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Dark Mission: The Secret History of NASA

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Dark Mission by Richard C. Hoagland
Book Review by Dr. Ali Fant, WB5WAF, 12DE2007

This review is from the perspective of a former NASA Manned Spaceflight Controller, so it is more technical than expository. I first encountered Hoagland's claims through the NASA Technical Alert Briefing viewed by many controllers at the Johnson Space Center in 1989-90, found his claims creditable, and then discovered the briefing tape "disappeared" from the closed JSC Technical Library - from both the open card catalog and the closed shelf listing catalog. As a former university library page, I was shocked to find all references to the briefing tape we controllers viewed were gone two years later. When I began investigating the matter, I was told in no uncertain terms to cease any search for the missing library records.

Key Findings from Dark Mission:

1. NASA is a defense agency of the US Government per the original agency charter.

2. NASA withholds data of non-human intelligence for the good of human society per "Brookings."

3. Brookings Institution advised US in 1959 report "Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs" to beware social-economic chaos resulting from alien artifacts found on the Moon or Mars as the 1938 "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast traumatized America.

4. Arthur C. Clarke based the 1968 novel/film "2001: A Space Odyssey" on the Brookings Report.

5. According to Clarke's 1968 Playboy Magazine interview, Stanley Kubrick quoted from Brookings in the film. The following movie dialog being based upon the "Brookings Report":
"I'm sure you're aware of the extremely grave potential for cultural shock and social disorientation contained in the present situation, if the facts were prematurely and suddenly made public without adequate preparation and conditioning. Anyway, this is the view of the [Space] Council... there must be adequate time for a full study to be made of the situation before any thought can be given to making a public announcement. Oh yes ... as some of you know, the Council has requested that formal security oaths be obtained in writing from everyone who has any knowledge of this event." -- Dr. Heywood Floyd, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

6. As a Manned Spaceflight Controller for NASA's last publicly acknowledged military shuttle mission, I remember taking this formal security oath to safeguard information on such flights. However, unlike all other US Government security oaths I have had in my lifetime, the NASA oath was never "terminated." That is, I never went through a formal debriefing. I questioned this lack of a debrief with NASA Security at the time and was told the Security office was already disbanded and no debriefing would be held.

7. Hoagland's retelling of the "Monuments of Mars" matches the NASA Alert Briefing the controllers and I saw in 1989-90 in the now "non-existent" tape from the JSC Technical Library.

8. Hoagland's explanation of "hyperdimensional physics" is too complex to be included here. Suffice it to say that I have studied the data, examined the historical connections between Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925), James Maxwell (1831-1879), Nikola Tesla (1856-1943), Thomas E. Bearden (1930-), Bruce DePalma (1935-1997), and Harold E Puthoff (1936-); and found the evidence convincing.

9. The multiple-sourced, publicly available NASA photographs of the pyramids, buildings, and connecting roads between the structures on Mars demonstrate the presence of ancient peoples on the planet. This is old news to most space news junkies. Second Astronaut on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin even released a "fiction" book Encounter With Tiber (1996) incorporating many of these Mars details. Aldrin's book had a storyline about ancient lunar structures being discovered by Apollo Astronauts. Arthur C. Clarke (surprise!) even wrote the foreword to Aldrin's book. Because the story line is fiction, any revealed details would not violate Aldrin's formal security oath. This was the same approach Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) took with his book "proving" the revolution of the planets - the book was originally written as a work of fiction. Unfortunately, the Catholic Church did not appreciate the humor of Galileo putting the words of the Pope into the mouth of Simplico (the fool).

10. And, just in case you missed it, there is a connection between NASA's Werner Von Braun and the Disney World "Mission to the Moon" (later restaged as "Mission to Mars," and featured in the excellent Disney produced films "Forbidden Planet" and "Mission to Mars." The latter film's climax is the "Face On Mars." However, coincidences do not make conspiracies.

11. Hoagland does an excellent job detailing the "Operation Paper Clip" removal of Nazi Germany rocket scientists to Texas as detailed in the James Michener's book and 1985 mini-TV series "SPACE" - even including National Archives photographs of Von Braun in his black SS uniform alongside Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler. The occult history of Hitler is well documented by other authors, but Hoagland claims the occult influence extended from the SS to Von Braun to even the selection of NASA Mission Patches.

