Closer to Mars

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Re: Closer to Mars

Postby DrEvil » Mon May 31, 2021 5:43 pm

Belligerent Savant » Sun May 30, 2021 11:47 pm wrote:.

I didn't move the goalposts. I specifically raised manned vs unmanned travel to Mars/Moon in a prior comment. Perhaps you misread my commentary.


Fair enough, but just to be clear: I do think getting people to Mars is a hell of a lot harder. Not impossible, just hard, and there's a good chance some people will die trying.

There can be no discussion Re: human travel to Mars without first addressing the many hurdles inherent to such a feat.

"Money" is no longer a viable excuse with Musk and Bezos investments in space. This is no longer a 'lack of govt funding' conversation. In any event, this was always a BS excuse. Money can be generated -- has been generated -- to fund all manner of ventures.


It may no longer be a viable excuse now, but it was back in the seventies. There's a limit to how much useful work you can do on the Moon with short trips. The next logical step would be a permanent base, and that would cost a hell of a lot more, something that Nixon decided wasn't worth it.

If Starship is successful it will be a whole other ball game. It can park 200 tons of cargo on the Moon in one go, so essentially an entire Moon base. Blue Origin might get there, but Bezos is going about it the wrong way. He's doing it the old space way: design and build the finished article and test it till the end of time before launching it. Musk is successful because he wasn't afraid to blow shit up and iterate.

Bezos tried hiring Gwynne Shotwell away from SpaceX, and when she declined he instead hired a conservative old space guy who in turn hired a bunch of his old space buddies. Apparently the internal workings at Blue Origin is a bit of a shitshow, and the whole operation feels more like your standard pork-extraction scheme than a serious contender.

The entire argument hinges entirely on the assumption that the moon landings occurred as depicted, and that the van allen belts are not as harmful as otherwise indicated.


The Van Allen belts are harmful if you go there and stick around, but the astronauts going to the Moon at thousands of miles an hour only spent a short amount of time there, limiting their exposure. Still not the healthiest thing you can do, but worst case is cancer several years in the future, not instant death.

You can live another 100 years without observing a human on mars or the moon, and still you will hold on to the narrative that we've been there, 150 years ago.


Yes, I would. There's just too much stuff needing to be faked otherwise. Lunar lander site, wheel tracks from the buggies, Moon rocks which have been studied extensively, reflectors placed on the surface, God knows how many subcontractors believing they were building the real thing (which begs the question: if they built the real thing why not just use it for its intended purpose?), everyone at mission control lying or being fed fake data, everyone tracking communications and telemetry in various parts of the world lying or being fed faked data from space, the Soviet Union not noticing anything amiss, etc.

People went there, and then stopped going because there wasn't much point in doing the same thing over and over again, and the funding for an expanded footprint wasn't forthcoming.

On Edit: rather than continued to and fro, as I anticipate we've long-since reached an impasse, i'll offer a gentleman's wager:

If a human is convincingly depicted to step foot on the Moon or Mars (i.e., no fancy CGI or deepfakes, which unfortunately will become increasingly challenging to confirm/identify with each passing year) in the not-too-distant future, i will happily ship to your attention a bottle of your preferred libation (or a case of your preferred beer). I'll cover all international shipping charges!

Hopefully it'll happen while we still maintain a presence here on this forum... or here on Earth.


I don't drink, so just keep a six-pack of Coke on standby (I'll also accept an ounce of good weed). :thumbsup
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Re: Closer to Mars

Postby dada » Mon May 31, 2021 6:12 pm

I'd say humans will touch down on the moon again for all to see pretty soon. Next ten years or so. The new race is clearly on. Commercial bragging rights are a good motivator, I think.

Not saying I want in on the betting pool, just thinking out loud, as it were.
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Re: Closer to Mars

Postby DrEvil » Wed Jun 02, 2021 1:31 pm

Agreed. China is gearing up their space program big time. They have plans for a joint Moon base with Russia, they already have the first module of their new space station in orbit, and they're building super heavy launchers and starting to talk about reusable launchers.

