Flat Earth going mainstream?

Are we as a society headed into a new dark age? Flat Earth (FE) belief for example. In recent months, the FE belief system has apparently gained traction. It was once a fringe belief but has now acquired numerous followers thanks to slick Youtube videographers with little or no actual scientific knowledge. FE beliefs go against centuries of evidence gathered by people who devoted their lives to working to find out the true nature of the earth. As opposed to "Tuber's" probably not devoting their lives to anything but video making. Is flat Earth belief going mainstream?

Ideas spread much faster with the internet, I-phones and so on than this word of mouth example. This example also shows how average folks often get information from poor sourcing.

 

Mainstream scientists and commentators tend to write these FE believers off as the fringe element they once comprised. But it is evident to me they do so at great expense to the scientific method. The method that has established a spherical Earth since the time of the ancient Greeks. In January, a rapper by the stage name B.o.B. weighed in  as an FE advocate. When a celebrity or rapper weighs in, you know FE beliefs are worming their way into the mainstream. Just as comedian Joe Rogan no doubt helped spread lunar hoax beliefs in recent years. I know this from debating Lunar Hoax Advocates (LHA) who cited Rogan and other celebs as examples. Rogan has apparently decided the lunar landings were real.

On the page linked below, B.o.B. posted this image apparently in an attempt to prove a flat Earth. This is obviously taken on a hilltop. Note the tree tops behind B.o.B. The higher up one is, the easier it is to see distant objects such as a skyline. What cannot be seen is whether the ground floors of these buildings are visible. As with most imagery, the shape of the Earth cannot be proven by images alone.

 

Just by looking at the lyrics to B.o.B.s song "Flatline", one can see his FE advocacy. He has also apparently stated FE advocacy and Holocaust denial as evidenced by his Wikipedia page. Both positions would make it appear he is just seeking to be controversial as most deniers of anything are trying to do. Be a controversial maverick against the evil system or evil NASA as it were. Some of the lyrics just espouse a lot of stuff not even related to FE beliefs. One example being "Globalists see me as a threat". I realize as a major celebrity rapper, B.o.B. is important in society. But he must really think he's more important than warranted to think globalists give a shit about his opinions. That statement could be applied to any Conspiracy Theory (CT). Another example being "Free thinking, got the world at my neck". Give me a break. He has the world by the nads! He has a wiki page! The world is hardly at his neck. Free thinking is another sound bite people use who wish to be seen as "Free thinkers". A real free thinker rarely calls themselves that.

These days, everyone thinks they are a controversial maverick thanks to Facebook, Youtube or other venues where anyone can voice an opinion and claim it proven fact.

 

As with most FE advocates. One cannot really determine if B.o.B. really believes Earth is flat or if he is just advocating that position to make money off of a song. This is why I call the FE belief system advocacy rather than belief. How can I know anyone really believes Earth is flat? Unless I know them personally. Like me, he may have noticed the growing FE movement on Youtube and decided to cash in because as a popular entertainer, he could. Or he may really believe Earth is flat because some Youtube vid convinced him. His "Flatline" lyrics don't display much actual scientific knowledge on his part but then, songs are not supposed to be accurate scientific descriptions anyway. One reflection of that inaccuracy is the lyrics referring to NASA. He says "Why is NASA department of defense?". Most anti NASA types tout this line of reasoning. But saying NASA is Department Of Defense (DOD) is like saying Walmart is DOD because soldiers sometimes shop there in uniform and Walmart sells camouflage outfits. NASAs charter specifically made it a non military organization but did not prohibit it from getting military support in the form of tracking or Launch Vehicles (LV). If B.o.B. wants to see a space agency that IS military, he should look into the Russian space agency or Roscosmos.

Conspiracy theorists often appeal to common sense such as is literally said here. While computer graphics (The CG in CGI) did exist in 1969, it was only capable of making a wireframe globe on a power hungry mainframe. One can only imagine what  the render times were. A wireframe globe is hardly a convincing Earth image from space.

