Evan Burton

You won't have to ask uncomfortable questions, such as why the FBI seized all surrounding camera footage of the Pentagon strike.

Someone did release some parking lot footage that seemed to show something hit the building. But it sure doesn't look like an airliner.

I agree... but how do you explain the large number of people whom actually saw the aircraft hit the Pentagon?

http://stj911.org/legge/Legge_Chandler_NOC_Refutation.html

http://911research.wtc7.net/pentagon/evidence/witnesses/

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blflight77w.htm

https://sites.google.com/site/wtc7lies/911pentagonflight77evidencesummary

But a day or so later, the lander has to leave the moon's surface and meet up perfectly with the space capsule orbiting the moon. And the meet-up is perfect. This is far, far better than Annie Oakley's shooting. Could anyone today, let's say a top gun flier, replicate this feat? You tell me.

Hi Jon,

This is pretty simple. It's called orbital mechanics. The astronauts on the surface had a small window in which to launch otherwise they would have to wait for the next opportunity to rendezvous with the CSM. If you think this is impossible, ask yourself: how did they launch spacecraft from the Earth to meet & rendezvous with spacecraft (or docking targets) already in Earth orbit? The calculations are exactly the same and can be done far in advance of launch time.

http://www.braeunig.us/space/orbmech.htm

Hi Jon,

That is also a much misunderstood issue. There were two variants of the "practice lander": the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) and the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV). Neither one of them was a replica of the Lunar Module but the second was meant to allow astronauts to experience something like they would experience in the final stages of the lunar landing. Being in air was NOT 'an advantage'.

The reason Armstrong crashed the LLTV was because (basically) the thrusters that controlled attitude ran out of fuel.

It must be stressed the the LLRV / LLTV was NOT the LM; the LM was designed to operate on the Moon; the LLRV / LLTV was designed to simulate - on Earth - what that experience would be like.

The LLRV / LLTV was very difficult to fly and several of them crashed; despite this, every single Commander of an Apollo lunar landing mission said that practise in them was invaluable, that a successful landing might not have been successful without that training, and that use of the LLTV for training of LM crews should continue.

As for the initial moon landing in June 1969, consider these verified facts, Neil Armstrong allegedly landed the lander on the moon without any help from the lander's primitive computer. The computer, we've been told, was overloaded. OK, I can buy that. Even though Armstrong crashed a practice lander on the earth several weeks before. On earth, Armstrong had the advantage of air. On the moon, all he would have had to control the lander as it landed was its rocket engines. OK, I'll buy that.

But a day or so later, the lander has to leave the moon's surface and meet up perfectly with the space capsule orbiting the moon. And the meet-up is perfect. This is far, far better than Annie Oakley's shooting. Could anyone today, let's say a top gun flier, replicate this feat? You tell me.

Hi Jon,

Based on your comments I am guessing that you haven't been told all the details and therefore making assumption on faulty data. Let's look at your first statement: that they landed without help of the computer because it was overloaded; this is just plain wrong.

The Lunar Module (LM) landing computer was called the Primary Guidance and Navigation System (PGNS) otherwise known as "pings". It had a backup called the Abort Guidance System (AGS or "aggs").

The PGNS was vital for every landing and if it was not functional, an abort was mandatory.

During the Apollo 11 landing were the (in)famous '1201' and '1202' alarms. This indicated a situation called 'executive overflow' and meant that there was so much data coming in that it could not do all the things it was meant to do in the required time; it would restart, dump what it considered to be non-essential, and continue to provide what it believe to be 'priority' tasks.

If you listen to the landing Flight loop audio, you hear the Mission Controller Gene Kranz call for information on the alarms; the experts in the back room (and there were experts in the back room for every systems on the spacecraft) told him they were GO on the alarm as long as it was not continuous.

So the PGNS was working, just not at the level expected (I can explain why, if required).

