I agree with some of what you say, but I think you are astray of the history a bit.
LBJ was JFK's "go-to" man on the space program. JFK gets the credit, but LBJ was the guy behind the scenes making it happen. To the benefit of Texas, of course (Johnson Space Flight Center). And of other states having major NASA facilities. Hard to predict what Kennedy would have done in the future. The Moon landing took place when Kennedy would no longer have been in office, even if he had a 2nd term. There's no reason to think things would have been otherwise than they were: the public support was not there, the Vietnam War was ramping up, and budgets were tight.
The government didn't fund the space program very well, and "lacks the will" to promote off-world manned exploration of the Moon? Says who? Not the majority of Americans, or they would have made their preferences known to Congress. But they didn't. At the end of the Apollo program, about 1972, NASA made a transition from a mission-driven organization to a self-perpetuating organization. As part of that, they kicked von Braun upstairs (perhaps the most visionary man in favor of exploration) and fired his team from Peenemunde. The Shuttle program and the ISS can easily be viewed as extravagant technical exercises to keep NASA "rice bowls" full and its employees engaged, while spreading the largess around the nation. Why would a bureaucracy go back to a mission-driven posture, when that carries the risk of failure? We can thank Trump for kicking them off their stools, and Musk for providing external competition.
There was never any competition between spy satellites (inaugurated by Eisenhower) and the NASA programs. Bush didn't do anything special. He continued a successful observation program that had been in existence since the late 1950s.
I don't know what you mean about "outright public deception." If you are talking about "climate change" propaganda, I can agree with you. Otherwise, you are barking up the wrong tree.
Nobody was standing in Musk's way to any significant degree when it came to him redeveloping all the technology necessary to revisit the Moon. You are not grasping the importance of MONEY and how people calculate a return on investment. Musk is a visionary. Anyone else who has as much money is fixated either on money per se, or on other obsessions. And, again, there was no popularly-expressed urgency to go to the Moon. In matters where the Legislature sets budgets, the democratic process rules. Moon exploration didn't have the votes. And NASA getting budget for the Artemis program is still a chancy deal.
The only "modern narratives" that contend space exploration is "impossible" come from ignorant conspiracy theorists. The "popular science" is quite opposite. The other position that space exploration is "too expensive" is a matter of judgment on priorities, and it is a legitimate position, depending on your point of view. I happen to think that NASA will ultimately bungle the Artemis project, and would have been happier with Musk bankrolling and guiding the entire effort---but that's not in the cards just yet. I would not be surprised if Musk would be the Man On the White Horse if Artemis fails, offering to do it his way.
As for precious-metal asteroids, don't count your chickens before they hatch.
The Moon Hoax delusion may come from the direction you mention, and/or also an obsession with radical skepticism ("Question Everything"), which we (us, this page) tends to feed into. Either way, it leads into paranoid psychosis.
But thanks for the conversation. Much more pleasant than ideological bashing. I hope you can see that the reasons for where we are owe much to simple lack of public support. Within reason, now that we are 30 trillion $ in debt. When the family bank account goes dry, trips to the seashore must be suspended for a while.
No, penguins are wonderful, but they live on the coastlines, adjacent to water. I was simply pointing out that, aside from the research stations, Antarctica is a barren wasteland. Humans left alone simply die from exposure. The only life I know of in the interior is bacteria in Lake Baikal, which is a pocket of water under the ice cap. But, be honest. Aside from us, there is no intelligent life inland.
Nor on the Moon nor Mars. The absence of observable life beyond the Earth shows only that...there is no observable extraterrestrial life, so far as we have seen. This is NOT a backhanded argument for the certainty of life elsewhere, either by example or by logic. It is entirely possible that we will fail to discover intelligent life not on this Earth.
