If you are seriously contending that that a "conspiracy" that would necessarily involve thousands of persons over dozens of years without any leaks or revelations has been successful, I have nothing to offer.

That, of course, is the beauty of conspiracy theories. They are impenetrable to critique, because there is always another layer in the conspiracy cake that conspiracy theorists take out of their ovens.

Words fail me.

< Sigh > Some otherwise intelligent people believe there is no such thing as objective fact and by extension that every opinion has value. Thankfully, I'm not one of them. it is for example a fact that Neuroplasticity works both ways and intractable rigidity is a real and present danger. It's quite sad to witness it in action.

NASA has backed itself into a corner from which it cannot and will not emerge: "we went to the Moon, in 1969 and many times thereafter, in a telephone booth, and we played golf there while listening to Donny Osmond 8-track tapes, and that's that."

Unfortunately for real space exploration, they made it look too easy ... too possible. Space-flight entrepreneurs talk of selling tickets. Little do they actually know.

How, then, can we send a probe to measure the radioactivity of the Moon? We can't. Just look at the "moon rocks" in our museums: non-radioactive, even though they've been exposed to the unchecked fury of ionizing radiation streaming from a nearby thermonuclear furnace for uncountable time. "The Moon isn't radioactive, and our astronauts, sailing blissfully toward the Moon and back in a virtually unshielded spacecraft, at one time during a Solar Maximum(!), experienced no more radiation exposure round-trip than a dental X-ray." (Except in the Van Allen belts, which we can't explain away, but we just went through 'em real fast, and as you know, radiation exposure isn't really cumulative ... .) That's our story and we're sticking to it.

Never mind that even Low Earth Orbit space is sometimes so hostile that satellites operating within that relatively-protected region still sometimes get blasted by the Sun, and that sometimes the Northern Lights can be seen in Arkansas.

It would have been much better to have admitted that JFK's dream was not (and, still is not ...) attainable with (even) present-day technology. But, that was not the mood nor the belief-system of the American public at that time. And, given the "conspiracy theory" denigrations which are hurled at anyone who suggests otherwise, it still is not.

This, then, is a great impediment to actual human long-distance space travel: we can never confess what the actual obstacles are. We must instead pretend that they are not there, or simply change the subject. We must, like all liars, continue to bend the ever-growing truth to support a fiction that was launched in the 1960's to fulfill the promise of a dead President. If we could only, instead, admit to what actually confronts us in our continuing dream of space exploration beyond Low Earth Orbit, we could possibly solve it.

I have no doubts that NASA did this with sincere intentions. It felt good, and everyone felt very, very proud. JFK could rest in peace. But, it was not the truth. No one at the time contemplated any long-term negative effect upon our ongoing space exploration efforts by creating a few seminal special-effects movies and showing them on TV.

How do you know that the radioactivity levels on the Moon are too high then?

I'd like to just walk away now but this bugs and confuses me ...

So are you saying that not only have no manned missions landed on the moon but also no unmanned ones? Now more than ever I'd like to hear your explanation of the LRRR data, not to mention by extension the many Mars rovers.

Obviously, we have had unmanned missions to the Moon and to Planets ... and to the bottom of the ocean, and so on. There are many places that "'droids" can go where we cannot (yet) go safely.

The basic problem ... the as-yet insurmountable problem ... is that of the so-called "solar wind." These are the endless stream of high-energy particles and other things which are emitted continuously by our Sun. They are largely deflected by our magnetosphere, although they also deflect that magnetosphere. A portion of it is caught in the Van Allen Belts. (This is why the belts are radioactive.)

It should be soberly remembered that geiger counters, in low earth orbit, used to "stop." No one understood how there could be large zones with no radiation. It turns out that the counters stopped when they were overwhelmed.

We simply do not yet possess the technology to protect the human body from significant radiation, let alone what would be produced by either the Van Allen Belts or the unrestrained solar emissions beyond them.

The fact that the lunar surface is, itself, radioactive, is a comparatively recent conclusion. The full force of the solar wind, solar flares, and cosmic rays strike the lunar surface without impediment. We have sent probes (e.g. "LRO") in the last decade to gain definitive information about what really is there. {Ref: https://sservi.nasa.gov/wp-content/u..._SpecIssue.pdf, e.g. pp. 21} Unfortunately, these data conveniently divide the quantity by "/yr." (Interesting if you somehow plan to be on the Moon for a year.) The most revealing thing is the tremendous variability. (Notice that the graphs are logarithmic.) Anyone would be at the complete mercy of the Sun.

And there would still(!) have to be a great deal of radiation protection, which simply does not exist yet and which certainly did not exist in 1969-ish for astronauts standing around on the Moon for many hours, shooting golf balls with nothing but a cloth suit to protect them.