 

B.o.B. of course slams science, as required of any FE advocate. The very thing that provided the technology that gave him worldwide exposure, he calls a club and cult. "Flatlines" lyrics state in part "Indoctrinated in a cult called science and graduated to a club full of liars". He has no idea what indoctrination is. He needs to go to N. Korea where indoctrination is a way of life. He apparently has no idea what science is either. Nobody in America or even the Western world is forced to accept science. That's why we have a nation full of scientific illiterates such as lunar hoax or FE advocates. That's why some 40% of Americans freely believe creationism over evolution. Even if one is scientific, they can become unscientific and leave the so called cult any time they choose. Try that with Scientology. Prominent Astrophysicist Neil De Grasse Tyson took B.o.B. on by using logic and reason. Something in short supply it seems. As a scientist, Tyson knows what he's talking about.

 

The broader problem is the question of whether society is entering some new dark age. The backlash against science has been ongoing for some four decades. Some reasons attributed to this backlash would be Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Challenger, to name the major ones. Another reason is the failure of many scientifically based predictions made in the 1960s, to come to pass. Predictions such as the famous flying cars, SuperSonic Transports (SST) and of course, humans to the planets. Indeed, seems we picked all the low hanging fruit science has to offer. The more difficult a pursuit becomes, the more it is inaccurately predicted and eventually misrepresented. This has happened to some extent with the space shuttle's history. This has also resulted in the current backlash against the one thing (Science) that has made progress along many avenues possible.

 

This backlash, ongoing as it has since at least the Apollo era, could be the first of several which in a century or so could result in a new dark age. Like the previous one, there would still be scientists trying to make new discoveries, but they could be even more a minority than they've always been. And science would be slowed down significantly. How does one fight this trend if indeed it can be fought? Using logic, high quality evidence and other scientific methods because unlike B.o.B.s assertions that science is a cult, science relies on a methodology to understand nature. Nothing more. So one should seek evidence of a flat Earth. The most obvious way to do this is to use NASA and other space agency imagery. Flat Earthers write NASA off as part of the conspiracy to suppress FE. But they fail to explain how we can know when a weather system is approaching when we didn't know prior to the space age. Or they fail to explain how we get satellite images looking directly down on an isolated nation such as North Korea. Or fail to explain something as simple as where do all the rockets go if they don't go to orbit? Some say the rockets are dumped into the ocean while failing to realize if a rocket makes it to the altitudes millions of eyewitnesses have seen them reach, why not to orbit? Where did 135 shuttle orbiters go when only 5 flight models were built? You'd have to trash 135 orbiters to dump them into the ocean. But if one insists on not using NASA or other space agency images, then go do some actual science. I'll even suggest the experiment. An experiment nobody can control. Not even me or the Illuminati. Consider lunar eclipses. It is not possible for lunar or solar eclipses to occur on the most commonly cited FE model shown below.

Just looking at the moon and sun and their altitude data should show anyone a solar eclipse is not possible on this flat world. Hint, the moon and sun would collide, not eclipse. Forget lunar eclipses. The Earth never passes between the sun and moon in this flat world. Also check the sun position and look at the night side. The sun would be visible even at night albeit at a low angle. Did I mention spotlights are not known to occur in nature? The explanation just above the N. pole is pure woo.

 

