Another open letter to Richard Hoagland (re: procrastination)

Dear Mr. Hoagland,

You are fond of saying--especially when you promise something and then don't deliver--"Make no wine before its time." Well, Richard, there's some wine you're supposed to be making that is now SIX MONTHS PAST its time. I refer to your book The Hidden History of Mars: A War In Heaven. Last March you characterized this book as "just recently completed," and you promised a free copy to Club 19.5 members. You also posted this on 24th March:

"Club 19.5 Members!! You've been patient, you've been faithful, and now - the GIFTS will begin! There is a broadcast coming up in the next few days that to even KNOW about you need to be in Club 19.5."

The broadcast you cited was simply another interview with Howard Hughes on talkradio.co.uk. An interview in which you said nothing new at all, but re-iterated the history of the so-called "Face" on Mars, and dropped the names of  Cronkite (3 times,) Roddenberry (twice,) and Sagan (once.) Do you seriously think that knowledge of this up-coming interview was an adequate gift for people who, at that point, had been paying you five bucks a month for NOTHING since October 2016?

It is now August. Where is this book? Where are these gifts? Are you content to be seen as dishonest?

Regards,

An irrational perfectionist

        Mike Bara, on working with Richard Hoagland as joint author of Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA:

37:55 "[chuckle] "It was exhausting. Exhausting. Richard is a... Richard is a... um, an amazing content editor, but he's also a perfectionist. To the... to the extent that I think it's not... it's not necessary. [..?..] I said he's a... he's an irrational perfectionist. He's a crazy perfectionist. And it just took a long time and it was very stressful. And I ended up with... with blood sugar in the mid- to high 300s. And I.. you know, I had to... I had to take a long break after we finished that one. But again, you know, I'm proud of the book and I'm... I'm so grateful that he gave me a... a platform upon which to build my own thing, that I'm doing here. Whatever it is I'm doing. So."

        That was a little gem from 70 minutes of chat with Chris George Zuger (whoever he is), poured onto Youchoob as a show called Den of Lore (whatever that means) last night.

        The split screen  showed both Mike and his interlocutor, giving Mike ample opportunity to hold exhibits such as his book covers up to the Skype camera, and Chris Zuger, a recent renouncer of ciggies, to show us himself taking  puffs from his vape tube. The discussion started with the Nazca mummy, and Bara reiterating the only correct opinion he's had in ten years. Then it wandered through his conversion to conspiracy theory by TWA800, to the usual artifacts on Mars and the Moon, to UFOlogy. He had a hilarious take on this thing:

photo credit: NASA

        He said it's a picture of an Arctic lemming, taken on Devon Island, which NASA is "passing off" as a picture of Mars. It does look a bit like a lemming, indeed.

        ...but by what twisted logic would the Curiosity team at JPL resort to such deception? The image dates from September 2012, nowhere close to April Fool's Day. This is just more of Mike Bara confusing "looks like" with "actually is." (see Mars rat taking Internet by storm -- space.com 31 May 2013.)

Update 27 July:
        During a brief appearance on Coast-to-Coast AM, Bara let drop that he's completed a work of fiction. He didn't say whether this was a novel or a screenplay, but either way, God help us all.My bet is that, like his brother Dave's fiction, it will feature a hero who is utterly irresistible to women.

Open letter to Richard Hoagland

Dear Mr. Hoagland,

        Your recent re-iteration of a claim to have originated the idea of oceanic life on Europa^{note 1} prompts me to remind you, and others who may be seeing this text, that this and several other claims you have made are false.

1. Ocean on Europa
In March 2004, in a message to Rob Roy Britt of space.com, you wrote:

"Clearly, I was NOT the first (nor have I ever claimed to be) to propose an original liquid ocean for Europa."

On 4 December 1997, on Coast to Coast AM, you said this:

"[W]hen I was covering the Voyager story out at JPL in the Summer of 1980, actually the Spring of 1979 and the Winter of 1980, we flew this extraordinary spacecraft, NASA did, by Jupiter for the first time and encountered the four moons, you know, Io, Ganymede, Europa, Callisto, and Jupiter itself, and it was as part of that observation that I began work on essentially what turned out to be the first scientific paper, which ultimately appeared in Star and Sky Magazine in the beginning of 1980, which was a prognostication, pulling all the data together, that there might be a global ocean under the ice cover that Voyager had revealed and that in that global ocean there actually might be some extant living life forms." (emphasis added)

        That looks very like a prior claim to me. It is certainly not justified--Lewis (1971)^{note 2} and Consolmagno (1976) were ahead of you, as were Cassen, Reynolds, and Peale (1979).^{note 3} I think you know this.

2. Life in Europa's ocean
        This is, of course, a separate question, and there is no doubt at all that you have  repeatedly claimed to have been the first to publish on this conjecture. However, as Greenberg notes:^{note 4}

"On June 19th and 20th, 1979, the conference  "Life in the Universe" took place at NASA's Ames Research Center. Benton Clark gave a lecture Sulfur: Fountainhead of Life in the Universe at that conference in which he discussed the biochemistry of those deep-sea vent communities discovered on Earth, pointing out that they do depend indirectly on sunlight: Photosynthesis near the surface of the oceans produces the oxygen that those communities require. Clark then explained how sulfur could play the role of oxygen, and that deep-sea volcanic emissions could potentially provide all the necessary ingredients for a self-sustained ecosystem. In the final part of his lecture, Clark raised the possibility that life might exist in undersurface oceans on the icy satellites in our Solar System, including Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto in particular." (emphasis added)

In the written version of his lecture, Clark wrote:

 "Consider H2O-rich bodies. In our Solar System, this includes not only Earth, but quite possibly Mars and Triton, and certainly Ganymede, Callisto, and Europa.  Liquid water does not exist at the surface of any of these bodies, except Earth,  but we should not discount the existence of "buried" liquid water reservoirs.  ... Habitable zones include not only the surface ocean environment, but also the much more probable subsurface oceanic regions. Earth-like environments as abodes for life may be the exception rather than the rule. Occupation of the much more abundant buried zones is possible, and these should ultimately become an object of exploration. Whether such environments can support life long enough and at a sufficient level of activity to permit the evolution of highly encephalized forms (intelligent life) is conjectural." (emphasis added)

        Prof. Greenberg notes other prior work. You have characterized his comments as political, but in fact they are purely scientific. Claiming credit for other peoples' work is an unattractive trait in anybody, but for somebody who calls himself a scientist,^{note 5} it is particularly deplorable because of the importance of intellectual priority in that domain.

