You're still asking the wrong kind of question. You're just asking, "Does this seem likely to you?" It requires us to make too many assumptions, like, "Things that appear unlikely are unlikely." The way you word the question affects how it can be answered, and your examples illustrate this point. Your first question has an easy answer because we all have an experience of terrestrial transportation. We've all been in a car, even if we haven't been in a race car. The object is directly within our experience.
Great. I'm glad you agree.
Your second question illustrates how problematic this phrasing is because its object is something of which we have no direct experience. The question doesn't even allow us to consider the evidence, it just asks, "Doesn't that sound too complicated to be true?" We'll always answer "yes" to these kinds of questions because we rarely have any direct, relevant experience of the matter.
Since you agree that the answer is yes, then great, we're still on track.
However, if cut right to the heart of the matter and ask, "What is the simpler explanation for our observations, that NASA is deceiving the public about space flight, or that NASA is not deceiving the public about space flight?"
It doesn't matter if you phrase it that way. NASA deceiving us is a simpler explanation than space ships exploring the solar system and robots which explore the martian surface.
Think of the North Korea example: "What's the simpler explanation, that North Korea is lying about its rail gun, or that it's being honest about its rail gun?" Without knowing anything about rail guns, I can think about my personal experiences with human behavior and conclude, for a variety of reasons, that North Korea is probably lying about its rail gun.
Correct. The simplest explanation is that NASA is lying to us.
We do not agree. I think that you are asking the question in a loaded way to construct the conclusion that you want to hear. That's not an honest inquiry. You make a number of unfounded assumptions, including the conclusion (that space flight is
per se improbable or unlikely).
You also assume from the beginning that all of the observations I have of space flight (first-hand accounts, biographies, images, other data, etc.) are not genuine. One should not make that assumption before inquiring into the legitimacy of the data.
In other words, since you don't provide any analysis of
why space travel is preposterous on its face, we simply have to take you at your word that it is too complicated to be real. Again, that's not an honest inquiry. You're just telling yourself what you want to hear.
1. Your own wiki isn't exactly solid evidence of your claims. It asserts that Baron believed that the space program was being faked. I cannot find a single piece of evidence to support this claim. Not one. I've now read both his testimony to congress and the reports he leaked to the press, and I can't find a single mention of fraud.
Baron claims that everything is run in a compartmentalized manner where people are shifter around from job to job, and where the quality control is extremely poor, and that things seem to be built for show more than anything. Baron says that a real space program wouldn't be this way, which is why he's complaining to Congress about it.
2. Baron's original report was leveled almost exclusively against North American Aviation, not NASA. Check it out yourself. Interestingly, the report is hosted on NASA's website. It seems odd that they are hosting a document over which they once murdered someone...
This isn't a report. That's only a two page brief he wrote. His 500 page anti-NASA Congressional report went missing.
NASA is hosting it (assuming that this is even an unedited version) because they are trying to discredit Baron. At the top of the page they call him a bunch of names.
3. Baron's report was about safety concerns, not a fake Apollo program. So was his congressional testimony. In fact, in his testimony, he explicitly states that he believes NASA does have the capacity to reach and land on the moon.
Sure, my little nephew has the capacity to become a billionaire and build a sprawling underground city. But I don't see what relevance that has, when his tunneling abilities are presently limited to digging in a sandbox.
4. You're assuming that his missing report would have been bad for NASA. His first report barely mentions NASA. I don't get why the second one would be different.
500 pages explains a bit more of NASA's fraudulence than a 2 page brief.
5. Baron and his family were hit by a train in their car. I don't even get how you could murder someone in such a manner.
It's a rather cliche mafia tactic. They were killed with baseball bats or knives and their bodies were put into their car and positioned on train tracks so that their bodies would be mutilated beyond recognition once the train hit.
You forgot #6. It doesn't make much sense to kill him
after he testifies to congress, does it? This is important. If you were going to blow the whistle on a fake NASA, wouldn't a congressional inquiry be your best shot at going public with your most conclusive data? Why would he have held anything back?
1. Nowhere in his congressional testimony does Baron say, "things seem to be built for show more than anything," or, "a real space program wouldn't be this way." I can't find any sentence in his testimony even close to that. He is very critical of North American Aviation, the company he actually worked for, not NASA, and his criticisms are clearly centered on safety concerns, not that he thinks fraud is occurring. Show me where you find him saying that NASA is fraudulent.
Everything that I have read about Thomas Baron so far universally indicated that his concerns were exclusively safety related. He testified before congress because he leaked his report to the press after the Apollo 1 fire. Three astronauts were killed. Safety was becoming somewhat of an issue.
2. Have you read the 55-page report? I don't mean that sarcastically. I can't find the full 55-page report on google, but if you have it perhaps you could host it for me.
If, however, you haven't actually read the 55-page report and are just speculating, I'm curious to know what available evidence leads you to conclude that the longer report focuses on NASA instead of NAA? The only documents I can find are almost exclusively focused on safety concerns at NAA. I think that you are assuming the conclusion again.
