I have recently found myself thinking about space. Specifically, the bit near the Earth which, admittedly, is a very small part of space but still pretty huge in comparison to, say, a walnut.
I have the brain capacity to hold the mental image of a walnut in my head with ease. Sometimes. On a sunny day. With a good tailwind.
Outer space, on the other hand, is a lot more complex than a walnut. Who knew?
I try and hold that mental image in my head and it leaks out all over the place and makes a mess on the carpets.
There’s a similar result when I try to think about internal space. I’ve recently given up trying to think about that. It hurts my head too much.
Like, when you have an organ removed, what happens to the space it once inhabited? After I had my gall bladder removed a couple of years ago, this question stuck in my mind for a while.
Do the other wibbly bits nearby stretch out and fill the vacated space. Does your spleen stretch its gastrosplenic and splenorenal ligaments out with a yawn and a sigh?
Does one of your kidneys groan and straighten out completely while saying,
“Thank fuck for that, I’ve been curled up for ages! I think I got a cramp in my transversalis fascia!”
…before flipping the bird at its sibling and spending the rest of its life taking the piss, wiggling what would be its toes if it had toes, and mockingly moaning about having ‘too much room’?
By the way. Is a kidney still a kidney if it’s not kidney shaped?
Does it become a nidkey?
Does it get mocked by its peers at the high school reunion?
“Ha ha ha! Have you seen Trevor? Gone and got himself all straightened out, hasn’t he! Looks like a right twat. It’s even funnier ‘cos he’s a left nidkey”
Does it have to go away and found some kind of social activist group and march (or, more accurately, wibble-roll) on parliament for equal rights for all kidneys, curly, straight or otherwise?
Kinda all depends on what came first, I guess. Was there a shape known as ‘kidney’ before the discovery of internal organs.
You know. Way back when, some guy fell off a cliff chasing mammoth and burst on the rocks below. When his mates went to look they saw all his internal wiggly bits and someone spotted that thing that was not called anything, but we now call a kidney, and said;
“Ug, ooh. Sprog’s gooey bits all over rocks. Dis one look shaped as kidney!”
Or….
Does being ‘kidney shaped; come from the shape of an actual kidney?
Probably that one.
I could go and find out quite easily. Do some research and ascertain exactly which one of those is true. But I’m not going to. Screw you. Find out for yourselves if you’re that interested. I’m not here to satisfy your curiosity outside of that weird growth I have on my hairy, gibbon-like ass.
If you want to see that, get yourself to Australia and I then would be happy to show you. But only if you bring some prawn cocktail Skips and Wispa Golds with you ‘cos you can’t get them here!
Kidneys are kidney shaped and I don’t care why.
Similarly, if you have an awesome thought one day, but then something happens to distract you just as you are delving deeper into it, what happens to the space that thought inhabited?
For example: a thought process starts but then you stand on a Lego brick casually discarded ‘en transit’ by a wandering Venezuelan, semi-professional, long-distance infant uni-cyclist on a pilgrimage to witness the ‘Launching of the Penguins’ festival in Northern Norway.
Or you unintentionally think about custard.
(I find those two things carry approximately the same severity and happen with the same regularity. Is it just me?)
So, you forget that awesome original thought immediately and yell either;
“God damn Venezuelan uni-cyclists!!”
Or,
“Mmmm, custard.”
Depending on the event, obviously.
I once had an amazing thought and, just as I was getting into it, found myself distracted and yelling:
“For fuck’s sake, Nigel, it’s too spiky for the flange bracket. Get it the fuck out before the cobbles make the fringe catch fire and the squidge-o-meter throws a wobbly and shits all over the ancient Greek tapestry analyser!”
As a result, I totally lost the idea of somehow creating unlimited, ecologically safe electricity from cabbages and a used biro with ‘Welcome to Scunthorpe’ written on the barrel.
That would have saved the planet and made me rich or something and now I have no idea what I was thinking.
Trust me, Nigel has never heard the end of it.
He loved the book and the movie, so he went out and bought the audiobook, narrated by Andy Crane and Wilhemima Spoon, but every time he tries to listen to it, something quirky happens that stops him getting to the last half hour.
It is quite lucky for me because he has yet to find out I recorded over the last thirty minutes with the soundtrack of ‘The Lost Boys’.
The fact that those ‘quirky things’ that prevent Nigel finishing his audiobook usually involve me, Nigel’s head and something either heavy, gooey, sticky or all three being thrown is totally coincidental.