Consider the explanation in the FE model image just over the N. pole. The one about projections and an inner sun. I have an inner explorer, does that make it real? No. It's a state of mind. There is no evidence the Earth has a hole in the pole with projections and so on. Here, the state of mind of whomever proposed this chart shows they failed to think it through the way an actual scientist would. Sure they got the ecliptic stuff right and shadows work as they would on a sphere. But eclipses do not work, there is no explanation for the outer planets and why other planets have satellites similar to our moon. There is no explanation as to why most northern hemisphere stars cannot be seen from the southern hemisphere and vice versa. Try seeing Polaris from Tierra Del Fuego. Don't take my word for it, go there or construct a global model and see for yourself. Other FE models have the sun and moon revolving around the Earth as any good Geocentrist would have it. The problem here is FE advocates like B.o.B. claim you can see buildings many miles away. If that's the case, a lunar eclipse would certainly be visible from all over flat world. In reality, lunar eclipses do not work this way, but again just experiment and see why they don't. That's what science is about. Most importantly, while folks like B.o.B. want people to believe FE is real because the evil government, evil science and evil NASA are keeping it secret. The broader question is what difference would it make if the Earth is flat or round? At a time when most folks don't know or care what NASA is doing, Earths shape would be about as noteworthy as NASA activities. The so called globalists wouldn't care about the shape of the Earth either. Maybe one day if our populace becomes scientifically literate, the Earths shape will matter. What is more likely. The Earth is the only flat disc world in a solar system of spherical worlds and larger moons, asteroids and KBOs? Or first century thinkers simply got Earths shape wrong due to being too small to realize they are on a sphere.

Though it's admittedly not entirely scientific, it is a sort of Occams razor approach to a flat Earth. One flat disc world in a solar system of round worlds, moons and so on is about as likely as seeing one absolutely perfect square cloud, though the one in this example is admittedly not perfect.

 

Ideas such as a lunar hoax or flat Earth can certainly be discussed and such discussions would be more convincing when high quality evidence is cited. But those who are listening to such discussions should take heed that FE, LHA and other CT advocates almost always use words like "Proof" or "We've been lied to" in their hype titled videos and other media. The "We've been lied to" claims are simply a sort of mind trick to make people think they really have been lied to at all times. Does the government lie? Of course! But they usually lie about elections and promises. Not the shape of the Earth. As for science, nothing is ever entirely a hundred percent proven in scientific inquiry. However, some ideas are proven enough (Earths shape) that scientists don't waste time debating them when they could use that wasted time on debating and researching something more effectively like curing cancer or climate change. Earths shape is provable through lunar eclipses, stellar observations and constructing FE models which demonstrate problems with lunar eclipses. Non of which requires so called evil NASA, science or government. Time to get out of the first century and make the 21st century what it was thought it would be in 1968.

 

Written and illustrated by me, J. Dean unless otherwise noted.

 

http://gawker.com/b-o-b-just-started-a-rap-war-with-neil-degrasse-tyson-1755122840

What's The Point?

What's the point I ask myself? What is the point of me doing blogs and videos at the age of 60? Do I really think I'm important enough to make a rich persons income or even a difference? Do I really think I can compete with other writers such as Michael Crichton or J. K. Rowling? Not at all. At most, I only ever hoped for a small fan following and to make maybe $50K annually off my work. Do I do it to have fun? Most anyone will answer that it should be to have fun, make a difference, and so on. But most of them have an audience. Besides, I've always had fun doing my story telling anyway. Especially when I was an early teen! A decade and a half since leaving my work world job at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and trying to get an audience, I get nothing out of it beyond having fun. To say nothing of making a difference or making a decent income. You can only amuse yourself for so long. I've always studied other peoples work from time to time. Whether it has been magazine articles in days past or You Tube now, I study to see what makes other successful while I fail. I'll never know why I fail while others succeed. You Tube, Twitter, Facebook etc. are places where even average people can be published. One can see all sorts of people publishing their works. I could try to publish my works and get seen on Facebook, Twitter, etc. but I generally do vid work these days.

So much for 21st century style but in any case, the CGI graphic novel style I used for my stories allowed me to tell stories and illustrate them as well. I've been using this technique since I was the age of ten. This example comes from a pic done in or around 2006 when I was half a century in age. The smudgy star like spot in the sky is the "Mars Voyager" plasma propulsion system ignition which takes place in 2024 in this story. A site that may be viewable for earthbound observers if we ever actually send humans to mars.

