NASA's Dark Secrets

I was bought a book called Dark Mission: NASA's Dark Secrets and I am 3 chapters in and hooked at moment its a real page turner andcould have far reaching implications if what this man writes is true. I am open minded and dont really know whether i believe it or not at moment but none the less its a brilliant read. I decided to google Richard Hoagland as I am a big physics fan and love his theories. I fell upon a 3 part documentary and thought you guys may find it intresting and could a a fun thing to discuss. here is part one ( the other parts can be accessed from the pane on the right. Here it is. If the embed does not work here is a direct link:

video.google.com...

Google Video Link

why dont you finish the book instead of posting a knee jerk thread....?

honestly bro

3 chapters in? what, 20 minutes in?

reply to post by tempest501

Hoagy's book is a good read to get the imagination going. You can get the same sense of wonder the best Sci-fi movies create. Some years ago, I was impressed with his ideas too. His ideas of Cydonia and Face on Mars caught my imagination and added fuel to the fire of space mysteries. Many will dismiss him out of turn as a charlatan, but if nothing else he generates an interest in Space. He encourages people to speculate about what is real. He has a site here that you might enjoy

I'm not much of a fan anymore, but it's up to you to find out more about what he presents. Read around, check some ATS threads on Cydonia or moon structures. For the intelligent reader, Hoags can help you develop critical thinking. Look at him as a stepping stone to the real mysteries of the Cosmos

reply to post by Kandinsky


Thanks for the link, I will definetely check it out.

Its funny because like you the Mars stuff is what intrests me also and how it leadds on to the theory of hyperdimensional physics. This stuff is a pure joy to research.

I am not sure what i believe if I am honest at the moment but how wonderful would it be if these things are true. Truely mindblowing but I guess one has to remember just because you want to believe does not make its in fact truth.

ill be mindful and keep researching i guess.

thanks again for reading.

reply to post by tempest501


Here's some good info that debunks a bit of the nonsense contained in "Dark Mission"
www.thespacereview.com...
It is without question that hoagland's accusations regarding failed Mars missions is completely bogus.

With regards to the moon is Hoagland saying that the astronaut were inside these glass domes or they were in the distant. Dont know if i am being stupid but I just cant get my head round what he is saying or if I am honest I find it hard to swallow that there is a massive glass dome round the moon.

Elighten me if you can lol

reply to post by tempest501


It really boils down to reading waaaaaay too much (ala da vinci code) into Alan Bean's artwork and then via confirmation bias reinforcing that belief by mistaking moon dirt on an astronaut's visor for some kind of dome structure.

Just like many other publications and researchers, whom some cant even hold a candle to the time spent compared to RCH, they will be correct 50 percent of the time.

Many like to attack RCH simply because he is RCH and is the most outspoken, NASA public enemy #1 on the planet. However, much of RCH's work regarding Mars, the water there, the ocean under Europa's icy surface, and moon anomalies have not only been proven correct by NASA itself, but also by many scientists associated with JPL, ASU, and independants, as well as other researchers who have no ties to TEM or RCH at all.

The matrial in the book (Dark Mission) that focuses on the "glass domes" is somewhat streching it IMO. Although I do think that there are ancient structures, I dont quite buy the huge massive glass dome claim.

For one, these glass domes would be quite apparent even after eons of micro meteor impacts. We would be seeing the "prisim" effect from sunlight shining onto these remains of glass domes, especially when viewing the moon through a good telescope. Second, during the Apollo moon landings, the orbiting Command Module would have picked up these glass domes on the surface as it orbited and took thousands of photographs as it orbited the moon.

The landing footage and photographs from the LEM would have also picked up these glass domes and their sunlight reflections (prisim effect) as the LEM decended.

About the only convincing evidence to the glass dome theory is a few frames from a pan image that apparently comes from a former NASA manager of a photograpic development lab who spared a few rolls of negatives from being destroyed. RCH has not provided the background evidence to support that these negatives are in fact valid. Plus RCH recieved prints from the person who has the negatives. IMO, it would have been better to have had the negatives and create the prints himself while taking dark room photos of the developing processes.

In conclusion, there are just as many other researchers out there who will tell you that ghosts and gobblins exsist because of a light refraction in a photograph or a creek sound in an audio tape to researchers who will tell you that society will come to an end because dogs and cats live together or tell you that the government is setting up death camps to round you up and put you to death...and yet RCH seems to be the primary target of ridicule and the most singled out.

I myself find that a bit disturbing that people will follow the most foolish and think nothing of it, yet bark the loudest at someone who has not only worked with NASA during the highlight of the space program, but also has over 40 years under his belt of real science research and actual data that anyone can obtain, hold in their hands, analyze and conclude with, while the cry wolves of FEMA death camps have absolutely nothing.

