For those who haven't read his Apollo series, check out Dave McGowan's in-depth commentary here:-
http://www.davesweb.cnchost.com/
excerpt from
davesweb:
...Anyway, I think when we left off we were discussing the highly improbable flight of Apollo 8, the very first manned launch of a Saturn V, which took flight, as I previously mentioned, on the winter solstice of 1968. The mighty Apollo spacecraft, which had failed on its last unmanned outing, purportedly flew all the way to the Moon, did ten quick laps around Earth’s nearest neighbor, and then flew back home, with every one of its
9,000,000 parts performing flawlessly.
Thanks for that was due in part, according to the official Apollo legend, to a band of surfers in Seal Beach. North American Aviation, you see, had a bit of a problem with keeping the liquefied hydrogen and oxygen in the Saturn V’s second-stage from boiling in the Florida sun. The proposed solution was to insulate the fuel tanks with honeycomb insulation, but NASA’s engineers had trouble keeping the insulation from popping back off. The solution to that problem was to hire local surfers, who, according to
Moon Machines, brought with them a “special skill set.”
NASA claimed, by the way, to shoot for 99.9% accuracy in the manufacture of its Apollo spacecraft, which shouldn’t have been a problem for a workforce composed of nαzι rocket scientists, bra seamstresses and surfers. Even if that lofty goal had been attained, however, that would still have left 9,000 defective parts per launch vehicle (6,000 if the figure of
6,000,000 parts is correct).
...
Just two months after the return of Apollo 9, NASA sent Apollo 10 off to the Moon, with Tom Stafford, John Young and Gene Cernan on board. The space agency obviously wanted to get the fake preliminary flights out of the way as quickly as possible so as to get on to the main event. The launch pace would slow considerably once the fake landings began with the next flight, Apollo 11, which blasted off just seven weeks after the return of Apollo 10.
Apollo 10, the third manned launch of a Saturn V, once again allegedly went to the Moon, this time with a lunar module mounted to the nose of the command module. The Apollo 10 mission allegedly included everything that later missions would experience short of actually landing on the lunar surface. Once allegedly in lunar orbit, the lunar module was deployed and flown down fairly close to the surface, before returning to and successfully docking with the command and service modules.
Having endured the perilous initial launch, and then the quarter-million-mile flight to the Moon, followed by the successful deployment and flight of the LEM, and having gotten to within p*~~*ng distance of being the first men to create those historic first footprints on the Moon, it would naturally have been tempting to ignore mission control and set down for a quick stroll into history. To prevent this, according to
the official mythology, NASA diabolically short-fueled the LEM for the Apollo 10 mission.
There was, of course, no possibility that some unforeseen circuмstances might have necessitated the use of that additional fuel, or necessitated a landing on the Moon, which would have been a bit of a PR nightmare for the agency. Walter Cronkite would have had to break the news to the American people:
“The crew of Apollo 10 unexpectedly became the first men to set foot on the Moon just moments ago, and we have been promised live footage momentarily. Unfortunately, their spacecraft was deliberately short-fueled so they will not be able to make the return flight to dock with the mothership and both astronauts will soon die. This should make for some riveting TV though, so stay tuned.”...
NASA supposedly gave up entirely on the idea of placing a vehicle on the Moon, but General Motors’ Defense Research Laboratories purportedly soldiered on, putting the company’s own money into research and development of the vehicle. As the story goes, NASA told the team at GM that if they could somehow come up with a way of fitting an operational vehicle into an impossibly small lunar module equipment bay, the agency might consider incorporating the vehicle into future Apollo missions.
...
As can be clearly seen, particularly
, the rover, as initially deployed, was far from complete. It seems to be
missing such things as a floor pan, and seats, and cameras, and antennae, and battery packs, and various other components – which
raises a few questions, such as where were all the other rover parts stowed? How many empty equipment bays were available to accommodate all the various rover components? And how long exactly did it take the astronauts, given the limitations imposed by their suits and gloves, to deploy and fully assemble a Moon buggy?
Any of these and other questions, that are too difficult to answer, can be
summarily dismissed by the umbrella-excuses such as:
"Everyone knows that NASA sent men to the moon and returned them safely."
Or, "Have you ever made a visit to the Kennedy Space Center in Orlando,
Florida - is that not real too?"
Or, "Have you ever heard of the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space
Museum?"
N.B. I know several staunch defenders of the Moon Walks who are just as
adamant - in the opposite direction, of course - when it comes to the topic of
the Miracle of the Sun at Fatima in 1917. It's interesting to see how selectively
blind some people can become when the matter at hand touches on their most
precious, subjective reality, which can become for them a kind of false god.
Trivia question: According to the Smithsonian's website,
how many parts did
the Apollo 11 spacecraft have? ("The Apollo 11 mission ... July 16-24, 1969 ...
"culminated in the first human steps on another world.")
A) 9 million
B) 6 million
C) 3
D) None of the above.
.
.
.
.
The
Smithsonian says, "Apollo 11 spacecraft had three parts: the
Command Module, the Service Module, and the Lunar Module 'Eagle'."