Logic, the moon landing, and space travel - a rant or philosophical argument.

Hi guys,
Bear with me here. I know we don't often delve into the political/conspiratorial side of Mathis's work, but I've had this itching in my brain for a few weeks now and I wanted to toss it out there, maybe get some feedback, maybe get some holes poked in my logic if possible. Certainty is something I try to avoid, since it never served me well before Mathis.

I was reading a relatively new sci-fi series called "The Expanse" by James S.A. Corey (AKA Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck), and it was simply amazing. Brilliant. The best sci-fi I've read in a decade or more, only trumped by Stephen R. Donaldson's "The Gap Cycle". Actually they're about even in my mind now, but that's neither her nor there. The Expanse was incredible. It hit me emotionally, something I rarely get from sci-fi and just as rarely from fantasy, but it was quite powerful.

And what hit me was an event in the series, much later (book four, I think), wherein some rogue space-pirate-like assholes begin dropping rocks onto the Earth. Big ones, asteroids coated with a stealth type of paint so that Earth's 2300-AD-or-so detectors can't even stop them. The bad-guys manage to get three asteroids through, and it pretty much fucks the Earth all up. About a billion dead the first week, and close to 10 billion dead as the book commences. The writing is such that it really hit me hard and made me very sad, something I wasn't expecting at all. They basically destroy the Earth, and after that it's only going to get worse. To survive is to leave. The asteroids hit in Africa, the mid-Atlantic, and one in Virginia. The ejection begins blocking out the sun rapidly, as well as tsunamis and shock waves and all manner of physical atrocity. Plants start dying quickly, animals even moreso. It was really horrible to read - even though I knew it was fiction.

The topic isn't novel really - Robert Heinlein did something similar in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress." In that book, renegade prisoners being held on the moon declare their independence, fill up several shipping containers with moon rock, and promptly drop them down the "gravity well", blasting Hawaii back into the sea and smooshing Norad like an aluminum can. This is a much, much older book of course - Heinlein is old-school. But while the projectiles are much smaller and slower, the damage is pretty extensive. Not world-killing like in the Expanse, but Earth doesn't have much choice but to concede the moon's independence.

So my logical conundrum is this: If the USA or the USSR could actually get to the moon, why wouldn't they develop rock-dropping as a cheap and ultimately effective weapon against each other?

Strapping some rockets on a shipping container full of dirt or rock would be so much easier than ICBMs or the (fake) nuclear weapons program or the Cold War or MAD or whatever. Why didn't NASA or the Soviets go with that, if they could in fact reach the moon? I've done quite a bit of simulated orbital dynamics in Kerbal Space Program and Universe Sandbox², and it would take very little fuel or force to generate a pretty damning impact.

Anyway, I'm still a little traumatized from The Expanse, but these thoughts have been bouncing around my head for weeks now and I had to get them out. Maybe there will be no answers or replies, and I've never spent much time examining the moon landing as a hoax or not, but at this point I can't see why or how any ACTUAL superpower would not secure such a simple, basic tech if they were able to. And to be honest, I'm a little scared of what humans might do if we do develop space travel now. I mean yeah it's just fiction, but... It kinda hurt. And I needed to talk about it. Thanks for reading.

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Hi Jared, Thanks for recommending the series, "The Expanse".

I’ve thought about rocks as space weapons ever since I read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" back in junior high school. Living in New York meant being the main target, I wasn’t too impressed with the story. Of course the moon is not a good location from which to drop rocks, they need to be launched. The moon has 6 times less gravity compared to the Earth, still, any rocks launched from the surface would require prohibitive amounts of fuel just to clear the moon’s gravity well, and those rockets would provide advance warning. I don’t see how a world threatening possibility could be feasible with fuel technology.

One drops rocks from Earth orbit or higher. Rock dropping schemes will be implemented in the asteroid belt. I expect particularly valuable asteroids will routinely be sent back to Earth orbit. The supply chain and technology will involve the potential for quite a few accidents.

I’ve always believed we must make it to the stars, or else we’ll destroy ourselves. Today, due to its increased complexity, few people follow science, let alone believe in it. Alternative explanations abound, indeed an alternate reality is replacing what we all once knew. Divisions and extremes multiply and it seems we’re being dragged backwards into the mud.

The charge field can change the world for the better by restoring simplicity - traveling and spinning photons - underlying physics and the universe.          
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While it's very true that it would take some decent amount of fuel or propulsion energy, I don't think the cost to propel, say, ten tons of moonrock to a damaging velocity would be anywhere near the cost of the nuclear program, or even one ICBM alone. The Minuteman 3 for example weighs 38 tons, and they (allegedly) built roughly 1,000 of those, with 450 still in operation supposedly.

Also, regarding the orbital transfer, you wouldn't need as much fuel to lob a rock into the Earth's well, since you wouldn't have to circularize the orbit. Or stabilize it. All you'd have to do is get the rock into Earth's orbit, and then another push or two if you wanted more accurate targeting.

I guess my thinking is that if either nation could make it to the moon, they wouldn't need nukes at all?

But following the money, maybe the nuclear program was a better money pit than the space program, so they didn't bother weaponizing the moon or asteroids?

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Higher technology conveys many advantages. Governments are expected to use technology wisely.

