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90 of 121 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Beavis and Butthead meets Enemy of the State, April 22, 2002
This review is from: Dark Moon: Apollo and the Whistle-Blowers (Paperback)
I should have guessed what I was in for when I read the authors' bios on the dust jacket and it states of one author "Unusually talented, Mary Bennett has developed the PSI abilities that have been with her since childhood, among which is the natural gift of remote viewing" and of the other, that he (David Percy) produced the video The face on Mars: The Avebury Connection. If I may add the observation that in my opinion the authors are so totally brainless that if they picked their nose they would tear the lining in their hat. So what's this book about then. Well this hopelessly inept manuscript is really about a colossal conspiracy theory that incorporates (among other things); faking the US moon landing(s), the sphinx, the entire US space program, the Soviet space program, the face on Mars, NASA, Stonehenge, crop circles,UFO's, alien autopsies and (you guessed it) the Roswell incident. Regrettably they missed Lee Harvey Oswald but presumably he will crop up in part 2. These dark and sinister conspirators are a group referred to, rather dramatically, as the "Masters of Infinity' and if you think you have heard this before, you are probably just confusing yourself with one of the many other conspirational groups that are in competition with each other to make our dull and boring lives even more unenjoyable. Although I am a skeptic by nature, even I enjoy a good conspiracy yarn if the ideas are sound enough but I need not have worried about this feeble epic as all of the arguments in this book are just plain silly. Had the authors compiled a tale based on NASA fudging a few photos they may have got away with it ,but they just couldn't leave well enough alone because after the fake moon landing scenario is explored they move directly into the a series of more and more idiotic exposes, including the following: The moon was placed in orbit around Earth deliberately (just who this was is not specified); the NASA space program was funded by Nazi gold acquired from Swiss banks; Stonehenge is actually a design for an interstellar spacecraft (unfortunately the instruction manual is still missing); the US and Russian space program engineers were in cahoots right from the beginning and (wait for it) that the Roswell crash was actually a fake UFO put there by aliens. The authors' demonstrate a complete lack of objectivity and freely distort facts and circumstances to suit their arguments which, when coupled with the loading of every statement with bias and innuendo, creates an annoying meter that eventually becomes so disruptive that the book is unreadable after only a few chapters. There are literally hundreds of ideas in this book that are completely irrational, like using the film `Independence Day' as a technical reference (it's true!) and claiming the fact that because virtually all the lunar astronauts are alive and in rude good health, this proves conclusively that they didn't go to the moon in the first place. While most of this work is just plain stupid, but there are some parts that are more idiotic than others - here's a few of my favorites: (I have abridged these to save space) Page 552: "The Speed of Light - Between the years of 1928-1945 the speed of light was found to be 3% slower than the (currently) accepted value...During that period many major historical events occurred...the Wall Street Crash, the great depression...the Spanish Civil War...the rise of the Nazis, the second World War, the development of the A Bomb... The activity of a significant portion of the world's population, taken together with the fluctuation of the speed of light, is truly worthy of note - especially when considered from the viewpoint of quantum physics." (I always knew the Nazis should have used the `Speed of Light' defense at Nuremberg). Pages 443 & 444: The authors claim that a physical upwelling of energy occurs at 19.47 degrees North latitude (over the Hawaiian islands) and then go on to comment "Does the reason that the Roswell Incident occurred in 1947 begin to make even more sense? Coupled with the fact that this event was precisely in the middle of 19 (point) 47!" As further confirmation they note that one of the Sphinx's paws is offset by 19.47 degrees. (No, the whole idea doesn't make any sense at all. Since the division of latitude into degrees, minutes and seconds is purely arbitrary and is only accepted by international convention as a convenience; coupled with the facts that the year 1947 is only valid in the Gregorian calendar [why not the Chinese, Hebrew, Islamic, Hindu, Mayan or ancient Egyptian calendars], and that ancient Egyptians didn't use degrees at all,instead they quoted angles (like the slope on the sides of a pyramid) in terms of a gradient e.g. 1:20, it seems clear to me that the linkage of all these facts is purely illusionary.) Page 500: The Face On Mars - Plate number 37 is the Viking 1976 photograph 170A13, which is low resolution and is one of the original pictures purporting to show the famous Martian face. Next to it is Plate 38, the MGS 1998 image of higher resolution and adjusted using new imaging techniques. Needless to say the new image looks exactly like what it is - a nondescript pile of rocks. Undaunted by this minor setback, our two optically challenged authors then declare "...we can see that indeed it is still a face." Having said all this, the book could be seen to have some value. If you are one of those people who, when late for work uses the excuse "the voices told me to stay home and clean my guns" or you believe that the CIA and FBI spend virtually all their waking hours just "messin' with my head" then this work will have your paranoia glands pumping at maximum pressure. There is enough conspiracy allegations inside this stultifying tome to make you suspicious of everyone on the planet for the rest of the millennium and then some. With a whacky combination of lamebrained ideas, irritating writing style, distorted facts and loopy logic, I personally found reading this book eye-glazingly painful, it's the sort of book that your analyst tells you to stop reading before it gives you some kind of mental breakdown. How these books get published at all is the greatest conspiracy theory yet to be investigated. Absolute nonsense.
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75 of 101 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
"Dark Moon" written and poorly researched by Dim Bulbs, February 18, 2003
This review is from: Dark Moon: Apollo and the Whistle-Blowers (Paperback)
The depth of research that went into this alleged book is best exemplified by a sidebar on page 256 that chides the US for not launching communications Satellites until 1972(!).Perhaps they were busy deveoping their PSI abilities when Telstar was placed into orbit in 1962 and beamed television pictures live from the US to the UK and vice versa. They probably never thought about the true meaning of the title to the Tornados and Ventures hit recordings of "Telstar" which also came out in 1962. I would challenge them to apply the same criteria they applied to the moon photos to some of Ansel Adams landscape photographs. ("Note the deep shadows in the foreground while the mountain is brilliantly lit. Adams obviously used a big honking flash blulb") Save your money and pray thatMary Bennet et al are abducted by aliens. As previously stated, the real conspiracy they expose is their intent to foist this trash on the public.
