Isn't the heiligenschien due to Aldrin, not Armstrong?

Actually, yes. The heiligenschein appears in the reflection around the tip of Aldrin's shadow (which is in the reflection), and Armstrong is the astronaut in the reflection but his shadow is behind him. "Associated with" is a bit vague. This is a lot easier when you can just point to the photo and say, "This is what I'm talking about."

Jay, I believe an aircraft carrier would not heat up due to applying a flame from a cigarette lighter because it would usually be sat in a vast amout of water, which would act as a coolant. Paperclips don't generally float, and their intended purpose decrees that they should be used under non-wet conditions.

(Am I entering into the spirit of CD's debate???) [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Call him some names and then you've got it.
[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Let me see if I can phrase this correctly.

I think the time has come to give up on Comic CosmicDave.

By that, I mean, ignore him. Don't bother replying to anything he has to say, ever again. This discussion has boiled down to basically to something akin to the Creationist/Evolutionist arguments, if you know what I mean. The Hoax Believer (the Creationist, as it were) is too firmly entrenched in his beliefs to ever admit he or she is wrong. The facts no longer matter. Many people on this forum have come up with ideas jokingly to explain away any supposed "facts". NASA could send another mission to the moon to take pictures of all the sites already there, and the HBs would just say that mission was faked, too. There is no way to "win" against someone that doesn't agree on basic physics. There is no way to "win" against someone that doesn't know how to apply Occam's Razor.

What I am suggesting, then, is that in fact the argument is over, and all here might be better productive in other endeavors. Put up the information on a website for reasonable people to see. Link to the physics or optics or heat-transfer sites (or whatever) as necessary. But give up on CosmicDave.

Don't bother to answer his questions, should he come back. It might be hard. He may eventually claim on his site, "Hey, I stumped all those brainiacs over there; they don't even answer my legitimate questions anymore." So what? The rest of his site is crap, too. Dave doesn't "win" just because he claims it. He's already lost, and we all know that. (I suspect, in fact, that he knows it as well.)

I think that should be enough. In fact, I think there should be a sort of informal time limit on anyone new making asinine claims. Let's say a month for them to come around. If they bring up a tired old argument, just point them to the specific page on BA's site, or Jay's site. Tell them to read up on it and come back if they have questions. We could even have numbers shortcuts for most of the answers. "How come there are no stars in the photos?" That's answer #3, look here: <a href=http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html#stars> no stars</a>.

Why am I suggesting this? Well, I'm tired of the debate. Maybe others aren't, and they'll want to continue it, but I think that at some point, you just have to give up. There is nothing more that can be gained from discussing things with CosmicDave. You're never going to change his mind. Just stop trying to. Declare him a lost cause and move on.

You know Honestmonkey in a lot of ways what you say is correct. Will Cosmic Dave ever change sides? I don't think so. But for me at least the true value of discussions such as this one is the sharing of information from those who know to those of us who don't. Its amazingly educational for laymen like myself. Entertaining too. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Craig

The point of the debate is not necessarily to get "Cosmic" Dave to concede. The point is to allow the world to see how clumsily he refuses to concede. Lots more people read these forums than post to them. I always consider that audience.

I'm not trying to be mean. The conspiracy theorists rely on presenting themselves as reasonable, intelligent true-blue Americans (okay, Britons too, whatever color they are) who were convinced by overwhelming evidence to believe that Apollo was a hoax. Powerful stuff for your typical couch jockey. The conspiracists look wistfully into the camera and say they didn't want to find this out, and then sob all the way to the bank.

It's amazing how quickly that falls apart when you ask a few questions and bring up a few facts. The true colors emerge, and they don't seem to be very true-blue. We're really just handing out rope, and the conspiracy theorists can either grab hold of it and be pulled to safety or tie it around their necks and and swing.

I don't have a problem with the public sending checks to conspiracy theorists as long as they realize that they are conspiracy theorists and not the conscientious, careful, unbiased researchers they portray themselves as.

Point well taken, though. There is a limit to how much battering one person should endure. But we have to keep in mind that this site is less interesting without hoax believers. So long as we can keep the debate civil and focused on relevant facts and assertions, it's useful.