12. Hoagland sees a connection between Freemasonry (33rd degree), Von Braun\Disney production film "Man in Space," and the "fiction" film's representation of an alien base on the farside of the Moon. It is just another coincidence that CIA Remote Viewer Ingo Swann saw an operational alien base in the same location prior to 1998.

13. The spiritual aspects of UFOlogy, Adolf Hitler's birthday (April 20), 19.5 degrees location of planetary "hotspots" (on the Earth, the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, etc), the number 33 (Launch Complex 33, Shuttle Runway 33, 333 degrees from Egypt's Great Pyramid at Giza leads to JPL in California), and more and more numbers are overwhelmingly discussed by Hoagland in detail.

14. Finally, the greatest surprises in Hoagland's book are in the last ninety pages. These last few pages contain the explosive description of Lunar ruins, mechanical artifacts, and even an (I kid you not) ancient robot head not unlike the one shown in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Mark Twain episode of "Time's Arrow" when Data discovers his death lies in the past of San Francisco. The color photographs Apollo 17 Astronauts Eugene Cernan (1934-) and Harrison Schmitt (1936-) took of the robot head in Crater Shorty have recently been released to Italian websites by NASA. Italy? Hey, the Catholic Church is headquartered in that nation ... just another coincidence. Hoagland postulates that the mechanical head could have easily been transported back to Earth.

15. Other NASA photographs show crystal domes once covered many of the Maria on the Moon. Apollo 10 photographed at least one unbroken crystal dome, blacked-out in the official NASA print catalog, but if ordered by anyone today shows the intact dome. Since the 1990s, many researchers are specifically ordering these "black-out" lunar catalog prints to be stunned by what actually arrives in the mail. Hoagland publishes many of the photographs.

16. Remember when Apollo 17 deliberately crashed the ascent stage into the Moon to measure the moonquakes using previously implanted seismic monitors? Such a moonquake map would show the placement of the newly revealed structures on the NASA photographs. However, after more than thirty years, the results still remain classified - on a civilian scientific Moon mission.

17. Hoagland's book is having an effect on NASA today. Last year, NASA engineers suddenly "found" high-quality TV recordings of the Apollo 11 mission in Australia. Then, high quality "close-to-the-original" Apollo photographs were released to international public websites detailing the shattered crystal domes on the Moon. Next, NASA began posting thousands of never-before-seen "best" scanned pictures. This year (2007), NASA released for the first time the truly spy-camera quality photographs of the "Face on Mars" - showing details down to 11 inches. The vehicle and wheel tracks of the Opportunity Rover are clearly visible, as is the Face.

18. Living astronauts refuse to comment on much of Hoagland's expose citing various reasons. Apparently, even the Coast-to-Coast Radio Show scheduled a "debate" between Hoagland and an astronaut, but the astronaut cancelled the engagement at the last minute.

19. Twice flown astronaut, war hero, and Senator John Glenn requested a March 2001 appearance on the television NBC comedy Frasier. In the unusual episode, Glenn makes some very-unfunny comments directly to the viewing audience (out of earshot of Frasier and Roz) that are significance enough to repeat here: "Back in those glory days, I was very uncomfortable when they asked, you know, were you alone out there? We never gave the real answer, and yet we see things out there, strange things, but we know what we saw out there. And we couldn't really say anything. The bosses were really afraid of this, they were afraid of the `War of the Worlds' type stuff, and about panic in the streets. So, we had to keep quiet. And now we only see these things in our nightmares, or maybe in the movies, and some of them are pretty close to being the truth."

20. Astronaut Neil Armstrong began his highly emotional address on 20JL1994 at the White House with the statement that he compared himself to a parrot - saying only what he had been told to say. Armstrong ended his strange remarks with the phrase "truth's protective layers."

21. Astronaut Alan Bean draws his colorful Moonscapes paintings with diagonal markings perhaps to show the presence of shattered glass domes fragments.

22. Don't be too hard on the astronauts. I know former NASA employees who have had their lives thrown into turmoil by losing retirement pensions or having unexpected deaths.

23. Dark Mission lacks an index and perhaps the second edition will include one. I am reminded of the United States Central Intelligence Agency selling their entire data collection on Remote Viewing (on CD-ROMS) without an index. An index would have made it too easy for someone, somewhere to censor Hoagland's book.

