WASHINGTON — A House subcommittee approved legislation Wednesday aimed at forcing college football to switch to a playoff system to determine its national champion, over the objections of some lawmakers who said Congress has meatier targets to tackle.
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Sandy Underpants
If Congress could accomplish ANYTHING it would be an accomplishment 2 years in the making.
So McCoy is out of the running? Is that what’s going on? If so, that’s a travesty. McCoy should have won the Heisman last year, and he sure as hell is more important and a better player than any of these individuals allegedly ahead of him. Suh just got born last Saturday. Give me a friggin break! Since when do you vote on the Heisman based on 1 weekend? Rey Mauluga should’ve won it about 9 times if that’s how they’re going to do it from now on.
David K.
You know, when Sandy said he thought the moon landing was faked, I didn’t think he could say anything that would sound mroe insane and out of touch with reality.
Guess I was wrong.
Suh wasn’t just born last Saturday, you just didn’t pay attention. And Colt McCoy THIS year isn’t even as good as Colt McCoy LAST year. Gerhart is outplaying Ingram in a tougher conference, with less talented players around him. Suh and Gerhart are the top players this year, unless you define top players as having to be on an undefeated team like Sandy seems to be doing.
Sandy Underpants
First of all, ain’t nobody said a damn thing about Suh all season long, and quite frankly there are few people that watch and read more about College Football than me. Honestly. He wasn’t even in the first round on anybodies draft lists until this weekend, when he had the game of his life.
I know McCoy had a better season last year than this year, but he IS the leader of an undefeated team in the national championship game. He touches the ball EVERY play, unlike the running backs. Furthermore, McCoy was the best player last season, and got ripped off, and didn’t lose a game this season to diminish his luster. Gerhart is an outstanding running back, but did he really have a stand out season? If Jahvid Best doesn’t get hurt, he’s got better numbers than Gerhart. What marquee wins did Stanford have? Beating the Worst USC team since Petros played? That’s it. Ingram’s Heisman should go to his O-line, because you could’ve put anybody in there to run behind those guys and get the same numbers. Plus he fumbled at crucial moments against Tennessee and if Kiffin wasn’t the coach, Alabama would have lost that game after Ingram’s fumble.
And to address your first point. Anybody that believes Americans landed on the moon 40 years ago with technology that is less than that of what is available in a Texas Instruments calculator, and NO OTHER COUNTRY CAN GET TO THE MOON 40 years later, with the technology of today, is the insane one.
Brendan Loy
Sandy, your first paragraph is flat-out factually false, so I’m not sure why anyone would bother to take the rest of your opinion seriously, Moon-landing conspiracy-mongering entirely aside.
David K.
Sandy, whether or not Stanford had a perfect season or a pathetic one is not relevant. The discussion isn’t who is the best player on an undefeated team, its who is the best player. As i’ve said before, its a lot tougher to do what Gerhart did against tougher opponents with less support. Even if I buy that Ingram is better than Gerhart, Gerhart, AND Suh AND Ingram, and more are better than Colt McCoy this year.
As for the moon landing thing, you argument is based on faulty assumptions and flawed logic. It demonstrates that you lack a sufficient understanding of any number of topics relevant to that discussion including rocketry, physics, astronautics, economics, psychology, and international relations.
And to address your first point. Anybody that believes Americans landed on the moon 40 years ago with technology that is less than that of what is available in a Texas Instruments calculator, and NO OTHER COUNTRY CAN GET TO THE MOON 40 years later, with the technology of today, is the insane one.
Hahahahahahahahaha.
I still can’t decide if you are for real or not.
Sandy Underpants
First of all, give me a link to all the articles about Nabdumpkin Suh. He was never even mentioned in the same breath with the word “Heisman”. It’s a flat out joke. I’m serious, I TiVo (and watch) College Football Live EVERY DAY, he was never mentioned once until this week. I TiVo (and watch) College Gameday and College Football Final EVERY WEEKEND, and he was never mentioned, forget about being featured on any segment until this week. So I don’t know what you nuts are talking about, everyone wants to pretend to be an expert. Post all the articles that featured Suh on the internet before this weekend if I’m lying, is there any motive to lie about this?
Secondly, Stanford didn’t play better competition than Texas or Alabama. As much as I detest the superiority-complex of the SEC and the over-ratededness of Texas’ flunky schedule, Stanford played mostly nobodies and lost to 4 of them, including Wake Forrest, who only won 4 or 5 games this season. Gerhart wasn’t playing on a team full of losers, Harbaugh himself stated that Andrew Luck, their QB, was the best quarterback in college football, and Stanford has a very good team.
Colt McCoy is a better player this year than any of those guys. He’s the most important player on an undefeated team at seasons end, with a record of 26-1 over the last 2 years. Come on. I’m not a Colt McCoy fan, but I do have a sense of right and wrong. He deserved it last year, and got ripped, he hasn’t become a worse player or failed his team as they are undefeated today.
As for this Moon Hoax you guys keep bringing up. It brings up fond memories of when I was the only guy in the room saying that invading Iraq was a terrible idea and would be a complete disaster and Hussein probably didn’t even have WMD in the first place, and having everyone calling me an idiot for it back in 2002 and 2003. Trust me, you’ll know that the US Moon Landings were hoaxed in our lifetimes, I hope you think of me when you find out about it.
Jazz
First, two comments in defense of Sandy:
1) Suh’s game against Texas was, indeed, the game of his life.
2) The casual dismissal of Sandy’s moon landing hoax may be an indication of a dismaying homerism among Americans. Fellas, 50% of Brits think the thing is a fraud. You can say that the Brits are just haters, but those fools are the only other nation on earth to send several thousand troops into Bush’s search for WMD in Mesopotamia. With haters like the Brits, who could have friends? In all seriousness, the Brits are a pretty educated lot, so treating the truth of the moon landing as “so absolutely obvious that any skeptic must necessarily be scientifically obtuse” is to say something rather negative about the Brits, and while I am no fan of the Brits, I doubt they are as obtuse as that statement implies.
Its not just the moon landing. You have all read MacBeth, Hamlet, a million other stories about regicide perpetrated by the guy-who-would-be-king, and yet you overwhelmingly believe that the Mafia/Cubans/Russians/Masons/The Trilateral Commission killed Kennedy, as opposed to Kennedy’s Claudius, who, for what its worth, had a much more plausible influence over the Dallas police station the morning Ruby killed Oswald, the Secret Service/Kennedy in having Kennedy in an open limousine, and a million other details that Khruschev couldn’t possibly have influenced. If the Kennedy assassination had occured in any other country, you would have suspected LBJ without further thought, but this is AMERICA, and such things don’t happen here. *sigh*.
Having written all that, I think the moon landing is true, for reasons unrelated to “this is America and such scandal couldn’t happen here”, as I have argued elsewhere.
Regarding Suh: while Suh’s game against Texas was his best, the Heisman Trophy is not like Olympic figure skating, where the highest and lowest scores are thrown out. The Texas game should not only count, it should count more. The fact that we didn’t pay attention to him before that game doesn’t mean that he sucked, it could mean that we sucked, as Brendan argued elsewhere.
After all, Suh finished tied for third in D-1 for total sacks, which has probably not happened in a long time for a nose tackle (but I don’t know for sure). More interestingly, Suh finished behind only Greg Jones at MSU for total tackles among the top 50 sack leaders in D-1.
That’s right – dude is a nose tackle and finished second, among the 50 best sackers, in total tackles (to an LB at MSU who is quite a stud). Has that ever happened before? Again, I can’t be sure, but I am guessing not.
You can still argue that McCoy or whoever should win the Heisman, heck its a subjective decision. But you’re on thinner ice in claiming that Suh didn’t achieve anything all that special this year, whether we paid attention or not.
It brings up fond memories of when I was the only guy in the room saying that invading Iraq was a terrible idea and would be a complete disaster and Hussein probably didn’t even have WMD in the first place, and having everyone calling me an idiot for it back in 2002 and 2003. Trust me, you’ll know that the US Moon Landings were hoaxed in our lifetimes, I hope you think of me when you find out about it.
Bwahahahahahaha!
Oh, gee, you are so smart! You are the *only* one who knew about WMD before the war.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
so treating the truth of the moon landing as “so absolutely obvious that any skeptic must necessarily be scientifically obtuse” is to say something rather negative about the Brits, and while I am no fan of the Brits, I doubt they are as obtuse as that statement implies.
I know that you are smart enough, Jazz, to know that we don’t evaluate the truthfulness of events based on opinion polls. If the brits are overwhelmingly as stupid as Sandy, they are overwhelmingly as stupid as Sandy.
I *might* be willing to give Sandy the benfit of the doubt if the issue was, “I’m not sure.” Fine, not enough evidence to be convinced? I’m surprised, but whatever. But to declare it a hoax in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary is just bat-shit insane.
So I take it back, perhaps it says less about the intelligence of brits, perhaps it’s their sanity.
Jazz
we don’t evaluate the truthfulness of events based on opinion polls
Of course we don’t. What’s more, I believe the moon landing story. What’s even more, one of Sandy’s main arguments (why hasn’t anyone gone back?) is easily refutable by the fact that its a) difficult, and b) in the US anyway, we decided that the Space Shuttle program was a better use of our limited space dollars, since – what is the point of going to the moon repeatedly if we can’t yet colonize the place?
The reason the Brits do matter in this conversation is because the level of ad hominem antagonism against Sandy is out of all accord with the fact that half the population of a demographically-similar, highly-educated nation agrees with him. The fact that 50% of Britons believe such a thing suggests that its obviousness is not at all a slam dunk.
Speaking of which, I am fully confident that you too are smart enough to recognize this, pthread. Faced with this dilemma, you had two roads you could have travelled:
1) You could have shared the “Ark of the Covenant”, the indisputable, sacred fact of the moon landing that washes away Sandy and half the British Isles because of its sheer, indisputable obviousness, or
2) You could just say all Brits are insane.
