Steve Knight

BBC were using feed from a local TV station from the shootings. Last night around 2AM UK time, that station was reporting Gabrielle Gifford dead for a while (ticker across the screen). BBC also reporting that Gifford had been targeted before - her office trashed and some other attacks on her body. The judge was being reported as a bystander, and Gifford as the target....

So, aeroplanes criss-crossing the sky, leaving "H" and "X" patterns is some sort of evidence of so-called "chemtrails"? So aeroplanes from ALL directions are supposed to be routed into one direction, and one route, and one altitude, at ALL times so the only contrails they leave merge together into one stream (or several tiered, when viewed at differing angles)? ROFL. I'd like to see that at and around London, New York, Chicago, and other major, busy international airports.

No, they were contrails - definitely from airliners, not military craft. From the sounds of whatever that story was, it happened a long while before "my time", and further south than where I was. The latest date mentioned in that story is 1977 - approximately 5 years before I would have been allowed out on my own or with my friends. I had a remarkably robust childhood, health-wise, even the normal childhood illnesses weren't heavy or protracted. Not even so much as a fractured bone, let alone anything worse. Pretty much the same throughout that neighbourhood.

Growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, I remember a fascination I had with watching aeroplanes crossing the sky, and leaving long plumes of white behind them. Some would last hours, spreading out, but not disappearing. At least until I had to go in for tea and bed, anyway. Some would also have a noticeable gap between the dot that was the plane, and the contrail it left behind. Fun times

lol. No, not me. There's also a "Steve Knight" (maybe the same guy as that one?) that writes some of Jasper Carrott's material. There's also another one that wrote one or two books on the Freemasons and secret Brotherhoods. Also not me!

Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. Have 10 people tell you about 1 event they all witnessed, and if you're lucky, you get 12 different stories.

http://act.demandprogress.org/act/wikileaks/?referring_akid=33.120277.vRtJap&source=typ-fb Senator Lieberman is at it again : Asking for laws to be created that will make Wikileaks illegal - then demanding extradition of Mr Assange from the UK to answer for his crimes. Sen. Lieberman is also the lackwit behind the "Internet Blacklist" - a list of internet sites that are deemed "against the interests of the USA", and should be forced to close without recourse to courts and trials. Isn't he the idiot that once said a while ago, something along the lines of "China has a button to shut the internet down, why can't we?"?? Or was that another idiot that was talking outside his expertise? O_o Edit : I can't help feeling that McCarthy would have been all over Lieberman's arse in the 1950s for his views on the Internet....

ROFL. That is GENIUS! Gotta love how it works on every level.

Logically impossible? Sir, I give you the Square-Circle-Triangle! Heck, haven't you heard of cylinders, either?

Guess not....

USA has a population of roughly 260,000,000? So 15,000,000 is about 5.7%? That's a big chunk of people. All those companies moving overseas for cheaper labour costs? or just crashed completely and gone? UK is pretty much in the same boat, I think. Almost no industry left, which is a shame for the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. I'd have to say I think the US will replace it easier if the need arises (the Gods forbid another Pearl Harbor, but look at the US Industrial complex before and a year or so after that attack, and you'll see where I'm going). UK's going to make much more of a mess doing that, if we ever can again.

Stronger? NO! Exactly the same. It just wouldn't have any drag and a much lower gravity well impeding it. Therefore, they could run the throttle at a lower setting for the same effect - IF it had ever been designed to be used on Earth and in an atmosphere. Which it wasn't, and never did. Where did you study your physics? You should go back and demand a refund of your fees. Not stop? The exhaust plume wouldn't keep going in one direction after a very short distance, like you see from rocket engines in an atmosphere. There's nothing to stop it diffusing apart and spreading out. Scattering a light layer of dust at a very low velocity wouldn't push said dust very far, especially in a vacuum where there's nothing to support it, or prevent it from dropping straight back to the surface. I'd love to see your calculations that disprove this. All of them, not just the result. Let's see your math. Please to remember that there was only a slight layer of dust over the hard rock they landed on, and not metres-deep layers as they were initially worried about (why the ladder had a high bottom rung - they planned for the lander to sink a few feet, although it never happened). I'll give you a start : Descent Propulsion System thrust: 10,125 pounds-force (45,040 N), throttle-able between 10% and 60% of full thrust. Assume they were indeed at 10%, and not 60% or the full 100%. Descent Propulsion System specific impulse: 311 sec (3,050 N-sec/kg). Descent Propulsion System delta-V: 8,100 feet per second (2,500 m/s). LEM Mass including fuel: 22,783 pounds (10,334 kg). Assume a Lunar gravity of 1.635m/s/s (Earth g (9.812m/s/s) divided by 6). There is no air resistance on the moon. That should be enough for you to get a half-way accurate, ball-park answer. Show us your math. Any chance of an answer, Jack? Waiting for your math proof that an engine of such output should leave a crater in rock at 10% throttle and very low speed.