So, when you have a thought, and lose that thought, through whatever reason, do you get a space in your brain? Not a huge one, obviously, brains ain’t that big, but a space nonetheless?
Do other thoughts capitalise on that sudden run-time vacancy like organs possibly maybe do?
Do weird thoughts that you have no intention of thinking at that moment, or perhaps ever, slip into that empty space and take over your current, conscious, train of thought.
One minute you’re contemplating being the saviour of mankind by creating limitless, free, clean energy using brassica and biros, then some unintentional custard jumps into your mind from nowhere and suddenly you’re thinking about building a bomb and ‘sploding the factory that makes Crocs.
Again.
Even after Dr. Splinkenmeir told you that those sort of thoughts are unhealthy and counterproductive and that you should really get a hobby, something active and outdoors, and stop focussing so much on weird, rubber shoes.
So yeah. Internal space. It’s just easier not to think about it.
External space, like Captain Kirk and those lads kinda space, is what I’m talking about now.
I think we all really should get some new words for space. Space means so many different things and it’s very confusing. Especially to me. I sometimes think it’s deliberate.
Outer Space?
Is that a term everyone just sort of gets?
But what area of space, specifically, does that apply to?
Our solar system? The arm of the Milky Way we are in? Our galaxy? The ‘Local Group’? Or all the massive everything that’s out there?
Can we have ‘outer space’ and then just random designations that can still be comprehended by the tiny human brain?
Earth is your house.
Outer space is outside your house but in your garden.
T’other side o’fence space.
Down t’road space.
Papershop next t’ pub space.
Supermarket int’town space.
Next-town-ovver space.
Other end ot’country space.
Abroad Space.
Antipodal space.
I guess that system breaks down there. There’s nowhere else to go except into space and I think that would just compound the problem.
Outer space space.
T’other side o’fence space space.
See what I mean?
Whatever, it works for me.
So, outer space.
I have no idea what set my damaged brain off down this avenue of thought regarding (outer) space, but there I was having made the journey with no real memories of how I got there.
So, like any other day really.
It was a simple thought that linked itself up to some knowledge already buried somewhere in my noggin. The rogue thought assimilated that knowledge and presented itself to my consciousness with arrogance and said,
“Yeah, well. You can sit there thinking about custard as much as you like, but what about this…”
That thought led me down a metaphorical avenue of contemplation. It was a gently meandering metaphorical path through a similarly metaphorical meadow populated with cheery, little metaphorical butterflies and those weird insects that look like they might bite, but don’t.
They know they look like they might bite though, and they have the attitude that goes along with that. They buzz right at your face making you think of old 70’s movies about killer swarms of insects before swerving away at the last moment chuckling under their wings.
(Whatever happened to those movies about bugs? They were all the rage at one point and now all everyone seems to care about is twinkly vampires and ever more obscure superheroes like ‘Anxiety Man’ and ‘Day Old Donut Non-Binary Person’.)
So, happy that the worst that could happen was being almost but not quite dive-bombed to death by insects and a little P.T.S.D. about weird, old movies, I continued down that metaphorical path.
I had nothing else to do at the time. My brain was ticking along in neutral, and nothing was currently, or about to be, on fire.
Now, I must point out at this juncture, that I am not usually a fan of conspiracy theories and the like. It all just tends to be a little unbelievable to me.
They seem, for the most part, to be generally backed up by evidence such as a video someone once saw on YouTube, what some bloke down the pub said or ‘personal research’.
Yeah.
‘Personal Research’.
How this is done is by opening a web browser and typing into a search engine: ‘evidence for that things what I already done believe’.
The internet, the current source of all knowledge for humans, has not done us any favours when it comes to truth and research.
Before the internet people had to read, you know, actual books to find information. And the thing about using books to perform research is, it’s quite difficult to take a tiny sentence or paragraph out of a book and only concentrate on those few words, taking their meaning completely out of context.
As opposed to research performed on the internet which is the polar opposite of that. Not only is taking the information out of context possible, it’s actually more likely to happen.
For example. If you were interested in, say, the weight of cargo ships that plied the Spanish Main in the 18th Century, you would have to physically pick up a book entitled ‘Cargo Ships in the Caribbean Circa 1700-1799’ by a Mr. Alan ‘Too Interested in Historical Boats and Should Get Out More’ Thompson.