Though I am on your side, I’m still sitting over here waiting for that “Ark of the Covenant” data point. The over/under on the number of ad hominems and sighing “its so obvious” comments we hear before we get that data point is probably somewhere in the tens of thousands.
Jazz
One other thing, pthread, you mentioned in your post #10 (as have others here) the existence of mountains of evidence that prove the moon landing beyond the shadow of a doubt.
As an act of mercy, considering their insanity, would you mind pointing out those mountains to Merry Old England?
David K.
Ok, first, Sandy you are an idiot. I mean not just a simple idiot, but an outright batshit insane, full on delusional MORON.
Second, um there were quite a few people who questioned the invasion of Iraq from the start. Even those of us who were willing to give Bush the initial benefit of the doubt (yes I was one of them) figured it out long before he did. Claiming you were right about something like that based on your extensive, what watchig of the internet, its pretty damn impressive allright.
Third, um, yes Stanford actually DID play tougher competition. The Pac-10 was the toughest conference top to bottom this year bar none. On top of that Stanford didn’t have cupcake schools like Florida International, North Texas, and F*ing Chatanooga for Gerhart to run up his stats against. And it doesn’t matter if they LOST games dumbass, in fact, its MORE impressive that even LOSING and playing ONE LESS GAME than Ingram that Gerhart had more yards! And Colt McCoy, he
Finally, the moon landing. I never claimed it was easy or simple, I said it could be done now, and it was done then. We could pull out the Saturn V rockets, strap an Apollo module and capsule on and go back today if we had politicians willing to take the risk. The moon landings were dangerous. The shuttle missions were dangerous, he’ll everything we’ve done in space thats been a manned mission is dangerous. Plus you ignore the fact that ew aren’t simply trying to just put people on the moon again, but actually conduct science out there as well, to prepare for potential longer term missions, longer range missions, AND replace the shuttle fleet. We aren’t simply redoing the same thing, we are trying to do a whole hell of a lot more.
As for why no one else has done it since? Well for one thing its damn expensive and no one has had the motivation or incentive to go back. Going to the moon doesn’t make you money or grant you a lot of power and resources. It was a pride thing, and once we were the first there, there wasn’t much incentive to being the second. Oh, did I mention the part where we poured a metric crap ton of money into the program? Our nations top scientist were involved in it?
Let me reiterate that for you, it has happened since, not because it was a hoax, but because its really expensive, has little monetary benefit, cariers a significant amount of risk, is really expensive, no one has wanted to diver their scientific resources to doing it again, and oh yeah, its really freaking expensive. We have video footage from the moon. Faking that video footage to pass the scientific examination done by multiple sources over the years would have taken a greater amount of time, effort, AND money then the actual trip to the moon! Hell even mythbusters debunked some of the so called proof the moon-bat insane conspiracy theorists like yourself cling to.
Jazz
David, your arguments from inference are pretty good ones for why the moon mission story is legit. With all due respect, you forgot the most important one: after Apollo 13, its possible that NASA didn’t think the risk assessment was worth the (limited) advance in human knowledge. All plausible reasons to move in the space shuttle direction instead.
But while your arguments from inference are persuasive, you – and everyone else, for that matter – have still not presented an argument from forensic information. A moon rock might have worked. Or some of that lost video. You and others have referred frequently to the “mountains” of evidence, but you haven’t shared any of it, preferring just to call Sandy batshit insane instead.
Sandy may in fact be batshit insane, and for what its worth, I disagree with him on this matter. But the fact that Sandy can take a minority opinion on Suh (which I also disagree with) and be categorically dismissed because he’s a “moon landing conspirator” has to be pretty depressing for the Loys. If denying the moon landing automatically disqualifies one from holding an opinion around these parts, Brendan is bound to forfeit any audience he gained from his nostalgia over Liam Clancy and other things British-Isles-ish. Why would any such person visit this place if fully half of them are too categorically insane to be taken seriously, even on an unrelated topic like the Heisman Trophy?
Matthew Caffrey
Sandy, your ignorance terrifies me. Both on football and on the moon landings. I will guess that you think the 9/11 attacks were staged, Diebold rigged the election machines and Obama was born in Kenya.
Jazz: In previous threads there have been several different types of evidence pointed out. I think someone got the moonrocks, I’ve hit on the fact that our moon trash is still visible. Plenty of sound reasoning has been thrown Sandy’s way, but he ignores it. That’s why he’s batshit insane.
I agree with you, though, that his opinion on the subject of the Heisman winner has nothing to do with this though. It was just brought up, and I still can’t believe it.
Jazz – Sandy bases his conspiracy theory ladden argument on the idea that since no body has done it since that means we couldn’t have done it then. Not only is this a flawed argument (for example, nobody has built a great pyramid since the last one, thats been thousands of years, guess that means the first one is a hoax too…), it ignores the fact that there are reasonable, logical, and frankly sane reasons why this is true, reasons which I laid out above. As pthread mentions, evidence has been provided to show that the moon landings happened. Mounds of it. Video, photograph, telescope, scientific, physical, etc. Sandy’s just nuts.
David K.
Annnnd its Ingram. Voters weren’t smart enough. Dissapointing.
Jazz
Even though, as I have mentioned before, I disagree with Sandy’s conclusions regarding the Apollo missions, I must say that his challenges (e.g. “why did no one go back?”) were helpful in causing me to consider three things I hadn’t considered previously.
The first, as discussed, is that the Space Shuttle program was the likely changed focus for NASA funding once we were “done” with the moon. The second is that Apollo 13 probably had a chilling effect on any additional moon explorations (in spite of what Ron Howard would have us believe). The third is that the 11 years between Apollo 13 and the first space shuttle seems like a long time, but those were OPEC/stagflation/Watergate/Jimmy Carter years, which makes such a time interval more plausible.
And it occurs to me that the three factors mentioned in the paragraph above work together to say something potentially interesting about the 70s, and what happens to science when the world goes to hell, interesting enough that I may even be motivated someday to read or learn more about it. As a result, while the rest of you were pleased to declare Sandy insane for pushing his (25% supported) argument, I was actually grateful for it, and wish that Sandy would push such arguments more frequently.
Because while some of you may have skin in this game, I don’t; I’m not Jazz, I’m not even remotely jazzy, and the only thing that justifies spending this amount of time here is that people say things that cause you to challenge your worldview, sometimes seeing things in more comprehensive ways. It is a bit depressing that not everyone shares this outlook.
More depressing when you consider that we are all nerds, really, not the hardcore types, I mean most of us have been on dates or whatever, but let’s face it, there’s a hell of a lot of you who spent a hell of a lot of time in front of the tube watching shows like the X-Files or Star Trek, shows that routinely spun conspiracy theories way more far-fetched than what Sandy believes about the Apollo missions.
Sandy Underpants
David K,
There’s no scientific advancement or feat to take place anywhere that wasn’t adopted world-wide or didn’t go mainstream and become improved and had the cost vastly reduced in short order after the first acheivement of such advancement. Railroads, airplanes, television, radio, film, satelite technology, organ transplants, biological cloning, HD friggin TV etc.
The Russians were ahead of the US in EVERY aspect of the space program when we supposedly landed on the moon. And of course because we landed there first, it’s logical to assume that the Russians would just abandon all their plans for a manned mission to the moon. I wonder why the Chinese are trying so hard and spending so much money to put a Chinaman on the moon, their target date is the year 2020 (that’s two thousand twenty). I guess they didn’t read your bunk about how expensive and pointless it is to go there. Maybe you should send the emperor an e-mail, he’d appreciate it.
As for more evidence to the hoax. Moon rocks that were given to other countries were proven to not be from the moon, but to actually be old wood I can see where you might mistake a moon rock for a piece of wood, given all the trees on the moon.
Over 200 video tapes from the moon mission were erased, accidently. Oops. I’ve watched my 8th grade graudation about 6 times in my life, it was a special day for me. It’s on one video tape. It’s only been 20 years, but I still haven’t taped over it.
Mathew Caffrey, I don’t believe Obama was born in Kenya, but I’m open to the argument, and furthermore wouldn’t give a damn if he were.
Except the Russians weren’t “ahead of the US in EVERY aspect of the space program when we supposedly landed on the moon.”
The US started to pass the Soviets in the mid sixties, with Apollo 8 being the first manned orbit of the moon, something the Soviets were trying for at the same time. You can read about it here:
You still haven’t responded to the fact that you can see all of our moon trash still up there.
Sandy Underpants
The United States is the only country to get human beings out of the earth’s orbit. Everybody else seems to burn up when they try it. I guess the American’s just have that magic touch, so there’s not much surprise that American’s were the ONLY people to be able to orbit the moon.
BTW, the first country to get an unmanned vehicle to the moon, the first country to send a satellite into space, and the first country to have a human orbit the earth, is planning to land a human on the moon in 2025. That means we didn’t just beat Russia to the moon we completely blew them out. I mean the country that was ahead of us in all space advancements, we beat to the moon by almost 60 years. That doesn’t really have the ring of truth to it does it, P-thread?
David K.
Sandy, when was the last time someone built pyramids to rival those at Giza? By your reasoning the fact that it hasn’t been done since can ONLY mean that it was never done in the first place.
As long as you are willing to ignore the myriad number of logical, reasonable, and non-conspiratorial reasons why moon landings didn’t become regular occurences, I am going to continue calling you an idiot.
Sandy: This is why you are a nutjob. I’ve demonstrated, beyond any discussion, that the fact is that the United States passed the Russians in the space race in the 60s. You could have read more about it at the link I posted. Yet you still continue to make the claim that they were ahead of us in all aspects of the space race despite being proven demonstrably wrong.
This is why you are a wing nut.
I could go on at length about the reasons we passed them, from specific issues with infighting over design issues with the N1 rocket to the fact that innovation was stifled in the Soviet Union by the hyper-specialization of their engineers. I have a degree in Russian history, this isn’t some arbitrary BS that I’m pulling out of my ass. The idea that the Russians were ahead of us until the moon landing is patently false.
