I just happened to look at the reviews on amazon.com for "Dark Moon" and noticed this HB Review. I can tell from the review the person didn't even read this book.
Have a good laugh.
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I just happened to look at the reviews on amazon.com for "Dark Moon" and noticed this HB Review. I can tell from the review the person didn't even read this book.
Have a good laugh.
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R.I.P. Bad Astronomy
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Try it now. There was a small problem with the link.
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I followed the link and what did I see bundled with Dark Moon?
Originally Posted by Amazon.com
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I swear I've seen that exact text somewhere before. Can't remember where, though.
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which review are we talking about?
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I think it's the 2nd review, the one that 0 of 5 people found helpful.
Insert awesome title here
I think it's Ralph Rene.
This takes the biscuit. NASA is the most open government organisation you'll be likely to find. The amount of data they provide of their activities is staggering and the amount of help they give to us in following their ongoing activities is magnificent. The implication that they are secretive and deceptive is completely unfounded and evidence that this guy has never spent a second actually trying to learn about NASA.
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Reviewer: BLH from Houston
No names.
A fascinating, well written and researched, fact filled book...
No. It's not fascinating. Dark Moon beats its reader over the head with its conclusions several times before moving on to new topics. Nor is it well-written. It flits at random from topic to topic. The authors editorialize sanctimoniously in nearly every section. For example
The authors simply conclude that the immediate unavailability of voluminous, 30-year-old test results, can only be the result of deliberate concealment. Time and again they report being stymied in their research, but my researchers can usually find the answer in minutes or days at the most.Naturally -- and as we had come to expect -- the NASA public relations machine kept a very low profile on these serious problems [with the F-1 engine combustion instability]. When we asked for copies of the F-1 test data, we were advised that the data is unclassified but unfortunately 'not available'. Obviously freedom of information is a selective process. (Dark Moon, p. 127)
The authors adopt the classic technique of innuendo, wherein the reader is pointed toward a certain conclusion, and then the conclusion itself is stated as a rhetorical question. The authors can then, when necessary, back down and say they never actually drew the conclusion, that they only "raised the question". True scholarship doesn't raise questions and then back away from the answers.
Bennett and Percy are also masters of hyperbole. Consider their description of a glossy brochure published by Hasselblad.Many such insignificant bits of evidence are hyped up with italics and exclamation points.Out of 41 space photograps, 29 were taken in Earth orbit; only 6 depict the Apollo astronauts on the Moon and 6 picture frankly bizzare lunarscape. And the famous 'classic' of Aldrin standing alone is printed the wrong way round! (Ibid. p. 70, emphasis in original)
And as anyone who has read Dark Moon can attest, the textual apparatus is useless. The index is categorized in seven sections, requiring the reader to search seven separate indices in order to look for where some particular topic is mentioned. Far from being well documented, the book makes unsupported assertions on every page.
All you need to get from this book, besides the voluminious facts concerning the bogus photography...
There is certainly a great volume of discussion about the photography, but very little verifiable fact. Many undocumented, unsupported assertions are put forward as self-evidence fact, and then the photographs are measured against them.
...bogus NASA "science"
But the authors are not scientists either. This leads to serious mistakes. For example,The reference the authors give to Davidson is to his elementary text on radiation in which he discusses, at the place indicated, the mathematical notion of half life. This would seem to support the authors' contention that we should still be enduring radiation from orbital nuclear detonations. But of course radioactive half-life applies only to radioisotopic decay, not to charged particles that Starfish Prime placed in orbit, nor to the particles we normally find there. Davidson's statements do not support the authors' attempt to apply his wisdom where it does not belong. This typefies the authors' approach to science. NASA's claims are weighed against Bennett's and Percy's flawed understanding of science, and the discrepancies are blamed on NASA.The length of half-life is of paramount importance as Professor John Davidson has pointed out. Essentially it continually slows down, which means that the artificially-induced radiation created by Starfish Prime would be dropping to a half of its original quantity by 1982... (Ibid. p. 309)
NASA's and the astro"NOTS" own inability to answer questions pertaining to even the simplest problems of space travel...
The authors did not interview astronauts, so the notion that the astronauts were unable to answer the authors' questions is simply a matter of finding some question for which no answer appears in the public statements of the astronauts. Then you can claim your questions aren't answered.
