Young Aussie genius whipping NASA in Moon Hoax Debate!

reply to post by Exuberant1

Doomed to fund and publicize the man you hate, increasing his profits with every thread bump....

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the man. I am not convinced that he is lying in his vids. I think he genuinely believes that men never set foot on the moon. He is dedicated to his project and I see nothing wrong with him making some $ with his personal passion.

As far as I've seen, he has not misrepresented himself. He doesn't pretend to be a scientist. Just an Average Joe looking back on history.

Originally posted by FoosM

All that detail, even down to the starless skies, no blast crater...

Originally posted byMactheKnife

And you're back to starless skies and craters ... even when those half-assed "theories" have been proven to be incredibly stupid and wrong. Ah well horses and water I suppose.

As an educator trying to simplify these matters for a learning audience, I have yet to find a satisfying way of bridging my intuition of a brilliant star-filled sky ( like in the Arizona desert but more so ) with the descriptions returned by the astronauts ( presumably an accurate account of what IS seen ).

It doesn't help that people often talk about different aspects of it as if they were the same thing. For instance people will say that in the absence of scattering the sky will be completely dark. I understand this to mean that the background against which the stars appear is completely dark, but it is also used ( in error I believe ) to make a case for background and field ( sky and stars ) both being completely dark, as in the lunar photos.

I understand that the lunar photos have a black sky because exposure-wise a choice is being made between photographing lunar-bound subjects and filming the stars in the sky. Accounts will sometimes talk about this as if it explains what a human will see, though of course that is not the case.

I understand that the astronauts wore gold-plated visors and that this affected their view of the sky, but I am less clear about what exactly they were able to see looking through them. I am essentially wondering what the Arizona night-sky would look like through a gold-plated visor, and whether you could see the stars clearly, or muted or not at all, and whether you could see the shadows cast by the starlight. Accounts will sometimes talk about this as if it explains what a human will see with their unconcealed eye, which I think unlikely.

I also imagine ( perhaps not correctly ) that the astronauts were privy to the magnificence of the heavens when looking through the capsule window. I know from their accounts that on the surface they could reference stars if they looked through a tube, though it isn't clear to me if that was to adjust for the effect of the visors.

Superimposed on what I sort of understand ( above ) is the question of how "daylight" ( i.e. shining sun ) affects what is seen, and how Earth-shine affects what is seen.

Clarity, anyone ???

reply to post by ConspiracyNut23


He has been caught lying and distorting facts to fit his agenda. Making money out of that not cool. I doubt that he is a youtube partner thought. He is just "asking donations" to "send him to moon". Which translates send him to a local pub in reality.

Originally posted by bansheegirl

Originally posted by FoosM

All that detail, even down to the starless skies, no blast crater...

Originally posted byMactheKnife

And you're back to starless skies and craters ... even when those half-assed "theories" have been proven to be incredibly stupid and wrong. Ah well horses and water I suppose.

As an educator trying to simplify these matters for a learning audience, I have yet to find a satisfying way of bridging my intuition of a brilliant star-filled sky ( like in the Arizona desert but more so ) with the descriptions returned by the astronauts ( presumably an accurate account of what IS seen ).

Clarity, anyone ???

You will not get far looking for answers for this subject.
The scientific community, including NASA will tell you, "Since the atmosphere is so slight (in regards to Mercury and our Moon), the sky would appear pitch black (except for the sun, stars, and other planets, when visible), even during the day. "

Yet you have Apollo astronauts stating they could not see any stars:

THE SKY IS A DEEP BLACK WHEN VIEWED FROM THE MOON, AS IT IS WHEN VIEWED FROM CIS-LUNAR SPACE, THE SPACE BETWEEN THE EARTH AND THE MOON. THE EARTH IS THE ONLY VISIBLE OBJECT OTHER THAN THE SUN THAT CAN BE SEEN, ALTHOUGH THERE HAVE BEEN REPORTS OF SEEING PLANETS. I MYSELF DID NOT SEE PLANETS FROM THE SURFACE BUT I SUSPECT THEY MIGHT BE VISIBLE.

