NOTE:
I was going to wait for the paperback version before completing this
review, but now Amazon has announced it'll be delayed, so I'm going with
the Kindle edition and I'll fill in page numbers later.
=============================================
Ancient Aliens on the Moon is Mike Bara's bid to cash
in personally on the popularity of the History Channel's junk TV series.
I'm assuming he doesn't get paid for his interview appearances on that
piece of merde (see this blogpost
for a list of errors in one show) but I could be wrong. In view of the
fact that the book was discounted by Amazon from $19.95 to $11.73 before
it was even published, however, I don't think Mike's fortune will be
assured by this one. Continuing his astounding record of one factual
error per 2 or 3 pages, Mike's gift to readers who understand science
& technology is a gem of a book of unintentional comedy.
Intro:
1. "As I put it in my previous book The Choice .... Without the
Moon's calming influence,the Earth would spin so fast that the winds
caused by the centrifugal force would most likely flatten us all like
pancakes." [emph. added]
As noted in this blogpost,
the addition of the underlined words was a cynical and deceptive
attempt to cover his original howler, and makes it no less wrong.
Centrifugal force does not create winds—temperature variations and other
more subtle geophysical phenomena do.
2. "The Moon also regulates and agitates the Earth's magnetic field..."
FACT: No it doesn't.
3.
"...as you'll see in the images I'll show you, these structures are
there [on the Moon], defiantly upright in a place where they should have
been ground to dust eons ago by the Moon's ... meteoric rain.
Now that Mike has published all his images as a Picasa gallery,
I can comment even without having the paper book itself to hand yet. As
evidence of a past lunar civilization, these images are woefully
inadequate. Those from early chapters we've seen before —the "castle,"
the "shard," the "paperclip" et al. The Chapter 9 images of "the gun
emplacement," "the drill," "the crane" etc. are simply laughable.
4.
"[T]he Ancient Aliens ... may have been forced off the Moon, either by
some conflict of unimaginable proportions, or by a natural calamity of
the same dimensions. Either way, the answers to that question are bound
to have created a ton of fear and trepidation inside the halls of NASA
and at the highest levels of government.
Mike just loves to imagine fear in other people, doesn't he? The haters
are scared of the truth — the truth that only he, Mike Bara, is in
possession of. JPL scientists were too scared
to admit that Viking found life on Mars. This is bunk, just pure bunk.
When does he think this episode of fear and trepidation occurred?
Obviously within the last 54 years, since NASA didn't exist prior to
that. Doesn't he think NASA Public Affairs would have put out a
teensy-weensy press release after discovering that a race of aliens had
been forced to leave the Moon? How would they have discovered it,
anyway?
Chapter 1:
5."...nobody really knows much about [the Moon].
FACT: Hundreds of books, and thousands of scientific papers, have been written about the Moon since the Apollo results.
6. "...according to rogue geologist Jim Berkland, the Moon may play a significant role in the frequency of earthquakes"
Well, he did say "may." But Stuart Robbins, in his exposing pseudoastronomy blog,
wrote very recently that Berkland's reputation is based on a single
lucky hit, and that in general his predictions are worthless. No lunar
influence on earthquake frequency has in fact been demonstrated. See
Robbins' careful statistical analysis.
7. "The co-accretion theory [of the Moon's formation] arose from
the accretion theory of planetary formation (which I thoroughly
dismantled in my last book, The Choice)."
Oh no you didn't, Mike. You did no such thing. In fact, your attempt to
"dismantle" it led you into the most crashing, howling error in the
entire train-wreck of a book. The one where you wrote that if the
orbits of both Earth and Mars were perfectly circular, they would remain
at the same distance from each other. OUCH!!!
Chapter 2: 8. Recycled Dark Mission material. Bara here reiterates
the falsehood that NASA is not really a civilian agency. He quotes the
Space Act, Sec 305 (i), accurately:
"The Administration shall be considered a defense agency of the United
States for the purpose of Chapter 17, Title 35 of the United States
Code."
Bara sees those words for the purpose of Chapter 17, Title 35 of the United States Code,
and yet somehow he doesn't see them. If he did see them he'd perhaps
take the trouble to discover what they mean. Title 35 is exclusively
concerned with patent law. Chapter 17 is headed SECRECY OF CERTAIN
INVENTIONS AND FILING APPLICATIONS IN FOREIGN COUNTRY [sic], and its
second paragraph reads as follows:
Whenever the publication or disclosure of an invention by the
publication of an application or by the granting of a patent, ...
might, in the opinion of the Commissioner of Patents, be detrimental
to the national security, he shall make the application for patent in
which such invention is disclosed available for inspection to the
Atomic Energy Commission, the Secretary of Defense, and the chief
officer of any other department or agency of the Government
designated by the President as a defense agency of the United
States.
(emphasis added)
I'm sure my regular readers will get the point. But in case Mike Bara
himself, or his manager Adrienne Loska, read this review, let me flog
the dead horse by explaining that this paragraph simply brings NASA into
line with other governmental agencies on the means of dealing with
patent applications relating to classified material. Yes, Mike, it means
that some aspects of NASA's work are secret. Everyone except you and
Hoagland already knew that. IT DOES NOT MEAN that NASA is under the
thumb of, still less an actual adjunct of, DoD.