Myself, I keep an open mind and wait to see. I don't think people realize how incredibly unique life is. All the propaganda about Darwinism and "evolution" have created the impression that life is inevitable, and therefore intelligent life is inevitable. But Darwinism only assumes that certain things happen once life is present; it does not make any argument about the emergence of life. As a result of this propaganda, many people simply expect there will be intelligent life, because they have been misled into thinking it is a mechanical result of mere matter. The idea that it might be God's creation and a major mystery is far from their outlook. I will go so far to say that NASA's extravagant and useless "search for life," is their attempt to prove that God does not exist and that Darwinism is the supreme principle.
I don't know exactly where the first camera was placed, but if you examine images of the LEM, you will find there are plenty of places where the body protrudes out far enough to view the exit hatch. Aldrin had to install a camera on a jutting mount, but that was the second camera.
Sorry. Those are only seven concrete paving panels that have been poured more recently than the surrounding ones. The surface blemishes extend from the surrounding panels onto these ones. There are taxi guidelines painted on the paving that go across these panels. These are clear images, not a blurred image. There is no invisible airplane.
"But...but...it's so invisible, it's like it isn't there!" Exactly.
Big conclusionary leaps. All that is seen are lights. As far as the photo is concerned, they could be stars. Or other aerial vehicles like surveillance drones (likely). No evidence whatsoever of advanced or alien technology from mere lights alone.
Yes, and if you really did consider the vastness of space, you wouldn't be so blithe about proposing aliens. Consider the vastness of Antarctica. Anyone there? Nope? Only us. How do we know that UFOs aren't manifestations of ESP?
I've been following the UFO phenomenon since before I was an adult. It kills me that enthusiasts urge the keeping of an open mind---yet they are as fixed in their ideas as the scoffers.
I don't think it makes "more" sense. What extra dimensions? Just because we can string words together does not mean we know more about the world.
Liz Cheney. Why am I so tempted to call her "Lizzo"?
This is a very pleasing surprise, if it is real. In 2016, I was originally a supporter of Ben Carson, having read his biography. Then Trump showed up for the primary, stirred the pot---and became friends with Carson. During this time, there was a lot of press agitation about Trump's personality and "mean tweets," etc. But I knew about Carson, and I figured, "If Ben Carson approves of Trump, that's all I need to know." For me, it was like a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval on Trump's personality. Carson is cool, collected, and effective. The perfect behind-the-scenes operative.
"Bloodthirsty" doesn't get the job done. That's just melodrama. Remember that Carson was a brain surgeon. He is used to having a life in his hands---and having steady hands. Remember also that of all of Trump's cabinet, he ran his department so impeccably that no news media could find fault with him.
It's closed-circuit TV (CCTV). You have a camera, mounted and focused to capture a scene, and the signal and control wires connect it to a control point. Every convenience store has remote closed-circuit TV cameras. This technology is quite old. The only new twist has been the advancement in camera design so that they are now very small.
Another example that can be seen readily are the camera shots from the upper stage of a launch vehicle, looking back at the first stage separating at the end of burn. SpaceX posts those shots fairly often. There is obviously no one on board holding a camera for those shots. Here is a quick example of the CCTV images from a Falcon 9 launch. The stage separation occurs about 2:38 on the timeline. https://www.space.com/spacex-launch-doubleheader-march-2023
The sad truth is that there was no popular desire to continue going to the Moon, or going "back" to the Moon. May I ask how old you are? I lived through all this and saw firsthand the changing agenda for spaceflight. The Moon novelty wore off really fast. Then it was the Space Shuttle and "reusable" spacecraft. And when that became routine, it was the International Space Station. And then the new wore off when the Challenger and Columbia were destroyed in flight, and the shuttles were retired without any replacement system having been developed (evidence that there were no adults in charge).
If you think that rules and restrictions are the main difficulty in going to the Moon, you don't know much about going to the Moon. And if NASA was opposed to private industry going to the Moon, they wouldn't have picked SpaceX for the lunar lander portion of the Artemis missions. Or welcomed their Dragon capsules as our chief way of getting into orbit with human beings---or approved entirely private flights.