3. Creation of the Pioneer "message to the Universe"
        On your website you refer to yourself as "co-creator of the 'Pioneer plaque'." (scroll all the way to the bottom of the long page). On 13 July 1990 you said "Carl [Sagan] for many years has been taking public credit for the Pioneer plaque which, of course, Eric Burgess and I conceived." In fact you had no part in the design or creation of the plaque, which was done by Sagan, his then wife Linda, and Frank Drake. As for "conceiving" it (as distinct from "creating" it,) that was overwhelmingly to the credit of Eric Burgess.  In the epilogue to his 1982 book, By Jupiter: Odysseys to a Giant, Burgess wrote:

"I came up with the idea [that the craft carry a message from Earth]. And I mentioned it [at lunch that afternoon] to Hoagland [then a freelance writer] and Don Bane [Los Angeles Herald Examiner ]. . . . And I said that the right man to get this onboard would be Carl Sagan. So I went around to JPL [NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory] -- Hoagland was in tow with me -- and found Sagan. . . . And I said, "Hey, Carl, I've got an idea for you." All Hoagland did was support me and say it's a good idea."

4. The "hammer and feather" stunt on Apollo 15
        On 2 July 2013, on Coast to Coast AM, you claimed that this was your original idea. The truth is that it was, in fact, dreamed up by Dave Scott, Jim Irwin, and Joe Allen.^{note 6}

5. The catchphrase "On the internet nobody knows you're a dog."
        On 11 November 2015, on your digital radio show, you claimed to have "coined" this bon mot. You repeated the claim much more recently, on Howard Hughes' radio show, 11 November last year. The original was a caption to a cartoon in New Yorker published on 5 July 1993. Credit for the phrase belongs to cartoonist Peter Steiner, not you.

         Would you kindly make an early opportunity to withdraw your claims and apologize to those whose work you have falsely taken credit for?

======================/ \=====================
[1]  The Other Side of Midnight (notice)
Partial text: Thirty-seven years ago, in December 1979 (published in January, 1980), I wrote a seminal article in “Star and Sky Magazine” — picked up and sent around the world by AP, lauded by Dr. Robert Jastrow (one of the founders of NASA), and Arthur C Clarke and (later) Ted Koppel — scientifically PREDICTING, decades BEFORE NASA: “The oceans of Europa [one of the four “Galilean Moons” of Jupiter] are the PERFECT habitat [beyond the Earth] for CURRENT non-terrestrial life! ... My article only dealt with the specifics of Europa’s habitability, but it foreshadowed the existence of an entirely new CLASS of habitable worlds, DECADES before scientists or NASA missions had discovered them — “Ice-covered moons … housing ‘world oceans’ … protected by a tens-of-miles-thick covering of ice!”

[2] Icarus, vol. 15

[3] Geophysical Research Letters, vol. 6

[4] An ocean on Europa? by Prof. Ralph Greenberg, 2002

[5] Dark Mission, 2nd edn, p. 224

[6] See this transcript, notes at 167:22:58

Richard Hoagland comes up worse than empty

        Only Hoagland himself knows how many suckers are still paying him five bucks a month for membership in "Club 19.5," whose sole benefit is access to the archives of his radio show. Since there have been no new shows since last October, it's a rapidly vanishing resource--I imagine that members must have, by now, heard all the shows they have any interest in.

        The Great Mr. Hoagland seems to be feeling just a teensy bit guilty about taking their money, since he feels they deserve some collateral compensation. On the Other Side of Midnight web site, this notice appeared last November:

"[W]e are giving the loyal Club 19.5 members that have stayed with us during our recent hiatus, Richard C. Hoagland’s latest and most anticipated work – just recently completed with The Imaging Team from the show. This gorgeous and pioneering new book, “The Hidden History of Mars: A War In Heaven”^{note 1} with a foreword by Dr. Joseph P. Farrell, chronicles the Human Race’s Ancient History on the Red Planet with groundbreaking information that has largely been hidden from the world until now."

Last Friday, this appeared on the Book of Fools:

"Club 19.5 Members!! You've been patient, you've been faithful, and now - the GIFTS will begin! There is a broadcast coming up in the next few days that to even KNOW about you need to be in Club 19.5."

        The chutzpah of the man is world-class, isn't it? He manages to make a notice of an upcoming interview seem like a gift. I hope all those "club members" laughed, as I certainly did.
 
        Well, obviously I'm not a loyal member, but it was not hard to grasp the grapevine and learn that the "gift" was notice of yet another interview with Howard Hughes on talkradio.co.uk. Added to the hyperbolic adjectives "gorgeous,"  "pioneering" and "groundbreaking" we now had "vitally important new discoveries," "revelations,"  "new insights, new information," and "the Ultimate Game Changer." WOW--this must really be something, right?

A Major Let-down
        The interview went on as planned at 11pm BST (Euro-clocks went forward this last weekend, hooray) and I tuned in. I even sent a couple of SMS messages, but they were ignored. Obviously, HH wanted to know right off what amazing revelations this new book contains. My lower jaw hit the ground as Richard Hoagland, instead of showing us game-changing marvels, recounted the whole history of his involvement with pseudoscience, decorated with the name-droppings of Cronkite (3 times,) Roddenberry (twice,) and Sagan (once.) He gave us the detailed history of the so-called Face on Mars (yet again,) and the blow-by-blow drama of the landing of Viking 1 in July 1976 (he was accredited to that event as a writer for an airline magazine.) Pioneering? Insights? Revelations? Not a bit of it. He gave us "The Brookings Report told NASA to hush up evidence of ETs," and "NASA is really an adjunct of the Department of Defense," both well-worn claims, and both wrong. He even repeated his false claim to have coined the phrase "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" (the bon mot rightly belongs to New Yorker cartoonist Peter Steiner.)

        Considering its build-up, this was a lame, lame failure. I took heart from the few tweets that HH allowed. One said quite frankly, and correctly, that there was nothing new here. Another said basically that Hoagland's well-known conclusions from all this are disputed. At that, Hoagland said "This person is obviously refusing to look at the data. It's all there on enterprisemission.com, all free. If you don't do your homework, you'll end up in the dust of history."

