In 1994, Victoria House Press in New York received a manuscript titled "A Funny Thing Happened On Our Way to the Moon." Its author, Ralph Rene, a brilliant lay physicist [...]

Much has been made of Ralph Rene's supposed brilliance. However, he is variously described as a self-taught engineer or self-taught physicist. Should one trust a self-taught doctor?

Since I had written the investigative report "Votescam: The Stealing of America," (Victoria House Press) they asked me to investigate Rene and his manuscript to determine the credibility of both. "I read Kaysing's book 'We Never Went to the Moon'", Rene told me, "and although it was compelling, it lacked technical details, a grounding in physics that would convince scientists, beyond a doubt, that America never went to the moon."

Unfortunately no one with the appropriate training and credentials has endorsed Ralph Rene, and several have gone on record calling him a charlatan, a crackpot, a lunatic, and worse.

Rene was positive that NASA had pulled off the hoax of the century. "NASA didn't have the technical problems solved by l969 when they launched the first moon shot," he insisted, "but I believe they couldn't admit it or they'd lose thirty billion dollars in taxpayer-money."

This contention is based mostly on some 20,000 defects or quality control issues logged against the combined spacecraft. Not being a practicing engineer, Rene apparently misunderstands the graded nature and severity of such items. He also apparently wishes to convey the notion that a system is not supposed to be considered safe until all pending issues are resolved.

I read Rene's manuscript and although I understood basic physics, I couldn't immediately assure the publisher that Rene's assertions were scientifically accurate. Least of all, I couldn't assure them that we didn't go to the moon. I needed time.

Mr. Collier never gets round to answering whether he was able to confirm Rene's scientific assertions.

So what began as simple research turned into months at the New York Public Library, the Library of Congress in Washington and the United States Archives. Surprisingly, precious little had been written about the Apollo missions except standard "puff" pieces in the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Then my research turned to Grumman Aircraft in Beth Page, New York. Grumman built the Lunar Module (LM), that unwieldy looking craft that never flew on Earth but supposedly landed safely on the moon six times. I asked for blueprints detailing the scientific thought behind its design. Did it run by computer? If so, who built the computer? What made Grumman engineers think it could fly?

Grumman told me that all the paperwork was destroyed. I was stunned. The LM historical paperwork was destroyed!? Why!? They had no answers. [...]

In fact Grumman does have answers. Most people are surprised to learn that the design documentation for the lunar module amounts to a boxcar's worth for each individual spacecraft. Aerospace engineering is not like building a house, where a mere roll of blueprints and good carpentry skills suffice. Each individual part must be meticulously documented, inspected, and signed off at each stage of its lifetime: from initial conception to detailed design to manufacturing to installation. This represents an enormous amount of documents.

Grumman is an aerospace engineering firm, not a museum. It did not wish to house the hundred thousand cubic feet or so of design documentation at its expense. As an aircraft manufacturer, Grumman is already required by aviation regulations to store the documentation for each commercial aircraft it builds. If the government does not require the manufacturer to retain the documentation, there is little incentive to do so voluntarily.

Only cursory material was retained for historical reference, and a few detailed items were saved by private citizens who picked them off Grumman's trash heap. But it's no great surprise to anyone who works in aerospace that the detailed documentation was destroyed.

But my research indicated that the Rover was at least six feet too long to fit into that corner compartment, thus making it impossible to ever get to the moon. [...]

The Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) did not go inside the triangular section of the lunar module descent stage, as Mr. Collier suggests. He apparently misunderstood the Boeing engineers, or else never asked them some crucial questions. The triangular sections of the LM descent stage are where the landing gear is attached. The LRV rides bolted to the side of the rectangular section of the descent stage. It's not contained in anything.

The cramped quarters of the lunar module is a feature well documented in several books about the Apollo program. There was a protocol for moving inside the spacecraft, and for "egressing" one at a time. Mr. Collier doesn't seem to appreciate that. He's not entirely in the dark, though. Neil Armstrong actually broke off a switch in his Apollo 11 lunar module by moving carelessly in his space suit. There was no margin for error. But it could be done.

Trying to understand how the moon acquired a ten-foot layer of top soil without wind, rain or water to erode the volcanic-crystalline surface, I spoke to a geologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston.