By the way, I am no cheerleader for government overreach and plunder, and you really have no right to assume I am. I'm just reporting the history and the background. And the idea that Kennedy was killed to prevent the Apollo program is belied by the fact that Johnson was an ardent supporter of the program, so to say "they killed the idea of mankind leaving this...planet" is totally at odds with what happened.
As for the Moon Hoax notion, you can thank the conspiracy theory community for giving legs to that absurdity. It may well be a Deep State head fake, but the community bought into it with all its teeth. They should have spurned it as the nonsense that it is.
It's not a big lie. Going to the Moon IS hard. Pretty much only Big Brother can devote the money to do it without a cost-benefit justification. It burns up billions like any other government program. And "useless"? You tell me.
It's not like anyone needs to keep people prisoner on the Earth. Try to go somewhere else. There ain't nowhere to go, except places where you would die unprotected and would need to survive at the far end of a logistic supply train that makes "resource monopoly" seem like a supermarket. There's plenty of vacant land in northern Canada, but no big land rush by freedom-seeking people.
Haven't you ever heard of remote cameras? They had several installed on the exterior of the LEM, activated from within. Once Armstrong got out, Aldrin was able to mount another camera.
Didn't go back? Why? No money, that's why. NASA's budget was cut and the last three planned missions were canceled. The Vietnam War was ramping up and going to the Moon was becoming a bore, so President Nixon decided to pull down the curtain on the Apollo program. And then afterward, we were all entertained by the Shuttle program and the International Space Station. The explanation is pathetically prosaic. You have to realize that things like going to the Moon do not have a limitless credit card for the satisfaction of the small minority that thought it was worthwhile. It's like a family that goes to Disneyland once upon a time, then has no budget to do it again in the future. They didn't lose the "ability" to go there; they lost the finances to go there. But once you shut down the production of launch vehicles, you sure enough lose the ability to go there.
You travel incredible distances in a deadly environment where there can be NO slip-ups, nerves taut when the landings took place (and the first landing had a last minute surprise when on the final approach), and then no letup on the very long trip home, then suffering the high-gs from the aerodynamic re-entry and the jostle about being plucked out of the water.... Yeah, they are heroes for even being able to walk, and you complain that they didn't look chipper as chipmunks? They were dead tired after holding it together for over a week. Who does something like that? "Most people"? Maybe someone who has returned from a grueling ascent of Mount Everest, or a trek across the Antarctic polar cap. I don't recall when the interview took place. Some of the physical strain may have worn off. But there is also a psychological strain of being in something not much larger than a phone booth for a week, with two other guys, no privacy, and a full schedule of tasks every day without letup. And there is the philosophical reaction to being on another world and getting your head around that. Perhaps they were so awed with what they experienced, they were distracted from trivialities like making interview chit-chat.
Sorry if my tone is off. I've crawled inside an Apollo capsule at the museum in Huntsville. I've seen the Saturn V vehicle there, once all stretched out on the ground, longer than a football field, and all assembled vertically. I'm familiar with the system design and how much went into it. The whole program was shocked with the deaths of Apollo 1. I'm just trying to convey the circumstances and considerations.
But, yeah, there are explanations. More questions are welcome.
Before you can trust or distrust, you have to learn the science. Ask questions and find out. That's how Covid was seen through.
I watched the video above. Putin remarked "interesting" in tones of understated incredulity. They have known all along that we were there. They have this interesting technology called a telescope. We are still bouncing laser beams off the Moon from retroreflectors left behind.
This tells us more about the state of Google's A.I. than it does about the Moon landing. Next the A.I. will tell us it has a bridge in New York City that is for sale.
My other offer stands, so I won't repeat it here.