        At that, I got mighty annoyed. It's a repeat of what he asserted in September 2013-- "I am sick to death of my stupid critics saying I'm nuts because they won't look at the data." On that occasion I had a sharp riposte for him. Hoagland, if you're listening, it applies just as much today.


==================/ \====================
[1] I think the title has now been changed but I can't remember the new one

Review of Hoagland on C2C Friday 19 June

        The starting point for this night's Hoaglathon was an article in Izvestiya, translated by the online Moscow Times, that gave rise to some notably inaccurate headlines. I can't now find the exact headline from The Washington Post, but it was something like RUSSIA QUESTIONS US LUNAR LANDINGS. Richard Hoagland pointed out that that was grossly misleading — and it was the last true statement he made that night.

        There followed three hours of near-hysterical hyperbole, as Hoagland latched onto that phrase "scientific — or perhaps cultural — artifacts" and ran with it, and ran, and ran, and ran. Naturally, his interpretation was that the Russians know all about the stuff that Apollo astronauts SECRETLY brought back from the Moon. You know, the head from C3PO that somebody carelessly left at the bottom of a crater called Shorty. Such highly advanced technology (from a civilization that wasn't clever enough to survive, please note) as could usher in a Golden Age here on Earth. Hoagland spent a good ten minutes explaining that reverse engineered Lunar technology could act as a total nuclear shield, preventing any nuclear reactions — be they bombs or out-of-control reactors — from functioning. He pulled this one entirely out of his imagination. It hasn't got the slightest basis in anything real at all. Amazing.

        Hoagland, as usual, didn't mince words. "The Russians have driven a dagger into the heart of the NASA cover-up." "This will not go away." Etc., etc. Well, as one who has had to negotiate with Russians three times in my life, I think I recognize this as something very different from Hoagland's interpretation. For a start, Hoagland missed entirely the reference in the original article to allegations of corruption surrounding Russia's status as host for the 2018 World Cup of Soccer. Then, he doesn't have enough experience to interpret the Russian reaction. In my view, this is "So, my fine friend, you question our right to host the World Cup? Let's have a look at your missing Moon rocks, too. Come, let us open another bottle of vodka and discuss these important questions." In other words, just a bit of semi-serious joshing.^{note 1} It is, by the way, true, that some Moon rocks are unaccounted for. Wikipedia has an inventory. The robot heads are all missing, too. In the sense that they never existed in the first place. The thing to remember about the SECRET artifacts from the Moon is that Hoagland has never produced one single shred of evidence that they exist.

        Hoagland had some images to show. Starting with the Chinese images from the Jade Rabbit Lunar rover that this blog discussed in April last year. Once Hoagland runs these images through Photoshop, they clearly show CCD detector noise that he says is glass structures, confirming his manipulations of Apollo photography. This blog actually got an oblique reference, as Hoagland said that critics (that's us) claim his images of glass skyscrapers  over the Moon are just scratches or contamination on his scanner glass. "Give me a break," he said, "as if I don't recognize scratches or don't know to clean my scanner glass." Well, Richard, here's the evidence.

credit: NASA, with Hoagland contamination

        Next, he turned to the intriguing images of the asteroid Ceres that have been coming in from the Dawn spacecraft. He tried to tell us that this is a city:

credit: NASA/JPL

        A fucking city, on an asteroid? An asteroid whose mass is only 0.00015 that of Earth, and whose gravity at the surface is 0.029g? Very funny, Hoagland.

        Well, the talk then ranged far and wide, through some familiar territory. How the Apollo astronauts had their memories "adjusted" so they don't remember seeing the glass skyscrapers. How JPL totally faked the color of the first Viking images from the surface of Mars. All poppycock. George Noory's attitude ran the gamut from worship to fury. At one point he said "You're amazing, Richard. Everything you say comes true in the end" (you could almost hear rationalists across the nation screaming "ELENIN!!!! GULF OIL SPILL!!!!"). But near the end, when talk turned to plans for Hoagland to guest-host in July on the occasion of the Pluto encounter, it got a little ugly. Hoagland tried to sandbag Noory on the air by arguing for a five-hour extended show. This was obviously something that had already been discussed and rejected, so Noory shut him down in no uncertain terms. Thanks to a Coastgab member using the name Georgie for President 2016, you can hear the audio. Good fun—arrogance squashed.

===============
[1] For a brilliant rendering of this aspect of the Russian character, see the portrayal of Col. Stok by Oskar Homolka in the 1967 movie Billion Dollar Brain (at 45:40)

See also the Rational Wikipedia article on "Whataboutism."

Richard Hoagland's incredible arrogance

        Richard Hoagland made a surprise appearance on Howard Hughes' The Unexplained web-radio show yesterday. I say "surprise" because he didn't promote it at all. Nothing on his Foolbook page^{note 1}(last updated May 2012), his twitter feed (taken over by his homeopathist woman) or even the awful Enterprisemission website (last updated six months or so ago.) In other words, his PR is non-existent these days. If I hadn't come across a reference to it on Coastgab I'd have missed this supreme example of arrogance.

        Hughes had obviously been getting e-mails from people urging him to get a little tougher with the Hoagland propaganda machine. Make him answer some of the many, many criticisms that have been flung at him (and not just on this blog, by any means.) Hughes tried hard, but Hoagland was having none of it.