The inability of NASA PR people to answer the questions is based in part upon the natural inability of most PR people to answer questions based on missions that were flown 30 years ago or more (and thus lie outside their personal recollection), but mostly to the authors' penchant for blowing out of proportion any failure by NASA to find or disclose some obscure, esoteric detail on command.
is the big "R" - radiation, which even one director of NASA recently stated is a "showstopper"
Radiation is a problem for extended missions to the moon and any missions to Mars, which is the context of Goldin's statement. NASA is fully forthcoming with the methods they say were used to protect Apollo astronauts. The only ones who question these methods are, again, those who have no personal understanding of radiation. Even the world's authority on this type of radiation -- Dr. James Van Allen -- has repudiated the claims of the authors.
Simply put, humans can not withstand the large amounts of radiation in space when away from the protective environment of the earth's atmosphere...
Earth's atmosphere provides little shielding against radiation.
...without bulky shielding,...
Not true. It is a common layman's belief that all forms of radiation can only be stopped by large thicknesses of dense material.
...or spend time on the moon which has no atmosphere or magnetic field.
There is some truth to this in the sense that protection against solar activity was strictly a matter of keeping the missions so short that the chance of a major solar flare during that mission was very small. For longer duration missions we will have to concoct a better solution that entails actually shielding against flares instead of avoiding them.
The reviewer seems not to understand that Earth's magnetic field is responsible for one of the hassles of interplanetary space flight: the Van Allen belts themselves. True, the magnetosphere protects us from solar radiation, but outside the belts the ambient is not all that unmanageable or harmful. If you've passed through the belts and the solar weather is nice, there is nothing particularly dangerous about standing on the surface of the moon. The layman believes everything from 200 miles or so outward from Earth is awash in ubiquitously deadly radiation. That's simply naive.
Conveniently now, 30 years later, they are saying that the moon does have an atmosphere. If this is so then why didn't NASA say so all those years ago?
They did.
Surely, that would have been part of the essential data we would have wanted to gather?
It was. Assessing the composition of the lunar atmosphere was part of Apollo 17's mission.
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/expmoon/Apol...ents_LACE.html
This is typical of NASA - giving bogus answers and mixing up dates, times and facts in order to confuse and cover up.
No, rather this is typical of conspiracy theorists, who convenienty "forget" to report facts that soundly contradict their conclusions.
This, along with a myriad of other missing data should be evidence enough that NASA is not being truthful.
No, rather, this information and the years of correspondence with conspiracy theories in which this information has been presented to them, coupled with their unwillingness to revise their arguments to account for it, is ample evidence that the conspiracists have no interest in the truth, only in their own profit.
The authors clearly state how and why NASA saw fit to "hoax" the moon landings...
The authors have a theory, but they have no evidence that their theory is anything more than hypothesis. Further, since their theory is an explanation for a "fact" which they got wrong (i.e., the radiation environment), it is unlikely on its face to be true.
they do propose that perhaps, a human did reach the moon but due to the effects of radiation died shortly after returning to earth.
The authors have been confronted numerous times by numerous readers to reconcile this claim with the facts. They have steadfastly refused to do so, and now do not even tender the questions anymore. Their answer then and now has been that you must purchase all their materials in order to understand their arguments. We who already own all their materials still demand answers, and the authors are not forthcoming.
If the death of these astronauts due to radiation was accidental and unanticipated, then NASA had no foreknowledge that the mission would be unsuccessful. Therefore, knowing that public spectacle was an important part of the space exploration equation (especially under Kennedy and Johnson), we should have seen a liftoff accompanied by considerable pomp and ceremony. Instead the entire mission of this hypothetical crew was entirely shrouded in secrecy, and no shred of evidence of its existence has survived.
If, on the other hand, NASA knew that any astronaut sent to the moon would surely die, how would they go about convincing a crew to volunteer for a suicide mission knowing that their names would never be known. And worse, that other pilots would be given the credit for their mission. Consider that a bona fide landing on the moon would require extraordinary skill and bravery. Given that only a handful of people in the U.S. were capable of this feat, we have to ask which one of them would step up to volunteer to die a horrible death in complete anonymity after being the first to set foot on a celestial body. And since the volunteer would have to come from this small group of expert pilots, we have to ask why none of them went suspiciously missing.