No way the US will just sit back and let them do all that without at least trying to compete. Right now the US is ahead, but the gap is shrinking fast. Hopefully it ends with peaceful cooperation and handshakes in space, but probably it ends with big fucking space lasers, because both countries (or rather, the systems running them) are paranoid lunatics.
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Re: Closer to Mars

Postby Belligerent Savant » Wed Jun 02, 2021 2:22 pm

DrEvil » Mon May 31, 2021 4:43 pm wrote:
The entire argument hinges entirely on the assumption that the moon landings occurred as depicted, and that the van allen belts are not as harmful as otherwise indicated.


The Van Allen belts are harmful if you go there and stick around, but the astronauts going to the Moon at thousands of miles an hour only spent a short amount of time there, limiting their exposure. Still not the healthiest thing you can do, but worst case is cancer several years in the future, not instant death.



I'll cherry pick this part of your reply to underscore your last sentence: "worst case is cancer several years in the future, not instant death."

Interesting, then, that the crew of Apollo 11 lived long, relatively healthy lives, eh?

Michael Collins lived to be 90; Neil Armstrong, 82 (premature at that, it seems, as his death was due to unfortunate complications following surgery, leading to a wrongful death settlement); Buzz Aldrin, born in 1930, still walks among us.
-- 91 yrs old.


If the Van Allen belts are as relatively benign as you suggest, it's minimally eyebrow-raising there's been no attempts to traverse the belts in ~50 yrs (assuming the narrative at face-value, of course). If they are indeed planning to land on Mars or the Moon anytime in the next ~10 or so years, I'd expect a test mission (or several) through the belts as part of a larger vetting/data gathering phase.
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Re: Closer to Mars

Postby DrEvil » Thu Jun 03, 2021 12:04 pm

Belligerent Savant » Wed Jun 02, 2021 8:22 pm wrote:
DrEvil » Mon May 31, 2021 4:43 pm wrote:
The entire argument hinges entirely on the assumption that the moon landings occurred as depicted, and that the van allen belts are not as harmful as otherwise indicated.


The Van Allen belts are harmful if you go there and stick around, but the astronauts going to the Moon at thousands of miles an hour only spent a short amount of time there, limiting their exposure. Still not the healthiest thing you can do, but worst case is cancer several years in the future, not instant death.



I'll cherry pick this part of your reply to underscore your last sentence: "worst case is cancer several years in the future, not instant death."

Interesting, then, that the crew of Apollo 11 lived long, relatively healthy lives, eh?

Michael Collins lived to be 90; Neil Armstrong, 82 (premature at that, it seems, as his death was due to unfortunate complications following surgery, leading to a wrongful death settlement); Buzz Aldrin, born in 1930, still walks among us.
-- 91 yrs old.


If the Van Allen belts are as relatively benign as you suggest, it's minimally eyebrow-raising there's been no attempts to traverse the belts in ~50 yrs (assuming the narrative at face-value, of course). If they are indeed planning to land on Mars or the Moon anytime in the next ~10 or so years, I'd expect a test mission (or several) through the belts as part of a larger vetting/data gathering phase.


I honestly don't get this obsession with the Van Allen belts. Where did you get this idea that they're some kind of lethal barrier? Saying that no one has tried traversing them in the last 50 years is misleading. The more correct version would be that no one has tried going to the Moon in the last 50 years, and that has a perfectly good explanation: lack of funding and will. The glamour wore off (how many astronauts can you name besides Collins, Armstrong and Aldrin?) and there were more immediate benefits in focusing on Earth orbit. Manned exploration funding has been tied up in the Space Shuttle and the ISS for the last several decades, and neither of those can go to the Moon.

Why would you expect a test mission (there will be one, but nothing to do with the Van Allen belts. They just want to know Starship can land on the Moon before they put people on it)? It's not like people completely ignored the belts since 72. Plenty of probes and satellites have been collecting data since. They know what they're dealing with and can plan for it, just like they did in the sixties and seventies by bypassing one and going through the thinnest part of the other.

