To this day, there are many rumors and gossip about whether the Americans were on the moon. What are they caused by?
René's statement
American engineer Ralph René, a former member of Mensa, a corporation that includes people of extremely high intelligence. However, Rene himself very categorically told the newspapermen that he had left the club, because “he has not met any bigger idiots than there in the world”.
And yet he himself claimed to have an IQ that is recorded by only 2% of Americans. And so Rene threw all his intellect to solve this mystery: were the Americans really on the moon or is it all a lie? At least in his book, Ralph stated unequivocally: “There was no man-made landing on the moon. Films and pictures about this event are linden. Filming took place on Earth in a special pavilion."
What was the reason for such a statement? Desire to become famous? Prove that his mind can make anyone believe that white is black and vice versa? Make a fuss about your book and make good money on it? …
Most likely, both that, and another, and the third. Moreover, in his work, he cited rather interesting facts to which no one had previously paid special attention.
“When I first saw a film about how our astronauts set a flag on the moon,” wrote the newly-minted expert, “I noticed that the banner swayed slightly, as if from a light breeze. However, even this obvious oddity did not make me immediately think about where the wind comes from where there is no air? I was told that the United States landed a man on the moon, and I believed that this is holy truth …"
Promotional video:
But the oddities did not stop accumulating, forcing one to think about seemingly obvious facts. After taking a closer look at how astronauts travel around the Moon on a lunar rover, Rene noticed that stones flying out from under the wheels fall at the same speed as they would on Earth, although it is known that the Moon has six times less force gravity, which means the stones should fall, respectively, more slowly …
Soon in the hands of an inquisitive researcher was the album "America on the doorstep", full of luxurious color photographs of large format. At this point, Rene undertook to investigate the problem literally under a magnifying glass. And with a strong increase I could notice a lot more, not quite usual.
“For example, take a picture of the descent vehicle after splashdown,” says Rene. - The photo clearly shows the plastic antenna. Not telescopic, not retractable, but plastic. How could she withstand the passage of the device through the dense layers of the atmosphere, where it (as the instruments show) heats up to 630 °?
And here is another discovery: in the moon pictures, the sky is completely black - not a single star. Where could they go? Yuri Gagarin, having been in space, called the stars unblinking, huge. It should be so. Even from our planet, through the polluted atmosphere, we can see and photograph stars. Why did they disappear above the surface of the moon? Perhaps because it is impossible to simulate a picture of the real sky in a pavilion? …"
Then Rene dug up another oddity. In the book of astronaut Aldrin - one of the members of the lunar expedition - there is such an episode. He was describing a party where a movie was shown about astronaut Fred Hayes trying to climb into a lunar lander. And when he almost did it, the step literally crumbled under him … “But Fred Hayes has never been to the moon! - says Rene. "His only flight was participation in the Apollo 13 program, which failed to land on the moon due to an accident on board. Where, when, who filmed Fred Hayes on the Moon?"
And then the researcher recalls a feature film showing the odyssey of Apollo 13 with such authenticity that the viewer does not have any doubts about the authenticity of the frames. But all the shooting of this feature film was actually made in the pavilion …
The Capricorn scenario?
Such are the doubts and accusations. How real are they? Let's now analyze the conclusions of Rene himself and see what we can get from this.
So, Renee assures that American astronauts never landed on the moon, but limited themselves to a scenario well shown in another feature film - Capricorn-1. There the Americans, according to the plot, were supposed to land on Mars. But at the last moment it became clear that the life support system can provide a resource for no more than a week. Then the crew, just before the start, is pulled out of the ship and sent to a secret base in the Arizona desert, where in the pavilion they are filming reports "about the conquest of Mars."
Let's start our investigation by pointing out that Ralph himself is by no means original in his findings and statements. “We Never Goed to the Moon: The US $ 30 Billion Scam,” is the title of a book by Williams Kaysing, a former production manager for an enterprise who once developed rocket engines for the US space agency. It was published by Desert Publication, Arizona, in 1990.
In it, the author questions the fact of the landing of astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin on the moon and subsequent scientific expeditions. NASA, he writes, was experiencing certain financial and technical difficulties at the time. And so in order to demonstrate their superiority to the American taxpayers and the world, to get ahead of the Soviet side in the lunar race, an unprecedented "show" was started.
The project, codenamed ASP (Apollo Simulation Project), was technically carried out at a heavily guarded military base in the Nevada desert, 32 miles east of Mercury, where an incredible underground film studio was built. Lunar landscapes, models of the Earth and the Sun, operating spacecraft - such an entourage has never even dreamed of Hollywood producers. A staff of many thousands of highly qualified specialists in the field of filming, recording and directing, operators and technical advisers worked day and night on the recording of the frames that have now become textbook.
