Flying the flag… for Apollo…

Look at this picture – no, properly. Look At This Picture…

Do you know what that is? I won’t blame you if you don’t. Here, I’ll give you a clue… it’s this, but seen from above…

That’s the Apollo 17 landing site, as seen by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. You can see the descent stage of the Lunar Module very clearly. You can also see something… else…

Yes, you read that correctly. That little line of dark pixels is the very flag, planted on the Moon, by the Apollo 17 astronauts, after they stepped down from the hatch of the lunar module and Walked On The Moon. The same flag that you can see Gene Cernan standing next to on this iconic image…

… the same flag you can see both Gene Cernan and Jack Schmidt standing beside here…

Many people are surprised that the flag is still standing there; for years it’s been assumed that the flags planted by the Apollo astronauts would have been reduced to tatters of bleached fabric, or even to dust, by decades of exposure to UV radiation and celestial sand-blasting the relentless rain of micrometeorites. So this picture is both surprising and exciting. It suggests that, even though it toppled over when the Eagle’s ascent stage blasted off from the Moon, the Stars and Stripes planted by Armstrong and Aldrin is still there, lying on the ground, waiting to be photographed – or even salvaged – in the future. Wouldn’t that be something? 🙂

So… and come on, you knew this was coming… looks like the Apollo Moan Hoax Believers have been slapped across the face with a wet fish yet again! We now have a photograph of a flag standing on the Moon, right where it was thrust into the lunar surface by astronauts. As far as I’m concerned that’s it, Game Over. Of course, die-hard Hoax Believers won’t buy it, not for a moment; they have too much time and face invested in carrying on with their little crusade to back down now. They’ll say that “a few pixels prove nothing”, that it’s just a Photoshop job by someone at NASA. Whatever. They can go on believing what they want to… while the rest of us laugh at them, knowing that in the “My Big Book Of Stupid Things To Believe”, believing that the Moon landings were faked is right there at the top of page 1.

I genuinely wish that these Hoax Believers would all have an epiphany, at the same time, that would open their eyes to the wonder, drama and beauty of Apollo, because they are missing out on so much! I mean, what’s better for getting the most out of life? a) believing, and telling others, against all the overwhelming and unquestionable evidence there is,  that the Moon landings were hoaxed and billions of people have been lied to for a generation, or b) being able to go outside on a clear night, look up at the sky, see the Moon shining there and think “Some of us… some of my stupid, brilliant, arrogant, kind, selfish, generous, destructive and creative species actually stood on that…”?

What would it take? What would it actually take to convince these people that It Actually Happened? I honestly despair for them. I mean, the people who lurch onto the auditions stage on X FACTOR in their shell suits and fajke gangsta jewelry, convinced they can sing when really they can’t carry a tune in a rucksack are deluded, but Moon Hoax Believers make them seem like pictures of sanity and reason. And if you’re one of them, and found that last remark insulting, well, sorry, but I don’t care! You don’t deserve any tolerance, or understanding, or reasoning with, not when there are pictures like this…

Look at it, Hoax Believers! How did NASA fake that image, a portrait of of Apollo 17’s landing site, taken by one of her crew, from far away? That was his home – that tiny, fragile, oasis of a spacecraft, sat in the middle of a vast, dusty plain with mountains behind it..! Why doesn’t that breathtaking image fill you with wonder, like it does countless millions of other people? How come you are so immune to the sheer beauty of that picture? How can you look at it and NOT feel your heart race a little faster, thinking “Look what we did… look what we did..!”..?

And how can anyone look at this brilliant picture and not feel a shudder of pride and wonder run through them..?

That’s all the Saturn V launches in a line. Doesn’t that picture just grab you by the throat and shake you? Look at all that power, all that energy… look at how beautiful those rockets were, how majestically they rose into the air… This poster puts it so well…

Which is a really good point, one that is totally passed over by Hoax Believers. They’re not, as far as I know, disputing the fact that they all launched, that they weren’t faked, right? How can they, when hundreds of thousands of people witnessed those launches in person, standing at the Cape, shielding their eyes from the Sun, staring open-mouthed at the ascending rockets as the crackling blast wave from lift off flapped their hideously checked trousers and migraine-inducing patterned skirts around them?

This is one of those questions that makes me want to jab my finger between the eyes of every Hoax believer and ask them “Tell me, why your precious, beloved Hoax would need so many launches? Why not just launch Apollo 11, fake that landing, then say “Ok, enough – we did it…” and walk away from it all?”

Answer: because there was no conspiracy, there was no hoax, it was not faked. And anyone who chooses to believe othwise is an idiot.