It's not a place you want to hang out any longer than strictly necessary, but it's a solved problem, and the risks are tiny compared to pretty much every other part of strapping yourself to a giant bomb and hurling yourself at another planetary body at stupid speeds. If the Conversation article Stickdog posted on the previous page is correct then the exposure was less than a CT scan of your chest. Not something you want to do on a regular basis, but a couple of times is no big deal.

The real danger with radiation is the part after the belts, with cosmic rays and solar radiation, which is something that needs to be studied if they're planning on extended stays, but it's not an insurmountable problem, it just comes down to figuring out the shielding and having good enough forecasting.

I know Bigelow was testing a method for burying habitats in regolith a while back (never saw the results, so not sure how it went), or you could set up inside a lava tube, or have a small hardened shelter to ride out bad space weather, etc. The point being, it's hard, but not impossible. People will probably die, but as long as they're fully informed of the risks before going I don't really see a problem with that.
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Re: Closer to Mars

Postby Belligerent Savant » Thu Jun 03, 2021 1:05 pm

.

"obsession"? Come now. So any worthwhile challenge to long-held beliefs are labeled an 'obsession'? I'm simply interested in fleshing out the true viability of claims being made.

Also, to be clear: the Van Allen belts are only 1 of many hurdles inherent to human space travel, of course, and not the only source of radiation in space. Astronauts would have to endure radiation exposure throughout the entire mission.

To quote from Dave McGowan's great series on the moon landings (gone far too soon, Dave):

There is no shortage of Moon hoax ‘debunking’ sites out there on the wild and wooly World Wide Web. The majority of them are not particularly well written or argued and yet they tend to be rather smug and self-congratulatory. Most of them tend to stick to ‘debunking’ the same facts and they use the same arguments to do so.

One thing they like to talk a lot about is the Van Allen radiation belts. The Moon hoax sites talk a lot about them as well. The hoaxers will tell you that man cannot pass through the belts without a considerable amount of radiation protection – protection that could not have been provided in the 1960s through any known technology. And the ‘debunkers’ claim that the Apollo astronauts would have passed through the belts quickly enough that, given the levels of radiation, no harm would have come to them. The hoaxers, say the ‘debunkers,’ are just being girlie men.

As it turns out, both sides are wrong: the ‘debunkers,’ shockingly enough, are completely full of shit, and the hoaxers have actually understated the problem by focusing exclusively on the belts. We know this because NASA itself – whom the ‘debunkers’ like to treat as a virtually unimpeachable source on all things Apollo, except, apparently, when the agency posts an article that implicitly acknowledges that we haven’t actually been to the Moon – has told us that it is so. They have told us that in order to leave low-Earth orbit on any future space flights, our astronauts would need to be protected throughout the entirety of the flight, as well as – and once again, this comes directly from NASA – while working on the surface of the Moon.

On June 24, 2005, NASA made this rather remarkable admission: “NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration calls for a return to the Moon as preparation for even longer journeys to Mars and beyond. But there’s a potential showstopper: radiation. Space beyond low-Earth orbit is awash with intense radiation from the Sun and from deep galactic sources such as supernovas … Finding a good shield is important.”(http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005 ... tatics.htm)

You’re damn right finding a good shield is important!! Back in the 1960s, of course, we didn’t let a little thing like space radiation get in the way of us beating the Ruskies to the Moon. But now, I guess, being that we are more cultured and sophisticated, we want to do it the right way so we have to come up with some way of shielding our spaceships. And our temporary Moon bases. And figuring out how to do that, according to NASA, could be a real “showstopper.”

As NASA notes, “the most common way to deal with radiation is simply to physically block it, as the thick concrete around a nuclear reactor does. But making spaceships from concrete is not an option.” Lead, which is considerably denser than concrete, is actually the preferred material to use for radiation shielding, but lead also isn’t very popular with spaceship designers. In fact, word on the street is that one of the main reasons the Soviets never made it to the Moon was because their scientists calculated that four feet of lead shielding would be required to protect their astronauts, and those same scientists apparently felt that spaceships wouldn’t fly all that well when clad in four feet of lead.

