Latest Apollo study

[Jack White]

...fodder for the Bad Asstronomy provocateurs.

Jack

[Evan Burton]

No wonder they want to remain anonymous, Jack - they didn't have a close enough look to examine the spacecraft to see what it might be.

The "flagpole" is the landing point designator (LPD) markings on the LM window. Here's a crop of the image you showed (AS11-40-5862) and the LPD on the LM window, see from inside:

[Evan Burton]

And if that wasn't enough....

A photo I took at Kennedy Space Centre's Saturn V hall, of Lunar Module No 9. It's at a not dissimilar angle to the shot taken by Armstrong on the lunar surface.

The full shot, a crop of the window from that shot, and the crop from the Armstrong shot:

Notice the similarity?

[Evan Burton]

And again, a comparison with a crop from AS14-64-9197HR (a B&W image):

[Kevin M. West]

The "reflection" looks like a view of the flag from ground level, a real reflection in that window would be a top-down view of the flag, since the window is like 15 feet off the ground and facing downward.

[Evan Burton]

Jack: I presume that - as per normal - you'll not admit that your anonymous person has made an error? Even when the evidence is beyond dispute?

[David Andrews]

Jack: I presume that - as per normal - you'll not admit that your anonymous person has made an error? Even when the evidence is beyond dispute?

Whatever shortcomings the visual evidence display pro- or con- actual landings, it is hard to believe we went to the moon *that many times.*

An enormous siphon of cash into defense contracting and the black budget instead?

And was that how JFK wanted it?

Edited June 19, 2009 by David Andrews

[Evan Burton]

Jack: I presume that - as per normal - you'll not admit that your anonymous person has made an error? Even when the evidence is beyond dispute?

Whatever shortcomings the visual evidence display pro- or con- actual landings, it is hard to believe we went to the moon *that many times.*

An enormous siphon of cash into defense contracting and the black budget instead?

And was that how JFK wanted it?

The people of Apollo would disagree; to paraphrase Gene Cernan "We stopped, just when we getting good at it!".

The budget cuts killed Apollo 18, 19 and 20, and some of that was no doubt for the Vietnam War. Even so, there were many in NASA who were fearful that something bad would happen eventually, that we shouldn't "push our luck". There were calls to stop even after Apollo 12!

[Len Colby]

Jack: I presume that - as per normal - you'll not admit that your anonymous person has made an error? Even when the evidence is beyond dispute?

Whatever shortcomings the visual evidence display pro- or con- actual landings, it is hard to believe we went to the moon *that many times.*

An enormous siphon of cash into defense contracting and the black budget instead?

And was that how JFK wanted it?

“Argument from incredulity” i.e. ‘I can’t believe its true, therefore it must be false’ is with good reason considered a logical fallacy

“… the flaw I want to focus on is what can be called the argument from incredulity.

An argument from incredulity essentially works by taking the fact that one can't believe or imagine that something is true (or false) to be a good reason for thinking it isn't true (or false).

[…]

Like many argumentative bad moves, once the structure of the argument is made explicit its weaknesses become obvious. Our own inability to be able to imagine that something is or is not the case is not in itself a reason to think it is or is not the case. Some true things just are unimaginable. And the fact that we have strong convictions when confronted by certain experiences does not mean that those convictions are reliable bases for true belief.

Consider just a few examples. I can't really imagine the evolution of life from single cells to human beings. But I should not think my inability to imagine this provides some kind of reason for thinking evolution is not how humans came to be. Similarly, when I see a magician saw a person in two, I can't see how the trick works. But I would be foolish to think that the person had in fact been sawn in two.

Dr Julian Baggini (noted philosopher)

http://www.butterfliesandwheels.com/badmovesprint.php?num=12

http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/Argument_from_Incredulity

I’d say such an argument is especially fallacious when made by someone with no known expertise in the subject.

[Terry Mauro]

Jack: I presume that - as per normal - you'll not admit that your anonymous person has made an error? Even when the evidence is beyond dispute?

Whatever shortcomings the visual evidence display pro- or con- actual landings, it is hard to believe we went to the moon *that many times.*

An enormous siphon of cash into defense contracting and the black budget instead?

And was that how JFK wanted it?

The people of Apollo would disagree; to paraphrase Gene Cernan "We stopped, just when we getting good at it!".

The budget cuts killed Apollo 18, 19 and 20, and some of that was no doubt for the Vietnam War. Even so, there were many in NASA who were fearful that something bad would happen eventually, that we shouldn't "push our luck". There were calls to stop even after Apollo 12!

Gene Cernan is correct. They made drastic budget cuts to JFK's space program under LBJ and they eventually killed the program by 1972. In 1962 JFK asked Congress funding for "nuclear powered" booster rockets. You don't require nuclear powered booster rockets to get to the moon. It's clear JFK had a vision beyond landing a man on the moon. He intended to go to Mars using the moon as the launch point.

JFK's space program acted like a science driver program for the US economy. His space program was the largest peace time expenditure in US history. The space program returned $0.10 for every penny invested in the program.

Government and Wall Street "Budget" cutters today would have a hissy fit with all that "spending". What they don't understand is investing "credit" in productive ventures like the Apollo Space program returns significant amounts of real wealth to the economy as a whole. It increases living standards for all Americans.

Hell , they might even try to kill JFK if he tried to repeat his space program today.