Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Highly Unlikely Conspiracies

Lost NASA footage from the moon landing
A year and a half ago the British PM Theresa May stunned the world by introducing into international relations a new, rather casual standard of proof—“highly likely”—in regard to the very strange case of the Sergei Skripal poisoning. It is part of a technique that is applied as follows. Make an unsubstantiated accusation of some party being “highly likely” to have committed a certain crime. Demand that the accused party confess to the crime, disclose all relevant information and agree to pay reparation. If this demand is not met, impose punishment.

It is “highly likely,” the British government claimed, that a couple of Russian tourists secretly employed by a nonexistent Russian government agency called “GRU” smeared some poison gas on the doorknob of the front door of the house occupied by Sergei Skripal, a former Russian officer who had been caught spying, did time in Russia and was released in a spy swap deal. This heinous act of smearing poison gas on the doorknob occurred after Skripal had left his house, never to return. So badly was the doorknob contaminated with poison gas that the entire roof of the building had to be replaced.

The name of the poison gas in question, called “Novichok,” was borrowed from a British television series. “Novichok” (which is Russian for “newbie”) was imputed to had been designed by the Russians (the Soviets, actually) who had once made it in a factory outside of Russia that was subsequently destroyed by the United States. Russia (as opposed to the USSR) never had a chemical weapons program (or so said international inspectors) but the British still do, and have kept samples of “Novichok” at a facility just down the road from where these events took place. They used their samples in order to identify the gas that was smeared on the doorknob, declaring it to be very pure.

Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found in great distress on a park bench and were rushed to a hospital with the help of the UK’s chief army nurse who just happened to have been strolling by just then. Although “Novichok” was designed to kill thousands of soldiers on a battlefield, it failed to kill Skripal or his daughter, whom the British have been keeping prisoner at a secret location ever since that event. Yulia appeared in a single staged interview where she read out a Russian translation of an obviously English script that had been handed to her and bore signs of a tracheotomy (which is pretty damned useless on somebody who has been paralyzed by a nerve agent).

This takes care of means and opportunity, but what about the motive? Well, clearly, Putin ordered this retired former spy to be murdered by a couple of bumbling tourists on a hookers and weed tour of London who took a side trip to look at a cathedral using an exotic poison gas in order to make sure that the FIFA World Cup championship, which Russia was hosting and which was just about to start, would go off without any international embarrassment. It is rather untraditional to assassinate spies exchanged in a spy swap because it undermines future spy swaps, but Putin, being a former spymaster himself, probably wouldn’t have known that and nobody at the mythical “GRU” knew either.

In any case, it is “highly likely” that this is exactly how and why all of this happened, and if you don’t believe that then you are a conspiracy theorist and your conspiracy theories need to be subjected to a thorough, lavishly funded debunking campaign. Elements of this campaign include accusing you of lack of patriotism and of aiding and abetting the enemy, paying “experts” to browbeat you with their superior acumen and knowledge (including secret knowledge to which you are not privy because of national security concerns) and feeding you false information as bait in order to discredit you once you take the bait and try to run with it.

The highly likely outcome is that you will end up making yourself look ridiculous. You are highly likely to come to be seen as a deranged person who quests for some exotic truth but doesn’t realize the far more basic truth of what’s good for you: keeping your head down, your mouth shut, and just going with the flow. After all, what’s more important, telling the truth or getting rich? “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” is a frequent rejoinder. And, as everyone knows, getting rich usually involves telling a lie or two or three and looking the other way when others do the same. If you refuse to play ball, your career and life prospects dim appreciably. It may be honorable and noble to quest after the truth but, chances are, your wife and children won’t thank your for it—just ask Julian Assange.

Nevertheless, most people who have a functioning neuron or two between the ears find it rather humiliating, demeaning and generally unsatisfying to settle for a load of bullshit like the preposterous Skripal saga outlined above. To avoid such negative emotions, we need a mechanism for defeating the process by which we are force-fed lies that doesn’t involve any sort of quixotic, self-defeating quest for the ultimate truth.

In order to develop this mechanism, we need to first defeat a certain other mechanism, which is almost innate: when we find out that X is not the truth, our minds immediately ask, But what is the truth?—and if no answer is immediately available we start making assumptions and jumping to conclusions because persisting in a state of partial ignorance and balancing several mutually contradictory notions causes mental discomfort.