Now NASA is thinking outside the box and contemplating using ‘force fields’ to repel the radiation, a seemingly ridiculous idea that, whether workable in the future or not, certainly wasn’t available to NASA in the 1960s. Below is NASA’s own artist rendering of a proposed ‘force field’ radiation shield that would allow astronauts to work safely on the Moon. As you may have noticed in the earlier photos of the lunar modules, our guys didn’t bring anything like that with them on their, uhmm, earlier missions to the Moon. And you may have also noticed that the modules did not have any type of physical shielding.
Image

How then did they do it? My guess is that the answer lies in that gold foil wrap. While it may look like an amateurish attempt to make the modules appear more ‘high-tech,’ I have a hunch that what we are looking at is another example of the lost technology of the 1960s – this time in the form of a highly-advanced superpolymer that provided maximum radiation shielding while adding virtually no weight. So all we have to do is track down a few leftover rolls of that stuff and we should be well on our way to sending guys back to the Moon.

According to Charles Buhler, a NASA scientist currently working on the force field concept, “Using electric fields to repel radiation was one of the first ideas back in the 1950s, when scientists started to look at the problem of protecting astronauts from radiation. They quickly dropped the idea though because it seemed like the high voltages needed and the awkward designs that they thought would be necessary … would make such an electric shield impractical.”

What a real journalist would have asked here, of course, is: “After dropping the electric shield concept, exactly what did they decide to use to get our astronauts safely to the Moon and back on the Apollo missions? And why can’t we do the same thing now, rather than reinventing the wheel? Don’t you guys have some of that gold foil in a closet somewhere?” No one in the American media, of course, bothered to ask such painfully obvious questions.

The 2005 report from NASA ends as follows: “But, who knows, perhaps one day astronauts on the Moon … will work safely.” Yes, and while we’re dreaming the impossible dream, let’s add a few more things to our wish list as well, like perhaps one day we’ll be able to listen to music on 8-track tape players, and talk to people on rotary dial telephones, and carry portable transistor radios, and use cameras that shoot pictures on special film that develops right before our eyes. Only time will tell, I suppose.

The Van Allen belts, by the way, trap most Earth-bound radiation, thus making it safe for us mortals down here on the surface of planet Earth, as well as for astronauts in low-Earth orbit (the belts extend from 1,000 to 25,000 miles above the surface of the Earth). The danger is in sending men through and beyond the belts, which, apart from the Apollo missions, has never been attempted …

https://centerforaninformedamerica.com/moondoggie-3/


There's this as well - surely to be scoffed by the moon-landing 'truthers', though I welcome any specific counters to these points:

as demonstrated by James Van Allen’s own findings, the radiation belts that surround earth would have been lethal to astronauts (10, 11). It began in 1952 when James Van Allen & his team at the University of Iowa began launching Geiger counters into space aboard rockoons. Although these did not have enough lift to get into orbit, these experiments were able to detect radiation levels higher than what Van Allen had expected. Later in the late 50s and early 60s, his Geiger counters were carried aloft by the Explorer satellites and Pioneer space probes. Each time the spacecrafts entered the radiation belts, the Geiger counters would become continuously busy. They encountered protons and electrons with fluxes of 40,000 particles per square centimetre per second and average energies ranging between 1-100 MeV.

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 [Fig-2](12). These instruments quickly became jammed by the radiation. Even to this day, the belts are so severe that satellites must operate outside the belts: geostationary satellites operating beyond the end of the outer belt (but still within the protection of the magnetosphere) and GPS satellites operating in the gap between the two belts. Meanwhile low earth orbit satellites like the Hubble must shut down some of their instruments during South Atlantic Anomaly (SAA) transit. 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.