9. Recycled Dark Mission material. Bara gives us his
version of what the Brookings Report of 1961 meant. At first it looks as
though his position is a little mollified from the Dark Mission passage, for he writes
"it quickly becomes apparent that the underlying purpose of the
Brookings Report was to provide legal and political cover for NASA..."
So is it now his theory that NASA already had already decided that it
would suppress knowledge of an extraterrestrial intelligence, and
Brookings merely "provided cover" for a policy that was already in
place? Alas no, for a page or two later he recycles word for word the
utterly incorrect passage from Dark Mission:
"So here we had the proverbial smoking gun. Not only was NASA
advised--almost from its inception--to withhold any data that supported
the reality of Cydonia or any other discovery like it, they were told to
do so for the good of human society as a whole."
My point by point critique of Dark Mission (error #14) explained how wrong that is.
10. Writing of early attempts to send spacecraft to the Moon,
Bara notes that the Soviet probe Luna 1 (1959) missed the Moon by 3,725
miles. He writes "that is simply not possible if Newtonian mechanics is
correct."
FACT: It certainly is, especially if, as in this case, a software
error caused a completely erroneous burn time to be commanded. As we
know, Mike Bara's ignorance of rocketry and orbital mechanics is as vast
as the Cosmos itself.
Chapter 3: 11."NASA's photographic exploration of [Sinus Medii] must have quickly scared them off..."
Again, the fantasy that NASA is "scared." I've had the privilege of
being acquainted with many NASA engineers, scientists, astronauts and
managers, and not one of them has struck me as the type to be scared by
the results of a reconnaissance for landing sites. Note that Sinus Medii is the site of several of Richard Hoagland's fanciful "alien structures," including the terrain he has called Los Angeles,
the paperclip (one of Hoagland's beard hairs caught in his scanner?),
the castle, and the ridiculous glass skyscrapers I debunked a week or so
ago.
In the present work Bara notes, as Hoagland has in the past, that the
"Castle" — a mile-high structure which is actually a photographic fault —
is held up by "a sagging support cable". Neither Hoagland nor Bara have
ever said what the top ends of this cable are attached to.
Chapter 4: 12. In this chapter Bara introduces us again to Ken Johnston, and
what his personal collection of photo prints revealed. He writes that
Ken dealt with "...first-generation photographic negatives and prints."
That is not the case. The main photo archive was not in the Lunar
Receiving Laboratory, where Ken worked, but in a completely different
building.
This blog has previously commented on:
The impossibility of airbrushing film negatives
The blue flares on six shots from Apollo 14 Mag #66 (written as a
briefing for Mike, which he obviously didn't read. I'm casting my pearls
before swine, obviously)
The "inclined buttresses" shown in some of Al Bean's paintings of the lunar landscape (see error #17)
13. Writing of the tense situation during the Apollo 11 landing, Bara writes of "..the 1202 alarm that no one could figure out."
FACT: The whole point is that somebody DID figure it out, and
very bravely declared that it could safely be ignored. The 1202 was an
executive overload alarm from the tiny LM computer, and it was a young
GUIDO called Steve Bales who took the responsibility to give it the OK
(although Bales himself also credits computer whiz Jack Garman.) Bales
was quite correct, and was commended by President Nixon as a result.
Chapter 5: 14. This is the chapter in which Bara tells us, very
unconvincingly, that there are satellite dishes in the craters Asada and
Proclus. He shows us images from Apollo 16, but obviously didn't take
the trouble to consult the far better imagery of these craters now
available in the LROC image library. There are no satellite dishes in
those craters. See for yourselves. Asada is notably dish-shaped, Proclus
is not even that.
Asada is at 7.3°N, 49.9°E
Proclus is at 16.1°N, 46.8°E
15. This is also the chapter in which Mike Bara writes this about images of Earth from space:
"the clouds are the highest in the atmosphere, meaning that they are
reflecting more light back to the camera and at a faster rate. Since
they are returning more light, the clouds are the lightest. The surface
areas ... are darker, because they are a bit further away from the
camera than the clouds and therefore the light has to travel further
before it is reflected back. The deep blue oceans are therefore the
darkest, because the light has to travel all the way to the ocean floor
before it is reflected back to the camera."
This paragraph has been cited by more than one negative Amazon reviewer,
as a clear indication of how tragically far Mike Bara falls short of
the minimum comprehension of the physical world to be credible as an
author on such topics. It's frighteningly inaccurate, as Neville
Parchemin has pointed out on this blog.
Chapter 6:
In this chapter, Bara takes us through several of the theories advanced
by Moon hoax loonies, and does a pretty good job of debunking them. I
can't help wondering, however, if he somehow forgot to credit that
excellent web site Moon Base Clavius for most, if not all, of his text.
16. Recycled Dark Mission material: "Almost from the moment that
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot upon the Moon ... rumors began
circulating that the whole thing was faked. I have always felt that
there was something a little more to this than simple stupidity or
naïveté, something a bit insidious about the whole thing. That was more
than confirmed in the Forward [sic] to Dark Mission, when Richard
related his memories of being handed a pamphlet claiming the landings
were faked even before Neil and Buzz had splashed down ... What made
that moment so extraordinary was not that someone had made up a pamphlet
making such a claim, it was that the person who authored it was being
escorted around the NASA press room by a NASA press officer to make sure
every reporter got one."