The ability to defeat this mechanism is something we can look for when we try to tell the sheepdogs from the sheep. As soon as we question the dominant narrative, the sheep among us, whose minds are primitive, immediately ask: “So what’s the real story?” And when you say, “I don’t know,” they immediately respond with “Well, let me know once you find out.” Don’t feel defeated when that happens; just write “baa” next to their name and move on. Life is too short to waste any of it conversing on complex subjects with people whose motto is “Certainty in Ignorance.” Of each person, ask, What is this person’s usefulness? Sheep aren’t worth talking to, but they are good to eat, save money on mowing and make fine socks and sweaters.

Once we filter out the sheep and train our minds so that we can remain comfortable while maintaining a skeptical view of all facts at our disposal, conspiracy theory becomes a very useful sport. In fact, it is quite a popular sport. Cornell University professor David Collum recently tweeted the following:
I am a “conspiracy theorist.” I believe men and women of wealth and power conspire. If you don't think so, then you are what is called “an idiot.” If you believe stuff but fear the label, you are what is called “a coward.”
I pretty much agree with Collum, although in place of “believe stuff” I would say “are skeptical of the official story” because what’s key here is not what you believe but what you refuse to accept as the truth unquestioningly. Like it or not, nobody is going to present you with “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth” on a silver platter tied with ribbons and bows accompanied by a bit of fanfare. Instead, the best you are ever likely to obtain is limited, skewed, distorted knowledge leavened with a bit of outright falsehood.

I suppose I am a “conspiracy theorist” too. Whenever I write something that questions the veracity of some official narrative, someone (probably a troll) pops up and asks me what I think of 9/11. Here is what I typically reply:
I totally believe that it was possible to knock down three steel-framed buildings using two flying aluminum cans loaded with kerosene, luggage and meat. I have proven that this is possible by throwing two beer cans at three chain-link fences. All three fences were instantly swallowed up by holes in the ground that mysteriously opened up right under them and in which they were instantaneously incinerated into fine oxide powder that coated the entire neighborhood. Anybody who does not believe my experimental results is obviously a tin-foil-hat crackpot conspiracy theorist.
Lots of people read this and ran away bleating; a few people bust a gut laughing because this is (trust me on this!) actually quite funny. Some people took offense at someone ridiculing an event in which thousands of people died. (To protect their tender sensibilities they should consider emigrating to a country that isn’t run by a bunch of war criminals.)

But if you do see the humor in this, then you may be up to the challenge, which is to pull out a useful signal (a typical experimentalist’s task) out of a mess of unreliable and contradictory data. Only then would you be in a position to persuasively argue—not prove, mind you!—that the official story is complete and utter bullshit.

Note that everything beyond that point, such as arguing what “the real story” is, is strictly off-limits. If you move beyond that point you open yourself up to well-organized, well-funded debunking. But if all you produce is a very large and imposing question mark, then the only way to attack it is by producing certainty—a very tall order! In conspiracy theory, as in guerrilla warfare, you don’t have to win. You just have to not lose long enough for the enemy to give up.

When calling bullshit some techniques are more powerful than others. Pointing out physical impossibilities is the best. The poisoning victim left his house never to return before the perpetrators smeared the toxic gas on the doorknob of its front door. Beyond that there is the preponderance of evidence technique: pointing out a very large number of incongruous details that cast doubt on the official story, forcing the debunkers to tackle each and every one of them by providing plausible explanations for each one.

Short of demonstrating physical impossibility, there is an almost equally powerful technique: pointing out (using physics and math, if possible) that the event, as described, was highly unlikely. There is a common saying: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.” Analogously, if something is highly unlikely, it probably didn’t happen. The burden of proof then rests with whoever claims that it did happen.

Let’s work through an example. Some people still claim that American astronauts landed on the moon. (Their name is a bit of a giveaway: they are “astro”-nauts, and so perhaps their exploits took place within the astral plane.) About a quarter of Americans didn’t believe that the moon landings happened at the time they were said to have taken place. Five decades later the doubters form solid majorities within many parts of the world.