And? Mr. Collier reports the adverse findings in detail, but he fails to report where his concerns were adequately addressed. The lunar surface is far older than the earth's surface (in most places). Millions of years' worth of meteoroidal bombardment have churned up the moon's surface. And there are moonquakes too. We tend to think of the moon as a solid object, but most planets and planetoids are fluid. Imagine putting a faint layer of plaster on the surface of a balloon and then flexing the balloon. The hard layer of plaster will crumble. And consider also that most of the meteors that fall on the moon are actually microscopic themselves. It accumulates "dust" the same way your furniture at home does.

Much of my time was spent just trying to mentally picture the physics of light and shadows, jet propulsion and solar radiation, because most of what NASA was claiming about the moon shots - and what was supposedly discovered on the moon - appeared to be diametrically opposed to present text book physics.

It's often difficult to apply conventional physics to new environments where some principles hold (say for certain gravity and atmospheric situations) and some don't. That's why instead of applying a layman's knowledge of physics to a situation, it's best to get the opinions of those who practice physics for a living and who can provide a better grasp of the principles from a more intuitive standpoint.

Anyway, I was knee-deep in all this research, when Rene became impatient and decided to self-publish his book. He changed the title to "NASA Mooned America". I, however, had been hooked. But now there wasn't a book to research. I was left hanging, questions plaguing my mind. Questions that neither Kaysing nor Rene entertained.

Their research had led me into a scientific wonderland, filled with possibilities. What was I going to do? I had been thrown out of a great movie and I'd never know how it ended. I decided to continue the research. I proposed a book to the publisher titled "Was it Only a Paper Moon?" and I promised it by 1998.

I started with the technical problems NASA faced in outer space. In fact, I discovered there are two separate zones out there, an inner space and an outer space, and that fact eventually became very significant in my research.

It appears that humans are most likely operating in inner space (the space lab) but outer space, beyond the Van Allen radiation belt, the magnetosphere, 560 miles up, may be too deadly to enter due to solar radiation. If that data proves to be true, Earthmen could not have gone to the moon and returned without some signs of radiation poisoning, cell damage and DNA alteration, and most likely, death from cancer.

Although the astronauts as a group don't seem less healthy than their earthbound colleagues, we have no way of knowing whether the health problems they have or might contract are due to space travel or just normal aging.

The Van Allen belts pose a radiation problem only if the exposure time is considerable. Ralph Rene doesn't seem to understand the physics of radiation exposure, the difference between types of radiation, and the duration of Apollo astronaut exposure. And so he misleads his readers into thinking the exposure was much greater than it actually was.

In fact there are literally hundreds of communications satellites happily operating outside the Van Allen belts, and they were engineered using the same data that NASA used for planning the Apollo missions. If NASA's data were wrong, these satellites should all be failing unexpectedly. Since they aren't we believe the NASA data is correct.

The first concern I faced when I started to write the book was my own public credibility. After all, I was the person who told the country (Votescam) that their votes were being rigged by a cartel of powerful elite, including the owners of major media in America.

Now I found myself investigating the possibility that we didn't go to the moon. "You've got to be nuts," said my friends. "First you told them the vote is rigged and now you question whether we went to the moon!? They'll hang you in Times Square!"

So I decided to test the waters with several talk-radio shows in the Midwest. [...]

Talk-show participants are not usually a good sample of the general population, nor are they especially level-headed people. Talk shows thrive on controversy, and often intentionally amplify the controversial aspects of a discussion.

It wasn't easy being the Cassandra of the airwaves, telling people what they definitely didn't want to hear. Half of me wanted to be proven wrong, but the other half had both hands on the tail of something that sure looked like a duck and quacked like a duck. The last time that happened, the duck turned out to be an expose of computer vote rigging in the United States. As an investigative reporter, I just couldn't let go of that damn duck.

One enraged listener said that the eagle-feather and hammer that astronauts simultaneously dropped on the moon, was an experiment proving there was no atmosphere on the moon's surface. That person was definitely angry, convinced that I didn't understand basic physics.

I explained that the experiment wasn't done to prove the absence of atmosphere, but to prove that an eagle feather and a hammer would both fall at the same rate of speed because the moon has gravity (1/6th a strong as Earth's).

"On Earth," I said, "they would both fall at 32-feet per second-per second.

