In article <3DBRf.7164$dw4.3538@newsfe3-gui.ntli.net>, manic_mandy@hotmail.com 
says...

In news:dv4riu$l9t$1@lust.ihug.co.nz,
Your Name Here=Harvey <you@somehost.somedomain.aus> typed:

In article <mqiRf.807$aA6.66@newsfe7-win.ntli.net>,
manic_mandy@hotmail.com says...

In news:dv2pbq$qd4$1@lust.ihug.co.nz,
Your Name Here=Harvey <you@somehost.somedomain.aus> typed:

It wouldn't matter. Because even if the focusing was stuck on the
infinity setting depth of field would allow objects from around 4ft
to infinity to appear in focus. In fact that fault would make it
easier to hid cords because depth of field is a kind of virtual
focus.

It does matter, if you are using depth of field.
A very basic knowledge of still photography says that if you had to
stop down the lens to use depth of field to get the objects in
focus, then you also have had to use a very slow shutter speed to
do so.
And considering the film speed at that time, it would have had to be
around 100 ASA or slower.

Yes but in bright sunlight that's 1/125 at f11, compact cameras such
as the Olympus ECR had lenses of around 43mm this gives quite good
depth of field at anything over F8. Even with 64ASA slide film which
was popular in the 1970s you would be able to use 1/60th at f11 in
bright sunlight or 1/60 f 8 in bright overcast conditions.

What this means in effect, he couldn't have taken any of a craft at
speed.

He wouldn't need to if they were static models. And of couse the
fact none of them show any form of blur is suspect in itself.

Actually there is information about the old Olympus 35ECR here
http://www.geocities.com/heidoscop/olympus_35_ecr.htm
It's clear from how this guy describes it was Aperture priority auto
only exposure which means it would have been impossible to take
sharp photographs of fast moving air vehicles in poor light
conditions using slow ASA/DIN film

Please also note, if foreground objects are sharp or not?

If they're not sharp, then depth of field was not used.
Please look at all the photographs available.
And just because there is a tripod shown in the picture, of one
picture, does not say that he used a tripod for all the photographs.
Please note that Billy took hundreds of photographs over a period of
years. He did not just take one photograph at a scene, but many,
in a series.
I don't know if there was any claim that Billy Meier used a
tripod...

Well considering he has one arm it would make sense to use a tripod
and there is evidence that he used a tripod because it is shown in
some of his images.

Anyway - it all boils down to who do you believe?

Only on the basis of evidence. There's plenty of evidence to suggest
some UFOs may be of ET origin and given the size of the Universe it
would just be plain stupid to rule that out because the possibility
is almost infinite. To state that *no* UFOs are of ET origin would
simply be close mindedness and isn't a rational or logical argument.

Even if people accept that UFOs come from outer space - it can also
mean they come from different outer space origins, in which case they
will be
of all varieties - not only from different solar systems, galaxies,
but
also that of dimension - ie. some non physical. And others could be
unmanned, ie. remote controlled or robotic.

Agreed. There's a whole universe of possibility out there. Which is why it
can be difficult to understand some sceptics who attempt to rule out
entirely ET origins for UFOs and attempt to portray that as a rational
argument, when in fact it is an argument based on close minded ignorance.

To get to the truth of the matter - one should not put blinders on,
which will screen out information that is truthful.
But many people put on these blinders themselves (sticking to only
their beliefs and ideas, and not willing to entertain ideas outside
of their box of limited understanding) - not realising that
truth is not limited to anything at all, that truthful information
simply exists, and the more information you can absorb the
more you'll understand.
I will simply go where the information takes me, and to especially
not ignore the same kind of information that keeps on coming up
again and again, from different sources.

There is the matter of urban legends, and myths - whereby
something does keep popping up again and again, but no facts
are forthcoming about it, only information which points to it
being only a myth, and purely a legend with no factual
confirmation(s).
I am undecided about the 'Philadelphia Experiment' - though
a History Channel presentation about the truth of it, says that
Carl Allen was a kooky individual, crazy enough to make up stuff.
While Al Beliek makes a brief appearance in it, they neglect to
interview him in depth, the only person who has said more
technically about the project, than any other individual.
And so why did the History Channel not also examined Al Beliek
in depth, and much of what he has to say?
Another example is that of 'The Hollow Earth' and inhabitants
living inside - an advanced race.
This seems to be that of myth - however this should not be lumped
together with people living underground, of an advanced
technology.

