The Groom Lake Desert Rat: Issue 28
Issue #28. July 28, 1995
In this issue...
- Reality Defined
- The Hungarian Connection
- More Details from Jarod
- Appeal Brief Filed
- Cammo Dude Manual Now On-Line
- Intel Bitties
Reality Defined
These are confusing times at the Research Center. All around us people are making fantastic claims. Bob Lazar and Jarod 2 say that flying saucers are real and are of alien origin. They each claim to have participated, in some limited way, in a U.S. government program to understand and reproduce these extraterrestrial craft. That's enough to chew on, but there's more! Ambassador Merlyn Merlin II from Draconis claims he is an alien himself and that the spaceships are powered by love.
But what is to account for the aliens choosing Hungarian at all? Do these gray aliens have a fondness for goulash or rotund Bolshevik women in polka dots? Perhaps their first encounter with earthlings happened in Hungary, and they assumed this language was what most humans spoke. We remember a similar scenario in a movie, Earth Girls Are Easy, about three lustful male aliens who crash land in a swimming pool in the San Fernando Valley. They adopt "Valley Girl" talk, accept the local culture as their own and go cruising for babes.We have an alternative theory, however. Remember that this is a thrice-told tale. Someone told the supervisor, the supervisor told Jarod, and Jarod told us. This is enough steps for many of the details of the message to be lost or garbled, even if the gist is accurate. The original conclusion of the staff linguists might have been that the language of the aliens was LIKE Hungarian. Hungarian is a member of the Ural-Altaic language group. Members of this family follow certain rules of syntax independent of the words themselves. If we allow that life could evolve on a distant planet to walk on two feet in bodies functionally similar to ours, then we would also expect this race to develop spoken languages. It seems unlikely that any of their specific words would match ours, but their syntax could. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are probably primal elements of any oral language anywhere in the universe, and there are only a limited number of ways to put these things together.
A human linguist attempting to analyze an alien language will try to correlate it with things he already knows. He could look at the word order and say, "I know this. It is structured like Hungarian." The fact that Jarod saw the language printed in our roman alphabet does not mean it is a human language; it means only that the linguists have found a way to transcribe the sounds uttered by the aliens into character codes. To J-2, who knew no foreign language, the words were meaningless, and they might have also been meaningless to an earthly Hungarian, but a linguist specializing in the structure of languages might not be interested in meaning. He would see only a pattern in the order of words that tells him how to classify that language. "This is a higher form of Hungarian," he might say, with technical accuracy. Only non-linguists might interpret this to mean the aliens can talk with Zsa-Zsa, which isn't true. Once you know the structure resembles Hungarian, you still need an army of linguists and others studying the alien culture to understand the meaning of individual words and idioms.
That is one theory. There could be others. Maybe some historical fluke indeed created a special connection to Hungary which lead the aliens to learn this human language first. It may not have been Zsa Zsa the aliens wanted to kiss up to but black world figurehead Edward Teller, who Bob Lazar suggests may have helped him get his job at Area S-4. Our colleague M.F. drew our attention to this passage in Teller's War, a book profiling the physicist and his Star Wars projects
Budapest at the turn of the century had a thriving Jewish community and a series of celebrated schools that produced no less than seven of the twentieth century's great scientists. In order of birth, they were Theodor von Karman, George de Hevesy, Micheal Polanyi, Leo Szilard, Eugene P. Wigner, John von Neumann and Edward Teller. The city pulsated intellectually, rich in commerce, architecture and opera. As Richard Rhodes has noted, the first subway system on the European continent was dug, not in Paris or Berlin, but in Budapest.The Hungarian scientists were to have a remarkable impact on science in the United States and were universally seen as visionaries. Szilard, Wigner and Teller played important roles in the push for the atom bomb. Von Neumann was a mathematical genius who helped build giant computers used for H-bomb calculations. Fermi, the Italian physicist, once mused over the number of stars in the universe and its age, saying that if aliens existed they should already have visited earth. Indeed, Szilard joked, "They call themselves Hungarians." Teller also delighted in this notion, applying it to himself with relish. Late in life, after getting to know someone he liked, he would sometimes give the person permission to call him "E.T.," after the movie about a friendly extraterrestrial who visits Earth.
