Moon Landing – What a baloney!

When I saw the moon landing clip for the first time in my life (which was definitely after 1983 because that’s when the TV first arrived in my small town), the first thing I noticed was the American flag fluttering in the wind… The intelligent kid I was I knew that there was no air and hence no wind on moon… Though the intelligent kid I was I did not dare raise this issue to anyone because I thought I would be laughed at… apart from being intelligent, I was sensitive too and could not afford someone laughing at me… I let it go… of course we (i.e. humans) had landed on moon… how could someone doubt that?
Anyway, the small iota of doubt did make it’s home in the backroom of my mind…

Access to literature was limited (or may be it was lack of my awareness) and as a kid I never got to read all the material raising doubts about moon landing… I did once read somewhere a Hindu Sadhu claiming that the Moon is beyond the reach of humans and Americans must have landed on a piece of rock somewhere close to the Earth… Me being a non-religious type just read it, shrugged and forgot about it…

Anyway, the moon landings were supposed to have happened more than 35 years back and whatever amount of controversy might have been there with the whole thing... you don’t sit and ponder about it after 35 years… definitely not if you are not part of the generation that was part of the whole excitement – most of the ‘landings’ happened well before I was born…

The reason the whole thing came back like a déjà vu is because couple of things happened recently – first, the person whom I consider the best President (so far) of the United States – a person named George W Bush – announced that we (i.e. human beings) are going back to the Moon by 2020 and second, more at a personal level, an enlightening visit to the NASA facility at Cape Canaveral…

Consider the following –
1. Russians were the first to send a satellite in the space
2. Russians were the first to send a living creature in space (the poor dog died)
3. Russians were the first to send a human in the space (the bloke did manage to come back)
4. Russians were the first to send a probe to the Moon
5. Russians were the first to send a human to the Moon
6. Russians were the first to build the space station
The list goes on…

Oops, point number 5 is not correct… Russians were NOT the first to go to the Moon… in fact, they never went to the Moon… Americans beat them at it – in fact, Americans managed to send 14 men over a period of 3-4 years while Russians sent none – never ever!
So, folks, Americans were behind the Russians all along as far as space race is concerned but for one thing – Moon landing! I can't believe that most of the world genuinely believes that Americans did land on the Moon… Russians never loudly protested – may be they did but it did not reach the ears of the capitalistic world…

If you consider the timing… cold war, Russian consistently beating Americans at the biggest show off, a dashing and dynamic President, a dashing and dynamic President making promise to go to Moon, a dashing and dynamic President making promise to go to the Moon and then dying, cold war still hot… What would you do if you were caught in this situation? If you can’t go to the Moon, the least you would do is get a bunch of Hollywood directors and make a movie!!
Well, that’s the feeling I got when I visited NASA at Cape Canaveral earlier this year… well, NASA is not all about Moon but there is so much focus on telling the Moon tale and there is so much focus on trying to convince that the Moon landings indeed took place that even a believer would start doubting…
And when they tell you the whole story – Kennedy announcement, misfired rockets, people dying in Apollo explosions, landings and missed landings of Apollo 13 – it starts sounding like a Hollywood thriller… it just sounds like a Hollywood thriller!!!

The funniest explanation I read of the fluttering flag was in “Who built the Moon?”. It goes like this – Armstrong had to swivel the flag post on the Moon surface to fix it… the swivel caused the fluttering of the flag and since there is no air on the Moon, there was nothing to dampen the flutter and hence the flag fluttered for a very long time… Too bad Armtrong did not carry a hammer - it would have saved NASA from a big controversy... And what if the surface they landed on was not soft enough for the flag post to be swivelled in???
Anyways, I think the swivel theory is "brilliant" – I wonder why NASA has been more or less silent on this issue and did not use the swivel theory…

The icing on the cake is thanks to the "brilliant" Bush (BB). BB announced that they are going back to the Moon and beyond (well, you need something big and exciting to take the spotlight away from Iraq debacle) – back to the Moon by, er!, 2020… well, er, why does it take 50 years (yes, 50 years – 1970 to 2020) to go back to the Moon??? And mind it, they would start with unmanned missions first – basically going through the whole cycle again…
NASA is so brilliant – they sent people to the Moon 35 years back but still keep killing their own people trying to send them to the lower space!

Ladies and Gentlemen: Moon landing – what a baloney… a big, large piece of stinking crap…

Now, it’s time for the poll –