24. Recent Moon News: Japan SELENE arrived Moon 05OC2007, China CHANGLE arrived Moon 27NV2007, India CHANDRAAYAN to arrive Moon 2008, US LRO to arrive Moon 2008, Russia Lunar Rover to arrive Moon 2010, and US GRAIL to arrive Moon 2011.

25. After thirty years of no manned missions to the Moon, why the sudden race for governments to return there? Even in the midst of a major war in the Middle East, governments are making a decision to return to the Moon as soon as possible. Check out the recently released Apollo photographs on the web and decide for yourself.

I've read almost everything there is on the subject of artificial structures on Mars and the Moon, from Hoagland, Rux, Sitchin, Hancock, Carlotto and Tonnie to even "Who Built the Moon?'' by Knight and Butler."Dark Mission'' takes that body of knowledge one step forward by speculating that NASA, essentially a government defense agency, could be responsible for hiding firm evidence about these artificial structures from the American public. Although I'm not as convinced by the photographic evidence given in the book, I'd have to admit that there MAY be things there that are artificial. For this, Hoagland and Bara are to be applauded. The science relating to hyperdimensional physics might be a bit difficult to follow (for greater depth I recommend "The Monkey and the Tetrahedron'' by David Jinks) but who's to say that it's wrong? To me, the most mind-blowing assertion has to be that JFK might have been assassinated because he had invited the Russians to participate with NASA in sending a man to the moon. And NASA's odd behaviour and delays in releasing Mars images is arguably telling. So yes, I'd say this book is a revealing and useful addition to the conspiracy, ET genre. My gripe however, is with the frequency with which the reader has to suffer punctuation and spelling errors, plus Hoagland's annoying habit of ITALICISING words or using "inverted commas" in every other sentence. The Boston University geologist who weather-dated the Sphinx is Robert Schoch and not Schock, the WW2 German missile testing facility is given as Mittelwerk first and then Mittelwork later then Mittelwerk again. "Words'' are suddenly "placed'' in inverted commas, SOMETIMES with only opening "commas but without closure. Italicising is so commonplace that it BECOMES tiresome. To be fair, I should have known - Hoagland's "Monuments of Mars'' is exactly the same and it irritated me no end when I read that book. You begin to wonder "why'' there is a NEED to keep PUNCTUATING sentences like "this'' and each time you come across an example, you have to re-read the sentence to make sure you get the intended meaning. Very tiresome indeed. So even though I think Hoagland and Bara have undoubtedly something intriguing to sell, I'd have to minus two stars for the annoyance factor.

Has the American space agency, with its fine legacy of putting a man on the moon, been lying to us? Does its mission have a darker purpose than pure science and has it made potentially explosive discoveries in its exploration of the solar system?

I've been interested in Richard Hoagland's work for a number of years, since he took on the cause of the "Face on Mars" and I've enjoyed exploring his website (enterprisemission.com), with its fascinating theory of hyperdimensional physics and his evidence that there are ruins of a civilization in the Cydonia region of Mars. Hoagland may sound like a nut but he puts forth an interesting and at times, convincing, case. Along with colleague Mike Bara, he has finally put it all together in this book, which persuasively argues that NASA is not quite what it seems to be. The book is liberally illustrated, with NASA's own photos along with others.

Let's get right to what Hoagland alleges in this book. While he's best known for his theories about Mars, Hoagland also tackles NASA's missions to the moon. He claims that the astronauts found ruins on the moon, specifically evidence of domes that once covered large portions of the surface. He backs this up with photos showing strange lines and markings in the sky over portions of the moon. Some of these photos come from a former NASA employee, Ken Johnston, who had worked at NASA as a test pilot and later was in charge of cataloging and storing photos from the moon flights. Johnston was shocked to be told one day by his superiors to destroy "all the copies of the original lunar photography" from the Apollo program. Instead, Johnston kept a set of the photos. He later contacted Hoagland and showed him the prints (mostly taken by the astronauts with a Hasselblad camera). Many of the other images (all of the Mars pictures) are digital, and the arguments about the "raw data" are highly technical. The arguments as to the validity of these photos relates to the types of processes and manipulation you can perform with digital images, but it comes down to this: it is fairly easy, with the aid of good photo editing software, to alter images to remove anything you don't want anyone to see. Is that what NASA has done with its Mars images?