 

From my beginnings in 1966 to 2008 to be exact, I thought I did pretty decent where graphics and writing are concerned. It even appeared I could do a lot outside of my familiar graphic novel realm as a result of helping a client. I helped with his video by blending 3D stills and animations I did into my clients videos, even doing the end credits. All for an indy movie he produced. I also began a PR campaign involving contacting monster and sci fi fan mag's which were the natural market for his work. To no avail. That resulted in a slump in my own work and then I picked back up slowly after another major setback occurring in 2009. I did non-publishable hobby work from 2012 to 2014 and was also active publishing my 3D works on the internet Renderosity gallery. Then I was hospitalized early in 2015 and discharged myself when the doctors thought I was going to die. I recovered at home but that took 6 months and during that time, I lost interest in my graphics activities in a way I never had before. Six or seven months of no activity resulted. I'd given up.

This before and after pic was one I did for a client in 2008 or so. The before pic being an original image of his actors. The "After pic" being my modifications. Not ILM quality, but my client thought it passable. The still image came from a  movie my client had finished in 2007. However, he had me do some additional website work for him. Like me, he has not found success and has since moved overseas.

 

Having nothing much to do, I resolved to pick back up and start fresh on New Years day of this year with short video projects instead of lengthy graphic novels  nobodies going to read or even know about for that matter. The GNs took anywhere from 3 months to a few years to finish. Five minute videos have so far taken only a few days to three weeks to complete. Since New Years, I've posted 4 with a 5th ready to post. My big problem has been how to get exposure. I see silly videos like "Gangnam Style" get thousands of posts within a few hours of being posted. Gangnam style is now at 2 billion plus views. It was professionally done but I see amateurish crap get numerous hits as well. And I know you have to have a hook to get people interested so I can only assume my hooks suck. I don't get any hits unless I spend hours debating target audiences, and then my videos will maybe get only two hits.

 

This scene from a sci fi story of mine about shrinking people. It may seem like the idea was a rip from "The Incredible Shrinking Man" or "Honey I Shrunk The Kids" but this story has it's own surprise ending which could be a beginning. However, I never finished it so the ending is still only in my mind.

 

In my youth, I kept my Westgate city works to myself. That concept more or less being ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances in my fictional town of Westgate. No superheroes or even batmen in Westgate, although I experimented with the batman like idea as an early teen. My shtick has always mainly been human spaceflight and over the top realism to the extent possible. An example being if there is a moon in the night sky, it should be where it's positioned and in the correct phase astronomy publications show it to be in. However, I've known since my early teens that realism isn't what sells. So I tempered it as best I could. An example being my Mars exploration stories focus on crew and situations between men and women as much as going to Mars itself. I won't go into any more details on the mechanics of my story telling here. Suffice it to say it seems I'm not an engaging story teller. So why do it I ask myself?

This image is an example of both my late 1970s ideas and drawings and later, the building of this aircraft idea in the computer (Inset). I even color picked the originals Crayola colors, the typed numbers of which can be seen just above the profile view of this gargantuan vehicle. When I drew this in 1977 or 78, I pegged the vehicle for operations in 1995. This because the future was always projected by movies, magazines etc. to be far more spectacular than it actually became. The original image was not intended for publication. I scanned it into my computer a few years back.

 

In the past few years, I do it because it has become the slightly morbid idea of just leaving something behind after I'm dead. I can't even call it a legacy. I'm not important enough to have a legacy. Much of my work in recent years has been related to future human spaceflight as it might occur were NASA to be doing it. That in part because many of my near future ideas are just variations on actual NASA or NASA contractor ideas. The difference is, I use my own spacecraft designs. But even those ideas closely conform to what is known to be realistic. No Star Wars, anti-gravity or perpetual motion designs. Anti-gravity of sorts is reserved for my space travel of the far future since nobody knows how that's going to work, including me. With actual NASA human spaceflight on hold beyond ISS, I don't do that sort of story anymore and I stopped doing GNs because of the time involved doing them with no return on my investment. I've also been doing my story telling using CGI since 1998. I don't have an audience for any of it because it's a niche market audience at best. The work I did prior to my CGI era was largely personal and unpublishable anyway.