Uhhh, Wright was a "5" man, not "6", but he did indeed tell of "6" assassination plots in his book. There's also plenty of Conspiracy Theories over MI5 and MI6, with or without military help (basically would amount to a coup), plotting to assassinate Labour Party notables as Harold Wilson, and Tony Benn. With reasons such as [Wilson] being possibly a spy for the Soviets, to [benn] possibly wanting to prevent a proposed merger of MI5 and 6 to over haul the Security Services. [Proposed by a distant relative of mine, Airey Neave, assassinated himself by a splinter group of the IRA, INLA, shortly before the Conservatives won the 1979 general election. Neave's own story is fairly exciting regarding WW2 and later]. Edit : Typo. "prevent", bolded above.

Duane, I just did a little reading on some few of those, and nothing stands out to me as being proof of a conspiracy of silence between NASA and the US DoD. They've always informed the public that they work together sometimes, and as you said, those are actually on the NASA website. One is a creator of new technologies, and the other is a consumer of new technologies. Seems a marriage made in heaven for them to me. Then there's the fact that NASA drew pretty extensively from Air Farce...Force personnel for the early manned missions into space - test pilots mostly. Again, never hidden, and even actively promoted into public domain. They were working together, ostensibly, for the betterment of the United States. That's still not proof of NASA being a military-run organisation. So....where's the collusion, secrecy and conspiracy? Sure, NASA/DoD don't always release specific information on what a certain payload is/was, but they've never hidden the fact they perform orbital insertions for the military. As I said previously. Now, both receive their funding from the US Government, but unless there's been a coup I haven't heard about, that's a civilian government. So does that make the DoD a civilian organisation? Some early Military programs put purely scientific payloads into orbit. Again, what does this mean? So, where can the US Military go if they want to maintain at least a little secrecy of what they're putting into orbit? ESA? Japan? Russia? Does NASA perform this for free? Does any civilian space program around the world put satellites into orbit for their military for free? You're going to need to provide something much more substantial than publicly available service provider agreements.

Stronger? NO! Exactly the same. It just wouldn't have any drag and a much lower gravity well impeding it. Therefore, they could run the throttle at a lower setting for the same effect - IF it had ever been designed to be used on Earth and in an atmosphere. Which it wasn't, and never did. Where did you study your physics? You should go back and demand a refund of your fees. Not stop? The exhaust plume wouldn't keep going in one direction after a very short distance, like you see from rocket engines in an atmosphere. There's nothing to stop it diffusing apart and spreading out. Scattering a light layer of dust at a very low velocity wouldn't push said dust very far, especially in a vacuum where there's nothing to support it, or prevent it from dropping straight back to the surface. I'd love to see your calculations that disprove this. All of them, not just the result. Let's see your math. Please to remember that there was only a slight layer of dust over the hard rock they landed on, and not metres-deep layers as they were initially worried about (why the ladder had a high bottom rung - they planned for the lander to sink a few feet, although it never happened). I'll give you a start : Descent Propulsion System thrust: 10,125 pounds-force (45,040 N), throttle-able between 10% and 60% of full thrust. Assume they were indeed at 10%, and not 60% or the full 100%. Descent Propulsion System specific impulse: 311 sec (3,050 N-sec/kg). Descent Propulsion System delta-V: 8,100 feet per second (2,500 m/s). LEM Mass including fuel: 22,783 pounds (10,334 kg). Assume a Lunar gravity of 1.635m/s/s (Earth g (9.812m/s/s) divided by 6). There is no air resistance on the moon. That should be enough for you to get a half-way accurate, ball-park answer. Show us your math. Glaring errors? Care to elucidate? It's well documented what each Apollo brought back, and the sum total of all 6 missions to land on the moon. It's also documented what the Soviet Luna and Zond probes managed to return, and there were far more than 6 of those. I'll grant you only around 3 actually managed to return samples. Funny how there's never been an outcry of geologists on TV denouncing NASA for not letting have access to lunar samples for testing. Ahhh sorry, yes, I see my mistake. Apollo missions returned well over 800lbs of rock, not 400. That would be around 400Kgs. Yes, I stand corrected in using pounds instead of kilos. Thanks for that. 2.2lbs to the kilo. Still, 3 robotic Luna probes returned a few dozens of grammes. 6 Apollo missions returned hundreds of pounds. Big difference there, wot? So, I'll await your debunking, if you can. And please provide citations and sources so we can examine context and science and math behind them. Once again, sorry for my confusing of mixing pounds and kilos.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_shuttle_missions#Launches_and_orbital_flights Last dedicated Space Shuttle mission with a partially or wholly classified DoD mission payload was in .... 1992. Some payloads since have been for the DoD, but as an afterthought, not specifically missioned for. When there's been room after all the Science missions, and ISS materials have been loaded. DoD/Military have turned to unmanned boosters to launch their recent payloads. Guess they didn't want to risk another loss like Challenger in 1989, eh? I seriously doubt NASA and DoD are as close now as they were for the years of the "Cold War". Hell, NASA have to compete for contracts these days with other nations' space-programs. I have the DoD/NASA documents that prove otherwise. Like I said before, many of NASA's recent missions were done to place DoD spy satellites into low earth orbit. By all means, trot this "proof" out then, and let's have a look at it. Should be fun.

