Testify: We Never Went to the Moon pp. 92-126

 Today’s post is going to be about two chapters. The first is a page and a half, completely unnecessary, and concerns how the radio transmission was faked. This question of the radio waves was never an issue to anyone in both the historical explanation and the conspiracy theory. It’s an issue that no one raises because we live in the age of global instant communication. Even back in the 70s, when the book was written, you could still phone England from Iowa. It would cost a lot, but no one doubts the technology. You might get some HAM operator nerd type wondering about the direction the transmission was coming from, but there are probably ways to explain that. Kaysing does engage in technobabble in an effort to confuse and bewilder the reader. He begins talking about ultra-low frequency transmission and how it is used to transmit messages to submarines. This was the backup to the actual transmission. Which doesn’t make sense because, according to Kaysing, we’re trying to fake the transmission that everyone picked up. ULF, again according to him, is a military technology. This two-page chapter is just filler.

The next chapter concerns the fire on January 27th, 1967, which killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. This is a tragic event which is made all the more tragic by the exploitation of it by conspiracy theorists like Kaysing and Joe Rogan. Conspiracy theorists claim that the accident was due to negligence…which is a little true. However, for us the story stops there. NASA conducted an investigation and made some changes—notably they changed the atmosphere inside the capsule from 100% oxygen to a 60/40 oxygen/nitrogen mix. The Apollo program continued and eventually landed on the Moon.

For the conspiracy theorists the story is roughly the same, but they need it mean more. The deaths of these three astronauts are not in dispute, nor is the cause. The conspiracy theorists need to use the Apollo 1 disaster as proof the government is incapable of doing anything successful therefore, they had to fake the Moon landing. Now, there is a self-defeating argument here: the government can successfully fake a Moon landing. Even this book cites the Manhattan Project a massive government undertaking to accomplish a scientific and engineering feat that had never been done before while maintaining secrecy.

The technical problem was not accounted for, and according to the investigations and subsequent history of the fire, very few people warned about the oxygen environment. The concern was “the bends.” Nitrogen enters the blood stream and rapid changes in pressure causes a variety of symptoms that can be quite serious. The thinking was that Oxygen didn’t cause this condition, and no one considered the fire risk.

Kaysing then reprints the testimony of Thomas Baron, the writer of the “Baron report” which Kaysing claims was going to be 500 pages before he was killed in a car accident. We’ve covered this report in an earlier chapter but here is his testimony to the investigating committee. Kaysing introduces it as “the struggle of one solitary man against the tremendous power of the corporate-government hierarchy.”

According to this testimony Baron had no education beyond high school and somehow stumbled into a job at NASA. Kaysing never mentions Baron’s lack of formal education any of the times he’s mentioned him. As Baron testifies, “We were used quite often in other areas that we weren’t familiar with because there was nobody else here to do the job and we were shifted around.”

Remember earlier when I said that “negligence” was certainly part of the cause? This is what I mean. Apparently doing seal checks and environmental control system maintenance is just handled by “Steve” who got the job because he knows “Chuck” …well not, Chuck, but Chuck’s girlfriend’s sister or some bullshit. Even so, the fire killed the astronauts because of the Oxygen, not because of some safety failure, so I’m sure Steve did his job.

The testimony focuses on a story that Baron tells about meeting a man named Al Holmburg in a grocery store who told him that he (Holmburg) knew exactly what caused the fire. The point then moves on, as I assume that the congressional committee called this Al Holmburg to testify. The committee says they will do this and the testimony moves on. What Baron claims is that there were unsanctioned materials in the capsule—paints, cleaning supplies, and materials like that. He feels that this is what contributed to the fire. He also condemns the communication methods on the testing, and generally this feels like a condemnation that anyone working with a great deal of people underneath contract management could levy.

Indeed, one of Baron’s complaints to the committee was of morale. NASA subcontracted the construction work, and the sub-contractors tried to cut corners whenever they could, this resulted in the lack of shift rotations and the lack of shift coverage. There are two instances that Baron claimed he could not call in sick because there was no one to cover his work.

There are two important points concerning Baron’s testimony that I must highlight: the first is that he’s asked to consider all of the problems he’s raised in his report and “if you can tell us, do any of them relate to matters of what we would call immediate safety to the crew of the spacecraft? Mr. Baron: No.”

Of course, this could mean that a series of indirect problems led to the fire. But there’s another wrinkle in his testimony, “Mr. Wydler: You are saying you don’t know anything about this personally, but you are indicating somebody might have said something to you about it; is that right? Mr. Baron: Definitely.”

The government investigation concluded that the source of ignition was likely a silver-plated copper wire that a small access door stripped the insulation from. A committee member asks directly whether any of Baron’s complaints are related to this wire and Baron answers, “no.”

Holmburg is brought in to testify, and he denies talking to Baron about the accident. In fact, he denies doing anything but asking Baron about the report he was writing. He also testifies that “He gets all his information from anonymous phone calls, people calling him and people dropping him a word here and there. This is what he tells me.”

Holmburg claims that what actually happened was that Baron talked to him about his theory, and he just listened.

The 500 page “Baron report” is never produced or entered into evidence. In fact, there is no evidence, aside from Baron’s claim, that it even exists. The chapter ends with some commentary, which is nice after reading the Cooper book where such commentary was few and far between.

Kaysing does a familiar conspiracy theorists’ gambit—he assumes you didn’t read what he just printed. There is nothing in that testimony that indicates the Apollo Moon landing was faked or that the Apollo 1 fire was anything other than a stripped wire. There is a further question of Baron’s integrity considering a portion of his testimony is directly contradicted by the witness he names. The testimony is pretty innocuous and for the most part just fact finding by the committee. Kaysing mentions the Philips report, a document which we’ve not seen or heard of before as being corroborating to Baron’s and he presents that next which is a strange way to do things, but that is for next week’s post.