atheists and "conspiracy" theories

[Christi]

Actually, the economy started going down in mid 2000, especially stocks.

I don't have to learn history as I lived it and was old enough to remember it.

BTW, get some manners.

[Thor]

BTW I noticed how you failed to respond to my simple question. A plane hit a building near the top of the building (not its foundation) yet it crumbles IN PLACE (similar to controlled demolition). Please explain...

This is very simple. The planes crashed into the WTC travelling in excess of 500 mph. The initial collision dislodged fire retardant insulation that was on the steel beams of the structure. The planes were also loaded with fuel. Remember, the terrorists specifically hijacked planes taking cross country flights so there would be lots of fuel on board. This fuel spattered all over the building and began to burn. As the fuel burned, it weakened the steel superstructure because the insulation was gone. As the steel weakened, it began to sag. Once the critical point was reached, the supports gave way and the top floors pancaked onto those below. Once begun, nothing could stop it and the building collapsed in place.

Understand now?

[Abishalom]

Actually, he did need 9/11 as the public would not have gone along with the invasion otherwise. Remember, economy tanking, no one really even cared much about Sadam Hussein. And yeah, where are those "weapons of mass destruction" anyway?

BTW, just look on Youtube for evidence as there is plenty of it. No, I don't want to get all up in it cause then the big bad government is gonna take me away.

Mythbusters? You mean the same guys that shot a hole through someone's house? Yeah, you keep on believing. BTW, they only even worked on 2 of the photos. And, in one of the photos, they manipulated the dust in order to get the shadows to go their way.

So with all of the money that NASA has pissed through, going back to the moon just isn't in the plans? Nope, not buying it.

WTF are you rattling on about? On 9-10-01 the economy was not tanking. The US still had a six trillion dollar surplus and Bush hadn't fucked it all up yet. Try to learn some history before commenting on it.

Where did you get six trillion surplus from? Who told you that nonsense? We don't even print our own money (federal reserve is owned by private bankers) so we'll always be in debt.

[Christi]

First of all, there is actually a lot of evidence to prove that the moon landing was faked. Just look at so much of the photos and you can see it was staged. Plus, if we were there and technology is so much better now, why haven't we been back?

I'm sitting here hoping that you were joking when you wrote this. There is exactly as much evidence that the Moon landings were faked as there is for creationism, and it's just as credible. Apart from those laser reflectors, consider that the Apollo program returned nearly 400 kg of material in the form of rock and dust samples, all of which has to be accounted for. This resource goes into the whole hoax conspiracy in incredible detail:

http://www.clavius.org/

Check out their forum (and their new one) as well to see how well the Hoax Believers defend their case. Hint: it's painful.

As to why haven't we been back to the Moon: I wrote a whole article on exactly this point over at the Connecticut Valley Atheists (CVA) forum many moons (!) ago. However, since that site went tits-up recently, I'll have to try and recreate it from memory.

We have been back, many times. Since Apollo 11, NASA has sent manned capsules to the Moon a further six times. It is true that America was the first nation to set a man down on the lunar surface, although Russia actually beat the US to the punch ten years year earlier when their Luna-1 probe performed a fly-by in January 1959, beating America's Pioneer 4 by two months. Later that year, Russia's Luna-2 became the first man-made object to reach (ok, crash into) the lunar surface. However, as we all know, Neil Armstrong was indeed the first human to step out onto the Moon's surface; a record which still stands to this day.

In the years since Apollo 17's landing in 1972, there have been seventeen missions to the Moon by five different national space agencies including NASA, with more planned for the immediate future. These missions, though not manned, have run the full gamut from simple fly-bys, orbiters and photo-reconnaisance to landers, rovers and sample return missions. Even the Apollo mission is still going on; those famous laser reflectors are monitored daily as part of the Apollo project.

