. "Computer analysis" is today's snake oil. Not to say computers are not valuable tools in this sort of study, but anyone can throw together some rag-tag "computer analysis" and fool a lot of people into thinking it's some magic, infallible process.

The judgment of whether it's a humanoid face or not is still a subjective opinion. And since the human visual cortex is especially attuned to humanoid faces, it's not surprising that we tend to see them in places where they just aren't (e.g., car headlights and bumpers).

There are also angular objects nearby.

Angular does not mean artificial constructs. Many have tried to impose some sort of order on the Cydonia formations, but whether they're "regular" or "artificial" depends on how far one is able to relax the constraints of regularity or artificiality. Don't show me a vaguely hexagonal pyramid. Show me an exactly hexagonal pyramid, then I'll take you seriously.

Carlotto: Nobody has questioned his methodology.

That doesn't make it correct.

Troy: The Face on Mars is probably related to the things he found on the Moon.

Why? How? Neither has been proven to be artificial. Why start talking about correlations and causalities? This is classic conspiracism: don't do any research, don't synthesize a theory from observation -- just draw the conclusion first and then construct a line of reasoning later than leads to it.

Narrator: NASA commissioned a report into how people might react to reports of life elsewhere. It concluded there would be mass panic.

May we read this report? If it is somehow classified, how were the conspiracy theorists able to read it?

Two UFO investigators: NASA was always going to hide the truth. They’re managing the release of information for our consumption.

So far no one has been able to prove NASA is hiding anything. The accusations seem to be that NASA isn't confirming the conspiracy theorists' wild assertions, therefore they're hiding something. It's absurd to postulate reasons for doing something before you can prove it's actually being done. But if you do this, as the conspiracy theorists do, you can construct a circular argument that looks plausible and consistent but which is simply an elaborate web of speculation.

On the other hand, it's not very difficult to show that the conspiracy theorists themselves hide information, ignore pertinent evidence, and misrepresent their sources. That's where the real hoax is.

Who was the geologist?

At one time, Aldrin also had the camera, e.g. when he also took the photo of the imprint of his boot, often mistaken as a photo of "the first step". On this occasion, when taking a pan, Aldrin also caught Armstrong working at the MESA.
See http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11.5886.html for the story behind this.

Harald

Right, I'm not saying Aldrin never took any pictures. But Armstrong had the camera most of the time, mostly because he was the one most likely to take good pictures in an uncertain exposure situation. Unlike later missions where both astronauts carried a camera, there was only one surface camera on Apollo 11 and one roll of film for it.

As a matter of fact, Aldrin took almost all of roll 37, but they aren't very exciting pictures. They're perfectly good pictures, but they're all essentially post-EVA pictures out his window of the LM.

Hoax believers have this inexplicable belief that the relative lack of astronaut pictures -- especially pictures of Armstrong -- is somehow suspicious. I simply don't see how that proves they weren't really there. The conspiracists invariably bring up a faulty analogy like, "If you went to the Eiffel Tower wouldn't you want your picture taken in front of it?" I don't understand why they judge the astronauts with this holiday-snap mentality. It's almost as if they think it's suspicious that NASA didn't deliberately act as if they were going to have to refute later allegations of having faked it.

Did you know there are no Hasselblad pictures of Collins during the entire mission?


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: JayUtah on 2002-06-28 11:18 ]</font>

The eiffel tower analogy would work better if you and a friend went to Paris, and had your picture taken in front of the tower wearing identical clothes and bags over your heads.

I mean, whats the point? ("Is that one you?" "No, I'm the other one")

(johnny carson voice)I did not know that!(/johnny carson voice)



[/quote]

James Oberg has talked about them at length, though I suppose he is not "NASA".

However, Shuttle astronaut Ron Parise has indeed debunked ice-particle-UFOs, on television. I am not sure which show; perhaps Shermer's "Exploring the Unknown"? I saw it on TV when it happened, and chatted with Ron about it since I was interested in all that. Ron worked down the hall from me for a few years when I was at Goddard.

To me it's simply laughable that anyone would look at floating specks in a video frame and assert conclusively that they must be alien spacecraft. Debris during launch and deployment of spacecraft is as ubiquitous and expected as dust clouds behind a car driving on a dirt road.

