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Space race or space fantasy?
It's one thing to enjoy science fiction [with an emphasis on fiction], but I long ago stopped thinking it somehow gave a window on the future. With a few rare exceptions, science fiction has given us boys own yarns in an imaginary space setting. Within that setting, many writers have explored the human condition, using the leap from a real world to free them to explore universal issues and conflicts. The trouble is that some people, having discovered this genre young, appear to have got fixed in a mindset which maintains that it's only a question of time before it all comes true. With the taking up of the genre by the film industry, this has further involved those who never read the books, and the message 'space, the final frontier' has taken root in the public mind. The 'real' space race has fuelled this, but I sometimes wonder how much of NASA's budget goes on simulations, which have got so good of late it's difficult to tell they're not real. Even pictures from Mars are a construct as the data comes streaming back to Earth in code and has to be assembled into a picture, colours chosen for effect. Back in the days of the first 'moon landing' the quality of the pictures was much worse than now - and in black and white - and, although the special effects skills were more basic then, scenes could be simulated and, according to a lot of people, were. Thing is, we live in a moving picture age, everyone is visually experienced and used to taking in information from pictures, but few have the experience of seeing the world from 'behind the lens' with the detachment that brings. In the first 'Moon landing', the classic shot is of the 'first step for mankind' where we see the first astronaut stepping onto the surface of the Moon. Fine. But where was it shot from? The picture suggests a view several metres from the landing craft; how did that camera get there in an age when remote control of cameras was hardly an art? Who placed it if we are watching the 'first step on the moon? Are we to believe that the craft fired out a remote camera which landed perfectly and then started to film in exactly the right direction at the time the astronaut made his move? There are other things like the Stars and Stripes, proudly erected, flapping in the breeze, which, with no atmosphere is a difficult thing to comprehend, and there are further issues that others have mentioned. All in all it does suggest a fabrication. After all, there are plenty of places in the US which look just like the moon, and they desperately needed to show the world in the 1960s that communism wasn't a match for good ole capitalism... that's what the space race was all about. But whether you go for moon hoax or not, there are indisputable scientific facts that no one can ignore; space is huge, distances are literally astronomical! It would take hundreds of years for craft from Earth to reach the nearest stars, so space travel as it's imagined in Sar Wars andStratrek just isn't going to happen for the naked ape, full stop. We might make it to the other planets in our little cul-de-sac of the galaxy, but I'm not sure how that could be of any benefit, other than some stunning photographs - these could just as easily be taken by a robotic craft, and have been. The biggest imprediment to manned space travel, however, is the fact that our puny little hairless bodies would be fried by the radiation that is drenching space in vast solar winds that stream across the universe and which are death to anything living other than viruses. Space ships have so far been constructed of lightweight metal and carbon fibre, and the only shielding that's been possible due to weight restrictions [caused by the sheer volume of fuel needed to lift away from Earth's gravity] has been tinfoil. The chances of anyone making it out into space and back are tiny, which is why NASA have for decades been sending unmanned robotic craft to Mars and Venus, rather than astronauts. We should settle for communication satellites giving us mobile phones and satnavs and leave it at that. Space travel is for science fiction and comicbooks, no species so far evolved on this planet is every going to make it elsewhere, and we had better pay attention to what we have done to our only planet - while dreaming of space - before it's too late. The more crazed ideas of mining other planets and asteroids for raw materials is so daft that only the truly insane would pay it any attention. |
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Urban-Legends-3056/2008/1/Moon-landing.htm
| http://mrbasheer.tripod.com/moonwalk.htm
| http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/discussion/the-great-moon-hoax/1035254/
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PLEASE VISIT THE CONTRIBUTOR'S WEBSITE
Fool on the Hill
A blog about the state of the world
www.oneworldnet.co.uk/blog/index.php
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