The caller actually started to holler. "No, no, an eagle feather will float down on Earth and the hammer will fall faster. On the moon there is no air so they both fall at the same speed!"

I told him to get an eagle feather and try it. It's Galileo's law: no matter what the weight of any two objects is, they will both fall at the exactly same speed. [...]

Unfortunately the caller is right and Mr. Collier is wrong. Galileo's law is popularly stated as that two objects, regardless of mass, will fall at the same rate. But that is not the physical principle. Galileo showed that the acceleration due to gravity is the same regardless of mass. All things being equal, an eagle feather and a hammer and a humpback whale will all fall at the same rate in the same gravitational field.

The caller correctly characterized the expected observation, and that's because -- Galileo notwithstanding -- all things are not equal. Gravity is not the only force acting upon an object falling in earth's gravity. Because the earth also has an atmosphere, things falling through it incur resistance -- a force which opposes gravity. The strength of that force depends solely on the shape of the falling object.

But here's the key concept. The acceleration upward imparted by the atmospheric resistance to a falling object is computed by dividing the force of resistance by the mass of the falling object. The feather has a very small mass compared to the hammer, so the resistance of the air has a much greater effect upon it than upon the hammer.

But on the moon you can ignore the effects of atmospheric resistance, and so Galileo's observation on gravity is the only factor that applies.

If Mr. Collier were correct in predicting that an eagle feather and a hammer will fall at the same speed on earth, citing Galileo's principle as his proof, he will have to contend with the notion of a parachute. A skydiver would be killed if he hit the ground going as fast as he does with his parachute closed. When he opens his parachute, he slows down dramatically to a safe speed. His mass hasn't changed; he's always had his parachute with him, just in a different shape. Gravity hasn't changed. But his parachute has made him more susceptible to the aerodynamic effects of air resistance, and this greatly affects the speed at which he falls.

While Mr. Collier may have been correct in stating that the intent of the experiment was to demonstrate Galileo's principle, the caller is correct in predicting the outcome were that experiment carried out on earth. Galileo's experiment wouldn't have worked on earth with those two particular objects. But on the moon it worked perfectly, precisely due to the absence of the confounding effects of earth's atmosphere.

Mr. Collier's browbeating of an intelligent and correct caller leads me to two conclusions: a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and perhaps Mr. Collier should have listened a little more carefully to the audience he was using to test his credibility.

Then, a funny thing happened on my way to writing that book. I was trying to use words to describe the strange visual phenomena that I saw in NASA photos and videos. Those provocative images are the first evidence that people investigating NASA use to draw you into the fray. "You won't believe this NASA picture," they say, and the tantalizing hunt for clues is forever on.

It was then I realized you had to see it to believe it. Those NASA pictures were supposedly taken on the moon's surface, but the lighting from the only available sources, the sun and reflected Earth-light, seems all wrong. It is too soft, appearing more like a Disney studio photo; soft pastels and diffused light.

How could there be diffused light on the moon?

For the same reason there can be diffuse light from the moon. The lunar surface reflects light, and if it can reflect light all the way to earth then it can certainly reflect light a few feet to an astronaut's space suit or to the shaded side of he lunar module.

Earth's atmosphere takes light and bends it, spreading it around objects. Light reflects off air molecules and lights up the dark sides of objects. It is atmosphere, bending the sun's light, that makes the sky appear to be blue. However, on the moon there is no prism of atmosphere to diffuse or bend light so the sky is totally black. On the moon, the sun's light should be blinding. In fact, the astronauts wear gold tinted face plates on their helmets to cut down 95-percent of the light from the sun. The dark side of objects in NASA photos should be pitch black [...],

The sun was indeed blinding. The astronauts commented on it. And the shadows were indeed dark, but not so dark as to impede vision.

Because atmospheric diffusion is the most salient cause of diffuse lighting on earth, Mr. Collier seems to believe it's the only cause. But if you've ever been out in the desert -- and especially taken photographs there -- you can see the effects of the glare of the sun off the sand.

On the moon you lose the atmospheric diffusion, but the diffuse reflection from the lunar surface does not go away. That reflection becomes the primary source of indirect lighting. Mr. Collier's conclusion that shadows should be pitch black is based on an incomplete understanding of how lighting works.