David K.
Sandy, let me give you a piece of advice. When you find yourself in a hole, the first step to getting out of said hole is to stop digging. Comparing the Luxor to the Great Pyramids at Giza is like comparing little league to major league baseball. Similar concept, vast degree of difference.
Jazz
Sandy, one of the key elements of your “why didn’t anyone else go?” arguments is that technology has improved so much in 40 years, that if we could do it in 1969, it must be a piece of cake today. Its an interesting argument, but it misreads an important aspect of technological advance.
Its true that man made it to the moon with extremely primitive technology in 1969. I wasn’t alive then, but my sense is that the thrill of reaching the moon was so great that the polity was willing to give it a try with 1969-era technology, and if that included something like a 40% or so chance of death, that was okay given the grandeur of the prize.
Compare that with any space shuttle mission, which always has dozens of people inspecting thousands of pictures of the launch, to ensure the craft is still intact. Two of the 127 space shuttle missions ended in disaster, which is 2 too many for a lot of Americans. As I perceive it, a 2/127 chance of disaster for a moon mission was a risk substantially everyone was willing to take.
So in a strange way technology makes the effort more difficult, as it raises the bar and expectations. All you need to convince yourself regarding the moon mission was that we had enough technology to give it a shot, even a dangerous shot, and we certainly did have enough for that.
You also suggested that other countries would have tried by now, which misreads another aspect of technology: other countries are not going to spend the billions on a moon mission until they can do it in a first-class, first-rate way. See Olympics, Beijing for an example of such developing world pride. Can China get to the moon in a 1989-era technological effort? Sure. Would they spend billions on such an effort? Not a chance.
Jazz
Also, Sandy hasn’t addressed pthread’s pretty good moon trash objection, though in fact there is an even more damning data point for Sandy’s conspiracy. I would be surprised if he or anyone else can rationalize the following:
Suppose that the moon program was all a conspiracy. This would mean that the moon launch occured on a sound stage in New Mexico (against a fake backdrop), then the media went back to worrying about Vietnam or whatever for a couple of days, then NASA alerted them again that the Eagle was about to land on the moon, happened on the same sound stage, then the media went back to Vietnam again, then a few days later the astronauts “landed” in a lake outside the sound stage.
At a very minimum, the conspirators would have heavily resisted any media coverage of the trip itself, since, there was no trip itself.
Given all this, how can we reconcile ourselves to “Houston, we have a problem”? It wasn’t a problem on landing, or liftoff, or one of the staged moments of the trip, it was a problem as Apollo was nearing the moon.
It was a problem that required any number of MacGyver-esque solutions over the next three days, all of which were documented in the movie Apollo 13, and none of which could possibly have been planned by conspirators. Think Richard Feynman and the O-Rings on the Shuttle disaster of 1986. It simply beggars belief to think that conspirators would have purposefully subjected themselves to that kind of scrutiny if it were all fake.
Such a plan would have to be pretty insane. Not saying that you are insane for believing it, I suspect that you haven’t really considered the Apollo 13 implausibility for the conspiracy, preferring to focus on broad themes like “what Russia would have done”, rather than the more germane particulars that make a conspiracy damn near impossible to have pulled off – or planned in such a manner.
ScottF
I’ve come to this discussion late but want to revisit a point David K. made. Anything having to do with space missions is expensive. Manned missions are much more expensive because safety is a top priority. Given the GNP of the U.S. over the last 50 years is it really a surprise noone else has gone to the moon? It is said that Reagan brought down the USSR by making it too expensive for them to continue. Would they have thrown money into space research at the cost of their own government?
I have a reason to believe the moon landing was real. My father was retired from the Air Force and worked on the project as a civilian programming trajectory computers. I believe the stories he told me of the project. Instead of telling me stories that were lies I believe he would have told me nothing at all.
It is said that Reagan brought down the USSR by making it too expensive for them to continue.
This is going even further off topic than this thread already has, but this meme is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Reagan’s actions played only a small part in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in reality if Reagan hadn’t existed it’s not unreasonable to suppose that things would have turned out similar (barring any butterfly effect type discussion).
Not that you seem married to that position (you did say, “it is said” and indeed it is said).
Your GNP argument is a good one that I hadn’t considered though.
Jazz
Another insight from this conversation: first, background – my perception is that those who embrace the moon landing conspiracy see the event basically in terms of the good publicity such an event generates, which consequently begs the question of why other nations don’t reach for the same publicity. Sandy hasn’t advanced that particular argument, though it wouldn’t be inconsistent with the arguments he has put forth.
Surely when Kennedy announces in 1961 that we will reach the moon by decade’s end, he as a politician is partially motivated by the personal benefit of such theater. Had he lived, I’m sure Kennedy would have pushed hard for the moon landing to be moved forward a year, for roughly the same reason that Obama went to Copenhagen the first time in 2009…what a way to finish a brilliant 8-year presidency…
The 60s are an interesting decade, technology-wise. When that decade began, there were no more than a handful of mainframes in a few government locations. When it ended, many institutions of decent size had some sort of server technology. When the decade began, those few computer systems couldn’t talk to one another, and when it ended, ARPANET was packet switching, the precursor to the internet.
A very impressive decade of technological advances. On the geopolitical front, when the decade began, the Soviets had just gotten the bomb and the Red Menace was huge, losing the Cold War seemed a real possibility. Though pthread may disagree, according to my Russian History prof (full disclosure: just a class! Not a major!), by 1970 the Cold War was pretty much over, as the technological gap between the US/West and Soviet Union was simply too great to be overcome. The Soviets still had the command economy and guns and tanks to win lots of battles, but the war was basically lost.
To what should we credit the amazing technological advances of the 1960s? Many reasons, and others are smarter on this than I, but if this were like the Family Feud, and the top 5 answers were on the board, one must surely be the Apollo Program. In addition to the bread and circuses for retiring Presidents, countries seek the moon in order to kick start technological development (and leave their frenemies in the dust).
(Its true that a two-bit dictator like Kim Jong-Il may wish to go to the moon to flex his machismo for the world, but that goal can be achieved much more cheaply by firing a primitive nuke into the South China Sea.)
Thus the insight: if you listen to futurists talk about who is going to dominate the 21st century, China is the prime candidate, with the rest of the BRIC countries in second place. China gets first dibs because its economy is the most developed of the four.
However, three of those four countries have their eye on the moon. The prediction here is: whichever one is serious, and lands a human on the moon in a high-tech, ultramodern fashion, will reap the salutary technological side benefits such that that country rules the century. Just a bit of investment advice for a Wednesday morning…
On the geopolitical front, when the decade began, the Soviets had just gotten the bomb and the Red Menace was huge, losing the Cold War seemed a real possibility. Though pthread may disagree, according to my Russian History prof (full disclosure: just a class! Not a major!), by 1970 the Cold War was pretty much over, as the technological gap between the US/West and Soviet Union was simply too great to be overcome. The Soviets still had the command economy and guns and tanks to win lots of battles, but the war was basically lost.
I think one could probably make an effective argument for that position, although I think a stronger argument could be made for the late 70s. I also think that, as far as things that we did go (because in reality most of the reason for the collapse was internal rot, not anything we did) Afghanistan probably played a larger role. And Carter started us down that path, not Reagan.
Sandy Underpants
David K,
First of all your Pyramid comparison to the moon landing hoax is totally ludicrous since you can buy a plane ticket to prove the pyramids are there, or were built or whatever it is that you’re comparing. The Luxor in Vegas is an improvement on that ancient design a 1000 times more modern and advanced, in terms of efficiency and practicality, which defeats your premise that nobody else built a pyramid since those of ancient history.
A more appropriate comparison would be to say that landing on the moon in the 60s would be like Christopher Columbo “discovering” America or Magellan discovering the Phillipines and then nobody in the civilized world really giving a damn about it. What happened after these pioneers landed on previously undiscovered new worlds way back when? Did everyone just sit on their asses and say well that was cool, there’s just a bunch of goof balls in loin clothes over there, so why bother? It would be the same thing today with space exploration. Landing on the moon 4 times and saying, “we’ve seen it forget about it” is completely ludicrous. The fact that NASA still sends landers to the moon and bombs the moon to observe whethere there is water there all the way in 2009 shows that there is still much to explore and investigate.
Jazz, I have thought about the APOLLO 13 film and the events they are based on, and previously considered those exact points. An interesting thing I saw in an interview with the director, Ron Howard, about the movie was that they had nothing to work off of, because there is no existing video or audio of the crisis to work from. It was all erased. To me that’s pretty interesting, and that interview was done before it came out that NASA doesn’t have any existing video from the Apollo 11 mission either.
P-Thread, I acknowledged that the US passed Russia when the US became the first to send men to orbit the moon. No person has EVER orbited the moon, other than Americans. That’s the ONLY time the US passed Russia in space exploration at that time in history. As I previously stated Russia put the first satellite in space, first man in space, first woman in space, first space station, first dog in space, etc. So, even if the US put the first man in orbit of the moon, how far ahead of Russia is could that possibly be? A couple years? It’s been 40 years, and Russia still hasn’t done it. There’s a reason they, and every other country, cannot put a man near the moon.
With regards to how expensive it is to go to the moon, the United States did it in 1969 for 335 million, which would be 1.75 billion in todays dollars. There’s a lot of Americans with enough money to go to the moon with that type of overhaed, forget about China and Russia who are set to go there no sooner than 2020 (two thousand twenty). So please stop with the “it’s so expensive” nonsense, it wasn’t. We spent that much money fighting the Iraq war THIS WEEK.
Sandy: How much harder could it be? It appears you didn’t read the link I provided, or you’d be able to answer that question yourself. But hey, wouldn’t want you to, you know, have any friggin’ idea what actually happened or anything.