Apollo 17

Schmitt - "We couldn't see the stars out the window or when we were out on the surface. It took the collimation of the telescope to eliminate all of the reflected light reaching your eye from your surroundings. Even in the LM shadow, there were too many bright things in your field-of-view for the stars to be visible."

And astronauts stating they could see stars if you tried during their EVAs.

Apollo 17

Cernan - "When you were in the lunar module, looking out the window, you certainly couldn't see stars. Using the telescope was sort of like being in a deep well; it cut out all the reflected light and let you see the stars. It was also generally true that, when you were on the surface in the LM's shadow, there were too many bright things in your field-of-view for the stars to be visible. But I remember that I wanted to see whether I could see stars, and there were times out on the surface when I found that, if you allowed yourself to just focus and maybe even just shielded your eyes to some degree, even outside the LM shadow you could see stars in the sky. And, quite frankly, under the right conditions here on Earth on a bright sunlit day, you can do the same thing. I could see stars through my helmet visor; not easily, but it can be done."

Though I have no idea why they couldnt see stars from the LM windows considering the windows were on the shadowed side.

Apollo 10:

Cernan: “The LM thrusters stick out like a sore thumb in earthshine, but they don’t keep you from seeing any of the stars at night it’s real well lit up.”

Regarding their gold visors, we had astronauts prancing around the moon not using their gold visors. So the gold visors cannot be the issue for not seeing stars.

The only unreasonable explanation has been "there were too many bright things in your field-of-view for the stars to be visible" What objects? Two story buildings? Big trucks? UFO's?

However, it doesnt explain the lack of discussion about seeing stars from looking out of the LM.
Or even the CM

If you believe that Apollo was a scientific endeavor, then you would expect that at least one of the astronauts would offer a detailed description of their surroundings ala Darwin.

We need to have people up there who can communicate what it feels like, not just pilots and engineers.

— Buzz Aldrin (born Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr), quoted in The Real Mars, 2004

So that was the problem, eh?

Though, Neil did a pretty good job with his first steps...

109:25:08 Armstrong: Yes, the surface is fine and powdery. I can kick it up loosely with my toe.
It does adhere in fine layers, like powdered charcoal, to the sole and sides of my boots. I only go
in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see the footprints of my
boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles.

Just wish he would have looked up once in a while.

Now he made these detailed description on the shadowed side of the LM (The side where you can barely see anything due to the pitch black shadows) with his visors down. So if he could see and describe black soil, you would think stars would be a piece of cake.

But, again, most, if not all, references to seeing stars come from post mission interviews and accounts in books. Where there any remarks during the missions on the moon? What did NASA expect the astronauts to see? Lets face it, stars and rocks would be the main subject of interest on the moon. An astronaut's attention would not be distracted by finding new flora and fauna.

After 6 missions, with 12 astronauts, you will not find any clear scientific observation of the moon regarding the heavens. There was even no attempt to do so. Not with photography, not with descriptions.





www.buffalostate.edu...
www.spacequotations.com...
www.honeysucklecreek.net...
www.enchantedlearning.com...
next.nasa.gov...

Before lead shielding

Before Van Allen began shielding his Geiger counters with a millimetre of lead, the instruments detected radiation with a dose rate equivalent of 312.5rad/hr to 11,666rad/hr for the outer belt and inner belt respectively

After lead shielding

Even after Van Allen shielded his Geiger counters with lead, the results were still equivalent to 10-100rad/hr. He concluded that effective shielding of astronauts was beyond engineering feasibility available at the time, that even a rapid transit through the belts would be hazardous, and that for these reasons the two belts must be classed as an uninhabitable region of space that all manned space flight must steer clear of.

Originally posted by MacTheKnife

So to address the shielding required (if only in a minor way) ... go back to the old source you cited (and misquoted above) on page 298, this one ...
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
What did your source have to say ?

The projected shielding of 10 grams per cm would protect a man from virtually all the effects of the outer belts lighter particles.

