Originally published at: INDIA SNAPS SOME INTERESTING PHOTOS OF THE LUNAR SURFACE
Well whaddaya know? When K.M. sent along this story, I was stunned, both for the self-explanatory nature of the story, but - I must confess - for the “we-told-you-so” opportunity that it gives to gloat, and the epistemological squawking that I can anticipate will inevitably follow. In a way, this blog is as much about…
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… what would be more interesting would be for someone to say they are going to those sites and watch USAirstrip-1’s response. Wouldn’t this force USAirstrip-1 to put up or shut up? After all, if “NASA and the US government have made it clear that the Apollo landing sites are to be treated as historical sites, with a quarantine zone of approximately a kilometer around each one into which no probe or human is to go.” then there seem to be only two conclusions possible … 1) this declaration is a bluff or 2) USAirstrip-1 does have the capability to monitor and enforce the no-go zone.
It would be interesting for India or China to say, well after they are about 3/4 of the way to the moon, we’re going to land at those sites and check out the technology … What are you going to do about it? I doubt seriously if we have the technology to monitor those sites let alone enforce the no-go zone. We certainly, unless black technology exists, have no way to return to the moon. While I’m not sure about the following … It appears to be the case that we only know well after the fact that anyone has even photographed these sites until the photographs are made public.
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Let’s put a little more nuance into it: I don’t think we have the technology either, and you suggest that the techology does not exist to MONITOR those sites, and I agree. I DO think we have the technology to DEFEND them, but the difficulty, sans any platform in Lunar-synchronous orbit above its surface (which as far as anyone know we don’t have, unless there were things on the old Clementine mission we don’t know about), is that we have nothing to target the laser, or particle beam, or missiles we might use to defend those sites. Thus I think your use of “MONITOR” the sites is spot on. Arguing against this, however, are those reflective mirrors that Apollo left on the lunar surface , which are very small affairs, which they used (supposedly) to do measurements of the distance to the moon by bouncing laser beams off those mirrors. So, if one believes those reports, we can hit the lunar surface fairly accurately with lasers from Earth. The problem is of course that to do so with a laser of sufficient power to damage or destroy a target would require some very advanced phase conjugation of the beam, which we may or may not have. (There is that strange picture of a beam at Kirkland AFB that may indicate experimentation with high power phase conjugation, but if that picture IS a picture of a test, then they had a long way to go.) Anyway, just my two additional cents.
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Like it was said before, why are there folks stranded in the space right above Earth if technology and space travel is supposedly so advanced? Are the stranded astronauts being used as lab rats for prolonged space travel?
And if the technology for video is so advanced, why are such crappy photos available for viewing released to the public? Perhaps the hype about technology is just that?
Question is, why India was even allowed land lunar probe successfully and make pictures? Not like Japanese or Russian ones.
Sorry. I can make a sugar mixture with baking powder that forms these patterns and then add some little models, take pictures and VOILA. NASA is Disney on Steroids and the amount of criminal money they rob from the American taxpayer allows anyone, India, China, VietNam, Mexico (ok, you get the picture) to say they have taken these pictures. Call me a conspiracy theorist … very few of these “theories” have proven to be false. We are NOT on a spinning ball… a torus, definitely. Spinning? Nope.
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… another thought … how about a FOIA request for every scrap of paper produced from the beginning of the Mercury missions through the “last” Apollo mission? Surely, 60 year old plus
“technology” shouldn’t need to remain “classified”. This should be a rather simple matter. With this being the most significant project/event in human history there is surely a well organized archive with a searchable database of all of this material documenting every aspect. Where are all of the hundreds, if not thousands, of “memoirs” of all of those who worked on these projects? Surely, there must be thousands of “notes” and “memos”. Where is all of this material? Maybe Elon could look into this as well.
If anyone has an X account please pass this on to Elon’s account as a suggestion.
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I think Ron Howard tried, this exact request for the making of “Apollo 13.” His reasoning was to be as accurate as possible for the reproduction of the Apollo 13 capsule. Even his request was denied from NASA, but not because didn’t want to, but because they didn’t have it! Maybe his request for just the Apollo program and not all like you suggested Scarmoge.
We’re going back to the Moon, eh? Well, then the operative question might be…,
Where did the Horton brothers stash Von Brauns Saturn V plans? I mean sure those people are supposedly dead but…I’ve heard tales of many Germans dying multiple times after WW2 
Maybe we could “Mary Shelley” us up a copy of Ralph Kramden and try to provoke him in to
“launching” a few people into orbit?
What if we did a few practice tries with Whoopie Goldburg to get the trajectory right?
To the MOON Whoopie!
Har-har-hardee-har-har!
Edit: And if they DO try to proffer up some alleged Saturn V plans let’s make sure to check that it contains blueprints for the landing module antigrav “naughty bits”…
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