10:57 Hughes: (after a brief discussion of social propaganda) There would be those who would say -- and I'm going to say it to you now -- that this is a very good backdrop for people to spread lies, disinformation, or just pure misguided falsehood.
Hoagland: Comes with the territory. 
Hughes: Those things of course are things which...
Hoagland: ...trolls and disinformers are spreading all manner of lies against those people that are trying to buck the tide, trying to actually... you know, sound a clarion call about truth, and standing up for what you believe and what you can verify in evidence, and the scientific process in the area that I have chosen. Yeah, we have quite a few enemies. And they're the same tired list. A lot of them are very nicely paid, so their job, 24/7, is to make sure that whatever ideas we put out, whatever papers we publish, whatever discussions we enter into in public media, are denigrated at every turn.
Hughes: OK, well I want to get into this quickly. You know what I'm going to say to you now. I get a lot of e-mails about you...
Hoagland: Who cares?
Hughes: A lot of good e-mails about you...
Hoagland: Look, it is one o'clock AM my time in Albuquerque. It is 8 o'clock -- 8:15 actually --  your time.  You know, I'm doing this because I care about your show, I care about your audience. I'm not going to waste time answering stupid ridiculous ask... accusations from known trolls. Trolls who have in the past tried to actually bribe me. Out of sedition and subterfuge.
Hughes: All right, I want to ask you....
Hoagland:    ...to provide them data, and did not have the guts to tell me that they wanted to subject it to independent test. They  actually went through this whole incredible chicanery to get access to information that we published freely on the Enterprise website.^{note 2}  These people have no character. They are certainly not any people that I would... would possibly want to answer to because they're not in the conversation. They are deliberate disinformation artists designed to submerge the truth. So let's move on to the substantive issues in the limited time we have.
Hughes: All right, let's do that, but let me just address one thing if I may, and then we move on, in 30 seconds.
Hoagland: I will not answer any of these stupid accusations. None, zero.
Hughes: All right, I tried. The person e-mailed me and asked me to make a point to you about Explorer 1 and what you said about Explorer 1,^{note 3} and how that may have been based on incorrect assumptions...
Hoagland: You're trying to do it anyway.
Hughes: Well, I'm trying to do it anyway because that's... that's my job, I'm a broadcaster...
Hoagland: It is a stupid, pointless discussion.

        Well, Mr. Hoagland may consider the discussion pointless, but I think there's every reason to discuss his failure to address what is unquestionably a gross mathematical error. He calls himself a scientist, he concedes that the error exists, but fails to correct it for five years and refuses to discuss the point. Shameful.

        At that point Hughes gave up and moved on, although some people might think he should have just put the phone down. So it was on to the usual performance. Comet 67P is an abandoned space station, Ceres is artificial, even Pluto may be found to be a spaceship when New Horizons arrives next month. On comet 67P, with wonderful imagery still coming in from the ESA's Rosetta mission, he insisted that the science involved was merely a front, a cover story. "Science can be done in an afternoon," he declared, revealing his gob-smacking ignorance of the realities. The real mission, he insisted, is learning about the extraterrestrials who used to live there. At this, Hughes had another valiant attempt to divert the conversation into some semblance of logic:

26:25 Hughes: If there was a secret agenda behind this mission, with all of these nations involved, does it strike you as strange or interesting in any way that so far, nobody has broken ranks and actually spoken about the real purpose of this mission?
Hoagland: Well, what would happen to them if they did? If they didn't have the evidence?
Hughes: People do disappear don't they?
Hoagland: I'm not thinking that, I'm talking about just professionally. They would be completely ostracized from all the other folks. They would be cut off from access to any more data, the good data. They would not be able to publish, they wouldn't have a job, because the job comes from one of the European governments or the private contractors who are getting their money from one of the European governments as part of this consortium called ESA, the European Space Agency. So they'd basically be reduced to driving a cab. Who in their right mind if the game is rigged, and even if they wound up on... on... you know, some... let's say the BBC. Who the hell would believe them if they were one voice in a chorus saying "You're nuts. You've cracked. You obviously have lost it, you need to go to a nice home. You know, take off for a few years."

        That would be good advice for Richard Hoagland himself right now. He came across as a case of senile dementia, frankly.

        There's one other event to watch for in July, other than the Pluto encounter. Promise of a total redesign of Hoagland's Geocities-style website. Wonderful, if it ever happens.

================================

[1] He actually has two FB pages. Nothing on the other one, either.

[2] I assume he's referring here to this brilliant high-risk gambit from Irene Gardner three years ago. It is not true that all the information was available on enterprisemission -- he published no baselines and no controls, and without those the data is useless. It is not true that Irene didn't "have the guts" to say that she wanted to subject the data to independent test. She specifically said that was the whole point.

[3] Here he's definitely referring to this. Although Explorer 1 is a hobby-horse I've ridden around a bit, here and elsewhere, it was not I who urged Howard Hughes to press that point.

Report on what Richard Hoagland has described as his "new book"

        During Richard Hoagland's"interview" last Friday night with Coast-to-Coast host Richard Syrett, I lost count of the number of times he plugged what he called "my new book", Pluto: New Horizons for a Lost Horizon. (I place "interview" in quotes because Hoagland's obnoxious arrogance was front and center, as he talked over Syrett and basically attempted to take over the whole show.^{note 1})

        Well, I don't usually blame C2C guests for plugging books—they get no other compensation for giving up most of a night's sleep (and by the way, it really works, as I have reported passim.) But in this case the plugging was strident and the problem is that IT'S NOT HOAGLAND'S BOOK. It's Richard Grossinger's book. Grossinger was the original publisher of The Monuments of Mars after Simon & Shuster reverted Hoagland's contract for non-performance. Grossinger wrote at some length about his pal Hoagland in 2010. Here's an excerpt:

"Hoagland is a unique mixture of amateur scientist, genius inventor, scam artist, and performer, blending true, legitimate speculative science with his own extrapolations, tall tales, and inflations. He is a brilliant and glorious myth-maker and a evidence-based scientist at the same time."

New Horizons for a procrastinating author
        The book is 300 pages long and contains 31 essays by a smörgåsbord of writers. None of the names ring a bell with me except Jason Martell and Grossinger himself, who contributes #2 in addition to a 44-page introduction (which is quite well-written, in fact.) Hoagland himself is #3 up, strutting around the book for 64 pages. His chapter title is New Horizon ... for a Lost Horizon, and it's recognizably Hoagland but ever so slightly toned down. We get lots of "extraordinary," "astonishing" and "stunning." There are the unmotivated italics and the bizarre ellipses, but no all-caps overemphasis and no exclamation points. Deo gratias.

        Well, here's a flavor of the sheer mendacity of this material, as Hoagland tries to substantiate his thesis that the solar system is replete with evidence of a now-dead advanced civilization:

"Our research has now revealed that this stunning, new solar system reality first became known to the U.S. Department of Defense under the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s—in part via a pioneering, top-secret JPL (U.S. Army) effort at a first unmanned circumlunar reconnaissance mission, "Project Red Socks." We believe the shocking results of this clandestine mission formed the real reason behind NASA's sudden public emergence after Sputnik, and the rapid congressional authorization, only one year later in 1958, of NASA as the loudly-proclaimed, lead "civilian space agency of the U.S.A."