Jazz
What an interesting thread. Few more comments:
1) Cost. Sandy argues that in today’s dollars, a moon mission would cost something like $2 B, which is a pittance to Richard Branson. That seems about right…if the mission is using 1969’s technology. Could Richard Branson even find the infrastructure to support 1969-era technology to take a shot at the moon? Get some guy in Houston to fire up an old Intel 8088 and give it a go?
Obviously, any individual or country, even an undeveloped Third World country, wouldn’t take a shot at the moon without 2009 technology. That would be maybe 100 times more costly than the 1969 effort, or, say, $200 B, or about 1/10th of the cost of Iraq, which (at least) in the eyes of the folks who get their civics lessons from Glenn Beck’s chalkboard, is a fight for the future of freedom in the USA. No one has 1/10th as grandiose notions about landing a man on the moon.
2) Space, the final frontier. Its interesting that Sandy repeatedly pushes the notion that manned moon missions are so obviously valuable that its incomprehensible that no one picked up the ball after the seven Apollo missions. In your most recent post you compared the Apollo program to the discovery of the New World, which prompted a thought.
Like many of you, I used to think it somewhat bizarre that Ponce de Leon really thought there was a fountain of youth in Florida, a place so magical as to be worthy of emptying the exchequer in pursuit. In de Leon’s defense, when you visit Florida, it does seem fountain-of-youth-ish, without knowing better, you might think the place had some magical properties.
By contrast, the moon seems like…a big rock. Yes, it synthesizes water in somewhat unusual ways, but then hydrogen and oxygen have an affinity for each other, as humans have known on plain old earth for centuries. We’ve been sending unmanned missions to the moon for nearly 50 years, is there a Fountain of Youth there that demands another human visit? I never thought so, but after Sandy’s post 33, I’m starting to have my doubts.
3) Those missing tapes. The smokingest smoking gun for the conspirators, and no doubt it looks bad. Does the disappearance of those tapes mean the thing was staged? Well, the invaluable Wikipedia reminded me of something that I had forgotten, which bears on this question: Apollo 13 wasn’t the last mission in the program….there were four more.
Given the choice between: a) the tapes were erased to maintain the myth that the moon landing was real, or b) the tapes were erased because there was either 1) some malfeasance in Apollo 13 or 2) the things that went wrong in Apollo 13 were much more dangerous than anyone realized, and with 4 more missions in the can, NASA wanted to cover that fact up, explanation b) is surely the better one.
Remember before Richard Feynman started sniffing around the space shuttle program, the official word from NASA was that the space shuttle was “safer than passenger air travel”, and then Feynman came along and said that defects in the O-rings made the risk of tragedy something like 1 in 35? The Wikipedia page does a pretty good job describing the risks, the cover-up, and how NASA made it seem like the O-ring system was safe…when they knew it wasn’t.
With Apollo 14-17 still to come, isn’t the erasing of the tapes far more likely explained as NASA – who would return to this well with Challenger – covering up the underreported dangers of the Apollo program? That is a much much better, Nixonian and Watergate-esque, explanation for the missing tapes than the wilder belief that the whole thing never actually happened.
Jazz
Finally, Sandy, a thought as a fellow-traveller in the belief that not everything is as it seems: in order for a conspiracy to occur, the most important condition it has to meet is to be containable.
As an example, this critical criteria is what makes the proposed Trig birther conspiracy so elegant. While the Trig switcheroo “may” have worked in a small town that the Palin family dominated, it wasn’t obvious that it would work, especially given the many complexities of, and potential outsiders involved in, a Down Syndrome birth, so the conspiracy – if true – explains Palin’s silence until after the fact much better than the official story does.
However, the 6 fmoon landings fail the containability test about as miserably as any commonly-held conspiracy. When NASA trotted out the moon rover on its last three “faked” moon landings, do you think there was some possibility that a hostile Brit at the Limey Intergalactic Observatory or a hostile Frenchman at the Fromage Planetarium or a hostile German at the Krauthammer Institute for the Study of Space would want to know the coordinates so they could see for themselves? How was the silence of such folks bought?
Or even back to Apollo 13: when that disaster was hurtling back to earth, didn’t every amateur in his backyard point his telescope at the sky to watch the dangerous return of that vessel? How did NASA buy all of their silence all these years?
IOW, while there is no doubt that things are often not what they seem, in order for conspiracy to work, you have to believe that the secret can be kept. There aren’t many proposed secrets that would be more impossible to keep than the six successful, and one failed, missions in the Apollo program.
I think that’s a good point Jazz, and one I often try to point out to be people. Wide-ranging conspiracies just don’t exist. My their nature they fall apart when casting too wide a net.
Sandy Underpants
1) I don’t think making up numbers is helpful to your argument. The cost of technology goes down, not up. The cost of going to the moon would be much less today, rather than more, and saying it would cost 200 billion is completely out of touch with reality. For instance a laptop cost 4500 bucks in 1994. Staples has a laptop for $199 today.
2) How can you argue against the fact that there is interest in “returning” to the moon? Why would Russia and China both be trying to get to the moon for the last 20 years and plan manned moon missions, but they won’t be able to get there any sooner than 2020?!?
3) So what the tapes don’t exist. The moon landing was only the most important accomplishment of the 20th century. I can see where they taped over ALL 200+ tapes of the mission.
Regarding your point towards isolation being key to conspiracies, the CIA is a massive group of people, who are sworn to secrecy, up to a point that not even their own family members know they work for the CIA. What goes on at Area 51 in Nevada? There’s a lot of people that work there and have done work there, nobody’s talking are they? How many people have spilled the beans about that place? No one, so it’s not really THAT difficult to keep secrets when there’s a place people are so curious about, but nobody that’s ever been inside that base has ever talked about what goes on in there.
P-thread, I read your link, Russian space programs were pretty much abandoned after the US moon landing, and then completely defunct around 1975. Also the article says that Russians were never anywhere near being able to get a man near the moon. Which is my point. How can a program that is ahead of the United States in every space advancement get passed so seemingly easily?
If there wasn’t such a strong motive for the US to fake the moon landing, it might be harder to argue this point, but NASA was on it’s way to being defunded and ultimately becoming defunct because it not only failed repeatedly in launches and every damn monkey they sent to space died during or shortly after the flight that it was clear they weren’t getting it done. Scientists openly stated that we wouldn’t get to the moon in our lifetimes (in the 60s). NASA started faking this stuff to continue getting funded. Another motive is that Kennedy guaranteed we’d land on the moon before the end of the 60s, we’re stuck in a crap war in Vietnam, nationalism is at an all time low. This was the galvanizing moment that re-instilled nationilstic pride in the country. Our slain hero, JFK, realized the promise he had made, America beat the Rooskies to the moon. USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!!
I couldn’t have scripted it better myself.
Jazz
Grouping points 1+2: I think you misunderstand what drives up the cost of Moon Mission 2009 vs. Moon Mission 1969. While its true, for example, that the cost per megabyte of storage space has declined from around $200 in 1980 to much less than a penny today, such price reductions would only matter if a 2009 mission were heading to the moon with 1969 technology.
And that is transparently not the case. So while the market value of the 1981 Apple, with its 5 Meg hard drive, would be less than a penny if mass-produced today, computers people buy in 2009 are many many thousand times more expensive than a penny because they are many many thousand times more sophisticated. The same would necessarily hold for a future moon mission, which will inevitably lead to the bill being vastly more expensive, even in real dollars.
Even if you could somehow get to the moon for $2 B (highly highly doubtful), why would Russia or China or anyone else go…today? Joking aside, I’m pretty sure there is no fountain of youth there. Why on earth…or the moon…would you expect such countries to incur such costs just to land a human on a barren rock that the US achieved several decades ago? Clearly, when Russia and China indicate an interest in the moon, they intend to do something much more meaningful and groundbreaking than “just” land a man there, which the US did in 1969, and thus the Chinese or Russian effort would be even more costly. Probably Russia or China wants to not only land a human on the moon, but also have him spend several days there, maybe stop for a burger and beer in the Hooters on the moon, where the chicks are still voluptuous but there isn’t much atmosphere.
Finally, to the conspiracy – you are right that the net of a conspiracy can sometimes be wide, and the CIA example is a good one. I’m sure the CIA has engaged in dubious behavior that is unknown to the masses, behaviors of which many CIA staffers are aware. For example, you mentioned the suspicious acts at Area 51; if I had to guess I’d say the “aliens” that were famously, grainly autopsied on Fox (narrated by Riker), were probably humans, perhaps even US military guinea pigs, who were exposed to a nuclear blast to determine whether a pilot could carry out his mission after such exposure. If so, there might be quite a few people who knew about it, and so the net would be relatively wider than any proposed Trig switcheroo conspiracy, for example.
But you are overlooking an absolutely essential difference between Area 51/the CIA and the moon landing – the net of a conspiracy can be cast wider when all participants have skin in the game. Everyone in the CIA/Area 51 has their careers – and possibly, their status as free citizens – tied to the keeping of the secret. When that condition holds, you can certainly sustain a somewhat wider conspiracy.
But the “skin in the game” condition clearly fails in regard to the Apollo program. What did the French astronomer have to gain by saying “I aimed my super-duper telescope at the spot where the moon rover is supposed to be, and there is nothing?” Surely he, or the British guy, or the German guy, would be motivated to tell the truth if the thing were a fraud, which is a vastly different case from the CIA/Area 51 example. Similarly, all the amateur astronomers training their backyard telescopes on the returning Apollo capsules, what did they have to gain by hiding the fact that there was nothing out there? Did any of them have skin in the game?
Finally, there are even some cases where suspicious events are not followed up by the masses – but simply because not enough people care (which frankly described the Trig birth story, and will do so more and more as time passes). However, even that couldn’t possibly describe the motivated German astronomer saying “Ach! Where is that rover!”