So tell me Duane? Do you drive your car into your 15ft garage at 150M.P.H? Neither did they. How do you explain how a rocket exhaust behaves in a vacuum, as opposed to the "constrained cylinder of flame" in an atmosphere? Lack of Earth shine effects According to NASA the Earth shine is 50 times brighter than a full Moon. Therefore, in the shady and very dark places on the Moon the Earth will lighten up objects when the Earth and object are in the right position. Indeed we have many NASA images with completely black shade, but not a single one showing the effect of the Earth shine. Maybe because the shine from the lunar regolith outshone it? Can you explain the concept of "Heiligenschein" in photographs? Circumstantial Evidence The Disney Connection In the 1950s W. von Braun worked as technical director at Disney Studio on three space-related television films. Therefore, von Braun had the best experience to be in charge of faking the photos and videos. He also had the personality, as a former Nazi, to stage the fake Moon Landing. What's that got to do with the price of fish in Zanzibar? At all. Richard Nixon's Character During the Apollo Moon Landings Richard Nixon was the President. We know his character from the Water-Gate scandal. Ditto. Radio Signals Not Picked Up NASA believers claim that the signals should have been picked up from the Apollo mission in many countries. But, nobody has ever testified picking up signals from Apollo Spacecrafts, not even after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Tell that to the whole of Australia. And the UK. Specifically many, many schools and universities and Jodrell Bank radio observatory. And Japan. And France. And Germany. And Spain. etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. The Russian Scenario Some Russian scientists claim that NASA has made it to the Moon, was orbiting it for a while, and returned without landing. This scenario would explain the radio signals from the Moon (if there were any picked up). Source? Who were these "some Russian scientists", and what were their specialities and relation to their own space program, who, incidentally, have nothing but praise for the US beating them to the moon. It's called "Being a good sport". Moon Rocks Moon Rocks do not prove manned mission, they can be brought back in unmanned mission. So explain how many of the Russian unmanned missions brought maybe 1lb total of rock back from the moon, but Apollo brought back around 400lbs? Moon Rock Verification The minimum requirement is to compare NASA Moon rock with Moon rock originating from the Antarctic. There should be difference due to the Antarctic rock being recrystallized going through Earth’s atmosphere. We do not have such laboratory results, therefore the NASA Moon rocks do not even prove a possible unmanned mission. According to a Voice of America article: "The vesicles are not cleanly [smoothly] spherical. They're spherical, but they have fairly rough outlines. They look as if there's been some recrystallization." If recrystallization was proven, it would render the NASA Moon rocks fake, because the recrystallization could have occured only by going through Earth's atmosphere. Also, this would prove that the NASA rocks are from the Antarctic. This doesn't even make any sense. O_o You mention Von Braun's trip to Antarctica, previously. Why would a propulsion and mechanical engineer know what piece of rock would likely come from the moon? To my knowledge, the total number of rocks found in Antarctica found to be from the moon is less than the fingers of both hands. And the first collected lunar meteorite from Antarctica was in 1979. FIVE years after Apollo was cancelled. O_o Buzz Aldrin Punches Bart Sibrel A New Mexico documentary movie director, Bart Sibrel, wanted Aldrin the swear on the Bible that Aldrin had been on the Moon. Instead, Aldrin punched him. What would