As you correctly observed, the technology has improved greatly over the past decades. That is precisely why NASA and other spage agencies have chosen to go the robot probe route over manned spaceflight since:

* it's bloody dangerous, as evidenced by Apollo 1's never leaving the launchpad and Apollo 13's almost never making it back;

* it's reletively cheaper. A robot probe can be made as small and as light as the equipment it has to carry for the mission it's designed to carry out, without having to worry about life support and the concomitant fuel increase for all that unnecessary extra mass;

* it's easier to sell to the public at large, as well as to the relevant funding authorities. While Apollo did provide a short-term boost to national morale during a particularly troubled period, eventually in the public eyes it became an expensive way of sending people a quarter of a million miles to play golf - regardless of how much actual science was also achieved and valuable data returned;

* robot probes can gather more data, more quickly and more reliably, as well as in more extreme environments, than a team of even the most brilliant scientists over a long period cooped up in a tin can.

So don't let me hear the words "Moon" and "hoax" in the same sentence again, unless it's to point and laugh. Ok?

Yes, apparently, I missed the episode of Mythbusters that debunked the moon landing conspiracy. Had me going, but I can't explain the reflectors, which I doubt they would have sent up with anything else. It would be too tough, but I did read somewhere that they were 20 miles from the landing sites. Who knows, there seems to be an answer for everything.

Of course who's going to walk 20 miles to put up reflectors, but I don't know if that is true either.

[Shell B]

I'm sorry, but this thread is somewhat ridiculous. The term "conspiracy theory" is often applied to the crackpot type bullshit mentioned in this thread. However, not all conspiracy theories are dismissed. Some are even proven correct. Skeptics do not typically dismiss such theories, but they do typically dismiss the type we have mentioned here. So . . . it is not a case of intelligent people dismissing intelligent ideas. It's really just a case of the term "conspiracy theory" being somewhat like the term "UFO." In other words, it came to mean something much more specific than its actual meaning.

[Abishalom]

BTW I noticed how you failed to respond to my simple question. A plane hit a building near the top of the building (not its foundation) yet it crumbles IN PLACE (similar to controlled demolition). Please explain...

This is very simple. The planes crashed into the WTC travelling in excess of 500 mph. The initial collision dislodged fire retardant insulation that was on the steel beams of the structure. The planes were also loaded with fuel. Remember, the terrorists specifically hijacked planes taking cross country flights so there would be lots of fuel on board. This fuel spattered all over the building and began to burn. As the fuel burned, it weakened the steel superstructure because the insulation was gone. As the steel weakened, it began to sag. Once the critical point was reached, the supports gave way and the top floors pancaked onto those below. Once begun, nothing could stop it and the building collapsed in place.

Understand now?

No I am not asking for the standard response that the government concocted for the ignorant masses. Go look at videos of the WTC collapsing the fire is at the top of each building. Even if steel structures can be weakened by fire that does not explain how the whole building collapsed due to planes crashing at the top (which is the only placed you can see fire).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhyu-fZ2n...re=related

So please explain how the whole structures became hot enough to weaken even though we see no fire other than the ones concentrated at the top.

[Cyberman]

---

First of all, there is actually a lot of evidence to prove that the moon landing was faked. Just look at so much of the photos and you can see it was staged. Plus, if we were there and technology is so much better now, why haven't we been back?

I'm sitting here hoping that you were joking when you wrote this. There is exactly as much evidence that the Moon landings were faked as there is for creationism, and it's just as credible. Apart from those laser reflectors, consider that the Apollo program returned nearly 400 kg of material in the form of rock and dust samples, all of which has to be accounted for. This resource goes into the whole hoax conspiracy in incredible detail:

http://www.clavius.org/

Check out their forum (and their new one) as well to see how well the Hoax Believers defend their case. Hint: it's painful.

As to why haven't we been back to the Moon: I wrote a whole article on exactly this point over at the Connecticut Valley Atheists (CVA) forum many moons (!) ago. However, since that site went tits-up recently, I'll have to try and recreate it from memory.

We have been back, many times. Since Apollo 11, NASA has sent manned capsules to the Moon a further six times. It is true that America was the first nation to set a man down on the lunar surface, although Russia actually beat the US to the punch ten years year earlier when their Luna-1 probe performed a fly-by in January 1959, beating America's Pioneer 4 by two months. Later that year, Russia's Luna-2 became the first man-made object to reach (ok, crash into) the lunar surface. However, as we all know, Neil Armstrong was indeed the first human to step out onto the Moon's surface; a record which still stands to this day.