What was Apollo rated at ? IIRC even JW has quoted the average 8 gm/cm2 number. Does 10 vs 8 seem enough of a difference to you to make Apollo go from being safe to being a death trap ? So just the CM (not including any shielding due to the LM and SM) would almost have met the criteria you put up to "protect a man from virtually all the effects". Nobody has claimed the astronauts did not receive any radiation, just that the VABs are not the impassible, deadly barrier HB'ers have claimed.

Did you read my recent posts to what JW had stated the CM was rated as?

The Apollo capsule, with its aluminium honeycomb hull and outer epoxy resin ablator, was rated at 3gm/cm2 on the walls and 8gm/cm2 on the aft heatshield. The thicker portion of the spacecraft walls would bring the dose rate of such flares down to around 1,000rem/hr. The records show that 1400 of these minor flares occurred over all nine moon flights

So who is playing fast and loose with the numbers? NASA? Or J.W.?

As far as windows go, I believe nataylor's post on that same page had them rated at 1.8 gm/cm2. So what percentage of the particle flux would be coming in a direction to come through the windows ? Recall that the trapped protons and electrons will follow the magnetic field lines and be bouncing from north to south poles.

The charged particles in the Van Allen belts are omni-directional, so all external spacecraft surfaces are equally irradiated.

So, you still have a big problem to explain how they got passed it.



www.slideshare.net...
moonfaker.com...

Originally posted by FoosM

The scientific community, including NASA will tell you, "Since the atmosphere is so slight (in regards to Mercury and our Moon), the sky would appear pitch black (except for the sun, stars, and other planets, when visible), even during the day."

This is what I am referring to as the pitch black background, against which I assume ( in the absence of sun or Earthshine ) the stars should show up brilliantly and in profusion ( more spectacularly than on Earth ).

quote]Originally posted by FoosM

Apollo 17

Schmitt - "We couldn't see the stars out the window or when we were out on the surface. It took the collimation of the telescope to eliminate all of the reflected light reaching your eye from your surroundings. Even in the LM shadow, there were too many bright things in your field-of-view for the stars to be visible."

As I understand the situation one of the major effects of the sun shining in the sky ( and maybe the Earth, though I'm less certain how significant that effect is ) is that sky-wise there should be little effect on the stars because there is no scattering through thick atmosphere, but near ground level ( and I don't know how high you would have to be positioned to rise above this effect ) light is scattering of the regolith in all directions and maybe ( does the scattering effect extend to eye level ???) causing a lot of background illumination that makes it difficult to see things in the sky clearly.

Both this and the quote from Cernan seem to be talking about what they could see out the lander window after they had landed on the moon. My assumption would be that looking out into space on approach to the moon you would see an incredible, unimpeded starscape of the sort my intuition keeps telling me must indeed have been experienced by the astronauts at some point in their moon journey. That is perhape what is being referenced by your next excerpt :

quote]Originally posted by FoosM

Apollo 10:

Cernan: “The LM thrusters stick out like a sore thumb in earthshine, but they don’t keep you from seeing any of the stars at night it’s real well lit up.”

Originally posted by bansheegirl

Originally posted by FoosM
All that detail, even down to the starless skies, no blast crater...

Originally posted byMactheKnife
And you're back to starless skies and craters ... even when those half-assed "theories" have been proven to be incredibly stupid and wrong. Ah well horses and water I suppose.

As an educator trying to simplify these matters for a learning audience, I have yet to find a satisfying way of bridging my intuition of a brilliant star-filled sky ( like in the Arizona desert but more so ) with the descriptions returned by the astronauts ( presumably an accurate account of what IS seen ).
[snip]
Superimposed on what I sort of understand ( above ) is the question of how "daylight" ( i.e. shining sun ) affects what is seen, and how Earth-shine affects what is seen.

Clarity, anyone ???