Now it’s Ingram 42.4%, Gerhart 40.8%, Suh 39.5%, per @stiffarmtrophy – http://bit.ly/8R8Soo
Thought you would love this one Brendan:
http://sports.espn.go.com/ncf/news/story?id=4727426
Subcommittee OKs college playoff bill
ESPN.com news services
WASHINGTON — A House subcommittee approved legislation Wednesday aimed at forcing college football to switch to a playoff system to determine its national champion, over the objections of some lawmakers who said Congress has meatier targets to tackle.
…
If Congress could accomplish ANYTHING it would be an accomplishment 2 years in the making.
So McCoy is out of the running? Is that what’s going on? If so, that’s a travesty. McCoy should have won the Heisman last year, and he sure as hell is more important and a better player than any of these individuals allegedly ahead of him. Suh just got born last Saturday. Give me a friggin break! Since when do you vote on the Heisman based on 1 weekend? Rey Mauluga should’ve won it about 9 times if that’s how they’re going to do it from now on.
You know, when Sandy said he thought the moon landing was faked, I didn’t think he could say anything that would sound mroe insane and out of touch with reality.
Guess I was wrong.
Suh wasn’t just born last Saturday, you just didn’t pay attention. And Colt McCoy THIS year isn’t even as good as Colt McCoy LAST year. Gerhart is outplaying Ingram in a tougher conference, with less talented players around him. Suh and Gerhart are the top players this year, unless you define top players as having to be on an undefeated team like Sandy seems to be doing.
First of all, ain’t nobody said a damn thing about Suh all season long, and quite frankly there are few people that watch and read more about College Football than me. Honestly. He wasn’t even in the first round on anybodies draft lists until this weekend, when he had the game of his life.
I know McCoy had a better season last year than this year, but he IS the leader of an undefeated team in the national championship game. He touches the ball EVERY play, unlike the running backs. Furthermore, McCoy was the best player last season, and got ripped off, and didn’t lose a game this season to diminish his luster. Gerhart is an outstanding running back, but did he really have a stand out season? If Jahvid Best doesn’t get hurt, he’s got better numbers than Gerhart. What marquee wins did Stanford have? Beating the Worst USC team since Petros played? That’s it. Ingram’s Heisman should go to his O-line, because you could’ve put anybody in there to run behind those guys and get the same numbers. Plus he fumbled at crucial moments against Tennessee and if Kiffin wasn’t the coach, Alabama would have lost that game after Ingram’s fumble.
And to address your first point. Anybody that believes Americans landed on the moon 40 years ago with technology that is less than that of what is available in a Texas Instruments calculator, and NO OTHER COUNTRY CAN GET TO THE MOON 40 years later, with the technology of today, is the insane one.
Sandy, your first paragraph is flat-out factually false, so I’m not sure why anyone would bother to take the rest of your opinion seriously, Moon-landing conspiracy-mongering entirely aside.
Sandy, whether or not Stanford had a perfect season or a pathetic one is not relevant. The discussion isn’t who is the best player on an undefeated team, its who is the best player. As i’ve said before, its a lot tougher to do what Gerhart did against tougher opponents with less support. Even if I buy that Ingram is better than Gerhart, Gerhart, AND Suh AND Ingram, and more are better than Colt McCoy this year.
As for the moon landing thing, you argument is based on faulty assumptions and flawed logic. It demonstrates that you lack a sufficient understanding of any number of topics relevant to that discussion including rocketry, physics, astronautics, economics, psychology, and international relations.
And to address your first point. Anybody that believes Americans landed on the moon 40 years ago with technology that is less than that of what is available in a Texas Instruments calculator, and NO OTHER COUNTRY CAN GET TO THE MOON 40 years later, with the technology of today, is the insane one.
Hahahahahahahahaha.
I still can’t decide if you are for real or not.
First of all, give me a link to all the articles about Nabdumpkin Suh. He was never even mentioned in the same breath with the word “Heisman”. It’s a flat out joke. I’m serious, I TiVo (and watch) College Football Live EVERY DAY, he was never mentioned once until this week. I TiVo (and watch) College Gameday and College Football Final EVERY WEEKEND, and he was never mentioned, forget about being featured on any segment until this week. So I don’t know what you nuts are talking about, everyone wants to pretend to be an expert. Post all the articles that featured Suh on the internet before this weekend if I’m lying, is there any motive to lie about this?
Secondly, Stanford didn’t play better competition than Texas or Alabama. As much as I detest the superiority-complex of the SEC and the over-ratededness of Texas’ flunky schedule, Stanford played mostly nobodies and lost to 4 of them, including Wake Forrest, who only won 4 or 5 games this season. Gerhart wasn’t playing on a team full of losers, Harbaugh himself stated that Andrew Luck, their QB, was the best quarterback in college football, and Stanford has a very good team.
Colt McCoy is a better player this year than any of those guys. He’s the most important player on an undefeated team at seasons end, with a record of 26-1 over the last 2 years. Come on. I’m not a Colt McCoy fan, but I do have a sense of right and wrong. He deserved it last year, and got ripped, he hasn’t become a worse player or failed his team as they are undefeated today.
As for this Moon Hoax you guys keep bringing up. It brings up fond memories of when I was the only guy in the room saying that invading Iraq was a terrible idea and would be a complete disaster and Hussein probably didn’t even have WMD in the first place, and having everyone calling me an idiot for it back in 2002 and 2003. Trust me, you’ll know that the US Moon Landings were hoaxed in our lifetimes, I hope you think of me when you find out about it.
First, two comments in defense of Sandy:
1) Suh’s game against Texas was, indeed, the game of his life.
2) The casual dismissal of Sandy’s moon landing hoax may be an indication of a dismaying homerism among Americans. Fellas, 50% of Brits think the thing is a fraud. You can say that the Brits are just haters, but those fools are the only other nation on earth to send several thousand troops into Bush’s search for WMD in Mesopotamia. With haters like the Brits, who could have friends? In all seriousness, the Brits are a pretty educated lot, so treating the truth of the moon landing as “so absolutely obvious that any skeptic must necessarily be scientifically obtuse” is to say something rather negative about the Brits, and while I am no fan of the Brits, I doubt they are as obtuse as that statement implies.
Its not just the moon landing. You have all read MacBeth, Hamlet, a million other stories about regicide perpetrated by the guy-who-would-be-king, and yet you overwhelmingly believe that the Mafia/Cubans/Russians/Masons/The Trilateral Commission killed Kennedy, as opposed to Kennedy’s Claudius, who, for what its worth, had a much more plausible influence over the Dallas police station the morning Ruby killed Oswald, the Secret Service/Kennedy in having Kennedy in an open limousine, and a million other details that Khruschev couldn’t possibly have influenced. If the Kennedy assassination had occured in any other country, you would have suspected LBJ without further thought, but this is AMERICA, and such things don’t happen here. *sigh*.
Having written all that, I think the moon landing is true, for reasons unrelated to “this is America and such scandal couldn’t happen here”, as I have argued elsewhere.
Regarding Suh: while Suh’s game against Texas was his best, the Heisman Trophy is not like Olympic figure skating, where the highest and lowest scores are thrown out. The Texas game should not only count, it should count more. The fact that we didn’t pay attention to him before that game doesn’t mean that he sucked, it could mean that we sucked, as Brendan argued elsewhere.
After all, Suh finished tied for third in D-1 for total sacks, which has probably not happened in a long time for a nose tackle (but I don’t know for sure). More interestingly, Suh finished behind only Greg Jones at MSU for total tackles among the top 50 sack leaders in D-1.
That’s right – dude is a nose tackle and finished second, among the 50 best sackers, in total tackles (to an LB at MSU who is quite a stud). Has that ever happened before? Again, I can’t be sure, but I am guessing not.
You can still argue that McCoy or whoever should win the Heisman, heck its a subjective decision. But you’re on thinner ice in claiming that Suh didn’t achieve anything all that special this year, whether we paid attention or not.
It brings up fond memories of when I was the only guy in the room saying that invading Iraq was a terrible idea and would be a complete disaster and Hussein probably didn’t even have WMD in the first place, and having everyone calling me an idiot for it back in 2002 and 2003. Trust me, you’ll know that the US Moon Landings were hoaxed in our lifetimes, I hope you think of me when you find out about it.
Bwahahahahahaha!
Oh, gee, you are so smart! You are the *only* one who knew about WMD before the war.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
so treating the truth of the moon landing as “so absolutely obvious that any skeptic must necessarily be scientifically obtuse” is to say something rather negative about the Brits, and while I am no fan of the Brits, I doubt they are as obtuse as that statement implies.
I know that you are smart enough, Jazz, to know that we don’t evaluate the truthfulness of events based on opinion polls. If the brits are overwhelmingly as stupid as Sandy, they are overwhelmingly as stupid as Sandy.
I *might* be willing to give Sandy the benfit of the doubt if the issue was, “I’m not sure.” Fine, not enough evidence to be convinced? I’m surprised, but whatever. But to declare it a hoax in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary is just bat-shit insane.
So I take it back, perhaps it says less about the intelligence of brits, perhaps it’s their sanity.
we don’t evaluate the truthfulness of events based on opinion polls
Of course we don’t. What’s more, I believe the moon landing story. What’s even more, one of Sandy’s main arguments (why hasn’t anyone gone back?) is easily refutable by the fact that its a) difficult, and b) in the US anyway, we decided that the Space Shuttle program was a better use of our limited space dollars, since – what is the point of going to the moon repeatedly if we can’t yet colonize the place?
The reason the Brits do matter in this conversation is because the level of ad hominem antagonism against Sandy is out of all accord with the fact that half the population of a demographically-similar, highly-educated nation agrees with him. The fact that 50% of Britons believe such a thing suggests that its obviousness is not at all a slam dunk.
Speaking of which, I am fully confident that you too are smart enough to recognize this, pthread. Faced with this dilemma, you had two roads you could have travelled:
1) You could have shared the “Ark of the Covenant”, the indisputable, sacred fact of the moon landing that washes away Sandy and half the British Isles because of its sheer, indisputable obviousness, or
2) You could just say all Brits are insane.
