Two videos from Luna Cognita

James Concannon writes...

        Two videos by "Luna Cognita" have re-surfaced in the blogosphere recently. Both make accusations of NASA-Apollo cover-ups, both are quite well put together, and both are utterly wrong.

        Luna Cognita might be José Escamilla, or maybe John Lear, or someone funded by one of those specimens. His (or her?) production values are way above standard Youtube quality. The editing and scripting are quite close to broadcast quality. Here's the video index.

Stand-up
        The first one to be given new exposure was "APOLLO 12's COVERT EVA - Proof of NASA's Off-The-Record Lunar Surface Operations," dating from October 2011 and over an hour long. The allegation is that the Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean conducted a clandestine Stand-up EVA shortly after landing. The notoriously error-prone Mike Bara drew attention to this in a recent blog post, remarking "Yes, they did. But not for the reasons the narrator believes... The truth is, they were looking for something." In a tweet the same day, he added "And I will show you what they were looking for soon." So far, he hasn't delivered.

        A Stand-up EVA (SEVA) involves depressurizing the Lunar Module, suiting up, and opening the docking tunnel hatch over the astronauts' heads. By standing on the ascent engine cover, one astronaut can then get an unobstructed 360° view of the surroundings. Only one SEVA was ever actually performed -- that was by Apollo 15 astronauts Dave Scott and Jim Irwin. Here's the transcript of that event. Note that the whole process takes from MET 106:41:20 to 107:16:23 -- some 35 minutes.

        There was no SEVA in the Apollo 12 flight plan or in any of the mission transcripts. Luna Cognita anchors his hour-long accusation of an Apollo 12 coverup on a document dated September 2006: The Apollo Experience: Lessons Learned for Constellation Lunar Dust Management by Sandra A. Wagner. And indeed, on page 1 we find this paragraph:

"The blowing dust caused by the Apollo 12 LM landing appears to have been worse than that of Apollo 11. In fact, a standup extravehicular activity (EVA) was performed by the crew to assess the site prior to performing lunar surface EVAs because blowing dust completely obscured the view during landing."

        Seems straightforward. However, Robert Pearlman, editor of collectSpace, contacted Sandra Wagner about this and she confessed that it was an error. She simply wrote 12 when she meant 15. Scroll down to Pearlman's 3-19-2014 post in this forum.

        Wagner's assumed reason for the Apollo 15 SEVA is at odds, by the way, with Dave Scott's own comments (following MET 106:50:01 in the transcript) and the fact that the SEVA was in the flight plan well before any dust problems occurred or were even contemplated. But that's a side issue. To me, the bottom line is that there is not sufficient "missing time" in the 12 transcript to allow for a clandestine SEVA. The radio silence from MET 04:15:09:31 to 04:15:18:34 just doesn't cut it.

        Luna Cognita claims that the SEVA happened a bit later, from MET 04:15:39:57 to 04:15:58:43 -- a stretch of 18:46. But this is still not enough time, and in fact the astronauts spent that time re-programming the computer, correcting an error they had made when tracking the star Pollux.^{note 1}

        Here's Mission Control (from the Tech Air-Ground transcript) giving them clearance for the re-program at the exact time at which Luna Cognita claims the SEVA began:

        Perhaps Mike Bara will astonish us all with a complete explanation in a few days. But given Bara's past performances, we're likely to get either nothing at all or ignorant bullshit.

Music behind the Moon
        The second Luna Cognita vid was The stunning Apollo 10 coverup - The Music Behind The Moon. This is mercifully less than nine minutes, and originally posted May 2008. It was recently promoted by the error-prone psychologist Robert Morningstar on 29th October, on Fussbook.

        It beats me how this "Luna Cognita" fellow (or female?) can claim that an event was covered up while simultaneously showing us the transcript of it, freely available to anyone with a computer and net access. But there you are -- conspiracy theorists have their own logic.

        Apollo 10 was the "dress rehearsal" for the Moon landing. Astronauts Stafford, Cernan and Young went into low lunar orbit, separated the LM from the CSM, and flew it to within 8.4 nautical miles of the surface before backing off and redocking. While behind the Moon, out of contact with Houston, all three astronauts made several remarks about "weird music" audible on the VHF radio channel. The source of these sounds was almost certainly artifacts of VHF ranging at a time when there was no line-of-sight between the two spacecraft.

04 06 13 02 LMP That music even sounds outer-spaeey, doesn't it? You hear that? That whistling sound?
04 06 13 06 CDR Yes.
04 06 13 07 LMP Who0ooooo. Say your - -
04 06 13 12 CMP Did you hear that whistling sound, too?
04 06 13 14 LMP Yes. Sounds like - you know, outer-space-type music.

04 06 17 58 LMP Boy, that sure is weird music.
04 06 18 01 CMP We're going to have to find out about that. Nobody will believe us.
04 06 18 07 LMP Yes. It's a whistling, you know, like an outerspace-type thing.
04 06 18 10 CMP Yes .... VHF-A ...