Then you would have to read that book. Probably all of it because, you know, you were interested in that subject anyway.
You would find the answers you were looking for and be able to quote that book as a reference. It would be fairly safe to assume that the author of that book had diligently performed his research using books or other documents.
Now, in that book might be a paragraph that went something like this:
‘……although the average weight of cargo ships in the Caribbean at this time is around 120 gross tons, some people suspect that, due to advances in shipbuilding technologies, it is entirely possible in the near future that we see cargo ships in the Caribbean weigh 500 gross tons or more…’
You read the book. You read that whole paragraph. You understand the information presented therein.
Along comes Google et al, and suddenly everyone has a world of information at their fingertips. So, Mr. Interested in Caribbean Shipping asks Jeeves for the answer (showing my age there huh?).
Jeeves has that information indexed. Plain text, ASCII format.
The question typed into the search engine is ‘what is the tonnage of cargo ships in the Caribbean in the 18th Century?’
The answer provided is ‘cargo ships in the Caribbean weigh 500 gross tons or more’.
See what I mean? The answer provided by the search engine is correct but also massively incorrect at the same time. We can’t blame the search engine; they are just doing what they are programmed to do to the best of their ability.
But now everyone thinks they are an expert on any subject because they have an internet connection and can use a search engine despite the fact that the information provided by those search engines can be out of context, incorrect or so wrong it’s insane.
And that’s only IF the search terms are not biased in the first place. That’s a whole other can of worms.
Computers are very, very literal.
There’s a huge difference in the answers provided depending on how you ask the question.
For example, if you are taking about the conspiracy surrounding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy;
a) Evidence that JFK was killed by the Government/FBI/Mafia/Lizards.
b) Evidence relating to the JFK assassination.
These two terms will yield spectacularly different search results.
If you ask a question with bias, the answer received will be similarly biased.
It never fails to amaze me how so many people can conduct research from a non-zero perspective. (A phrase invented by me so you can’t use it, you plagiarising fucks!)
What I mean by that is, whenever someone is trying to find out the truth of a specific matter; honestly, logically and scientifically, then that person must start out without a fixed, pre-established opinion on the subject.
A ‘zero perspective’.
If not, all their research will tend to be biased.
People look for, find, and quote evidence that supports their opinion while discounting evidence that does not support their opinion.
This is one of the major things that annoy me about conspiracy theories and theorists.
The people who support them, the people who promote them, the people who get angry when you challenge them are all guilty of bias.
People who will point at one book and say ‘this is evidence’ while pointing at another book stating ‘this is all lies’, and the only determining factors are their own personal beliefs.
They use straw man and circular arguments but refuse to see the lack of logic in their argument as conceding any ground, or even further consideration or discussion, is just not something they are prepared to entertain.
“I’m right, and if you don’t agree with my blind belief in this, YOU are stupid. You are a sheep believing everything you are told by the government/new world order/illuminati/lizards.”
How many times have you heard this insane rhetoric? Some neckbeard tells you about a ludicrous theory he and his internet mates have come up with and when you challenge him, he accuses you of believing everything you hear/read/are told like a fool. ‘Swallowing the lies’.
Casually ignoring the fact that he has just literally done the same thing with some youtuber or a maniac on a dark and swampy reddit thread. The only difference is the subject matter. He believes the royal family are alien lizards in human suits and I believe gravity exists.
They will often fall back to insults or name calling as they know they can’t really debate in a calm, logical manner with someone who actually has facts and research at their fingertips.
They will attempt to turn the argument into a slanging match to scuttle the whole discussion so they aren’t exposed for what they truly are.
They will often, ironically, call you ‘sheep’ despite being the best example of a sheep in the room. Blindly following with only belief and not evidence.
They employ what the great Stephen Fry coined ‘wallpaper words’.
They mean nothing. They just exist to deflect from the nub of the issue when there is no real evidence or data. Like wallpaper covers a bloodstain on a wall.
‘It’s obvious…;
‘It goes without saying….’
‘It’s common knowledge….’
‘Of course it’s true…’
Christianity is the perfect example of this.
I don’t care if you are Christian or not. It’s none of my business.
As long as your shit don’t mess with my shit you can shit where you want, know what I mean?
But those people will point to the Bible and say it’s evidence.
(It’s just a book.
But it was written by God.
Where’s the evidence of that?
It says so in the book.
What? But this book, by this beardy guy called Charlie Darwin, who did actually exist by the way, directly contradicts the Bible’s version of events.
