From: Ray Stanford <dinotracker.nul>
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2004 12:27:11 -0500
Fwd Date: Sun, 01 Feb 2004 10:11:37 -0500
Subject: Re: Russia Surpasses Americans In Space Race -


>From: Frank Warren <frank-warren.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Fri, 30 Jan 2004 09:39:06 -0800
>Subject: Russia Surpasses Americans In Space Race

>Source: Pravda

>http://english.pravda.ru/mailbox/22/98/387/11928_space.html

>01/30/2004

>Russia Continues to Surpass Americans in the Space Race

>On July 25, 1969, many Americans watched their televisions in
>awe as astronaut Neil Armstrong walked on the moon and said,
>"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Americans
>were amazed at what advances in technology had produced: a man
>on the moon. Ticker tape parades greeted returning astronauts.
>America had proven itself a leader in the space race.

>Lately, some have begun to suggest that this was not the case at
>all; some people have suggested that America never made it to
>the moon and that it was just an illusion made with trick
>photography. Bart Sibrel is one of those people. He made a video
>called, "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon," in
>which he provides much documentation to suggest that man has yet
>to walk on the moon. Is this possible? Could have America faked
>the entire moon landing?

<snip>

In my opinion we should wisely refrain from repeating, on this
List, the mindless lie that U.S. astronauts never walked on the
moon. Even though it is duly credited to Pravda (whose record of
bullshit and fake UFO reports possibly exceeds the worse of the
tabloids over the last several years), if uninitiated public or
media persons come across this list and find that kind of
delusion being repeated here, the image of the UFO interested as
mindless fantasy mongers could well be magnified.

If I take this personally, so be it. My wife (although we were
not married during the Apollo Program) was involved peripherally
in it with NASA and she has awards from NASA of appreciation for
her part in it, to prove it. Although only a minor participant
among many, she knew personally some of the fine people of great
integrity involved, including some of the Apollo astronauts, and
she knows full-well that it is Bart Sibrel who is deceiving
people world-wide (and not the U.S. space program) about Apollo
and selling the wide-eyed a completely phony 'bill of goods'.
Personally, I don't even think Sibrel believes the bullshit he
is propagating but only sees in it the potential for money and
the attention of the media. Shame of Pravda for repeating it.

A major player in Ufology, the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek, became
involved in the Apollo Program when the Los Corrilitos
Observatory (in New Mexico) of which he was the director, was
called into duty to try and get high-resolution photos of the
explosion damage to Apollo 13. Allen sat in my living room and
described the observatory's participation at that time with the
intensity of one who had been emotionally involved in a life-or-
 death salvage operation. He was not lying to my wife and me,
and he had not been fooled. They had photographed the damaged
spacecraft between earth and the moon.

Quite aside from the films of our astronauts walking (sometimes
even hopping or skipping) on the moon under its low-gravity
condition and the testimony of thousands who participated in the
Apollo Program (Bart Sibrel would have us believe they are all
liars or deceived and that not one of them has dared reveal it
was a hoax!), there are the rocks brought back from the moon.
Are we to suppose that geologists with major institutions of
education and research all over the world were hoaxed? Of course
not! The geological samples brought to earth by the Apollo
astronauts were universally found to be distinct from anything
that could have derived from earth. If any of you don't believe
me, you are invited to read up on it for your own sake. There
are plenty of good books on those wonderful Apollo rocks.
Subsequently, lunar meteorites with the tell-tale fusion crust
from atmospheric ablation (in some cases - with exception of the
fusion crust - virtually indistinguishable in hand samples and
petrographically from the Apollo samples) knocked off Luna (the
name of our moon) by cosmic impacts, have been recovered from
widely located places on earth and recognized for their direct
mineralogical and isotopic association with Apollo rocks. Those
lunar meteorites bear witness to how old they are, how long it
was since they were knocked off the moon before their orbits
intersected the earth, and even how long they had been down on
the desert of, for example, Oman, or, also, from the Antarctic
continent.

Now, back to the Pravda article. Anyone to thinks the U.S. space
program is behind that of Russia hasn't been watching the news.
Hey! Wake up! We have two rovers successfully landed on the
surface of Mars right now. How many does Russia have despite
their long-term interest in Mars? :) We and the European Space
Agency also have craft in orbit around the red planet, providing
us with images and information about that world which Russia
cannot provide.

Sure, the space shuttle is grounded for now, but better times
are on their way, as are better launch vehicles.

Several days per week when circumstances dictate that I brave
the food at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center cafeteria for a
convenient lunch, I look admiringly around me at the faces of a
'unique breed' or dedicated people. The facial-feature-sensitive
will notice that many of the faces show the traits of dedicated
idealists, whose dreams from childhood were being a part of the
space program, and quite a few of those dedicated idealists were
in the space program during the Apollo Program, my wife being
one of them. Surely, many of them could be making better money
with private industry, or even much better money with the very
nearby NSA, the CIA, or the DMA, or similar intelligence
agencies. But, there they are, preferring to live a less-grand
life-style just to be a part of humanity's daring adventures to
further penetrate (whether by manned or unmanned vehicles)
unexplored realms beyond the blue skies of our terrestrial
homeland. And, quite frankly, it really irks me that anyone like
Bart Sibrel would fuel conspiracy buff paranoia in accusing such
good, dedicated people of being involved in an incredible and
really ridiculous-to-allege moon-landing hoax.

Sorry for getting on my 'soap box, but that Sibrel-Pravda crap
falls out of the figurative sky pretty near-to-home for my wife
and me. Furthermore, the ground here in Maryland is too frozen
and ice covered for me to be out doing more exciting things like
tracking Early Cretaceous (about 110 million-years-old)
dinosaurs, crocodilians, pterosaurs, and even mammals. Oh well,
there is hope. Spring is reportedly coming. :)


Ray Stanford

"You know my method. It is founded upon the observance of
trifles." - Sherlock Holmes in The Boscombe Valley Mystery