Ken Johnston, Thornton Page and Tsiolkovsky

        Ken^{note 1} was on "Coast" last night, plugging his application to be one of the first crew members on the "slow suicide" mission to Mars in 2022. Since he'll be 80 by then I don't reckon his chances much, but I wish him well. He lobbed a verbal grenade in James Oberg's direction -- once he remembered Oberg's name, which took several seconds. It seems to be Down With Oberg week, what with that and snarking on this blog from Misti/Jaq. I doubt if JimO cares, but he's well able to riposte without any help from me.

        Ken trotted out his standard story about how he was once showing Apollo14 lunar backside pass film to Thornton Page and other miscellaneous scientists — some "meaningful looks" were exchanged, and they remarked on what looked like a manned base in Tsiolkovsky, complete with a flashing light. Which was later "covered up". Oh yeah. Just like those "glass skyscrapers" which were really crap on Hoagland's scanner.

        Here's the followup question a well-briefed host would have asked: "Very interesting, Ken. Now, the resolution of those Apollo images would have been -- what? 200m per pixel? Since that time Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has covered the entire Moon at 77m and most of it at 0.8m resolution, 200x better than what you saw that night. Have you checked the LRO image library to see if there's a manned base?" Do I need add that that's NOT what George Noory asked? I thought not.

Here's the link.


        By the way, at the time of Apollo 14 Tsiolkovsky was under serious consideration as a future landing site, despite being out of contact with Planet Earth (the plan was to do comms via a lunar satellite). So there would have been nothing unusual about Page et al. showing special interest.

        As for the "flashing light"... is he sure Page didn't have a laser pointer?

Update 1: I'm wrong
        The resolution of those images was most likely much better than 200m. See comment #7. It does remain true that the LRO images are the best, and certainly the most accessible.

        Also, if the frames were from the Topographic Camera, they would not have been in the form of a movie. So it's a mystery how a flashing light could have been seen. I sure wish Ken would respond to my e-mails.

Update 2: James Oberg sets the record straight
Partial transcript from last night:

24:15 GN: You’re a whistle-blower, aren’t you?

KJ: Well (laugh), you know, that’s funny. I don’t usually go on and look up myself, [but] a person said, you need to check this out, and I went and did google on a name, and up pops, um, (laugh) my old nemesis (laugh..draws breath) help me out here, will you? What’s his name? Um ..

GN: Give me a hint.

KJ: James Oberg

GN: OK. All right.

KJ: He always pops up again and starts chipping away at my credentials and my background, and things like that. You know, he never was … He and I used to sit in the same room talking stories about his Master’s thesis which was “Mass Media Indoctrination” having to do with space, and all. For some reason he’s the hatchet man, he’s trying his best to do a number on me, I just sorta blow it off and don’t pay any attention to it, 'cause the people themselves can filter through and find out what the truth is. 

JimO: Needless to say, there is NO 'Master's thesis in mass media indoctrination' I ever wrote, nor ever talked to anyone about. My MS degrees are in "Computational Methods in Astrodynamics for Space mission Planning" [applied mathematics], and "New Developments in Compiler Theory"  [computer sciences]

        The deets of the dispute over Johnston's credentials are still here, on the Unexplained Mysteries forum.

 ====================

[1] For newbies, this is who Ken Johnston is.

Mike Bara's "new scientific truths"

Today Mike Bara officially endorsed this statement:

"A new scientific truth does not win by convincing the skeptics and making them see the light, but rather because the skeptics eventually die."

A memorandum of Mike's candidates for new scientific truths...

1. Additional centrifugal  force due to Earth's faster rotation would "flatten us all like pancakes" (The Choice, p. 32.)

2. If the orbit of Mars was perfectly circular, Mars and Earth would remain at the same distance from each other for ever. (Explaining his error on p.34.)

