Another imaginary Enterprise Mission NASA conspiracy

[morpheus]

Way back in 2001, Michael Bara of EM wrote another of their NASA conspiracy articles. This one accused NASA of covering up anti-gravity research.

Againt my better judgment, I emailed Bara:

Sent: Sunday, February 04, 2001 12:54 PM
Subject: NASA gravity research


> I'm not quite sure what your recent article is
> implying - a NASA coverup? This isn't
> the case as five seconds of research could
> have told you.
>
> The Podkletnov research at NASA has been in the
> public arena since 1997 at least. The Wired article at
>
> http://www.wired.com/wired/6.03/antigravity.html
>
> was written in early '98, and Pete Skeggs published
> a very complete report of a trip visit in Oct 97.
>
> http://www.inetarena.com/~noetic/pls/msfc-trip.html
>
> Even the AG buffs appear to have given up on
> Podkletnov now, due to his failure to replicate
> the experiments when offered a lab.

He acknowledged my email, and stated he was unaware of the Wired article. The response shows just how deep the research is on their site, because it took me just minutes to find the references myself.

I replied:

Mike

Seeing as you were unaware of the Wired article,
perhaps you should put a notice to that effect
as a postscript to your article?

After I read your article I did a search online and
it took me less than ten minutes to refresh myself
with the facts. I would have thought you would
have done this level of background research
yourself before publishing anything.

As I am sure you know Wired magazine has a monthly
circulation of 500,000 copies. The Wired Web site has been
in the Media Metrix Top 500 Web sites worldwide, so
literally hundreds of thousands of people have been
exposed to that article.

You are correct - it's not a NASA press release. But then
they don't do press releases on that much of their research as
far as I can tell. If a journalist interviews five NASA
scientists on an official escorted visit to NASA premises and the
article is published in a mainstream technology magazine,
as far as I am concerned it is basically approved NASA PR.
If NASA was trying to keep it quiet, would that be their
strategy?

After all that - do you think he ever clarified his article or printed a retraction about this NASA 'conspiracy'? Of course not!

His reply:

Again, I am only interested in official NASA sourcing, but that does seem like a good deal of co-operation. And my point in the article was that NASA did not exactly shout it from the hills that they were doing this research. Wired is not NASA, no matter how much co-operation they got from them. If Wired made an inquiry, how likely is that NASA would refuse access? Then the story would be that NASA was "hiding" the work behind closed doors.

I don't think -- based on one article in a magazine with a circulation of less than .001 of the human race -- that you can say my characterization of the research was either inaccurate or unfair.

[and then off into woo woo land we go]

I will let you in on a little secret here as well -- we received word through "channels" (a person you would have heard of) that NASA actually privately confirmed Podletkov's work in 1997, which is why there is a link to their advanced propulsion site from 7/14/98 on our web site. We expected a release of information around that time. We were told that they were not sure how to proceed with this information since it was so revolutionary. The Huntsville program was just the "public" program to "verify" what they had already done in private. When that public effort collapsed, we became concerned And decided to write our story, which sat around for several months before we decided to go ahead with it.

[Invader Spleen]

"channels"?

"little secret"?

](*,)

[btimsah1]

"channels"?

"little secret"?

](*,)

I've always had a hard time with the idea of hiding information.

Because, quite frankly it seems we can have the information but don't do anything with it.

For example, we can run our cars using cooking oil. Apperently many people do it. I'd have to image with the HUGE rise in gas prices that the cooking oil would cost less than gasoline? I guess my point is, many peopl who come up with these awesome idea's are all good and dandy but if no one's ready to buy and use it, then it just never seems to happen.

-Robby

[dummy]

For example, we can run our cars using cooking oil. Apperently many people do it. I'd have to image with the HUGE rise in gas prices that the cooking oil would cost less than gasoline? I guess my point is, many peopl who come up with these awesome idea's are all good and dandy but if no one's ready to buy and use it, then it just never seems to happen.

That's because it's actually illegal :P (well here in England) unless you pay tax on the cooking oil. It also only works on diesel cars.