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A couple of years ago, President George W. Bush gave a speech promising a return to the moon. We've shuttled back and forth to the International Space Station numerous times, but no one has returned to the moon since 1972.
One of the most visible and exciting facets of the space race was our ("our" here means earthlings) visits to the moon. As you know, there is a contingent of conspiracy theorists who claim we never actually landed there, and that the 18 manned and unmanned spacecraft landings on the moon were bogus--all filmed on a soundstage. Particularly, that first landing of Apollo 11 in 1969.
12 U.S. citizens have walked on the moon. That's it, as far as we know. (If you don't believe the story of The Skeleton On the Moon: See All This Is That, March 28, 2005).
Only a rocket (but not a balloon or jet) can actually increase its speed at high altitudes in the vacuum outside the Earth's atmosphere. Or at least that's what they say. But some people believe you don't need a rocket at all.
In the Southern Literary Messenger of June 1835, Edgar Allan Poe published the tale of Hans Pfaall, an unemployed bellows mender from Rotterdam, Holland, who worked clandestinely, and built a giant balloon. His goal was "to force a passage, if I could, to the moon." He gambled he could acclimatize to the extreme altitude [as have many mountain climbers over the years, although the highest they have reached is just over 29,000 feet].
Hans Pfaall took off on April 1, 1935 and, because of the thinning atmosphere, soon suffered spasms and began bleeding from the ears, nose, and eyes. He made it 'though: after 19 days in space, his balloon, the Flying Dutchman landed amidst a crowd of homely looking moon people, who "stood like a parcel of idiots, grinning in a ludicrous manner, and eyeing me and my balloon askant, with their arms set akimbo."
Despite the strange welcome, the world's first astronaut lived among the moon folk for five years. He then then wrote a letter to the Mayor of Rotterdam in which he described some of his experiences and begged to be allowed to return to earth, and Rotterdam.
A lunar messenger Pfaall entrusted with his letter reached Rotterdam (also by balloon) but "frightened to death by the savage appearance of the residents of Rotterdam," he couldn't be persuaded to land. He dropped the letter, and disappeared into the heavens without waiting for a reply, according to Poe.
The story snowballs from here. Imagine if you can, a telescope lens with a diameter of 24 feet and a weight of almost 15,000 pounds. With it, you could see insects on the moon, or so the readers of the New York Sun were told.
In August 1835, the 'paper reported the findings of British astronomer Sir John Herschel. In a six-part series, a reporter--Richard Adams Locke--told how Herschel used his custom-built telescope in a planetarium at the Cape of Good Hope (in Southern Africa), to spot many incredible species on the moon. Among them: horned bears, tailless beavers, and 4-foot-tall ape-like creatures with thick beards and large wings. Locke referred to them as "bat-men." There were bat-women too, and the bat-men and bat-women apparently engaged freely in randy behavior that Locke refused to describe, because their acts would be considered improper on earth.
Herschel was a legitimate, respected scientist who remained unaware of his "discoveries" for months. When word of Locke's confabulations reached him, he tried to debunk the story--but no one wanted to hear that!
On June 20, 1977, Anglia TV in England caused an uproar when it broadcast a documentary called Alternative Three. By linking facts with half-truths, and by staging interviews with so-called "astronomers" and "astronauts," the makers suggested that both NASA's space program and the Cold War were decoys. The power elite in the USSR, the US, and Great Britain had in fact been working together on a secret project - Alternative Three - that had established bases on the moon and on Mars, so that they could escape the coming ecological nightmare on earth. Insiders who were deemed a security risk were callously murdered. Scientists had been abducted to do experiments in the space colonies. Even regular folks had been forced into slave labor on the moon and Mars.
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