[Budapest Guide | Hungary in City Net | Hungary Home Page | Fermi/Szilard quote | Today's weather forecast (in Hungarian)]
J-2 himself has no explanation for the alien use of Higher Hungarian, but he reminds us about the Native American Code Talkers of World War II who spoke a "higher form of Navajo" as a radio code that was never broken by the Axis. Did the aliens deliberately choose a difficult human language to talk to Teller and his cronies and no one else? As usual, this question remains an Unsolved Mystery, but one that Psychospy can live with. We expect reality to have its surreal moments. First Nixon, then boron, and now we have aliens conferring with Zsa Zsa. What could be more real?
Most earthlings have no difficulty accepting the theoretical possibility of alien life. Psychospy will personally strangle the next moron who tells us, "With all those million, million stars in a million, million galaxies, I have to believe there is intelligent life out there somewhere." It is only when it gets down to specifics that humans become uncomfortable. The gray aliens, like Jarod 1, could not possibly be real, some say, because they look too much like us. You want they should look like crabs? In that case, people would say the aliens look too much like their B-movie counterparts. Lifeforms that evolved on separate planets are likely to be very different in detail but not necessarily in functional form. Just as certain plants in the African and Mexican deserts have evolved separately to look alike, a body with two legs, two arms and four-to-six fingers per hand may be the norm for intelligent life throughout the universe. Likewise, any such life might also be expected to develop a system of crude communication by sounds emitted through the breathing orifice. Maybe they also hiccup, cough and belch. This is not the sort of thing we expect of angels or the idealized aliens of our imagination, but real lifeforms cannot live up to those expectations. When we meet them, they will be as earthy, smelly, specific and repulsive as we are.
More Details From Jarod
Alien Hygiene
And speaking of smelly and repulsive, J-2 has now answered a question for us that we never asked: How do the aliens keep clean? They take a "bug bath." Or more precisely, a bug shower. J-2 has seen the apparatus in a work area at Facility X. It is basically a shower stall where microbes are sprayed onto the alien's skin. As J-2 explains it, "the good bacteria eat the bad bacteria." Underneath the shower chamber was a reservoir that held the good bacteria--apparently in a liquid medium--and a system of piping brought it up to the chamber to spray on the alien. As the residue flowed out the bottom it passed through some kind of filtering system that separated the good bacteria from the bad bacteria, and the good bacteria passed back into the tank.J-2 never saw the apparatus in use. (We do not know how personally the aliens take their bathing.) He knew it was an alien shower only because he was told so. He concedes it is possible that the shower also performed a nutritional function. In the public UFO literature, it is often stated that the gray aliens have no alimentary system, so they have to absorb nutrients through their skin.
Jarod says he has never seen an alien eat but has seen one drink. It was while an alien was sitting at a conference table during a technical briefing. He brought a cup to his lips and appeared to drink from it. J-2 does not know what the liquid was in the cup, but he assumes it was water.
Document Security
While discussing with J-2 the Higher Hungarian he saw in writing, we asked him about documents in general. Although the mechanical design team had the finest earthly computers at their disposal, the design of any complex device generates a lot of paper: drawings, technical specifications, evaluations. Were these documents stamped "Top Secret" or "Classified"? Jarod says they were not. There was nothing on the document to identify its source or classification level except an alphanumeric code. Someone who stumbled across the document by chance would probably not know what it was.Since personal security was extremely thorough and intrusive and the rules of secrecy had become a way of life, Jarod and his colleagues were not tempted to smuggle any documents out of the design room. At night the documents were locked up in a vault. If someone cleaned the office, it must have been at night, because Jarod never saw them.
