Problem with Apollo "murder" claims

Aside from the lack of evidence for a hostile act, there remains a basic
problem with the Apollo One conspiracy claims - no motive. Two possible
motives have been advanced, and neither is remotely convincing.

#1: An attempt to sabotage the Apollo program to let the USSR get to the moon
first. This is certainly not beyond the thinking or resources of the KGB, but
the USSR archives have been open over a decade now. Anyone with a good story
to sell to Western media has sold it. Intelligence agencies, scholars, etc.
have pored through the records. Nothing has been found on what would have been
an op requiring top-level approval. So we can discount that.

#2: A vendetta against one astronaut, presumably Grissom, by NASA brass. It
doesn't pass the laugh test. Taking any astronaut out of the program would
have been easy. All you'd have needed is a flight surgeon or psychiatrist to
"find" something, either supporting it by altering a record or claiming
something like a borderline psychosis that's hard to disprove. Even if the
finding is overturned on appeal, you've taken that astronaut out of the
rotation and out of training for a while, and if your motive was to ensure Gus
was not first on the moon, you've done it. Create the same scenario twice, and
he probably quits the program in disgust.

No motive, no crime... especially when the case concerns a grossly flawed
machine where preventing accidents was difficult and there is no need to look
for external cause.


Matt Bille
)
OPINIONS IN ALL POSTS ARE SOLELY THOSE OF THE AUTHOR

(MattWriter) wrote in message ...
Aside from the lack of evidence for a hostile act, there remains a basic
problem with the Apollo One conspiracy claims - no motive. Two possible
motives have been advanced, and neither is remotely convincing.

#1: An attempt to sabotage the Apollo program to let the USSR get to the moon
first. This is certainly not beyond the thinking or resources of the KGB, but
the USSR archives have been open over a decade now. Anyone with a good story
to sell to Western media has sold it. Intelligence agencies, scholars, etc.
have pored through the records. Nothing has been found on what would have been
an op requiring top-level approval. So we can discount that.

#2: A vendetta against one astronaut, presumably Grissom, by NASA brass. It
doesn't pass the laugh test. Taking any astronaut out of the program would
have been easy. All you'd have needed is a flight surgeon or psychiatrist to
"find" something, either supporting it by altering a record or claiming
something like a borderline psychosis that's hard to disprove. Even if the
finding is overturned on appeal, you've taken that astronaut out of the
rotation and out of training for a while, and if your motive was to ensure Gus
was not first on the moon, you've done it. Create the same scenario twice, and
he probably quits the program in disgust.

No motive, no crime... especially when the case concerns a grossly flawed
machine where preventing accidents was difficult and there is no need to look
for external cause.


Matt Bille
)
OPINIONS IN ALL POSTS ARE SOLELY THOSE OF THE AUTHOR

A couple of things. Obviously you did not see my post motive:
Motive is not a legal test. It's great for movies and crime dramas,
but it's not required in court.
However, your rationale for discounting the motives you've listed (and
you included one of your own while omitting one that's been advanced)
doesn't "pass the laugh test" as you quoted Barry Scheck's pet phrase.
To #1, if you think everything to do with the KGB has been released,
you are naive indeed. Do you honestly think we know everything that
ever went on during the Cold War? Please.
As for #2, no one (at least not here) has said NASA brass had Gus
killed. That's in your imagination--either that, or you got it from
one of Bart Sibrel's interviews, and he is wrong as well. He's still
telling people the crew was "incinerated", which is not true either.
The motive you forgot was that of a disgruntled worker. While that is
not the most likely scenario, it is a possibility.
LaDonna

While reading in the bathroom on 03 Jul 2004 03:42:23 GMT, I saw that
(MattWriter) had written:

Aside from the lack of evidence for a hostile act, there remains a basic
problem with the Apollo One conspiracy claims - no motive.

I wasn't kidding, a few days ago, when I said I knew someone who
figures it was because Gus was going to blow the whistle on the
impending moon-landing hoax. Apparently, it was guilt over his part
in the murder that sent Armstrong into isolation and made him a
hopeless drunk.

