Gotten in my email today - here's what the UFO community has to say about this.
I'm including the whole article because the editorial comments are, well, pretty illustrative of problems at the fringe....
UFO ROUNDUP
Volume 8, Number 1
January 1, 2003
Editor: Joseph Trainor
OBERG AND SCIENTISTS
CHALLENGE MOON-HOAX THEORISTS
"Is that the moon or a studio in the Nevada desert? How can the flag flutter when there's no wind on the moon? Why can't we see stars in the moon-landing pictures?"
"For three decades, NASA has taken the high road, ignoring those who claimed the Apollo moon landings were faked and part of a colossal government conspiracy."
"The claims and suspicious questions like the ones cited here mostly showed up in books and on the Internet. But last year's prime-time FOX TV special on the so- called 'moon hoax' prompted schoolteachers and others to plead with NASA for factual information to fight back."
"So a few months ago, the space agency budgeted $15,000 to hire a former rocket scientist and author to produce a small book refuting the disbelievers' claims. It would be written primarily with teachers and students in mind."
"The idea backfired, however, embarrassing the space agency for responding to ignorance, and the book deal was chucked."
"'The issue of trying to do a targeted response to this is just lending credibility to something that is, on its face, asinine,' NASA chief Sean O'Keefe said in late November (2002) after the dust settled."
"So it's back to Square One--ignoring the hoaxers. That's troubling to some scientific experts who contend that someone needs to lead the fight against scientific illiteracy and the growing belief in pseudoscience like aliens and astrology."
"Someone like NASA."
"'If they don't speak out, who will?' asks Melissa Pollack, a senior analyst at the National Science Foundation."
"Author James Oberg will. The former space shuttle flight controller plans to write the book NASA commissioned from him, even though. He's seeking money elsewhere. His working title: A Pall Over Apollo."
"Tom Hanks will speak out, too."
"The Academy Award-winning actor, who starred in the 1995 movie Apollo 13 and later directed the HBO mini- series, From the Earth to the Moon, is working on another lunar-themed project. The IMAX documentary will feature Apollo archival footage. Its title: Magnificent Desolation, astronaut Buzz Aldrin's real-time description of the moon on July 20, 1969."
"While attending the Cape Canaveral premiere of the IMAX version of Apollo 13 in November (2002), Hanks said the film industry has a responsibility to promote historical literacy. He took a jab at the 1978 movie Capricorn One, which had NASA's first manned mission to Mars being faked on a sound stage."
"'We live in a society where there is no law in making money in the promulgation of ignorance or, in some cases, stupidity,' Hanks said, 'There are a lot of things you can say never happened. You can go as relatively quasi-harmless as saying no one went to the moon. But you also can say that the Holocaust never happened.'"
"A spokesman for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial in Washington says there will always be those who will not be convinced. But the museum does not engage them in debate."
"The spokesman acknowledged, however, that if a major news channel was doing a program that questioned the authenticity of the Holocaust, 'I'd certainly want to inject myself into the debate with them in a very forceful way.'"
"Television's FOX network was the moon-hoax purveyor. In February 2001 and again a month later, FOX broadcast a program titled Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?"
"Roger Launius, who agreed to Oberg's book just before leaving NASA's history office, says the story about the moon hoax has been around a long time. But the FOX show "raised it to a new level, it gave it legs and credibility that it didn't have before.'"
"Indeed the National Science Foundation's Pollack says two of her colleagues, after watching the FOX special, thought it was possible that NASA faked the moon landings. 'These are people who work at NSF,' she says."
"The story went--and still goes--something like this: America was desperate to beat the Soviet Union to the moon but lacked the technology to pull it off. So NASA faked the six moon landings in a studio somewhere out West."
"Ralph Rene, a retired carpenter in Passaic, New Jersey, takes it one step further. The space fakery started during the Gemini program (1964 to 1967--J.T.), according to Rene, author of the 1992 book, NASA Mooned America."
"'I don't know what real achievements they've done because when do you trust a liar?' Rene says, 'I know we have a shuttle running around right above our heads, but that's only 175 miles up. It's under the shield (Van Allen radiation belts--J.T.). You cannot go through the shield and live.'"
(Editor's Note: Ralph Rene and other moon-hoax theorists contend that, once beyond the safety of the Van Allen belts, the Apollo spacecraft were exposed to deadly solar and cosmic radiation that should have killed the astronauts.)
"Alex Roland, a NASA historian during the 1970s and early 1980s, says his office used to have 'a kook drawer' for such correspondence. But there were no prime-time TV shows disputing the moon landings then--and no Internet."
"Still, Roland would be inclined to 'just let it go because you'll probably just make it worse by giving it any official attention.'"
"Within NASA, opinions were split about a rebuttal book. Oberg, a Houston-based author of 12 books, mostly about the Russian space program, said ignoring the problem 'just makes this harder. To a conspiracy mind, refusing to respond is a sign of cover-up.'"
"Phil Plait, a Sonoma State University astronomer who picks apart the moon hoaxers' claims on his Bad Astronomy website, agrees that NASA should have followed through with the (Oberg) book but understands why it didn't."
"'It became, as things like this do, a media circus. And by circus, I mean more like a carnival (fun fair in UK--J.T.),' Plait says, toot-toot-tootling like a calliope. He warns, 'There's a lot of antiscientific thinking, and if this stuff is allowed to continue, it's going to spell doom for our country.'"
"Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell does not know what else, if anything, can be done to confront this moon madness."
"'All I know is that somebody sued me because I said I went to the moon,' says the 74-year-old astronaut. 'Of course, the courts threw it out.'"
"The authorities also threw out the case involving Apollo 11 moonwalker Aldrin in September (2002)."
"A much bigger and younger man was hounding the 72- year-old astronaut in Beverly Hills, California, calling him 'a coward and a liar and a thief' and trying to get him to swear on a Bible, on camera, that he walked on the moon. Aldrin, a Korean War (1950 to 1953--J.T.) combat pilot, responded with a fist in the chops." (See the Chicago Tribune for December 23, 2002, "Moon Madness," section 2, page 1, and "Moon: Sifting fact from fiction," section 2, page 5. See also UFO Roundup, volume 7, number 46 for November 12, 2002, "NASA kills Oberg's book," page 9.)
(Editor's Comment: What I object to is lumping moon-hoax proponents like Ralph Rene with so-called Holocaust deniers, branding them both "a menace to society" and then targeting them for destruction. Does this animus also extend to UFO "believers?" How about "pyramid power" enthusiasts? Or the editorial gang at Fortean Times? The UFO community is not the enemy of the National Science Foundation. It never has been. You scientists claim to be able to think clearly. Don't let a few Zionist media barons--who have their own agenda-- stampede you into a jihad against students of anomalies.)
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