That book is just a lie.
What if your book is just a lie?
It’s not, God says so.
Where?
In the book.
What? Okay, so there are all these other books, hundreds and thousands of them, all of which refute the possibility of your book being true. What about those?
All made up. All lies. They are just books. You can’t just believe everything you read.
You surely see the hypocrisy there, right?
Nope.
Okay, toodle-pip.
Exit Brad, stage left, bashing himself over the head with a baguette and gibbering.)
There’s a reason the Church refers to its followers as a ‘flock’ and priests, and Jesus himself, as ‘shepherds’.
Blindly follow, stupid sheep. Don’t ask questions.
I find it hard to believe so many of these conspiracy theories.
To my mind there is some bizarre thing in people’s minds that make them want to believe in some unseen evil or nefarious organisation screwing with their lives, like their lives are so important. Some invisible force that is responsible for all the bad things.
These things are the modern equivalent of vampires, werewolves, witches and other things that go bump in the night.
And the people who believe these crazy theories; with venom, with anger, with snarling ferocity, are the same sort of people who burned innocent young women as witches simply because they knew that chewing willow bark can help with headaches. Witchcraft! Burn her! Burn the witch!
(If you really want to believe in something that rules and ruins all our lives, it’s not hidden, it’s called greed and money and it’s responsible for so much more than any lizard king or masonic secret society)
But, theories like the moon landings?
What the fuck! It was all staged? Really?
“Yeah, ‘cos like, there’s a photo where you can see the reflection of a Starbucks in Neil Armstrong’s helmet, and the flag moved when it shouldn’t and…and…and….”
Argue all you like about weird anomalies in photographs and stuff. I prefer a simple approach to it.
I apologise in advance for the seriousness and fact-based bullshit that is about to happen. It’s long, boring and tedious which is probably why the theorists don’t take it on board. Can’t have some actual knowledge and research fogging their world view. Especially if it’s presented in text, requires reading and comprehension, and is not a 30 second youtube video or TikfuckingTok short.
Point 1: The Apollo Program
The Apollo Program ran from 1961 to 1972, following Project Mercury and Project Gemini, and culminated in Apollo 11 landing on the Moon in 1969 (which it absolutely did). That was eleven years of incremental progress, enormous resources, and some of the smartest people on Earth solving problems one at a time.
11 years from first deciding to find out, once and for all, if the Moon is made of Wensleydale to finally setting foot on the lunar surface and being massively disappointed by the fact that it’s just more dust and rocks.
It wouldn’t have even taken that long if NASA were not so cautious. They commendably took the decision that, if you’re going to send a man/woman/living thing into space, you generally prefer them to return alive rather than some kind of hissing, fizzing puddle of organs.
Unlike the USSR, who didn’t give a flying fuck and happily boiled many of their astronauts (R.I.P. Laika), probably using some kind of slogan like,
‘Honourably boil your torso in the name of progress and self-determination for our people and humiliation for capitalist pig dogs’.
NASA’s entire philosophy was small, testable steps: build rockets, reach orbit, send people into space, perform spacewalks, dock spacecraft, orbit the Moon, then finally land. Each mission built directly on the success or failure of the last.
For example, Apollo 10 left Earth, settled into orbit around the Moon, did a little dance to prove it could, did everything bar actually land, then came back.
After that, NASA had nothing else to test and ‘The Eagle’ was sent to make that last little step and touch down on what could be vast reserves of Blue Stilton (but sadly, wasn’t).
So there are two basic possibilities here.
- The entire Mercury–Gemini–Apollo program was fake which would mean there was an eleven-year global charade for no strategic reason.
Which makes little sense.
It also begs the question: if the whole thing was a lie, why wait until 1969 to fake the landing? Why not fake the landing a year before? Two years before? Five years before? Why let the U.S.S.R. lead the race for so long?
If the plan was to fake the whole thing, why not fake it back in 1958 and scare the absolute bejesus out of the Soviets. Those wacky Soviets who by that point had only managed to get a big, strong bloke to chuck an old kettle up in the air from the top of a big hill?
And what does that mean? Mankind has never landed on the Moon?
So what of all the undeniable evidence we have that they did? Like the laser reflecting mirrors on the lunar surface, moon rocks brought back, and hours of video footage taken on subsequent missions. Does that exist? I’m pretty sure it does.