        At AOS (Acquisition of Signal), when the LM was once more contactable from Earth, this dialog took place.

        Luna Cognita makes the following allegations: 1) Some incriminating material was edited out just before the PAO said "That was John Young", and 2) What Young actually said was "Boy, you wouldn't believe this, Frank" (meaning Frank Borman.)

        Well, the idea that some substantial dialog was edited out is laughable. The audio was released in real time to accredited news media. There was even a feed to guest rooms at the Nassau Bay Hotel, the favorite haunt of NASA junkies (and groupies). As for the remark being addressed to Frank Borman, the problem with that is that Borman was not even in Houston at the time. He was in Prague, accepting a gold medal from the Czech Academy of Sciences. If you don't believe me, read the mission transcript, page 671 (by pdf count), 118:58 GET.

        This blog has commented before about Mr. Morningstar's inaccuracy in respect of the DSE and DSEA^{note 2} tapes. He should find himself some sources that are more credible than Luna Cognita.

==========================
[1] Verb 32 initiates the Coelliptic Sequence, meaning the calculation needed to perform the circularization burn, nominally one hour after LOI. Very fortunately for Apollo 12, VERB 32 did not start the burn itself -- that required a separate VERB 41.

[2] DSE, Data Storage Equipment, was installed in the Command Module. It stored  voice and data during the times that the CM was out of contact behind the Moon. DSEA, Data Storage Equipment Assembly, was likewise installed in the Lunar Module. The purpose of both systems was to provide information in the event that some serious anomaly occurred behind the Moon and the astronauts were never heard from again. Morningstar has stated on several occasions that the astronauts were not aware of this -- an allegation that is easily refuted.

Robert Morningstar misinforms the public again

        Robert Morningstar, the "civilian intelligence analyst" who doesn't spend enough time analyzing his own intelligence, popped up on internet woo-woo radio again last night, this time on Darkness Radio.

        His main motive was to promote his upcoming Secret Space Program conference, but in fact it was the usual performance, even including his ridiculous fantasy that Apollo astronauts weren't aware that the DSE (in the Command Module) and DSEA (in the Lunar Module) were recording their conversation when out of touch with Houston on the far side of the Moon.^{note 1}

        Unchallenged by Darkness's host, he went through a buffet of the usual lunar anomalies. My face hit the desk when he stated that "NASA doesn't show" images of Ukert crater (at 7.8°N, 1.4°E) because there's a symbol in it "like the eye on the pyramid". My question to Morningstar is this: "WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK THIS IS, INTELLIGENCE ANALYST GENIUS?"

photo credit: NASA/LRO image library

        Here's a permalink so any readers can zoom around and NOT see an eye on a pyramid.

        Ukert has been photographed by NASA many times. Here's a partial list.

Lunar Orbiter frame LO-IV-102H (the white dots are photo processing errors)
Apollo 10 frame AS10-32-4822
Grail image #MK12_03

Old, old, old stories
        Morningstar claims to have a "photographer's eye." Why, then, does he say that the lack of stars in the sky of Apollo photography is a mystery, no doubt done to deliberately obscure UFOs. The answer is so simple I can't even bear to write it.

        Again unchallenged by Darkness, he told us about the "mysterious object" that followed Apollo 11 during the first two days after trans-lunar injection. Everyone in the world except AM* knows that it was one of the four panels of the LM adapter shroud, discarded after LM extraction.

Truly this man is a danger to the truth.


===============
1] Once again, here's the CM instrument panel with the DSE switches clearly labeled TAPE RECORDER in the bottom row of Panel C. Here's the LM instrument panel with RECORDER ON/OFF equally clearly labeled on Panel 12. DSE stands for Data Storage Equipment.

Here's page 3-83 of the Apollo 11 Flight Plan. It captures the moment when Armstrong and Aldrin are preparing  to leave Tranquility Base. GET 116:00-116:36.

A task for Mission Control is 'DUMP DSE'. This is in the Flight Plan. And Morningstar claims the astronauts weren't aware of it?????

Robert Morningstar has his little joke

        Robert Morningstar, the "civilian intelligence analyst," is one of the darlings of internet woo-woo radio. Why? It's simple -- like Hoagland, Bara, Icke, Hancock, Morton etc., you push his button and away he goes. The interviewer doesn't have to think much or even bother to read the trash these clowns write.

        In a recent outing on OffPlanet radio, hosted by Randy Maugans and Chris Holly, Morningstar was off and running with a strange mixture of humor and error. He surely must have been having a little joke when he told us, very early on, that there was more than one space station in orbit. The other one, he explained, belongs to THE SEEKRIT SPACE PROGRAM^{note 1}. It's HUGE, he said, and his mate in Hoboken got a great photo of it just the other day. Why haven't the tens of thousands of other amateur astronomers ever seen this? THAT'S THE JOKE, duhhhhh. He suggested it was actually Black Knight, the well-known hoax story that's been around since 1899.

