41

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Wiki on aviation

« on: May 05, 2022, 04:29:05 AM »

The statement behind that originally stems from the narrative of the wider Flat Earth movement. There are a number of videos of pilots saying that the gyroscope of their planes don't dip for curvature, that they don't actually take Coriolis into account, that radar on F-15 jets go further that RE should allow, and so on.

A RAF document saying that the earth is round, or even that it spins, is almost irrelevant and does not directly address how pilot are "taught to fly".

I humbly suggest referencing these videos (I note none of them are about pilots being taught to fly over a flat earth as the wiki claims), so we can discuss their merits, rather than the diversionary quote of the letter which you agree is unrelated to FE.

There’s no evidence provided on that page to show that pilots are taught to fly over a flat earth. Just a baseless claim.

Actually, the Wiki does provide a number of links referencing that pilots say they are taught to fly over an FE -

42

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Wiki on aviation

« on: May 04, 2022, 10:02:33 PM »

The statement behind that originally stems from the narrative of the wider Flat Earth movement. There are a number of videos of pilots saying that the they don't actually take Coriolis into account, that radar on F-15 jets go further that RE should allow, that their gyroscopes show level flight, and so on.

A RAF document saying that the earth is round, or even that it spins, is almost irrelevant and does not directly address how pilot are "taught to fly".

43

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Wiki on aviation

« on: May 04, 2022, 09:36:10 PM »

That quote is describing geocentricism, not FE. Those aren't always the same thing. Traditional geocentricism assumes an RE.

44

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Bye Bye Abortion

« on: May 04, 2022, 06:02:37 PM »

If there’s some issue which means the mother will die if the baby is carried to full term then there is an argument to be made.

So if a mother gets cold feet and wants to abort her baby the day before it is due to be born, that's fine?

45

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Moon landing hoax question

« on: May 04, 2022, 01:20:44 AM »

Tom - in the above list of the Soviet Union's fakery of "firsts", why would the Soviet Union skip faking #8 above which is a manned landing on the Moon?

Probably because they had already won the space race by that point. Again, it was called the space race and not the 'put a man on the moon' race.

Someone has to approve the plan and give the go-ahead for exorbitant release of public monies, real or fake. The gravy train has to wind down at some point. Note that immediately after Apollo the NASA gravy train of public money also slowed significantly and everyone stopped caring about the Moon.

46

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Terrible Political Memes

« on: May 03, 2022, 11:41:56 PM »

47

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Terrible Political Memes

« on: May 03, 2022, 11:38:44 PM »

48

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Moon landing hoax question

« on: May 03, 2022, 02:57:07 PM »

Tom, I think you need to do a lot more research into the Soviet space programme in the 50s, 60s and 70s before declaring there was 'no comptetion'. Lots of evidence out there, including books written by those involved.

Of course the USSR did not say there was.

In other news, the German Democratic Republic wasn't actually a democracy.

Shocking.

The evidence of what they were doing in "secret" and what they were focused on and prioritized on in "secret" is based on speculation though, based on decades-later archival digging and seeing that academics were putting some amount of research into lander and rocket designs.

During the Space Race they were clearly working on lots of different space projects.



It is clearly a matter of national coping to claim that it had to be a man on the moon to win the Space Race, much like the previous analogy given of after losing a foot race deciding that the REAL race is the race to your car in the stadium parking lot.

49

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Moon landing hoax question

« on: May 03, 2022, 10:18:35 AM »

There is nothing to skip. Read above. They publicly said they were not in a race to send men to the Moon...

If Russia was willing to lie about sending humans to orbit, then why would you think that they wouldn't be willing to lie about their intentions to send humans to the moon?

Actually I said that Russia did not publicly concede to a race to the Moon. They never declared that they were sending people to the moon during the time of Apollo. It wasn't a competition. They may have researched a few things, and made their model of a lander, but NASA interns and academics make new models of planetary landers every year as a standard academic exercise, which never see the light of day. When your space agency partners with academia they research all kinds of wacky stuff.

The assumption that Russia was actively competing to get to the moon is just that, an assumption. At the time they never publicly said that they were trying to get people to the moon, or were in a competition, so that's that. When Apollo 11 happened Russia denied that there was a moon race at all.