 

What made me think I could even interest a small fan base? 

I still can't answer that given I was generally cautious about major goals most of my life. I never bought into the "Believe in yourself" idea alone because I would think of many thousands doing just that and standing in movie audition lines over and over only to be turned away, while one lucky person might make it. Making it involves more than just one person believing in themselves. Other people eventually get involved and help determine ones path to fame. I managed to work at KSC from 1984 till 2000. My best professional 16 years. I worked there as a technician and later QA inspector. Nothing I'll be remembered for. I never expected to be remembered for that anyway. And in a sense, it took 7 years of preps in the work world and the USAF to build my resume because I didn't have a college degree.

I was told I had some graphical and story telling ability as an early teen by my parents and a few others. Nobody in high school except a best friend and girl friend knew about that activity. A few in the AF and KSC saw my work as well. Non of them ever said anything more than that I should work for Disney. Decades later, I get to see people younger than me making a difference often in huge ways. Or seeing someone close to my age making a difference. An example being the late Michael Jackson and his dancing, song writing and singing. I can still recall seeing MJ when he was part of the Jackson 5 and wondering if I would reach his level of fame. But as my mid teens hit, I knew I wouldn't reach that lofty a level. So I focused on work world employment after HS graduation and decided to get into aerospace. Getting the KSC work lead to a 15 year sabbatical in my writing although I still maintained my drawing works. By writing, I should point out my graphic novel activity prior to my employment at KSC, consisted of comic book formatted style of story telling. Drawing during my KSC years meant drawing spacecraft designs I wanted to use in stories that never materialized during that period. Prior to my CGI era, I did type out a spaceflight and time travel story intended for publication but of course, was unsuccessful in my attempts to publish them.

Orion is a popular name for spacecraft concepts. I named my Mars Transit Vehicle (MTV) concept Orion in the early 1990s when I made this drawing (Among many) and typed in the text. I've since come up with my own name for MTVs which is "Mars Voyager". This image clearly illustrates my borrowing NASA ideas and reshaping them into something with my signature so to speak. USV was one of my rare collaborations. I collaborated with 4 other technicians, a supervisor and an engineer. But even USV was built upon early NASA  space tug ideas. The 1983-1998 period was one of low energy imagination for me.

When the internet came about, I saw the potential for average people like me to publish and tried to do so. I can of course, make a website or go to the tube and publish all day long. But if I can't get the traffic without spending large sums of money I don't have, what's the point? So now I just want to leave something behind. I can still hear the faint voices of people long gone saying I was meant to be a graphics person as though I'd hit it big. I'd say artist but that's too hoyty toyty for me so I don't go there, but that's what a few of the long gone voices called me. I mean, an artist is someone who is truly accomplished IMO. They generally have a large body of work and their works matter to many. I may have been meant to do graphics all my life, but only as a hobby not to be appreciated by more than a few others. I don't mean to seem like I'm disparaging those few others because they are all I have or had and I do appreciate them. But I did what I did in hopes of a reasonable fan base of some kind. Since that's apparently not meant to be...I'll just post what I consider most important to me and be done with it.

Challenger Effect.

At least one theory suggested the starboard Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) pivoted on the upper attach strut as a result of the thrust coming from the burn through. This pivoting caused the nose of the SRB to strike the External Tank (ET) and the rest tragically followed.

An article called "Fire In The Sky" written by Chuck Klosterman appeared in the December 2015/January 2016 issue of AARP magazine. The article touched upon the usual ideas that prior to Challenger, NASA somehow made shuttle flight seem routine, safe. Indeed NASA did do this to a certain degree. The AARP article also touched upon the idea that the "Teacher in space" mission known as STS-51L in the Space Transportation System (STS) jargon of that era, was an overblown publicity stunt.

The Space Transportation System (STS) was envisioned as a system that would provide near airliner like routine operations to low orbit human space flight. Shown here is one version of the originally planned, fully reusable system including a flyback booster. Image courtesy NASA.