Alien Eyes
Jarod reports that the covering of the alien eye becomes darker or lighter depending on the ambient light, like photosensitive sunglasses. In bright light, the lens appears black and opaque. In subdued lighting, it becomes clear, and you can see the structure of the eye underneath. In that case, alien eyes appear not much different than ours, although bigger. J-2 does not know if the photosensitive covering is a natural part of the eye or some sort of contact lens, but he says he has never seen an alien blink.
NERVA Correction
In DR#27, we reported that Jarod 2 and his son, a lab technician, happened to both work at the Nevada Test Site in the late 1970s, when J-2 was temporarily assigned to the NERVA nuclear rocket program. The assignment was incorrect, since NERVA had been canceled in Feb. 1972 (at a total cost of $1.4 billion according to DOE public affairs).This was our error, not Jarod's, as we did not clear this portion of the text with him before publication. Although Jarod did work for NERVA prior to its demise, he was obviously not working on it when his son was at the Test Site. The two met occasionally for lunch in Mercury but did not discuss work. What was Jarod doing there? "Another project" is all he'll say. [Thanks to fishhook@access.digex.net for the hint.]
Appeal Brief Filed
The Opening Brief in Glenn Campbell's appeal of his obstruction conviction was filed on July 7. It is 41 pages (on numbered paper in the proper format) plus 5 pages of attachments. [Full text] Campbell was convicted by a Justice of the Peace on March 3 for an incident, over a year ago, in which he pushed down the door locks of a vehicle to delay the warrantless seizure of a news crews videotape [DR#12 | #23]. Of course, the video tape is still unaccounted for. Campbell paid a $315 fine and was condemned to paint the Rachel Senior Center. This appeal is his attempt to weasel out of that duty, as well as prove a principal of some sort, which will probably be long forgotten by the time the appeal is resolved. Such are the wheels of justice.Under an earlier stipulation agreed upon by Campbell and his very own Special Prosecutor, the opposition now has 30 days to file a counter-brief, then Campbell has 20 days to file a reply. At that point, the appeal will be scheduled for hearing before a real judge, who will then have to mow through all this paperwork, including a massive trial transcript that must have cost a thousand dollars to prepare. Campbell researched and wrote the brief entirely on his own, with final proofreading by lawyers AP, SH and PL, who offered only a few suggestions. Campbell managed to squeeze in 34 different legal references, including the Pentagon Papers case (U.S. vs. New York Times, 403 US 713) and Julius & Ethel Rosenberg (U.S. vs. Rosenberg, et al, 103 FS 808).
Campbell seems to be having a fine ol' time, but one wonders how many thousands of dollars the county and court have spent on this case. The tally includes....
- Compensation for a contract stenographer from Las Vegas to produce the massive trial transcript.
- Ongoing compensation and expenses for one Special Prosecutor, imported on contract from Ely, including at least two six-hour round-trip drives from Ely and two days of court appearance.
- Compensation and expenses for one Special Judge and his clerk, imported from Ely, also including two six-hour drives and two days of court appearance.
- One day's salary for each of these local law enforcement officials who attended the trial in their official capacity: Sheriff Bradfield, Undersheriff Davis, Deputy Lamoreaux, Deputy Bryant and Asst. District Attorney Waite.
- Time previously spent on the case by District Attorney Tom "Do Nothing" Dill, which can't amount to much because he never does anything.
In compensation, Lincoln county law enforcement gets nothing but the bad publicity it deserves, while the court is rewarded with only the $315 Campbell has already paid. On his side, in addition to the fine and possible Senior Center servitude, Campbell has spent only $50 for a copy card at the Clark County Law Library, plus printing and postage costs for the motions he has submitted and copying costs at the County Courthouse. We think it is a fair price to pay for education and entertainment. There are other legal actions in the works, but we cannot discuss them until they become a matter of public record. Win or lose, we are beginning to like this game.