3.   Newton's laws of motion only work if the object being measured doesn't rotate (The Choice, p. 60)

4. An annular eclipse happens when the Moon is unusually close to Earth (The Choice, p. 214.)

5. Nobody really knows much about the Moon (AAotM, p. 5.)

6. Lunar construction glass would be twice as strong as steel (AAotM, p. 51-2.)

7. The lunar craters Asada and Proclus A are in fact satellite dishes (AAotM, p. 108.)

8. Clouds look white in images of Earth in space because light comes off them faster. Oceans look dark because the light has to travel all the way to the ocean bed and back (AAotM, p. 125.)

9. There's a one mile square ziggurat at 174.31°E, 8.95°S on the Moon (AAotM, ch. 9.)

10. Oh, and there's also a gun emplacement, a beach house, a crane and a spaceship (ibid.)

I'd say the entire population of the planet would die before any of those became truthy.

An engineer accuses Hoagland & Bara

        Derek Eunson Ph.D., who comments here as binaryspellbook, believes in calling a spade a spade. Better still, a fucking spade, if the adjective seems appropriate. Derek totally shares my contempt for Hoagland's faulty mathematics and Bara's "insult as a substitute for rebuttal," and he laid into those two fawlty boys by e-mail this week. Nothing back from Bara or his sweetly passive manager, but a little fantasy back from Hoagland. Since both of them are keen to see this material disseminated as widely as possible, it's my pleasure to republish here, unedited except for one teensy copy-edit.

==========^^^===========

Subj: Lunar anomalies, lies, and disgraceful mendacity.
To: RCH, Mike Bara
Cc: Henrik Palmgren, Richard Dolan, Mike Bara Mgmt
From: derek james eunson 8/21/13

Dear Richard and Mike,

This is an open letter which will be plastered all over every piece of social media myself my colleagues, and our children can find. Isn't it truly amazing how many people you can reach on social media when you get teenagers and young adults involved. Don't you find it astonishing how our children have taken to such things.

Now on to the truth. I realize that this is something that both of you are unfamiliar with. Nevertheless, shall we press on regardless.

To document the bare faced lies you two bandits have been perpetrating over the years would require a ridiculous amount of time. However, since I actually have a real job as a real engineer I will have to cherry pick. And oh my, how big the cherry tree is.

Hoagland's preposterous lies about Von Braun and Explorer1 have been exposed because he couldn't even fill in the numbers and crank the handle on one of the most well known (and simple) rocket equations. I refer of course to the equation derived by K.Tsiolkovsky. Yet this utter garbage is still on his utterly shambolic 1990's style webpage after all these years. Even after multiple instances of Hoagland's atrocious mathematical skills being pointed out. The man has no shame. You couldn't even paint a red nose on this clown. His hubris knows no bounds.

The torsion waves Hoagland pretends to measure with a 40 year old wristwatch and a laptop computer don't exist. Even if they did exist Hoagland has done nothing to prove it. In fact his method is so far short of the scientific method that it is simply laughable. No baselines, no controls, no calibration and no fucking data. Hoagland even refuses to share his data with what he calls "complete strangers." This is what we real engineers and scientists do all the time you dimwit. It is called peer review.

Hoagland told us that comet Elenin was a spacecraft with a hyperdimensional shield generator on board. He attempted to prove this by faking yet another image. First by legitimately stacking frames and then using photoshop to manipulate the final image. True to form Hoagland refuses to tell anyone what frames and in what order he used them.

 He also told us that Elenin had a message for humanity sent from 13,000 years ago by our highly advanced ancestors the Shem Su Hor (the followers of Horus) who apparently had something important to tell us. I must have missed it. Although Hoagland tried to tell the world that the Arab spring was due to Elenin's influence.Yes he really did say all that stuff, and he calls himself a scientist. Stop laughing, he really did say that.

 Comet Elenin disintegrated, everyone with an interest in comets saw it. Hoagland lied about this too, and tried to show an earlier picture as "proof" that Elenin was still intact. He milked that one big time, before being caught rotten on Facebook by many critics. He was caught so rotten that he had to abandon his facebook account (although it still exists he hasn't posted there in well over a year) as he was being made a laughing stock. Not that he already wasn't.

The whole disgrace is catalogued in a wiki page dedicated to Hoagland's spunk-trumpetry.

Hoagland insists that the wiki page is invalid because NASA edits it and are out to get him. Yes he really did say that too. Fucking clownhat.