I kept thinking that if our astronauts had found evidence of previous visitations and habitation on the moon, wouldn't someone eventually say something? Hoagland contends that there have been hints from the men who went to the moon, but that NASA would have many means of keeping them loyal - and quiet. He cites the Brookings Report, written in 1959 to comment on the implications of exploring space, which reported that there was a near-certainty that such exploration would find intelligent life. The report recommended that such findings should be kept from the public, to avoid disruption to society, and Hoagland contends that that is what NASA has done. He even states that the astronauts were hypnotized when they got back to earth to help erase the memory of some of what they saw on the moon.

What about Mars? Hoagland believes the Cydonia region is full of artificial constructions, and he provides photo evidence. The Face is the best-known of the constructions, but is certainly not the only piece of evidence. And, of course, NASA has done everything it can to dissuade the public from the idea that it is actually a face. They have always dismissed it as "a trick of light and shadow." We now have pictures of Mars from a number of successful robot journeys to the Red Planet, and we have more photos of Cydonia and the Face, and the newer pictures tend to confirm the earlier hypotheses that these constructions are artificial. Many of the shapes, and the geometry of their placement, mimic monuments on Earth; pyramids, for example. This book does not get into speculation as to who built the Martian monuments or how long ago that might have been. But Hoagland's earlier book, Monuments of Mars, does speculate about connections between those monuments and ancient ruins on Earth. Another excellent book about Mars that examines the possibility of a Mars-Earth link is Graham Hancock's book, The Mars Mystery: The Secret Connection Between Earth and the Red Planet Could the ancient Martians have been us - could human beings have come to Earth from a dying planet, Mars? Could they have left messages in the monuments they constructed on Mars about our human ancestry?

Dark Mission provides us with yet another theory about the assasination of President John F. Kennedy, who initiated the program to send men to the moon. There is solid evidence that Kennedy wanted to work with the Soviets on a space program. While the popular story is that the "space race" pitted the US against our cold war enemy, the Soviet Union, that may not have been what Kennedy intended. JFK did not live to see his dream fulfilled, and the US won the race to the moon, but could the idea of working with what President Reagan years later called "the evil empire" have been sufficient motivation for someone to kill JFK? Perhaps the inclusion of this material on the Kennedy assasination will simply lead to more ridicule for Hoagland's overall theories, but it seems to me to be at least as good a motive as the others that have been suggested (the Mafia, the Cubans, the CIA, etc).

I was a huge JFK fan, so I am not offended by Hoagland's picture of him as the inspiring leader who wanted peace, not war. But I have a little more trouble with his notion that NASA is obsessed with rituals dating back to ancient civilizations and kept alive by secret societies. Are we really to make something out of the fact that many top NASA officials have been Masons (as were many astronauts, including Buzz Aldrin who brought a masonic flag to the moon)? How about the influence of Nazis, people like Werner Von Braun (and the book builds a case that he WAS a Nazi)? Does NASA really time its launches to coincide with ritual dates? I can't say they don't, but it does sound a bit crazy.

I enjoyed reading this book, even though it left me back where I started from - thinking Richard Hoagland has some interesting ideas that are worth a serious look, but not being totally convinced either. I wish the book had an index so I could quickly find information I want to check with other sources.

It is very sad to me that people are questioning whether the moon landings ever actually happened. That is sheer ignorance, but might serve NASA's purposes as disinformation in case too much comes out about what they really found on the lunar surface. Denying we went to the moon is like denying the Holocaust. As a generation that has no memory of those events take their place as world leaders, such ignorance can be easily spread. It totally stops the REAL questions we should be asking. Like these: Why haven't we gone back to the moon? What did NASA really find there? And if we do go back (as NASA is planning), will they start telling us the truth about what they find?

This book is rife with grammatical and spelling errors, which to me is just unprofessional and unacceptable in a published, $25 book. My reaction to Hoagland's writing is that he is an ego-maniac because he thinks that everyone is out to foil his "research" (even other Cydonia research colleagues that disagreed with him) and that his "research" scared THEM so much, that THEY would purposely try to destroy a $300M mission to Mars. Even when NASA gives him the data he wants, there's a conspiracy because it was too convenient and they are trying to confuse the public. NASA is definitely damned if you do and damned if you don't in Hoagland's eyes. His arguments are weak and rely very much on interpretation on the personal level and on flimsy coincidences. His geometric 19.5 deg angles (which he highly focuses on in the book) drawn on images of Cydonia can be any angle from 15-21 deg depending on where you choose to have vertices on the "Face" and the "D&M Pyramid" (pg. 388). He mocks other Cydonia research teams because they had totally "absurd scientific position(s)" that weren't at all different than any position he had earlier in the book; just in this case he saw it a different way ("Letters from Mars", pg. 312).