 

What was new in the article was something I had sensed several years before Challenger. First, some background information. I was employed by McDonnell Douglas as a Spacelab ground processing technician starting in March 1984. I was concerned about shuttle safety a year or more before Challenger occurred. Many of my coworkers were as well. We'd probably come to realize the dangers of shuttle flight through launch delays and Redundant Set Launch Sequencer or RSLS aborts. I was aware something was amiss when the planned flight rate went from a 1973 traffic model high of 60 annual flights between 7 orbiters to a March 1984 flight rate of 24 annual flights between 4 orbiters. In 1984, the actual flight rate showed little sign of reaching 24 annual flights.

Spacelab 2 crew. Middle two standing, Tony England, Karl Henize. Three standing in the back, Story Musgrave, Loren Acton and David Bartow. Seated are G. Fullerton and Roy Bridges. Image courtesy NASA.

 

I was assigned to work shuttle mission STS-51F which was the second Spacelab flight or Spacelab 2. It had actually come after Spacelab 3 due to schedule slippages. This all pallet spacelab was loaded with experiments and minutes after launch, STS-51F experienced a main engine shutdown caused by a sensor malfunction which threatened to shut down another engine before mission controllers corrected the problem. Spacelab 2 went on to a lower but effective orbit in what is known as an Abort To Orbit or ATO mode. Had this been a mission with a comsat or other payload requiring precision orbital insertion, the payload would have been returned to earth at high cost and reprocessed for a future mission. While that posed a chance for me to go overseas as part of the Spacelab recovery contingent, I didn't really want to go at the expense of a program setback.

Shuttle Plasma Diagnostics Package (PDP). Image courtesy NASA.

 

Prior to the July 29th 1985 launch of STS-51-F (Challenger), there had been an RSLS abort of that mission on July 12th. I had worked on Spacelab 2 since April 1984 and was frustrated that our payload had come so close and then...abort. Of course, the mission proceeded as planned after the successful July 29th launch. Fast forward to 2015 and the AARP article. I had long suspected the general public and scientific community were really not very fond of human spaceflight. As a space buff since about the age of 12, I became acutely aware of NASAs budget problems a year or so after my initial interest. I later discovered there had been funding reductions from 1967-71 which totaled nearly 50% of NASAs budget. I'd see the usual "Americans support space" propaganda but never really believed it after the budget cuts and subsequent Nixon Administration limitation of shuttle development to $5.5 B 1970 dollars from the originally estimated $10 B 1970 dollars.

NASA budgets indicate NASA only ever really existed because of Apollo. Image courtesy NASA.

 

NASAs budget is dwarfed by some of the other major government agencies yet NASA critics still think cutting NASAs budget is going to solve social problems much larger budgets such as Social Security, have yet to solve.

The AARP bore out my suspicions of how public support really is with the following quotes which were featured in the AARP article: "Suddenly we were all unconsciously asking questions about the space program that had not been asked for years. What are we getting from this, really? What is the larger motive here? Are we underrating the risk these voyages incur? Are we overrating our confidence in the people conducting them? And if NASA isn't infallible, what other institutions should we worry about?" End quote. It should be noted that other institutions came under suspicion long before the Challenger accident. Institutions came under fire during the 1960s and early 70s social upheavals. The lingering effects of those times still present to this day in the form of widespread conspiracy theories and these Challenger anniversary articles. This in large part due to assassinations, Vietnam and Watergate. Was it any wonder NASAs day would come sooner or later?

 

Prior to Challenger, it was often said human spaceflight could benefit the man on the street with discoveries stemming from experiments conducted aboard space missions. A favorite was the perfect ball bearing claims. Another was finding cures for disease. Even the post Apollo Skylab missions were touted as spaceflight to benefit the taxpayer directly. However, Challenger and Columbia demonstrated human spaceflight is still difficult and expensive. Especially when it's on the leading edge like the shuttle program was. The shuttles failure to make low orbit economical had a negative impact on the perception of human spaceflight. In addition, it seemed way too early to try to make spaceflight pay benefits to Joe public. To this day, human spaceflight is still largely experimental. There have of course, been benefits to Joe public. But they apparently haven't been as widespread as originally expected.