FACT: This is Hoagland's oft-repeated story of "Greatcoat Man"
being led around the press room at JPL, where Hoagland was part of a CBS
team reporting, not Apollo, which JPL had almost nothing to do with,
but the approach to Mars by Mariner 6 & 7. The fatal flaw in
Hoagland's theory that NASA itself started the hoax rumors is this: If
they had wanted to seed this thought in the minds of the specialist
press, surely they would have addressed that to the press in Houston,
where Apollo 11 was being managed, rather than Pasadena where it was
not. Of course, I have no idea who "Greatcoat Man" was (neither have
Hoagland & Bara,) but the possibility occurs to me that this person
asked if he might distribute his pamphlet, and Frank Bristow (then chief
PAO at JPL) was with him to make sure he didn't start lecturing or
haranguing members of the press corps. Friar Occam would prefer that
explanation, I believe.
Chapter 7:
This chapter is all about the Apollo 17 mission, and its fanciful
interpretation as the clandestine exploration of a seekrit tunnel, and
the collection of the technical artifacts of the dead lunar civilisation
that exists in the minds of Hoagland & Bara. Bara refers to the
South Massif as "an ancient alien base in the Taurus-Littrow valley."
This blog commented back in June this year, when this horrible book was
first announced.
The material draws heavily on the six-part www series A Hidden Mission
for Apollo 17? by Keith Laney. Mike Bara credits Laney more than once in
his text, but that has apparently not appeased Laney himself, who has
recently written:
"...if he's going to expound on my musings he really ought to consult
with
me first, or at least use the same "we don't know but it looks like we
did" attitude I took when investigating this. Would also be nice for
once if one of these guys that use my stuff to make money would cut me a
check as well. that's
the part that pisses me off the most. I do what I do not for cash, but
for the sheer wonder, if someone takes it and makes money it's only
right to share. So far I've got not so much as an email..."
17. "The first thing that's notable about the Apollo 17 Mission
is the very dangerous look of the landing site itself. Positioned at
19.5° N by 33° E, the target landing ellipse....etc."
FACT: The nominal landing site was at 30° 44' 58.3" E, 20° 09'
50.5" N. This is per the official press kit (p.33) -- a more reliable
source than anything Hoagland & Bara have ever written. Those
scoundrels think nothing of bald-faced lies when it comes to introducing
those "magic" numbers 19.5 and 33. They did it notably for the landing
site of Mars Pathfinder, now known officially as Carl Sagan Station.
In that case they said the co-ordinates were 19.5°N by 33°W—in fact
they are 19.13°N, 33.22°W. If Mike reads this he'll probably be saying
to himself "page 33, hmmm....see? It works."
18. Bara likes this image, AS17-135-20680, run off as Cernan
& Schmitt arrived at station 2. Is it a pyramid on the Moon? No, it
isn't. It's one of a sequence of five junk shots showing parts of the
LRV (see the Apollo 17 Image Library, Mag #135).
19. Writing of the infamous "Data's Head" rock in the crater
Shorty, which this blog has written about at length, Bara here writes
"The red stripe is plainly visible even without enhancement on several
photos Schmitt took of the interior of Shorty."
FACT: It is not. See the far better quality image this blog obtained for analysis.
Chapter 8:
Skipped -- just more silliness about a "factory in Hortensius" -- again, with no attempt to validate against the LROC library.
Chapter 9:
"Wow. Just wow! AS11-38-5564 [is] covered with machinery, structures,
buildings, artifacts and Ancient Alien ruins of all types."
Almost the entire chapter concerns that one Apollo 11 shot of the far
side of the Moon, and what Mike Bara thinks he sees. Here it is for your
delectation. It's a pretty wide angle shot, at a fairly low sun angle,
so it's not too surprising that shadows form in all sorts of random
shapes. To Mike Bara, however, they aren't random.
20. He sees a ziggurat. See this blog passim. But Stuart Robbins has done a better job than I could have done on the ziggy. Here's his summary page and "Final Words."
21. He sees a crane. This is bad.
22. He sees a spaceship. Really, really bad. Why would it be aerodynamic?
23. He sees a gun emplacement. Terrible!
24. He sees a jack. Awful!!
25. He sees a flying saucer in a hangar. Childish!
26. He sees a beach house. Not like any beach house I've ever seen.
27. He sees a human head. Can you see it?
28. He sees a drill. Laughable!!
On his blog, Mike Bara spent some time telling us that pareidolia doesn't exist.
"The word was actually first
coined by a douchebag debunker ... named Steven Goldstein in a 1994
issue of Skeptical
Inquirer. Since then, every major debunker from Oberg to “Dr. Phil” has
fallen
back on it, but it is still a load of B.S. There is no such thing. "
It doesn't matter what you call it, Mike, the phenomenon of finding
familiar things in random patterns is absolutely real, and this chapter
is as fine an illustration of it as can be imagined. It really is
pathetic that Bara didn't take the obvious step that any serious
researcher would, and check the LROC images to see what these smeared
shadows really are. The fact that he didn't further invalidates this
wretched, wretched book.
29. "Stuart Robbins has a long history of false and utterly silly
accusations against me and Mr. Hoagland, and frequently teams up with
someone calling himself "Expat" to attack us within hours of anything we
post. "Expat" in fact has made a habit of stalking my radio appearances
to ask me in-depth questions along the lines of "are you still beating
your wife?""