Here is one big inaccuracy that highlights the either misleading or just incompetent nature of Hoagland's arguments: Figure 4-45 on page 198 (also repeated as color Figure 6). The actual graph shows the ABSORBANCE vs. the wavelength of light for a gold film, yet Hoagland just renames the graph as the "Gold Film Spectral TRANSMISSION Curve". Absorbance and transmission are two opposite phenomena (i.e. the higher the absorbance of a material (A), the lower its transmission (T), specifically A = log(1/T) ). Hoagland states that NASA "claims" that a gold coating is used on the astronauts' glass visor on their helmets to protect astronauts from UV light. Well, this is exactly what the gold coating does as it has high absorbance in the UV range (i.e. low transmission of UV light). But because Hoagland incorrectly interpreted the graph as "Transmission", he argues that the gold coating actually "enhances" UV light to allow the astronauts to better see the UV scattered light off of the Moon's "glass ruins". Hoagland can't even get basic scientific terminology right; or he is being deliberately misleading. However, I believe he just doesn't understand, because if he was trying to be misleading he wouldn't be too smart for leaving the absorbance axis labeled that way in the published figure.

This book, while having some interesting pictures and somewhat entertaining explanations (as in, "what is this guy smoking?"), was a complete waste of time. It left me frustrated, because I've seen so many people willing to take Hoagland's evidence as hard scientific fact; I fear for the intellectual future of society. But, if you're the die-hard conspiracy believer, nothing I can point out will stop you from your belief that "they are hiding something". As they say, you can't convince a conspiracy theorist that the sky is blue, even if they were looking straight up on a clear, sunny day. Please, just don't drag respectable science down.

I found this book to be a very interesting read. The authors offered some unique theories about things found on the Moon and what may some day be found on Mars. I did find some parts of the book bogged down with technical descriptions and explanations that, at times, was hard to follow-unless you are a NASA scientist. I was also a little disappointed in the quality of some of the photos as many were presented in low quality black and white. However, I definitely enjoyed the book and would recommend it to anyone interested in conspiracy theories about space. It really makes you wonder just what they did find up there.

XXXXX

Consider the following:

(1) The "Face" on planet Mars is an artificial structure and the "face" is part of a city on Cydonia Planitia (a region of Mars) .
(2) Numerous objects surrounding the landing sites of the Mars Exploratory Rovers (called Spirit and Opportunity that are still exploring Mars) are, in fact, pieces of Martian machinery.
(3) There are large semi-transparent structures constructed of glass on the moon's surface.
(4) The twelve moon-walkers "have had their memories selectively edited" so that they no longer remember seeing evidence of a lunar civilization.
(5) The evidence of a advanced civilization that once existed on the moon and Mars is being suppressed by NASA.

The above five claims are just some of the tamer claims (there are many, some of which really (I mean really) become outlandish) that you will find in this book, authored by Richard Hoagland (perhaps best known as "principal investigator" of the Internet site called the "Enterprise Mission", an organization that examines NASA data for the "possibility of archaeological ruins on Mars and the Moon") and Michael Bara (an aerospace structural engineer).

(For those that don't know, the name "Enterprise" was used for the name of the spaceship or "star ship" in the 1960's science fiction television show "Star Trek." The title of this review is actually a popular phrase from that TV show. Montgomery "Scotty" Scott was the Enterprise's Chief Engineer.)

Each chapter of this book has black and white images or pictures at the end of the chapter. The chapter's narrative indicates when the reader is to look at a particular picture. I counted over 200 captioned images.

As well, in the middle of the book are nearly thirty color captioned images.

As far as the pictures go, I had trouble seeing what the authors saw unless I used a heavy dose of imagination. These pictures reminded me of a Rorschach test (after the psychiatrist who had this last name) or more generally an inkblot test where the person looking at the blot states freely what he or she sees. I predict that hardcore science fiction readers and/or those that cannot distinguish between science and science fiction will adore reading this book.

I also noticed that all the images were manipulated (enhanced, filtered, etc.) in some way. If you manipulate photos enough, you're bound to come up with something interesting.