Even if we discount the Van Allen belt, there are still other dangers to consider. The sun constantly bombards the earth-moon system with solar flares. Regardless of whether these flares deliver x-rays or protons, or are minor or major, both are a hazard to humans. A major flare delivers in excess of 100rad/hr, a minor flare can deliver 25rad/hr depending on how many centimetres of water shielding is used. The minor flares of May 10th and July 15th 1958 for example, would have required 31gm/cm2 of water just to bring their dose rates down to 25rad/hr [Fig-3]. 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 (Tables 1 & 2). NOAA’s Comprehensive Flare Index for Major flares, also reveals that thirty of the major ones took place during the Apollo missions. By any definition, these astronauts should have been as dead as spam in a can.


10. “Radiation Belts Around The Earth”, James Van Allen. Scientific American, March 1959. http://www.moonfaker.com/images/misc/Va ... ar1959.pdf

11. “The Danger Zone”, James Van Allen. Space World, December 1961. http://www.moonfaker.com/images/misc/Va ... eWorld.pdf

12. “Radiation Protection During Space Flight”, E.E. Kovalev. Aviation Space & Environmental Medicine, December 1983.

http://www.moonfaker.com/faqs.html

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Re: Closer to Mars

Postby DrEvil » Thu Jun 03, 2021 2:00 pm

I'm not saying the Van Allen belts aren't dangerous, but that they're dangerous in a way we can handle. Going back to CT scans: there's a difference between doing it once and doing it once a day for a year. It's not just how much radiation, but how long you're exposed. As long as they're just zipping through on their way to the Moon and they have decent shielding it really shouldn't be a problem. I would be more worried about the entire rest of the trip. The belts are predictable and can be planned around, space weather not so much.

Once we (hopefully) get to the point where going to space is routine and there's a lot of people floating around up there we will start to see the effects of all that radiation better. Up until now the sample size is just too small. In my opinion the answer isn't to not do it, but to plan for it and do everything possible to mitigate it with shielding, frequent medical checkups, etc., and make sure everyone involved is aware of the risks.

We're still taking our first baby steps when it comes to manned space flight, but we won't learn how to walk without trying. People are going to die along the way, but pushing the boundaries and expanding the human footprint off this single, very fragile ball of dirt is worth it in my opinion. There's a lot of space out there to explore, and I would very much like us to at least try.
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Re: Closer to Mars

Postby Marionumber1 » Thu Jun 03, 2021 2:21 pm

I love Dave McGowan's work, and his series is thought-provoking, but while reading through it a while back I did come up with potential counterarguments at various points that I wish he'd explored more fully in his "Moondoggie" piece. For instance, is NASA's commentary on the necessity of radiation shielding an absolute necessity or just an indication that they're being a lot more cautious than they were in the 60s about their astronauts' safety for a future mission? And how serious is this radiation if (for the Van Allen belts) you're going at such a rapid speed that you're not exposed to it for any great length of time and (for the solar flares) you're only on the moon for a relatively brief period? Is it not out of the question that the astronauts sent to the moon just got lucky that it wasn't as deadly as it could have been, with NASA negligently taking a gamble on their astronauts' lives to stick it to the Soviets? I don't know the answers for sure, but I think this issue definitely has more nuance that is worthy of being explored.
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Re: Closer to Mars

Postby Belligerent Savant » Thu Jun 03, 2021 2:55 pm

.

Indeed - I also considered similar explanations while reading his series (and Dave does explore a few of them, albeit with his sarcastic/playful tone).

It's certainly possible these missions occurred as described. And, again, there will always be plausible explanations for why we haven't yet returned to the Moon, or why we may likely not make it to Mars anytime soon.

But my 'intuition', for whatever it's worth, tells me that it didn't happen as depicted. Is it possible it's all part of a long-term misdirection to cloak 'secret' missions deployed with advanced tech, unbeknownst to the masses? Can't rule it out.
Alternatively, is it possible we simply have never surpassed these Van Allen belts, at least not with humans onboard? Can't rule it out.

Will we ever know with any measure of certainty? Unlikely.
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Re: Closer to Mars

Postby dada » Thu Jun 03, 2021 3:41 pm

"People are going to die along the way, but pushing the boundaries and expanding the human footprint off this single, very fragile ball of dirt is worth it in my opinion"

Worth it or not, we're clearly interested in trying. It could be totally pointless in the long run, but I don't think far seeing into a totally pointless future would even stop us. We'd try anyway, trying to somehow avoid the fate we've forseen.