It doesn’t take too much intelligence and technology to shine a laser at the moon and get a reflection back from the mirrors put up there for precisely that reason.
Hell, with a powerful enough telescope, you can see all the shit those guys left up there with your own eyes. The place is like a goddamn junkyard!
And how far back do you take that?
There’s a very famous phrase often used in scientific circles, it goes like this:
‘Standing on the shoulders of giants.’
It basically means that every, single bit of progress mankind has made became possible because of work done by previous generations.
Some grunty caveman back in the deep, dark past, looked up at the sky and thought, “What up dere?”
Since then, many other people have done exactly the same thing. More recently, some clever people started working on actually going and having a look.
Space travel stands on the shoulders of flight.
For hundreds of years, man has attempted to fly. From Icarus’ doomed attempts, through Da Vinci’s ornithopter, to balloons and airships, biplanes, jet aircraft and helicopters, high altitude bombers, flying at Mach 1, Mach 2, Mach 3 and beyond, onwards to orbital craft.
Man has spent the last 100 years attempting to fly higher, faster and further.
You can clearly see the progress in history. Is all that fake or did we just get so far and give up?
Chuck Yeager flew the X1 past the speed of sound at 45,000ft in 1947 and then those boffins just said, “Ah well, that’ll do, there’s nowhere left to go from here” and buggered off to open tattoo shops in California.
Back when Orville and Wilbur Wright set the ‘Wright Flyer’ up at Kitty Hawk, people were saying, ‘Flying is impossible!’, ‘Man will explode if he goes too high!’, and ‘Our bodies can’t possibly survive speeds higher than 50mph!’ and various other crazy claims.
We laugh at this now, but it’s the same sort of thing people say about space travel and the Moon landings now.
In another hundred years, when space travel is commonplace, we will all look back and laugh at those people who said “You can’t get out of the atmosphere without exploding” or “The Van Allen radiation belt would boil astronauts alive”.
So the idea that none of the Apollo Program happened is a little bit weird, to say the least.
Or, the other possibility:
- Apollo 11 alone was faked after ten years of genuine success — despite Apollo 12 landing just four months later. This also seems ridiculous.
That would require believing that NASA could:
• build reliable rockets,
• reach orbit,
• perform EVAs,
• dock spacecraft,
• orbit the Moon repeatedly,
…but somehow then find landing, in low gravity, with no atmosphere, impossibly hard.
That’s just backwards. Getting off the Earth is the hard part. Once you’re in space, going to the Moon is comparatively easy. Fart in one direction and you fly off in the opposite one and don’t stop until you hit something.
Faking the landing after doing all the difficult work makes no practical or logical sense.
‘We have spent ten years and billions of dollars and we can now successfully send a manned craft into orbit and bring it back to Earth safely.’
‘Awesome. So, I guess the hard bit is now sending that craft to the Moon?’
‘Not really. It’s a piece of piss compared to the rest of it. We just fire a little booster, the craft toddles off Moonward. Job’s a good ‘un.’
‘I guess it will take years for a craft to get there with only the teaspoon of fuel we can send up there?’
‘Not really, about four days there, four days back. The Moon’s quite close.’
‘Then it will be almost impossible to land on the lunar surface, yes? What with having very little fuel left to slow down?’
‘Nope. 1/6th Earth gravity on the moon, no wind, no atmosphere, no problem. We just give the boosters a little thrust when we get close and gently touch down like a feather on a breeze.’
‘Right. Oh. Well. Fuck it. Let’s just not bother. Let’s fake it in a crappy warehouse instead and lie to everyone. That’s a much better idea.’
‘But…we already did all the hard work! This final step is relatively easy! What did we do all this for if we’re not going to land?’
‘It doesn’t matter. We’ll fake it. Scrap everything. Stanley Kubrick has agreed to direct and we’re all very excited!’
I do accept that a possibility exists for America to have actually attempted it for real, find out it was too hard after 10 years and have their spies tell them Russia was close, then decide to fake it but…
If that were the case, why not fake the first man in space before the Russians too? Why not fake the first satellite? Why did they let Russia get so many wins before deciding to cheat?
Why did the U.S.A. live under the spectre of the ‘Red Menace’, with its superior rocket technology hinting at imminent nuclear destruction, for years, when the solution was right there?
My next point has always been the decider for me and as far as I can tell, it’s pretty airtight.
Point 2: The Cold War and the Space Race
The Moon landing hoax theory hinges on the Cold War rivalry between the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R.