No, Chris, the publisher is shipping dead trees, but for $19.95. I hope David Childress realizes he's published garbage.
Amazon shipping has gone back to what it was originally -- mid-Oct.
September 23, 2012 1:14 PM
jourget said...
To what extent does Bara credit Hoagland with past research or
making joint deductions that were previously published in Dark Mission?
Is he mentioned to any great extent in the new book at all (other than
in the greatcoat tale)? I'm interested in the degree to which Mike has
taken Hoagland's past tales and run away with them.
Hoagland
really must be having a bad 2012. The year he's been talking about as
being a veritable buffet of disclosure has arrived, and he's spent a
third of it (since May) completely and utterly silent.
Thanks to e-Book technology I can tell you that the string
'Hoagland' appears 52 times. Yeah, he gets fair credit for
anomaly-hunting, but the more political stuff, no.
Expat, He may be getting some of the credit, but he's
getting none of the money. And that has to be the hard part for him.
Bara spent a great deal time learning the woo business from Hoagland,
and now he's using that knowledge to compete with him. Any bets Hoagland
won't be able to stop himself from alling in Monday night?
Expat, can you do me a favour and search through for my name and
see if anything strikes you as libel? As we mentioned in Skype, the one
you quote doesn't really make the libel cut.
I also love how he brings some sort of petty internet grudge into a book that's listed as "Science" in Amazon.
11 occurrences of the string 'robbins.' I really don't think any of them amount to libel. This is the strongest:
"What
I have proven here is that the chief critics of the Daedalus Ziggurat
are not only wrong, they are foolishly and sloppily wrong. Either they
didn't want to study the images in the depth that I did before releasing
it [sic] to Mr. Hoagland, or they simply lacked the intellectual
capacity to do so. I lean towards the latter, but let's face it,
buffoons like Mr. Robbins and Expat are just haters who attack
everything I do, no matter how many times I embarrass them. I doubt this
will be the last time I have to respond to these louts, but I certainly
hope it's now obvious that they don't know what they're talking about. I
would say they were liars and/or idiots, but that's their territory.
The difference is I can actually prove what I say."
To me, that's just typical Internet flaming, it doesn't bother me one bit.
September 23, 2012 5:59 PM
Trekker said...
I like how Amazon is giving prominence to the three well-written,
articulate and intelligent one-star comments, while ignoring the
badly-written, fawning positive ones!
What I don't get is why he bothered mentioning his critics at
all. It's his book about his (OK, his and Hoagland's)ideas. Why bother
bringing up issues that the person buying the book either doesn't know
or doesn't care about? I can only guess that you guys really got under
the guy's skin, so he decided to work it out by dissing you in the book.
It's dumb because those not familiar with the controversy will now have
their curiosity peaked, and Bara might not like the conclusions they
draw.
September 23, 2012 7:34 PM
Trekker said...
Good point, Chris. Those readers will read those critics'
reviews on Amazon, and have a good chuckle at why Mikey was so irked by
them!
Considering that Dr Margaret Mead's contribution the so called,
Brookings Report, based upon her own observations of her own
contamination of the primitive cultures that she personally spent time
with to observe, there is a principal similar to that of quantum
physics; that the mere act of observing a subject, causes it to change.
Her conclusions were that invariably, the more technologically advanced
culture annihilates the lessor developed one.
Hoagland
presents no secret memos from NASA to support his assertion, but he does
offer reasonable circumstantial evidence, if we accept that NASA alters
images without explanation, and in light of so many sightings of UFOs.
Again, nothing conclusive as he likes to make out, but he does make a
case for reasonable doubt of atheism.
The statistical analysis of methods used by Berkland, tactfully,
not by name, seems fair enough. Nevertheless, Berkland has been right,
and if people had listened, they might have survived.
September 23, 2012 11:32 PM
Strahlungsamt said...
The mere fact that Hoagie and Mike are not hiding in the
Ecuadorian embassy or in some jungle in a non-extradition nation is ....
"STUNNING CONFIRMATION" that NASA don't give a rat's ass about their "CONTROVERSIAL THEORIES"...
Excelent job,Expat, as always, and very good point, Chris, Dr
Robbins "has had to touch some nerve in Bara´s claims to get him get so
mad and worried", using their own pathetic sentences ,,,
Keith Laney just posted an additional comment that sums up his position nicely:
"once again I'm f'ed in the A by the hoagy bunch"
I
take back my comment about "typical Internet flaming." This isn't the
Internet, it's a published book. If I'd been Bara's manager, I'd have
advised him not to include that material. It looks childish now, and in
six months time it's going to look REALLY childish, if anyone is still
reading this garbage by then. Adrienne Loska evidently has a different
opinion.
Expat, I'm not sure anyone will be reading it now, let
alone then. $20 is a lot to ask for material that can be found elsewhere
on the Web for free. His C2C appearance should boost sales somewhat,
but he doesn't tell the story in quite the breathless manner (STARTLING
RESULTS! and STUNNING CONFIRMATION!) that Hoagland uses. Without that
ability to make the audience think they are about to be let in on some
deep dark secret (the real hook of Dark Mission), he's left with just
another "anomalies" book.