Cammo Dude Manual Now On-Line
An alleged security manual for guards at the Groom Lake base was published on-line by the Area 51 Research Center on June 20. This 29-page manual, the origin of which is unclear, has been circulating among the Interceptors and many others for some time. The lawyer in the hazardous waste lawsuit, Jonathan Turley, had submitted this or a similar document as part of a pre-trial motion to the federal court. The Air Force immediately declared that the document, as well as Turley's motion, were classified and it threatened to seize some of Turley's files. [News Article | Follow-up Article | Legal Times review] This deeply alarmed our regional director, Glenn Campbell, who wondered if this document in Turley's hands was the same one sitting around in one of Campbell's piles, under the old newspapers and dirty clothes. "This can't be classified," said he, "because I have a copy, and nowhere does it say that it is secret or classified." The document did say, "FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY. DO NOT REMOVE FROM SITE," but Campbell never removed it from the site, wherever that may be, and because the document did not specify its author or owner, it was not clear for whose "official use" it was intended."Ergo," said Campbell, "I must show the world that the government has made a terrible mistake." If this was indeed the same document, then it was already in the public domain. U.S. vs. Heine, 151 F2d 813, and U.S. vs. New York Times told Campbell that any attempt by the government to restrict a document was legally moot if the document was already public. To emphasize this prior fact (and not at all to make it so), Campbell scanned the document into his computer and posted it immediately on the Research Center's WWW page.
Although we cannot vouch that it is authentic or the same document submitted by Turley, it certainly is a fascinating piece of work. It includes floor plans of the base headquarters and security buildings, radio code names, schematics of road sensors and how to disable them and this cover story for the Cammo Dudes....
YOU ARE A MEMBER OF THE SECURITY FORCE PATROLLING THE NELLIS BOMBING RANGE. [ADVISE PERSONNEL TO DEPART] BECAUSE OF UNEXPLODED ORDINANCE, LOW FLYING AIRCRAFT AND STRAFING RUNS CONDUCTED HERE.
The whole concept of cover stories fascinates us. It is institutionalized lying, and it means that you can never trust what the military tells you.
A Reaction?
A 7/27 article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that government lawyers are stepping up their efforts to have the hazardous waste lawsuit dismissed. The article includes this ambiguous passage...
Government attorney Russell Young told Pro that in recent weeks "incidents have occured that demonstrate the necessity of terminating this action quickly in order to prevent further damage to national security. Because those matters are under seal, they cannot be discussed... but they are well known to the court. This case must be dismissed now."Turley and Department of Justice spokesman Jim Sweeney said they could not speculate on what the language meant.
Intel Bitties
THE DESERT RAT IS NO LONGER FREE. For over a year and a half, the Desert Rat has been distributed over the internet without charge. We did this as a clever ploy to increase market share and achieve dominance of the Area 51 newsletter sector. Now that we have smashed the competition, like Wal-Mart crushing small town merchants, we are the doing the only American thing, which is to increase our prices. The Desert Rat is now "guiltware." You can continue to subscribe by email, browse our WWW area or redistribute the Rat to others without charge. However, if you obtain any significant entertainment or information from the Rat, you are obligated, by your own conscience, to send $5 to Psychospy, c/o Area 51 Research Center. This fee entitles you to one year of guilt-free reading of the Rat on the internet. (Those who have purchased subscriptions by regular mail have already paid their dues.) We have no means of enforcing this fee, and we have no plans to terminate subscriptions or otherwise discriminate against those who do not pay. We will, however, note the people who do pay and place them at the top of the waiting list when saucer rides are offered at 51.LINCOLN COUNTY COMMISSIONER Eve "Mad as Hell" Culverwell [DR#2 | DR#27], one of the few local officials we respect, has survived a recall election sponsored by the Forces of Darkness. At issue was Culverwell's support of an initiative that would allow a temporary nuclear waste storage facility to be constructed in a remote part of the county. Say the word "nuclear" and many citizens go ballistic. Culverwell was saved, we suspect, because the word "environmentalist" has even more vile connotations in these parts, and those meddling outsiders were all over this one. The Forces of Darkness, based in Panaca, Nevada, automatically seek to unseat any competent official who takes an unpopular stand. Since this power block seems to have enough signatures to force a recall election anytime, Lincoln County seems to hold one every other week. We are fond of "Maddie" but have mixed sentiments about her victory. Had she lost, she would have been free to blow this rotten little county and return to human civilization, like Campbell. Because she won, thanks to the loyalty of fellow citizens, she feels compelled to remain to serve out her term. Now, she and her co-conspirators face a lawsuit against them by the state Attorney General, seeking to remove them from office. It appears to have little hope of success, only interim harassment value. Maddie and her co-conspirators may appear sometime in August or September in a segment on nuclear waste on Sixty Minutes. (She was interviewed by Morley, but wasn't put on the hot seat.)