Though I am on your side, I’m still sitting over here waiting for that “Ark of the Covenant” data point. The over/under on the number of ad hominems and sighing “its so obvious” comments we hear before we get that data point is probably somewhere in the tens of thousands.
One other thing, pthread, you mentioned in your post #10 (as have others here) the existence of mountains of evidence that prove the moon landing beyond the shadow of a doubt.
As an act of mercy, considering their insanity, would you mind pointing out those mountains to Merry Old England?
Ok, first, Sandy you are an idiot. I mean not just a simple idiot, but an outright batshit insane, full on delusional MORON.
Second, um there were quite a few people who questioned the invasion of Iraq from the start. Even those of us who were willing to give Bush the initial benefit of the doubt (yes I was one of them) figured it out long before he did. Claiming you were right about something like that based on your extensive, what watchig of the internet, its pretty damn impressive allright.
Third, um, yes Stanford actually DID play tougher competition. The Pac-10 was the toughest conference top to bottom this year bar none. On top of that Stanford didn’t have cupcake schools like Florida International, North Texas, and F*ing Chatanooga for Gerhart to run up his stats against. And it doesn’t matter if they LOST games dumbass, in fact, its MORE impressive that even LOSING and playing ONE LESS GAME than Ingram that Gerhart had more yards! And Colt McCoy, he
Finally, the moon landing. I never claimed it was easy or simple, I said it could be done now, and it was done then. We could pull out the Saturn V rockets, strap an Apollo module and capsule on and go back today if we had politicians willing to take the risk. The moon landings were dangerous. The shuttle missions were dangerous, he’ll everything we’ve done in space thats been a manned mission is dangerous. Plus you ignore the fact that ew aren’t simply trying to just put people on the moon again, but actually conduct science out there as well, to prepare for potential longer term missions, longer range missions, AND replace the shuttle fleet. We aren’t simply redoing the same thing, we are trying to do a whole hell of a lot more.
As for why no one else has done it since? Well for one thing its damn expensive and no one has had the motivation or incentive to go back. Going to the moon doesn’t make you money or grant you a lot of power and resources. It was a pride thing, and once we were the first there, there wasn’t much incentive to being the second. Oh, did I mention the part where we poured a metric crap ton of money into the program? Our nations top scientist were involved in it?
Let me reiterate that for you, it has happened since, not because it was a hoax, but because its really expensive, has little monetary benefit, cariers a significant amount of risk, is really expensive, no one has wanted to diver their scientific resources to doing it again, and oh yeah, its really freaking expensive. We have video footage from the moon. Faking that video footage to pass the scientific examination done by multiple sources over the years would have taken a greater amount of time, effort, AND money then the actual trip to the moon! Hell even mythbusters debunked some of the so called proof the moon-bat insane conspiracy theorists like yourself cling to.
David, your arguments from inference are pretty good ones for why the moon mission story is legit. With all due respect, you forgot the most important one: after Apollo 13, its possible that NASA didn’t think the risk assessment was worth the (limited) advance in human knowledge. All plausible reasons to move in the space shuttle direction instead.
But while your arguments from inference are persuasive, you – and everyone else, for that matter – have still not presented an argument from forensic information. A moon rock might have worked. Or some of that lost video. You and others have referred frequently to the “mountains” of evidence, but you haven’t shared any of it, preferring just to call Sandy batshit insane instead.
Sandy may in fact be batshit insane, and for what its worth, I disagree with him on this matter. But the fact that Sandy can take a minority opinion on Suh (which I also disagree with) and be categorically dismissed because he’s a “moon landing conspirator” has to be pretty depressing for the Loys. If denying the moon landing automatically disqualifies one from holding an opinion around these parts, Brendan is bound to forfeit any audience he gained from his nostalgia over Liam Clancy and other things British-Isles-ish. Why would any such person visit this place if fully half of them are too categorically insane to be taken seriously, even on an unrelated topic like the Heisman Trophy?
Sandy, your ignorance terrifies me. Both on football and on the moon landings. I will guess that you think the 9/11 attacks were staged, Diebold rigged the election machines and Obama was born in Kenya.
Jazz: In previous threads there have been several different types of evidence pointed out. I think someone got the moonrocks, I’ve hit on the fact that our moon trash is still visible. Plenty of sound reasoning has been thrown Sandy’s way, but he ignores it. That’s why he’s batshit insane.
I agree with you, though, that his opinion on the subject of the Heisman winner has nothing to do with this though. It was just brought up, and I still can’t believe it.
Also, it appears it’s 25%, not 50%:
http://kn.theiet.org/news/jul09/moon-landing-survey.cfm
Jazz – Sandy bases his conspiracy theory ladden argument on the idea that since no body has done it since that means we couldn’t have done it then. Not only is this a flawed argument (for example, nobody has built a great pyramid since the last one, thats been thousands of years, guess that means the first one is a hoax too…), it ignores the fact that there are reasonable, logical, and frankly sane reasons why this is true, reasons which I laid out above. As pthread mentions, evidence has been provided to show that the moon landings happened. Mounds of it. Video, photograph, telescope, scientific, physical, etc. Sandy’s just nuts.
Annnnd its Ingram. Voters weren’t smart enough. Dissapointing.
Even though, as I have mentioned before, I disagree with Sandy’s conclusions regarding the Apollo missions, I must say that his challenges (e.g. “why did no one go back?”) were helpful in causing me to consider three things I hadn’t considered previously.
The first, as discussed, is that the Space Shuttle program was the likely changed focus for NASA funding once we were “done” with the moon. The second is that Apollo 13 probably had a chilling effect on any additional moon explorations (in spite of what Ron Howard would have us believe). The third is that the 11 years between Apollo 13 and the first space shuttle seems like a long time, but those were OPEC/stagflation/Watergate/Jimmy Carter years, which makes such a time interval more plausible.
And it occurs to me that the three factors mentioned in the paragraph above work together to say something potentially interesting about the 70s, and what happens to science when the world goes to hell, interesting enough that I may even be motivated someday to read or learn more about it. As a result, while the rest of you were pleased to declare Sandy insane for pushing his (25% supported) argument, I was actually grateful for it, and wish that Sandy would push such arguments more frequently.
Because while some of you may have skin in this game, I don’t; I’m not Jazz, I’m not even remotely jazzy, and the only thing that justifies spending this amount of time here is that people say things that cause you to challenge your worldview, sometimes seeing things in more comprehensive ways. It is a bit depressing that not everyone shares this outlook.
More depressing when you consider that we are all nerds, really, not the hardcore types, I mean most of us have been on dates or whatever, but let’s face it, there’s a hell of a lot of you who spent a hell of a lot of time in front of the tube watching shows like the X-Files or Star Trek, shows that routinely spun conspiracy theories way more far-fetched than what Sandy believes about the Apollo missions.
David K,
There’s no scientific advancement or feat to take place anywhere that wasn’t adopted world-wide or didn’t go mainstream and become improved and had the cost vastly reduced in short order after the first acheivement of such advancement. Railroads, airplanes, television, radio, film, satelite technology, organ transplants, biological cloning, HD friggin TV etc.
The Russians were ahead of the US in EVERY aspect of the space program when we supposedly landed on the moon. And of course because we landed there first, it’s logical to assume that the Russians would just abandon all their plans for a manned mission to the moon. I wonder why the Chinese are trying so hard and spending so much money to put a Chinaman on the moon, their target date is the year 2020 (that’s two thousand twenty). I guess they didn’t read your bunk about how expensive and pointless it is to go there. Maybe you should send the emperor an e-mail, he’d appreciate it.
As for more evidence to the hoax. Moon rocks that were given to other countries were proven to not be from the moon, but to actually be old wood I can see where you might mistake a moon rock for a piece of wood, given all the trees on the moon.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8226075.stm
Over 200 video tapes from the moon mission were erased, accidently. Oops. I’ve watched my 8th grade graudation about 6 times in my life, it was a special day for me. It’s on one video tape. It’s only been 20 years, but I still haven’t taped over it.
Mathew Caffrey, I don’t believe Obama was born in Kenya, but I’m open to the argument, and furthermore wouldn’t give a damn if he were.
Except the Russians weren’t “ahead of the US in EVERY aspect of the space program when we supposedly landed on the moon.”
The US started to pass the Soviets in the mid sixties, with Apollo 8 being the first manned orbit of the moon, something the Soviets were trying for at the same time. You can read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Moonshot
You still haven’t responded to the fact that you can see all of our moon trash still up there.
The United States is the only country to get human beings out of the earth’s orbit. Everybody else seems to burn up when they try it. I guess the American’s just have that magic touch, so there’s not much surprise that American’s were the ONLY people to be able to orbit the moon.
BTW, the first country to get an unmanned vehicle to the moon, the first country to send a satellite into space, and the first country to have a human orbit the earth, is planning to land a human on the moon in 2025. That means we didn’t just beat Russia to the moon we completely blew them out. I mean the country that was ahead of us in all space advancements, we beat to the moon by almost 60 years. That doesn’t really have the ring of truth to it does it, P-thread?
Sandy, when was the last time someone built pyramids to rival those at Giza? By your reasoning the fact that it hasn’t been done since can ONLY mean that it was never done in the first place.
As long as you are willing to ignore the myriad number of logical, reasonable, and non-conspiratorial reasons why moon landings didn’t become regular occurences, I am going to continue calling you an idiot.
David K.,
you must not have ever been to Las Vegas.
Sandy: This is why you are a nutjob. I’ve demonstrated, beyond any discussion, that the fact is that the United States passed the Russians in the space race in the 60s. You could have read more about it at the link I posted. Yet you still continue to make the claim that they were ahead of us in all aspects of the space race despite being proven demonstrably wrong.
This is why you are a wing nut.
