Saturday, October 30, 2010

Faux-pas in the book

You know, you can read over the text 5 million times, yet there is always something that leaks through the cracks. "Live TV From the Moon" is no exception. Sure, typos are virtually impossible to avoid, but I did make sure that the facts always remained as such. However, on page 27, paragraph 2 I erroneously state that there were 7 manned Mercury flights, not 6!

I have no idea how that got through: I can only guess I was thinking "7 astronauts" and so 7 I wrote. As Billy Joel sang, "You're only human!"

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Moon Hoaxers

Did I mention that I have low tolerance for such folk? The most recent idiotism I have read by one of them is regarding "Live TV From the Moon". Apparently because it contains "From the Moon" in the title it makes it a claptrap of government shill propaganda. Never mind that I used documents and articles from sources that have absolutely nothing to do with NASA, nor that cameras tend to work the way they are described independantly of whether NASA changes the laws of physics or not. I'm apparently the essence of evil, and all because of the racy title of my book.

On top of that if you look at youtube and the fine folk (sic) that post comments there, you still get classic questions like "who filmed Armstrong coming down the ladder?" (geeze I don't know but I suspect its the same sorry camera operator who stands behind your webcam everytime you turn it on).  Apparently, despite working in the TV industry for 20+ years, I was never made aware that a person needs to actually stand behind the camera in order for it to work. I can only imaging the closed loop circuit meltdown their brains would have if they dared look at the Sky News studios in Sydney.

Sometimes I fear my efforts in documenting how the cameras which were used on the lunar surface actually worked have come too late.