VERSION 4.00 of the Area 51 Viewer's Guide is now available. As usual, there were a lot of incremental changes and a few larger additions. Freedom Ridge and White Sides are now history, while we have added more details and a couple of new maps for Tikaboo Peak. On the cover, the Campbell has proudly stamped: "BANNED AT THE LITTLE A'LE'INN." The Viewer's Guide is available for $15 for new customers or $9 for people who have bought a previous version (send copy number and place purchased). [Ordering info.] Add priority/airmail postage: $4 U.S./$4.50 Canada/$8 Europe/$10 Asia-Pacific. Within the next week, selected portions of the Viewer's Guide will be made available free on WWW.
THE QUIK PICK GAS STATION AND CONVENIENCE STORE in Upper Rachel is the only place on Earth that sells both Campbell's Viewer's Guide and Chuck Clark's Area 51/S-4 Handbook [DR#26] There, the Viewer's Guide outsells the Handbook by about 9 to 1--which shows you that there IS a place for Chuckie's work in this diverse world of ours.
NEW CAR FOR CHUCKIE. Meanwhile, Chuckie has moved up in the world: He has been seen driving around Rachel in a brand new four wheel drive Jeep Cherokee. This poor fellow who has never had an original idea can't even buy a car without ripping someone off--in this case the Cammo Dudes who he is obviously trying to emulate. He should have consulted a C.D. first, as a friend of ours did when he had one cornered. "What do you think of the Cherokee," our friend asked. "Piece of shit," said the Dude. He complained that the car was not made for desert abuse and the engine mounts did not last. However, other friends of ours own Cherokees and are satisfied, while a Popular Science car reviewer says the new model is much improved over the lemons of the past.
We regard it as a fine American-made vehicle that is perfectly adequate for runs to the mall and occasional off-road use, but our personal choice is the Jap-made Toyota 4Runner for regular romps where there ain't no roads. After owning ours for over 30,000 miles, the only thing that has ever gone wrong is running through a half-dozen tires sliced up by rocks and cacti. (We torture tires without remorse because we buy them from Big-O with their unconditional replacement guarantee.)... By the way, how can Chuckie, with no visible means of support and no obvious talent afford to lay down at least $15,000 for a new car? Is he on the government payroll as an intelligence agent? (If so, we are outraged, as a taxpayer, at the appalling waste of funds.)
POP CULTURE ADDENDUM [to DR#27]: "Dreamland" according to the group's WWW page is "a Bay-Area acid folk band with roots in British Invasion, Bulgarian folk and `New Music.'" No mention of Hungarian.
ONE OF THE "JOHN DOE" PLAINTIFFS in the Groom Lake hazardous waste lawsuit has died. It is unclear whether it was the result of his claimed injuries. [L.V. Review-Journal, June 14]
THE OPEN SKIES PROGRAM, wherein our former Communist enemies are permitted to overfly and photograph any U.S. military installation, including Area 51, has quietly begun operation. [news article]
THE FORMER COMMANDER OF NELLIS AFB, Lt. Gen. Thomas Griffith, has been fired by a bigger general from his position as commander of the 12th Air Force and U.S. Southern Command Air Forces. [press release | news article] His crime? Griffith, a married man, had a consensual affair with a civilian woman. Dear Lord, give the man an "A" for his chest! Does this firing sound puritanical? Hypocritical? Disregarding of all human rights and privacy? That's the Air Force we know and love.