"This was the perfect cover—in the 1950s world of perpetual Soviet pursuit of any and all technological supremacy over the West—for NASA's real, long-term covert mission:
To secretly ascertain ... from NASA's inception ... the full extent of (potential) military threats (or benefits) of these long-abandoned, ancient ET derelicts ... as well as those ancient surface installations still partially preserved on various planets and moons (Cydonia et al.); the surviving riches of an entire, astonishing Type II Civilization in our own backyard—whose extraordinary legacy and scientific potential was only fully accepted (even within NASA) when Apollo astronauts fulfilled their real Kennedy Mission and clandestinely returned, beginning in 1969, unquestionable intelligently-designed and manufactured ET artifacts to Earth—from the Moon."^note2

Ahem.

        He writes of "the shocking results" of Project Red Socks. The most shocking result was that the project never happened. It was way too ambitious for a group of people who would not even succeed in orbiting a tiny 14kg satellite for another three months. Red Socks was a panic reaction to the Soviet success with Sputnik 1, conceived as a series of nine lunar orbiters which would, at a minimum, return photographs of the far side. It was even suggested that they might deliver a nuclear weapon to the surface, then wait patiently for some of the debris to come flying back to Earth by sheer good luck (I almost added an exclamation point there, tsk tsk.) Some vestiges of Red Socks were folded into the Pioneer 4 mission in 1959, but basically, it was a non-starter.

        As for that utterly daft allegation that Apollo returned the technical artifacts of a lunar civilization—he made the same claim in the introduction to Dark Mission. He did not then, and does not now, produce one scintilla of evidence for that assertion. On the contrary, the evidence is all against him. We know what was brought back from the Moon. It was meticulously catalogued in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, where Hoagland's pal Ken Johnston worked. Surely Ken could set the Hoaxster straight on that. It's all very well him saying "Ah well, that's what they want you to think"—without some evidence, he just looks like a buffoon. In Dark Mission he further alleged that the lunar goodies were then subjected to reverse engineering. Well, where are the results, Richard?

        I love the fact that Amazon categorizes this work as Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Folklore & Mythology. Yes indeed, Amazon.

Update 10th April:
        Oy veh, Coast to Coast saw fit to give Hoagland yet another two hours last night to mention "my book" a dozen times. He talked at some length about private enterprise Moon landings, then added:

"Another reason to buy the book is that part of the proceeds will go toward funding this enterprise."

        FACEPALM. There are 31 authors to pay. After publishing costs the book might generate as much as $50,000—probably less. How much use does Hoagland think the residuals would be to a manned lunar landing mission?

Liar.

======================================
[1]  Everything in the show is recycled Hoaglandiana, but it's worth following that Youtube link, just to enjoy the mocking comments.

[2] That second half is all one sentence. That's Hoagland for you.

The wisdom of Facebook commenters

        As I write this, there are 184 FB comments attached to the Coast to Coast announcement of Richard Hoagland's return to the show last night. Very likely more to come, but the trend is obvious. Even the very few supportive comments don't take Hoagland's opinions seriously, but are more in the nature of  "very unlikely, but we should keep an open mind" (and regular readers will know what I think about the "open mind" business.)

Here's a more representative selection:

"What a crock." --Lonnie Rowe

"That guy is a F-ing crackpot. His "theories" hold as much fact and are as real as Santa Claus" --Chad Garcia

"Mount Sharp is an ancient habitation. Good grief no wonder the guy's broke." --Vince Denny

"I think Hoagland is off his meds - again." --Michael Lonergan

"Hoagland...a legend in his own mind." --Steve Knox

"Hoagland would find man made structures on his own pile of *#@&." --Manny Ochoa

"Hoagland  is a real ego maniac and a fraud ! He loves the sound of his own voice. He needs to go away" --Jill Gartland

"Here we go again,no wonder nasa banned him,he is batshit crazy..." --Richard A. Martin

"Ridiculous. Is this guy on crack? Where do they find these delusional people? Where?" --David Jefferson Pearcy

"This guy is full of crap." --Joel BiJeaux

"Is it just me, or does Hogland take FOREVER to get to a point?" --Rance Sullivan

"But "I have analyzed all the data" and you sir are nuts. Has anything he ever said come to truth or actually been proven in "real" science?" --Matt Smith

"This guy is a delusional idiot" --Mark Miller

Lazy blogger?
        I pull out those quotes not to shirk the hard graft of actually writing this blog, but to point out that Hoagland has really lost his audience. It isn't just me and my fellow skepti-bloggers who see that the Emperor has no clothes, scientifically speaking. I heard all of last night's show, and I do have my own comments. The main topic is comet 67P, the ESA spacecraft Rosetta that rendezvoused with it, and the lander Philae that touched down on it.

        First, he was absolutely correct in reporting that the Philae lander is not dead. As soon as comet 67P's orbit brings it into a different orientation with the Sun (and closer to it,) there's a very good chance that the lander's solar panels will get enough energy to wake the spacecraft's systems up again. Hoagland isn't wrong about everything.

        He was wrong, however, in saying that 67P has no ice. True, the Rosetta orbiter wasn't able to see any surface ice as it approached, but when the lander attempted to use its MUPUS hammer to probe the surface, it encountered hard ice pretty soon. It looks as though the surface dust is perhaps as much as 20cm thick, overlaying a core that is predominantly ice and gets more porous toward the center of the comet. I refer you (and Hoagland, if he's reading) to the ESA blog posted a month ago, headlined Philae settles in dust-covered ice. There's been a lot of fuss about the HD ratio in 67P's water (that's the deuterium fraction, much higher than Earth water.) At a temperature of -153°C, does anyone think this water could be liquid?

        I laughed into my pillow when Hoagland spoke of "artificial gravity machines" inside the comet, and laughed again when he mentioned his buddy in Los Angeles who's an ace at digital image enhancement. This guy, according to Hoagland, has developed a way of removing "the blurring mask that NASA and ESA superimpose on all the space pictures" (not verbatim). Oh dear. Pure paranoia, that one.