I could go on at length about the reasons we passed them, from specific issues with infighting over design issues with the N1 rocket to the fact that innovation was stifled in the Soviet Union by the hyper-specialization of their engineers. I have a degree in Russian history, this isn’t some arbitrary BS that I’m pulling out of my ass. The idea that the Russians were ahead of us until the moon landing is patently false.
Sandy, let me give you a piece of advice. When you find yourself in a hole, the first step to getting out of said hole is to stop digging. Comparing the Luxor to the Great Pyramids at Giza is like comparing little league to major league baseball. Similar concept, vast degree of difference.
Sandy, one of the key elements of your “why didn’t anyone else go?” arguments is that technology has improved so much in 40 years, that if we could do it in 1969, it must be a piece of cake today. Its an interesting argument, but it misreads an important aspect of technological advance.
Its true that man made it to the moon with extremely primitive technology in 1969. I wasn’t alive then, but my sense is that the thrill of reaching the moon was so great that the polity was willing to give it a try with 1969-era technology, and if that included something like a 40% or so chance of death, that was okay given the grandeur of the prize.
Compare that with any space shuttle mission, which always has dozens of people inspecting thousands of pictures of the launch, to ensure the craft is still intact. Two of the 127 space shuttle missions ended in disaster, which is 2 too many for a lot of Americans. As I perceive it, a 2/127 chance of disaster for a moon mission was a risk substantially everyone was willing to take.
So in a strange way technology makes the effort more difficult, as it raises the bar and expectations. All you need to convince yourself regarding the moon mission was that we had enough technology to give it a shot, even a dangerous shot, and we certainly did have enough for that.
You also suggested that other countries would have tried by now, which misreads another aspect of technology: other countries are not going to spend the billions on a moon mission until they can do it in a first-class, first-rate way. See Olympics, Beijing for an example of such developing world pride. Can China get to the moon in a 1989-era technological effort? Sure. Would they spend billions on such an effort? Not a chance.
Also, Sandy hasn’t addressed pthread’s pretty good moon trash objection, though in fact there is an even more damning data point for Sandy’s conspiracy. I would be surprised if he or anyone else can rationalize the following:
Suppose that the moon program was all a conspiracy. This would mean that the moon launch occured on a sound stage in New Mexico (against a fake backdrop), then the media went back to worrying about Vietnam or whatever for a couple of days, then NASA alerted them again that the Eagle was about to land on the moon, happened on the same sound stage, then the media went back to Vietnam again, then a few days later the astronauts “landed” in a lake outside the sound stage.
At a very minimum, the conspirators would have heavily resisted any media coverage of the trip itself, since, there was no trip itself.
Given all this, how can we reconcile ourselves to “Houston, we have a problem”? It wasn’t a problem on landing, or liftoff, or one of the staged moments of the trip, it was a problem as Apollo was nearing the moon.
It was a problem that required any number of MacGyver-esque solutions over the next three days, all of which were documented in the movie Apollo 13, and none of which could possibly have been planned by conspirators. Think Richard Feynman and the O-Rings on the Shuttle disaster of 1986. It simply beggars belief to think that conspirators would have purposefully subjected themselves to that kind of scrutiny if it were all fake.
Such a plan would have to be pretty insane. Not saying that you are insane for believing it, I suspect that you haven’t really considered the Apollo 13 implausibility for the conspiracy, preferring to focus on broad themes like “what Russia would have done”, rather than the more germane particulars that make a conspiracy damn near impossible to have pulled off – or planned in such a manner.
I’ve come to this discussion late but want to revisit a point David K. made. Anything having to do with space missions is expensive. Manned missions are much more expensive because safety is a top priority. Given the GNP of the U.S. over the last 50 years is it really a surprise noone else has gone to the moon? It is said that Reagan brought down the USSR by making it too expensive for them to continue. Would they have thrown money into space research at the cost of their own government?
I have a reason to believe the moon landing was real. My father was retired from the Air Force and worked on the project as a civilian programming trajectory computers. I believe the stories he told me of the project. Instead of telling me stories that were lies I believe he would have told me nothing at all.
It is said that Reagan brought down the USSR by making it too expensive for them to continue.
This is going even further off topic than this thread already has, but this meme is a bit of a pet peeve of mine. Reagan’s actions played only a small part in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and in reality if Reagan hadn’t existed it’s not unreasonable to suppose that things would have turned out similar (barring any butterfly effect type discussion).
Not that you seem married to that position (you did say, “it is said” and indeed it is said).
Your GNP argument is a good one that I hadn’t considered though.
Another insight from this conversation: first, background – my perception is that those who embrace the moon landing conspiracy see the event basically in terms of the good publicity such an event generates, which consequently begs the question of why other nations don’t reach for the same publicity. Sandy hasn’t advanced that particular argument, though it wouldn’t be inconsistent with the arguments he has put forth.
Surely when Kennedy announces in 1961 that we will reach the moon by decade’s end, he as a politician is partially motivated by the personal benefit of such theater. Had he lived, I’m sure Kennedy would have pushed hard for the moon landing to be moved forward a year, for roughly the same reason that Obama went to Copenhagen the first time in 2009…what a way to finish a brilliant 8-year presidency…
The 60s are an interesting decade, technology-wise. When that decade began, there were no more than a handful of mainframes in a few government locations. When it ended, many institutions of decent size had some sort of server technology. When the decade began, those few computer systems couldn’t talk to one another, and when it ended, ARPANET was packet switching, the precursor to the internet.
A very impressive decade of technological advances. On the geopolitical front, when the decade began, the Soviets had just gotten the bomb and the Red Menace was huge, losing the Cold War seemed a real possibility. Though pthread may disagree, according to my Russian History prof (full disclosure: just a class! Not a major!), by 1970 the Cold War was pretty much over, as the technological gap between the US/West and Soviet Union was simply too great to be overcome. The Soviets still had the command economy and guns and tanks to win lots of battles, but the war was basically lost.
To what should we credit the amazing technological advances of the 1960s? Many reasons, and others are smarter on this than I, but if this were like the Family Feud, and the top 5 answers were on the board, one must surely be the Apollo Program. In addition to the bread and circuses for retiring Presidents, countries seek the moon in order to kick start technological development (and leave their frenemies in the dust).
(Its true that a two-bit dictator like Kim Jong-Il may wish to go to the moon to flex his machismo for the world, but that goal can be achieved much more cheaply by firing a primitive nuke into the South China Sea.)
Thus the insight: if you listen to futurists talk about who is going to dominate the 21st century, China is the prime candidate, with the rest of the BRIC countries in second place. China gets first dibs because its economy is the most developed of the four.
However, three of those four countries have their eye on the moon. The prediction here is: whichever one is serious, and lands a human on the moon in a high-tech, ultramodern fashion, will reap the salutary technological side benefits such that that country rules the century. Just a bit of investment advice for a Wednesday morning…
On the geopolitical front, when the decade began, the Soviets had just gotten the bomb and the Red Menace was huge, losing the Cold War seemed a real possibility. Though pthread may disagree, according to my Russian History prof (full disclosure: just a class! Not a major!), by 1970 the Cold War was pretty much over, as the technological gap between the US/West and Soviet Union was simply too great to be overcome. The Soviets still had the command economy and guns and tanks to win lots of battles, but the war was basically lost.
I think one could probably make an effective argument for that position, although I think a stronger argument could be made for the late 70s. I also think that, as far as things that we did go (because in reality most of the reason for the collapse was internal rot, not anything we did) Afghanistan probably played a larger role. And Carter started us down that path, not Reagan.
David K,
First of all your Pyramid comparison to the moon landing hoax is totally ludicrous since you can buy a plane ticket to prove the pyramids are there, or were built or whatever it is that you’re comparing. The Luxor in Vegas is an improvement on that ancient design a 1000 times more modern and advanced, in terms of efficiency and practicality, which defeats your premise that nobody else built a pyramid since those of ancient history.
A more appropriate comparison would be to say that landing on the moon in the 60s would be like Christopher Columbo “discovering” America or Magellan discovering the Phillipines and then nobody in the civilized world really giving a damn about it. What happened after these pioneers landed on previously undiscovered new worlds way back when? Did everyone just sit on their asses and say well that was cool, there’s just a bunch of goof balls in loin clothes over there, so why bother? It would be the same thing today with space exploration. Landing on the moon 4 times and saying, “we’ve seen it forget about it” is completely ludicrous. The fact that NASA still sends landers to the moon and bombs the moon to observe whethere there is water there all the way in 2009 shows that there is still much to explore and investigate.
Jazz, I have thought about the APOLLO 13 film and the events they are based on, and previously considered those exact points. An interesting thing I saw in an interview with the director, Ron Howard, about the movie was that they had nothing to work off of, because there is no existing video or audio of the crisis to work from. It was all erased. To me that’s pretty interesting, and that interview was done before it came out that NASA doesn’t have any existing video from the Apollo 11 mission either.
P-Thread, I acknowledged that the US passed Russia when the US became the first to send men to orbit the moon. No person has EVER orbited the moon, other than Americans. That’s the ONLY time the US passed Russia in space exploration at that time in history. As I previously stated Russia put the first satellite in space, first man in space, first woman in space, first space station, first dog in space, etc. So, even if the US put the first man in orbit of the moon, how far ahead of Russia is could that possibly be? A couple years? It’s been 40 years, and Russia still hasn’t done it. There’s a reason they, and every other country, cannot put a man near the moon.
With regards to how expensive it is to go to the moon, the United States did it in 1969 for 335 million, which would be 1.75 billion in todays dollars. There’s a lot of Americans with enough money to go to the moon with that type of overhaed, forget about China and Russia who are set to go there no sooner than 2020 (two thousand twenty). So please stop with the “it’s so expensive” nonsense, it wasn’t. We spent that much money fighting the Iraq war THIS WEEK.
Sandy: How much harder could it be? It appears you didn’t read the link I provided, or you’d be able to answer that question yourself. But hey, wouldn’t want you to, you know, have any friggin’ idea what actually happened or anything.