It's a matter of opinion whether they are softly lit. Where reflected light from the lunar surface is a primary light source -- such as when Aldrin is climbing down the lunar module's ladder -- we should actually expect soft lighting. Soft lighting is achieved in photography by using large area light sources. Perched at the top of the ladder, Aldrin was surrounded by an entire landscape of brightly lit lunar surface, even though the area immediately surrounding him was in a puddle of shadow. That would certainly produce soft lighting effects. He was not in direct sunlight.

But notice how Mr. Collier jumps to the conclusion. He observes the soft lighting. And since he's convinced himself above that only atmospheric diffusion could produce soft lighting, he concludes that the photographs must have been produced on earth.

Why? If NASA film footage was actually taken on the moon, then it would be a tremendous scientific story. One would expect new physics books trumpeting an incredibly new physical reality: atmosphere has nothing to do with diffusing light! Therefore, and forever thereafter, a new scientific principle would be taught in schools: where there is no atmosphere, light will react exactly the same as light in atmosphere. What was wrong in the world of science?

Why were the scientists silent about such an important discovery?

Why was the major media mute on the subject?

Journalistic melodrama aside, it's interesting to note how Mr. Collier has gone from a simple theory of illumination all the way to the point of lambasting mainstream physics.

His contention that this represents a "new physical reality" is absurd. This is what logicians call a fallacy of inverse implication. We know that atmosphere diffuses light. Therefore the presence of atmosphere would imply the diffusion of light. However, does that mean the absence of atmosphere should imply the absence of diffusion? Only if atmosphere were the only possible cause of diffuse lighting. It is not. So there is no "new reality" to trumpet. In the absence of atmosphere we are able to see other causes of light diffusion -- in this case, diffuse reflection.

This is a good example of how many conspiracists think. When the observations recorded in film and video fail to match the conspiracist's expectation, it is seen as an earth-shattering anomalous condition that (in their estimation) fairly begs for resolution. In fact, we often find that the conspiracists' expectations are incomplete or incorrect. But few conspiracists will go back and defend those expectations.

Mr. Collier chooses to marvel at the apparent density of science and the media, when in fact he should be using that information to refine his expectations. Maybe there's a reason why people haven't noticed the "anomaly." Maybe it's what really ought to be expected.

I called Kodak, in Rochester, NY, the company that supplied the film for the Hasselblad cameras the astronauts used on the moon. "At what temperature does film melt?" I asked.

"One hundred and fifty degrees."

But NASA video and film prove the astronauts to be on the moon's surface when the sun was at high noon; the temperature was +250 F. degrees. "The film, in the uncooled cameras would melt," Kodak said. So the duck was quacking.

NASA film and video, in fact, show that the astronauts are on the moon's surface in early morning, when the sun is just beginning to warm the surface.

Mr. Collier seems to be among the large group of people who misunderstand what "surface temperature" means when applied to the moon. On earth, when we say the outside temperature is 80 degrees, we mean the temperature of the air. The surface temperature may in fact be as high as 150 degrees. I'm sure Mr. Collier tried to walk barefoot across a hot sandy beach and was given an object lesson in surface temperature.

The surface temperature of the moon can indeed reach 250 degrees, but that's the temperature of lunar surface material heated by direct sunlight. There is no such thing as air temperature on the moon. So if you can keep the photographic film out of direct sunlight, you can keep it cool.

It's not true that the cameras weren't cooled. They weren't actively cooled by any mechanism intended for that purpose, but cooling something on the moon is a simple matter of keeping it out of the sun, or of putting reflective material on it so that most of the sun's rays are reflected away. The cameras had thermometers on them so that the astronauts could keep tabs on the internal temperature of the magazine.

When I realized that everything I was trying to describe with words was strongly visual, I decided to commit the research to a video tape instead of a book. "Was it Only a Paper Moon" video was released in Spring 1997. It contains a 90-minute unbroken chain of circumstantial evidence that, if not refuted by NASA, proves we could not have gone to the moon. I feel this evidence demands Congressional hearings.

I think the only thing congressional hearings would demonstrate is that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Mr. Collier educates himself only to the point of understanding some of the relevant principles. And he doesn't seem impressed that the answers to his questions lie in the principles he doesn't yet understand.