From: James Smith <lunartravel.nul>
Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2007 10:16:37 -0400 (GMT-04:00)
Fwd Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2007 06:54:24 -0400
Subject: Re: Cultural Taboos & Prejudices - Smith


>From: Lan Fleming <lfleming6.nul>
>To: UFO UpDates - Toronto <ufoupdates.nul>
>Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2007 13:35:12 -0500
>Subject: Re: Cultural Taboos & Prejudices

>The bad science done on the official side is
>mostly done by bona fide scientists. And there is way too much
>that is _very_ bad, a recent case in point being the treatment
>of the Apollo 11 UFO sighting by a Ph.D. astronomer and by the
>Apollo astronauts who witnessed it and then changed their story
>for public consumption from what they had concluded in the
>mission debriefing.

I don't know if you are referring to Dr. Plait or to Dr.
Morrison. If you look at what Morrison did, all he did was ask
Aldrin. He didn't even TRY to use the raw data to determine
whether the panels could in fact be seen. Then look at what
Plait did, simply took Morrison at his word and didn't TRY to
determine independently whether what Morrison or Aldrin were
saying was true. This is not at all peer review, but simply
water cooler talk.

They should simply not say anything.

I have already discussed how it could be the panels but without
added data, its useless to speculate. If Aldrin could tell us
how the object appeared to be passing by, then that would be
helpful. By this I mean, was it 1) "moving" from the front of
the CSM to the aft, 2) visa versa or 3) was it really moving
side to side, which due to the fact they saw it during the
rotisserie mode the CSM was in at the time (lengthwise axis
normal to the ecliptic plane), meant it could likely not be
moving but just be following them as the panels would. Also,
even with the disorienting spin nature of the flight mode, they
should have been able to give some rough estimate of the
direction the object was seen (namely towards Earth or towards
the Moon). Even this meager data is left out of their accounts.

An estimate of magnitude would be nice.
An estimate of tumbling rate would be nice.

I don't blame the crew for changing their story. They can't be
expected to explain everything they see and can't make
inflamatory remarks.