The Apollo mission story was never particularly believable. The preponderance of evidence technique has been used to poke lots of holes in it. Here’s a very much shortened list of the incongruities:

First, there are multiple signs of forgery. There are multiple indications that the official Lunar landing photographs were shot in a studio. In all of the photos lunar dust the wrong color: flat gray instead of reddish. Quite plausibly, the studio simulated the cratered lunar surface by filling it with Portland cement and throwing rocks and pebbles at it. Shadows don’t run parallel but converge to a point, indicating that the source of the illumination was a studio light rather than sunlight. The claim that the photos were shot on the Moon using a film camera is implausible because temperatures on the lunar surface are too cold for film to work at all in the shadow and hot enough to melt the film in sunlight with nothing in between. In any case, since the Moon lies outside the Van Allen belts, solar and interstellar radiation would have at least fogged, and probably ruined the film. Astronauts, who had cameras strapped to their chests and wore cumbersome pressurized gloves, couldn’t have plausibly framed, focused and exposed virtually all of the shots to produce perfect studio quality. In some official photos the shadows run in different directions because multiple studio lights had been used. The video of astronauts cavorting on the lunar surface appears to also have been shot in a studio on Earth and shown in slow motion. There is no crater under the lunar lander which would have been formed by the engine during descent. The dust under the lander is undisturbed except for footprints. Clearly, the lander was placed on the scene using a crane. In all of the photos the sky is completely black instead of being filled with brilliant stars, planets and galaxies.


Second, there are multiple signs of cover-up and guilty demeanor. All of the magnetic tapes from the Apollo missions have been destroyed along with most of the plans. In particular, blueprints of the lunar lander are nowhere to be found. The astronauts, when asked to swear on a Bible on camera that they have been to the moon, reacted rather strangely and refused. The lunar rocks that were supposedly retrieved from the Moon and given out as presents have turned out to be either missing, indistinguishable from asteroids that have been collected by Antarctic expeditions, or fossilized wood from the Nevada desert. Also, the Apollo missions being the crowning achievements of human space exploration, we would expect a huge deal to have been made of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, which was just a few days ago, but nothing of the sort happened.

All of this is quite puzzling but rather inconclusive and open to counterargument and rationalizations. On the other hand, it is difficult to argue that the Apollo missions were outright physical impossibilities. But it is quite possible to argue that they were highly unlikely—so highly unlikely that the chance of all of them transpiring as described is sufficiently negligible as to be discounted entirely. Sure, the suicide stabbed himself in the back through the heart 10 times over a five-year period—and survived. A likely story!

First, a bit of probability theory: in evaluating the probability of success of a sequence of events, the probabilities of each step in the sequence multiply. As was correctly pointed out by the Nazi-American rocket scientist Werner von Braun, a simple version of a single multistage rocket that flies to the Moon, lands and flies back, would have required a rocket of such ridiculously huge dimensions that it was unthinkable. But probably unbeknownst to von Braun, a more complicated and more doable version of the mission had already been worked out by the Russian scientist Yuri Kondratyuk back in 1919, and which the Apollo program adopted. It made it possible to limit the starting payload size to 100-140 tonnes—something that Saturn V rocket could handle. The problem with Kontratyuk’s version is that it introduced many new potential points of failure.


Let’s enumerate the steps of Kondratyuk’s method. A multiple-stage rocket lifts the payload to near-Earth orbit. The orbital module separates from the last stage of the rocket, turns around and docks to the lunar module. Then the last stage of the rocket fires again, accelerating to Earth boost velocity and driving it toward the Moon. Then the rocket stage disconnects and crashes into the Moon along a ballistic trajectory. Then the lunar modules brake and enter lunar orbit. Then the lander undocks from the orbital module, descends and lands on the Moon. Then, once the mission on the surface is completed, the ascent module disconnects from the lander, fires its rocket to enter lunar orbit and docks to the orbital module. After the crew is transferred to the orbital module, the ascent module is disconnected. Then the orbital module fires its rocket to fly back to Earth. Before reentry, the crew is transferred to the descent module, the service module separates and the descent module plummets through the atmosphere.