Now consider the publicized astronauts. These are people used to putting their lives at risk in the dangerous endeavor of flight test, without any public recognition. Now you ask them to pretend to have flown a dangerous mission (which they knew someone else flew) without having actually flown the mission. In short, you're asking them to adopt an entirely different attitude toward flight than that which they've practiced their entire lives. The Apollo astronauts were not people who thrived on glory and daring. They were pilots who worked hard to do a dangerous job because they liked the challenge.
Supposedly NASA went to the moon for "all mankind". So why the secrecy?
What secrecy? There was indeed some secrecy associated with many of the specific details. That's natural in a race. Indy 500 mechanics don't let the other mechanics see how they build their engines. The makers of racing boats keep their techniques secret from their competitors. Secrecy is only suspicious if there doesn't appear to be any reason for it. Anyone who knows anything about the space race can see a lot of good reasons for secrecy.
Are only a priviliged few allowed to know facts about the moon?
No. Apollo findings are widely published.
If they did go to the moon then what are they hiding?
What is alleged to be hidden, and what evidence is there that anything is being hidden? These general arguments serve to agitate the reader, but do not actually say anything.
Was something found there that we are not supposed to know about?
The reviewer wants to have his cake and eat it too. One cannot be simultaneously a Hoaglandite and a Percivalian.
Or, as Dark Moon proposes is it all just a sham and a hoax?
Yes, which is it? Both cannot be true. This smacks of conspiracism for its own sake. Any conspiracy theory will do, so long as NASA comes out the loser.
Rocks from the moon have been dated to be older than anything found on the earth
This does not mean the moon is older than the earth.
...its orbit is evidence that it was not "captured" by the earth's gravity.
This is a relatively new finding. The argument goes that captured objects initially have eccentric orbits. The moon's current orbit is roughly circular, but it was not known in Apollo times whether that orbit "settled" down from an elliptical one, or whether it has always been circular.
Ironically the studies were done at the university just up the hill from my house and involved Earth rocks, not Moon rocks. By studying very old Earth rocks from ancient seashores, we have discovered that tides were steady billions of years ago, suggesting that the moon's orbit was regular even at that time. A circular orbit billions of years ago is inconsistent with the capture theory, but consistent with the impact calving and common accretion theories.
Surely this is evidence that debunks many scientific theories so far proposed for it's origination - so then, what does science now propose?
Not at all. The authors propose that the age of Moon rocks asserts that the Moon is older than the earth. Since the moon can't have been calved from a newer body, the impact calving theory can't possibly be true. Unfortunately the age of Moon rocks is not evidence that the moon is older than the earth. Because Earth's surface is volcanically active even today, traces of older rocks are erased. The moon's surface solidified much earlier than Earth's. After that, little activity occurred to disrupt it. Meteoric bombardment cannot stir up the surface nearly as much as active volcanism and heavy fluid erosion.
The authors again show that they have no understanding of the sciences that apply to their arguments.
The authors' theory - and they are rightfully entitled to theirs as much as anyone - is "intelligent placement".
The authors' theory is based on tying together every conspiracy theory under the sun (and a few from elsewhere) into one horrific house of cards.
And while they are just as entitled to their theory as anyone else, they are not entitled to have their theory respected to the same extent as theories from people who have studied planetary geology their entire lives and conducted well organized scientific investigations to support their findings. The authors have simply sewn together several fanciful speculations.
Given the facts and data gathered so far this is as probable as any other.
Of course it isn't. The authors give us contradictory statements and selective evidence. When we confront the authors with questions, they run and hide. Why should their conclusions be held on par with those of the best scientific minds of our generation? Bennett and Percy are not scientists.
Everything about the moon is anomalous - anomalies that science, so far, has no answers for.
This broad, sweeping statement simply has no basis in fact. We learned quite a bit about the moon before ever having gone there. And we continue to learn about the moon without needing to return. It is easy for the authors to claim that science "has no answers" when they don't bother to look for any of the answers, and when they misrepresent the few answers they can't avoid.
The veracity of the Apollo missions notwithstanding, we know very little about the moon.
The veracity of the Apollo missions is squarely in the middle of the authors' claims.
Dark Moon cribs a bit from James Hogan's science fiction. David Percy was a science fiction writer before he turned his hand to pseudoscience, so we presume he's familiar with the Hogan Giants of Ganymede series which is based on the presumption that Earth's moon was brought here from elsewhere. At least if Percy is going to write science fiction, he should make up his own stories.