The concept you need to grasp is instantaneous dynamic range. Let's talk cameras first as that easier to understand than the human visual system. A modern digital SLR might have an instantaneous dynamic range of somewhere around 11 or 12 "stops". A stop is a photographic term meaning a doubling or halving of exposure. Having an IDR of 12 stops means that if I represent the darkest object in the picture with a number = 1 for it's brightness then I can double that 12 times to ...2,4,8,16,32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048... to 4096 to represent the brightest thing in the picture. If I assigned a number to the brightest object in a picture it could only be (at most) 4096. Objects in real life that would have a bightness value of > 4096 will be captured by the camera and have a value of 4096. Objects in real life darker than 1 will be captured by the camera and have a value of 1. Now you can move the IDR up or down so as to capture (in the picture) darker or brighter objects by adjusting the exposure settings (aperture, shutter and "film" speed) but you can't capture objects accurately when their brightness values differ by more than 4096 times.
So let's make up a hypothetical situation where you have a black cat with gray speckles on a white sheet that has some offwhite dots. The speckles are 4x as bright as the black on the cat. The white sheet is 4x brighter than the offwhite dots. The offwhite dots are 1000x as bright as the speckles. So the scene itself has a range of brightness that exceeds the 4096 IDR of our camera. What can you do ? Well in any single picture you can only accurately capture 3 of the objects. I can set the exposure to capture the white of the sheet, the offwhite dots and the gray speckles but the black on the cat will be indistinguishable from the noise background in the picture. Or I can set the exposure so I can see the black of the cat, it's speckles and the offwhite dots but the sheet is now overexposed and looks about the same as the dots. On the Moon the astronauts set the exposure to capture the details of the lunar landscape. The stars are faint in comparison (nataylor had a good numerical analysis of this in a prior post in this thread). The cameras could not capture them. Had the astronauts increased the exposure the stars might have been visible in the pics but the lunar landscape would then be overexposed and the details of the lighter and darker parts lost (like the white sheet and the offwhite dots). The astronauts weren't on the Moon to take pictures of the stars. And given the cameras used it's dubious that the exposure controls could be set high enough to ever capture the stars.

The human eye and visual system work a bit differently than a camera but the basics still hold, there's a limit to the IDR the eye can see and while the eye can change it's exposure setting (it does so automatically) there's a limit to what it can perceive at any one moment. Turn on the interior lights in your car on a dark AZ night and see if you can see any stars while it's on. Even after turning off the lights, it'll take your eyes some minutes to adjust. The lunar landscape is like your interior lights. Adding in a sun visor is like wearing a pair of sunglasses. Sure they darken the interior lights but they darken the stars by the same amount. Wearing sunglasses (not unexpectedly) doesn't help in seeing stars.

Originally posted by bansheegirl
Apollo 17

Schmitt - "We couldn't see the stars out the window or when we were out on the surface. It took the collimation of the telescope to eliminate all of the reflected light reaching your eye from your surroundings. Even in the LM shadow, there were too many bright things in your field-of-view for the stars to be visible."

As I understand the situation one of the major effects of the sun shining in the sky ( and maybe the Earth, though I'm less certain how significant that effect is ) is that sky-wise there should be little effect on the stars because there is no scattering through thick atmosphere, but near ground level ( and I don't know how high you would have to be positioned to rise above this effect ) light is scattering of the regolith in all directions and maybe ( does the scattering effect extend to eye level ???) causing a lot of background illumination that makes it difficult to see things in the sky clearly.

Imagine you're out on a dark night but someone has turned on a spotlight behind you. It's very bright and lights up the all the ground in front of you. There's a dim firefly on that ground. W/o the spotlight it's easily visible, with the spotlight it's not. The ground is too bright and your eye's iris closes to dim all the light coming in to an acceptable strength. Now narrow your feild of view by looking through a paper tube so that only the 1 sq inch around the firefly is seen. It's still bright but without all the extra light coming in from all the other square inches, now blocked by the tube, your eye's iris opens up enough to allow enough light from the firefly into your retina to be able to see the firefly. You've changed the exposure setting of your eye by using the tube.

reply to post by MacTheKnife


Thanks, those are very good explanations, and help me to understand the dynamic ( pun intended ) going on. I did try PM by the way ( re space.com survivors ), but was told I can only PM ATS staff.