Some might want to review their opinions again. Perhaps it might not change your minds, but maybe, just maybe giving a review again of things may just put the ridicule where it belongs.




Cheers!!!!

Originally posted by RFBurns
and yet RCH seems to be the primary target of ridicule and the most singled out.

Perhaps I take RCH personally because I used to buy into the mars face before MRO settled the issue. I feel like I was duped and I don't want others to be duped by him as well. I know others focus on RCH because he's a bit of an "anakin skywalker," someone with a legitimate background who went bad at some point. He gets the attention because he's probably the most well-known of his type. Personally, if I find 50% of a person's claims to be complete bunk, I'm not going to trust the other 50% unless I can verify it myself.

[edit on 4-2-2009 by ngchunter]

reply to post by RFBurns


Yea not sure i buy the glass dome thing either but some of the stuff is very intresting none the less. The hyperdimensional theories are very intresting to say the least.

I guess the trick is to be vigilante with this stuff.

One for sure the book is fascinating to read. I surely hope there is truth in there as would be nice to think were not alone but im still on the fence where that is concerned.

Thanks for you detailed reply.

reply to post by ngchunter


Thanks for the warnings, I do look at these thing very objectively. You have to really because of all the nonsense there is out there.

By the way what has MRO proofed about the Mars Face? Just wonder because Cydonia facinates me.

upload.wikimedia.org...

vs

hirise-pds.lpl.arizona.edu...

The "mars face" no longer looks like a face when seen in high resolution. It was just a case of pareidolia when it was poorly resolved by viking with the proper lighting. The high resolution imagery reveals the mesa as just a regular martian mesa.

reply to post by ngchunter


Thankyou for that, I have to agree does not look much like a face anymore. How disapointing.

i guess we have to hope well find something better out there or elsewhere then .

reply to post by ConservativeJack

so truth so many lies o many deceptions if you dont belive then u have not reached that time in yourlife,i belive ecausican and thats true in its self

It always pays to look closely at the debunkers and their arguments. Have they really done the job? Have they too been partial in selecting evidence and argument?

It's obvious from Oberg's wiki entry that he's NASA's go-to guy for debunking. He's a member of CSICOP, an organisation known for its predisposition to ignore and manipulate data to its advantage.

Have a look at this thread - Pseudoskeptics and Disinformants on ATS - for some background on CSICOP and its adherents.

As for the photo, the "face-like" features may no longer be apparent in that viewpoint and lighting, but there is nonetheless an underlying symmetry beneath features that may have been eroded.

Proceding to Oberg's piece of debunkum, there's a lot of slippery stuff in there that I for one don't trust.

Before he even gets into his rebuttal of Hoagland's claims, Oberg tries to claim the moral high ground by saying that Hoagland is dangerous because,

Apart from the comic relief value of such crackpot ideas, there’s a darker aspect of this kind of cultural pathology, just as there are serious analyses pointing to the socially toxic effects of the JFK assassination “alternate theories”. For spaceflight, being distracted by the wrong cause means being tempted by the wrong fix. That’s never amusing, and often can be expensive.

"Serious analyses"? "Socially toxic effects"? We are not treated to any examples of these serious analyses, nor of the socially toxic effects they analyse, so it's hard to comment on this assertion... or to take it seriously. For anyone looking at the evidence, it's impossible to conclude that Oswald killed JFK, or that he was anything other than what he himself said he was - a patsy.

However, moving on... who does he think is going to be "tempted by the wrong fix"? What does that mean? When you look closely at what he's written, it falls apart.

He then spends rather a lot of space attacking one specific claim by Hoagland. Now, I haven't researched this so it's hard to come to any firm conclusion either way - it's possible that Hoagland's guilty of some journalistic hyperbole. I haven't read the book myself yet, though I'd like to. I have to say that Oberg's assertion that

Actually, whether a radio is turned on or off, practically all orbital insertion burns on lunar and planetary missions occur out of radio contact. This is a result of the geometric alignment of the probe passing behind the planet (or moon) and hence having its radio signals blocked.

...sounds a little implausible to someone with no knowledge of orbital mechanics. I'm open to correction on this, but it does strike me that if you want to insert a spacecraft into a planetary orbit, you'd execute the burn before the craft had started to swing around the planet, which implies that you've still got line-of-sight contact. I'm assuming, in this line of thought, that you'd want the relative position of Earth and Mars to be as close as possible at the time of insertion - if the probe only starts relaying data when Earth and Mars have the sun between them to mess up the signal, it doesn't seem like good planning to me. I'm open to correction on this, of course - but "practically all orbit insertion burns"?

If anyone has Starry Night software, they could check out the relative positions of Earth and Mars at the time of insertion. I haven't got room to install it on this computer or I'd do it myself.