you do if an idiot had followed you for over an hour, spouting libellous and vitriolic accusations at you? I say Buzz was remarkably restrained in his reaction. He should have kicked him in the nuts and head a few times while he was down, also. The judge at the trial hearing Sibrel pressed for Mr. Aldrin's assault, later, seems to agree with me, too. He couldn't dismiss charges fast enough when the full video was shown, not just the 3 seconds Sibrel presented. Seems to be a recurring theme, that, wot? cropped and edited "evidence", and never the whole story. Did I mention that Sibrel's sole job, before he was ignominiously sacked from it, was as a TV News cameraman. Hardly dripping with credentials to authoritatively determine a hoax. And why does he charge good money for edited footage of NASA videos that are available free, unedited from NASA themselves? I smell CONSPIRACY and HOAX! Just for context : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUFO8AGMwic < 2 minutes of Sibrel harassing Mr. Aldrin, and it went on for much longer than this before the punch. <3 European Space Agency’s Smart 1 Spacecraft On USA Today:"We shall search for them (i.e.:landing sites), with measurements not only in black and white, but also in three colors...." They found nothing. http://www.esa.int/esaSC/SEM1O6BUQPE_index_1.html "With a ground resolution of 159metres per pixel." How large was the LM? A tad smaller than 159m methinks. I'm out of date on what they had before they crashed it into the surface, but I do know they had planned to take more pics of the Apollo sites from a lower orbit. Mayhaps you can go to the ESA site, and have a look. Lost Items: -NASA lost Armstrong’s audio tape with his famous first sentence on the “Moon”. -NASA lost Apollo 11’s video tapes. Not lost. Reused. They still have the copies and backups, albeit at a slightly lower quality. Neil Armstrong on the 25th Anniversary: -“The only bird that can talk is the parrot, but, he cant fly very well” -"There are great ideas, undiscovered breakthroughs available, to those who can remove one of truth’s protective layers." And again : What does this have to do with the price of fish in Zanzibar? O_o Epilogue: I believed until 2001, just like many of you do, that the Moon landings did happen. We all have been mesmerized for many years by NASA and political propaganda. It was in the year of 2001, that I walked into a friend’s office, who was an IT and animation specialist. The day previous Fox aired the hoax documentary (I did not see it.). He showed me the Apollo lift offs from the Moon, then he showed two other animations: one with sudden start (infinite acceleration) and the other with gradual start (with realistic acceleration). I immediately knew what the problem was: The Apollo lift offs videos were with instant velocity, therefore the NASA videos were/are fake." http://gianthoax.com/moonhoax/ I will post more photos of image composting and tampering when time allows. And that Fox "mockumentary" has been shown many times to be a bigger pile of steaming compost than Oscar the Grouch's friend in Sesame Street. And makes even less sense than that sentence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_shuttle_missions#Launches_and_orbital_flights Last dedicated Space Shuttle mission with a partially or wholly classified DoD mission payload was in .... 1992. Some payloads since have been for the DoD, but as an afterthought, not specifically missioned for. When there's been room after all the Science missions, and ISS materials have been loaded. DoD/Military have turned to unmanned boosters to launch their recent payloads. Guess they didn't want to risk another loss like Challenger in 1989, eh? I seriously doubt NASA and DoD are as close now as they were for the years of the "Cold War". Hell, NASA have to compete for contracts these days with other nations' space-programs.