Mikey boy Bara is simply a thoroughly disagreeable little man. He has no flair for mathematics, lies uncontrollably, and likes to refer to his critics as homosexuals or douchebags. Unless you are female in which case he will ask you not to reproduce because you are too ugly.
I will simply refer you to this rational-wiki page dedicated to the one and only Mike 'Homophobe' Bara.

DJE

 ==========^^^===========

From: RCH
Date: Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 10:49 PM
Subject: Re: Lunar anomalies, lies, and disgraceful mendacity.
To: ....


Derek,

Now, now ... temper ... temper ....             :)

And please ... DO post this as far and wide as possible -- gratuitous obscenities included (of course)!

It will ONLY drive more folks to read what you (literally) are "raving about" ... and, to find out what we ACTUALLY have said (and written) ....

And, thanks to YOU, to finally "open their eyes."


 RCH

==========^^^===========

Subj: Lunar anomalies, lies, and disgraceful mendacity.
To: RCH, Mike Bara
Cc: Henrik Palmgren, Richard Dolan, Mike Bara Mgmt
From: derek james eunson
Date: Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 11:46 PM 

Hi Richard 

Obscenities are a favourite of your former co-author. I have the screenshots to prove it. Mikey boy likes to call female critics "cunts."

Both you and I know this is unacceptable as a man. We may have our differences Richard, but you will agree that speaking to a lassie in such terms is not the actions of a man. Bara would do well to stick with the rudimentary grunts and gestures he was obviously taught as a fledgling.

Moving on. Please respond to specifics. For example Von Braun's secret. You can't, can you. Because you have been proved wrong. Big time. 

Yes the teenagers have been unleashed. Bad for you mate,  good for the sheeple rednecks you plan to fleece.

Please delete the thoroughly discredited Von Braun's secret. It makes a respected scientist like yourself look like a tit.

Oh and can you please state what units torsion waves are measured in. And hows about some data for we real engineers to discredit. 

You know, baselines and stuff like that. Bring it on man, you v me on C2C. You can make it happen. But Noory must not be allowed to moderate since he is under your spell, and therefore biased as well as a dunce.

Kindest Regards
DJE.

==========^^^===========

Editorial comment:
        I can't imagine what Hoagland means by "what we ACTUALLY have said (and written)". Does he think there's SOME OTHER VERSION of Von Braun's Secret that does not contain unpardonable errors? Does he think all his writings about the Inaccutron will magically yield some actual science, if you just look hard enough? I don't think that's how it works, Richard. I join with Dr. Eunson in asking you to retract. Demanding it, actually.

Mike Bara gets lost following a link

        In e-mail last week, I was taking issue with Richard Hoagland & Mike Bara, this time over the Apollo 10 Lunar Module, "Snoopy." In May 1969, just two months before the Apollo 11 triumph, Snoopy paved the way with a brilliant dress rehearsal, separating from the Command Module and flying within 16 km of the lunar surface before backing off.

        On p. 280 of Dark Mission, discussing the Apollo 10 mission, Hoagland & Bara wrote:

"While the spacecraft was theoretically fully capable of landing on the moon, inexplicably, it was not given the capability to do so."

        There is, in fact, nothing inexplicable about this. Snoopy was too heavy -- or, to be strictly accurate, would have been too heavy if it had been fully fueled.

        The purpose of  my argumentative e-mail was to point that out, and I included a link to the online  version of the Apollo 10 Press Kit. On p. 44 the dry weight of Snoopy is listed as 9,484 lb—almost 200lb heavier than Eagle, the eventual lander.


http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a410/A10_PressKit.pdf

        By some feat of misadventure, Mike only followed a partial link, and got a surprise.
http://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a410/A10_

        Mike sent me the screen capture above, with the sarcastic message "Gee, when I click on your link, I get the attached warning from NASA to the effect that this information can only be accessed from inside a NASA facility. That must be where you found this link.  So how long have you worked at NASA?"

        How do I know he followed an incomplete link? Easy—I can see it in his browser tab, and when I follow the same link I get exactly the same warning message that he does. Thus proving that I'm not on a NASA network.

