Dr. Brian Cox faces his critics

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I had little time for reading on our recent trip to Florida, so am surprised at the volume that I managed to take in at the website Aulis Online.com. It is in regard to the moon landings.

It is easy to see that Apollo was a hoax. The means of pulling it off are familiar to us now. The script is written in advance, and much (if not most) of it filmed and acted in advance. Prior to the supposed landings, the film was ‘in the can,’ ready for airing. The event that preceded airing of the pre-written script was, in the matter of the John F. Kennedy assassination, shots fired from a window in Dallas. On 9/11/2001 it was explosions set off in empty buildings.

In the matter of Apollo, it was a launching of rockets that only made their way to the Atlantic Ocean, there to be ditched. All that followed was a made-for-TV movie.

Long before July 16, 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had already filmed the moon landing.* They must have watched it with us, but not smirking as we imagine, as their task was from then forward to be lifetime actors, forever part of a lie. It was an arduous task. I think it was hard for Armstrong, apparently a man of high integrity, to live that lie. Aldrin appears a little less challenged. Armstrong lived mostly in seclusion and left us with a legacy of intrigue, telling us of “truth’s protective layers.” This leaves us with the impression that while he knows of the hoax, he protects it with the attitude that it served a higher purpose. Perhaps. Public mythology is an important aspect of the art of governance. But then again, maybe he was just salving his conscience.

I pored over the Aulis site looking for strong (maybe even convincing) evidence. It is abundant. I decided, however, that photographs, even though easily seen to be fake, are not useful. For one thing, people see mostly what they are told they see. If they want to be fooled, they will not pass more than a couple of seconds examining  crevasses and shadows. Further, it could be argued that even though the photos were staged, Apollo was real. Taking photos on the moon was impossible, so they had to stage them, but only for public consumption to seal the deal. The landings were real, you see.

So I vowed never again to waste my time staring at miscast shadows. Jack White spent much of his life doing this, and managed to convince only the already-skeptical.

What other evidence is there? Plenty, but much of it is scientific and is therefore lost on the public. Is there a smoking gun? Is there one thing that we can point to and say “this is it, proof?” Yes. There are a dozen at least, from rockets that don’t go high or fast enough to the problems of radiation to the flimsy tin-foil lunar lander to Playtex jump suits to film that are unaffected by intense radiation to the Rover that mysteriously got there and was even re-used on various missions. (It was nothing more than a Willy’s Jeep.) There is the fact that we never went back, that is, that the technology was shelved and the alleged records destroyed. Then there is this: Untested technology that worked, first time, with no flaws. Human lives were on the line, and they sent them on a 480,000 mile journey in untested rockets, landers and buggies. I have remodeled bathrooms in my time here. Everything goes wrong! With the moon landings, nothing. That does not happen.

But again, one must be already skeptical for this evidence to work, and most of the public is neither skeptical nor able and willing to objectively look over volumes of evidence. Face it, our education system does not produce people capable of absorbing and critically understanding large volumes of information. TV is all it takes to sell a hoax.

Here is Dr. Brian Cox, a professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester (born on 3/3), discussing the moon landings:

“The Moon landings happened and it’s [the question is] nonsensical … it’s like saying was America ever discovered? Right? Well, yes, it was. Did we, did we work out how to… did we discover penicillin? Yes. Did we go to the Moon? Yes. That’s the evidence. There is no information content or use in debating it any more.”

That is called “stonewalling.” Notice that he is not willing to discuss details, but is rather rubbing our faces in his supposed credentials as a means of averting any natural curiosity about the volumes of evidence that scream “Fake! Fake! Fake!” He is a scoundrel, and this is his only refuge. If called out to defend even a shred of what has since been learned, as for instance with the timing of the takeoff of Apollo 11, far too slow and low to have even achieved even low-Earth orbit, he’d have to be a master of diversion, deception and bullshit. How much easier to simply construct a wall and hide behind it.

That in mind, I decided that the best way to approach this massive hoax is a face-to-face dialogue with Cox. Since he would never consent to such a thing, I have to make it all up. This dialogue is set in the following imagined scenario: Cox has agreed to take the stage and face his critics, answering them one by one as they pelt him with nagging inconsistencies. Such a scene actually happened, in a place called Neverland Auditorium in Nossex, England, on March 3, 1998. Dr. Cox was most gracious in agreeing to appear, his self-confidence and scientific assurance his only weapons in the face of “conspiracy theorists” and “quote miners.”

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Moderator: Ladies and gentlemen, we are honored this evening to have with us Dr. Brian Cox, a particle physicist, who has agreed to take the stage and answer all questions, no holds barred. I will ask you to take the microphone, one by one, and to be courteous throughout this evening, as Dr. Cox is quite courageous to appear. Let us begin.