I'm wondering if I should give Noory, Tom, and Lisa a pre-show
e-mail recommending some questions Noory could ask and mentioning that
I'm going to try to call.
You know, tax paying United States American citizens pay for
NASAss' missions. Why should NASA be able to sit on all the data? All
of the images taken, as well as any radiospectographic hockum ought to
be openly available to the public. NASA needs to be peer reviewed by
anyone who cares to take up that effort; including H&B. If I want
to filter out pesky water and vegetation, then that's my prerogative,
but not NASAss'.
Screw those rat bastards. I am sick to fucking death of supporting their horseshit.
Misti, you seem to not understand what actually goes on. As in,
all data from NASA-funded missions are embargoed for 6 months so that
the team who spent a decade of their lives proposing, designing, and
building the craft get first-go with the data, and then it's all
released to the public. It's not "NASA" that sits on the data, it's the
team that build the mission. NASA is the organization that forces them
to release the data, by law. It is a *fact* that NASA is one of the
most open of all federal agencies.
Cry me a fucking river. If there's no water and trees and
Martians on Mars, then what's the big fucking secret? Six months hell,
they never release anything of real significance. Open my ass.
Clearly, Misti, you really have no idea what's going on from a
very, very basic level. Maybe you should do some basic investigation
into why people are interested in Mars ... and I do not mean reading
Hoagland's or Bara's writings, I mean read actual science.
Dont bother answering Mistyc, Astroguy. Is our bedside Troll.
Not only believes that there are forests and ruins on the Moon and Mars,
also believes Expat and Chris are masking agents, paid by dark
interests (islamics, communists,both, who knows...).I mean it. Why will
sin- equa -non condition being an asshole to be a rude conspiranoic with
the same vision as a mole?
I don't have any basis to believe or refute any claims of life on
Mars, because NASA hoards all the data, away from all the United States
American citizens who paid for the shit.
Misti, what is your evidence? You are making a claim - much like
Hoagland and Bara - that charges a government agency with illegal
activity which is a serious charge. You are also, as I stated,
factually wrong with how data are stored and who is "in charge" of it. I
have evidence to back up my statements. Do you have any to back up
your claims which, if true, would mean people would go to jail?
There's nothing illegal about NASA sitting on data. It is
immoral, yet so typical, as astroturff alludes, for civil servants to be
so personally possessive with their coveted fiefdoms, and an
interesting coincidence, however, that Richard C Hoagland was promoting
the nuclear powered Project Prometheus (now X-37B) at the time he was
the last person to speak with Dr Eugene Mallove about a cold fusion
energy generator in Mallove's possession, shortly before Mallove's
assassination, and that now, NASA comes out with a cold fusion
generator.
I don't have to prove anything. All I have to do is campaign to
defund NASA. Of course, NASA could be more forth coming if they want
the public support.
You want proof, Astroturf? Look at the red filtered images of Mars. Where are the originals?
Who
the fuck do those chauvinistic bastards at NASA think they are, to
decide what data the tax paying United States American citizens are
worthy to evaluate for themselves?
With the tons of data that's
actually collected, you'd think that NASA would appreciate as much
volunteer researchers as are willing to contribute.
"Point by point critique of 'Ancient Aliens on the Moon' - FULL VERSION"
32 Comments - Hide Original Post
=============================================
Ancient Aliens on the Moon is Mike Bara's bid to cash in personally on the popularity of the History Channel's junk TV series. I'm assuming he doesn't get paid for his interview appearances on that piece of merde (see this blogpost for a list of errors in one show) but I could be wrong. In view of the fact that the book was discounted by Amazon from $19.95 to $11.73 before it was even published, however, I don't think Mike's fortune will be assured by this one. Continuing his astounding record of one factual error per 2 or 3 pages, Mike's gift to readers who understand science & technology is a gem of a book of unintentional comedy.
Intro:
1. "As I put it in my previous book The Choice .... Without the Moon's calming influence,the Earth would spin so fast that the winds caused by the centrifugal force would most likely flatten us all like pancakes." [emph. added]
As noted in this blogpost, the addition of the underlined words was a cynical and deceptive attempt to cover his original howler, and makes it no less wrong. Centrifugal force does not create winds—temperature variations and other more subtle geophysical phenomena do.
2. "The Moon also regulates and agitates the Earth's magnetic field..."
FACT: No it doesn't.
3. "...as you'll see in the images I'll show you, these structures are there [on the Moon], defiantly upright in a place where they should have been ground to dust eons ago by the Moon's ... meteoric rain.
Now that Mike has published all his images as a Picasa gallery, I can comment even without having the paper book itself to hand yet. As evidence of a past lunar civilization, these images are woefully inadequate. Those from early chapters we've seen before —the "castle," the "shard," the "paperclip" et al. The Chapter 9 images of "the gun emplacement," "the drill," "the crane" etc. are simply laughable.
4. "[T]he Ancient Aliens ... may have been forced off the Moon, either by some conflict of unimaginable proportions, or by a natural calamity of the same dimensions. Either way, the answers to that question are bound to have created a ton of fear and trepidation inside the halls of NASA and at the highest levels of government.
