Well whaddaya know? When K.M. sent along this story, I was stunned, both for the self-explanatory nature of the story, but - I must confess - for the "we-told-you-so" opportunity that it gives to gloat, and the epistemological squawking that I can anticipate will inevitably follow. In a way, this blog is as much about the squawking as it is about the story itself.

So what exactly is that story? Well, as readers know, India has sent multiple probes to the Moon to map its surface, perform various experiments, and in general to flex its space muscles for all the world to see. One of those probes, the Chandrayaan-2 snapped some very interesting photos indeed. What it photographed were two pictures, both from a direct overhead view, of the Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 landing sites, with the Lunar Excursion Modules (LEMs) clearly visible:

One can hear the epistemological squawking from the "Apollo-was-hoaxed-by-Stanley-Kubrick-on-a-sound-stage-in-Nevada" crowd already. We will be asked to believe that "India is in on it," and that either their own intelligence agencies "faked the photos" or that they were paid by the Clowns In America or the N.R.O. (National Racketeering Office) to post the photos on its space agency's website. We might even get a few learned and highly analytical-sounding articles about the angles of the shadows being cast not quite aligning properly, or that a pixel analysis by the latest computer camouflage analysis software has proven that the little lunar modules were dubbed into the picture, or that the sun could not possibly have been at that particular angle casting shadows that particular way because it was the wrong time of day...

... and so on and so on &c &c etc etc...

But there are a couple of questions that that crowd never asks in its rush to disprove the Apollo missions ever happened. The first question I've covered in my various books, beginning with The SS Brotherhood of the Bell and continuing on into the Covert Wars series: did the Apollo missions happen exactly the way we were told they happened? While they did happen, were there some fibs and impostures committed to misdirect the "how"? In my opinion, the answer is yes, and my own personal suspicion is that a deal was struck with NASA's Nazis to allow NASA access to and use of some exotic technology that enabled the lunar landing, liftoff and (here it comes) a safe traverse of the Van Allen Belts. We were told that it was all accomplished by means of some very sophisticated and delicate operations with conventional rockets. Maybe... after all, Mr. Musk has demonstrated that you can use the thrust of a rocket to back slowly down and land on the same gantry from which you launched it. The problem is that he has demonstrated this capability after much trial and error, expense, and some five decades after the Apollo landings. In my view, the landings on and liftoffs from the lunar surface were enabled by the use of some variation of the Bell technology, and that this would explain why Dr. Kurt Debus, the former Nazi actually in charge of the Cape Canaveral launch site and Apollo schedule, was in the position he was in, for he was not a rocket scientist at all, but a plasma and high voltage physicist, and in fact had been a member of the team working on the Nazi Bell.

Which brings me to the important question that I think people should be asking about the Indian photographs of the Apollo 11 and 12 landing sites and their Lunar Excursion Modules: why did India take the photographs in the first place? The obvious answer is that it wanted to see for itself, once and for all, if the claims of having landed men on the Moon and returned them were indeed true. Beyond this, however, I suspect the goal and purpose of the photos in much deeper. Indian scientists are as capable as I am - if not much more so - of analyzing the kind of data and arguments I've been presenting about the Apollo missions since The SS Brotherhood of the Bell was published. They are entirely capable of reaching the same or similar conclusions as I, namely, that the Apollo landings happened, but they were not made possible by advanced rocketry, but something very different and very exotic, and - here it comes - that technology, at least in part remains on the lunar surface at the landing sites.

And thus we arrive at what I suspect is the real purpose of the photographs. The reader will have noted that the pictures are of very low resolution. The Lunar Excursion Modules are clearly visible, and it's clear that the pictures are of that equipment. But you can bet your bottom dollar, or rather, rupee, that there are much more sophisticated optics available to India, optics that would enable it to get an up-close-and-personal view down "inside" that Lunar excursion module, to see what possible clues to the technology might be there. NASA and the US government have made it clear that the Apollo landing sites are to be treated as historical sites, with a quarantine zone of approximately a kilometer around each one into which no probe or human is to go. But it isn't about protecting historical sites at all. It's about protecting a technology, and India has just signaled to the rest of the world that there are other ways of investigating it without ever having to set foot on the site.