Report Cards: We Never Went to the Moon pp. 126-150

Last week we ended with Kaysing very long insertion of Thomas Baron’s testimony to the Congressional investigation into the Apollo 1 fire. The goal of that section, and this one, is to claim that the conspiracy theory is plausible because sometimes massive projects have flaws. The method to complete that goal is the inclusion of official documentation, because so far, all we’ve had to go on is what Kaysing assumes to be the case. We’ve had him guessing, makings things up, and providing a rendering of what the command room might look like if it were real. Official documentation makes the theory seem better, and since we are over halfway into the book, no one is reading it anymore.

The first report comes from General Samuel C. Phillips, director of the Apollo program. In the preface to the report Phillips makes it explicit that he is not satisfied with the progress made by the program and that substantial improvement is needed. He also spells “enclosed” with an “I” (“Inclosed”) which I’ve seen in other documents from the 60s and I wonder why the spelling changed. Kaysing wants us to believe that the Philips report is damning evidence that the Apollo program could never be successful, but the last line of the preface is “If I can assis in any way, please let me know.” Clearly, Phillips was still hopeful even if he didn’t like what he saw during his inspection.

The first thing we have to understand is that this is not about the Apollo program as a whole, it is about the failure (in Phillips’s eyes) of North American Aviation (NAA) to meet the milestones they promised in their construction bid. There is mention in section II of the introduction of problems that NAA has in meeting schedules, technical acumen, and cost.

In section IV we are given the summary findings, I’m going to be lazy and skip the intervening sections. It’s all technical and detailed, important for historians, but that’s not what we’re here for. Kaysing, doesn’t want anyone to read those sections either. He wants people to flip through the pages, assume it’s going to reinforce the conspiracy, and move on.

He’s added footnotes with his commentary, a nice addition because it gives us the reason for why we are reading what we are reading. To continue to bash Bill Cooper’s book—this is what was missing through most of it. In the previous paragraph I said that Kaysing doesn’t want us to read the actual text here is my proof. On page 136 (of the PDF) the footnote reads, “One year later, the fatal accident occurred on Pad 34, verifying Gen Phillips’ worst prediction.” This footnote is attached to section IV.A and it reads:

“NAA performance on both programs is characterized by continued failure to meet committed schedule dates with required technical performance and within costs. There is no evidence of current improvement in NAA’s management of these programs of the magnitude required to give confidence that NAA performance will improve at the rate required to meet established Apollo program objectives.”

The footnote implies that Phillips was concerned about safety, but the text is about NAA not being on schedule. These two things are not related. Phillips made no prediction about the astronauts or safety; his only prediction is that NAA will continue to fail to meet expectations.

The next addition to the book is the Baron report. This is out of order. We had Baron’s testimony, then we had the previous report, now we have Baron’s report? No. The order should have been Baron report, Baron testimony (since it was about the report), then the Philips’ report since it is supposed to confirm what Baron has been saying. This isn’t the full 500-page report that Kaysing has been mentioning, it’s also not the 350-page report either. It’s the general notes.

I mentioned this last post, but Baron isn’t some crank. The issues he brings up are worth looking into because it all concerns the corners that NAA was cutting in order to save costs on their end. He raises the points that there weren’t enough people working in various projects, there was little communication between workers and management, lack of equipment and spaces to work in, constantly shifting workers from one project to another, etc. The footnotes are repetitive at this point, constantly reminding us that three astronauts tragically died in a fire on pad 34. My issue is that none of this points to final safety checks—which we know weren’t completed because of the frayed wire. The ultimate problem was the oxygen rich environment. Finally, none of this points to the Apollo landing being impossible.

The footnote on page 145 (pdf) claims that Baron was fired because “he revealed what Phillips report had already verified. But Phillips was promoted up and out of the way while Baron went to meet his death at a railroad crossing.” No, Phillips was promoted because the Apollo program was a success. Baron admits in the report why he was fired and it’s not one thing: he had financial obligations that he was not fixing, his ex-wife was calling his boss, he had been served “papers” at work, that in 12 months he had only been to work for 8 or 9 months, and that his boss “did not like the way I had handled this report in reference to newspaper people. He did not think I should have given thm the information that I had collected.”

What I am reading here is that Baron had a string of problems, and turning the report over to the newspaper was the final straw. What Kaysing seems to miss, purposefully I imagine, is that Baron’s focus is on NAA being incompetent and not on NASA. Over and over again Baron will say things like this, “We definitely need more NASA coverage in all aspects of the program. There are too many times that the authority of a NASA counterpart could have helped the situation.”

Baron isn’t a government whistleblower; he’s a corporate whistleblower.