Mike just loves to imagine fear in other people, doesn't he? The haters are scared of the truth — the truth that only he, Mike Bara, is in possession of. JPL scientists were too scared to admit that Viking found life on Mars. This is bunk, just pure bunk. When does he think this episode of fear and trepidation occurred? Obviously within the last 54 years, since NASA didn't exist prior to that. Doesn't he think NASA Public Affairs would have put out a teensy-weensy press release after discovering that a race of aliens had been forced to leave the Moon? How would they have discovered it, anyway?
Chapter 1:
5."...nobody really knows much about [the Moon].
FACT: Hundreds of books, and thousands of scientific papers, have been written about the Moon since the Apollo results.
6. "...according to rogue geologist Jim Berkland, the Moon may play a significant role in the frequency of earthquakes"
Well, he did say "may." But Stuart Robbins, in his exposing pseudoastronomy blog, wrote very recently that Berkland's reputation is based on a single lucky hit, and that in general his predictions are worthless. No lunar influence on earthquake frequency has in fact been demonstrated. See Robbins' careful statistical analysis.
7. "The co-accretion theory [of the Moon's formation] arose from the accretion theory of planetary formation (which I thoroughly dismantled in my last book, The Choice)."
Oh no you didn't, Mike. You did no such thing. In fact, your attempt to "dismantle" it led you into the most crashing, howling error in the entire train-wreck of a book. The one where you wrote that if the orbits of both Earth and Mars were perfectly circular, they would remain at the same distance from each other. OUCH!!!
Chapter 2:
8. Recycled Dark Mission material. Bara here reiterates the falsehood that NASA is not really a civilian agency. He quotes the Space Act, Sec 305 (i), accurately:
"The Administration shall be considered a defense agency of the United States for the purpose of Chapter 17, Title 35 of the United States Code."
Bara sees those words for the purpose of Chapter 17, Title 35 of the United States Code, and yet somehow he doesn't see them. If he did see them he'd perhaps take the trouble to discover what they mean. Title 35 is exclusively concerned with patent law. Chapter 17 is headed SECRECY OF CERTAIN INVENTIONS AND FILING APPLICATIONS IN FOREIGN COUNTRY [sic], and its second paragraph reads as follows:
Whenever the publication or disclosure of an invention by the publication of an application or by the granting of a patent, ... might, in the opinion of the Commissioner of Patents, be detrimental to the national security, he shall make the application for patent in which such invention is disclosed available for inspection to the Atomic Energy Commission, the Secretary of Defense, and the chief officer of any other department or agency of the Government designated by the President as a defense agency of the United States. (emphasis added)
I'm sure my regular readers will get the point. But in case Mike Bara himself, or his manager Adrienne Loska, read this review, let me flog the dead horse by explaining that this paragraph simply brings NASA into line with other governmental agencies on the means of dealing with patent applications relating to classified material. Yes, Mike, it means that some aspects of NASA's work are secret. Everyone except you and Hoagland already knew that. IT DOES NOT MEAN that NASA is under the thumb of, still less an actual adjunct of, DoD.
9. Recycled Dark Mission material. Bara gives us his version of what the Brookings Report of 1961 meant. At first it looks as though his position is a little mollified from the Dark Mission passage, for he writes
"it quickly becomes apparent that the underlying purpose of the Brookings Report was to provide legal and political cover for NASA..."
So is it now his theory that NASA already had already decided that it would suppress knowledge of an extraterrestrial intelligence, and Brookings merely "provided cover" for a policy that was already in place? Alas no, for a page or two later he recycles word for word the utterly incorrect passage from Dark Mission:
"So here we had the proverbial smoking gun. Not only was NASA advised--almost from its inception--to withhold any data that supported the reality of Cydonia or any other discovery like it, they were told to do so for the good of human society as a whole." My point by point critique of Dark Mission (error #14) explained how wrong that is.
10. Writing of early attempts to send spacecraft to the Moon, Bara notes that the Soviet probe Luna 1 (1959) missed the Moon by 3,725 miles. He writes "that is simply not possible if Newtonian mechanics is correct."
FACT: It certainly is, especially if, as in this case, a software error caused a completely erroneous burn time to be commanded. As we know, Mike Bara's ignorance of rocketry and orbital mechanics is as vast as the Cosmos itself.
Chapter 3:
11."NASA's photographic exploration of [Sinus Medii] must have quickly scared them off..."
Again, the fantasy that NASA is "scared." I've had the privilege of being acquainted with many NASA engineers, scientists, astronauts and managers, and not one of them has struck me as the type to be scared by the results of a reconnaissance for landing sites. Note that Sinus Medii is the site of several of Richard Hoagland's fanciful "alien structures," including the terrain he has called Los Angeles, the paperclip (one of Hoagland's beard hairs caught in his scanner?), the castle, and the ridiculous glass skyscrapers I debunked a week or so ago.
In the present work Bara notes, as Hoagland has in the past, that the "Castle" — a mile-high structure which is actually a photographic fault — is held up by "a sagging support cable". Neither Hoagland nor Bara have ever said what the top ends of this cable are attached to.
Chapter 4:
12. In this chapter Bara introduces us again to Ken Johnston, and what his personal collection of photo prints revealed. He writes that Ken dealt with "...first-generation photographic negatives and prints." That is not the case. The main photo archive was not in the Lunar Receiving Laboratory, where Ken worked, but in a completely different building.