        A bit later, Hoagland excitedly mentioned that comet 67P is sending out audio signals -- a song, he called it. Here's what he's talking about.  He forgot to mention that, to make this audible, the frequency was artificially raised by a factor of at least 1000. The true frequency of these magnetic oscillations is around 50 millihertz (that's one beat per 20 seconds.) Hoagland is either dishonest or ignorant. Maybe both.

Worthless imagery
        The images Hoagland provided to C2C to accompany his interview had no credibility whatsoever. Skyscrapers my ass. Take another look at this one, that Hoagland thinks is a tramway on Mars (he actually means a cable car, like the Sandia tramway in Albuquerque.)

        I'm obliged to another commenter -- this time from the Coastgab forum -- for pointing out what the tramline actually is. If you look at the whole strip that this image is part of, it's totally obvious that this is a boundary between two of the CCD elements in the HiRISE instrument.The line extends well outside the feature nicknamed Waffle City.

        The commenter was Georgie for President 2216, who also posted "It's a sad day for C2C when Richard C. Hoagland is the biggest draw in months." Thanks, GfP. The bottom line here is that Richard C. Hoagland, the unemployed museum curator, is pig ignorant. When even Farcebook commenters know it's true, it's true.

JBW takes on RCH

        Poor old John B. Wells lost his Hoagland-virginity last night, as Coast-host. Three hours, and it did not go well for him.

        Things got off to a bad start when Wells said "So, remind me, it was Viking that took the original photo of the Face on Mars, right?" "No-no," replied the pseudoscientist. "Viking was in two parts, an orbiter and a lander. It was the orbiter that took the image." You could almost hear Wells' thoughts -- "Oh I get it, three hours of one-upmanship."

        Then it got zanier. The pseudoscientist went on to describe the image taken by Mars Global Surveyor in April 1998. He and his henchpersons have nothing but contempt for this image, because weather conditions at the time were about as bad as they can be on Mars. Only with extreme skill could Malin Space Science Systems (PI of the MOC) retrieve anything worth looking at at all.

image credit: Malin Space Science Systems

        Last night, unbelievably, instead of giving MSSS due credit for giving it their best shot, the pseudoscientist accused. He said "Malin waited until the fog was so thick that nothing could be seen, before taking that photo." That statement reveals such total lack of understanding of the general principles of orbital imaging that a knowledgeable host would have sent him away immediately, on grounds that he had nothing meaningful to offer. John Wells was NOT that knowledgeable host. We had more to suffer. Somehow, the really excellent image of Owen Mesa (as I prefer to call it, honoring Tobias Owen who first noticed the "face-like mesa") didn't get mentioned last night. I refer, of course, to the one shot by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in 2007, at about 100x the resolution of the original Viking pic. It didn't get mentioned because it totally falsifies the pseudoscientist's proposition that NASA has dragged its feet ("fought tooth and nail," I think he said) on giving us images.

image credit: HiRISE/JPL/Univ. Ariz

        Well, inevitably, we finally got to the very recent imagery of Gale crater, returned by the Curiosity rover in full color and very high resolution. The pseudoscientist says these images undoubtedly show ruined apartment blocks. They show clear evidence of "geometry, parallel lines, symmetry. Features that natural landforms simply cannot have." There was much confusion about where these images could be found -- not on the C2C web site, and not on enterprisemishmash either. It was left to Greg Ahrens, who seems to be a Hoagland alter ego in Facebookistan, to provide links to eight images. Here's a typical one:

image credit: JPL

Oh, I see. Stratification. What a disappointment.

Off the scale

        Along around Hour 3, we got to the Accutron toy. The pseudoscientist persists in saying that he measured the torsion field with this apparatus, when of course he did nothing of the sort. Last night's explanation was, in fact, a denial in itself. He said (not verbatim) "The Accutron tuning fork normally vibrates at exactly 360 Hz. When I've taken it up pyramids, or to Stonehenge, it has shown readings of as much as 1000 Hz and as little as 14 Hz."

image credit: Richard Hoagland

        It may be difficult to read the y-axis scale, so let me make it clear that its range is 359.269685 Hz to 360.750945 Hz. I don't doubt that it's quite possible to adjust that somewhat, but the proposition that it could be extended to a range of 1000 to 14 does rather stretch the old mind. In what sense does the word MEASURE have any meaning in the context of such wild excursions?

Update:
I e-mailed Bryan Mumford, MicroSet™ engineer, to ask if the apparatus was in fact capable of measuring such an enormous frequency range. His reply:

Yes, MicroSet could measure such excursions. But I am skeptical that any outside influence caused an Accutron to vary by so much unless it's broken.

        Well, finally, a Link to the Conscious Life Expo 90-min talk (which included the sneaker on Mars) did in fact appear on Enterprise Mash. Here it is -- somebody please let me know what it's like. I've had enough for now.

I never said Elenin was a nit-pick

        Wonder of wonders!! I actually got an e-mail reply from 'The Big Man,' as Richard Hoagland self-describes. I don't think any preamble is needed, and not much postamble either. Here's the entire épistolat.

expat to RCH:

Greetings. During the 'Awake & Aware' conference last year you stated as follows (times relate to the Youtube video set):

"Elenin is NOT a comet." Part 1, 04:15
"Something is active on board."  Part 5, 07:50
"So we've got a spacecraft of some kind, flying in an orbit of some kind..." Part 5, 09:52

On Coast to Coast AM, 2nd April, you shouted down a caller with the words "I NEVER SAID ELENIN WAS A SPACESHIP."

Do you think you owe that caller an apology?

RCH to expat:

A "spacecraft" is NOT axiomatically a "spaceship" ....     :)

"Mariner 9" was NOT "Apollo 11."

"Something active on board ..." described anything from "a possible active, automated control system ..." to "a real AI."

Never once mentioned "living beings" -- driving an crewed [sic] "spaceship."    

Words HAVE meaning.

expat to RCH: 

In this page you use the word "spaceship" three times to describe Phobos, yet you have never said that Phobos is "occupied" and indeed it certainly is not. It follows that the definition, to you, includes any celestial object that has ever been under intelligent control. Incidentally, your assertion, in support of your ideas about Phobos, that "You can't have a natural object that's 30% hollow" is laughably incorrect. To name but two contradictory examples, Hyperion is about 40% hollow. Kelp floats are >90% hollow.