I'm kinda split down the middle on this one. On the one hand the tennis match strains the neck. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]
All of you going in swinging and particularly Jay have the patience of Job, I gotta hand that to you. But do you ever get the sense you are throwing rocks at the tide?
On the other hand I am all for (to paraphrase Heinlein) Heaping scorn on inexcusably silly ideas. I was never in any kind of doubt as to the historical and technological truth that is Apollo (Side note, notice how none of them disparage Gemini where all the techniques were proven?)and still I have learned so much from this board and I am sure to learn more.

I was going to propose this back when Ngant dangled his line in the water it might have saved some grief.
When assailed by a HB the first person to respond should do so thusly:
1. Read the moon hoax section on the BA site and http://www.Clavius.org very thoroughly. If you have claims not addressed or answered by these pages, then continue.
2. What is your specific allegation and specific evidence. You are dealing with a bunch of science and engineering professionals and enthusiasts. Hard quantitative data is required, not unfounded allegations. Be prepared to back up your claims with good science.
3. Even though the burden of proof lies with the accuser (you) what evidence will you accept that will falsify your claim? (if at this point they come back with NONE, we ignore and move on)
4. If you have questions, by all means ask. Someone (more likely a buch of people) will take the time to answer it.

If this is done, the ignorant can still be educated, and the fanatic will be ignored.



Edited to fix lousy proofreading.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Waarthog on 2002-07-02 07:32 ]</font>

Understood. I was, however, looking at how many times you've gone back and forth (Waarthog's tennis match that strains the neck). It's different when the opponent says "Good lob" occasionally, as opposed to his always arguing "Out, whadaya mean out? That was in by a mile!" Eventually, you want to stop playing with the guy.

LOL! Be as mean as you like. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] I wasn't concerned about that.

I hadn't thought about the lurkers, but otherwise, it seems a losing proposition to keep arguing the same points with the same person with nothing new ever coming from it. I keep coming back to the point that it seems like the facts don't matter. They started with "There's no stars!" That was explained. "There's no blast creator!" That was explained. "Van Allen radiation! Solar Flares! Crosshairs!" By this time, they seem to be looking for any little thing. If they come up with 100 things and 99 are explained away, the 100th means that the whole landing was faked. They are locked into a mindset that no longer allows for being reasonable. Thus, being reasonable back is, for the most part, useless.

I guess it would be nice to hear from the lurkers that have seen the HBs for what they are. Instead, there seems to be just another troll with the same stupid questions.

Something like what I had in mind, but you laid it out much better. A good plan.

I guess part of my feelings of futility come from previous arguments with Creationists. Again, the facts don't matter. In effect, if the facts don't match their beliefs, the facts themselves must be wrong. I don't understand how a person can think that way. To be honest, I never knew people took the whole Moon Hoax thing seriously, until the FOX TV show came on. My main reaction was "How can people be so stupid?" I still wonder that.

Finally - This wasn't exactly meant to be a argument on how we argue. That should probably be in another thread, if necessary (which is probably what I should have done with my previous post). [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_frown.gif[/img]

Considering the good, old fashioned a**-whoopin' you guys gave Cosmic Dave, he would probably love to concede by now. But the thing is he can't. How would it look if the owner of a major award-winning crank site were to concede he was wrong? He would lose all his adoring fans and ruin it for all the other cranks. It might spell the end for the whole crank industry! Stocks would plunge, corporations would be in bankruptcy, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria! So, you see, there's no way he's going to concede and put himself out of business.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Art Vandelay on 2002-07-02 15:14 ]</font>

Unless he were able to say he was wrong and simultaneously turn it around and reveal his former HB colleagues as a loose conspiracy of hucksters. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif[/img]

Ah, but there you hit the nail on the head for the folks like White and Cosnette. They have a following, they're consisdered authorities in their "fields", they grant themselves titles like "UFOlogists" and "Conspiratorial Investigators". It's a way to be thought of as an expert without having to put in the training and labor, or adhere to any of the strictures that being an expert in a real technical or scientific field would require. It's an ego trip, nothing more.