This blog has previously commented on:
The impossibility of airbrushing film negatives
The blue flares on six shots from Apollo 14 Mag #66 (written as a briefing for Mike, which he obviously didn't read. I'm casting my pearls before swine, obviously)
The "inclined buttresses" shown in some of Al Bean's paintings of the lunar landscape (see error #17)
13. Writing of the tense situation during the Apollo 11 landing, Bara writes of "..the 1202 alarm that no one could figure out."
FACT: The whole point is that somebody DID figure it out, and very bravely declared that it could safely be ignored. The 1202 was an executive overload alarm from the tiny LM computer, and it was a young GUIDO called Steve Bales who took the responsibility to give it the OK (although Bales himself also credits computer whiz Jack Garman.) Bales was quite correct, and was commended by President Nixon as a result.
Chapter 5:
14. This is the chapter in which Bara tells us, very unconvincingly, that there are satellite dishes in the craters Asada and Proclus. He shows us images from Apollo 16, but obviously didn't take the trouble to consult the far better imagery of these craters now available in the LROC image library. There are no satellite dishes in those craters. See for yourselves. Asada is notably dish-shaped, Proclus is not even that.
Asada is at 7.3°N, 49.9°E
Proclus is at 16.1°N, 46.8°E
15. This is also the chapter in which Mike Bara writes this about images of Earth from space:
"the clouds are the highest in the atmosphere, meaning that they are reflecting more light back to the camera and at a faster rate. Since they are returning more light, the clouds are the lightest. The surface areas ... are darker, because they are a bit further away from the camera than the clouds and therefore the light has to travel further before it is reflected back. The deep blue oceans are therefore the darkest, because the light has to travel all the way to the ocean floor before it is reflected back to the camera."
This paragraph has been cited by more than one negative Amazon reviewer, as a clear indication of how tragically far Mike Bara falls short of the minimum comprehension of the physical world to be credible as an author on such topics. It's frighteningly inaccurate, as Neville Parchemin has pointed out on this blog.
Chapter 6:
In this chapter, Bara takes us through several of the theories advanced by Moon hoax loonies, and does a pretty good job of debunking them. I can't help wondering, however, if he somehow forgot to credit that excellent web site Moon Base Clavius for most, if not all, of his text.
16. Recycled Dark Mission material: "Almost from the moment that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot upon the Moon ... rumors began circulating that the whole thing was faked. I have always felt that there was something a little more to this than simple stupidity or naïveté, something a bit insidious about the whole thing. That was more than confirmed in the Forward [sic] to Dark Mission, when Richard related his memories of being handed a pamphlet claiming the landings were faked even before Neil and Buzz had splashed down ... What made that moment so extraordinary was not that someone had made up a pamphlet making such a claim, it was that the person who authored it was being escorted around the NASA press room by a NASA press officer to make sure every reporter got one."
FACT: This is Hoagland's oft-repeated story of "Greatcoat Man" being led around the press room at JPL, where Hoagland was part of a CBS team reporting, not Apollo, which JPL had almost nothing to do with, but the approach to Mars by Mariner 6 & 7. The fatal flaw in Hoagland's theory that NASA itself started the hoax rumors is this: If they had wanted to seed this thought in the minds of the specialist press, surely they would have addressed that to the press in Houston, where Apollo 11 was being managed, rather than Pasadena where it was not. Of course, I have no idea who "Greatcoat Man" was (neither have Hoagland & Bara,) but the possibility occurs to me that this person asked if he might distribute his pamphlet, and Frank Bristow (then chief PAO at JPL) was with him to make sure he didn't start lecturing or haranguing members of the press corps. Friar Occam would prefer that explanation, I believe.
Chapter 7:
This chapter is all about the Apollo 17 mission, and its fanciful interpretation as the clandestine exploration of a seekrit tunnel, and the collection of the technical artifacts of the dead lunar civilisation that exists in the minds of Hoagland & Bara. Bara refers to the South Massif as "an ancient alien base in the Taurus-Littrow valley." This blog commented back in June this year, when this horrible book was first announced.
The material draws heavily on the six-part www series A Hidden Mission for Apollo 17? by Keith Laney. Mike Bara credits Laney more than once in his text, but that has apparently not appeased Laney himself, who has recently written:
"...if he's going to expound on my musings he really ought to consult with me first, or at least use the same "we don't know but it looks like we did" attitude I took when investigating this. Would also be nice for once if one of these guys that use my stuff to make money would cut me a check as well. that's the part that pisses me off the most. I do what I do not for cash, but for the sheer wonder, if someone takes it and makes money it's only right to share. So far I've got not so much as an email..."
17. "The first thing that's notable about the Apollo 17 Mission is the very dangerous look of the landing site itself. Positioned at 19.5° N by 33° E, the target landing ellipse....etc."
FACT: The nominal landing site was at 30° 44' 58.3" E, 20° 09' 50.5" N. This is per the official press kit (p.33) -- a more reliable source than anything Hoagland & Bara have ever written. Those scoundrels think nothing of bald-faced lies when it comes to introducing those "magic" numbers 19.5 and 33. They did it notably for the landing site of Mars Pathfinder, now known officially as Carl Sagan Station. In that case they said the co-ordinates were 19.5°N by 33°W—in fact they are 19.13°N, 33.22°W. If Mike reads this he'll probably be saying to himself "page 33, hmmm....see? It works."
