Actually I think that Cosmic Conspiracies should be applauded in this case because they actually found out where the footage originally came from and also contacted Bennett for an official response to Obergs question.

This story also turned up in the April edition of UFO Magazine'.

Could you provide a citation for that?

Actually I think that Cosmic Conspiracies should be applauded in this case ...

Yes, credit where credit is due. However, it's a bit difficult to get through to Bennett and Percy. They've stopped responding to questions, and I've asked mounds of them. If the Cosmic Conspiracy writers have established inroads at Aulis due to similar interests, that doesn't necessarily translate to better journalism on their part. Whom Aulis chooses to answer is their business, and largely out of our control. Most of us have asked them questions until blue in the face, but are routinely ignored.

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

I know the guys at Cosmic Conspiracies personally and know that they know Mary Bennett and have met personally many times. That is why they can get an answer out of them and you cant.

There are a lot of accusations throwing around in this thread which are unsubstantiated and wrong. I would suggest that you should not comment or speculate on events that you know nothing about.

All you have to do is get the April edition of the UK UFO Magazine to see that Cosmic Conspiracies have indeed tracked down the relevant info in this case and have forwarded this to Jim Oberg. Now, I know that some of you guys will have a dig at Dave and the guys at CC for anything they do, but you have to understand that they do not simply write stuff on their site for mere sensationalism. If this were the case they would have just left the Surveyor III footage on their site and kept quite about Obergs request. Also. none of you have commented that Dave has taken down the rover footage from his site either because he agreed that it was a misrepresentation.

[bI know the guys at Cosmic Conspiracies personally and know that they know Mary Bennett and have met personally many times. That is why they can get an answer out of them and you cant.[/b]

Agreed, that was substantially my point.

I would suggest that you should not comment or speculate on events that you know nothing about.

Agreed, and I suggest likewise. I'm not speaking specifically of the Surveyor issue, but generally of the many questions I have asked of the Aulis authors. I asked about the Surveyor footage more than a year ago, and the authors would not even acknowledge the question. So if the authors' friends ask them the same question later on, and the authors deign to answer it because they're friendly all round, who gets the credit?

Obviously Cosmic Conspiracies is to be commended for dragging the truth of this matter out into the public light. No question about that. But the deeper and more general question of who Aulis chooses to deal with is more acute than this one instance. Aulis has a very long and demonstrable history of simply ignoring people who ask them hard questions about their findings. Many people who have asked them questions are fully qualified professionals and have serious doubts about the Aulis findings. Those questions simply cannot be ignored if the Aulis authors wish to be considered reasonable.

Now, I know that some of you guys will have a dig at Dave and the guys at CC for anything they do, but you have to understand that they do not simply write stuff on their site for mere sensationalism.

I can't vouch for the other authors at Cosmic Conspiracies. I am familiar only with Dave Cosnette, and that familiarity is based on a lengthy converstion with him, which you can read on this forum, and a detailed study of his contributions there. I don't believe anyone here is treating him unfairly.

While I might take issue with what some of the other authors have said or written, I'm simply not well enough versed in them to make any meaningful public comment. I am essentially neutral when it comes to the rest of Cosmic Conspiracies.

I sense you want me to give more praise than I have to Cosmic Conspiracies. I simply have mixed feelings. On the one hand it's nice of them to use their inroads to reach Bennett and Percy. On the other hand, they haven't done anything we haven't already done, except be friends with the authors first. Call it sour grapes if you want.

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

Like What?

Pete Conrad must be doing summersaults in his grave and Alan Bean must have a big headache if he bothers to read this thread.
During the descent, Conrad mentioned afterwards that when the LM pitched forward for the final approach, he recognized the area and knew he was in the right area without actually seeing surveyor.
the 16mm camera wax attached to the upper rim of the LM starboard side window (to the right) and Alan Bean only had to flip a switch to turn it on without taking his concentration away from his task as LM pilot (even if Conrad was the one actually controlling the descent)
Now I could be wrong here but I think Pete actually saw surveyor after he went down the ladder and took a few steps.

Why are we still debating this? The moon missions HAPPENED, they brought back samples that cannot be of this Earth, The laser reflectors continue to prove it happened everytime we point a decent laser at the right spot. I personally believe that "we" will go back and retrieved some artifacts from the 6 landing sites (hadley rille beeing my favorite). What will the hoax proponents say then?...

