Harvey, may I take off my tinfoil hat now?

[Michael Collins]

(I'll leave it ambiguous as to whether I'm referring to the rabbit or the gunman living with my grandma in Alice Springs.)

Righto, I was talking to an American pal of mine here in Krakow, about a docco I watched in Australia before I left, about how no one has landed on the moon yet. Now, unless I need to put my tinfoil hat back on (I was working in a group home for adults with severe intellectual disabilities), I'm pretty sure I saw good ol' Donny Rumsfeld say, directly to the camera, that no one has landed on the moon. He went on about how it was considered necessary to boost American morale, beat the Russians etc. Did anyone see this same docco? It was on the ABC in may (I think). Or, does anyone know of a reliable source to back this up? Has there been any manned landings since? My friend is adamant there's been a few, and that, for sure, the stars and stripes is sitting up there on the moon.

I guess there's always the photos in conspiracy web sites, and those pesky radiation belts that would give your whole body cancer rather quickly.

Anyway, cheers.

Mike

[Porter Doran]

Well I certainly have no interest in defending Mr. Rumsfeld, in any of his misguided speeches and acts: but it would surprise me very much if he'd denied the moon landings. I am quite certain such a statement would make national headlines and a scandal.

At any rate, there were six lunar landings: Apollo 11 through 17, excepting flight 13. The first was launched 20 July 1969 (my grandfather's birthday -- he was Head of Manned Space Flight then); the last was launched 11 December 1972. Each was filmed and documented thoroughly. Thousands of engineers and tens of thousands of laborers were employed in the Apollo program, either by NASA or its contractors. Diagrams and papers in the millions detail the program and the science behind it and resulting from it, and almost all are available for public perusal.

A good book on the Apollo program -- detailed but charmingly readable, and comprising interviews with hundreds of engineers, &c. -- is Apollo: The Race to the Moon (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671611011/qid=1061748829/sr=1-4/ref=sr_1_4/103-2380881-8671008?v=glance&s=books) by Charles Murray and Catherine S. Cox.