Alien Abductions: Idiocy of the Worst Kind

November 06, 2009

Today the much-hyped film, “The Fourth Kind,” debuts in theaters with a predictable poster of a pair of other-worldly eyes staring out.

Sci-fi film buffs will remember Steven Spielberg’s sappy 1977 film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” where flying saucers outfitted with disco lights buzz lone cars and farmhouses, and in a messianic ending aliens carry a few chosen people skyward in a “mothership” that looks more like a chandelier.

“The Fourth Kind” goes one step further and supposedly presents “real footage” clips from alleged alien abduction cases – the so-called “fourth kind” of encounter with extraterrestrials. 

New Rocket Ready To Go Nowhere

October 23, 2009

Like someone who just bought a new car, earlier this week NASA proudly rolled out its next generation spaceship, the Ares I-X. The spindly rocket looks anemic compared to its predecessors: the space shuttle, Saturn V, and Saturn IB.  But at a height of 310 feet it casts a long pencil-like shadow over the Kennedy Space Center causeway.

Ironically, the Augustine Commission report that formally came out this week casts a black eclipse shadow over this arrow-craft that is scheduled for its maiden test flight in just a few days. 

The commission will give a series of options to the White House for President Obama to consider for redirecting NASA’s future human space effort.

When We’ll Really Nuke The Moon

October 14, 2009

The dust is still settling from the public blowup over NASA’s LCROSS experiment to go prospecting for water on the moon by crashing a rocket booster into it last Friday. The impact was a PR flub. There were no dramatic images for any evidence of the smashup.

Nevertheless, I have subsequently received a few angry e-mails from people who are incensed that we would harm Earth’s only natural satellite.

The tersest note was from a retired Marine:

“Stop bombing the fu*king moon.”

In a following e-mail he was more philosophical: 

“Yes, worlds are being destroyed every second in our timeless universe, but through natural processes of creation and recreation . . .”  

If I apply that logic, then we should do nothing in the future to deflect or destroy any Earth-bound asteroid, but instead let nature take its, er, natural course  in “recreating” life on the surface of an incinerated Earth.

Bootprints On The Moon

September 07, 2009

Last month a reader left a comment on this site wondering where the “Apollo artifacts” were that I said NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) would photograph.

Well this is the coolest picture to date from LRO that captures the activities of Apollo astronauts at a moon-landing site. It is littered with hardware! 

But even more intriguing, we see the astronauts' footprints. From LRO's altitude they look like the humble little tracks of small birds across newly fallen snow. 

LRO flew over the flat lava plain in western Oceanus Procellarum where Apollo 12 landed on November 14, 1969. The unmanned Surveyor 3 landed there two years earlier.

Mars or Bust By 2035?

July 27, 2009

When I was a kid I loved those board games that let you take a shortcut to get to the “finish” square first. Everybody's favorite is: “Go directly to Go and collect $200,” from Monopoly.

An interplanetary shortcut was implied last week when NASA’s new administrator, astronaut Charles Bolden, said he would like to see humans venture beyond the moon and onto other destinations in the solar system. The 62 year-old administrator said that he’d like to see humans on Mars within his lifetime.

Could we get to the Red Planet in the next 25 years? I’d say only if we sidestep spending all the time and resources to set up a base on the moon, i.e. “go, past moon, go directly to Mars.”

One Giant Leap Into Past Glory

July 20, 2009

Of all the Apollo 11 decadal anniversaries, this one is particularly made poignant with the passing of the "journalist’s journalist" Walter Cronkite. Alongside astronaut Wally Schirra, he shared our collective excitement about the historic Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969. 

I remember camping out on the living room couch, like waiting for Super Bowl, to watch the landing actually happen. Cronkite was like having an uncle in the living room sharing the intimacy and wonder of what was unfolding in real time. I needed this because the only real person in the living room was my widowed mother’s boyfriend, who did nothing but curse out the landing as a waste of his taxed blue–collar wages.

Quick Guide To Answering Moon Cover-up Allegations

July 16, 2009

With the Apollo 11 moon landing anniversary just a few days away, I’m cringing to see if some sensationalistic cable TV news outlets drag out some space-age Inspector Clouseau to claim that the moon landings were faked on a motion picture soundstage. 

This conspiracy fantasy is far from new. It was dramatized in the B-grade 1978 film Capricorn One and parodied in the 1971 James Bond flick Diamonds are Forever.

The moon conspiracy idiocy has a life – where else – on YouTube and assorted whacko websites.  The ringleader of the current crop of loonies is Tennessee filmmaker Bart Sibrel. In 2002 Apollo 11’s Buzz Aldrin punched him in the nose, after Sibrel called the ex-fighter pilot a “coward, a liar and a thief.” The police did not file charges against Aldrin. Call it “street justice.”

Do We Still Have the Right Stuff?

July 13, 2009

We went to the moon 40 years ago flying by the seat of our pants.

The years from 1968 -1972 to will be remembered as the pioneering days when fearless humans barnstormed the moon in spacecraft comparatively as fragile as the biplanes of WWI. The Apollo lunar lander was so lightweight that an astronaut could kick a hole in the side of it, if not careful.

The Apollo Command Module navigated to the moon using a high-tech sextant. The landing computer on the Lunar Module -- far less powerful than an Iphone – was so overwhelmed with tasks it kept rebooting during the critical moment Eagle’s descent on July 20, 1969. Commander Neil Armstrong, who must have been born without a nervous system, adroitly took manual control to skirt by a dangerous crater and boulder field, with just a few seconds of propellant left.

Space Trekkers Live in Binary Planetary Systems

July 05, 2009

For years I’ve hypothesized that binary planetary systems exist, and that these are the places to go looking for space-faring civilizations.  By binary planetary system I mean a pair of gravitationally bound stars, each with its own independent family of worlds.

There could be habitable planets around each star in the binary system, if the stars are far enough apart. If technological civilizations independently evolve around both stars, they could actually travel across space and visit each other. This would be a powerful motivation to build the fusion-powered rockets needed to travel back and forth within a reasonable amount of time.

Astronomers have now found such as system, but we’ll have to wait another 4 billion years before an alien civilization manifests itself. Why? Because the double star is just a few millions of years old, and if Earth is any example, it takes a long time to evolve intelligent beings.

Government Hides Alien Moon Base!

July 01, 2009

Now that I've got your attention . . .

Every time I take a stab at debunking pseudo-science topics like UFOs and the 2012-doomsday predictions, it’s like kicking a hornet’s nest, judging from some of the comments posted here.

Some of these counterpoint arguments from readers are tied to references in clips on YouTube (truly a cesspool of idiocy) where self-styled “experts” try and sound authoritative in front of the camera.  More often than not these "whistle-blowers"  assert having special knowledge about  “government conspiracies.” They’ve discovered the Internet is a bottomless pit of people who feel powerless and suspicious of everything. Healthy skepticism is good, which means followers should not unequivocally swallow the tall tales from self-proclaimed "insiders."

Occasionally I’m going to give out a Pants-on-Fire award to those individuals who make outrageous claims that are simply incredulous.  Either they were duped or have endless other motives: selling books, videos, articles, going on a lecture circuit, getting onto radio shows or CNN’s Larry King Live (he loves UFO tall-tales), or simply bolstering their sense of self importance.