Count the steps: there are 13 of them. Now, suppose that each step is 99% reliable. Then the probability of the overall mission being successful is 0.9913 or 88%. Problem is, practical experience of failures during space missions during the 60s and 70s puts the chance of success at each step at around 60%. Now, 0.613 gives us the chances of success of any given Apollo mission that lands on the moon at 0.13%. There were purportedly six Apollo missions that landed on the moon. 0.00136 gives us a truly astronomically small probability of success: 5×10–18. That’s one chance of success for every 200,000,000,000,000,000 attempts.

Suppose you don’t like the 60% reliability number. Maybe those NASA scientists were just extraordinarily good and managed to make each step 90% reliable—a tall order, considering that they had to get it right on first try. Then the chance of all six Apollo missions being successful is one in 3,707. But then the 90% number is itself highly unlikely.

As far “highly unlikely” goes, the Apollo missions pretty much set the gold standard. It leads us to conclude that it is highly unlikely that any Americans ever set foot on the Moon. Now, a lot of people are understandably flabbergasted at the possibility that it has been possible to pull off a hoax of this magnitude for 50 years. Sure, that’s highly unlikely too. I’ll leave it as an exercise for the readers to calculate the probability of pulling it off, but my hunch is that it is many orders of magnitude higher than one in 200,000,000,000,000,000 because I think it highly unlikely that an overwhelming percentage of highly compensated professionals wouldn’t keep their mouths shut in order to save their jobs, protect their reputations and, if the stakes are high enough, stay alive.

So, yeah, sure, Americans landed on the Moon six times. Lucky, lucky Americans! Soooo lucky!

29 comments:

Grant Piper said...

Well, that wraps it all up then!
I call it being 'willfully naive' to believe the official story unquestioningly (and worse, to even defend it!).
But there is also the intentional intimidation aspect of having people swallow a preposperous story - they know it is unbelievable, the populous know it is unbelievable, but as part of the power play... The populous is cowed, and know it, and can be counted on to swallow the next big lie, provided it is served with lots of well dressed gravitas.
I agree, rarely will you ever get a glimpse of the true story, but all you need to know is that the official story isn't.
Regarding anniversaries on the quiet, MH17 is a standout.
I wish you well Dimitry.

Grant Piper said...

I forgot - lucky? no, exceptional.

Nils said...

One thing in connection to this topic I have been wondering about is the rationale for the Soviet leadership at the time not to call the Americans out on what must have been more or less an obvious lie to the scientific leadership of the USSR. Could you kindly offer some insight or educated guessing on that?

karlos said...

Recently I tried to find some moon landing hoax videos that I watched in the past. Y-tube kept listing recent "official" videos of the pro-US apollo moon landing bullshit. I gave up the search. Refreshing to read something that puts the "official" NASA story a complete sham! So now U.S. is going back to the moon, and then Mars! Hand me another beer. Great article.

Kevin Frost said...

My favourite line, which I believe you once posted in the comments section is this website is: 'people, if you don't believe in conspiracies you can't possibly believe in politics, or history for that matter. Do you believe in politics?' But there's another angle worth considering - pertinent not to scientific facts but rather facts of a criminal nature. The post 9/11 ideological condition has made fools of just about everyone. We all eagerly vend our considerations about what went on, like with Building 7, or citing Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth and all this. But I think there's something that most of us are missing; it's this: the facts of the matter regarding 9/11 are facts of a distinctive type. They concern crimes and therefore must be ascertained in a highly coded and quite public manner all according to laws that largely proceed from the Common Law tradition that Anglos take such pride in. What happened on that September morning is not for you or I or Noam Chomsky or even the Under Secretary of Defence to say. All of these, including public officials, are quite welcomed to their private opinions, but a public judgement concerning a crime, a judgement that has the weight to send folks up for long sentences or worse is something that requires a public investigation carried out by recognised officials 'according to the book' so that when a judgement is finally made in a public court it is binding on all because the evidence is public evidence available to all, at least in principle. This is absolutely essential to the whole hoary edifice of 'the rule of law'. That didn't happen. And that's what really got lost in the theatrical spectacle. And every step in this direction, with bombings in London, pressure cooker horrors in Boston and a host of other dubious events up to and including the Skripal case all exhibit the same tendency. The public is presented with no proof to back up the assertions of the politicos. Obama, when he first inaugurated the Russia talk just before leaving office put it succinctly: 'trust the intelligence agencies'. That's it. To conclude: I normally make it a point of principle to shove the 9/11 business into peoples faces just for forms sake but it's probably more convincing for the sheepish to make the point that the rule of law was seriously violated and that that's the point: it's nothing about Arabs, the Mossad or who Cheney and Co. were in cahoots with etc. There are a few people who care about these things, though not as many as one might think. Still the argument has the advantage that it cuts through the predictable rhetoric already exhaustively rehearsed and presents a truth that can hardly be denied. It opens a little door.