50

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Moon landing hoax question

« on: May 02, 2022, 02:11:39 PM »

See my comment above:

Even if fake, you still need to get the public and people out of the loop on board and convince people of the plan to get funding.

The US Congress approved the risky scheme because they were desperate.

Russia was not desperate, and did not publicaly announce that this was their goal. Clearly a difference there.

Easy to see why a desperate US would try to beat the Russians at something after so many losses. Turns out that the Russians never consented to a manned moon race  and it was mostly hype.

51

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Moon landing hoax question

« on: May 02, 2022, 01:53:26 PM »

There is nothing to skip. Read above. They publicly said they were not in a race to send men to the Moon and that their lunar program was robotic; which was cheaper, more flexible, and without risk to human life.

Apollo is prided on being "risky" and "hazardous"... which is really nothing to be proud of. The US Congress funded such a risky scheme out of desperation. The Russians were not desperate, and was not keen on funding wild hazardous manned missions to the moon. Even if fake, you still need to get the public and people out of the loop on board and convince people of the plan to get funding.

52

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Moon landing hoax question

« on: May 02, 2022, 07:29:18 AM »

It's simple. If there is a competition both parties need to agree to it.

From the Wikipedia article on "Space Race" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race

"The competition began in earnest on August 2, 1955, when the Soviet Union responded to the American announcement four days earlier of intent to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year, by declaring they would also launch a satellite 'in the near future'."

Both parties agreed to this and publicly communicated their intentions. The Soviet Union won this.

In contradiction, the Soviets did not publicly claim at the time of Apollo that they were in a race to the Moon:

https://www.history.com/news/space-race-soviet-union-moon-landing-denial

The Soviet Response to the Moon Landing? Denial There Was a Moon Race at All

President John F. Kennedy kicked off the moon race in 1961 by announcing the U.S. would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. From then on, NASA’s program to reach the moon before the Soviet Union was public information. In contrast, the Soviet Union didn’t publicize its own program, or even officially admit it had one.

https://reason.com/1979/08/01/the-moon-race-cover-up/

The Moon Race Cover-Up

Ten years ago Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Did the US really beat the Soviets, or was the moon race just a NASA hype?

On Christmas Eve 1968, three American astronauts circled the moon in the Apollo-8 spaceship. After another lunar scouting mission the following May, the Apollo-11 flight then carried out the first actual manned landing on another world. Five more landings (and one cliff-hanging near-disaster) were made in the next three years.

The Apollo-8 astronauts had celebrated their achievement with a poem modeled on "The Night before Christmas." An astronaut on earth read the parody to the men a quarter of a million miles away: "'Twas the night before Christmas, and way out in space, The Apollo Eight crew had just won the moon race.…"

But had there ever been a race?

The USSR, which had opened the frantic "space race" with a rapid-fire series of surprise "space spectaculars" a dozen years earlier, never seemed unequivocally committed to the "man-to-the-moon" race against Apollo, despite repeated strident cries from NASA during budget hearings that "the Russians will beat us to the moon." Many Western observers were motivated to believe that Moscow had decided to drop out of this phase of the space sweepstakes: liberal observers opposed Apollo as a wasteful use of resources, which without the whipped-up "moon race" hysteria could never have been diverted from social programs; conservatives were convinced that Soviet engineers are congenitally incapable of creating sophisticated moon ships but were pouring rubles into near-earth space weapons that Apollo did nothing to counteract; most leading space scientists were opposed to the tremendous extra costs of manned versus automated space missions, especially those that promised unique contributions to their own specialties.

After the initial Apollo successes in 1969, Moscow spokesmen were quick to aver that "the Soviet Union has never intended to send men to the moon" (else surely it would have beaten Apollo). The true Soviet lunar program, these sources claimed, was based on the exclusive use of automatic robot probes that were cheaper, more flexible, and could be launched "without risk to human life." Less-polite remarks were made in native-language broadcasts from Radio Moscow to Latin America, Africa, and Asia; this line stressed the excessive costs of Apollo, resulting in "the fanatical squandering of wealth looted from the oppressed peoples of the developing world."

Some skeptics dismissed this as a "sour grapes" rationalization of Russia's defeat or as a face-saving excuse for losing a race Moscow had promised to win. But most observers accepted these Soviet declarations at face value.