How does Earth-shine compare to Moon-shine ? Is it as simple as comparing the albedo of the moon and the Earth, and relating that as a ratio ( degree to which Earth illuminates the landscape on the moon ... regolith effects discounted ... compared to how much the full moon illuminates the landscape on the earth ) ???

Question

If the powdery surface of the moon clumped on and stuck to the astronauts boots, how where they still able to make such defined bootprints? Wouldnt their boots be clogged with regolith?

Remember, they regolith stuck so well to the boots that it made Buzz Aldrin's boots go from blue into a gray in color.

Originally posted by bansheegirl

Originally posted by FoosM

The scientific community, including NASA will tell you, "Since the atmosphere is so slight (in regards to Mercury and our Moon), the sky would appear pitch black (except for the sun, stars, and other planets, when visible), even during the day."

This is what I am referring to as the pitch black background, against which I assume ( in the absence of sun or Earthshine ) the stars should show up brilliantly and in profusion ( more spectacularly than on Earth ).

Yes that would be correct. Another non issue for the moon is pollution.
Lets not forget that there are planets and stars that are visible with the naked eye during daytime hours.
Its not required for it to be pitch black outside for even us Earthlings to see stars in the sky.

When you look at photos like these
starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov...

It does not look like the regolith is so bright to impair human vision. It doesnt even bother exposures on the camera.

All one would have to do is simply look up away from the ground and look at the stars and wait for a few seconds for you eyes to adjust... if it were so bright on the ground.

But, I recall NASA stating that the visors cut down up to 90% of the sunlight? Now if this was the case, I could understand why seeing stars would be difficult during an EVA, maybe even not possible. But then for that matter, it would be hard to see anything in the shadow. From adjusting settings to the camera on the chest, to finding the ladder on the LM. And we still have Cernan who said he could see stars, contradicting Neil who said it was not possible.

b. STARS WOULD NOT BE VISIBLE because of the nearly 20 coatings deposited on the Lunar Extravehicular Visor Assembly (helmet) to protect the astronauts' eyes from glare and the sun's harmful energy. Without these protective coatings the stars would have been readily visible on the daylight side of the moon as the astronauts made their way over its cratered surface.

www.astronomy.org...


Sorry to say, but the photos, the eyewitness accounts, the science, just doesn't not agree with each other when it comes to this subject.

reply to post by FoosM


Yea FoosM, I totally agree about the sunshield/visor, especially when one of the astronauts had to be TOLD to put their sun visor down.. as he looked directly at the sun and then said..

"but I can't see anything with it up" .......still think that hilarious~!!

and the heat from the sun doesn't melt pictures left on the surface of the moon either.. it's so comfy and cozy up there ya know...

bah~! why doesn't the USA just call it what it was/is and chalk it up to a time where the country formerly known as the USSR as our enemy and we just could loose..........no matter what the ......cost..

but, then i guess NASA wouldn't get the funding to go find more water on mars... DEFINITELY important to ensure ALL planets have water you know.. no rock must unturned...

reply to post by FoosM

Sorry to say, but the photos, the eyewitness accounts, the science, just doesn't not agree with each other when it comes to this subject.

You know that's simply not true:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/7a0dabc32e91.jpg[/atsimg]

(Sorry, Black!)

Edit to add: I love your "NASA" source:

Earth's Nearest Neighbor in Space

Third Grade

www.astronomy.org...

Originally posted by FoosM
It does not look like the regolith is so bright to impair human vision. It doesnt even bother exposures on the camera.

Holy hell. Are you serious? You do realize that the camera has a dynamic exposure. You know F-stop for example?

Moonraking

How JFK got the idea to land men on the moon?



Sir Roger Moore says JFK Murdered by Conspiracy


In previous posts I made drew several lines between James Bond movies, Howard Hughes, Special effects, etc, to the moon hoax.:

This technology, Front Screen Projection, was also used for "Diamonds are Forever" '71. As you many you may or may not know, there is a scene in the film where: ...Sean Connery (as James Bond) breaks into a secret facility in Nevada where fake moonwalking is being filmed. Some people believe Apollo moonwalking could have been filmed at the Nevada Test Site or inside a hangar at nearby Area 51.