With respect to the main narrative, I noticed that it was filled with assumptions, beliefs, a jumping to conclusions, etc. Conspiracy theories abound in this book. Thus, conspiracy addicts should also enjoy reading it.

It also seems to me that Hoagland "lost it" in the last few pages of the book's epilogue. To see why, you're going to have to read the book. (Hint: the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter probe with its high resolution camera did not reveal in images released in April 2007 what Hoagland expected.)

Finally, before I even began reading the main narrative of this book, I first read Hoagland's brief biography on the last page. (Hoagland seems to be the principal author.) There were things that I read in it that didn't seem right. I checked his credentials on the Internet. My suspicions were confirmed!! There are significant problems with his credentials.

In conclusion, if you are either a conspiracy addict and/or a hardcore science fiction reader, then you should thoroughly enjoy this book.

Review written star date 21831.8

(first published 2007; introduction; 12 chapters; epilogue; main narrative 540 pages; endnotes; acknowledgements; about the authors)

<<Stephen Pletko, London, Ontario, Canada>>

XXXXX

I find the conspiracy reviews that say this book has no proof to be absurd. This is an excellent book with examples to back up the theories and problems concerning Nasa secrecy and the mars missions in particular. The physics of Hoagland makes more sense than what was taught in all my college physics courses. Anyone who says there is no proof in this book either didn't read or didn't understand the book. Just the Brookings Institute report and the way Nasa stonewalled on Cydonia proves they are hiding something. If there is a possibility that there are structures on Mars then why would Nasa not want to take better pictures of the area. If nothing else, you would think they would like to disprove all the scientists who propose that these are not natural formations.

The photos we do have are directly from Nasa and even they admitted (finally) that they had lied when saying they had later photos of Cydonia which did not show the structures. If it's a conspiracy to think the government or defense agencies might hide something, then so be it. Anyone who believes the government does not keep secrets from the people has not studied history. Just look to Gulf of Tonkin, Nixon, Iran-Contra, Operation Northwoods, etc. A conspiracy is just a secret plan between 2 or more people. To say this never happens is ridiculous.

This is a ZERO star book, but Amazon doesn't give that option. DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK. Better to get a latte and relax with News of the World or some other tabloid. It's not even as believable that the trash at the supermarket checkout!

As a scientist (geologist, geochemist, etc.), I was sent an advance copy of Dark Mission to review for a prestigious national publication. Even though it cost me the fee I would have received for writing the review, I convinced the publication's editor that the book was worthless and not deserving of any review.

I have never received any funding of any kind from NASA.

ALL of Hoagland and Bara's claims about crystalline structures on the moon are spurious. First and foremost, the structures they describe could not survive the continuous impacts of micrometeorites on the lunar surface. There is no atmosphere around the Moon which can protect the surface from the high-speed impacts of space debris, and supposedly abandoned "crystalline towers" which Hoagland and Bara claim are visible in the photos they published in their book would be rapidly pulverized.

The multitude of geochemical analyses which have been conducted on lunar materials by scientists located in laboratories all over the world show that silica (the material that makes glass) is deficient in lunar rocks. If large amounts of manufactured glass had been found on the moon's surface, it would have shown up in the numerous published geochemical analyses of the lunar regolith. Thousands of researchers around the world received and analyzed lunar samples, and if such an anomalous amount of non-natural silica found, the results would have been published and debated in the independent scientific literature.

The irregular pyramidal forms that the authors claim are artificial pyramids in fact are undoubtedly of natural occurence, representing on the Moon remnant impact features (most probably central uplift features) and on the Mars possible glacial features (cirques and similar kinds of structures that one can see in the Alps, in Arctic and Antarctic mountains, and even on Mt. Rainier).

Again, the morphology of geological features is an arcane subject, unfamiliar to the general public. The features of impact structures both on the Moon (where there is no atmosphere or ocean) and on Earth (where both atmosphere and ocean influence the remnant structures of impact features) have been studied intensively. Studies have included laboratory simulations of bullets hitting targets, rocks dropped on sand, and many other experimental models. These studies clearly show that the range of impact features is dependent on the direction of impact (straight up versus at an angle), on the size of the impactor, on the velocity of the impactor, and on the composition (a rocky meteorite vs. a comet, for example).