You have to be thoughtful about what a "good answer" is. Any truthful answer is a good answer. If you are not in a position to know the answer beforehand, you may have a problem if it conflicts with "common sense." In this case, common sense is mostly ignorant expectations and prejudice. (People actually scoffed at Robert Goddard's contention that one could use rockets in a vacuum. "How could it work if there is no air to push against?" Seems reasonable---but is totally ignorant of how a rocket works.) It will be necessary to accept answers that have nothing to do with your "common sense," because your common sense is the result of having no answers. The way to get over that is to continue to ask questions, and read up on the founding subject matter.
What questions did you ask, and not receive answers to? Maybe I can help.
You have to know information from sources other than social media, like history books or textbooks. Fairly reliable insofar hard science is concerned (because it has to match experimental results). Must be cautious about the "soft" sciences and politics. The oldest history books may be best (and also old dictionaries).
No "technology was lost." You have a magical conception of technology. We lost the ability to make F-1 engines for the same reason we lost the ability to purchase Studebaker automobiles: it was a limited production run, and after the run was over (or the demand market dried up), the supply base turned to other products or went out of business. A lot of the manufacturing information was embedded in hand-me-down "tribal knowledge," and when the tribe retired and died, that went with them. (A good argument for systematic and complete documentation.)
The F-1 "production line" was over with. People talked about bringing it back, but it would have meant starting all over again from scratch, and no one wanted to foot the bill. It didn't mean we lost the technology of making rocket engines. We went on to make the Space Shuttle Main Engine---which is now in its waning years. SpaceX comes along, newcomer on the block, and starts making rocket engines for its own use. Now they have the Raptor engine, which compares to the F-1 and they are flying it with gusto.
Go find a Studebaker and drive it around. Or an American Motors car. Pontiac, Mercury, Plymoth, and Oldsmobile will be equally unknown in another decade or so. Does their demise mean we have "lost the technology"? Of course not. We have lost them as products, and all we can say is "boo-hoo."
Get some humility and learn some history. You are in a very poor position to look down with scorn on NASA when they were doing the right things.
You don't know. I don't know. No one knows. Nor do we all know if the number is only "thousands." You don't even have evidence that a single person was silenced, so that is a flight of fancy. We do have evidence that thousands---if not millions---are aware and have knowledge. We have rocks from the Moon. Other nations have sent probes and landers. You can't silence a world of independent researchers.
What kills me is that we know from (usually) personal experience that Google is perverse and following an inimical agenda. Why would we give it's "A.I." any credence whatsoever? These things are no better than scripted telephone robots. No sane person should have any expectation of truth from these algorithms. They are entirely a reflection of the ignorance and bias of their programmers.
Okay. But you have to figure out how to live, if you basically cannot rely on anything written or anyone who might write it. "Trust" is overrated. It implies that you can let others do your thinking for you. The better defense is knowledge: learning enough that you can correlate what you've learned with what you are told. You have to rely on sources that are used for real purposes, like engineering, physics, chemistry, or medicine. Textbooks, not internet articles.
Especially be critical of those who denounce everything as lies, for they are the camp from which operators like Jim Jones comes from. Civilization is a collective enterprise; it disintegrates if it is impossible to find truth.
It was covered in Kapton foil with an aluminum backing. That was solar radiation shielding to prevent the underlying structure from heating up. https://apollo11space.com/apollo-11-kapton-foil/ It helps to research topics of discussion.
So, the Great Awakening thinks a toaster is smarter than the people who put us on the Moon? A toaster that is programmed by a left-leaning intelligentsia? Or, who do you think is doing the work on all this "Artificial Intelligence"?
Yes, when you are totally ignorant, you are at the mercy of anyone who tells you anything. So, why do you assume you are being lied to about the Apollo program? (Because it is only an assumption, as you have no evidence to the contrary.)
According to the late Dr. Vladimir Zelenko (RIP), the effective quality of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin against viruses is that they are both zinc ionophores: they make cell membranes more permeable to the transport of zinc. Zinc interferes with the virus replication mechanism...but is not ordinarily easy to get into cells. (See comment from JesusmyLordandSavior about vitamin A. Same thing.)