S.G. Pokrovsky: Dr. Cox, we in the scientific community were astounded to learn that the blueprints for the Saturn 5 rocket, the one used in nine trips to the moon, were either lost or destroyed by NASA. Are you aware of this? It seems odd given that we now know that Rocketdyne, the company that built the rockets, had as many as twenty volumes of data on the rockets, part of its Knowledge Retention program. Are you able to access any of this information?

Dr. Cox: Yes. I have seen the twenty volumes. They had red covers. I looked over a couple of them. They were on a book shelf in Houston. But you have to remember that paper and ink in a place like Houston don’t last forever. Even as I looked over the information in 1991 when I visited NASA, I could see the ink was fading. By this time, I imagine they would be unreadable. But NASA did not destroy them. They are an organization steeped in integrity. They recycled them after the ink had faded.

S.G. Pokrovsky: A follow-up, sir?

Dr. Cox: Of course.

S.G. Pokrovsky: Rocketdyne records indicate that the F-1 engine, five of which powered each Saturn 5 launch, received only 70 hours of static testing prior to their use in the moon landings. In one live unmanned test, known as Apollo 6, they performed miserably, so much so that NASA feared that a real mission would have failed. Yet after that time, and with so little testing, they performed flawlessly. How is this possible?

Dr. Cox: The answer is contained in your question. After Apollo 6, Rocketdyne worked really, really hard to fix the problems with the F-1, and as can be seen with Apollo 8, which went all the way to the moon, the problems resolved. Apollo 6 was just a test, and it highlighted some areas that needed work, and the work was done. Apollo 8 is proof.

S.G. Pokrovsky: Then the technology was jettisoned? It makes no sense.

Dr. Cox: Of course it makes sense! We used the technology to go to the moon. After that, we did not need it anymore.

Moderator: Thank you, Dr. Pokrovsky. Next question, please.

Alexander Popov: Dr. Cox, we were very fortunate to have recovered an unedited Super 8 film of the Apollo 11 launch. In it we found that at 105 seconds the rocket had only then penetrated a layer of cirrostratus clouds at 26,000 feet. However, NASA’s record of the launch says that at that time in the mission, the rocket was at 79,000 feet, or three times farther along. How can this be?

Dr. Cox: I once had a Super 8 camera. But remember, NASA had much better equipment than that. I would not rely on a Super 8 to record a historic event.

Alexander Popov: We timed the frames in the camera against NASA footage, and found them to be in perfect sync, the rocket clearing the tower at 9.5 seconds in both.

Dr. Cox: That may be so, but after that, the Super 8 camera was known to get bouncy, that is, the mechanism within it that pulled the film through the exposure lens would speed up, and go way too fast to give us an accurate record of an event. I found this with my son’s graduation from kindergarten where when he marched with his classmates into the room while Pomp and Circumstance was playing, in the filmed version he was suddenly walking really fast to a much peppier revision of that wonderful song.

Alexander Popov: We found that the timing held, with NASA saying first stage separation was at 162 seconds, and the Super 8 film at that very moment showing a tremendous cloud of hot gas. The entire Super 8 film appears to be in sync with NASA records of the timing of the event except for this: We found that the rocket had only traveled a third of the distance and was traveling nine times slower than NASA claims.

Dr. Cox: Again, reliance on Super 8 technology is the problem. If it could not properly record my son’s kindergarten graduation, how can we rely on it to properly record an event of such historic significance as the launching of the first moon landing? I choose to rely on NASA’s footage.

Alexander Popov: But NASA has never offered continuous footage of the event. It is all spliced and edited.

Dr. Cox: Spliced and edited by some of the best technicians available in 1969. Anyway, it does not matter how the Command Module and Service Vehicle and Lunar Lander got into low Earth orbit. The important feature of the Apollo 11 event was that they got there, otherwise there would have been no moon landing. Next question please.

Alexander Popov: OK … in July of 1975 NASA and the Soviets engaged in a joint mission, Apollo-Soyuz, where their spacecraft and the Apollo capsule docked in low Earth orbit. Since that time, the Apollo space capsule has been seen in museums, but never again used in outer space. To this day, when astronauts are taken to the International Space Station, it is aboard a Russian vessel. The U.S. has paid the Soviets and Russians billions of dollars to ferry then. If the technology was so good as to get men to the moon and back, why are we now paying others?