I have a very vague recollection from somewhere that once the astronauts got back into, and re-pressurised the LM, the dust they'd brought back in on their suits made the air smell pretty badly of burnt gunpowder. The sample containers used to store the dust for return to Earth proved insufficient, and the seals were soon broken by the glass-like granules, and so the chemical reactions that produced the "smell" were washed away by the moisture and oxygen in our atmosphere. Let me see if I can find some stuff on this. Edit : http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/30jan_smellofmoondust/ http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2005/22apr_dontinhale/ It seems better decontamination procedures may be needed for future missions. http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2005/04/67110 Similar to last. http://www.space.com/adastra/adastra_moondust_060223.html And another.

NASA is a civilian organisation. It is an independent Executive Branch of the US Government. IE - it doesn't have a cabinet-level secretary. Granted, at its creation in 1958, it absorbed parts of the military's research into space-based technologies, but also more educational and civilian scientific research complexes and projects. Yes, they used Military pilots for their early manned missions, but wasn't that because it was more ecumenical than training someone for high-stress jobs from the ground-up? Also of note is most of them, if not all, were test pilots - practised in flying brand-spanking-new craft upto and beyond its design-envelope. So they weren't going to be that unprepared for emergencies. Besides the manned missions for getting to the moon, there were, and still are, many purely scientific missions - Mariner; Pioneer; Voyager, etc. Do they still put military projects up into orbit? Yes, but then they've never really hidden that, only the specific contents, as required. And they make them pay for it. So technically, yes, they work "for" them, but that's about it.

B5 was, and probably still is, the benchmark for a decent sci-fi show. Great writing, great story arcs, pretty good (for its time) Special Effects, and pretty good acting, too (At least once Boxleitner/Sheridan settled in). There was something for everyone in it - casual and hard-core fan. Especially interesting, I found, was the use of a more realistic Newtonian Physics for the craft. Gotta love those StarFuries <3. I didn't really think the last two seasons (of B5) were hurt by the uncertainty about Warner Bros. and the network, at that time, but Crusade was certainly a patchwork mess due to the tampering TNT tried. JMS, IIRC, walked out after half the episodes were completed, because of it. The discontinuity throughout certainly doesn't help (uniforms and Gideon/Lochley's relationship). B5 hasn't been in TV for many a year, here. Good job there's DVDs. I can't remember Crusade ever being shown.

And here's me thinking the Military had to pay for Military missions. Although, I suppose if NASA are using civilian funds for military projects, I guess that's why they don't have enough to also go around disproving every crackpot "theory" about previous missions, eh?

Evan, I didn't say that Armstrong never talked publicly .. I said he didn't talk often, and was reluctant to talk about Apollo, as was evident in his 40th Anniversary of Apollo 11 speech, which only lasted 11 minutes.. With only 11 SECONDS of that 11 minutes, devoted to his alleged Apollo stunt. I'm glad you posted that still shot from this TV interview though, as that was what I wanted to discuss next. Not only is Neil Armstrong "shy" but he is also extremely uncomfortable, as can be seen by his stammering, squirming, gulping and scratching his neck when asked by this interviewer how many people walked on the Moon. If you pay close attention to time stamp :44 , you will witness his "shy" behavior, along with his hesitation to answer exactly how many people suppossedly walked on the Moon.. In fact, the interviewer actually answered that question for him. Sorry, but the entire interview shows the mannerisms of a guilty man with much to hide. And was exactly his behaviour for years before Apollo was a dream, let alone a reality. He always eschewed the limelight for obscurity. Never blew his own trumpet, but got on with the job at hand. Even when things went badly wrong (ie : Training on the Lunar Landing Training Vehicles) he minimised the dangers to himself. Some people consider a small ego to be a virtue.

Thanks. Yeah, TOS is probably my favourite of all the flavours of Trek. TNG was too annoying for the first four seasons or so. DS9 seemed to be a cheap copy of Babylon5, and I never really liked it, though it had its moments. Voyager....well...let's just say I'm surprised it lasted 7 years. Some of it was really, really bad, and some of it was just badly rewritten copies of other Trek series' episodes. And Enterprise...changed too much of the established "histories"....am I the only one who kept waiting for Bakula/Archer to utter "Oh boy"? And John, that's not a coffeecup holder.

They don't refuse to, it's a matter of funding, and specific missions. I'm going to go out on a limb and say designing, developing, creating and launching one mission specifically for this purpose of debunking HB's, who won't even choose to examine its data with an open mind isn't going to be very high on their list of priorities. The recent LRO had a camera, but it's optical resolution wasn't that good - trade-offs between weight and size, and other science packages included. It was, however, good enough to resolve down to objects of around a couple of meters, when it reached its optimal orbital height, as has been linked to for you in this thread. Could we ask for better resolutions? Probably, but as long as other space is needed for multiple science experiments, it's unlikely we'll get them. What we did get, though, is good enough for anyone with an inquiring and open mind. It's fairly funny, too, to be asked why they can't use HST to image the landing sites. After all, it regularly images distant nebulae and galaxies. (IIRC, the smallest object it can resolve on the moon is around 30metres). And that's by far, better than anything we have on Earth. It will take a specific mission to do what you suggest, and they have other priorities, and a shrinking budget to do them with.