As for the really infamous one (STS-48?), it's a classic example of stuff caught in an RCS or vernier plume. That's exactly what it should look like.

As for Glenn's "fireflies", Glenn himself has no problem believing the explanation that they were fragments of debris from his own launch vehicle. Philip Kaufmann, however, fictionalizes it quite effectively in his film version of Wolfe's The Right Stuff. It's great storytelling, but poor history.

Yeah, Marcus Allen is the editor of NEXUS, I have met him a few times. The first being a talk he did in a town close to me about the Apollo Hoax... funnily enough. Talking of Marcus reminds me about one of the pieces of evidence he presented and I don't think i've brought up the subject here. I wonder if perhaps Jay or somebody else could answer it.

Mr. Allen presented a picture alleged to have been taken during Michael Collins spacewalk on Gemini 10. It was actually a manipulated photograph from an earlier training mission in a high altitude plane. Can anyone explain why NASA would release such a picture claiming it was taken during Collins' space walk when it can easily be proven otherwise? I could post the pictures here of this event if someone tells me how to attach it to my post.

I'd like to address Jays comment about 'As for the really infamous one (STS-48?), it's a classic example of stuff caught in an RCS or vernier plume. That's exactly what it should look like.'

Jack Kasher said 'We calculated that if they were ten miles away from the shuttle, the biggest went from zero to 2,500 mph (4,023 km/h) in one second.'

If you dont believe Mr Kasher's claims then another source has said 'The distance from the Discovery to the Earth's horizon is 2,757 kilometers.The UFO's speed before accelerating into space is calculated at 87,000 km per hour (Mach 73).Three seconds after the light flash, the UFO changes direction sharply and accelerates off into space at 340,000 km per hour (Mach 285) within 2.2 seconds. (Such an acceleration would produce 14,000 g of force.)

It seems rather a coincidence to me that a beam of light shoots up from the ground (Australia) a few milliseconds before the object turns back on itself. Was this a starwars weapon? And talking of starwars weapons - I read that one was used in space by NASA as recent as yesterday!

Perhaps the group could also explain the events encountered during the STS-75 mission? (the tether incident).

Many people (including James Oberg) have claimed that these objects are mere ice particles, but qualified film technicians have proved that one of the objects actually passes close to the tether which is reported to be at least 70 miles away from the camera aboard the shuttle.

Below I have posted my investigations into this event and also my debate with James Oberg (who has worked for NASA, and John Locker who is a satellite specialist). I also did my homework (something that people on this board accuse me of not doing) and wrote to Chuck Shaw, lead flight director of STS-75... It makes interesting reading...Enjoy!

Cosmic Conspiracies have been having a debate with John Locker and James Oberg (NASA) over the tether sequence in the last week or so. Both are very sceptical of the footage being strange in any way. I have had the usual 'ice particle' explanation or 'space debris' from Mr Locker. But Mr Oberg seems to think we see the images on the film because they are refractions in the lense, or caused by some strange lighting effects on the colour wheels. Mr Locker accuses me of not having any experience with filming in space, of which I suggest very few would - not even himself, and that I shouldn't comment because I know nothing about space flight and photography.

What I want to know is, Mr Oberg works for NASA and obviously is more accustomed to watching these films. He says objects appear because of very rare, lighting and atmospheric conditions. So who is right? One is telling me this is normal procedure, and anyone familiar with space missions would often see this. Then a NASA expert tells me that this is not so? Who do we believe?

I was told by Mr Oberg that the red and green '2nd phenomena' flashes on the film were nothing more than cosmic rays and are a common occurence. However,since doing some investigations, I have found that CCD cameras which were used to film this event CANNOT detect Cosmic Rays... So I guess that puts another theory out of the window. We are also led to believe that these objects are near-camera 'ice particles', anyone who is familiar to photography would know that near-camera objects would be focused out (especially as these are of microscopic dimensions as suggested by Mr Locker) when zooming to an object 70+ miles away. I have therefore suggested that these objects are near the tether and not directly in front of the camera.