THE LAZAR S-4 FLYING SAUCER plastic model from Testors [DR#16] has been seen prominently displayed in the Nellis Air Force Base Post Exchange. It must be a hot seller there. [Thanks to M.F.]
CAMPBELL ON ART BELL. Our Regional Director Glenn Campbell will be a guest on Art Bell's Dreamland radio talk show on Sunday, Aug. 6. He will be speaking live from our Las Vegas annex overlooking the Janet terminal. Dreamland is a nationally syndicated radio show broadcast on some 140 stations in the U.S. and Canada, 7pm-10pm Pacific Time on Sunday. (Repeated in some areas the following Saturday, 5pm-8pm Pacific Time.) See Art Bell Page for a station in your local area.
OTHER CAMPBELL APPEARANCES. Also on Aug. 6, Campbell will speak at DefCon III, the totally paranoid computer hacker's convention held at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas. As reported previously, Campbell is also speaking at The Science and Politics of UFO Research, the only UFO-fest endorsed by the Area 51 Research Center. It is Oct. 28-29, 1995, in St. Paul, MN. Latest speaker list also includes: Dr. Richard Haines, Jeffrey Sainio, Dr. Bruce Maccabee, George Knapp, Dr. Michael Swords and Dr. David Jacobs. (So many doctors, but never an aspirin.) For latest details, see WWW document, email penson@geom.umn.edu or call the Science Museum of Minnesota at 612-221-4511.
CALL FOR AREA 51 MAP. "Area 51," in its most specific interpretation, refers to a 6 by 10 mile block of land adjacent to the northeast corner of the Nevada Test Site. The designation is plainly shown on old maps of the Test Site, available for inspection in the DOE reading room in Las Vegas. However, these maps usually show only the periphery of '51 along the border of the NTS. We have not yet seen an official government map that includes both the printed "Area 51" designation and its full extent. We have heard many rumors of such maps being public in the 50s, but have not year seen one with our own eyes. Can any of our readers help?
AN ACCOUNT OF A UFO CRASH IN ARIZONA is provided by Raymond Fowler in his book, Diary of a UFO Investigator. The information comes from the written statement of "Fritz Warner," a pseudonym for a former AF worker assigned to the Nevada Test Site. On May 21, 1953, he says he was flown from Indian Springs to Phoenix, then was taken in a bus with blacked-out windows to another location, assumed to have been near Kingman, where he investigated the crash of a flying saucer. The craft was perfectly intact, Fritz said, and he saw only one occupant, deceased.
THE LATEST TIKABOO HIKE on July 22 [expired promo] enjoyed fine weather and suffered no disasters. The Minister of Words and Agent X brought all the toys--including a Humvee, fist-sized night vision scopes and a military-grade non-cryogenic thermal viewer. Watch for their report on this hardware in an upcoming issue of a major magazine (you guess which). Naturally, nothing of consequence was seen at the base with this fantastic equipment, although some members of the party say they saw a "astronomical anomaly" in the perfect skies on Friday night. (Not a "UFO" mind you.) This was a pulsing star-like object that moved in unusual ways against the background of stars directly overhead: not a star, satellite, meteor or planet, the witnesses say, although all these things were also seen in the moonless sky. This was a rare TV-free excursion: NBC's Dateline had threatened to send two camera crews, but it never materialized. About 30 people attended the hike with a dozen staying the night: four on the peak and the rest at the trailhead. Those below were entertained by the Minister of Words late into the night. He is the patron saint of the Desert Rat with verbal agility and inventiveness far beyond that of Psychospy, who has stolen many a ministerism for these pages. The Minister is better than television when seated in front of the campfire, recounting tales both clever and profound, the only occasional drawback being the absence of an off switch.