<font size=-1>[corr. sp.]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: pvtpylot on 2002-07-02 16:09 ]</font>

Sci-fi author L. Sprague De Camp once said:

"The scientific debunker's job may be compared to that of the trash collector. The fact that the garbage truck goes by today does not mean that there will not be another load tomorrow. But if the garbage were not collected at all, the results would be much worse, as some cities found when the sanitation workers went on strike."

http://members.lycos.nl/quotesforskeptics/id21.htm

So I guess that we will have to crown Jay "Chief Trash Collector" ! [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]




<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Sherlock Holmes on 2002-07-02 17:24 ]</font>

Perhaps Jay would prefer the more politically correct term, Sanitation Engineer

__________________
Cheers...Loreto

I find it interesting that throughout the last section of this thread people have been referring to the CosmicDave situation as a "debate". I suggest you shouldn't flatter Dave by calling it such.

Dave has been served with concrete refutations of all his arguments, and he has responded with ignorant and irrelevant comments, material lifted from other (possibly more literate) HBs, unwarranted abuse, and handwaving.

I agree with Honestmonkey to a large degree. Dave's ranting and raving has frustrated me and I haven't even been participating in this "tennis match" to any extent.

An old adage comes to mind:
"Never argue with a man who would not know if he had lost".
(can't remember who coined that, sorry)

Badminton, anyone?

JB

(edit. sp)
_________________
"Nowhere in all space or on a thousand worlds will there be men to share our loneliness..."

- Loren Eisely, "The Immense Journey" 1956

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Jovianboy on 2002-07-02 21:28 ]</font>

Last year, AULIS actually contributed with an Australian angle. Buried inside an article about something else, AULIS mentioned:

"It seems increasingly likely that the many, if not all, the images and the TV coverage were generated in a massive 360-degree studio constructed inside a specially built extremely large Buckminster Fuller Geodesic dome. Not in the United States we hasten to add—but in Australia!



12. Example of a small Geodesic Dome

This piece of the complex Apollo puzzle has been contributed by a Whistle-Blower who wishes to remain anonymous but until we have verified the data and thereby removed it from the domain of speculation we offer this only as something to bear in mind at this stage. Perhaps that Coke bottle sequence reported by Una Ronald, and others who saw it in Western Australia during the Apollo 11 EVA transmission, has more relevance than we first thought?"

http://www.aulis.com/nasa12.htm





_________________
"It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence. It biases the judgment."

Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson in the novel "A Study in Scarlet"


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Sherlock Holmes on 2002-07-02 22:31 ]</font>

Translation:

"We thought of another type of building in which someone could shoot movies, though we can't reproduce the behavior of 1/6 G and Sunlight and such a large volume of vacuum in any building on Earth, but it still sounds good to us, because someone somewhere has made another unsubstantiated claim that this was done, and we're sure they were on the "inside" of the job, and somebody claimed that they saw a Coke bottle while watching Apollo, though it was the wrong time of day, and there's no evidence of any such newspaper article as we claim demonstrated this, but just you wait, the crushing grip of our infallible logic and evidence will yet break this conspiracy of tens of thousands of people yet."

OK, I surrender. I'm officially becoming a "whistle-blower". I want to get on these guys' (or is it one guy using the "royal We"?) good side while there's still time!

Regarding large geodesic domes:
Maybe they mean the same geodesic dome by Buckminster Fuller that is used to fake Manhattan? [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]


BTW, the dome in the AULIS photo is "La Geode" in the "Cite des Sciences et de l'Industrie"
in Paris/La Villette. I visited it last october.

Harald

So what you're saying, Kucharek, is that Paris is being faked in Australia? Or that Australia is being faked in Paris...?

I was doing a bit of research today on lunar soil, lunar meteorites and the like, and found out one very interesting fact. Contrary to CosmicDave claims that the melting temperature of the lunar surface is 1000 C, the actual melting temperature is on the order of 1100C to 1370C. The 270C temperature range occurs, because the surface is made up of a variety of materials.

http://powerweb.grc.nasa.gov/psi/DOC/lrpaper.html

Since the temperature of the LM's exhaust gas is only 1535 C at the exit plane of the engine bell, and further cooling of the gas will occur as it expands into the vacuum and radiates thermally, it is impossible for the engine exhaust gas to melt the lunar surface

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: jrkeller on 2002-07-04 00:57 ]</font>

Worse. Paris may be faked in Japan, or Tokyo is faked in France. When I was in Tokyo, I saw the same prop used as in Paris, just with a different paint and a few accessoires...