18. Bara likes this image, AS17-135-20680, run off as Cernan & Schmitt arrived at station 2. Is it a pyramid on the Moon? No, it isn't. It's one of a sequence of five junk shots showing parts of the LRV (see the Apollo 17 Image Library, Mag #135).
19. Writing of the infamous "Data's Head" rock in the crater Shorty, which this blog has written about at length, Bara here writes "The red stripe is plainly visible even without enhancement on several photos Schmitt took of the interior of Shorty."
FACT: It is not. See the far better quality image this blog obtained for analysis.
Chapter 8:
Skipped -- just more silliness about a "factory in Hortensius" -- again, with no attempt to validate against the LROC library.
Chapter 9:
"Wow. Just wow! AS11-38-5564 [is] covered with machinery, structures, buildings, artifacts and Ancient Alien ruins of all types."
Almost the entire chapter concerns that one Apollo 11 shot of the far side of the Moon, and what Mike Bara thinks he sees. Here it is for your delectation. It's a pretty wide angle shot, at a fairly low sun angle, so it's not too surprising that shadows form in all sorts of random shapes. To Mike Bara, however, they aren't random.
20. He sees a ziggurat. See this blog passim. But Stuart Robbins has done a better job than I could have done on the ziggy. Here's his summary page and "Final Words."
21. He sees a crane. This is bad.
22. He sees a spaceship. Really, really bad. Why would it be aerodynamic?
23. He sees a gun emplacement. Terrible!
24. He sees a jack. Awful!!
25. He sees a flying saucer in a hangar. Childish!
26. He sees a beach house. Not like any beach house I've ever seen.
27. He sees a human head. Can you see it?
28. He sees a drill. Laughable!!
On his blog, Mike Bara spent some time telling us that pareidolia doesn't exist.
"The word was actually first coined by a douchebag debunker ... named Steven Goldstein in a 1994 issue of Skeptical Inquirer. Since then, every major debunker from Oberg to “Dr. Phil” has fallen back on it, but it is still a load of B.S. There is no such thing. " It doesn't matter what you call it, Mike, the phenomenon of finding familiar things in random patterns is absolutely real, and this chapter is as fine an illustration of it as can be imagined. It really is pathetic that Bara didn't take the obvious step that any serious researcher would, and check the LROC images to see what these smeared shadows really are. The fact that he didn't further invalidates this wretched, wretched book.
29. "Stuart Robbins has a long history of false and utterly silly accusations against me and Mr. Hoagland, and frequently teams up with someone calling himself "Expat" to attack us within hours of anything we post. "Expat" in fact has made a habit of stalking my radio appearances to ask me in-depth questions along the lines of "are you still beating your wife?""
FACT: Stalking?
Amazon shipping has gone back to what it was originally -- mid-Oct.
Hoagland really must be having a bad 2012. The year he's been talking about as being a veritable buffet of disclosure has arrived, and he's spent a third of it (since May) completely and utterly silent.
He may be getting some of the credit, but he's getting none of the money. And that has to be the hard part for him. Bara spent a great deal time learning the woo business from Hoagland, and now he's using that knowledge to compete with him. Any bets Hoagland won't be able to stop himself from alling in Monday night?
I also love how he brings some sort of petty internet grudge into a book that's listed as "Science" in Amazon.
"What I have proven here is that the chief critics of the Daedalus Ziggurat are not only wrong, they are foolishly and sloppily wrong. Either they didn't want to study the images in the depth that I did before releasing it [sic] to Mr. Hoagland, or they simply lacked the intellectual capacity to do so. I lean towards the latter, but let's face it, buffoons like Mr. Robbins and Expat are just haters who attack everything I do, no matter how many times I embarrass them. I doubt this will be the last time I have to respond to these louts, but I certainly hope it's now obvious that they don't know what they're talking about. I would say they were liars and/or idiots, but that's their territory. The difference is I can actually prove what I say."
To me, that's just typical Internet flaming, it doesn't bother me one bit.
Hoagland presents no secret memos from NASA to support his assertion, but he does offer reasonable circumstantial evidence, if we accept that NASA alters images without explanation, and in light of so many sightings of UFOs. Again, nothing conclusive as he likes to make out, but he does make a case for reasonable doubt of atheism.
Stay Tuned....
"once again I'm f'ed in the A by the hoagy bunch"
I take back my comment about "typical Internet flaming." This isn't the Internet, it's a published book. If I'd been Bara's manager, I'd have advised him not to include that material. It looks childish now, and in six months time it's going to look REALLY childish, if anyone is still reading this garbage by then. Adrienne Loska evidently has a different opinion.
I'm not sure anyone will be reading it now, let alone then. $20 is a lot to ask for material that can be found elsewhere on the Web for free. His C2C appearance should boost sales somewhat, but he doesn't tell the story in quite the breathless manner (STARTLING RESULTS! and STUNNING CONFIRMATION!) that Hoagland uses. Without that ability to make the audience think they are about to be let in on some deep dark secret (the real hook of Dark Mission), he's left with just another "anomalies" book.
Screw those rat bastards. I am sick to fucking death of supporting their horseshit.
How daring ignorance is.
Who the fuck do those chauvinistic bastards at NASA think they are, to decide what data the tax paying United States American citizens are worthy to evaluate for themselves?
With the tons of data that's actually collected, you'd think that NASA would appreciate as much volunteer researchers as are willing to contribute.