 

The failure of Challenger appears to have overshadowed the shuttles overall success in the post Challenger era. Even the abort modes mentioned earlier seemed to demonstrate that the safety features built into the shuttle, worked as planned. Otherwise, there might have been a disaster long before the ill fated Columbia (STS-107) mission of February 2003. Today the Challenger effect can be seen on YouTube where a lot of people spew absolute hatred of NASA. Some seeing it as the ultimate expression of evil government. These are the folks who now say all spaceflight is faked while adequately failing to explain how. For example, how would one fake 135 shuttle missions and why? It's one thing to say rockets are dumped into the ocean just after launch. But to do this with the shuttle, you'd have to build an orbiter for each mission because orbiter recovery nearly intact from the ocean after launch would be next to impossible. Not to mention how the shuttle is returned. I've yet to see a space faker explain returning the orbiters in a faked shuttle scenario. There are videos of shuttle re-entries over Texas, including STS-107 taken by amateurs. For those who might say shuttle flights were real but uncrewed, what would be so difficult about simply putting a crew aboard? Same goes with any other launch vehicle used for human spaceflight. As for Lunar Hoax Advocacy (LHA), if NASA was able to develop the incredibly complex shuttle and International Space Station (ISS). Then Apollo would have been nearly a cake walk in comparison. Summing it up, there is no reason to suspect spaceflight of any kind was ever faked. No credible evidence has ever come forth to indicate Apollo or all spaceflight was some grand hoax. Given that NASA is probably the only major government agency to survive budget cuts of almost 50%, if they had faked spaceflight, the whistle would have been blown after Apollo. Certainly by the likes of former US VP Walter Mondale, former US Senator William Proxmire and the former Soviet Union.

Flat Earth debates seem to have increased on forums such as Youtube where anyone can proclaim expertise on a complex subject, usually through a slick Youtube video.

 

The NASA haters largely consist of flat earthers, space fakers, and pretty much anyone who is anti-goverment in general. The space fakers obviously were not satisfied to just say the moon landings were faked because it was supposedly impossible to traverse the Van Allen radiation belts without killing the crews. Now it's all spaceflight regardless of the VA belts. Space fakers say ISS is faked and what people are seeing when it flies over is really just aircraft. This despite amateur astronomers the world over who have taken numerous pictures of ISS and shuttle in some cases through semi-professional telescopes. The space faker crowd even claims satellites are faked. They explain Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) are actually cell towers on the ground despite the fact people have been rescued using GPS from remote places where there are no cell towers.

The most commonly cited Flat Earth (FE) model has a 32 mile diameter sun and moon orbiting some 2,600 miles above a flat earth. They rotate around the north pole above equatorial regions so as to have the correct shadowing on the ground. Unfortunately for FE advocates, the model makers failed to see what happens to eclipses. The sun and moon would collide rather than eclipse. Lunar eclipses would be visible globally. Something that does not occur with actual lunar eclipses. Then there is the spotlight sun. No naturally occurring spotlights are known to exist in the Universe.

 

CGI must have been pretty good in 1972. At least as good as it is today since the space fakers claim NASA Earth images are faked using CGI. Image courtesy NASA.

 

The flat earth or FE crowd claims NASA fakes spaceflight because it shows images of a round earth. They often say "Spaceflight is all fake NASA CGI" while failing to realize one of the most famous images of earth, "The blue marble" predates modern CGI by decades. That image having been taken when CGI was still squiggly vector lines on CRTs driven by large mainframe computers. These are examples of the Challenger effect. Are flat earthers and space fakers some small minority? Have they always been among us and the internet has simply made them visible as never before? Hard to know since it appears there is no reliable data on the percentage of the population that would identify as space fakers.