After World War II, both nations emerged as hostile superpowers, largely due to competition over German military and rocket technology.
Rocket science mattered because it led directly to Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. The Space Race wasn’t about curiosity, it was about demonstrating the ability to launch nuclear weapons anywhere on Earth.
Crucially, the Space Race was public. Both sides monitored each other constantly using radar, telescopes, tracking stations, spies, and intelligence networks. Nothing about Apollo was secret.
So conspiracy theorists are asking us to believe that:
The U.S. faked the Moon landing live on global television,
The U.S.S.R. (America’s sworn enemy) could easily prove it,
And instead, they chose to say nothing, concede defeat, abandon the Space Race, and quietly accept U.S. dominance.
This makes no strategic sense. Exposing the hoax would have been the greatest propaganda victory in Cold War history. The Soviets would have humiliated the U.S. instantly and publicly.
They didn’t — because the landing happened.
The alternative is that, when the U.S.A. flexed its new atom powered muscles in the debating chambers, the U.S.S.R. would concede to their demands and somehow this was what the U.S.S.R. wanted?
“Listen here, y’all red commie bastards, we done got the biggest bomb on the planet and if y’all don’t do what we say we will blow you to itty, bitty, glowing pieces!”
“Yes sir, ve vill capitulate in every vay…..(little does diss idyot yank know that diss is all part ov our plan to….to….to….Boris, explain diss plan to me again vould you.)”
Conclusion
The Moon landing hoax theory collapses under basic logic.
Faking Apollo 11 would have been harder than doing it for real, pointless after a decade of genuine progress, immediately exposed by hostile rivals, and contradicted by subsequent Moon landings, physical evidence, and ongoing verification.
It was already a shaky idea.
Once you add history, geopolitics, and common sense, it falls apart completely.
There’s also the fact that I know for sure that Apollo 11 landed on the Moon because I was there. I was actually the first man on the moon. NASA just doesn’t like that fact and have covered it up ever since, insisting it was Neil and Buzz who first set some stinky toes on the lunar dust.
But. If I tell people that, their eyes narrow, they start edging slowly towards the nearest exit and before I know it, yet another bunch of guys in white turn up at my door asking if I’d be interested in donning one of their lovely, long-sleeved jackets and accompanying them to a large, secure building for my own safety.
That never ends well so I usually keep that information to myself and simply attempt to argue the logic.
(As an aside, regarding the crew of Apollo11. I always feel sorry for Mike Collins.
Imagine being chosen to be part of the team who were going to land on the Moon and not actually landing on the Moon!
Poor old Mike did all the intense training, stretched his brain around the unimaginable amounts of data and procedures these guys had to memorise, did all the same hard work, went all the way there, but when they arrived, he had to stay in the lunar orbiter and just watch!
Sitting in the orbiter for hours playing Mouse Trap by himself and watching Neil and Buzz cavort around in 1/6th gravity, playing golf and generally having much gits and shiggles.
Everyone knows the names of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. No fucker gives a shit about Mike Collins. Ask people who he is and they look puzzled and say, ‘doesn’t he run the butchers on the high street? You know, Dave’s brother.’
We should recognise that man, give him a massive statue or something. Mike, depicted in his astronaut gear, his head propped up on one hand, playing patience and sulking.)
Anyway, I’ll get back to my point. If, indeed, I ever had one. I think I had one. I’m pretty sure. Ah yes, I remember now.
We all know shit about space, right?
We are all aware of satellites and space stations. We all know about the little wheely robots scuttling about on Mars and the strangely anthropomorphic dustbins heading out into the darkness beyond our solar system. We’re aware of odd German blokes riding massive balloons up there and jumping off and that Musk bloke attempting to become even richer by firing other rich dickheads into orbit from a massive rich-prick gun.
There’s some awfully cool technology out there. There’s a lot of technological advances that have become everyday things as a result of the technology invented for space and space travel.
Most people don’t realise that NASA, especially, but most other space agencies around the world actually turn a profit.
Do you think that Governments would plough millions into space exploration for the good of the race, for some philanthropic reason, just because?
Nope. The technology drips down into the lives of all of us, and that makes money. Lots and lots of money.
The space agencies pay the government funds they receive back, with interest.
It is easy to see just how far technology has come. Just look around you.
How good is the technology used by NASA? It’s pretty mind blowing.
NASA runs on a relatively small amount of funding.
