Akimbo: We Never Went to the Moon pp. 150-168

 The story is that Kaysing was commissioned to write this book. Skeptics will concentrate on the portion of that story where Kaysing would claim that he wrote it as a goof but then started to believe it; I want to focus on the other part. That someone paid him to write this because that implies some kind of editorial decision. An editor is what we need here because mid-chapter the format changes. Last week I criticized the ordering Kaysing presented: Baron’s testimony, then Baron’s report, then the Phillip’s report. I said that it should have gone Baron’s report, Baron’s testimony, then Phillip’s. This is because we have Baron’s findings, then the investigation into his findings, then a corroborating report. They didn’t do that for some reason. Now, we have something new, side-by-side comparison of the claims Phillips’ is making with Baron’s. This is fine, but either do this for the entire chapter or don’t do it all. Either choice is better than suddenly deciding to do it.

What were led to believe is that the unofficial Baron report is going to make a claim, and then the General in charge of the program is going to say the same thing; but the two do not know each other so therefore it must be true. What this comparison lacks is any kind of link to faking the Moon Landing. It’s not addressed, it’s not mentioned. Kaysing wants to imply that the landing was impossible because of the Apollo 1 tragedy but that claim doesn’t work.

Further the side-by-side comparison doesn’t work. For example, on page 151, Baron begins listing the problems of record keeping. According to him the record keeping was completely unorganized and records were kept in a single desk that served as the filing cabinet. This is a problem because cleanliness records of various gases, liquids, and rooms were all shuffled together. I can see that this is a problem that the hiring of an intern or secretary could solve and in an engineering project like this I’m sure such records are important and need to be kept in order. So, what does the Phillip’s report say about this, “It is not NASA’s intent to dictate solutions to the deficiencies noted in this [The Phillip’s report] report. The solution to NAA’s internal problems is both a prerogative and a responsibility of NAA management, within the parameters of NASA’s requirements as stated in the contracts. NASA does, however, fully expect objective, responsible, and timely action by NAA to correct the conditions described in this report [Phillip’s report].”

There is nothing that we, the reader, should understand that Phillips and Baron agree with each other based on what was just provided. A lot of conspiracy literature can be ascribed to the author just not understanding what they are reading. We saw this in both the Cooper book and the Robison book. However, there are times like in “None Dare Call it Conspiracy” and this one where the author is just lying. I can’t say that they disagree, they might agree. If Baron is writing accurately, I would imagine that the General in charge would agree that proper record keeping is necessary; but there is nothing Kaysing is writing that we can use to say that they agree. It’s not even wrong.

The next section is titled “Quads” and Baron writes of engineering deficiencies and how the engineering went on without quality control testing. Some of the devices being constructed were left in the open where they picked up dust and metal shavings. The Phillips report says, “The condition of hardware shipped from the factory, with thousands of hours of work to complete, is unsatisfactory to NASA. S&ID must complete all hardware at the factory and further implement, without delay, an accurate system to certify delivered hardware, properly related to the DD 250.”

This is more agreement than we just had but since Baron isn’t specifying what projects he’s discussing we have to assume. I’m willing to make that assumption because it’s very low stakes whether or not this is correct. The next section concerns Baron’s focus on record keeping and quality control standards. The Phillips report complains that there is a problem. NAA inspectors are claiming a product has met standards and then the NASA inspectors looking at the same thing say that it is deficient. Generously, I will say that this part is Baron identifying the cause, and Phillips describing the effect. What we are led to understand, again, is that there were issues with NAA’s handling of their contract. They attempted to cut corners in order to generate profit. The problem here is capitalism, but let’s put that aside for now because Kaysing is going to summarize.

He begins an author’s note on page 157 by saying that “rather than belabor the issue, it is sufficient to conclude this comparison of BARON and PHILLIPS in their respective reports…”

Ok, I’m rather happy he decided to do this because it was getting tedious. Kaysing continues a sentence later, “Both Tom Baron and Sam Phillips knew that Apollo was on the rocks technologically. And while this information was generally suppressed in the media, it did not escape the attention of the those who make high-level decisions. Thus, following the fire on Pad 34, there was never any doubt that the moon landings would be simulated since reaching the moon with a hodge-podge of malfunctioning hardware was an obvious impossibility!”

This is just another lie. Neither report claimed that Apollo technology was untenable, rather it points to problems that need to be fixed. We have the Apollo 1 tragedy in February of 1967 and the next activity by the program was a test flight seven months later to demonstrate the capabilities of the rocket, the heatshield, and the ability of the engine to restart in space. Three months later there is another uncrewed test flight, in April of 1968 a third uncrewed flight. Then, in October of 1968 is the Apollo 7 flight, which is crewed. There is plenty of time to fix the NAA problems, run tests, and then put people in the flights. The claim that the technology wasn’t feasible is only for people who are skimming the book and only reading the author’s notes.

Now the chapter returns to the report. We aren’t told which one and I have to assume that it’s the Baron report. It’s more details of the safety problems on pad 34. Baron continues detailing the problems but it’s nothing new, and most importantly, it’s all problems relating to the fire—problems, that were solved because there was no subsequent fire. In fact, until Challenger in the 1980s, there are no more fatalities in the NASA program. The book’s argument is this: NAA had problems in quality control and record keeping, there was a fire that killed three astronauts; therefore the Apollo landing was faked.

What’s even more infuriating is that this is summarized in the section titled “Author’s reprise, summary, and conclusion” but then the chapter continues with more blatant conspiracy accusations. The first is that Holmburg mysteriously turned up in the Congressional inquiry, but it isn’t mysterious. Baron testified that Holmburg told him certain things, it would be remiss if Congress didn’t subpoena him. He then creates a scenario where Phillips, Baron, and now Grissom are compiling safety reports and Grissom is murdered in the fire in order to suppress it. None of this makes sense because the Phillips and Baron reports only exist because of the fire. Baron spends too much time on Pad 34 for Kaysing to fail to understand this. This is purposeful lying.