StevenStarr said...

In support of your statements, see the links copied below for detailed scientific analysis of the US Apollo Space Project:

http://www.aulis.com/moonbase2015.htm The safe reentry of astronauts into the earth's atmosphere was impossible using the published parameters of the descent of the landing capsule (did not use skip landing technique developed much later) plus US lunar lander is missing (The descent-stage top deck of the LM had a continuous, firm upper surface with no routes through which the hot gases could escape when the ascent engine was fired.)

http://www.aulis.com/apollo17_ascent.htm For the rocket with the same propulsion as Apollo, its Reactive Control System (RCS) has to be much quicker than that of Apollo, and the resulting Orbit Insertion trajectory cannot be performed with Apollo's guidance logic.

http://www.aulis.com/scientific_analysis.htm Very detailed analysis of hundreds of photos of astronauts on moon showing all types of alterations were made to them.

http://www.aulis.com/illusion.htm Detailed summary of discrepancies by Soviet/Russian scientist who graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology majoring in Aerodynamics

http://www.aulis.com/photostudy.htm Detailed photostudy of an Apollo 15 image shows a host of fabrications

NowhereMan said...

Great post Dmitry. An additional factor that often gets overlooked in such events is that they are at their core magic shows, and the first rule of magic is that the audience actually desperately wants to be fooled. Never more so than in the cases of the moon landings and 9-11, to name just the two of the most prominent recent examples. That willful suspension of disbelief makes the magician's job all that much easier, and in the aftermath, strongly reduces the inclination to question the magic when contradictory facts arise. Of course good magicians worth their salt realize this and capitalize on it during and after the fact, which makes it all the more unlikely that any of the lower level conspirators will later step out of line and reveal the truth, as they'd know full well that they wouldn't be believed anyway. It's a self-reinforcing lie - an alternative truth, if you will - that's damn near impossible to dispel once it gains serious traction. I imagine that 100 years from now if society's still functioning we'll still be regaled with the legends of the Great Moon Landing and the US's heroic response to the tragic attacks of 9-11-2001, even though a small percentage of us will have long since written them off as pure hyperbolic bullshit on the part of a desperate dying empire.

Mike D said...
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Stanislav Datskovskiy said...

Seems as if they did have at least a Lunohod-style probe, however -- the retroreflector mirror somehow did end up installed on the moon, and appears to still work.

Pamela Storer said...

The well credentialed psychologist, Julien Jaynes - whose theory that consciousness developed from language I never accepted incidentally - did point out that we classify, categorise, judge and estimate the value of other people all the time. We do this, he says because our opinion of others acts as a filter. The higher we esteem anyone, the more influence over us their words are likely to have. The converse also holds - those we hold in low esteem have little influence over us.
So, All we need to do is ask ourselves "do I hold May, the US Congress and Presidents etc, in high esteem, as truthful, reliable people". Once you are clear you dont - and if you do, you'll believe anything - what they say carries no weight with you. Thus I never did believe that anyone went to the Moon - especially, for some reason I can't quite analyse, after I saw the landing module - and as for believing Theresa May on anything, including that the sky is blue!! Never.