3. I don't get the nephew analogy. Here is Baron's direct testimony on the question: "Mr. Baron, if things were really as bad as you pictured them by the things that, you have said to this committee in your report, do you believe we would ever have gotten a shot off to the moon? Do you think we ever would have had one successful shot?"
Baron: "Certainly, sir."
He goes on to say that not all of the missions would have been successful, and he claims that Apollo is a failure. Not a fraud. A failure. He says this in 1967, well before Apollo 7 and 8, mere months after the Apollo 1 fire. Most congress people thought Apollo was a failure at this point. That's what the congressional investigation was about. How did none of those people ever find evidence of fraud?
4. You're assuming the contents of the 500-page report. The evidence we have indicates otherwise, that his report was targeted at NAA, the company he worked for. And, again, his concerns weren't that NASA is fake, so it's irrelevant anyway.
However, even if it was targeted at NASA, it's unlikely that NASA would feel threatened by it. His congressional testimony is vague and almost entirely hearsay. He admits that most of his information comes from anonymous phone calls and conversations with other engineers, and not things he actually witnessed.
5. Again, without any evidence, you're just assuming the conclusion you want and inventing ways to fit the facts into your preconceived notions. It's not very zetetic.
There is not any evidence that he was murdered. At all. And, it would be way easier/less risky to simply discredit him.
If the assumptions are wrong, I fail to see how we could derive mathematics from them that is convincing to all of the mathematicians and scientists who study them every single day for the last century or so.
Well, the exact math used for orbital flight isn't even published or publicly available. I don't see what math they would study.
Dynamics of Earth Orbiting Formations, from JPL.
Equations of Motion for use in Space Navigation, NASA, 1966.
Orbital Mechanics.
This is obviously just a quick sample. Orbital mechanics is well understood. The equations are not a secret. The history of the derivation of these equations is equally well understood.
However, I don't get why you would be surprised that the US federal government would keep some rocket secrets. There is good reason not to openly proliferate schematics for rockets that could just as well be ICBMs as orbital lifters.
The fact that there are things which cannot be explained absolutely is evidence of a conspiracy.
If they can't be explained, then they aren't evidence of anything. They're inexplicable. That's what that means. Maybe they're evidence of equipment malfunctions, or data errors, or even just a misunderstanding of the data. It's not evidence. By definition.
My guess is that you're going to suggest that bad bookkeeping is the means by which the conspirators are stealing the money. This makes little sense given how much attention it brings on NASA. If you're trying to hide a huge secret about NASA, it hardly makes sense to constantly have congress investigating you and imposing new financial regulations. You don't want PricewaterhouseCoopers, or Ernst and Young, or Arthur Andersen looking through your books.
That's right, you don't. NASA decided to not have any books at all and play the incompetence card, and they're alleged to be the most meticulous and advanced scientific organization in human history.
NASA keeps financial records. None of their audits have ever revealed that NASA simply keeps no books. It might seem unlikely that NASA would be so bad at bookkeeping, but when you consider the potential for cost overruns, unexpected changes in the cost of materials, and the usual poor management and inefficiencies that accompany many government projects, it makes a lot of sense. NASA isn't the only government organization to have trouble balancing its checkbook. Welcome to public enterprise.
Hell, it might even be because of financial fraud (hard to imagine it going on for so many decades), but that still wouldn't be evidence of a fake space program. It would be evidence of fraud.
There have been plenty of audits. Since 1999, NASA has been audited by PwC, E&Y, Andersen, and the GAO. they've probably been audited and investigated many, many times since the 1960s, including by Walter Mondale and the congressional investigations that proceeded the Apollo 1 accident.
Provide the source of these other financial audits, please.
2010 Audit Opinion, Ernst and Young This contains a table of the previous ten years of audits. As you can see, they are audited every year by an external accounting firm. E&Y also outline where NASA's budget problems come from.
CFO article detailing NASA's financial problems during PwC's 2004 audit. They explain the source of NASA's bookkeeping woes in great detail.
Arthur Andersen LLP Audit of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Financial Statements for Fiscal Year Ended September 30, 1999In conclusion, it just isn't practical to use NASA as a front to steal money. If you did, you'd probably try and keep great books so you'd stop getting constantly audited by the GAO. Being in the spotlight is not good for a conspiracy. It can't operate that way. It makes no sense.
All of
these people would have to be lying. And all of
these people. And all of
these authors are lying or have been duped.[/url] None of the congressional hearings revealed that NASA was fake. None of the audits. No one has ever confessed. no one has ever been caught. All of the scientists have been tricked with fake data and fake math. All of
these movies have been made with fake images and fake videos, and all of the film crews who have worked on them have been lying. For more than 50 years. And not one person in a position to do so has ever blown the lid off of the conspiracy. And the conspirators are taking this huge risk for money? Haven't they ever heard of compound interest? Wouldn't they have to already be super wealthy and powerful to pull something like this off? Really, it strains the imagination.
So, what's seems more probable: that the most public conspiracy ever constructed has gone undetected for 60 years, or that, after centuries of scientific progress, someone invented a rocket?