Headlines in March 2013

The first time in history a manned Sojus spacecraft reached the ISS in six hours only, instead of the previously common 50 hours.
The time from lift off on the moon until docking on the CSM was 3:41h [according to the Apollo 11 Mission Report].   

Colour and Brightness of the Moon

The moon as well as the sun appear white when they are high on the sky. Therefore the moon has no colour, it is neither read nor green nor blue, it is grey.

The Moon’s albedo is 0.1. This means that the Moon scatters only 10% of the incoming light. The Moon is therefore a dark object for terrestrial conditions.

The following picture shows the shade of grey of the Moon on the left.
The shade of grey or generally the colour of an object is here the colour impression if the object is illuminated during a bright day. Referring to the Moon a big lunar rock would look dark grey or almost black at noon, if it were placed on the Earth.

Albedo Moon
At the first sight this looks hardly plausible – almost black and on the sky almost white. But there is an easy experiment to explain this. Take an opal black object, for example a black leather wallet, and go in the dark night and illuminate the wallet with a bright torch, which you hold close to the leather. In the small cone of light the wallet appears white – exactly as the moon appears white in the bright sunlight.

The following picture of the Moon which is illuminated by the Sun and which is in front of the Earth confirms my statement. The picture was taken on the 16th of July 2015 (at new Moon) from the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR). The DSCOVR is between the Sun and the Earth in the Lagrange point L1; it is therefore in a distance of 1.5 million kilometres from the Earth.
Moon in Front of the Earth
Moon in Front of the Earth

Conspiracy "Theory"

If you hear in the context of any topic the expression conspiracy theory, how do you react?

A) You bow your head and admit awesomely, that in this context the official version is the correct one and anything else is complete rubbish.

B) You ask yourself, why at all, the mass media bring in the expression conspiration theory to this context, and who profits from the fact that we are intimidated with this expression.

To this a thought-provoking impulse:


 Already John F. Kennedy informed about conspiracies in 1961: see the sequence from 9:50 of about one minute here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdMbmdFOvTs. Today’s presidents do not speak about this anymore; in return they have a longer life.

How does Wikipedia work?

What is your opinion to the following statement: „If Apollo hadn’t landed on the Moon, then this could be read in Wikipedia like that. Someone would have noted this long ago and published in Wikipedia!”
Dear reader, Wikipedia is not so frank and open as many people may believe. The second sentence of the above statement is correct, but there are speedy watchdogs who make sure that such articles are deleted in next to no time and their authors blocked whenever possible.
“Anybody can claim this”, you might reply. But the above statements can be proven, because Wikipedia is a well-structured software platform where all changes are traceable. To see this you only have to click to View history on the top right and then you have the historic record back to the beginning of the article. You can also compare two selected versions.
I demonstrate to you the behaviour of such a watchdog on a site with rather few visitors and therefore with a slow reaction time:
On 15 Jul 2012 I posted a paragraph on Wikipedia. The rationale was deleted on the 2 Aug 2012, but the header and the picture remained. I restored it on 4 Aug 2012 and two hours later it was deleted by another watchdog.
Here is my post, starting from “The photographer's shadow …”:

A new rationale was added on 7 Aug 2012:

On the Talk side (click top left) I have justified my restore activity; my user name is Andrew199:

As you can see the watchdogs are well organised and work together. Their silly arguments finally found a majority. If I had restored the article a second time I would most probably have been banned. I have done a double restoring in the German Wikipedia and there I could record an example. I had posted on a frequently used web site; therefore the reaction time of the watchdogs was much shorter, down to two minutes. If you understand German then read that story:

Summarised there are the following lessons learnt:
  1. The watchdogs are coordinated and always in the majority.
  2. Wikipedia has valuable information in many fields, but in explosive themes Wikipedia shows us only the official version, as it is presented by the main stream media.

These views behind Wikipedia and the main stream media are the most interesting lessons learnt from the Moon landing story. And this story is not a single case …

And how do our Western Media Work?

Our western main stream media, i.e. all big newspapers and broadcast companies blindly take everything what comes from Reuters or other big news agencies. And if there is a reportage about “conspiracy theories”, then they present only the silly arguments, which have only been invented to make “conspiracy theorists” look foolish. Information as shown here is omitted.
The bigger question behind this is: if our media mess about with the moon landing, how manipulative is then the information about other topics?

Historic Rocket Landings

The space company Blue Origin achieved a historic rocket landing in Texas on Monday, 23-November-2015: it was the first time that a rocket landed softly on Earth using retro-rockets. It landed in upright position with a speed of 4.4mph or 7km/h.
The rocket was launched from the same place and rose to an altitude of 100km where it released an unmanned passenger module.
Up to now only the big space agencies have reported about such landings, but only on the Moon or on Mars. Preparatory tests on Earth had obviously not been deemed necessary.

Blue Origin just before touch down
Blue Origin just before Touch Down
On Monday, 21-December-2015 SpaceX could do this as well for the first time; this time during a commercial flight where 11 ORBCOMM-2-satellites were put into orbit. The first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket landed softly close to the launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Touch Down of the First Stage of Falcon 9
Touch Down of the First Stage of Falcon 9
Launch and Landing, taken with a Long Time Exposure
Launch and Landing, taken with a Long Time Exposure

Why did the Soviet Union Never Debunk the Faked Moon Landings?

One should better ask this question in the first person: “Why have I never heard that the Soviet Union called the Apollo Moon landings into question?”
I only read in an astronomical journal (orion 3/19) in 2019, that the Moon landing is taught to be a fake in Russian schools. Even if you investigate in a similar question, why all participants had been silent, you can find avowals. But our media do not report on this.
Obviously the Soviets did not want to make publicity in 1969. How should they have made it? Placing an advertisement in a German newspaper? Our media would have laughed at them and called them a sore loser.
Generally also today there is hardly any country which asks questions when the USA broadcast lies. Take 9/11 as an example: in New York three skyscrapers collapsed, but only two of them are reported to have been hit by an airplane. No European country asks any questions. They are afraid of the mighty USA; they want to continue to trade with the USA and they would not see a direct profit from such a campaign. So they keep quiet – and obviously one kept quiet at that time too.
Possibly you, dear reader, remember the speech of the Iranian president Ahmadinejad in the UNO in 2010, where he blamed the USA for involvements in the 9/11 attacks. The US delegation left the room and our media ranted and raved.
By the way, the third collapsed skyscraper in New York was WTC 7. You can watch the collapse here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mamvq7LWqRU
According to the official version there was a fire and then a pillar broke or something like that. Decide you whether this is correct or whether there was rather a professional explosion. Also in this case a common sense is sufficient to judge.