Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Moons Over My Hammy


By nature I'm not really a conspiracy guy. I feel most conspiracy theories involve a level of cooperation and strategic planning that don't coincide with our inherent sense of greed and selfishness. That said, anyone who believes we landed on the moon in 1969 is downright delusional.

Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of NASA's first manned orbit of the Earth. I saw it mentioned twice on CNN during the day, and both times the segment ended with the proclamation that these orbits paved the way for us to land on the moon seven years later. It awakened my outrage, which to be fair, is never slumbering too deeply. I raged at the television: SEVEN YEARS! You're telling me we went from a guy circling the earth three times in a tin can at low orbit to putting all kinds of roving equipment on the moon in seven years?

Things don't even move that fast today and we have computers that would make those geeks in the '60s loose their minds. It took nearly seven years for Chevy to get the Volt up and running and it's still barely up and running. Back then we couldn't make a car able to get to the nearest grocery store on less than a tank of gas, but we could send people to the moon? And speaking of that, I don't recall seeing that rover spewing black clouds of diesel.

I don't want to get into all the photographic evidence, of which there is plenty. If you're interested, here's a site to check out. Now in fairness, this is a site refuting the conspiracy claims. But if you read the refutes, they sound as if he's reaching for as many straws as the conspiracy theorists. Personally I think you can boil this one down to common sense...did I mention SEVEN YEARS.

My position is that we had everything to gain from a public relations point of view to get to the moon first. Even on CNN yesterday, they mentioned how the moon landing ultimately lead to a victory in the Cold War (their words, and something I've been saying for years). Now I ask you what's more likely, that we had the technology to go to the moon or the technology to make a really convincing movie?

No comments:

Post a Comment