But seriously terrestrial origin is involved as well, which can add
more confusion --- but these will fall into certain specific 'types'
of craft, narrowing down the field a lot.
Nazi Flying Saucers is to be seriously believed - I've managed to
locate
a few clips/references to them in video/television program material,
most
of which has rarely aired.

Well yes there's the Battle of LA in 1942 the craft in the pictures appears
to be identical to some of the images of the Nazi Disks. The Nazis did have
plans to develop long range weapons in order attack the US, for example they
were attempting to launch V2 rockets from their U-boats

There has been some wild Nazi ideas, that never got beyond a preliminary
planning stage. There are some documentaries about these - they were all
dropped because conventional technology was thought to be way they'll
win, and not using weird untried undeveloped advanced technology.
And when they were losing badly, it was too late to bring onstream their
advanced technology ideas, they lacked the resources, and most importantly
the time - to bring them to fruitution.

The other major terrestrial source, would be black budget US
government craft, which pops up in the Disclosure Project witness
testimonies. References to this, comes from Phil Schneider/Dulce
Report/etc material.
To get an idea of how messed up the US goverment is, you need only to
look at Alex Jones "JFK2" documentary and Barrie
Zwicker's "The Great Conspiracy - The 9-11 News Special You Never
Saw". There are inconsistancies with the official story not lining up
with the facts about 9-11 he points out much the same information as
above.
We all know the US Government's credibility is on the line, with how
they used the 9-11 tragedy to push through the policies of the US
Government.

Of course the other side of the coin is there are highly organised Islamic
terror groups that would seek to undermine confidence in the US Government
and one of the ways to do that is through propaganda. I'd be very wary of
some of that material because these people will stop at nothing and it is
very easy to be taken in by such propaganda.

You should watch Barrie Zwicker's "The Great Conspiracy -
The 9-11 News Special you never saw" - he gives a run down of the
various US convert operations - basically CIA operations which used
terrorist tactics to bring down governments the US did not agree with.
These are US foreign policies they like to keep secret.
And Alex Jones documentary, mentioned above - describes the whole
Bay of Pigs fiasco. Basically why Kennedy was assassinated, supplying
the motive and exposing who were behind it?

Also with the Apollo 11 Moon Landing
and other moon landings. Did they in fact take place? As in what we
are
told about them?

Well that's most likely propaganda funded by the religious right in the US.
There are people in this World who would prefer to propagate ignorance.

Well which propanganda do you believe?
Any religious dogma and rhetoric? US government official propanganda?
NASA publicity propanganda?
The truth is outside of all this, and is merely a no-nonsense
retelling of the events that actually happened - accurately told.

Bart Sibrel has directed the documentary "A Funny Thing Happened On
the
Way to the Moon" in which an original footage was shown which shows
the astronauts faking their position in space, to the public. They
were in
low earth orbit, and they wanted us to believe they were halfway to
the moon.
It isn't just one piece of information which builds up a believable
picture that all of it was faked. The program presents an abundance of
information as to why it was not possible for astronauts to have
travelled to the moon.

There is the Van-allen belt and the claim the astronauts could not have
passed through it. But I'm old enough to remember the moon landings and saw
it all live on TV. It was definitely real IMO. In fact if I remember rightly
you could watch them walking about up there with a powerful enough
telescope, after all the moon isn't all that far away and one of the news
papers included a whole double page spread free map of the moon so you could
see the area they landed. I believe the area where the landing took place
and the lander and lunar rover that was left behind can still be seen
through a powerful telescope. That could not have been faked, and could be
verified to this day :)

The knockout punch in Sibrel's documentary is that original footage
supposedly uncovered. I do wonder if it is authentic footage?
Without it, the whole programme is simply a series of logical
deductions based on how NASA is ignoring our closest neighbour.

I have little doubt some images were taken in a studio. In fact I remember
they set up a whole lunar landscape in an aircraft hanger or something in
order to train the astronauts, that was openly shown on the Television to,
so the fact there are some studio shots floating about of astronauts posing
is not evidence that the whole thing was staged, it simply means they did
some studio shots for publicity purposes and over the years people have
forgotten which were the studio shots and which were the real ones. And
considering this took place in the Cold War when there was the "Space Race"
I'm sure there would ahve been an element of propogandising and releasing
staged studio shots for publicity purposes, but that doesn't prove the whole
thing was staged.