        There were more jokes to come. The US Army moonbase. The story, attributed to Clark McClelland, about a Nordic alien conferring with astronauts in the Shuttle cargo bay, while a massive Black Triangle mothership hovers in the background. Very funny, Robert. I'm sure NASA would have been thoroughly amused as a massive hazard approached the Shuttle dangerously close. Oh yeah.

Planetary astronomy revised
        Then came the errors. This blog has already reported Morningstar's track record of error in respect of the crashed spaceship on the Moon, the dire prediction of city-destroying earthquakes, and the "hangers" [sic] in some Apollo 17 mapping camera frames. Now this genius of our age gave us the pseudo-fact that Jupiter and Saturn used to be stars, but then lost their fusion reactions and devolved into gas giants. He talked himself into that one because he was developing the theory that the Gray aliens came from Titan, so he needed to warm Titan up a bit. Just to get life started, don'cha know. He says the US Gubbmint has an alliance with the Nordics against the Grays. He wrapped that in with Felisa Wolfe-Simon's arsenic-tolerant extremophile bacteria GFAJ-1 -- managing to misunderstand Wolfe-Simon's research very thoroughly^{note 2}. Oh, maybe this was more joking, come to think of it.

        Then we were off to Mars, with a bullshit notion that the Tharsis Montes are an exact representation of the layout of the pyramids of Giza (they are not), and the pseudo-fact that the very word Cairo means Mars (it does not, it means The Conqueror. A word for Egypt is Mas'r, which has nothing to do with the Red Planet).

        OffPlanet radio's promo described Morningstar as...

"A man you can truly learn from. Men like Morningstar are the men who will reignite our brains in to [sic] finding answers by way of knowledge and great thinking."

        I can only assume that was their little joke. And oh, by the way, this hour of fun-and-games was only Part 1. There's another whole hour to come, but I'm not sure I can stand to listen.

Update:
        In e-mail, Chris Holly questions my credentials and expresses flagrant disgust:

"I ... want nothing to do with whoever this expat jerk is and do find him a hate filled arrogant fool who really thinks he knows what he is talking about but is very mis informed.  Expat needs a name and a punch in his nasty mouth   .  I doubt he has any personal experience at all in any of these subjects much less information that is not soaked in mean spirited rejection of things he knows nothing about due to the fact those things may frighten him poop less."

        I reiterate what I have written previously: I'm an acknowledged expert in the history of Apollo and Shuttle, plus to a lesser extent NASA's Mars and Lunar orbiters. I have met and interviewed key figures in the space programs of the USA and Russia. Contemplating the errors of amateur observers like Robert AM* does not frighten me in the slightest.

        Holly also implies that "Bigelows space station" is the space station AM* was referring to. If so, that is manifestly absurd. How can a Bigelow-designed orbiter belong to the SECRET space program???? Genesis II is not a space station, it's an experimental habitat. It is not, and never could have been, peopled. In addition, AM* specifically referred to something very large, and Bigelow is not Big. Genesis II's pressurized volume is 11.5 m³ (cf. 837 m³ for the ISS). Nice try, Chris Holly. Your pal is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Update 2:
        In a further brief e-mail, I asked Chris Holly how such a small orbiter, with no facilities for human crew, could be classified as a space station. I got this answer:

"Look Expat , go get a life and do not annoy me with your hate and denail of things you can not deal with. How about this , man to woman, get lost I think your a jerk and a loser who I want no part of and do not care about at all what you think, do , go  none of it. I am busy and have no time for you, dime a dozen downers... lets just call you not in my life so  end it now and leave me alone please, I  have a big life with lots going on and really think you should think what you want, and I will do things my way.  Your a NASA bleiver which is hilarious , I bet you love your government and think our fighting men are fools, go away please."

I presume that could all be summed up as "Gee...I don't know."

Update 3:
        Well, I did in fact listen to the second AM* interview, which went way over an hour. As it turned out, there wasn't much of my type of material in it -- other than a reiteration of the obviously false claim that the voice recording equipment in the Apollo Command Module was installed without the astronauts' knowledge. For it to do its job effectively--reporting some terrible accident behind the Moon--they had to know it was there. ^{note 3}

        Almost all of the interview was mythology, UFOs, abductions -- not my area of expertise at all. What stuck in my mind was that AM* claims personal experience of alien encounters. He related how he successfully thwarted an attack by an alien monster reaching a "three-fingered claw" towards him in a bid to steal his soul.

I believe Robert AM* practices psychiatry.
 

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1] He was promoting the Secret Space Program conference, coming to an astonished San Mateo Event Center this summer.
2] He added that Felisa Wolfe-Simon is an example of someone who got slapped down by the "establishment" for daring to suggest there was evidence for extraterrestrial life. The facts are that "Iron Lisa" never said any such thing, and she was slapped down because her research was faulty.
3] Here's the CM instrument panel. If, as AM* claims,  the astronauts didn't know about the voice recorder, they sure must have wondered WTF that switch labeled TAPE RECORDER was down in the bottom row of Panel C.