In fact, I have never believed that the Skripals were Poisoned. I lived my life in either England or related Anglo countries. One thing I can guarantee is that nothing dramatic - even as mild as a small accident - can happen on Anglo streets without a crown gathering to watch. Supposedly due to morbid curiosity. There is absolutely no way two people can start foaming at the mouth and twitching on a public park bench without at least 50 people gathering round to watch. I have never heard of a single one coming forward to grab a bit of fame by telling a newspaper "Yeah mate, I wuz there. I saw 'em".
All we can say with any certainty, or high degree as possible, is that there were two such people so named, they did indeed meet, visit a grave, and go to a pizza restaurant. And after that they disappeared where they are still!! Everything else is a tale told by an idiot - called May. However, I appreciate very much your analysis as to why the Moon trips were idiotic. Nice, solid maths and probability. Thanks for your work - I might direct it to my FB page if you dont mind. I'd like to see it spread. By the way - do you think the Russian Government has any detail on this?? I wonder why they have said nothing.

Juan Santos said...

I abound in Nils argument, Dimitry, had the USRR technology enough to disprobe the Moon landing?

Pamela Storer said...

Interesting Mike - about the suits needed for beyond the Van Allen Belt. Because also, in a way, Putin alluded to this, when answering a question about humans going to Mars. The first trips to Mars, he said, would be only for robots, because no human could stand the amount of radiation out there!!
I wonder if he had the US supposed Moon launch in mind !! Was it an allusion to the fact that maybe he knows they didn't go??

Mike D said...
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Prodigal Son said...

Nils, Juan, the 'why didn't the USSR call 'em out' question is brought up a lot.

Think about motives a little and you'll come up with obvious answers.

1. It was horrendously expensive, and the Soviets had already proved their ICBM prowess by landing their own robotic modules on the moon and the Venus.

2. Going along with this meant a horse-trade - the USA would go along with some other fake story of the USSR's in exchange.

3. In areas where the Soviets did call out or cast doubt on the moon narrative, the USA could just call them sore losers.

4. Giving the USA their 'win' saved the Soviets from their own potentially embarrassing failures to put men on the moon. Which - given the odds - were sure to happen if they continued the pursuit.

Beagle Juice said...

For Nils and Juan, the Soviet acceptance of the Moon Landing is always offered as proof of the event. It's entirely possible that the Soviets were bribed at the time to keep their mouths shut, and since then have had no reason to expose what any reasonable human being should be able to decipher for themselves. What could they possibly hope to gain from such a revelation at this point? The 1970s were the era of detente, and during the 1980s, Gorbachev was masterminding the breakup of their empire. During the 1990s, Russia was basically an American colony.

Does the fact that Russia didn't denounce 9/11 as an inside job mean that it wasn't one? No, in fact, they helped the Americans get into Afghanistan.

John Shrader said...

This is a very fine article because it restores my faith in reason.

Living with the wife and kids tends to compromise clear thinking in favor of the accepted wisdom just to keep the peace.

A first-rate essay from Dmitry Orlov is like a night out with the guys.

Mike D said...
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Esn said...

@ Grant Piper
But there is also the intentional intimidation aspect of having people swallow a preposperous story

More than that, it's a loyalty test. Anyone who DOESN'T swallow it is easily marked as a potential troublemaker. It's a great way to discover who to purge, or at least prevent from rising up in the ranks.

Some years ago I discovered that the Chinese are well-aware of this, and have a popular idiom for it - "point deer make horse", based on a historical event that happened during the rule of the second Emperor of Qin:
https://spandrell.com/2015/06/03/the-purpose-of-absurdity/

RB Seymour said...

Thank you for shining a light on what must be the most ridiculous USG canard.

Once you get it in your head that everything is rigged and the world is in fact run by “intelligence”, you can have a lot of fun with all the stupid stuff they do.

Regrettably, you will be enjoying this alone. Because your friends and associates, I can safely speculate, are not aware.

All roads lead to the City of London.
www.911nwo.com

RB Seymour said...

It’s all a big joke.......... and it is pretty funny.

http://mileswmathis.com/musk.pdf

testing blog said...

The "highly likely" accusation is the British version of "it's not the nature of the evidence, it's the seriousness of the charge".

buntalanlucu said...

the stanley kurbrick story and the subsequent death of the film crew should be a clue on why US intel want stanley to film a moon landing on studio. To prepare the fake footage or to be backup just in case the landing footage go blank due to radiation or something,.

