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Poor Jess hasn’t known what to do with herself today. She has spent most of the time hiding in the shed, her face tucked safely into the creases at the back of an old armchair while, keeping away from James.

James is… well, I guess you’d say my step-nephew, if you can have such a thing. He is almost one and he is almost walking. He came to visit mum and Andrew this afternoon, bringing his mum and dad with him. It’s traditional that they should visit at this time of year - it’s Andrew’s (un)official birthday.

I was due there at half one, but of course was late. I’d got myself all tied up with jobs that needed doing at home and was delayed leaving. One set of roadworks later (on a Sunday?!) and a cluster of associated traffic lights that I overshot, so couldn’t tell if they were red or green, and before I knew it, it was gone two.

They were out on the upper patio when I arrived, eating salads and quiche in the sun. It was a very enjoyable afternoon, by the end of which Andrew and James must have walked three miles around the lawn. The horse spent its time peering over the fence, waiting to be fed apples

Viv was down from the north, staying for a week. She’d brought a water feature for the garden, which was playing happily in the shade. It made a relaxing giggles to itself, and soon we were all close to dozing off. I don’t know what’s happened to me this weekend, but I’m finding it very difficult to stay awake. Eating too much probably doesn’t help…

Jess finally came in when James went home, taking his parents with him. She did a patrol of the house, checking there were no infants hiding in the corners or behind the larger pieces of furniture, then let me brush her while I watched a programme on Channel 5 (there’s a first time for everything) about Nasa faking the moon landings.

Typical American docu-trash. Lots of emotive leading sentences, narration from Mitch Pileggi and irritating dramatic music from beginning to end that made the whole thing play out like an ad for a film. However, when you got past all of that it raised some interesting points.

Among the ones that stick in my mind:

• Bands of very strong radiation surround the earth. Anything less than six-feet of solid lead surrounding the craft on all sides would have protected the astronauts from certain death or at least serious radiation sickness. However, the craft was covered in just a “paper-thin” reflective coating, yet none of them ever fell ill. Conclusion: it was an elaborate hoax staged in a massive studio.
• In many of the photos taken by the astronauts not all of the shadows cast by objects on the lunar surface lay in the same direction indicating that the sun was not the only light source. Conclusion: it was an elaborate hoax staged in a massive studio.
• All of the cameras taken to the moon had crosshairs etched onto the surface of the lens so it was easy to work out the level horizon. These should therefore be overprinted across every object in every picture. However, in some you see objects in the pictures in front of the crosshairs. Conclusion: it was an elaborate hoax staged in a massive studio.
• In some of the pictures the sun was behind the object being photographed, yet the details of those objects facing the camera, which should have been in silhouette, were clear and well-lit. Conclusion: it was an elaborate hoax staged in a massive studio.
• In some of the pictures you see an astronaut climb down the ladder from the lunar lander into the shadow cast by the craft, yet the astronaut is very well lit and not affected by the shadow. Conclusion: it was an elaborate hoax staged in a massive studio.

Aha, you say - but people witnessed the rocket blasting off. Well, yes - they did. Apparently, though, it merely orbited the earth for eight days. The only genuine parts of the whole televised event was the blast-off and splashdown.

I approached the whole thing with a healthy dose of skepticism, but have to admit that by the end of it, when they’d detailed how 15% of the members of Nasa’s space programme died in suspicious circumstances following criticism of the programme, and how the American government was desperate to make it seem they were ahead of the Russians in the space race, you do start to wonder…

Rather conveniently there is no telescope powerful enough to take pictures of the supposed lunar landing sites and prove one way or another whether the lunar vehicles, American flags and mythical footsteps are still on the surface. Next year, though, Japan is to launch a probe to take close-up photos of the surface so we could know the truth … of Nasa could slip them a back-hander and ask them to do a few Photoshop ‘enhancements’ first.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 11th, 2002 at 11:25 pm and is filed under Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.