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80 of 110 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Silly - No Science in this book at all, November 25, 2002
This review is from: Dark Moon: Apollo and the Whistle-Blowers (Paperback)
About two years ago, fox (deliberately not capitalized) aired a TV show about how NASA had faked the moon landings and I couldn't believe that with the great wealth of scientific and engineering data available that the moon landings were faked. Since that time, I have become very interested in the Moon Hoax Conspiracy and have researched both sides of the arguments. As an engineer with twenty years of research, design and development experience in the areas of heat transfer, thermodynamics and fluid mechanics research, I felt that I could provide an unbiased scientific/engineering evaluation of at least some of the claims. One thing I should also add, unlike others who have probably provided a review without even having read this book, I can honestly say that I read this book from cover to cover (but boy was it hard to do). The first thing the reader should notice in the prologue is that the authors make no claims that moon landings did not occur, just that the official record is not correct. Quoting, "We are not claiming that astronauts have never walked on the Moon. Our personal interpretation of the evidence is that surrogate astronauts were employed. It is our further view that the famous named astronauts for example Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Ed Mitchell in all probability never left Earth orbit, ..." These statements clearly imply that NASA had to create an elaborate hoax of massive portions to fool all worked for NASA and the billion or so people who watched the Moon landings live. The reader should take note of one last thing; there is no opposing point of view from either NASA or the scientific/engineering community in this book, only non-scientific hogwash and deceptive writing (For an example, see the review provided by William O. Wood, a former NASA employee). Since others have provided a review of this book, especially the entertaining review by Ed Boyes from Perth, Australia, I will comment some sections that were not covered in other reviews. I think I should point out that on just about every other page I found something wrong or a complete misunderstanding of physics. I'll just cover a few. The first thing that struck me was how could a conspiracy of this magnitude, with 400,000 people and hundreds of companies working on the project, be maintained for over 30 years, without someone coming forward and saying that the landings were faked. There are no whistle-blowers named in the book, at most just a few interviews with people who worked on the project. In all the years since the last moon landing occurred, there has not even been a deathbed confession. The authors of this book believe or at least want the reader to believe that only a select few were involved in creating the faked landings; however, thousands of engineers and scientists received data on vehicle performance, such as pressure, temperature, flow rates, acceleration and many other parameters that also had to be faked. These data were compiled and evaluated by NASA and sent out to the appropriate engineers and scientists. You can still download these engineering evaluation reports from several NASA websites or occasionally pickup an original on Ebay. There are only two possible ways that NASA could have faked these engineering evaluation reports. First, NASA had an alternative of group of engineers and scientist that provided fake data to all parties involved, but I don't how they could fool the thousands who actually designed and built the hardware and software and of course survive over thirty years of scrutiny. The second possibility is that those thousands of people were in on the hoax too, but if that were the case, that would mean that a large number of people involved. On page 159 of the book, there is a photograph of the Surveyor 3 unmanned lunar lander probe on the lunar surface that was taken by one of the Apollo 12 astronauts. The authors state that the vehicle should be covered with dust that was generated by the Lunar Module as it lands; however, the picture they present only shows the probe's surfaces that are facing away from the exhaust plume. So of course, these surfaces are dust free. If the authors had examined ALL the Apollo 12 photographs, they would have seen that the surfaces, which faced the Lunar Module (LM), are covered with dust. Only presenting part of the story is Very Deceptive and Unprofessional!!! On page 156, the authors attempt to convince the reader that exhaust leaving the descent engine should have produced a blast crater. Again, the authors do a poor and incomplete job of researching this topic. First of all they quote William Woods who states that the temperature of the exhaust gasses is 5000F. It is important to note, by his own admission, William Woods is a communications expert, not a rocket engine designer. This is the temperature of the gasses within the combustion chamber, this is not the temperature of the gasses that will impinge of the lunar surface. One of principles behind a rocket engine is to convert the energy of a high temperature gasses into a velocity which in turn produces thrust. Therefore, as the hot gasses leave the combustion chamber, they cool off thereby producing a fast moving jet of gas. As a result, the temperature of the exhaust as it leaves the LM's engine is around 2700 F. While this temperature is still high enough to melt rock, it is a far cry from 5000F. Furthermore, there is no analysis to show that the short contact time for landing, around 5-10 seconds is enough time to melt the surface. For example, I can stick my hand in a hot oven for 10-15 seconds and I barely feel it, and my blood doesn't start boiling. Finally, if the authors had actually examined the historical record, they would have found that Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11 fame, actually states in the Mission Report that the LM did in fact actually singe the lunar surface. (You can get this report from several NASA websites, Apogee books, or sometimes it is for sale on ebay). On page 153 the authors state "NO EXHAUST = NO HYPERGOLIC FUELS = NOT A TRUE RECORD OF AN ACTUAL LUNAR LANDING." For those that don't know, hypergolic fuels are liquids that ignite instantaneously upon contact with each other. They have the advantage of not needing a sophisticated ignition system. There are many different types of hypergolic fuels and as with all combustion processes, the color of the flame or lack of any color depends of the materials being burned. Once again, the authors fail to provide a full account of all the relevant facts. As one can, by these three simple examples that occur in just six continuous pages of the book, that there are serious problems with book. Whether or not the authors were deliberately trying to deceive the reader, I cannot say. My final thought is save your money and a buy a book or a movie that is written by people who understand, science and engineering.
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