In the years since Apollo 17's landing in 1972, there have been seventeen missions to the Moon by five different national space agencies including NASA, with more planned for the immediate future. These missions, though not manned, have run the full gamut from simple fly-bys, orbiters and photo-reconnaisance to landers, rovers and sample return missions. Even the Apollo mission is still going on; those famous laser reflectors are monitored daily as part of the Apollo project.

As you correctly observed, the technology has improved greatly over the past decades. That is precisely why NASA and other spage agencies have chosen to go the robot probe route over manned spaceflight since:

* it's bloody dangerous, as evidenced by Apollo 1's never leaving the launchpad and Apollo 13's almost never making it back;

* it's reletively cheaper. A robot probe can be made as small and as light as the equipment it has to carry for the mission it's designed to carry out, without having to worry about life support and the concomitant fuel increase for all that unnecessary extra mass;

* it's easier to sell to the public at large, as well as to the relevant funding authorities. While Apollo did provide a short-term boost to national morale during a particularly troubled period, eventually in the public eyes it became an expensive way of sending people a quarter of a million miles to play golf - regardless of how much actual science was also achieved and valuable data returned;

* robot probes can gather more data, more quickly and more reliably, as well as in more extreme environments, than a team of even the most brilliant scientists over a long period cooped up in a tin can.

So don't let me hear the words "Moon" and "hoax" in the same sentence again, unless it's to point and laugh. Ok?

---

Yes, apparently, I missed the episode of Mythbusters that debunked the moon landing conspiracy. Had me going, but I can't explain the reflectors, which I doubt they would have sent up with anything else. It would be too tough, but I did read somewhere that they were 20 miles from the landing sites. Who knows, there seems to be an answer for everything.

Of course who's going to walk 20 miles to put up reflectors, but I don't know if that is true either.

And the answer in this case is, I'm afraid, that men walked on the surface of the Moon.

I didn't actually mention the Mythbusters episode but I would thoroughly recommend it as a sort of primer. There's so much more they could have gone into if they'd had the time to cover it properly, at least a couple of series' worth.

Even if you were convinced of a cover-up, in this particular case, with all that would have been involved in faking the landings, including the reflectors, the samples, the photos, the video footage, the thousands of independent astronomers, amateur and professional, of all nations (not all of whom were friendly), all those thousands of witnesses working for NASA directly and for private contractors actually building the spacecraft, all of whom would have to be silenced - honestly, the least implausible scenario has to be that we went to the Moon.

[Shell B]

The fires are near the top, not at the top. If the weight of the detached structure, meaning the very top floors crashed down, which it did, it would only need to crash down to the next floor in order for more weight to then be applied, thus collapsing the next floor and so on. It's not rocket science. If the top floor of my house collapsed, it would likely collapse the next floor, despite there being steel beams in my cellar. If there were another floor beneath that, it would just keep going. In short, it only needed to be heavy enough to collapse the next floor. The structure of the entirety of the building didn't have a chance once the structure of the affected floors was compromised. There was more than enough weight to take it all down. I was in those trade centers. Each story was massive in its own right. Also, terrorists can think too. In a way, it was controlled demolition, just not done with construction explosives. It was done with fuel.

---

Take this photo for example.



See where the plane hit? There are several floors above that area. How much do you suppose that weighs? I'm guessing that is more than each of the houses of the people in this thread combined.

[Christi]

So odd watching that video where even though planes have been flown into the towers and many were already dead or jumping to their deaths, people are chatting about it nonchalantly. It's not until one of the towers goes down that they really freak out.

[Minimalist]

Actually, the economy started going down in mid 2000, especially stocks.

I don't have to learn history as I lived it and was old enough to remember it.

BTW, get some manners.

The stock market? That's what you are hanging your hat on to prove a vast conspiracy? The market lost a fortune after 9-11 and it dwarfed any earlier temporary losses. Unemployment remained stable and as previously noted we had a huge surplus that Bush pissed away but apparently facts mean nothing to conspiracy nuts.

Go fuck yourself.