The reason people probably think he did without the computer is the auto-land system. A large majority of people did not know that the LM had the ability to do a completely automatic landing: this was called P65 (Programme 65). None of the astronauts ever used it, however. All of them switched to the semi-automatic landing mode called P66 (listen to the landing audio of all missions and you'll hear them switch from P64 to P66). This allowed the astronauts to control rate-of-descent and horizontal movement.

Armstrong switched to P66 because he saw that the autoland system was going to take him into a boulder strewn field; he used P66 to halt the rate of descent, increase the forward movement to a clear area, then have the computer assist him to make a soft landing.

If you have any questions, please ask.

From the linked article: "In 2009 Nasa admitted they had deleted footage of the landing for budget purposes but the footage was then restored thanks to contemporary TV recordings."

Larry or Evan, can that be true? I don't recall hearing about any such admission, though I can understand why the media might not report it. If it's true, it sounds like utter BS to me. I guess there's nothing wrong after all with Hillary Clinton deleting her State Dept. emails, or the IRS deleting Lois Lerner emails. It's just the government at work as usual.

Ron,

Put simply it is not true... but there are elements of the truth that are misrepresented. It is all to do with the original Apollo 11 broadcast.

Weight saving was very important in the Apollo programme, and so they couldn't afford to have a big TV camera on the Moon with the first landing. They needed a lightweight one. Another important consideration was signal bandwidth; the technical people already had loads of critical data being streamed back from the LM (heartrate, LM computer data, etc). There was precious little available for the transmission of TV pictures.

The TV camera people came up with a good compromise: the Slow Scan TV (SSTV), a system which some radio hams may be familiar with. This gave a reasonable B&W picture within the available bandwidth (a colour TV was available but had not been fully certified for the mission; NASA did not want to take any risks and pushed its use to Apollo 12).

The SSTV differed from regular TV in two major ways: the SSTV sent back pictures at a resolution of 320 lines (versus US TV's 525 lines) at 10 frames per second (versus TV's 30 frames per second). This meant that they had to be converted from SSTV format to the US NTSC format before being broadcast. I won't bother to go into detail about how this was done but it was not unlike showing the SSTV picture on a TV and then filming that picture with a normal (NTSC) TV camera. This conversion process led to loss of quality but no-one really cared too much about that: we were seeing pictures live from the Moon!

The SSTV tapes were put into storage and the pictures that we all saw became the standard.

Many years later, someone somewhere was looking at some pictures taken by staff at the Honeysuckle Creek (HSK) tracking station, where the Apollo 11 pictures were first broadcast (if anyone has seen the movie The Dish, it is wrong; Parkes didn't take over until about 12 mins into the moonwalk. There is a reason for this; if you want to know just ask).

It was a polaroid picture of the SSTV screen at HSK, taken during the Apollo 11 landing... and the picture quality was way better than we had seen, even though it was a polaroid. Whoever it was followed this up and learnt of the SSTV (it is all available information but only us geeks are interested in the technical details). They asked: if the SSTV picture is better, and considering we have such advanced digital processing available today, couldn't we get a better quality video image of the landing?

People slapped their heads for not thinking of this earlier, and so the search for the tapes began. For years a team searched through the various archives for the tapes but to no avail; some other mission tapes were found, and some later missions video was found but the SSTV appeared to be lost forever (the search still goes on but chances are slim to none they will be found).

The first question people ask is why would such a valuable tape be lost? Surely it would be of historical significance and be preserved forever?

It is a very reasonable question but you have to appreciate two things. Firstly, a lot of people didn't even want TV on the mission. They wanted scientific data and mission essential items; this was just pictures of no real value; besides, they had Hasselblad cameras which would take high quality pictures from the surface - there was no need for TV. Only when a number of the NASA hierarchy pointed out that millions of people want to watch - not just listen to - the first manned lunar landing did the TV camera make it on board. The second point was that the SSTV tapes were only a backup; once it was confirmed that the broadcast video was safe then there was no real need for the SSTV tapes.