&

Ken Adam, production designer on "Dr. Strangelove" and "Barry Lyndon", said he was not asked to work on 2001 because Kubrick had already worked for a year with experts from NASA and had done a lot of research; Adam said he would have been "too far behind." (Note: Ken Adam did production design for the 1971 movie "Diamonds are Forever" that includes a moonscape.

etc... www.abovetopsecret.com...


I also made several posts looking at the background of NASA and Apollo which included JFK, von Braun, etc.

Starting with this post: www.abovetopsecret.com...
and continuing on that page:

During its first year in office, the Kennedy administration approved the creation of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the National Reconnaissance Program (NRP), entities whose existence was classified Secret and Top Secret, respectively. The NRP comprised the satellite reconnaissance and aerial overflight programs conducted by the CIA, Air Force, and Navy. For its part, the NRO served as the institutional home for those programs, reviewed proposals for new systems, set common security standards, arranged for launches, and provided other services and forms of oversight. Established in 1960, the existence of the NRO was not declassified until 1992.

The question is...

On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy announced before a special joint session of Congress the dramatic and ambitious goal of sending an American safely to the Moon before the end of the decade.

Where did he get such a crazy idea to land men on the moon... after his administration would be over?

Reactions to the lunar proclamation were mixed within NASA, ranging from excitement to disbelief. The Mercury astronauts particularly were all too aware that NASA didn’t have the technology for such a program. Gus Grissom called the President “nuts”. Nevertheless, they stood behind the president. When Kennedy was assassinated in November 1963, many within NASA felt more committed to reaching his lunar landing goal by the decade’s end.


Enter Bond, Ja-errr Fleming.

It was the spring of 1960. The hosts were Senator and Mrs. John F. Kennedy. The guest of honor was John Kennedy's favorite author, Ian Fleming. "Kennedy asked Fleming what his man James Bond might do is M. assigned him to get rid of Castro. Fleming had been in British Intelligence … He was quick to answer. According to his biographer, John Pearson, Fleming thought he would have himself some fun …

"[He] said there were three things which really mattered to the Cubans—money, religion, and sex. Therefore, he suggested a triple whammy. First the United States should send planes to scatter [counterfeit] Cuban money over Havana. Second, using the Guantanamo base, the United States should conjure some religious manifestation, say, a cross of sorts in the sky which would induce the Cubans to look constantly skyward. And third, the United States should send planes over Cuba dropping pamphlets to the effect that owing to American atom bomb tests the atmosphere over the island had become radioactive; that radioactivity is held longest in the beards, and that radioactivity makes men impotent. As a consequence the Cubans would shave their beards, and without bearded Cubans there would be no revolution.

"Fleming was staying at the house of British newsman Henry Brandon. The next day CIA director Allen Dulles called Brandon to speak to Fleming. Brandon said his guest had already left Washington. Dulles expressed great regret. He had heard about Fleming's terrific ideas for doing in Castro and was sorry he wouldn't be able to discuss them with him in person. "It is testimony to the resounding good sense exercised by the CIA during the Secret War that all three Fleming's spoof ideas were in one form or another attempted---or at least seriously considered."

Now why would the CIA take such ideas... as odd as they sounded, so seriously? Well because it was Fleming who suggested them. A little about Fleming:

Fleming instigated a plan named Operation Ruthless to obtain details of the Enigma codes used by the German Navy by crashing a captured German aircraft into the English Channel, where the British crew, dressed in Luftwaffe uniforms, might be rescued by a German patrol boat. The "survivors" could then kill the German crew and hijack the ship, thus obtaining the required information. Much to the annoyance of Alan Turing and Peter Twinn at Bletchley Park, the mission was never carried out. Fleming's niece Lucy Fleming, on a BBC Radio Four programme entitled "The Bond Correspondence" broadcast on 24 May 2008, stated that the reason given was that an official at the Royal Air Force pointed out that if they were to drop a downed Heinkel bomber in the English Channel, it would probably sink rather quickly. However, the plan necessitated that the bomber was to sink so as to avoid its identification by the Germans – the "survivors" were to take to a rubber dinghy to await rescue.