For example, the U.S. government granted NASA a budget of $24.9 billion in 2024.
That seems like a lot of money but not when you realise that, in a percentage of the total amount of national spending, that equates to 0.48% of the annual budget.
In comparison:
Social Security 21%
Medicare 14%
Health Insurance Programs 24%
Veterans Benefits 8%
Economic Security Programs 7%
Added to that is the fact that NASA employs approximately 18,475 employees, and those guys aren’t on minimum wage.
The actual funds NASA uses to do all the amazing shit it does is really, quite small.
The USA spends 17.7% of its budget on the military. That we know of. There’s a lot of secret money going to projects no one knows about.
So, given all that. What the fuck kind of space shit do the governments of the world have?
Seriously. I’m scared!
There really is a conspiracy but it’s not what those youtube and flerfers think it is.
There’s stuff up there we wouldn’t believe.
So, I’m going to use NASA as an example here. There are many other space agencies and research groups all around the world who are up to equally amazing stuff.
What I mean when I say ‘NASA’ is actually ‘NASA and all the other space agencies and research groups all around the world’.
It’s just a lot easier to type ‘NASA’ than ‘NASA and all the other space agencies and research groups all around the world’.
And if I were to say ‘NASA and all the other space agencies and research groups all around the world’ multiple times, rather than just say ‘NASA’, I would feel the urge to rephrase it every time so it didn’t get repetitive and weird.
I’m just that kind of person, alright? Don’t judge me.
I don’t come around your place judging how you do shit, do I? Telling you that you’re wrong to make a cup of tea and put the milk in first? (You are wrong though).
Or casting derision on how you store your shoes? Or ridiculing you on your choice of sofa placement in relation to the ancient art of Feng Shui? I just don’t do it, do I?
So, afford me the same courtesy.
Please. Just make that mental addition whenever you read ‘NASA’ okay?
When you read ‘NASA’, mentally change it to ‘NASA and all the other space agencies and research groups all around the world’.
Deal?
Fair enough.
You’re a gentleman and a scholar. Or a lady. Or whatever. You’re a star. Leave it at that and we’re all happy.
I am aware, by the way, that I just said I don’t come around your place judging you after spending a lot of time telling you, if you do indeed believe in conspiracy theories and the like, that your theories are not only wrong, but they are also ridiculous and you’re a fool for believing them.
That’s neither here nor there. Like wearing sunglasses in the rain.
Hypocritical? Moi?
Nah. Not me.
Anyway.
NASA is very proud of its work, and rightly so, and they want nothing more than to get other people interested. They publicise everything just because they love to talk about it.
NASA is the space agency equivalent of a giggling bunch of kids, proud of the pictures they just drew, screaming and shouting at their parents to look, please, just look, look what we did, it’s amazing!
Giddy and hysterical. One step away from getting over excited, being sick on their own shoes and having to go and take a nap in a darkened room to calm down. The only difference is that NASA are all fully grown adults with brains the size of cars and a shit ton of money to spend on toys.
NASA doesn’t have any secrets. NASA can’t keep secrets. It’s just too excited.
Like buying an awesome birthday present for a loved one and trying desperately to keep the surprise. But you know that they are going to love it so you end up giving them the gift a week early because you just can’t wait any longer to see their face light up.
NASA reports everything to the U.S. government. They have to in order to receive funding. NASA doesn’t read much into this. Of course the government is interested in what they’re doing, who wouldn’t be?
But the government has ulterior motives. They want to use the work NASA do for their own purposes.
Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, Space 1977, Thunderbirds, all of it, all of it is true!
Up there, right now, one-handed Luke Skywalker is having a crazy sword fight with Darth Vader.
Starbuck is on the phone to Scott Tracy, trying to get a date with Lady Penelope.
Captain Picard is having a bare-chested scrap with Captain Kirk about who gets to sit in the big chair while Spock looks on, unemotional, demanding they stop their illogical behaviour.
Buck Rogers is performing some weird dance in a futuristic nightclub, looking like he is having some sort of mental episode, while Tweeky moans about the price of space-kippers.
It’s all going on up there, while we sit down here being obsessed with our phones and complaining about the price of Earth kippers.
Consider, really consider, what the massive military machines all around the world can do with unlimited funding when we know what NASA can do with a few old bobbins and some string (relatively speaking).
The possibilities are endless.
Think about that. Or don’t. I don’t really care that much. I’m just waiting to evolve into a crab.