The next question people ask is: so what did happen to the tapes?

No-one is absolutely sure but the mostly explanation is that they were taped over, re-used, probably during deep space probes and various Earth satellite programmes during the 1980s. Even so, NASA have decided to preserve the only machine capable of replaying them... just in case.

So why would such tapes be re-used?

As I have said, these tapes were backup that were no longer needed. As time went by they were put in an archive somewhere and forgotten. The 1980s rolled around, the Shuttle was yet to fly, NASA was basking in the glory of Viking and Voyager, and what was that Apollo thing? Oh yeah - that cool rocket with Buzz Armstrong, really great, we beat the Russians to Mars or something, didn't we?

NASA had expensive machines to record various technical data from satellites and probes and they most all used a particular type of recording tape. By the late 70s and early 80s, a few things happened with that type of tape. The first was that a large batch of the tape (Memorex, I think, but don't quote me on that) was found to be faulty. Instead of lasting for decades, it began to deteriorate within a few years. That meant recent data had to be transferred to unaffected stock before the data was lost. Around the same time, we started to realise that the Earth was a limited resource that we shared with other inhabitants. The tapes in use were made using whale oil (IIRC). Next, the real technological revolution started to take off and the demand for these specific types of tape waned; the people who made them no longer saw a profit in them and so they were discontinued. This meant NASA had to recycle to limited stock of long-life tape to use with it's current missions.

Someone grabbed a batch of tape from the archives (possibly not labelled appropriately), didn't appreciate the historical significance, and used it for a current mission.

Now, despite the SSTV tapes being most likely lost forever, the search actually turned up some items of use and generated interest in the original Apollo 11 mission. Former workers came forward with home movies of the original SSTV screen; these provided better quality images than we had. Digital processing companies expressed interest in restoring the available footage, and so that is what happened. They took the broadcast footage, newly discovered footage, and applied restoration techniques to them. The result is far superior quality than what we used to have... video artifacts and all. That's right: in the 60s, no-one would have thought anyone would claim the whole thing was a hoax. These days they know better and so when the restoration took place the company that did it left in all the things that would have normally been removed.

Sooo... very long winded but that is why what was said is wrong but has elements of truth to it. And as always, happy to answer questions or provide references.

Now if we look at the articles linked above - and limit ourselves to websites that are not antivax and simply medicine or science reporting - what do we find?

"The dangerous new strains of whooping cough bacteria were reported in March 2012. "

"The vaccine is still the best way to reduce transmission of the disease and reduce cases, but it appears to be less effective against the new strain and immunity wanes more rapidly. We need to look at changes to the vaccine itself or increase the number of boosters,” said Dr Lan, whose analysis of cultured bacteria from 194 whooping cough patients was published last week in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

" Two years earlier, scientists at Penn State had already reported that the pertussis vaccine significantly enhanced the colonization of B. parapertussis, thereby promoting vaccine-resistant whooping cough outbreaks."

Despite widespread vaccination, whooping cough incidence is on the rise worldwide, making it the only vaccine-preventable disease associated with increasing deaths in the United States. Although this disease is most often attributed to Bordetella pertussis infection, it is also caused by the closely related pathogen, B. parapertussis. However, B. pertussis has remained the center of attention, whereas B. parapertussis has been greatly overlooked in the development of whooping cough vaccines.....Highlighting the extreme consideration that should be exercised in future vaccine development, this work supports the use of vaccines that also target B. parapertussisas a potentially more efficient way to battle whooping cough.

"In the study cited above, the researchers noted the vaccine’s effectiveness was only 41 percent among 2- to 7-year-olds and a dismal 24 percent among those aged 8-12"

Conclusions Our data suggests that the current schedule of acellular pertussis vaccine doses is insufficient to prevent outbreaks of pertussis. We noted a markedly increased rate of disease from age 8 through 12, proportionate to the interval since the last scheduled vaccine. Stable rates of testing ruled out selection bias. The possibility of earlier or more numerous booster doses of acellular pertussis vaccine either as part of routine immunization or for outbreak control should be entertained.