Humans are good for that. Don't even need a reason to sit at the end of rocket, above massive propulsion engines, and see how high can you get, like donkey kong. What's it worth? Who cares! Mars beckons.
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Re: Closer to Mars

Postby DrEvil » Thu Jun 03, 2021 4:30 pm

Belligerent Savant » Thu Jun 03, 2021 8:55 pm wrote:.

Indeed - I also considered similar explanations while reading his series (and Dave does explore a few of them, albeit with his sarcastic/playful tone).

It's certainly possible these missions occurred as described. And, again, there will always be plausible explanations for why we haven't yet returned to the Moon, or why we may likely not make it to Mars anytime soon.

But my 'intuition', for whatever it's worth, tells me that it didn't happen as depicted. Is it possible it's all part of a long-term misdirection to cloak 'secret' missions deployed with advanced tech, unbeknownst to the masses? Can't rule it out.
Alternatively, is it possible we simply have never surpassed these Van Allen belts, at least not with humans onboard? Can't rule it out.

Will we ever know with any measure of certainty? Unlikely.


I agree with all this. All the things you mention are possible. Where I balk is at how likely they are. There's lots of things we can't rule out, but that doesn't necessarily make them very likely explanations, and once you get into pure speculation like advanced tech and secret missions it's, as far as I'm concerned at least, just idle speculation. Fun speculation for sure, but not something I'm inclined to believe without a lot more evidence.

To me the simplest answer is that things happened more or less as we've been told. I'm sure there are snafus and classified military aspects we're not aware of, but I think the broad strokes are accurate.

Hopefully we'll know for certain in a few years when NASA returns to (or goes to) the Moon, and if not NASA, the Chinese will probably be more than happy to point out that things on the Moon are not what the US said and claim to be first, bringing glorious Xi Jinping thought to Luna for all mankind.

Of course, at that point everything we see can be explained away with deepfakes and CGI, so we'll probably be arguing about this for years to come yet. I don't think the argument will die until going to space is so common that "everyone" knows someone who went, like working offshore, or going to Canada, at which point there will probably be people on Mars, and we can start the whole argument over again. I foresee heated debates over whether Musk is really on Mars, or if this or that Youtube video shows him with a goatee drinking coffee in Sri Lanka. And those shadows in Valles Marineris are clearly wrong. I'm a whale biologist so I should know! :)
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Re: Closer to Mars

Postby DrEvil » Thu Jun 03, 2021 5:03 pm

dada » Thu Jun 03, 2021 9:41 pm wrote:"People are going to die along the way, but pushing the boundaries and expanding the human footprint off this single, very fragile ball of dirt is worth it in my opinion"

Worth it or not, we're clearly interested in trying. It could be totally pointless in the long run, but I don't think far seeing into a totally pointless future would even stop us. We'd try anyway, trying to somehow avoid the fate we've forseen.

Humans are good for that. Don't even need a reason to sit at the end of rocket, above massive propulsion engines, and see how high can you get, like donkey kong. What's it worth? Who cares! Mars beckons.


Exactly. It's the age-old instinct to think "I wonder what will happen if I do X. Let's find out!" Sometimes you earn a Darwin award, sometimes you cure cancer, and sometimes you have to explain to the police what you were doing with a goat, five pounds of black powder and a sled. You just don't know until you try.
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Re: Closer to Mars

Postby Belligerent Savant » Thu Jun 03, 2021 6:50 pm

.

Your (DrEvil's) description of the future of space travel reads like science fiction to me.

I mean, I believe lies have been told about our reported prior visits to the Moon. That's my position. Time will tell otherwise --- perhaps. But every year that goes by that nothing happens up there (other than satellites and space stations), at least as far as what's presented to the public, the more clear it becomes (to me at least) that lies have been told.