But the claim that space aliens brought our moon from elsewhere is based on the presumption that the Moon rocks -- which allegedly conclusively date the moon to be older than Earth -- are actually genuine rocks. That begs the question of how we got them. If they are genuine, did we send men to the moon to bring them back? If we didn't do that, how did we get genuine Moon rocks? If we didn't, then what would it matter if laboratory knock-offs appeared to be older? Actual Moon rocks might destroy the authors' conclusion if they turned out to be younger than Earth.
And so we confront one of the biggest contradictions in the authors' findings. They want to argue that the Apollo missions were faked, because ultimately that's all Percy's credentials will get him. He can plausibly claim to be a photographer, and that gives him the credibility to go out and attack NASA on grounds that he seems to be familiar with.
But the "fact" that NASA faked the photography begs the question of why they needed to do that. Then Percy and Bennett have to argue that bona fide missions were impossible. We get the radiation argument. We get the argument that the rockets were faked, so that Kaysing and Wood can be cited as "experts".
After having dug themselves into that hole, the authors must then figure out how to get real Moon rocks, because their "alien relocation" theory won't make sense unless they can prove that the moon is one big basaltic anomaly. So that's why they have to leave the door open for the possibility that -- just maybe -- some astronauts made it to the moon, grabbed some rocks, and then collapsed in a vomiting, cancerous mass onto the lawn of the Johnson Space Center. Six times.
Its difficult to accept the fact that the moon landings were faked because Americans want to believe that their government and NASA are honorable and doing the right things--
No. It is difficult to accept the proposal of faked moon landings because the case in favor of the proposal is so blatantly mishandled. Selective evidence, speculation, inexpert analysis -- these are the hallmarks of the pseudoscientist out to make a quick buck before the legions of real experts tear the theory apart.
However, American government has a long history of lies and deceit...
This does not nevertheless allow one to conclude without proof that NASA is lying in this particular case. I can make a fairly strong case that Bennett and Percy have a long history of lies and deceit too. But I'm sure they would consider themselves very ill-treated if I were to implicitly reject anything they might say in their own defense on that basis.
...including the "mysterious" Area 51 ... surely the moon landing hoaxes would be no problem for a sinister agency such as NASA to pull off.
Apples and oranges. No one ever believed the Pentagon's disavowals of Area 51 and within a very short number of years its existence had to be acknowledged. The argument that since one secret was ineptly kept for a few years, the authors' alleged secret -- much broader in scope -- could have been successfully kept for decades with no leakage, is a stretch of the imagination. The authors are trying to excuse the total lack of evidence for their conclusion. It doesn't wash.
At any rate it is all revealed, quite convincingly in the book.
No. The book is convincing only to those who don't do the research themselves, and is convincing only because the authors simply omit any and all evidence that disputes their findings. An argument which fails to account for the evidence against it is not a strong argument.
The authors make a compelling case concerning the behavior of the astronauts who supposedly landed on the moon - reclusive and vague about their "adventures"
The authors only consider the reclusive astronauts (e.g., Armstrong) and do not discuss the gregarious ones such as Conrad and Mitchell. The authors quote only the vague statements and omit entirely the meticulous detail in the dozens of astronaut memoirs.
After starting off as photographic interpreters and proving themselves inept at the only science their credentials had a prayer of validating, and after pretending to be planetary geologists, the authors now adopt the mantle of armchair psychologists. They get a lot of mileage out of Aldrin's well publicized depression and alcoholism, but omit entirely the successful post-mission careers of the rest.
The worst comes in the form of a cheap shot (not the only one in Dark Moon -- they mention in a footnote that Eric Jones' name, pronounced in Spanish, resembles Spanish slang for "testicles"!) in which, on page 284, they show a picture of the Apollo 11 crew in the quarantine trailer, dour looks on their faces.The authors, true to form, do not answer these questions. They invite the reader to uninformed speculation based on a single photograph. If we happen to say that the authors have concluded the astronauts were lying, based on their expressions, the authors can say they have made no such claim, only raised questions that the reader is expected to answer for himself.Look carefully at this photograph of the triumphant 'Apollo 11' astronauts. They have just returned to Earth and President Nixon (out of frame) is congratulating them on their achievement -- do they look comfortable with themselves? Look at their eyes. Are these the expressions of men who have just stepped back onto their home planet after the adventure of a lifetime?