Mind you, this is a god-fearing, fundamentalist Christian who has no
trouble bearing false witness. She also believes that hundreds or
thousands of gays and lesbians moved to Vermont so they could tip the
elections toward Civil-Union friendly legislators, and she sent her
husband off to Mexico to have his tumor treated with oxygen therapy
(in fairness, I have to add he then went into remission). My entire
library of books and videos makes no difference, since "anybody can
write a book." I thought of loaning her the Penn and Teller videos
("Bull****"), but, being Christian, she won't watch anything with a
lot of obscenity in it (and the Sex and Creationism episodes would
throw her right through the roof).

This is a normally sweet and compassionate person, whose entire family
has been good friends with ours for years. When Mrs Beady totalled
our car on the freeway a year ago, it was this person who took me to
pick her up, then spent a couple of days helping us get a new car
(she's a car-salesman's worst nightmare). For the last few months,
though, I've been avoiding her company; we're going to her
granddaughter's birthday party next weekend, but there will be a
roomful of normal people there so it won't be a problem.

There are a couple of punch lines, here. One of her sons (the father
of the above-mentioned granddaughter) was married in a college chapel
to a Wiccan, by a preacher whose car's bumper sticker says "My other
car is a broom." Meanwhile, his twin sister became Civil Unionized.

Anyway, that's the kind of person who believes in conspiracies.
They're not raving lunatics, but neither are they paragons of reason
and logic. In all honesty, can anyone here see my "friend" shedding
her delusions anytime soon?


--------------
Beady's Corollary to Occam's Razor: "The likeliest explanation of any phenomenon is almost always the most boring one imaginable."


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"John Beaderstadt" wrote in message
...

Anyway, that's the kind of person who believes in conspiracies.
They're not raving lunatics, but neither are they paragons of reason
and logic. In all honesty, can anyone here see my "friend" shedding
her delusions anytime soon?

not a chance, John. People who believe strongly in conspiracy theories are
commonly desperate to find *any* kind of Reason why bad or unexplainable
things happen in life.

I'd guess that your fundie friend is one of those who truly believed whoever
told her that truly believing in Jesus would take away all the problems in
life. So she's probably reached a stage where she's trying as hard as she
can to be "good", and she's increasingly fervent in her devotion...and bad
**** still happens, maybe even at an increasing rate. So rather than accept
the gut-level reality that being a decent, deity-fearing human being
*doesn't* remove all the bad stuff in life (just gives you a way to cope
with all of it and turn the negativity into something positive), she has to
concoct a lot of bogus explanations for everything.

At some point she may move on to the disillusioned, cynical stage. At that
point look for her to drop out of her church and to become obsessed with
another "alternative" religion like I AM or Scientology, or she may even
become a witch like her children. Preferably one that pays lip service to
Jesus being some flavor of superhuman, so she can maintain some sense of
validity for her current faith. (She will be "finally reaching a higher
plane" built upon the one she's on now, not simply transferring her
obsessions to something new).

If she lives long enough, she'll eventually revert back to being a nice
little old lady adn not worrying too much about things. Hope that day comes
soon for her.

--
Terrell Miller


"Married men live longer than single men, but married men are a lot more
willing to die."
Proverb

"John Beaderstadt" wrote in message
...
In all honesty, can anyone here see my "friend" shedding
her delusions anytime soon?


Not considering the hypocrasy-based life in which she lives.


--
Alan Erskine
We can get people to the Moon in five years,
not the fifteen GWB proposes.
Give NASA a real challenge

OK, two more ideas for motive have been advanced more or less seriously.

#1 is an act of sabotage by a single disgruntled worker. This can never be
wholly dismissed, and it would merit a look IF there was any indication of a
hostile act, as opposed to mere accident, in the first place. To put it
another way, if we had some reason to think there was a crime, this would be
where to look. While the people working on Aollo were a highly motivated,
decently-paid, professional group, but you never know about human nature. It
drops out of consideration only because of the lack of evidence (or even need
to look for evidence) of any sort of crime in a spacecraft that was an accident
waiting to happen.

