From
http://www.geocities.com/apollofacts/

FACT: Arthur C. Clarke referred to Apollo 11 as a "Hole in History"

Sir Arthur does not in any way support the hoax idea.

The "hole" in history Clarke referred to, was a "rift" as I recall, and was just a metaphor for the historical divide, that vast difference between Before Apollo, and After.

Action needs to be taken here. How? This is an egregious misrepresentation of Clarke!


_________________
Never give all your baskets to one egghead.
-Arthur C Clarke (paraphrase)

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DaveOlden on 2003-01-13 02:38 ]</font>

Could Mr. Clarke sue? I still say we send a debunking to all those e-mail addresses in his fan club page.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Glom on 2003-01-13 06:28 ]</font>

If I was a lawyer (which I'm not) i would certainly demand an immediate correction and notification in big letters for all to see...

If I were me (which on odd days i am) I might very well shut them down.

How do we notify Clarke?

__________________
Popeye ate spinach because they wanted to market spinach to children. What a relief, then, that Superman doesn't eat Kryptonite.

I don't know for sure whether he can sue.

If he can, I would endorse it.

Regards the emailing... that's alot of emails...

__________________
Popeye ate spinach because they wanted to market spinach to children. What a relief, then, that Superman doesn't eat Kryptonite.

We can send a mass e-mail. I have prepared a debunking of four of their pages. (I uploaded a copy in Word format onto my palm top and I occupy myself during boring lessons like Chemistry and Stats by debunking them.)

Surely Stanley Kubrick would know. Anyone know a medium we can use to contact him across the vale?

Not offhand, but don't forget... if we find one that works, we also win a million bucks from James Randi!

If you don't have the original, perhaps we can look it up. What was the source?

Of course not.

http://www.randi.org/jr/07-20-01.html

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~AstroMike

If no other method can be determined, perhaps pass the information on to Randi with a request to forward to Clarke for his information? I know that's not an ideal approach - using Randi and a conduit - but I think he might be amenable on a one-time basis for something clearly in Clarke's interest to address.

Conspiracists don't care about the context in which quotes were made, just in what contexts they can be used.

David Percy and Cosmic Dave love to quotes the experts on optics, photogrammetry and radiation and use their quotes for the their books and websites. But they miss the important question, "Do you believe this shows the Apollo program to be a hoax?" Because if the answer is no, then their quote is worthless.

Cosmic Dave quotes Jan Lundberg as saying that AS11-40-5903 (the man on the moon) has Aldrin looking like he's in spotlit conditions. However, Cosmic Dave doesn't say that Lundberg actually believes this is the case (ie the picture is a studio photo) but merely that it looks like it. Lundberg could just be comparing appearances descriptively rather than in terms of causality.

So we are left with the question, does Lundberg actually believe this photo is fake?

We would certainly want to ask Lundberg if he thought the photograph was fake. Another interesting question is whether Lundberg (a mechanical engineer) had any training or experience in studio lighting. This would indicate whether his opinion was casual or expert.

Logicians call this the fallacy of divided expertise. Someone may indeed be a recognized expert in some field, and perhaps even a field that's closely related to one in question. But that doesn't immediately mean his expertise would transfer over. Someone who is a mechanical engineer and builds cameras for a living might well have a great deal of expertise in, say, optics. But would his opinion stand up against an optician's? It might, or it might not. The safe thing to do, if you're a researcher, is to go find an expert on optics and ask him optics questions.

Consider the saga of Bill Wood. As John Witts pointed out, Wood's experience with rocketry seems to be "the bit that explodes". That means he might know something about propulsion, and probably ought to, but it's not a given. Wood claims to have written papers about propulsion. Why can't I find any of them? He claims to have chaired a propulsion committee for ASME. Why can't ASME find any record of that? In short, Wood may be a very highly qualified engineer in terms of blowing stuff up, but that doesn't make him an expert on the Rocketdyne F-1. He may very well be, but I can find other experts who are very clearly qualified on the F-1 and whose opinions differ from Wood's.

Then there's the saga of the other Bill Wood, who is a well-known radio engineer and gave David Percy a tour of some of the NASA communication facilities. Wood's description of the Apollo 11 downlink is included in Dark Moon alongside the infamous Una Ronald story. Wood reviewed Dark Moon and quite strongly denied any agreement whatsoever with its conclusion. He can't say enough bad about it.

Aulis quotes Brian O'Leary, implying that he shares their conclusion. He doesn't.