And as Australia was faked by the Brits, I can't see why they should do it in Paris?

[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_confused.gif[/img]

Harald

I have irrefutable proof that Paris, the pyramids at Giza, and the Sept. 11 attacks on New York were all faked in the Nevada desert.

At 36°5' N 115° 10' W there is a vast complex which contains, among other things, a pyramid with exactly the same angles as the one at Giza, a scale model of the Eiffel tower, and a model of the New York skyline made before Sept. 11, 2001 that does not include the World Trade Center.

You all know I'm an engineer. I'm therefore an insider, and I'm blowing the whistle.

BTW, the dome in the AULIS photo is "La Geode" in the "Cite des Sciences et de l'Industrie" in Paris/La Villette.

Ah, I thought I recognized it. My favorite Paris restaurant, Entrecote de Paris, is just across the street from the main entrance.

This is typical of Aulis, though. They've never confirmed anything else they've reported, so what's the business with them "waiting" for confirmation now? If they really were waiting for confirmation prior to publishing their "data", we wouldn't be reading it on their web sites. Waiting to publish means you don't publish.

Obviously this is just to get the story out there and circulating without having to do any real research to back it up.

So I guess that we will have to crown Jay "Chief Trash Collector"

I would have to politely decline that title as well as its more politically correct title. Without butting up against de Camp too much, I don't agree with the trash collector analogy altogether. Yes, there is an ongoing need to address bad science, wrong thinking, and the hysteria that results. But I don't think I'm in the business of removing anything.

If we are as committed to free speech as we aspire to be, we cannot suppress speech on the grounds it is poorly researched, poorly reasoned, and poorly presented. The freedom of speech must protect that speech we deem to be provocative and disagreeable. In fact, that's really the only kind of speech that requires such protection.

The classic cure for bad speech is more speech. And that is what we are providing. I'm not trying to do away with or suppress the speech of the hoax believers. I'm merely trying to show it for what it is. Any subsequent rejection of the ideas will occur at the hands of the consumer in the marketplace of ideas, just as it was intended to.

I prefer the analogy to a consumer advocate. Just as a consumer advocate helps you learn which car will likely disintegrate out from under you on the motorway despite its manufacture's glowing recommendation, so the skeptic helps to rank ideas according to how well they explain facts. But the consumer (i.e., the reader) will do the actual selection and rejection.

Sadly the marketplace of ideas is no more capitalistic than the marketplace of commerce. People still believe hype and still have brand loyalty. We cannot establish a "pure" market, nor maybe should be attempt. But we can still provide a valuable service for those who wish to "shop" for quality ideas in the absence of passion and prejudice. We are not the trash "collectors" so much as the trash "recognizers".

How about Chief Lunar Landings Comsumer Advocate. I know it's a little wordy.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: R.A.F. on 2002-07-04 12:04 ]</font>

>>>At 36°5' N 115° 10' W there is a vast complex which contains, among other things, a pyramid with exactly the same angles as the one at Giza, a scale model of the Eiffel tower, and a model of the New York skyline made before Sept. 11, 2001 that does not include the World Trade Center.

I hear this is actually near Emerald City of OZ and that the Royal Navy keeps losing ships in the vicinity. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Well, I haven't ever heard about Royal Navy vessels, especially since it's the middle of a desert, but I have heard that a lot of people loose their shirts there. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_razz.gif[/img]

__________________
...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

Now that theory sounds like a winner. In fact, I'd be willing to bet on it. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

At 36°5' N 115° 10' W there is a vast complex which contains, among other things...

Jay, that's a pretty accurate position to be determined from a fuzzy orbital photograph. The accuracy you imply is way beyond any reasonably scope of accuracy such a system would be capable of. Are you sure you're not trying to 'cook the figures' so they all multiplty to give some multiple of pi divided by the sqare root of 2 to give us the date of birth of your cat?

(I'm assuming that the coordinates in question are on Mars?)

Bet it isn't. In fact I'll give you 2 to 1 odds.

Maybe because the model was done before the late Sixties? [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

Harald

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: kucharek on 2002-07-05 04:32 ]</font>