As you can see, Fleming was no stranger to psyops, tricking the enemy with some outlandish plots.

Fleming also conceived a plan to use the British occultist Aleister Crowley to trick Rudolf Hess into attempting to contact a fake cell of anti-Churchill Englishmen in Britain, but this plan was not used because soon afterwards Rudolf Hess flew to Scotland in an attempt to broker peace behind Hitler's back. Anthony Masters, in his book The Man Who Was M: The Life of Charles Henry Maxwell Knight asserts that Fleming himself conceived the plan that lured Hess into flying to Scotland in May 1941, to negotiate Anglo–German peace with Churchill, and which resulted in Hess's capture. This claim has no other source, however.[9]

Operation Goldeneye was also one of Fleming's conceptions, a plan to maintain communication with Gibraltar and help in its defence in the unlikely event that Spain joined the Axis Powers and assisted Germany in invasion. Fleming is also credited with the idea for Operation Mincemeat, a highly successful deception by the Allies, before the invasion of Sicily in 1943

In 1944, Fleming was given control of a specialist unit of commandos, known as 30 Commando, or 30 Assault Unit (30AU: not to be confused with the Auxiliary Units in which his elder brother had served). He was not their field commander but their planner. As an intelligence officer at the Naval Intelligence Division (NID), he had an idea of what information and equipment the enemy had that might be of interest to the Allies and where it was likely to be located. He detailed the "scalps" he required and his "Red Indians", as he called them, were then sent off to acquire them.

Following the success of 30 Assault Unit, it was decided to establish a "Target Force", which became known as T-Force. Fleming sat on the committee that selected the targets for this unit, helping to create what were known as the "Black Books" which were issued to the officers of this unit. The infantry component of T-Force was in part made up of the 5th Battalion of the King's Regiment, which supported the British 2nd Army. It was responsible for securing targets of interest to the British military. These included nuclear laboratories, gas research centres and individual rocket scientists. The unit's most notable coup was during the advance on the German port of Kiel, where it captured the research centre for German engines used for the V-2 rocket, Messerschmitt Me 163 fighters and high speed U Boats.

Ian Fleming was to use elements of this activity in his 1955 James Bond novel Moonraker. The story of T-Force and Fleming's connection to its work remained unknown until it was revealed in Sean Longden's book T-Force, the Race for Nazi War Secrets, 1945, published in 2009

Fleming's intelligence work in the Naval Intelligence Division provided the background for his spy novels.

Leiter had introduced Kennedy to Fleming's books during his recovery from an operation in 1955.

By the time of the Dulles correspondence, James Bond was becoming big in the United States -- mainly thanks to President John F. Kennedy including From Russia With Love on the list of his 10 favorite books. Fleming acknowledges that fact in a 1962 letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. "I am delighted to take this opportunity to thank Kennedys everywhere for the electric effect their commendation has had on my sales in America."

The James Bond 007 series of books written by British author Ian Fleming were mildly successful in the late 1950s and early 1960s. After Fleming met President John F. Kennedy, the books became extremely popular in the United States, resulting in a series of 007 movies.

Wait a minute... Dulles?

Other letters show Fleming's relationship with more casual acquaintences -- except his casual friendships were with CIA directors or U.S. attorneys general. Allen Dulles, the one-time CIA chief, didn't know Fleming's address when he wrote a letter on April 24, 1963. "I have received and finished reading your latest "On Her Majesty's Secret Service." I hope you have not really destroyed my old friend and colleague James Bond, but I fear his bride has gone." More than a year later, in June 1964, Dulles writes again. "I see that "From Russia With Love" is now a movie and although I rarely see them I plan to take this one in."