Five years after the first Apollo moon landing, CBS ran a special TV report in which news correspondent Walter Cronkite intoned, "It turned out that the Russians were never in the race at all." A few weeks later, Parade magazine was asked about the "wasted money" of Apollo, since "we've learned that the Russians never even came close technologically to putting a man on the moon." Replied editor Walter Scott, "Whether putting Americans on the Moon was a waste of money is of course arguable. That our intelligence of the Soviet space technology was faulty is not."

Books on Apollo generally praised the program while echoing the theme advanced by the science editor of the Saturday Review as early as 1963, that "there never was a race to the moon, because the Russians wouldn't race." The authors of Journey to Tranquility (Doubleday, 1969) claimed to reveal the "startling fact" that "by 1963 it had become clear that the Russians had little immediate interest in the Moon and that the race for space did not, in fact, exist."

The above articles go on to describe that Russia was making some steps towards a future manned lunar mission, and developed a few things. But they were clearly not publicly claiming to be in a moon race at the time of Apollo. Russia said that they were not in a race to the moon. It is claimed by the western side that Russia was in a moon race and that Russia was lying when publicly stating that they were not in a moon race. 

In order to have a competition you need two parties who communicate their intention. Russia did not agree to any such race. Despite whatever research they developed towards a possible future moon landing, the claim that they were secretly in a race is clearly just coping. It was a space race, which the Soviets won. It turned into a "moon race" when the US needed to cope.

53

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Moon landing hoax question

« on: May 02, 2022, 06:27:21 AM »

Even if you are faking your achievements, it still takes effort to fake. Someone cheating in a foot race with steroids wouldn't necessarily entertain someone deciding that the race was to his car in the stadium parking lot.

Again, it was called the space race and not the "first man to the Moon" race. Putting a man on the Moon was just something that the US did to feel better about losing the space race and wasn't really the original goal.

If you are having a competition with someone you need to stick to the original goals, not make them up as you go along. It was called the space race, clearly. The goal was to get into space. The race to space was to express military dominance in terms of orbital and ICBM weapon capability. It was to show the world that you have the capability of creating orbital weapons. A manned lunar mission has little to do with that. It was tacked on because the US didn't want to appear to be a complete loser on the world stage.

54

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Moon landing hoax question

« on: May 02, 2022, 04:52:30 AM »

Yeah, it was called the space race, not the 'send a man to plant a flag on moon' race. It was a race to space. The goal posts shifted to planting a flag on the moon with a man after the US lost the space race. Russia clearly and obviously won it with what it was claiming, and was under no obligation to win further arbitrary goal post shifting.

If you lose a foot race and then decide that the race is actually to your car in the parking lot, that just makes you a big loser.

55

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Moon landing hoax question

« on: May 02, 2022, 01:58:41 AM »

The Soviets did claim that they were the first to put a flag on the moon.

https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/russian-flag-on-moon-first/



https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/soviet-probe-reaches-the-moon

In September 1959, the Soviets upped the ante considerably with the announcement that a rocket carrying the flag of the Soviet Union had crashed onto the moon’s surface. In Washington, a muted congratulation was sent to the Soviet scientists who managed the feat. At the same time, however, the United States warned the Soviet Union that sending the Russian flag to the moon gave the Soviets no territorial rights over the celestial body.

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2125:_Luna_2

Luna 2, the first artificial object to touch another world, carried a sphere made of steel Soviet flag emblems. [A patterned sphere is shown blowing up to pieces.] It was designed to blow apart on impact, scattering tiny metal flags and ribbons across the surface of the moon.

https://thecosmical.com/which-countries-have-a-flag-planted-on-the-moon-2021-edition/

The “Flags” of the Soviet Union

In all sense of the matter, the Soviet flag was technically the first to reach the surface of the moon.

In the 20th Century, the Space Race between the two Cold War adversaries, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (USA), spurred on the scientific advancement in the space domain. The race soon brought the nations to the moon, when in 1959, the Soviet Union took another step forward in its space program with the launch of the Luna-2 probe.

Luna-2 was the sixth attempt of the Soviet Union to impact the moon, which ultimately succeeded to become the first man-made object to reach the lunar surface. With a crash landing mission directive, the Lunar-2 detonated two sphere-shaped pennants prior to impact.