What an interesting thread. Few more comments:
1) Cost. Sandy argues that in today’s dollars, a moon mission would cost something like $2 B, which is a pittance to Richard Branson. That seems about right…if the mission is using 1969’s technology. Could Richard Branson even find the infrastructure to support 1969-era technology to take a shot at the moon? Get some guy in Houston to fire up an old Intel 8088 and give it a go?
Obviously, any individual or country, even an undeveloped Third World country, wouldn’t take a shot at the moon without 2009 technology. That would be maybe 100 times more costly than the 1969 effort, or, say, $200 B, or about 1/10th of the cost of Iraq, which (at least) in the eyes of the folks who get their civics lessons from Glenn Beck’s chalkboard, is a fight for the future of freedom in the USA. No one has 1/10th as grandiose notions about landing a man on the moon.
2) Space, the final frontier. Its interesting that Sandy repeatedly pushes the notion that manned moon missions are so obviously valuable that its incomprehensible that no one picked up the ball after the seven Apollo missions. In your most recent post you compared the Apollo program to the discovery of the New World, which prompted a thought.
Like many of you, I used to think it somewhat bizarre that Ponce de Leon really thought there was a fountain of youth in Florida, a place so magical as to be worthy of emptying the exchequer in pursuit. In de Leon’s defense, when you visit Florida, it does seem fountain-of-youth-ish, without knowing better, you might think the place had some magical properties.
By contrast, the moon seems like…a big rock. Yes, it synthesizes water in somewhat unusual ways, but then hydrogen and oxygen have an affinity for each other, as humans have known on plain old earth for centuries. We’ve been sending unmanned missions to the moon for nearly 50 years, is there a Fountain of Youth there that demands another human visit? I never thought so, but after Sandy’s post 33, I’m starting to have my doubts.
3) Those missing tapes. The smokingest smoking gun for the conspirators, and no doubt it looks bad. Does the disappearance of those tapes mean the thing was staged? Well, the invaluable Wikipedia reminded me of something that I had forgotten, which bears on this question: Apollo 13 wasn’t the last mission in the program….there were four more.
Given the choice between: a) the tapes were erased to maintain the myth that the moon landing was real, or b) the tapes were erased because there was either 1) some malfeasance in Apollo 13 or 2) the things that went wrong in Apollo 13 were much more dangerous than anyone realized, and with 4 more missions in the can, NASA wanted to cover that fact up, explanation b) is surely the better one.
Remember before Richard Feynman started sniffing around the space shuttle program, the official word from NASA was that the space shuttle was “safer than passenger air travel”, and then Feynman came along and said that defects in the O-rings made the risk of tragedy something like 1 in 35? The Wikipedia page does a pretty good job describing the risks, the cover-up, and how NASA made it seem like the O-ring system was safe…when they knew it wasn’t.
With Apollo 14-17 still to come, isn’t the erasing of the tapes far more likely explained as NASA – who would return to this well with Challenger – covering up the underreported dangers of the Apollo program? That is a much much better, Nixonian and Watergate-esque, explanation for the missing tapes than the wilder belief that the whole thing never actually happened.
Finally, Sandy, a thought as a fellow-traveller in the belief that not everything is as it seems: in order for a conspiracy to occur, the most important condition it has to meet is to be containable.
As an example, this critical criteria is what makes the proposed Trig birther conspiracy so elegant. While the Trig switcheroo “may” have worked in a small town that the Palin family dominated, it wasn’t obvious that it would work, especially given the many complexities of, and potential outsiders involved in, a Down Syndrome birth, so the conspiracy – if true – explains Palin’s silence until after the fact much better than the official story does.
However, the 6 fmoon landings fail the containability test about as miserably as any commonly-held conspiracy. When NASA trotted out the moon rover on its last three “faked” moon landings, do you think there was some possibility that a hostile Brit at the Limey Intergalactic Observatory or a hostile Frenchman at the Fromage Planetarium or a hostile German at the Krauthammer Institute for the Study of Space would want to know the coordinates so they could see for themselves? How was the silence of such folks bought?
Or even back to Apollo 13: when that disaster was hurtling back to earth, didn’t every amateur in his backyard point his telescope at the sky to watch the dangerous return of that vessel? How did NASA buy all of their silence all these years?
IOW, while there is no doubt that things are often not what they seem, in order for conspiracy to work, you have to believe that the secret can be kept. There aren’t many proposed secrets that would be more impossible to keep than the six successful, and one failed, missions in the Apollo program.
I think that’s a good point Jazz, and one I often try to point out to be people. Wide-ranging conspiracies just don’t exist. My their nature they fall apart when casting too wide a net.
1) I don’t think making up numbers is helpful to your argument. The cost of technology goes down, not up. The cost of going to the moon would be much less today, rather than more, and saying it would cost 200 billion is completely out of touch with reality. For instance a laptop cost 4500 bucks in 1994. Staples has a laptop for $199 today.
2) How can you argue against the fact that there is interest in “returning” to the moon? Why would Russia and China both be trying to get to the moon for the last 20 years and plan manned moon missions, but they won’t be able to get there any sooner than 2020?!?
3) So what the tapes don’t exist. The moon landing was only the most important accomplishment of the 20th century. I can see where they taped over ALL 200+ tapes of the mission.
Regarding your point towards isolation being key to conspiracies, the CIA is a massive group of people, who are sworn to secrecy, up to a point that not even their own family members know they work for the CIA. What goes on at Area 51 in Nevada? There’s a lot of people that work there and have done work there, nobody’s talking are they? How many people have spilled the beans about that place? No one, so it’s not really THAT difficult to keep secrets when there’s a place people are so curious about, but nobody that’s ever been inside that base has ever talked about what goes on in there.
P-thread, I read your link, Russian space programs were pretty much abandoned after the US moon landing, and then completely defunct around 1975. Also the article says that Russians were never anywhere near being able to get a man near the moon. Which is my point. How can a program that is ahead of the United States in every space advancement get passed so seemingly easily?
If there wasn’t such a strong motive for the US to fake the moon landing, it might be harder to argue this point, but NASA was on it’s way to being defunded and ultimately becoming defunct because it not only failed repeatedly in launches and every damn monkey they sent to space died during or shortly after the flight that it was clear they weren’t getting it done. Scientists openly stated that we wouldn’t get to the moon in our lifetimes (in the 60s). NASA started faking this stuff to continue getting funded. Another motive is that Kennedy guaranteed we’d land on the moon before the end of the 60s, we’re stuck in a crap war in Vietnam, nationalism is at an all time low. This was the galvanizing moment that re-instilled nationilstic pride in the country. Our slain hero, JFK, realized the promise he had made, America beat the Rooskies to the moon. USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!!
I couldn’t have scripted it better myself.
Grouping points 1+2: I think you misunderstand what drives up the cost of Moon Mission 2009 vs. Moon Mission 1969. While its true, for example, that the cost per megabyte of storage space has declined from around $200 in 1980 to much less than a penny today, such price reductions would only matter if a 2009 mission were heading to the moon with 1969 technology.
And that is transparently not the case. So while the market value of the 1981 Apple, with its 5 Meg hard drive, would be less than a penny if mass-produced today, computers people buy in 2009 are many many thousand times more expensive than a penny because they are many many thousand times more sophisticated. The same would necessarily hold for a future moon mission, which will inevitably lead to the bill being vastly more expensive, even in real dollars.
Even if you could somehow get to the moon for $2 B (highly highly doubtful), why would Russia or China or anyone else go…today? Joking aside, I’m pretty sure there is no fountain of youth there. Why on earth…or the moon…would you expect such countries to incur such costs just to land a human on a barren rock that the US achieved several decades ago? Clearly, when Russia and China indicate an interest in the moon, they intend to do something much more meaningful and groundbreaking than “just” land a man there, which the US did in 1969, and thus the Chinese or Russian effort would be even more costly. Probably Russia or China wants to not only land a human on the moon, but also have him spend several days there, maybe stop for a burger and beer in the Hooters on the moon, where the chicks are still voluptuous but there isn’t much atmosphere.
Finally, to the conspiracy – you are right that the net of a conspiracy can sometimes be wide, and the CIA example is a good one. I’m sure the CIA has engaged in dubious behavior that is unknown to the masses, behaviors of which many CIA staffers are aware. For example, you mentioned the suspicious acts at Area 51; if I had to guess I’d say the “aliens” that were famously, grainly autopsied on Fox (narrated by Riker), were probably humans, perhaps even US military guinea pigs, who were exposed to a nuclear blast to determine whether a pilot could carry out his mission after such exposure. If so, there might be quite a few people who knew about it, and so the net would be relatively wider than any proposed Trig switcheroo conspiracy, for example.
But you are overlooking an absolutely essential difference between Area 51/the CIA and the moon landing – the net of a conspiracy can be cast wider when all participants have skin in the game. Everyone in the CIA/Area 51 has their careers – and possibly, their status as free citizens – tied to the keeping of the secret. When that condition holds, you can certainly sustain a somewhat wider conspiracy.
But the “skin in the game” condition clearly fails in regard to the Apollo program. What did the French astronomer have to gain by saying “I aimed my super-duper telescope at the spot where the moon rover is supposed to be, and there is nothing?” Surely he, or the British guy, or the German guy, would be motivated to tell the truth if the thing were a fraud, which is a vastly different case from the CIA/Area 51 example. Similarly, all the amateur astronomers training their backyard telescopes on the returning Apollo capsules, what did they have to gain by hiding the fact that there was nothing out there? Did any of them have skin in the game?
Finally, there are even some cases where suspicious events are not followed up by the masses – but simply because not enough people care (which frankly described the Trig birth story, and will do so more and more as time passes). However, even that couldn’t possibly describe the motivated German astronomer saying “Ach! Where is that rover!”
It just couldn’t possibly happen that way.
No, if you read the link you’d recognize the decline of the Russian space program.