 

FErs on the other hand were assumed to be a minority. Many of which belonged to the International Flat Earth Research Society (IFERS). Or the newer flat earth society resurrected in 2004. Indications from the YouTube comments section suggest FE ideas have spread in the past year. There are videos claiming to be documentaries that cover the subject from 2 to 7 hours long. Although FE beliefs are generally rooted in fundamentalist religious beliefs, it's connection to NASA as mentioned earlier makes it appear to be a result of the Challenger effect. Space faker advocates have even resorted to claiming the Challenger accident was staged and the people shown on the bleachers were crisis actors. As someone who worked on shuttle payload processing, I've seen the reality of human spaceflight. I witnessed the Challenger accident. When conspiracy theorists have to resort to crisis actor explanations for Challenger and the Sandy Hook shootings among others, they've stooped to sick new lows. The space faker/lunar hoax advocates think going into space or to the moon is just too hard. Can't have a great nation with people like that!

 

However, it's easy to marginalize the FE, space faker crowd but as something that appears to be a growing phenomenon, marginalization might come with a future price. That price would be in the form of the US totally loosing it's leadership position in science. It all seems to be part of the general publics attitude about science. From the attacks on evolutionary theory to denial of global warming. Increasing numbers of non professionals and non scientists suddenly believe they are qualified to tackle important scientific questions even as they sometimes proudly profess ignorance of the subject in question. And they make YouTube videos with "Hype titling" suggesting their ideas are proven, when all they have proven is that they can make slick propaganda videos. Even Presidential debates have shown a degree of proud ignorance towards science. I've never been a professional scientist but if I disagree with a scientific finding or theory, I will admit that I don't have evidence to back my disagreement. The FErs and space fakers don't do this. Especially those who are videographers. Instead, they prefer to hype their videos with words like "Proof" or "Proven" when videos rarely provide proof of anything regardless of what position they advocate.

 

Another Challenger effect was the numerous cancellations of programs after the approval of the space station in 1984 that lead to ISS. The Orient Express or X-30 National Aero Space Plane (NASP). Shuttle-II, Delta Clipper, Venture Star, the George Bush Sr. lunar mars initiative of 1989. The George Bush Jr. Constellation program...to name a few. I call it "Cancellation trail". NASA is in advanced development of the Space Launch System (SLS) Orion programs. If the present schedule holds, it will take longer to go from the recent SLS/Orion test to the second planned test than it did to go from the first Saturn-V test to the splashdown of Apollo-17. Of course, Apollo was what was then known as a crash program which necessitated an accelerated schedule. The private sector is working to restore America's ability to send astronauts into low orbit. It is also working to economize access to low orbit. If successful, they might cause cancellation of SLS/Orion. At that point, NASA would probably be out of the human spaceflight business for good. Perhaps that's as it should be since it would appear taxpayer support of human spaceflight will never support missions beyond low orbit. If it hadn't been for ISS being an international program, it would probably have been cancelled. It very nearly was in June 1993, having missed cancellation by just one vote in the House Of Representatives.

 

The private sector is beginning to discover human spaceflight may not be as easy as initially thought. "X" prize winner Burt Rutan, founder of Scaled Composites engaged in a bit of over confident NASA bashing following the "X" prize flight of Space Ship One. That was 12 years ago and space tourism has yet to see a single tourist flight from any of the current crop of companies working to achieve it. Much less Rutan and company. The tragic loss of SS-2 is a haunting reminder of Challenger and Columbia. An accident that had the same sort of schedule delays the shuttle was once harshly criticized for. Indeed, the whole space tourist plan has been plagued by NASA like slow progress. It's still a little early to assess whether the private sector will succeed or fail to economize low orbit. If it fails, then it too might be seen as having suffered the Challenger effect.

 

The Challenger effect has transformed a once bold organization seemingly incapable of failure, to an organization that represents the failures of science. An organization drawing the wrath of many a NASA basher and hater. The bashing and hating accomplishes nothing. It's time for the US to overcome the Challenger effect once and for all. This can be done by following through with a number of proposals that could have already been accomplished had it not been for the lingering Challenger effect.