In another interesting example of words having meanings, the meaning of "geodetic latitude" is the angle made by the extension of the local vertical with the equatorial plane.  The geodetic latitude of the Port-au-Prince earthquake was NOT 19.5°.

Bandy

        I hesitate to bandy words (Bandy? How did something describing dodgy legs also come to mean verbal sparring?) with one so totally skilled at picking the nit, but I'll just point out that wikipedia says 'spacecraft' and 'spaceship' are synonyms. I realize wikipedia is largely the work of bored twelve-year-olds in the Manchester suburbs, but I think if there were originally two separate articles the kiddies would have had a hard time merging them.

         I've waited most of today, like a Tennessee Williams spinster longing for a gentleman caller, for the continuation of this dialog, but I don't think it'll continue. If it does, you'll be the first to know.

        Meanwhile, back in Facebookistan, nothing but dead air on the subject of the Inaccutron "experiment" during the Venus transit. Even some of the Branch Hoaglandians are getting testy. No doubt the testiest are the ones who gave Hoagland money for nothing.

Update:

        Just for fun I hit the translate button, and translated this post into French, a language I understand a bit. Here's what the frenchies would read as the first line of RCH's e-mail:

Un "vaisseau spatial" n'est pas axiomatiquement un «vaisseau spatial»

What's French for "WTF"?

German: Ein "Raumschiff" ist NICHT axiomatisch ein "Raumschiff" ..

Pseudoscientist found to be denser than moons

        This wonderful image is not new — it was returned from Cassini-Huygens back in 2005 when that brilliant over-achiever of a mission was in orbit around Saturn. It shows the honeycomb-like structure of Hyperion, one of Saturn's 62 moons and Titan's nearest neighbor. Since Bob Zimmerman referenced it in his blog today, I was reminded of the lesson to be learned.

        One of the many remarkable facts about Hyperion is its extremely low density—a mere 0.57 gram cm^-3 (water has a density of 1, ice is 0.92. Most rock is in the 2.2-2.9 range.) Scientists have interpreted that as meaning that Hyperion's porosity exceeds 40% even assuming it's mostly ice.[1] For comparison, the density of our own Moon is 3.35 gram cm^-3.

        Now, remember back in April 2010, when Richard Hoagland was dancing from foot to foot yelling that Phobos is an artificial spaceship? The density of Phobos is 1.876 gram cm^-3 and porosity about 30%. One of Hoagland's primary arguments was YOU CAN'T MAKE A NATURAL OBJECT THAT'S 30% HOLLOW.

        If I was any kind of artist I'd make a little animation of a Hoagland figure doing a Homer Simpson style D'oh!!

[1] Hyperion's sponge-like appearance (Thomas et al., Nature 2007)

Comet Hartley 2: Oh so predictable

        The EPOXI flyby of Comet Hartley 2 yesterday was another brilliant success for JPL, and the images were extraordinary. The body of the comet looks like a two-kM-long jet-propelled peanut.

        In less than 24 hours, Richard Hoagland had figured out a highly unoriginal way of using this scientific triumph to draw attention to himself and his crackpot ideas. OF COURSE! CLAIM IT'S AN ALIEN SPACESHIP!!! He posted this:

Just look at the regular, tiered GEOMETRY of the lower end -- like a cutaway, 3-D view of a large skyscraper ... with many exposed "floors" ... after a massive internal explosion.

It's those subtle, interior SYMMETRIES that "give the game away."

And then, OF COURSE, NASA is hiding the true story.

[S]tudies (at MIT, I believe) some years ago, with cats, demonstrated that the human visual/brain mechanisms (cats are CLOSELY related to humans, genetically) ONLY see such 3-D regular geometry--

At CERTAIN ANGLES ....

NASA releases its images so those ANGLES are specifically NOT "triggered."

        Oh yes, sure, JPL scientists were up all night figuring out how they could release the images in a deceptive way. Never mind that Hoagland has, as usual, got the science totally wrong. The cat vision study was at UC Berkeley, and showed that the retina-brain interface acted far more rapidly for horizontal motion than for vertical motion. Nothing to do with seeing angles in static objects, and nobody said that the same applies to humans in any case.

        I wonder if the NASA/JPL scientists who work so hard and so effectively to bring us news from the Cosmos ever hear about Hoagland's ravings and unfounded accusations? I assume not, but you never know.

        Meanwhile, back on the FB page, even some of the gullible disciples apparently find this tale hard to swallow. Several of them have expressed doubt.

        James Concannon posted this, and of course Hoagland deleted it immediately:

To all the Branch Hoaglandians and True Disciples:

Now look, you guys... your NASA-hating and science-ignorant guru has spent most of the summer assuring you not only that Phobos is an alien spaceship but that ESA scientists will DEFINITELY confirm that at the EPSC conference in October.

IT NEVER HAPPENED.

Your glorious leader wrote, in mid-July, that the attempt to cap the Macondo oil well was certain to end in failure and make the oil gusher worse.

HE WAS DEAD WRONG.

Now he comes at you with this cock-and-bull story about Hartley being an alien spaceship, and some of you are willing to believe him.

WHAT THE HELL IS THE MATTER WITH YOUR JUDGMENT??????

[Reprinted by permission]

Useful links:
EPOXI/Hartley quick image gallery
Full resolution images
Morph animation by Daniel Machacek
EPOXI fact sheet (pdf)

End of the line

        End of the line for the dramatic revelations about Phobos at the EPSC conference.

        End of the line for Deepwater Horizon.

        Richard Hoagland was comprehensively wrong.

        What's next? Oh, that's right -- the cities in the rings of Saturn. How fun.

Hoagland invents a non-existent event so he can say "I predicted that"

        You may find this hard to believe, but I swear it's as true as the day is long.

        On the 14th July, at 12:30 pm, Richard Hoagland posted on his FB page, on the subject of the new cap on the Deepwater Horizon gusher:

I'll bet they quietly closed the first valve at "19.5" tonight ... on 7-14--
Just as we predicted.
Ritual Uber Alles .... :)

        Well, Richard dear, there are just two problems with that. One is that they didn't close any valves at 19:30 that night. The other is that you didn't predict it.

