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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
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