72 titanium alloy pentagonal elements covered the two pennants. The center of the spheres was an explosive designed to detonate on impact to scatter the tiny pentagons all across the moon. The centerpiece of the sphere contained the state emblem of the Soviet Union with the Cyrillic letters CCCP (“USSR”) and the launch date engraved below it.

56

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Moon landing hoax question

« on: May 02, 2022, 01:52:57 AM »

But, going to space is a conspiracy / faked in a studio as space travel conspiracy theorists would contend. It wouldn't need to cost billions.

The Russian government and populous thinks it does though. Pretty fishy if the RSA claimed to do it without getting the money appropriated, or if they did it after the Soviet government denied their funding request for it.

57

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Moon landing hoax question

« on: May 02, 2022, 01:23:14 AM »

There were multiple government organizations involved. Money has to be appropriated. Neither NASA or the Soviet Space Agency had authority to appropriate money to itself.

NASA to US Congress: Russia is beating us!! Please give us billions of $$ for Apollo manned lunar landing.

US Congress: OMG OKAY

Soviet Space Agency to Soviet Russia: NASA is sending men to the Moon, please give us billions of ₽₽ for a Soviet manned lunar landing to beat them at that too!

Soviet Russia: That would unnecessarily endanger human lives. We already beat them at the most important space achievements. We won. We are going to reduce funding that area and not focus on it, never really getting past the planning stages.

58

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Moon landing hoax question

« on: May 02, 2022, 12:57:30 AM »

The US Moon Landing was only the biggest win because you were conditioned to see it that way in the western school system. Russia had claimed many firsts:

- First intercontinental ballistic missile and orbital launch vehicle
- First satellite
- First person in space
- First robotic space rover on the Moon
- First probes sent to Venus and Mars

Considering these firsts, suggesting that Russia should have focused on being the first to send people to the Moon to claim that just seems arbitrary. Apollo was highly criticized because there was nothing a person could do on the Moon that a robot couldn't do, and that NASA was unnecessarily endangering the lives of people for national prestige.

From The Atlantic: "Over the years, I’ve spoken with many people who think deeply about space travel, and when I ask some of them about the whys, they admit, a little sheepishly, that there might be no compelling reason to send people into space—robots, yes, but people, maybe not. They seem hesitant to even say it aloud, as if to do so were blasphemous."

There wasn't actually a scientific reason to send people to the Moon. Why should Russia give importance to something the US arbitrarily decided to do?

59

Philosophy, Religion & Society / Re: Terrible Political Memes

« on: April 30, 2022, 03:31:05 PM »

60

Flat Earth Theory / Re: Question on the motives of The Space Travel Conspiracy

« on: April 29, 2022, 09:29:43 PM »

An analogy could be this:
1. Cthulhu is a titanic space monster who sleeps at the bottom of the Pacific ocean, but he is not real.
2. However, the US has a security imperative to protect Hawaii and the Western coast of the US from a potential attack if Cthulhu ever awakens.
3. Therefore, the US spends lots of money on weapons systems designed to specifically defend us from Cthulhu, but, crucially, these weapon systems are all completely faked. Everything about them is made up as a giant conspiracy.

After all, Cthulhu isn't real, so why would there be any need to actually make the special weapons that protect us from him?

Likewise, if RET space isn't real, what is the purpose of NASA and the pentagon to perpetuate a conspiracy to dominate a phenomena that doesn't even exist?  Put another way: If RET space exists, the security motive makes practical sense. If it doesn't, the security motive makes no sense.

In this world if Cthulhu was a part of their religion people may not accept the military declaring that Cthulhu didn't exist. People would just say that the military's submarine or sonar technology is primitive and that he could easily be hidden somewhere. It is far better for the the military and military contractors to ask for money from the public to defend against such threats. The military knows that increased defense funding and the associated development of new technologies would increase the country's security and status in general. The contractors know that increased defense funding is more money for them. The government gets to satisfy the public's fears. Politicians get to win elections, etc, etc.

If another country came along and said that they couldn't find Cthulhu and he therefore did not exist it would simply be rebutted that they they must have too primitive of technology to do it. It is better for that country to join the defense industry bandwagon.