And the thing is: demonstrably, BIG LIES are/have been told, historically. LIES about the reasons for war. LIES about 911. Lies about COVID. Lies about all manner of pharma products. Lies about GM foods. Lies about the environment and climate change. These are all BIG lies. If the moon landings turn out to be a big lie, it wouldn't be anomalous. (out of all the lies I referenced, the moon missions may be the lone outlier in that it didn't directly cause extensive loss of life, but optically remains a high water mark for mankind).

I understand some of us here will have different positions on the extent of these lies. And I'm not assuming everything is a lie, of course. But so far, most major events of the modern era -- once analyzed soberly, especially when assessed years later as part of a postmortem, with the benefit of hindsight and far less 'white noise' distraction -- haven't occurred as portrayed 'on TV'.

Needless to say, you're entitled to your view, of course. And a part of me would prefer your vision of the future to be true, naturally. Your version of it is more appealing than mine.
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Re: Closer to Mars

Postby DrEvil » Fri Jun 04, 2021 9:57 am

Why does the time since X happened last matter so much? The US hasn't tested any nukes in ages. Does that mean nuclear bombs don't exist?

The explanation is straightforward: no funding and no interest from those holding the purse strings. There really isn't anything mysterious or suspicious about it. They spent the money on other things.

I also still don't get why they would lie about it. The first landing maybe, to score a PR coup against the Soviets, but then why keep doing it? They would have to keep fabricating science results, return fake moon rocks, fake all the telemetry and communications coming from the Moon, and all the stuff the fake astronauts left behind on the Moon would have to be placed there in case someone pointed a powerful enough telescope that way or lobbed a satellite at the Moon or fired a laser at one of the reflectors.

They would have to either fake everything and be found out when someone else checked, or they would have to actually do it all, only with robots instead of humans.

Edit:

And the thing is: demonstrably, BIG LIES are/have been told, historically. LIES about the reasons for war. LIES about 911. Lies about COVID. Lies about all manner of pharma products. Lies about GM foods. Lies about the environment and climate change.


Okay, I'll bite: what lies have been told about climate change?
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Re: Closer to Mars

Postby Belligerent Savant » Fri Jun 04, 2021 12:43 pm

DrEvil » Fri Jun 04, 2021 8:57 am wrote:Why does the time since X happened last matter so much? The US hasn't tested any nukes in ages. Does that mean nuclear bombs don't exist?


Of course it matters. For one, it ties back to a key theme in science (true science, that is): replication. The fundamentals of science require that in order for a premise/theory to be considered valid, it needs to be replicated over time.

But beyond that, another reason is this: the govt has indicated, numerous times, that we'd be returning to the moon, and have yet to deliver. The most recent (lapsed) landing date was 2020, uttered by Dubya Bush. The next one on the calendar is 2024. I have a strong suspicion this date will lapse as well. And the reasons for it?
DrEvil » Fri Jun 04, 2021 8:57 am wrote:The explanation is straightforward: no funding and no interest from those holding the purse strings. There really isn't anything mysterious or suspicious about it. They spent the money on other things.


So you're essentially accepting this explanation at face value. Again, you're entitled to do so. I simply don't believe money is an obstacle. As mentioned before, funding can always be generated. It has been generated for many other ventures. And now we have private investors willing to play along, so we should be seeing returns on the investment very soon.... right?

DrEvil » Fri Jun 04, 2021 8:57 am wrote:
I also still don't get why they would lie about it. The first landing maybe, to score a PR coup against the Soviets, but then why keep doing it? They would have to keep fabricating science results, return fake moon rocks, fake all the telemetry and communications coming from the Moon, and all the stuff the fake astronauts left behind on the Moon would have to be placed there in case someone pointed a powerful enough telescope that way or lobbed a satellite at the Moon or fired a laser at one of the reflectors.

They would have to either fake everything and be found out when someone else checked, or they would have to actually do it all, only with robots instead of humans.


Historical events are 'faked' and altered throughout history. Many times, the majority of the players involved aren't even aware of the extent of it. Some may have certain bits of info -- the majority are fully in the dark. So it's not so outlandish when compared to, say, 911... or (in a few years time, once it becomes more commonly accepted) the Covid hysteria. Or numerous other staged events (to initiate war, etc) throughout history.