But the cheap shot is in the fact that they've chosen practically the only frame from that kinescope in which the crew are not beaming like schoolboys. Mark Gray's excellent DVD series contains the entire clip, and the astronauts are all smiles except for a few isolated moments when they are listening intently to Nixon's speech. The authors have selectively presented unrepresentative evidence and, with leading questions, invited the reader to draw the conclusion that the astronauts were uncomfortable. And this is the basis of their claim that the astronauts' behavior is odd.
they can't even speak to the simplest of questions such as "So, what was it like to land on the moon?".
The authors presume that such broad questions ought to be easy to answer, and that the inability to formulate a comprehensive, accurate summary of what they admit was an "adventure of a lifetime" is a serious impediment. Again the authors want to have their cake and eat it too. They argue that the astronauts should have been exhilarated and overwhelmed by the magnitude of their experiences, yet simultaneously able to distill all that into an articulate summary.
Many of them have contradicted eachother with strange, completely unscientific statements.
Such as?
The authors quote many astronauts, but construct the "contradictions" themselves. They do not contact the astronauts themselves to see if the apparent "contradiction" is something the astronauts can explain, or if the authors have misinterpreted some of the statements.
Its time to re-examine the role that NASA plays in our lives and our country.
It is, but we have to realize that NASA was different 30 years ago than it is today. Back then it was a haven for engineers and scientists. Now it seems more bureaucratic. The current push is to get back to its innovative engineering roots.
Do we really want to give these secretive pseudo-scientists/engineers billions and billions of our tax dollars to achieve nothing more than low earth orbit?
Rather that than give it to Bennett and Percy, who pocket it and then withdraw from public inquiry.
They can't even prove conclusively that the Apollo missions were successful...
If by "conclusively" the reviewer means "in the face of even conjecture to the contrary," then he is correct. However that is not a reasonable standard of proof. No historical event can be proven authentic to the point of being impossible to hoax.
"Dark Moon" does us all a great service by opening up the lines of questioning
No. Dark Moon ignores the answers that are already out there. It raises questions based on ignorance and fear. These issues gum up the works of legitimate inquiry by characterizing government watchdogs as ill-informed and impervious to reason, making them easier to dismiss out of hand.
As an expostulation of science, the book is ignorant in the extreme. As a proponent of far-reaching conclusions, the book is tenuous at best. As a call to greater scrutiny of government, the book falls completely flat as it can't make up its mind what the conspiracy really is.
to which NASA has responded with riducule and cover-up
NASA has, in general, not responded at all. The authors make many conclusions that are properly ridiculed; their knowledge of science is laughable. And the authors simply slap the "cover-up" label on any failure by NASA to give the answer the authors expected. The fact that some person on the other end of a phone can't recall exactly what Aldrin ate for breakfast on the fourth day of the mission is a "cover-up". Many people have since uncovered the answers to the authors' questions, typically from NASA sources. And when we present these answers to the authors, the authors run and hide.
The authors of this book make some very interesting proposals for how deep space travel can be accomplished
The authors attempt to mask their ignorance of actual space engineering with references to far-reaching, highly speculative theories. This is a typical ploy by conspiracists to show that their "science" is far more advanced than that actually practiced by people who operate space industries for a living.
Dark Moon is nothing less than an entertaining read...
No. It's a plodding, meandering tome that can't decide what it wants to be. It's useless at telling a story and worse than useless at educating the reader about space travel.
Even, if, after the copious amounts of questions raised, you do not have any doubt as to the truth behind the Apollo missions it is a fascinating book well worth reading.
After reading the book I had doubts about its authors' motives for writing it. The caginess and evasion of the authors cleared up that doubt. Bennett and Percy don't seem to have any purpose in mind other than bilking the gullible.
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I followed the link and what did I see bundled with Dark Moon?
I think it odd that in one sentence, Amazon.com provided a more fair discussion of the moon landing than the Fox network did in their program.
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The authors have been confronted numerous times by numerous readers to reconcile this claim with the facts. ... Their answer then and now has been that you must purchase all their materials in order to understand their arguments. We who already own all their materials still demand answers, and the authors are not forthcoming.
Jay, perhaps you misread the materials you bought. I'm sure the authors would prefer that you buy a new, fresh, unread set and see if that won't answer your questions.
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Which is an audacious ad hominem given that Percy's surname, pronounced in English, is British slang for pe-ople I thank you for your attention.......
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Not to mention that it's and old joke in spanish......Which is an audacious ad hominem given that Percy's surname, pronounced in English, is British slang for pe-ople I thank you for your attention.......
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