Anyone who wishes to learn more about this research (which has been conducted over the past 40-50 years) can type "impact structures" into their internet search engine and find more than enough information, including hundreds of references in scholarly journals which are entirely independent of NASA.

Similarly, anyone who wishes to know how the lunar surface has changed over time can type "lunar regolith" into their search engine and be rewarded with dozens of websites and journal titles. Regolith is the "soil" that results from the continuous impact of micrometeorites which reduces the surface matter of a planetary body to a fine-grained sediment.

AT BEST, the material presented in this book can only be called PSUEDOSCIENCE. The features which Hoagland and Bara claim to see in their Mars photos are entirely spurious and frankly rather irrational. In photos of the Martian surface, they claim to see geometrical relationships among these supposed "pyramids" that they claim are proof that the geometry is intentional -- that is, that the structures they connect were built by constructive beings. In fact, the connections they claim to show are meaningless. When one removes all those lines, a sensible geologists sees natural glaciated and/or remnant impact peaks and rims blanketed or partially buried in regolith. That is all they are. The photos do NOT show "buried ancient cities". Only the most desperately deluded can imagine that.

As an independent scientist, I have read dozens of NASA histories and there is much about NASA that can and should be criticized. It is an agency in dire need of fundamental reform. However, there is no secret Nazi hierarchy within NASA that has driven the agency's programs. Nor is there a conspiracy related to Orion or any other distant star assemblage. The lengths to which Hoagland and Bara stretch to make their links between this photo and that photo are in the end hilarious to the scientifically informed reader. The book was, in my opinion, so ridiculous, with so much that is false, inaccurate, and utterly mythological, citing "proofs" that are so fantastic and so unsupported by real data, that no one could or should take it seriously. It is not worth spending money on, and it is certainly not worth the paper and ink required to produce it.

For those whose desire for conspiracies needs factual support, I recommend (highly) two recent books on NASA history:
The Man Who Ran the Moon: James E. Webb, NASA, and the Secret History of Project Apollo
Challenger Revealed: An Insider's Account of How the Reagan Administration Caused the Greatest Tragedy of the Space Age
Both of these books provide MORE than enough factual scandal to keep NASA reformers productively busy for years to come.

There is a strange community of people who desperately want to believe that space aliens have visited the Solar System and Earth in the past. This belief is related to their own psychological needs and is not supported by any scientific facts.

My evaluation of Dark Mission is based on being forced to read it after being assigned to review it. It was very hard not to gag. My professional critical conclusion was that it was so false that it was not worthy of a review in a serious publication. It is bunk -- bunkity bunk bunk -- of the worst sort.

This book, if one has an open mind, is very informative. Unfortunately, a large number of the pictures in the book are not of high quality. There is however a section of good color pictures.

On the other side of the coin, it IS possible to verify for yourself what the authors are saying by looking up and inspecting the reference images on line. I have done this in a few cases and found the analysis of the authors to be accurate. Perhaps getting readers to check things out for themselves is the reason that many included pictures are not of high quality.

I must say though that some of the claims brought forth in the book seem somewhat difficult to agree with. This is in regard to gigantic dome structures on the surface of the moon. I say this not because it is difficult to accept that there are artificial structures on the moon, but because some of the authors' examples seem as if they must be so gigantic ( many miles high and dozens of miles across ) as to bring questions to mind regarding their possible usefulness and possible purpose at those sizes.

The book is very well documented and written.

I picked up this book solely to see the much touted pictoral "evidence" of structures on the moon, etc.... and I have to say, the bulk of the images (as with other books on this topic I've seen in the past) are still very unconvincing. A few of the images are marginally interesting, but it's hard to say if what you're seeing is 'something' or just image compression/wishful thinking/the standard digital artifacts you get when messing with filters and contrast in photoshop, etc.

Don't get me wrong - I find this genre vastly entertaining, own a large library of similar titles, and I enjoyed some of the other material in the book (notably the improbably hysterical level of animosity aimed at NASA - very funny stuff)... but the images in this volume do not make it worth the price of purchase, in my opinion. I gave my copy away immediately... deemed not keepable as a reference.

Of disappointing note was how much time was wasted playing the martyr card and slagging other writers in this field... a common trait in alternative literature, unfortunately. This comes off as mean-spirited and nakedly paranoid. Note to authors - just resist that temptation. It doesn't help your case. Ever.

Overall, I'd advise anyone who is not already convinced on this topic to get this one from a library.