This is classic propaganda. You quote from scientists to give your argument the appearance of legitimacy according to the mainstream. You draw your own conclusions based on their statements and data. But you never contact those scientists directly to see if your interpretation is defensible or if they may have some objection to your conclusion.

The textual conventions of propaganda are not hard to understand. The subtle migration from the original mainstream sources to the author's own questionable conclusion is a time-honored technique of suggesting unwarranted legitimacy.

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

Our little mate Cosmic Dave is a good one for...well...massaging the facts to support his position. The example below is supposed to be conversation from Apollo 16, quoted on his site (remember that this is the same Cosmic Dave who questions whether Apollo is possible!):

= = = =

Duke: These devices are unbelievable. I'm not taking a gnomon up there.
Young: O.K., but man, that's going to be a steep bridge to climb.
Duke: You got - YOWEE! Man - John, I tell you this is some sight here. Tony, the blocks in Buster are covered - the bottom is covered with blocks, five meters across. Besides the blocks seem to be in a preferred orientation, northeast to southwest. They go all the way up the wall on those two sides and on the other side you can only barely see the out-cropping at about 5 percent. Ninety percent of the bottom is covered with blocks that are 50 centimeters and larger.
Capcom: Good show. Sounds like a secondary ...
Duke: Right out here ... the blue one that I described from the lunar module window is colored because it is glass coated, but underneath the glass it is crystalline ... the same texture as the Genesis Rock ... Dead on my mark.
Young: Mark. It's open.
Duke: I can't believe it!
Young: And I put that beauty in dry!
Capcom: Dover. Dover. We'll start EVA-2 immediately.
Duke: You'd better send a couple more guys up here. They'll have to try (garble).
Capcom: Sounds familiar.
Duke: Boy, I tell you, these EMUs and PLSSs are really super- fantastic!

It is obvious that the astronauts are talking in code - meant to disguise what they are referring to. The big question is why the excited cries? Can this be *merely* due to the collecting of Moon rocks, as they would have us believe? Or did they find something much more substantial, which was not meant for public knowledge?

= = = =

Now, courtesy of the reference to Buster (a crater), it took me less than three minutes to find some of this conversation on the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, which starts at Ground Elapsed Time of 124:30:19, at the second geology stop of the first Moon walk.

The first interesting thing is that the ALSJ says Duke’s first comment is, “Okay. (Pause) And if you'll notice, I'm carrying John's bag, and the shovel, and I'm not taking the gnomon.”

The second interesting thing is that on the ALSJ, Young talks about a “ridge”, not a “bridge”, which turns a (usually) man-made structure into a perfectly natural one.

The third interesting thing is that the ALSJ’s version of this conversation differs from Cosmic Dave’s version after the Capcom says, “Sounds like a secondary…” The remaining conversation listed on Cosmic Dave’s site comes from some other time on Apollo 16, which I haven’t been able to locate, though a reference to starting EVA-2 should be able to narrow it down.

In fact, a careful reading shows that there are a lot of little differences between Cosmic Dave’s version of what people say, and what the ALSJ records. How likely are people to notice these differences?

And what’s so strange about talking about the super-fantastic EMUs and PLSSs? Would most visitors to Cosmic Dave’s site know what they are?

There are a few other examples of this on the site, such as a conversation between Apollo 17 Command Module Pilot Ron Evans and Houston which refers to “Vostok.” Now Cosmic Dave assumes this is a reference to the Soviet spacecraft, which, as an Earth-orbiter, has no business being anywhere near the Moon. Strange? Well, no. Because it’s also the name of a crater on the Moon!

Duke: Right out here ... the blue one that I described from the lunar module window is colored because it is glass coated, but underneath the glass it is crystalline ... the same texture as the Genesis Rock ... Dead on my mark.

From ALSJ:
125:08:50 Duke: (Discussing a sample he has just collected) That blue one that I described from the lunar module window. And my bluish color is because it's glass coated; but underneath the glass, it's a crystalline rock that, to me, has the same texture as the Genesis Rock, and it's not a breccia.

Young: Mark. It's open.
Duke: I can't believe it!
Young: And I put that beauty in dry!
Capcom: Dover. Dover. We'll start EVA-2 immediately.
Duke: You'd better send a couple more guys up here. They'll have to try (garble).
Capcom: Sounds familiar.