THE MT CURY HIKE on June 24 [DR#27], went pretty much as expected, offering a wide view of the atomic testing grounds of the Nevada Test Site, but the desert gave us a scare. The weather was hot--in the 90s--but not uncomfortable, as long as your personal air conditioning was working. We had recommended a gallon of water per person, but that wasn't enough. The six of us stumbled back to the car without a drop of liquid among us. Since this was a seven-hour hike, we should have each brought at least a gallon and a half (one quart per hour) and probably more. Deaths in the desert due to "heat exhausion" almost always come down to a lack of water. As long as you keep up the liquid intake, the body can take any dry heat, but when the water runs out, the natural air conditioning shuts off, and you could be dead within hours. In our case, there was no serious danger, because in an emergency we could have easily walked to the nearby support facilities at Mercury, perhaps suffering a trespassing charge but living to tell about it. Still, it was humbling to realize that the desert can be as cruel and unyielding as the sea or outer space. If you are unprepared for its demands, you could pass away almost painlessly. [Upon request, we will post a hiking guide to Mt. Cury here.]
LEVIATHAN CAVE HIKE? The destination we are considering for the August hike is Leviathan Cave, about 15 miles north of Rachel. This cavern, complete with stalagtites/-mites, is near the top of an 9000 foot mountain. The cave system is said to be about 1/4 mile long. This a specialty hike that is recommended only for hard-core adventurers. Unless we find a guide, this will also be a first-time visit for the two of us planning the hike. The hike to the mouth of the cave is said to be long and strenuous, probably 4+ hours, mostly on a steep slope, so we will have to start at the crack of dawn from Rachel to allow exploring of the cave. The date has not been set, but it is likely to be a Saturday late in the month. Those interested should contact Psychospy. [This event has already passed.]
APOLLO 13 REVIEW. We recently attended a screening of the movie Apollo 13 in the company of a former Apollo project engineer (not J-2 but a contemporary of his). Our companion had been concerned with quality assurance for Rockwell in the manufacture of, among other things, the service module that suffered the explosion. He remembered rushing to work to immediately begin analyses and simulations to find what went wrong and what could be done to get out of it. Aside from some whining about technical oversimplifications in the movie and all the heartrending "mushy stuff" from the earthbound wives, our companion did not have too much bad to say about the film. We thought it was great, though, and recommend it to everyone.
The movie emphasizes the importance of simulators to the operation of any actual spacecraft. Without an accurate functional reproduction of the command and lunar modules on earth, Apollo engineers might not have figured out the actions the crew had to take to save their lives. Of course, the whole space program could have been a simulation, too, just like the movie itself. "We never went to the Moon," some conspiracy theorists say, and Psychospy cannot prove them wrong. It must have been a hoax perpetrated by the media-government-industrial complex: The photographs, moon rocks and TV images were all fakes, cleverly concocted by government laboratories and Hollywood studios. The only evidence we have that it really happened is the word of the people who participated, like this Rockwell guy. Our friend could be lying, though, or he could have been tricked, so we will have to dismiss his testimony. To take a rocket to the Moon is Too Weird, especially when the government has flying saucers in stock; therefore, it could not have happened.
VICTIM OF SPACE AND TIME. There is so much more we wanted to cover in this issue of the Rat: (1) Campbell is evicted from his Las Vegas apartment and subsequently arrested for espionage (according to reports from the Little A'Le'Inn). (2) Campbell also confesses he is an operative of a little known government agency, the USGS. (3) Ambassador Merlin pays the piper in the Nevada Legislature for his seminal indiscretions.... Plus MUCH, MUCH MORE. However, time and space have defeated us in this issue. We will try to pick up these threads in DR#29, which we hope to put out soon.
Reader Responses...
- Psychological Treatise on Flamers, recommended by robert.hatfield@ucbeh.san.uc.edu
- Complaint from a Japanese-American concerning 4Runner reference.
- Previously loyal reader reassesses and withdraws