Dr. Cox: The Soviets had to sit on the sidelines during the moon landings, and were rightly chagrined that their program was overshadowed by Apollo. At a very high level, as I recall, Richard Nixon and Alexei Kosygin, a decision was made to allow the Soviets to save face with their own population, which resulted in Apollo-Soyuz. Prior to that time there was an exchange of technology allowing the Soviets to catch up. Otherwise, Soyuz would not have been up to the task of docking with Apollo.

Alexander Popov: So you’re saying that Soyuz is actually NASA technology? This makes no sense given that the Soviet list of firsts in space technology far exceeds anything done by the Americans … first in space, first to launch animals then humans into space, first to land a probe on the moon …

Dr. Cox: [interrupting] I would remind the gentleman that the Soviet Union was capable of immense deception. Unless you were there to witness the events you just listed, I would urge caution. It could all be an elaborate hoax.

Alexander Popov: My point exactly! Are not the Americans, is not NASA, capable of such deception on a grand scale?

Dr. Cox: I would remind the gentleman that it was the Soviet Union, and not NASA and the United States, that collapsed. And remember, NASA did the Soviets a favor, merely allowing them to save face. It was a gracious gesture.

Alexander Popov: It looks more like a payoff, even a bribe.

Moderator: Thank you, Dr. Popov. At this time we are going to take a short break before we return to questioning. Please enjoy some musical entertainment, and we will pick up where we left off in about five minutes.

 

Moderator: Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. Dr. Cox, are you ready again to face your inquisitors?

Dr. Cox: Of course. Let’s move forward.

Gennady Ivchenkov: Dr. Cox, I’ve earned my degrees in solid-fuel rocketry, and have done an extensive analysis of the Saturn 5 rocket. My research indicates that the engines that powered the rocket could only lift off the pad carrying 2,000 tons instead of the 2,800 tons claimed by NASA, so that it seems unlikely that any of the necessary accoutrements for a journey to the moon – lunar lander, command module, astronauts, moon buggy, could have been aboard.

Dr. Cox: That’s an interesting theory, but again, I emphasize that we did discover America, invent penicillin, and go to the moon. How, pray tell, could we have achieved this remarkable feat without the necessary equipment?

Gennady Ivchenkov: My point exactly, sir. Your craft was not adequate to the task.

Dr. Cox: Inadequate, you say? I suggest, sir, that you speak to the folks at Rocketdyne, the people who built the F-1 engines that powered the rocket, and tell them it was not adequate! They will set you straight.

Gennady Ivchenkov: But sir, this is my point. A feat of science cannot be achieved unless the actual thrust underneath the rocket is adequate for the task. I am a scientist of such machines, one who has spent his entire career designing them for trips to low Earth orbit. My analysis of Saturn 5 was that it was not up to the task.

Dr. Cox: This is possibly the point of departure in this discussion, in that you specialize, as a Russian scientist, in placing vehicles in low-Earth orbit. That was never our objective. We went to the moon. Next question please.

Gennady Ivchenkov: But sir, this is my point! Your rockets were not up to the task.

Dr. Cox: Results say otherwise. Next question!

Andrei Bukatov: Dr. Cox, my colleague Dr. Inchenkov and I agree that your Saturn 5 rockets was not up to the task at hand, and could not possibly have delivered the necessary equipment and fuel to make a moon journey.

Dr. Cox: That is repetitive, ground already covered. Do you have anything new to add?

Andrei Bukatov: Again, getting back to the 175 second Super 8 sequence …

Dr. Cox: Again, repetitive! Do you have anything new to add to this discussion?

Andrei Bukatov: Only that I find your answers this evening to be evasive and even dishonest.

Moderator: Dr. Cox’s assistant informs me that he has a pressing engagement and has to cut this evening short. Dr. Cox, would you be so kind as to offer some closing remarks?

Dr. Cox: Of course. I will be brief. The Moon landings happened. Questioning official history is a nonsensical enterprise. It’s like saying was America never discovered? Right? Well, yes, it was. Did we work out how to… did we discover penicillin? Yes. Did we go to the Moon? Yes. That’s the evidence. There is no information content or use in debating it any more.

Perhaps the distinguished scientists in this audience missed something important. Your research has been diligent and even judicious, if you will. But you are questioning a reality that we invented, and soon we will act again to create an even newer reality as we tackle the journey to Mars, having already shown that the moon was well within our reach. You can study that too. You, all of you, will be left to just study what we do. That’s your role as history moves forward.

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PS: Please note, in the video above, Mr. Charles Durnan, at 3:34, breaks the “fourth wall.” He is no longer an actor, and communicates directly with us, the audience, with a sly wink. I have for many years been taken by the entertainment value of this brief segment from the movie Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, as it works in real life, if that is what this is.

*Silly me, to imagine that the men in the space suits even had to be the men named as astronauts. They could be anyone.