The launches of spacecraft themselves, according to Kaysing, were carried out automatically, without crews. For the distribution of the reports, they used a communication system that has no analogues to this day, which distributed recorded audio and television stories to the receiving antennas of all tracking centers in North America, Australia and Africa. And at the end of the "flight", a special plane dropped a capsule with astronauts by parachute in a pre-designated area of the Atlantic.
So, as we can see, Ralph Rene, in spite of his intelligence, did not invent anything fundamentally new. However, perhaps he discovered in this case those particulars that Kaysing passed by, but which make his investigation more reliable?
Alas, not at all. Imagine that everything he said is true, and such a film studio actually existed. So would the scriptwriters, who worked out panoramas with the participation of the moving Earth and the Sun to the smallest detail, would have forgotten about the stars in a creative rage? Unlikely. They are not visible in photographs for one simple reason: the intensity of solar illumination on the lunar surface is so great that the photographic width of the film is not enough to simultaneously see astronauts literally flooded with sunlight and relatively weakly luminous stars.
Interesting detail: Rene refers to Gagarin's opinion. So, as it became known relatively recently, in his flight, Gagarin simply could not see the stars due to the unsuccessful design of the window. He glared, and the first cosmonaut of the Earth was able to see in it only his own reflection, and by no means the night sky. So his story about large, unblinking stars is only one of the creative fantasies suggested to him by ground-based "scriptwriters". There were, as you already know, others …
However, for us in this case it is only important that Rene himself in his statements and conclusions is by no means sinless. At times, he generally contradicts himself. On the one hand, he says; that modern computer technology and graphics make it possible to accurately reproduce something that never happened in reality, on the other - it claims that the simulators of the lunar expedition made mistake after mistake …
Well, let's suppose that there was an overlap with the stones flying out from under the wheels, to which no one simply paid attention. But how, interestingly, the newly-minted expert was able to establish that the stones are falling “at the wrong speed”? How did he find out that the picture shows exactly the plastic antenna? It can be difficult to understand, even after touching this or that object - paint often hides the texture of the material, - but here an categorical conclusion based on the picture …
Now is the moment with the crumbling step. Yes, Hayes was not really on the moon. But we should not forget that all astronauts, without exception, were trained on earth simulators. And all their exercises were recorded on video and film. So such a recording may well exist in nature. And we only have to find out who is cunning in his books - astronaut Aldrin, who consciously or unconsciously forgot to mention that the movie was filmed in training, or Rene himself, who did not deign to allow such an interpretation, because it destroys his concept?
And finally, the last one. Kaysing, and after him and Renee, assure that this terrible secret has not become public knowledge to this day only because all its participants are bound by a terrible oath, subscription, etc. And those who did not agree to remain silent soon found his death under very strange circumstances. At the same time, Rene says that "not many people were really aware of what was happening." Oh, is it ?!
Let's try to figure it out. Of course, the astronauts themselves knew everything - both who flew and did not fly, but who were preparing for a flight - and this, according to the most conservative estimates, was about 50 people. Further - flight support officers, operators of the ground control center, the leadership of NASA, the CIA, the Pentagon, some from the White House administration, operators, pilots who drove astronauts to the secret base and back, employees of the base itself …
In general, at the very least, there will be about 300-500 people. And some of them would probably like, like Kaysing and Renee, to warm their hands on "fried" facts. At the same time, it would be possible to do this quite anonymously, simply by selling the details of this story - real, not imaginary, such that even the most sophisticated mind cannot come up with - to some newspaper. Neither the New York Times nor the Washington Post would be stingy on paying for this kind of sensation …
We should not forget about another cohort of attentive observers. These are employees of our special services, who closely followed the flights of the Americans. Exactly as they are for ours. At least the following fact speaks about the capabilities of our intelligence officers: all information about the next step in the creation of an atomic bomb by the Americans, in a maximum of a week, appeared on I. Kurchatov's desk. And the bomb was guarded, for sure, no worse than the lunar project …
To say that ours were silent only because the Americans sold us cheap grain for this, as Rene claims, is simply ridiculous. The Soviet government could starve at least half of the country - this has already happened in history. But to miss your political advantage, not to catch your main enemy in such a big lie? Never!
All the same, the truth will come out …
In more detail and visually all this was told (and shown) in the television movie "The Other Side of the Moon", which was recently broadcast on the first channel.
Our leading experts - pilot-cosmonaut Georgy Grechko, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences M. Marov, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences V. Shevchenko and others explained in detail and convincingly why there are clear traces on the Moon, which caused the flag to flutter, installed on the moon, etc.
We can add to this the following interesting fact. In early 2004, when the whole world was watching the television coverage of the American Mars rovers, Komsomolskaya Pravda drew attention to this oddity.