Anyway, Oberg spends a lot of time demonstrating that turning off the radio was part of the mission plan, which is apparently fair enough: though again, I don't know enough of the background to be sure one way or another. It's quite possible that the report itself, when viewed in the proper perspective, is as much of a work of fiction as the 9/11 Commission Report.

He then contradicts himself, however:

Nor is it true that “no cause for the probe’s loss was ever satisfactorily determined”, as Dark Mission claims. To the contrary, in hindsight it was excruciatingly clear what almost certainly happened.

“The Board was unable to find clear and conclusive evidence pointing to a particular scenario as the ‘smoking gun’,” the report explained, but “the Board concluded through a process of elimination...

I think the passage I've bolded shows where Hoagland got his conclusion from: yes, there may well be a cause established through a process of elimination as probable - but it's hardly "excruciatingly clear", otherwise the Board would not have hedged its bets in such an unequivocal way.

As for the next assertion about the acceptance testing for the Mars Polar Lander, this seems like an attempt at damage limitation. There were, by Oberg's own admission, two fatal flaws in the design. One was to do with the braking thrusters:

“They tested the [engine] ignition process at a temperature much higher than it would be in flight,” UPI’s source said. This was done because when the [engines] were first tested at the low temperatures predicted after the long cruise from Earth to Mars, the ignition failed or was too unstable to be controlled. So the test conditions were changed in order to certify the engine performance.

Oberg states that

the flaws in the [engine] testing were uncovered only a few days before the landing was to occur on December 3. By then it was too late to do anything about it.

I frankly find this difficult to believe. In a multi-million dollar programme that would become quite a focus of attention from scientists and media around the world, whoever was in charge of acceptance testing for a mission-crucial piece of kit was able to fudge the results? And how and why was this only discovered a few days before the burn was due to take place?

As a piece of damage limitation, this begs more questions than it answers.

We are also required to believe that NASA engineers have no equivalent of integration testing. I may, as an ex-programmer and analyst, only know the software jargon for this process, but surely there's an engineering equivalent?

Post-accident tests have shown that when the legs are initially unfolded during the final descent, springs push them so hard that they ‘bounce’ and trigger the microswitches by accident. As a result, the computer receives what it believes are indications of a successful touchdown, and it shuts off the engines. Ground testing prior to launch apparently never detected this because each of the tests was performed in isolation from other tests. One team verified that the legs unfolded properly. Another team verified that the microswitches functioned on landing.

I'm asking myself, are NASA really that stupid? And I'm finding it difficult to answer, "yes". Although, I have to admit, Oberg does make a good case that, thanks to political pressures and a poor climate of management, human errors have crept in.

I don't believe everything Hoagland says. He can get carried away by his own rhetoric at times: but i do think there's something fishy in the depths of NASA - there are enough whistleblowers on the Disclosure Project 2000 press conference video to demonstrate as much.

I do think he's right about certain things though: I'm pretty accustomed to the overwhelming probability that there's been a high-level cover-up of back-engineering and ET contact going on since 1947: and naturally NASA would have to be "kept onside" as part of that.

I haven't read Dark Mission so I don't know if Oberg has dealt the book a mortal blow. I don't trust Oberg because of his background, however, and as I say some of the article doesn't sit right for me.

And if you look at the photos of Iapetus Hoagland has on his website, they're pretty freaky IMO. Check it out.

Here's some good Hoagland videos. I trust his opinions and theory's a lot more than NASA. I'd love to hear these videos critiqued.






www.youtube.com...
www.youtube.com...
www.youtube.com... www.youtube.com...
www.youtube.com...
www.youtube.com...

[edit on 2-3-2009 by Sargoth]

Originally posted by rich23
As for the photo, the "face-like" features may no longer be apparent in that viewpoint and lighting, but there is nonetheless an underlying symmetry beneath features that may have been eroded.

It looks nothing like the original photo and if not for the pareidolia induced by the original you'd pay it no mind because it looks just like any other natural formation.

For anyone looking at the evidence, it's impossible to conclude that Oswald killed JFK, or that he was anything other than what he himself said he was - a patsy.

Off topic and wrong
mcadams.posc.mu.edu...
Last I'll say on that off-topic matter.

...sounds a little implausible to someone with no knowledge of orbital mechanics.

Then learn orbital mechanics. Just because your expectations are not met doesn't mean you're right, especially when you're not familiar the subject. This is a repeating problem with conspiracy theorists. Spend a few weeks or months learning the ins-and-outs of a spaceflight simulator and then tell me what you think.
orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk...
The information is readily available and if you really wanted the truth you'd find it.

Everybody check out this series of moon videos by Hoagland's associates. I'm certainly no expert in this area but they are pretty damn good IMO. The first one shows a huge alien craft blurred out by NASA. Love to hear all your comments.

www.fourwinds10.com...

[edit on 17-7-2009 by Sargoth]