I am simply not familiar with how much photographic data NASA has released
into the public domain. It would take a moon buff to know how many
books do contain extensive photographic evidence that NASA has been to the
moon, and not hidden any kind of information from us?

It would be simple for NASA to discredit the above, simply by
releasing every footage and roll of film that was shot, during the
Apollo moon landings. I wonder what is the % that has been released
to the public
so far? (Note - what was said in one of the witness testimonies for
the Disclosure Project - which strongly hinted that NASA airbushed out
what was unsuitable for public eyes).

Well bearing in mind everything was filmed with fairly primative analogue
B/W TV cameras and everything was beamed back to earth I wonder if they
still have all the footage. Video technology was in it's infacy in those
days and some things have been lost forever. In fact in the UK and much of
Europe the TV pictures had to be converted from US NSTC video standard to
the European PAL 625 line standard (in fact it may even have been 405 line),
in those days the technolgy for doing this was very ropey, actually all
pictures from the US used to look like they were shot on the Moon back in
the 1960s LOL and it's only since the invention of digital technology that
it has been possible to to view NSTC video on PAL TV with any clarity. Which
is why the old US TV programs such as The Fugative, Dallas etc used to be
shot on 35mm film for World distribution.

I was always pretty horrified at the very poor quality of the
'live' television pictures of the moon landing.
Only a person with the technical background, will have any idea whether
the quality should have been much much better - and exactly how many
minutes was transmitted live to us? And how much footage was achived
by NASA - and shouldn't all of the footage be accessible to the public?
The same for all footage ever shot on the moon - shouldn't NASA release
it's archives to the public - which the US taxpayer paid for?
But the American public don't have access to it, do they? That which
they paid for.
The kind of censorship/stupidity is exhibited by the US government
(and other governments too) - that THEY are there to serve the
people, who elected them into office - and not for they to dictate
to the people their policies. They should not lie to the people and
be self centred and selfish fulfilling their wants and desires.

Of course - people are wondering? Why haven't we been back to the moon
since? Why don't we have a moonbase up and running by now?
Or at the very least remote controlled vehicles running around the
moon, conducting various scientific and geological tests?

That's an interesting point. I dare say it's because it is very expensive.
Well at least that's a valid excuse if one is using rockets. That said a
modern PDA has more computing power than the entire Apollo 11 Moon Mission
and like my Mororola A1000 mobile phone shoots better videos than were
available in 1969 (Gosh I can film my missions to the Supermarket to buy
more cheese) and costs about 400 UKP brand new (you can pick them up on eBay
S/H for about 100 UKP). Given the sophistication of the technology available
to the public and the fact it is relatively inexpensive you do wonder why
there aren't thousands of Web cams on the moon not to mention robots, after
all we could send space probes to the moon around the size of a 2 litre Coke
bottle capable of sending an incredible amount of data. It is strange, we
know they have the technology yet they are not using it, in fact NASA seem
to go out of their way to keep up a pretence that these things are not
possible, as if it's still 1969 and they are still making things with valves
LOL Gosh even the ESA pictures of Mars were better than NASA's and the
European craft was in orbit, and I dare say there will come a point when
private individuals are sending rockets to the moon, I think NASA really
needs to wake up sometimes.

-- 
Amanda

Sending robotic rovers to the moon should be easy peasy for NASA, as
they used Titan rockets to launch unmanned probes to the planets - although
they were modified. You would think it would be possible to recycle
ICBM rockets towards peaceful endeavours, instead of completely trashing
them in disarmament treaties.
We have the technology - so why aren't the current generation of 
children encouraged to go lunar lander surfing via the Internet, controlling
a robotic camera on the moon? To get them interested in science and
technology, so that their generation can land on Mars within their
generation?

I think it shows more - that the Moon is offlimits to humans (for whatever
reason, mainly one of conspiracy - to keep humans grounded here) and that
NASA is being very very slow towards any advances in space travel, etc. etc.
It's almost as if NASA's mission is slow mankind's advances into
space travel and associated technology.
And that the Apollo moon landings were just a one-off never to happen
again...

Harvey