You can see this because if you slow down the sequence where a disc passes close to the tether - it doesn't pass behind the tether by the way - it leaves a shadow on the lighted part of the tether, which we are led to believe is only a few centrimetres in width. I ask how can an object, no matter how long, be filmed in space some 70+ miles away when it is only a few centimetres thick? what an amazing camera this must be. For example try filming a completely lit up lampost from 70 miles distance.. I dont think you would even see it - let alone film it.

We are told that the footage is taken 3 days after the tether broke away.. and that (conveniently) the 'phenomena' that we see is nothing more than a 'toilet flush' that had been carried out a few hours before filming commenced. Isn't it funny that everytime there is some weird space footage, they are always in the toilet???

Anyone can apply simple mathematics and work out that the 'Tether' must be moving at approximately one mile an hour (72 hours and 70+ miles away). If this is so, we can calculate that the 'toilet flush' should therefore be approximately 2 miles away, not right in front of the camera. I know that Mr Locker and Mr Oberg are in contact with each other, because they have forwarded my posts to each other. I therefore suggest that both of you get together and concoct a story that matches each other perfectly.

We are all told that we are inferior to NASA scientists and that we have no right to comment because we are not qualified scientists. But I do know my metric from imperial - not like NASA when they were calculating the flight path of the latest Mars probe, hence its disappearance... or did it? did you know that it would have just used Mars as a slingshot to go further into deep space! You dont have to be a scientist to apply common sense.


STS Lead Flight Director Replies To Cosmic Conspiracies!!!

EXPLANATIONS
This letter also appeared in the March/April 2001 edition of UFO Magazine(UK)

I was fortunate to come across a letter from Chuck Shaw who was the lead Flight Director for STS-75 on the web, which addressed issues raised by James Oberg concerning anomalous images that appeared on the STS-75 footage. As luck would have it the letter also had Mr. Shaw's e-mail, so I decided to put a few questions to him.

Here are his replies to my questions, which arrived on 4 January, 2001. It's funny don't you think, how Mr. Shaw refers to UFOs, when I did not even mention the term in my original letter!

DAVE: Mr Oberg said that the (anomalous phenomenon) was simply 'cosmic rays', but could not comment further after I pointed out that the CCD (Charge Coupled Device) cameras were incapable of picking this phenomena up?

CHUCK: Unfortunately you are quite incorrect insofar as CCD's not picking up cosmic rays. I am an amateur astronomer, and enjoy astro-photography using both film and a CCD camera I built (a CB245). Quite often I get images with cosmic ray hits on them. I usually take a series of images and average them to improve signal to noise. And it is not unusual to have several images with cosmic ray hits in them in a series of images. This is well known and quite common to the CCD community. As to whether or not the image artifacts were cosmic ray hits, there is simply no way to tell, However, it is not unusual to have them.

DAVE: The main question that has foxed me all this time is: if these 'disc-shaped objects' were indeed ice crystals close to the camera lens, how would the camera have picked them up if it was focusing on an object (the tether) which was reported by the film commentator to be 70+ miles away? Surely they would have been focused out, as would water drips on a window if you focused on a far away object? Or are NASA saying that these ice crystal are several miles in width?

CHUCK: It is not unusual for light reflections off ice crystals to cause sun glints back into the cameras. The sun glints are not sensitive to distance (within reason). In addition, any moisture in the camera lense (and there is always some there), aggravates any glints and causes internal reflections inside the lenses. It would be nice to have state of the art camera on the Shuttle, since they are getting old and suffer a lot from optical and mechanical aggravations. However budget pressure makes you concentrate on more important issues and we learn to live with things like this.

DAVE: We are told that the footage is taken three days after the Tether broke away and that the 'phenomena' that we see is a 'toilet flush' that had been carried out a few hours before filming commenced. Anyone can apply simple mathematics and work out that the Tether must be moving away from the Shuttle at approximately one mile an hour (72 hours and 70+ miles away). If this is so, we can calculate that the 'toilet flush' should therefore be approximately two miles away, not right in front of the camera.