Ok, to recap.
Fleming worked for intelligence, was a planner, concocted plots to trick the enemy.
Fleming and JFK had met prior to Kennedy proposing to land men on the moon.
Fleming proposed some off the wall ideas on how to get rid of Castro during a dinner.

Now the question is, did Fleming suggest an outlandish idea to Kennedy to fool the soviets and their more advanced space program?


Remember:

Kennedy as president had little direct interest in the U.S. space program. He was not a visionary enraptured with the romantic image of the last American frontier in space and consumed by the adventure of exploring the unknown. He was, on the other hand, a Cold Warrior with a keen sense of Realpolitik in foreign affairs, and worked hard to maintain balance of power and spheres of influence in American/Soviet relations. The Soviet Union's non-military accomplishments in space, therefore, forced Kennedy to respond and to serve notice that the U.S. was every bit as capable in the space arena as the Soviets. Of course, to prove this fact, Kennedy had to be willing to commit national resources to NASA and the civil space program. The Cold War realities of the time, therefore, served as the primary vehicle for an expansion of NASA's activities and for the definition of Project Apollo as the premier civil space effort of the nation. Even more significant, from Kennedy's perspective the Cold War necessitated the expansion of the military space program, especially the development of ICBMs and satellite reconnaissance systems.

Perhaps the strongest indication that Kennedy was having doubts about Apollo, though, came in the fall of 1963, when he made a bold proposal for “a joint expedition to the Moon” during an address before the 18th General Assembly of the United Nations. The day after Kennedy’s speech, the powerful chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Independent Offices, congressman Albert Thomas, wrote Kennedy asking if he had changed his position on the need for a strong US space program. Kennedy replied in a letter that the United States could only cooperate in space from a position of strength.

So could it be that the idea to send men on the moon came from Fleming?
Is this why so many aspects of the hoax can be found in his films?

You see, if you look at Apollo as a ruse, a hoax, against the Russians, you can understand why the program was so successful, and why the program ended when it did, and any future trips to the moon never occurred.

Basically the US was trying to catch up to the Soviets. By proposing a mission to the moon, the soviets got sidetracked trying to do it themselves. While the US focused on their NRO missions. Basically, Saturn was doing what it was meant to do, bring up heavy payloads for the DoD. In the end, the Soviets, curious about how advanced the US was, agreed to working in space together. In this fashion, the US could finally see how advanced the USSR was, and the USSR found out how not so advanced the US was.





www.hmss.com...
en.wikipedia.org...
www.neatorama.com...

Originally posted by MacTheKnifeI don't see how the numbers JW put forth can be put into the honest mistake category.

If there's anything I've learned in this thread, it's that there is no end to the amount of honest stupidity the human spirit can produce.

Originally posted by bansheegirl
As an educator trying to simplify these matters for a learning audience, I have yet to find a satisfying way of bridging my intuition of a brilliant star-filled sky ( like in the Arizona desert but more so ) with the descriptions returned by the astronauts ( presumably an accurate account of what IS seen ).

Trying to bridge intuition and fact is often difficult, and I'm glad that you've noticed the discrepancy and are seeking answers instead of just assuming intuition is right.

reply to post by FoosM


FoosM, you substantially edited bansheegirl's post, allowing you to cut and paste your usual linkspam without directly responding to each of her points.

Originally posted by Komodo
reply to post by FoosM

 

bah~! why doesn't the USA just call it what it was/is and chalk it up to a time where the country formerly known as the USSR as our enemy and we just could loose..........no matter what the ......cost..

Ah, yes, so NASA faked going to the moon, because of the Russians, and then Russia didn't expose them because--

Hm. That's odd. There's not a single credible theory. Even the usual "wheat deal" HBs like to throw out before changing the subject as quickly as possible doesn't explain why the USSR didn't just expose the US anyway and use the wheat as proof, or blackmail them for, oh, the entire duration of the Cold War.

If the only fake part was actually the maned aspect then how would Russia know??

I don't believe that's a sustainable argument as most have not challenged the fact that the US did get craft to the moon..