Then there is the UFO comspiracy who claim Armstrong saw ufo ships when he landed. As usual these UFO stories usually inserted to make any conspiracy seem ridiculous. Remember the 911 ? people start auestioning by using engineering and physic and suddenly some moron said it was hologram plan that cover up a missile strike,, Classic intelligence use of poisoning the water , so legitimate suspicison or alternate theory got ridiculed also.

what are they hiding ? the astronaut never land but only orbit the moon ? the lunar lander landed automaticlaly with no one on board ? or the event happened the way history told us as it is ?

A read on Ingo Swann book Penetration , on the moon episode , should be mandatory. Ingo is the govt CRV inventor who push technical schientific protocols in the field of RV. He got tasked to view the moon in 1975 and what he saw really boggles the mind..

Athanasius said...

As rule of thumb the TV show was a fake, on the moon landed a different crew or a robotic probe (lower DV budget if no return from surface).
We know somwthing on the moon is added (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_evidence_for_Apollo_Moon_landings) we don't know what, this can be assured.
As propaganda machine a show mission where anything is just perfect is a top, the real one is unknowable (only vague radar tracks and comm intelligence) so must only be good enought for staging and test key tech.... Here is a conspiracy problem: someone landed on the moon but is not the man on the TV the event is true or fake?

Mike D said...
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Pamela Storer said...

Bruno "How do you keep all these people from talking?"

Very simply. By something called "compartmentalisation". A "need to know" basis. And with so many people and such a complex project, that's easy to do. Few except a very small handful organising the hoax ever get to see the whole, or even enough to make duduction. You just know the tiny part you are involved in, and mostly never to get to know, see, or talk to all the others, equally compartmentalised.
It's how Secret Services, who usually have a staff of thousands or more, keep themselves very secret. I mean, what do we know of all the CIA, the FSB etc, are doing, where they train, who they are - and they are staffed in the thousands. They do it by compartmentalising. By only knowing the small bit you are invovled in
It works for conspiracies just the same way.

Pamela Storer said...

As to "why did the Russians say nothing about the hoax, if they, as seems probable, knew about it?"
Knowing about such a massive hoax gives Russia a huge "stick". But having something to hold over someone is of limited value, i.e. it might be a huge, huge, stick, but you can only use it once.
Russia could blow the hoax on America, but once done, it can't use it again.
It's much more value not used, but held over them in clear sight.
Like knowing who killed JFK and how. Putin has dropped small hint that Russia knows, in a single interview.
Better use of such a weapon than using it and then losing it.

José DeSouza said...

To take all the trouble of landing on the moon and then abandoning the task of moon exploration/exploitation altogether soon afterwards seems like a very costly juvenile attempt at nothingness. I keep scratching my head as to why one would do it in the first place if logic is still of any value. Thanks for the post, Dmitry.

Bruno said...

First some news showing that freedom of speech is alive and well:

YouTube Bans Dave Collum's "Conspiracy Theory" Podcast For "Violating Its Hate Speech Policy"

Now back to the moon landings.

While there is always compartimentalization in big structures, this doesn't mean that a number of people, those with some brains and a sense of observation, cannot put 2 and 2 together.

In the case of NASA, the engineers knew much more than those in the control room in terms of what was possible and what was not...and they talked to each other.

Just look at the recent Boeing 737 story/scandal... many people knew there was something wrong and that the proper procedures had not been followed... and there is compartimentalization also at Boeing.

Having said that, I admit that there are quite a few strange things surrounding the whole Appolo program, most notably the fact that NASA managed to lose or destroy everything, from the Saturn 5 engines design, to the films and photos of the landings.

It seems unlikely that an organization dealing with such complicated issues, with human lives at risk, could be so careless and yet have an almost 100% record of success.

I don't believe that the Russians knew and witheld anything, especially the Russians of the 60s and 70s who were not nice guys like Putin.

Finally, if someone pulls a hoax like a fake landing on the moon, this someone is very unlikely to play with the devil and repeat the hoax six times over three of four years, at the increasing risk of being caught... doesn't make sense... why involve more people, more astronauts and so on?

Lucky Joestar said...

How do you smear a gas onto something? If people are intellectually docile enough to accept the notion of “smearing” a gas on anything, then certainly they could blindly accept other “official stories,” such as that we went to the Moon or that jet fuel worked great for a controlled demolition of two buildings right into their footprints.