CHUCK: You are neglecting the effects of orbital dynamics, which is the dominant effect. When the Tether separated, the satellite and Tether did, in effect, a 100 ft/sec posigrade manouvre due to differences in altitude of the two masses (which had been constrained to be in the same orbit, and that same effect was what was providing the tension in the Tether), which moved the satellite and Tether up and behind the orbiter. After three days we lapped the satellite (i.e. we had moved approximately 25,000 miles ahead of it and were coming up on it from below and behind). The 'toilet flush' you mentioned was actually a supply of waste water dump that we periodically have to do. The fuel cell and waste water are stored in tanks, and when those tanks get full they get dumped through the nozzles overboard. The water freezes as it is dumped and makes a huge cloud of 'snow'. We typically dump the retrograde to allow orbital dynamics to help dissipate the cloud away from the orbiter, but there is always a portion that stays with us since the cloud expands very rapidly in all directions when it hits a vacuum. It is not unusual to have a cloud of ice crystals around the orbiter at a variety of distances for several days after dumps. As much as I would like to think some type of UFO was around, the fact is there was not anything up there that we did not understand.


UFO Magazine Editor Graham Birdsall replies: Although a particularly intriguing contribution to what is an on-going debate over anomalous images gleaned from space shuttle cameras past and present, and in
particular that concerning NASA's STS-75 mission, one has to say that while Charles Shaw's self-built CCD camera may indeed be capable of detecting what he terms 'cosmic rays', equate that with the assertion
by professional CCD manufacturers Lexx Systemes sa (Belgium), that anomalous images known as 'the Second Space Phenomena' and which feature in the video tape The Secret NASA Transmissions: The Smoking Gun, 'cannot be attributed to a CCD being affected by 'cosmic rays' or anything else'. All the more curious then for Charles Shaw to concede that there is 'simply no way' of telling what the image artifacts ('Second Space Phenomena') are. Moreover, to offer the excuse that anomalous objects seen to hover, change direction and make intelligently controlled manouvres during the STS-75 mission is due entirely to 'budgetary pressures' that have resulted in a lack of 'state of the art cameras on the Shuttle' beggars belief! And
while it may not be unusual 'to have a cloud of ice crystals around the orbiter at a variety of distances for several days after dumps', it is damned unusual to say the least for that cloud to manifest itself in the vacuum of space and do what it does during the Tether sequence.

A sequence so unique, incidentally, that not one segment of footage from any other STS mission has been found to remotely resemble it. Given Charles Shaw's remarks, one might be forgiven for offering to donate a standard digital camera to NASA, complete with decent lens for future shuttle missions, given the amount of moisture and debris that apparently plagues NASA's on-board cameras at present. Though it would be interesting to determine quite what the manufacturers of said cameras make of his criticisms.

Graham Birdsall
UFO Magazine Editor (UK)


READERS MAYBE INTERESTED TO LEARN THAT: The complete 2002 budget request, released Monday 9th April, 2001 by President Bush, would give NASA $14.5 billion for fiscal year (FY) 2002. That would be an increase of $250 million -- just under 2 percent -- over the FY 2001 budget. The increase, at best, allows the agency to keep pace with the rate of inflation.

SO SURELY QUITE A FEW GOOD QUALITY CAMERAS COULD BE BOUGHT????

Mr. Allen presented a picture alleged to have been taken during Michael Collins spacewalk on Gemini 10.

Give me the ID numbers so I can obtain originals from archives, and then we'll talk.

Can anyone explain why NASA would release such a picture claiming it was taken during Collins' space walk when it can easily be proven otherwise?

It depends on whether that photo was released with the intention of people believing it was an actual mission photo. You have to consider that PR people will sometimes put dramatic effect at a higher priority than official accuracy. It's just a difference of mentality. But before we can explore any of that, we have to know more about the origin of the photo.

You're right, though, about it being monumentally stupid to release a photo that could be easily disproven. That's one of the reasons we have to doubt it was intended as an official documentary photo of the flight itself. It's unparsimonious to presume that people will act stupidly, so any conclusion that requires that premise is automatically less credible.

I could post the pictures here of this event if someone tells me how to attach it to my post.

No need, I've seen them on your site. The question is where the doctored photo came from and for what purpose it was made.

Jack Kasher said 'We calculated that if they were ten miles away from the shuttle, the biggest went from zero to 2,500 mph (4,023 km/h) in one second.'

I can quibble with the computations, but I won't. It's so much easier to quibble with the premise. You talk about them being ten miles away. What if th