#2 is an attempt to kill Gus because he was going to blow the whistle on the
moon landing hoax. Since the hoax is the wildest of fantasies - conspiracies
in which thousands of people keep the secret for decades, despite the obvious
financial incentive to blow the lid, exist only in the imagination of writers
like Robin Cook - there's no need for sane people to spend time on this one.


Matt Bille
)
OPINIONS IN ALL POSTS ARE SOLELY THOSE OF THE AUTHOR

"MattWriter" wrote in message
...
OK, two more ideas for motive have been advanced more or less seriously.

#1 is an act of sabotage by a single disgruntled worker. This can never
be
wholly dismissed, and it would merit a look IF there was any indication of
a
hostile act, as opposed to mere accident, in the first place. To put it
another way, if we had some reason to think there was a crime, this would
be
where to look. While the people working on Aollo were a highly motivated,
decently-paid, professional group, but you never know about human nature.
It
drops out of consideration only because of the lack of evidence (or even
need
to look for evidence) of any sort of crime in a spacecraft that was an
accident
waiting to happen.

#2 is an attempt to kill Gus because he was going to blow the whistle on
the
moon landing hoax. Since the hoax is the wildest of fantasies -
conspiracies
in which thousands of people keep the secret for decades, despite the
obvious
financial incentive to blow the lid, exist only in the imagination of
writers
like Robin Cook - there's no need for sane people to spend time on this
one.


Matt Bille
)
OPINIONS IN ALL POSTS ARE SOLELY THOSE OF THE AUTHOR

Your memory must be failing you, Matt, because I know you were around when I
posted this:


http://www.google.com/groups?&selm=b...s22.netins.net

If you read the 'before and after' in that thread, you'll see that my
"inside-KSC" opinion generated some controversy last year. I don't believe
Scott Grissom ever endorsed it (or anyone else, for that matter). That
certainly doesn't mean it's invalid. (Note: "Industrial" sabotage might
have been a better choice of wording.)

John Maxson

In article ,
says...
#2: A vendetta against one astronaut, presumably Grissom, by NASA brass. It
doesn't pass the laugh test. Taking any astronaut out of the program would
have been easy. All you'd have needed is a flight surgeon or psychiatrist to
"find" something, either supporting it by altering a record or claiming
something like a borderline psychosis that's hard to disprove.

It wouldn't even take that. Without having to commit medical
malpractice, you just declare him to be too valuable to risk in another
space flight. Precedent: John Glenn. Postcedent (is there such a word?):
Neil Armstrong.

"Kick him upstairs", in the vernacular.
--
Kevin Willoughby lid

Imagine that, a FROG ON-OFF switch, hardly the work
for test pilots. -- Mike Collins

MattWriter wrote:
OK, two more ideas for motive have been advanced more or less seriously.

snip

Matt, how DARE you try to bring something as irrelevant as motive into a
perfectly good conspiracy theory someone is trying to milk for a few
bucks? What are you, a communist? Either that or a NASA apologist!

But seriously... The problem with your post is that it makes too much
*sense*. And as usual, our latest troll is now attempting to dismiss
motivation as "irrelevant" because it tends to lessen the credibility of
her story, and thus must be dismissed by whatever means necessary. In
the instant case, the "this is not a court case and even if it were,
motive is only required for a conviction in the movies" serves 2
purposes. The first is to deflect any serious discussion of why someone
would want to sabotage Apollo 1. The second is to infer that the
"evidence" will prove beyond a reasonable doubt" that the Truth is
finally being revealed and that no one should take it upon themselves to
judge for themselves whether the case has been made or not.

She's not even close to showing anything by way of a preponderance of
the evidence, never mind beyond a reasonable doubt.

--
bp
Proud Member of the Human O-Ring Society Since 2003

Actually, you've again misstated the arguments. 1. An act of
international espionage. 2." An act by a single disgruntled worker."
3. WOULD be "an attempt to kill Gus because he was going to blow the
whistle on the moon landing hoax" except for one thing: There was no
hoax. That is Sibrel's argument, not ours.
LaDonna