At the time, there was plenty of incentive for these moon landings to occur as depicted. When those incentives waned, the charade was scrapped. Since then: zero activity other than LEO (low earth orbit).

The bolded bit below, again from Dave McGowan, sounds quite reasonable to me as well:
Before proceeding any further, I should probably mention here that, until relatively recently, if I had heard anyone putting forth the obviously drug-addled notion that the Moon landings were faked, I would have been among the first to offer said person a ride down to the grip store. While conducting research into various other topics, however, it has become increasingly apparent that there are almost always a few morsels of truth in any ‘conspiracy theory,’ no matter how outlandish that theory may initially appear to be, and so despite my initial skepticism, I was compelled to take a closer look at the Apollo program.

The first thing that I discovered was that the Soviet Union, right up until the time that we allegedly landed the first Apollo spacecraft on the Moon, was solidly kicking our ass in the space race. It wasn’t even close. The Soviets launched the first orbiting satellite, sent the first animal into space, sent the first man into space, performed the first space walk, sent the first three-man crew into space, was the first nation to have two spacecraft in orbit simultaneously, performed the first unmanned docking maneuver in space, and landed the first unmanned probe on the Moon.

Everything the U.S. did, prior to actually sending a manned spacecraft to the Moon, had already been done by the Soviets, who clearly were staying at least a step or two ahead of our top-notch team of imported Nazi scientists. The smart money was clearly on the Soviets to make it to the Moon first, if anyone was to do so. Their astronauts had logged five times as many hours in space as had ours. And they had a considerable amount of time, money, scientific talent and, perhaps most of all, national pride riding on that goal.

And yet, amazingly enough, despite the incredibly long odds, the underdog Americans made it first. And not only did we make it first, but after a full forty years, the Soviets apparently still haven’t quite figured out how we did it. The question that is clearly begged here is a simple one: Why is it that the nation that was leading the world in the field of space travel not only didn’t make it to the Moon back in the 1960s, but still to this day have never made it there? Could it be that they were just really poor losers? I am imagining that perhaps the conversation over in Moscow’s equivalent of NASA went something like this:

Boris: Comrade Ivan, there is terrible news today: the Yankee imperialists have beaten us to the Moon. What should we do?
Ivan: Let’s just shit-can our entire space program.
Boris: But comrade, we are so close to success! And we have so much invested in the effort!
Ivan: Fuck it! If we can’t be first, we aren’t going at all.
Boris: But I beg of you comrade! The moon has so much to teach us, and the Americans will surely not share with us the knowledge they have gained.
Ivan: Nyet!

In truth, the entire space program has largely been, from its inception, little more than an elaborate cover for the research, development and deployment of space-based weaponry and surveillance systems. The media never talk about such things, of course, but government documents make clear that the goals being pursued through space research are largely military in nature. For this reason alone, it is inconceivable that the Soviets would not have followed the Americans onto the Moon for the sake of their own national defense.

It is not just the Soviets, of course, who have never made it to the Moon. The Chinese haven’t either. Nor has any other industrialized nation, despite the rather obvious fact that every such nation on the planet now possesses technology that is light-years beyond what was available to NASA scientists in the 1960s.

http://centerforaninformedamerica.com/moondoggie-1/



DrEvil » Fri Jun 04, 2021 8:57 am wrote:Edit:

And the thing is: demonstrably, BIG LIES are/have been told, historically. LIES about the reasons for war. LIES about 911. Lies about COVID. Lies about all manner of pharma products. Lies about GM foods. Lies about the environment and climate change.


Okay, I'll bite: what lies have been told about climate change?


That's a topic for another thread. The "EcoFascism" thread touches on some of it. The short version is: as with many lies told, there are often elements of truth that are then twisted or otherwise manipulated for ends that ultimately benefit the very few at the expense of the many.

I posted a sampling of a far better exposition on this premise, authored by JM Greer, here:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=42029&p=695336#p695336
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