When Spirit began to transmit an image of the surrounding landscape from the landing platform, the Americans could not boast of the clarity of the image. And in fact, the sharpness turned out to be such that on one of the stones … the number "194" suddenly appeared quite clearly.
Where from ?! Was it really the Martians who made an inventory of their property and marked the stones with numbers? …
No one was able to get an articulate answer to this question from NASA specialists. The mysterious image of the ill-fated stone immediately disappeared from the NASA website. And, as it were, an official message about the failure of the rover's equipment followed.
"Spirit" was silent for three days. After responding to requests from Earth again. But the signals coming from it are so weak and unintelligible that experts started talking about a computer program malfunction or even a more serious failure. Realizing that it was impossible to expect intelligible explanations from specialists, the writing fraternity tried to explain themselves how the numbers on the stone could appear. Only the most desperate ufologists are at risk to say that these marks could have been left by "little green men". Sane people finally came to the following hypothesis.
This is not the first time an alien stone with a mark has appeared on television. More than 30 years ago, the letter "C" suddenly appeared on the image of one of the moon rocks. But then it turned out that one of the American astronauts decided to leave this unforgettable memory of himself on Selene. His joke, however, made independent experts and journalists take a closer look at all video recordings of transmissions from the Moon. All this led to the fact that many even doubted: were the Americans on the moon? Have all the shots been taken in a special pavilion, as mentioned above?
The widow of the famous director Stanley Kubrick also added fuel to the fire, saying that before his death, her husband, they say, confessed to her: it was his team who filmed moon reports commissioned by NASA.
Let's leave this statement on her conscience. But the shooting at the test site during the training of the astronauts was actually carried out. And in the end they also came in handy.
The fact is that the costs of flights were huge, and interest in them was rapidly falling. If a minute of advertising in the first lunar reports was valued at many millions of dollars, then no one wanted to advertise in the last programs from the Moon - Americans at that time preferred to watch baseball games and feature films that were broadcasted on other TV channels.
And then, they say, the telebosses, in order to somehow revive the lunar television reports, began to insert fragments into them that were filmed at the earth's "lunar" during tests of this or that technique. So, spectacular, but strange shots appeared in the reports, which alerted the experts …
By the way, the same was probably the case with the rover. After all, it was announced that the Spirit, worth $ 300 million, made a safe landing, is gaining energy into the batteries for the subsequent march. President Bush at this time made a speech on the prospects for the future exploration of the Moon and Mars. It's time to ask Congress for new appropriations for future space research, and then suddenly it turned out that the rover was faulty … What to do?
And in the course, probably, once again went footage taken at the ground tests of space technology. But in a hurry, they overlooked, and a stone with ill-fated numbers hit the TV screen …
Who will dot?
And the final point in this story, apparently, will have to be put … by the Chinese. Yes, don't be surprised. According to the plans, published at the time by the Xinhua news agency, Chinese cosmonauts intend to land on the moon over the next 10 years. It is then that we, perhaps, will find out whose traces they will find on the surface of Selena. And will they find anything at all …
In general, be that as it may, another chapter will be added to the lunar epic.
UFO on the Moon?
Let me finish this story about "exposing" the Americans with such a digression into the past. Do you know what was the reason for the failure of Apollo 13? According to the official version, one of the gas cylinders exploded on the ship after launching from Earth. But this explosion, according to an unofficial version, was staged by none other than aliens … They, they say, did not want the Americans to land this time, because they were carrying a compact nuclear charge with them to detonate it on the Moon. The alien lunar base could suffer from this, so they tried to prevent the landing this time.
By the way, rumors that the Americans on Earth's natural satellite constantly had to deal with UFOs and their inhabitants are very persistent. They were born immediately after Neil Armstrong set foot on the lunar surface.
"Wow, how many there are!" - they say, he said, looking around, and immediately switched to the secret code, reporting to the NASA management about what he saw.
Our specialists had the opportunity to check how this rumor corresponds to reality. The fact is that during the preparation of the American-Soviet expedition "Apollo" - "Union", Armstrong came to the USSR. In the Star City Museum, I even happened to see his watch. “They cost a million dollars,” the lady guide explained. And she added that during these hours, having visited the moon with the owner, one billionaire gave Armstrong a check with a six-digit figure, but he refused the money. And he donated the watch to the museum in memory of his stay on Russian soil.
Whether it is true or not, let's leave it on the conscience of the guide and Armstrong himself. But I believe that our cosmonauts took advantage of the opportunity and questioned Armstrong in detail about his stay on the Moon.
By the way, the leaders of NASA have not confirmed the presence of contacts with aliens and through official channels.
S. Slavin
Recommended for viewing: The Apollo Case. Were Americans on the Moon