NASA Pride
        I might add that if I did work for NASA it would be a matter of pride, and not something I would be diffident about revealing. Not at all. The notion that everyone in NASA, and everyone funded by NASA, is corrupt and deceptive is one of the most toxic aspects of the Hoagland/Bara thesis. They should be ashamed.

Renewing the attack on Explorer 1

Date: 17th August
Subj: Some technical reading for your weekend
To: Richard Hoagland
cc: Mike Bara, Adrienne Loska
==================================
You all ought to read this technical report on the Juno rocket and the Explorer satellites it launched. You will find enlightenment in these pages. These are FACTS.

For example:

On page 13 (25 in pdf) You will find a discussion of the variability of thrust and burning rate of the T17-E2 solid fuel of the Baby Sergeants.

Between batch: 3%
Within batch: 0.1%/1.5%

That's getting very close to the 4% velocity excess of Explorer 1, which is what is calculated when someone who knows what he's doing applies the Tsiolkovsky equation (as opposed to Hoagland, whose mathematical skills are almost absent, and who stated on Coast to Coast AM [21 August 2008] that the excess was 30%).^{note 1}

On page 47 (59 in pdf) you will find the launch trajectory. You will note that, by the time the second stage ignited, the vehicle was already at altitude. The task of the three solid upper stages was to accelerate the vehicle horizontally to orbital speed. It follows that any so-called "anti-gravity effect" induced by spinning would have been irrelevant.

On pp 59-66 (68-78 in pdf) You will be thrilled to read a description of the networks of tracking stations established for Explorer and to discover how totally wrong you both were.

The Microlock network consisted of:
Antigua (doppler)
RED - Earthquake Valley
GOLD - AFMTC Florida^{note 2}
BLACK - Ibadan, Nigeria
SILVER - Singapore


The Spheredrop network had stations at:
China Lake, CA
Temple City, CA
White Sands, NM
Cedar Rapids, IA
Huntsville, AL

So ten in all. The map Richard included in his wretchedly inaccurate web page Von Braun's Secret is shown to be totally wrong.  Mike said on Stranger Advice Radio (20 April 2010) that only three tracking stations were active.

You guys are really, really wrong about all this stuff. You should stick to writing about pet psychology.

Regards,
[expat]

===========================================
1. A neat summary of the math is in the Rational Wiki.  Readers new to this whole subject ought to read it.
2. An interesting sidebar is that not only is the oft-misquoted "Goldstone has the bird!" wrong (because Goldstone was not operational in January 1958,) but the oft-corrected version "GOLD has the bird!!" must be wrong too, since GOLD was in Florida.

A village idiot writes....

        On his blog today, and also on the Book of Farces, Mike Bara once again quite mistakenly seizes on an astronomical discovery to promote his wretchedly error-packed book The Choice. The discovery is another exoplanet, a long way (43.5 AU) from its parent star. Bara simulates triumph, as if this clinched his beloved solar fission theory despite the planet NOT being one of a pair. He writes:

"Of course, the usual village idiots have attacked the solar fission theory on the basis that it requires the planets to be spun off in roughly twin pairs, with one planet slightly larger than the other. So far, in the 2 cases here, only one planet has been observed. But that’s easily explainable."

        I think he means me, since I did indeed send (perfectly polite) e-mail reminding him that Van Flandern made "two-at-a-time" a central part of the solar fission idea, as this blog noted last time Bara went into his fake triumph routine, just two months ago.

        He "easily explains" the problem by stating that the missing twin just hasn't been observed yet—it's probably too close to the star. That's a bit like saying the Moon you see in the night sky is evidence that there are two Moons, but you can only see one because the other one "probably" hasn't risen yet.

        Bara writes of "NASA’s shopworn accretion model" and declares "this new observation fits the solar fission theory perfectly." Well, the accretion model is not NASA's, it's the consensus of the entire planetary astronomy community (that's all the people who know a great deal more than Mike Bara,) strongly supported by quite recent direct observation. As for fitting solar fission perfectly...

A village idiot writes, yes indeed. But I don't think it's me.