The danger of falling rocks would be real. I just think truck canister or rocket sized rocks are too small to cause much damage. In my opinion, pound for pound, even if they aren’t nuclear, warheads at these sizes would cause greater damage. I believe the rock that killed the dinosaurs was what – 10 miles in diameter? The Earth’s atmosphere - and charge field - greatly heat up meteors and small asteroids and they usually shatter.  Undoubtedly, larger asteroids would present a greater threat. Living with the technology to master the asteroid belt is a bridge we'll cross when we get there - if ever.

With respect to the money, I think we agree. The powers that be would use all the money and power at their disposal.
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The largest impact of all near Madagascar apparently caused rapid continental drift. See http://NewGeology.us

Charles Chandler explained that rocks going something like 20 km/sec produce enough heat and pressure on impact to produce thermonuclear explosions. No radioactive elements needed. Small rocks, though, would be slowed down too much or airbursted to make a strong enough impact. So big rocks are needed. And getting rocks to go that fast would require slingshotting them around a lot through the solar system.

Ron Howard claimed that he saw the stage set where the first moon landing was staged in Hollywood, but that doesn't prove much. The moon rocks should prove the moon landings. So should the laser equipment and sensors left on the moon by the astronauts. Even if the Hollywood stage were real, the moon landings could still have occurred and apparently did.

That's a bold claim. How would they produce fusion via collision? To say they produce effects as powerful is one thing, but to say they produce H-bomb explosions is another. But those would be very small ones compared to the size I'm talking about, anyway. Tsar Bomba at (allegedly) 50MT wasn't anywhere near the size of an asteroid impact.

I was looking at the moon last night through several telescopes, contemplating the whole landing fiasco. I'm really not sold on it, but I'm trying to keep an open mind. Moon rocks prove nothing, since all rocks are made of similar elements and can be easily manipulated. Lasers and sensors too, very easy to manipulate data like that. I'd need a smoking gun but I don't know quite what that would look like, to resume belief in the event.

Have you checked out any websites that say they have proof the moon landings were not faked?

I'll try to ask Charles where he got his info about thermonuclear explosions being possible from high velocity impacts.

The evidence that I use is that there was one entity that had both the capabilities to tell if the US went to the moon or not, and the motivation to tell the world if they lied about it.

The USSR.

Normally, and for years, that would have been one of my leading arguments as well. So I dug around in old Soviet news, and couldn't find anything resembling doubt or naysaying - but I could also find no evidence for, either. No photographs, no examination, no verification process by the Soviets in all this time. Given the evidence that NASA and co. has given us as well, this doesn't really convince me of anything anymore. The photo evidence is so poor as to be below my limit of belief. There's none from the Soviet side at all. On paper, they never examined the US landing sites.

I did however find a Russian guy who is planning and funding a small spacecraft to examine these sites closely, evidently for the first time since the landings allegedly occurred. Or, to be more accurate, for the first time a non-NASA party will have tried to examine them. It's kind of a cool project:

https://sputniknews.com/science/201701091049412041-russia-lunar-satellite/

I'm just really skeptical about this whole thing now, not because of my experience with those books (The Expanse) or the whole weaponization thing, but because the evidence I can find is almost wholesale garbage. We have vastly higher-resolution images of the sun, in every spectra possible. But nothing remotely like it of the moon? How is it more difficult to take photographs of the moon than it is of the sun? I can be convinced by photos. If they are real photos, I can handle jumping off the fence again. But I haven't been able to find any that stood up to my examination. I ask myself, "How long would that take me in a darkroom, and how long would it take me in Photoshop?" The question a normal person with little editing experience would ask is, "Could they fake that?" But in every image I see, that answer is already a yes.

At the same time, I don't think The Sun Today photos are fake, nor most planetary or other solar-system photos and images. Pluto was pretty cool to see. Jupiter and Saturn look rad. Why does our own moon not even have decent photographs? Shouldn't the satellites people have put in place around the moon have included decent cameras as well?

I agree that there may be something fishy about the lack of good images of the Moon. The military was and is in charge of NASA and the most sensible theory to me is that they're doing covert ops on the Moon. Richard Hoagland used to work for NASA and he said they're covering up remains of advanced civilization on the Moon and Mars. I think that's unlikely, though possible. I think the shadow government is trying to keep secret their operations there, perhaps for weaponizing space. Why not ask Miles his take on it?

I haven't approached Miles on this one because it's nothing concrete. I merely suspect that the moon landings may have been faked, based on circumstantial evidence at best. And generally I prefer to stick to the physics instead of the grand conspiracy stuff, though I enjoy reading his work on those topics too. I just take a bit more convincing than simple photo analysis.

All this is kinda just time-wasting when I should be working on my spin models or something. But diversions aren't always bad things. I just took on a job doing regular graphics for websites and stuff, a nice change from my normal architecture gigs, but I'm also hoping I get a chance to learn something along the way. Maybe something that will help with my animations, bring them out of the amateur look I've got and into something classier, easier to understand.

I'll try to ask Miles his current thoughts. In this paper http://milesmathis.com/wiki.html Miles mentioned that Brian O'Leary questioned the moon landings, but he didn't say if he himself doubted the landings. That paper may be from 2006.

In this article http://www.clavius.org/oleary.html it looks like O'Leary is pretty confident that the landings were not faked.

PS, in this later paper, http://milesmathis.com/probe.pdf , Miles mentions mirrors left on the Moon by Apollo astronauts and doesn't seem to question that.