[X] My Assistant

[hal_9000]

From http://www.moondaily.com/reports/First_Men...Lander_999.html

The first men on the Moon had to use a pen to fix a broken switch on their lunar module and return home to Earth, British newspaper the Daily Mirror reported Monday ahead of a new television documentary.

Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, and Buzz Aldrin, his fellow astronaut, accidentally snapped off the switch of a circuit breaker, and found they could not take off without it.

Aldrin then jammed a ballpoint pen into the hole where the switch had been, allowing the astronauts' lunar module Eagle to leave the surface of the Moon.

According to the documentary "Apollo 11: The Untold Story", to be aired Monday on Britain's Channel Five television, the US was so eager to beat the Soviet Union to putting a man on the Moon, it launched its historic 1969 mission before it was completely prepared.

Then-president Richard Nixon even prepared an address to the nation announcing the deaths of Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins.

"In looking around at some of the lunar dust on the floor, I discovered something that really didn't belong there -- a broken end of a circuit breaker," Aldrin told Channel Five in excerpts printed in the Daily Mirror.

"In the countdown procedure I used a pen, one of several that we had on board that didn't have metal on the end, and we used that to push the circuit breaker in."

The documentary also shows how the US government ordered NASA to cut links with the astronauts if disaster was imminent, not wanting the world to watch images of American astronauts spinning off into space.

Aldrin revealed how the astronauts believed they saw an unidentified flying object during the flight as well, adding that NASA covered it up for thirty years.

"There was something out there that was close enough to be observed," Aldrin said.

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

technical UFOs? It sounds like "technical healing" for a patient who died of the treatment.

How to create a technical UFO (inspirited by dvandorn post):

1) start from a real observation which was not explained immediately
2) report it as unexplained
3) when it is explained later, don't mention it, or
3 bis) take a likely explanation as no explanation
4) years after, unearth it.
5) As the witness and responsibles don't remember or don't comment this insignificant event, say there is censorship. No risk, there are real examples of censorship
6) publish it in a mystery series or in "speculative science".
7) keep quoting 2) in the literature, avoiding thoroughly to give hints to allow to find 3)


The implications of real UFOs and technical UFOs are not exactly the same.

Real UFOs would mean that:
-there are intelligent beings out there in space
-there are science domains which are unknown to us
-the promise of a better life

Technical UFOs mean that:
-there are stupid beings down here on Earth
-there are sciences domains which are unknown to many
-the obstacles to a better life.


In the instance, an uncertain but likely explanation (SLA Panel) is enough, as there is no indication that anything more extraordinary happened. If the object was observed changing of trajectory, this explanation would not hold, so that it would be realy unexplained. This kind of reasoning is the basis of serious ufology.