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It amuses us. It is also important to show to any readers that the conspiracy theories portrayed by the Dark Powers are by no means irrefutable and are in fact fully refuted. I think what what we are doing is a perfect balance. To ignore the problem completely would be to allow the conspiracists to have free rain. To dedicate too much time to it would be to give it too much credibility. By debating it on web boards, we provide the answers to the surfing public, while keeping it contained to and outside areas that would give it too much credibility.

The evidence overwhelmingly supports that. No argument here. But it's important to show that those who would attempt to desicrate it and destroy critical thinking are WACKY.

Hopefully.

NASA sneaked them up in the interim or some other bartsibrel.

I know its been a while since this thread was written but I'm wondering if anyone managed to run down the actual source of the footage referenced in the OP?

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We all know those Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

John Sladek, The New Apocrypha, pg 34.

I did watch the real landing footage now. What an excellent landing. Was that manual mode? It's nice to hear how happy they are when recognizing the intended crater. Of course, A12 had a bit more relevance to where they wanted to land compared to other missions, given Surveyor preferably had to be within walking distance. (while typing this, I'm amazed. This is the second time people go to the moon from the earth, and after this ridiculously long voyage (distance, not duration), they define there landing spot up to the precision of walking distance! )

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

If you read Apollo: The Race to the Moon, you'll learn that they had to take manual control because the automatic pilot was going to touch down too close to the Surveyor. The doppler-based navigation scheme was that accurate. (They used the Surveyor's position as the target landing spot, assuming there would be enough error in navigation that they wouldn't actually land on top of it. They almost did.)

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

Did they see Surveyor while approaching? I only hear them talking about a crater they recognize, and then "it's right there where it's supposed to be" or something like that, but no indication whether that still referred to the crater or Surveyor.

I read over the transcripts, and there I also can't make out whether he sees only the crater or also Surveyor itself.

The amount of joking going around in these transcripts is impressive, and would give HB's a field day ("stay away from the clouds"). I can imagine there was a need to reduce the stress a bit, even for trained test pilots.

Another question I always had on Apollo: why did they worry about damaging the descend engine bell on landing? It's not like they'd need it in another billion years. Did they worry about the descend engine pushing up and damaging the ascent engine, an explosion, or something like that?

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

I don't think they saw Surveyor. They knew the Snowman crater was along the track they needed to be on, and the autopilot took them right to it. That's what the comments were about -- they knew they were on the right landing path.

They also knew the crater the Surveyor was in and they saw that the LM was heading right for the center of that crater, so they took manual control and landed on the far rim. (They didn't want to spray it with dust as they landed.) They later estimated that the autopilot would have set them down within 150 ft (50m) of Surveyor.

This feat was so impressive that some years afterward, someone asked Neil Armstrong who stood out among all the talented people in the Apollo program. His answer was "Emil Schiesser! I'd vote for Emil every time." That's the guy who figured out how to use Doppler to fine-tune the navigation.

As to the engine bell, I can imagine a whole host of bad things that could result from such a "controlled flight into terrain", including the things you mentioned and flipping the LM onto its side due to asymmetrical thrust.

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Relight the Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)

I like Conrad's story about it. He never liked the idea of switching off a perfectly good engine while still in the air (Apollo procedure dictated you'd switch it off after contact light, making you fall up to 6 feet). After he heard Armstrong had landed with the engine still on, he was sure he'd leave it on until past touchdown. When the Big Day arrives, as they approach the surface the contact light goes on, and on that instant Conrad switches off the engine. More instinctively than thoughtfully, and he was planning to say an expletive but refrained from doing so when he felt a good touchdown. Procedures were fine and apparently loads of training + stress win from stuborn free will .

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

The way that Conrad reacts when he gets out on the surface and sees Surveyor strongly suggests that he hadn't seen it before then.

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"The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head" Terry Pratchett

The recently released DVDs by Spacecraftfilms feature the Surveyor simulation footage prominently. The 1967 Progress Reports, and the MSC Biannual Reports both refer to the Surveyor project often. One thing is definite. The "suspect" footage was in existence 2 years prior to the date of the Apollo 12 landing.

Percy answered my questions. Of course, I didn't exactly represent myself as a "hostile" either. It helps if you know what key phrases to use when forming your questions.

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