"In 1993, The National Childhood Encephalopathy study: a 10-year follow-up reported on the medical..."

Hmmm - that's a dead link! I found a summary at http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/medicine/medicine-general-interest/national-childhood-encephalopathy-study-10-year-follow but there is simply a summary and nothing to actually see what they thought about the use of vaccines.

The next couple of links also lead to the one above or other pay-to-view sites. Hint: if you want to make a claim using a big name journal study but no it doesn't really say what you want, link to a report where people have to pay to read the details. 9 out of 10 won't pay and just assume that you are not totally distorting what the report said.

"In 2004, a study in the British Medical Journal found that the prevalence of asthma and wheezing in non-vaccinated individuals was approximately 50% less at age 69-81 months than children who had 3 or more doses of with the Diptheria and tetanus vaccine."

Some studies have shown a link between vaccination of infants with whole cell inactivated pertussis vaccine and the later development of asthma and atopy. 1,2 A randomised trial disagreed with these findings, but follow up was done until only 30 months of age.3 Our previous report of the lack of an association between pertussis vaccination and wheezing disorders was based on outcomes in early childhood.4 In this study we have examined the association between pertussis vaccination in infancy and asthma or atopy by age 7.5 years in a large, population based birth cohort.....These findings confirm and extend our previous observations of the lack of an independent association between pertussis vaccination in infancy with inactivated, whole cell vaccine and the subsequent development of asthma or atopy during later childhood.

"Researchers reported in the OSMA Journal that the pertussis vaccine may cause lasting and permanent brain damage. Physicians are required to warn all responsible parties of vaccine recipients that pertussis vaccine may cause “lasting brain damage”, but rarely if ever to Physicians inform parents of this fact."

Pertussis vaccine has not been shown to cause permanent neurologic damage in children, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and others. However, the federal government continues to maintain that, on rare occasions, permanent brain damage does occur. The report of a single case-control study in support of this position prompted the establishment of a special committee under the sponsorship of the United States Public Health Service, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council to determine the validity of the report. The special committee concurred that pertussis vaccine does produce permanent brain damage in rare instances. Physicians are required to warn all responsible parties of vaccine recipients that pertussis vaccine may cause "lasting brain damage." This requirement has been authorized by Congress and the National Childhood Injury Act of 1986.

etc

etc

etc

As always, the antivax movement continue to distort and twist the facts.

Ron, he was referring to my memory of the JFK Australia news report that was "early," i believe.

That's correct, Glenn.

regarding the report of BBC reporting 9/11 early - I remember one of the very first things i ever read about the JFK conspiracy being that some newspapers in Australia had actually printed the news predated to some extent or the other - by a few hours or something.

Willing to be corrected but I think that was a misunderstanding regarding the international date line / time zones. For example, as I write this it is 9.03PM on Saturday 27 June 2015. At the same instant in Washington DC it is 7.03AM on the same day.

This just in:

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-demands-probe-into-us-moon-landing/ar-AAbNWHp

One does have to wonder: If we got there with the kind of equipment we had in 1969...why didn't the Soviets follow?

They tried to, but the way they ran their rocket programme meant that too many design decisions were based on personality rather than best design. They tried to launch their N-1 a number of times - unsuccessfully - and the receding Politburo support for a lunar landing programme meant they didn't get a chance to fix the problems. People forget (or didn't know) that the Soviets had a "lunar" spacecraft (which had been tested unmanned a number of times) and a lunar lander.

At a certain point it became more expedient to just hide the attempts they made, claim they never intended to go to the Moon, and concentrate on a more successful low Earth orbit space station programme.

bit busy atm, I'll answer tomorrow.

Thank you.

Good on you. Many thanks.

The evidence suggests that it was a missile fired from a buk system that ukraine has, fron ukrainian occupied territory.