        For most of the 14th, the capping stack wasn't even on the well-head. It had been hauled back up to the surface to replace a leaky hydraulic line. Hoagland had indeed suggested (on 13th July) that the utter madness that is numerology was playing a part in BP operations, but he never predicted the first event at 7:30 pm.

        We're quite used to Hoagland's claims of "I predicted that" being fraudulent, but now they venture into new territory, referring to an event that never even happened.

        Meanwhile, one firm prediction he did make — on 12th July at 11:50 pm — looks like going down in flames along with just about every other prediction he's ever recorded.

suddenly -- the White House is DEMANDING real proof of BP's claims ... and this "48-hour-pressure-test" of the NEW cap, is to PROVE to the White House the actual existence of those other fissures ....

So, if THAT is the case, the much-hyped "new cap pressure test" will FAIL ....

        Right now the gusher has stopped, and the pressure is reportedly 6,700 psi. Too low to call a success, but too high to cry failure. Last night on the radio Hoagland dismissed the news as "another BP lie."

I have a different opinion about who's lying here.

Update #1: 15:30 EDT July 17th
        The 48-hour period of the originally-planned test of the 3-ram capping stack has now expired, with no oil leak. Oil pressure is at 6,745 psi, rising at about 2 psi/hr and expected to stabilise at 6,800. There are two credible theories as to why the pressure did not reach the hoped-for 8,000 psi. One is simply that so much oil has flowed out of the damaged well that the resource is actually depleted: another is a phenomenon of cross-flow meaning, essentially, that oil is circulating between one underground cavity and another.

        One very positive data point is that the temperature in the well has reduced to ambient. When oil is flowing the temperature rises significantly.

        BP has announced that the testing period will now be extended for a further 24 hours, and also that when tests conclude they will release the valves and start recovering 60,000 barrels a day from the well. If you want to be cynical, you might say that BP can hardly wait to start generating some revenue from the damn well. Cynics will be looking for BP to find excuses to delay the final cementing that will kill their "golden goose," currently scheduled for early August. It does also seem that BP has been keeping information closer to its chest than is appropriate in the circumstances.

        However, the bottom line is that the test started on July 15th DID NOT FAIL.

So let's summarise Richard Hoagland's errors up to this point.

* He wrote that "our data indicates that [Deepwater Horizon] was sabatoged[sic]" but never came up with any such data.

* He stated that there was a 20-mile wide bubble of methane at a pressure of 100,000 psi threatening to erupt. This has found no support from people who know what they're talking about, and has been ridiculed by geologists.

* He stated that there was a gash in the Earth's crust 10 miles from Deepwater Horizon, gushing 120,000 barrels a day. This is the bizarre opinion of only one other man -- Matthew Simmons of the Ocean Energy Institute.

* He very confidently predicted that the cap test would fail.

* He called the preliminary announcement that the well had been capped "another BP lie."

        So Richard Hoagland's performance on this event has been as dismally inaccurate as his previous record of trash and/or alarmist predicting. Why does Coast to Coast AM continue to give him access to their audience?

Update #2: 12:00 EDT July 22nd
Yesterday, Hoagland posted another misguided and misinformed plea to his FB page:

If we can keep them from doing this stupid "static kill," this still can be resolved in safety.

But, that requires that we communiate IMMEDIATELY with Congressman Ed Markey, demanding that this latest, insane idea of BP be permanently shelved (the "static kill"), that the well be placed BACK in "containment" (oil piped up to the ships, ... thus relieving the pressure ...) until the relief well is in position to begin to kill this monster FROM THE BOTTOM (which will NOT put additional pressure on the well or the fragile formations above the high-pressure methane/oil reservoir ...).

        He clearly thinks that BP operations have increased pressure in the well, instead of, as is the actual fact, decreasing it. And, considering that he characterized the initial announcement that the well had been capped as "another BP lie" he's not supposed to think that the "static kill" is even a serious option.

        Question to RCH: Why hasn't that ENORMOUS quantity of oil flowing from that OTHER gash in the seabed not been seen by anyone??

        Meanwhile, Adm. Allen and his advisors have one hell of a hard decision to make. A possible tropical storm is headed for the site. The relief well drilling has already been suspended and a storm plug installed. It looks like the rigs and ships surrounding the Macondo well will have to leave for at least five days. Do they leave the well capped and unsupervised, or do they release the oil once more?

Update #3: 16:30 EDT July 26th
        Well, they took the brave decision to keep the lid on. Tropical storm Bonnie fizzled, and all the vessels are now back on station. Oil pressure is 6,900 psi — a good indicator that the well is not leaking into the rocks — and the top kill is scheduled to begin a week from today. Still no sign whatever of the MUCH LARGER oil leak Richard Hoagland has twice referred to.

        On his FB page today, Hoagland trotted out some story about HAARP being used to create southerly winds, as "they" are now "increasingly desperate" to keep oil off the beaches. What a load of claptrap. The person in this who's increasingly desperate is Hoagland himself. No mud logs, no methane explosion, no huge gash. It's now obvious to everyone that his comment that the capping of the well was "another BP lie" was itself a lie.

Our data indicates....

        Seemingly it's got to the point where Richard Hoagland makes use of ANY news story, not just off-beat astronomy announcements, to promote himself and his imaginary "inside information."

        Today somebody posted on his FB page "I heard the oil disaster was at the same latitude as the Giza Pyramids." Hoagland agreed "within ~2 degrees," and opined that it was a hyperdimensional event

"Because-- It also took place EXACTLY 120 degreres [sic] from Giza - -ONE "tetrahedron vertex" over (west) And ... our data indicates that it was SABATOGED [sic]...."

        Oh please. The latitude/longitude data is correct, but a "tetrahedron vertex" (he means an imaginary tetrahedron inscribed within the planet) would be nowhere near 28° 44' N. And then, SO WHAT IF IT WAS??

        Such is the hypnotic effect he apparently has on his disciples that not one of them enquired "WHAT data, Richard??"

        Hoagland's "data" proved how reliable it was when, just a few weeks ago, his "data" showed that President Obama would declare a national commitment to a manned Mars mission. Yeah, right.

        You've got to love that royal "we," too. The so-called "Enterprise Mission" is Hoagland, his wife and a part-time PA.