So, this is why I wish that the hoax(!) had never been done in the first place. Although it was politically acceptable and expedient at the time, every probe of the Moon is clouded by the fundamental requirement to uphold the story of 1969, "no matter what." Today, we a-c-t-u-a-l-l-y want to go there, and I'm quite sure that we will. But the illusions of our past now stand in our way; now get in the way.

So we can send a probe to the Moon?

The first lifeforms to travel to the moon and back were Russian Turtles and other living matter. For what its worth some of my coworkers (retired now..) worked on the Saturn V rockets and were stationed at the Cape.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ns_to_the_Moon

I think someone has backed into a corner, but I'm unconvinced it's NASA.

Here's some more reading material, just for fun: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Moon_landing_hoax

Quite obviously, we did.

- - -

"Frankly, Gentlemen, I find myself rather enjoying(!) this." You see, not a single one of you appear to be in the slightest way even prepared(!) to consider the fact that I happen to disagree! Nay, without exception, you are all clinging to "the Official Party Line.™" And (if I may venture, "quite obediently ...") vilifying me, quite personally(!) ... as though I had somehow just emerged from underneath a nearby stone. Somehow unaware of lunar probes ... or, if so, somehow unwilling.

(Koff, koff ...) "Seriously?!?!"

Gentlebeings, please let us somehow try to rid ourselves of "the imposed stigma of" the so-called "conspiracy theorist." We are perfectly aware of Groupthink, and we have all ground through too-many science fiction novels in which The Protagonist simply "dared."

Implicit(!) in the phrase, "conspiracy theorist," is the condemnation that said person is wrong!

But ... what(!) if(!!) ... said person ... ... isn't?!

"Debate" (like "water-cooler conversation") is not a social exchange that ends ... or, that should end ... in "Victory." We've all gathered here because we were thirsty and wanted to grab a drink.

I know you disagree and that nothing we write will convince you otherwise. Although you have valid arguments as to the radiation amount that maybe hard to dispute by this water cooler conversationalist they can be proven to be acceptable levels. I'm just saying that I've talked to an astronaut and many people that worked on the program. Granted its only second hand information but I am satisfied.

"... nothing we write will convince you otherwise?" ... Who says?

Who's the astronaut in question? Who are the people? Please, feel this forum forthwith with hotlinks!! Go ahead, take me on! Go ahead ... change my opinion! Go ahead ... utterly defeat me!!

I was not, after all, "born yesterday." This is "water-cooler debate," and I know the rules of this game as well as anyone.

I've also worked on the EC-135B although not during space program that were used to track the capsules on return entry. I've been to Goldstone mountain Deep Space communications complex. I know all part of the conspiracy.

Obviously, the capsules blasted-off in public view on the top of a very tall rocket.

That does not, however, mean that they ever left Low-Earth Orbit.

Nevertheless, I digress. In the thirty-odd years since 1969, there is only o-n-e ... v-e-r-s-i-o-n of The Truth: that "right on schedule, JFK's promise somehow came true." Yessirree, we sailed right through those pesky radiation belts, soared right through that solar wind, and miraculously planted a flag (that waved!) upon a surface that was simultaneously powdery-enough to sustain a footprint but rocky-enough to show not the slightest after-effect of a rocket blast.

Such are the incongruities that are most-easily explained away by condemning those who ask questions as, "conspiracy theorists."

Implicit in this term is the prejudice is that "this person must be a fruitcake, (since ...) s/he is of course totally wrong, because his/her thought is contrary to The Official Story." Obviously(!) there is no "conspiracy," because the official version necessarily must be correct because it is official. Groupthink prevails. Nothing to see here ... pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain. These aren't the 'droids you're looking for.

Well, "call me a contrarian, but ..." this is not the way that I am content to think.

Face it: in 1969, we knew nothing of "special effects." It never occurred to any of us to ask questions. But we've come a very long way since then. And, although I am very eager to be proven decisively wrong in my thoughts on such matters, I steadfastly refuse to stop having them. We didn't go to the Moon in 1969, nor at any time since then, very-simply because we couldn't can't. We didn't don't possess the technology that we require to survive in such a supremely-hostile environment.

... Y-e-t.

"C'mon. Let's go to the Moon! For real, this time." Let us therefore own up to our 1960's illusions, and put them behind us, so that in (say ...) the coming decade, we can really go "where no man has gone before." To get there, we've got lots of problems to solve: most especially, the problems created by that pesky nearby thermonuclear furnace . . .

. . . and we can't begin to solve them if we're stuck behind the illusion that we somehow already did so.

How do threads go from interesting computer to conspiracy?

The rope memory was interesting.

The power of that computer was also part of the people who actually used slide rulers to calculate.