We Never Went to the Moon [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

This, simply speaking, is the most utterly ridiculous book ever written. I mourn the loss of the time I spent reading this.... thing. I will not even call this rambling snarl of images and text a book. That this man could shame the Apollo astronauts who went to the moon, the astronauts who gave their lives in the quest to get there, and the hundreds of thousands of Americans involved in sending us to the moon, is appalling.

To speak about the pseudo-scientific "evidence" that he presents is a waste of time. However, if this person's ideas have intrigued you, I will briefly refute three of the most popular ideas:

1) The flag is waving. We faked the Apollo program and shot it on a stage in Nevada.
The flag was stiffened with wire on the back to give it the apperance of waving, since there is no air on the Moon. Plans to do this can even be found in books written before we went to the Moon! Movies where the flag is actually waving only appear where the Apollo astronauts were struggling to stick the flag in the soil, and as a result, the thin wires vibrated.

2) There is no blast crater underneath the lunar module. We faked the Apollo program and shot it on a stage in Nevada.
There is no blast crater underneath the lunar module because, as can be found in countless books and websites, the lunar module's engine was shut down about five feet above the lunar surface. A long probe extended from the end of each footpad. When they touched the ground, the engine was shut down to prevent thrust from bouncing back from the surface and damaging the LM.

3) There are no stars in the pictures from the moon. We faked the Apollo program and shot it on a stage in Nevada.'
Have you ever tried to take a picture of a bright object and a dim one at the same time? The lunar cameras were designed to take pictures of the well-lit surface. The bright lunar surface and Earth washed out the stars. If you don't believe this, try to find stars on a moonlit night with snow cover or try to take a picture of a flashlight and a car headlight at the same time.

My favorite part of this book is when he says that while the astronauts were not on the Moon but in Las Vegas, they were visiting bars and the like. There is a full-page spread of an exotic dancer. No astronauts, just a dancer. Boy, I'm really convinced now!

Please, don't, don't, DON'T get this book. There are better things to do with your life, like planting hyacinths, re-inventing the law of gravity, or painting pictures of your relatives.

Bill Kaysing is the grandmaster of the moon hoax game. For the uninitiated, Kaysing and a happy band of "investigative journalists" believe that NASA faked all of the moon missions for one reason or another.

Ironically, this book began as a satire of the moon hoax theory. Kaysing was contracted to write an outlandish tome that would make fun of the theory, showing how ridiculous it is. But, the story goes, as he researched his quarry, he became convinced that NASA had indeed defrauded everybody and that the astronauts never got farther from earth than an airplane.

I won't go into Kaysing's "proof" of all this, because there is none. His creativity, however, can be amusing. Kaysing writes that while we thought we were watching moon walkers bound along the moon's surface 250,000 miles from earth, they were actually getting down in Las Vegas girlie bars. His evidence? He has a full-page spread of an exotic dancer. Of course, we don't see any astronauts, but the dancer sure is nice to look at.

Then there are the personal schedules. Kaysing gives us what he believes were the astronauts' activities on earth during the moon flights. One of my favorites is the "Guilt Therapy" sessions, obviously for whomever was suffering pangs from defrauding us all. Did these schedules come on official NASA letterhead? Were they developed by government officials? No, they came straight from Kaysing's imagination--but what the heck.

Bill gets ugly with his original editor. He reprints a letter from the woman where she tells him that his manuscript just isn't written very well, and therefore she cannot publish it. I guess Bill never received a rejection letter before, because he concludes that this is proof she is in cahoots with NASA to suppress his efforts to expose the truth.

It's tempting to say that this is so bad that it's good, but I can't, because there are people who actually believe this moon hoax garbage, and revere Kaysing for starting the whole thing. What is most annoying is the attitude of these folks. Their ignorance of basic logic, critical thinking and scientific concepts is outweighed only by their arrogance: they do not put forth their ideas as mere theory, but as fact. And when challenged, they respond with "NASA made that up," or "that cannot be proven," "the photos were faked" or "how do you know--were you there?" All the while, forgetting that they have never furnished one bit of creditable evidence. All they do is make up claims, and then put them forth as fact. (Kaysing once said that he knew a geologist who said the moon rocks actually came from earth. His friend's name? Credentials? Proof? Funny--that's not in the interview.)

This book was once the subject of an article in the Weekly World News--you know, the paper that features articles such as "Clinton catches Hillary in bed with space alien!" Kaysing applauded the News for their work on his behalf. Enough said.

The gist of Kaysing's pamphlet (as near I can make out - the writing style is not exactly fluid) is that NASA was under enormous pressure to produce a successful moon-shot before the Soviets. What Kaysing didn't know (no doubt due to his complete and utter lack of research) is that the Soviet moon program was dead and buried long before 1969 - and pretty much everyone at NASA and the CIA already knew that.

The Saturn V rocket was powered by a 1st stage module which consisted of 5 J-2 engines. (If you've ever been to KSC, you'll know how big these engines are. You could, quite literally, park a car inside a J-2 engine.) The Soviets, in their haste, made a crucial design error in their moon-rocket - the N1 (technically, the N1-L3). They built the first stage with 30 NK-33 engines (yup - that's *thirty* engines). They then discovered what the Americans already knew - controlling the thrust of multiple engines was difficult, but without even thrust from all engines, the rocket would be unstable, and would never fly. NASA had enough trouble working out a control system for 5 engines - the Soviets never had a chance of controlling thirty engines simultaneously. The technology to do so simply did not exist. The N1 program suffered a series of catastrophic failures during the mid to late 60's.

About a month before the Apollo 11 launch, seismic detectors all over Europe picked up a massive detonation originating in Russia. CIA spy planes later imaged the Baikonur launch complex, only to discover that the complex was almost completely destroyed.

Decades later, the Soviets admitted what the CIA already knew - the N1 had exploded on the launch pad, with massive loss of life. The Baikonur plant had to be abandoned - along with the N1 program.

NASA had all the time in the world to get the Apollo program safely off the ground - there was no longer any pressure to take shortcuts. The moon race was over long before Apollo 11 lifted off from KSC, and took its crew safely to the Moon.