From ALSJ:
126:28:09 Duke: Okay, Ed, on my mark. Mark. It's Open.
126:28:14 Mitchell: Roger.
126:28:16 Duke: (Probably giving John the water gun) Here you go. John?
126:28:21 Young: Okay, thank you. (Pause)
126:28:36 Duke: I can't believe it. (Long Pause) And I sucked that beauty dry.
[Charlie is probably talking about his drink bag.]
126:29:07 Mitchell: (Joking, deadpan) Say, Orion. We figure this 8 minutes of refill is enough rest. We'll start EVA-2 immediately.
126:29:19 Young: (Laughing) You better send a couple more guys up here. (Laughing) You better start them here in the next 5 minutes.

Duke: Boy, I tell you, these EMUs and PLSSs are really super- fantastic!

From ALSJ:
126:30:25 Duke: Boy, I tell you these little EMUs - (correcting himself) PLSSs - are really super-fantastic.

It is obvious that the astronauts are talking in code - meant to disguise what they are referring to.

Most of the "code" is either the confusion created by Dave's juxtaposition of several unrelated comments, and his inability to transcribe them correctly. Just because Cosmic Dave doesn't understand what's going on in a highly technical conversation doesn't mean it's some "secret code". (And we've seen that what Cosmic Dave doesn't understand could fill several libraries.) Most professions evolve a vocabulary of jargon that is precise and concise (and therefore useful to its practitioners) but which means little to outsiders.

The big question is why the excited cries?

The level of excitement cannot be inferred from a transcript, especially a butchered transcript.

Official transcripts of the mission are available, and have been available for some time. NASA's claims are clear, and Cosmic Dave has simply rearranged them for his own benefit. That's not history; that's fraud. It's one thing to have a variant interpretation of the observation. It's another -- more dastardly -- thing to fabricate observations to match one's preconceived interpretation.

I renew my opinion that "Cosmic" Dave Cosnette has no business attempting to participate in a legitimate historical or technical discussion.


_________________
It's not about belief; it's about fact.
Clavius Moon Base

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: JayUtah on 2003-01-13 18:57 ]</font>

I have forwarded my concerns about Clarke's misquote, to James Randi via email, giving the "Apollo Facts" url and such.

Since they have been in contact with each other, this might be the best way.

BTW, thanks for the suggestion, Irishman, and AstroMike.... thanks for the link. I got a kick out of Clarke's last paragraph.

_________________
Never give all your baskets to one egghead.
-Arthur C Clarke (paraphrase)

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DaveOlden on 2003-01-14 03:35 ]</font>

That transcript business is really tough.

How many people who encounter it are even aware that the Apollo transcripts are available online at ALSJ? How many would be able to use clues from the conversation to weed through the transcripts and find what was actually said? How many would be that interested to do the actual digging? Vs. how many would take what he wrote at face value, wonder just enough at what was going on, but not put any effort into finding the truth?

And you are correct the technical terms often befuddle the layperson. When I first got my job, I was always asked what I did. And I'd go into detail about my responsibilities, and the organization, and the hardware I was working on. And people would give me puzzled looks, and try to repeat the acronyms I used, etc. And I found myself having to back up and try to explain what I had just said. There's a real trick to talking to people with no experience in the field. I have found in my day to day life I convert my terminology to common phrases - spacewalks instead of EVAs, foot restraints instead of PFRs, and often describe hardware by its function rather than name. And that's exactly what most people see when they read the transcripts - a boggle of jargon that is indecypherable.

I've been in a thread over at Straight Dope discussing evolution, and whether birds are dinosaurs or not. And someone got into the fine details of the scientific names of the various taxons and the different levels of ancestors, connecting birds and reptiles. And I quickly got lost just by the names making it hard to follow which was which. I had to back up and omit the technical names to sort out what I was told, and then repeat it back. Which just goes to show that outside of their own field, everyone is a newbie.

That's one funny site.

Here's a keeper: "It would have been impossible for the astronauts to get from the Command Module to the conical space capsule, as the heat shield would obstruct them. It would have also been impossible for them to get out at the conical/pointed end of space capsule, as this section was occupied by the 3 large reentry parachutes, which ejected from the conical end."

This has been scientifically proven by research on the author's son's toy model of an Apollo capsule.

Few may know that one could leave a Mercury capsule through the conical end. There was also a hatch, but to use it, you've to move away part of the instrument panel and then push out the parachute canister. Only Carpenter left his Mercury capsule this way as it was not floating upright after splashdown.

Here a photo from training: http://images.jsc.nasa.gov/images/pao/MA7/10073683.jpg

Harald

Checked my email a few minutes ago...
So, now Sir Clarke knows.

__________________
Popeye ate spinach because they wanted to market spinach to children. What a relief, then, that Superman doesn't eat Kryptonite.