Personally, I think not enough attention is given to the tandem revelation that a ukrainian pilot and ground crew were also involved. These missile system need guidance such as those can provide. It's not a matter of 'point and shoot'.

I'm not sure that it was fired from "government" held territory; can you give some evidence of that? To be honest, I don't who held what territory on that day. We would need to see if there were any sightings of missile smoke trails, what the range of the Buk is and thus what areas it could have been fired from, etc. I don't know if the investigation can tell what general direction the missile came from. Without all this type of information we're pretty much stuck to saying "it was fired from somewhere within this radius around the aircraft at impact".

Secondly, I hadn't heard about this "ukrainian pilot and ground crew"; can you tell me what that was about and throw in a couple of references for me to read (no walls of text, please)?

Many thanks!

*sigh* "wall o' text". Even you agreed it was a Buk.

Detailed information about accidents are normally not released until after the results of the investigation are complete. Sometimes partial information is provided, but wait until the investigation is complete.

Welcome Matt!

Hi Vitali,

I agree. The aircraft certainly brought down by a SAM, most likely a BUK.

From there on, it is very hard to determine any facts. We have no hard evidence who fired the missile.

I still believe that it was the rebels, though. I believe it was a mistake, and that they thought they were firing at a Ukrainian military transport. If this is the case and if it was supplied by the Russians, I don't believe the Russians hold any culpability in the affair.

Thanks for the reply - if you want to discuss further, start a thread in Political Conspiracies and I'd be glad to participate!

Cheers!

Hi Vitali!

Look forward to your participation. I like to discuss claims of moon landing hoax, or things military.

Cheers and welcome to the Forum!

Well, the Russian manufacturer of the Buk has done their own independent analysis and said the aircraft was hit by a Buk.

Pretty straightforward & good enough for me.

BUK controlled by Ukraine, Pretty straightforward & good enough for me.GAAL

Okay, that is to be debated but you do agree it was a Buk now?

Well, the Russian manufacturer of the Buk has done their own independent analysis and said the aircraft was hit by a Buk.

Pretty straightforward & good enough for me.

I don't understand, John.

The Russians themselves admit it was a Buk and you believe that is untrue?

Notice how the Russian say it was not their missile - which could be true.

Hi Curtis,

Welcome to the Forum and an extra welcome from a fellow squid (albeit RAN and not USN).

Hope you enjoy the board.

Cheers!

Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was brought down by a 'Buk' ground-to-air missile, which exploded near the Boeing's cockpit then peppered the plane with shrapnel, a state-run Russian weapons manufacturer says.

Moscow-headquartered Almaz-Antey – which has manufactured Buk missile systems since 2002 – said it conducted its own analysis of the pattern of damage seen on pieces of MH17 wreckage recovered from the fields of eastern Ukraine.

That analysis showed that a Buk-M1 missile exploded 3-4 metres from the plane, close to the left side of the cockpit.

Fragments from the warhead then hit the left wing and the left engine.

There was a distinctive 'double-T shape' to the damage which narrowed down the type of missile used, Mikhail Malisevskiy​, chief engineer at the company, said at a news conference in Moscow on Tuesday, according to reports.

http://www.smh.com.au/world/mh17-plane-was-shot-down-by-a-buk-missile-russian-weapons-manufacturer-says-20150602-ghfdco

Hi Mike!

Welcome to the Forum.

And John Pilger has been ultra-critical of Western governments since the late 60s, and has been critical of Australian Government treatment of the indigenous population since the same.

He is not without just cause but he often sensationalises matters and is hardly impartial on the matter.

Hi Tony! Welcome to the Forum.

Sounds interesting and very credible. I think many 'conspiracy theorists' today do the same job with no prompting: they latch onto weird and unlikely events, claim they are true, and raise a big fuss about it. This distracts everyone's attention from the real conspiracies and at the same time discredits anyone who does stumble upon something real.

The conspiracy theorists are their own worst enemy.