The Space Hoax That Time Forgot, Part 2
In 1961
National Review dismissed Soviet claims to have put astronauts into an orbit as a hoax, based on extremely flimsy reasons -- a good example of hostility over-riding critical thinking.
After posting information about that at the start of this thread, I came across an earlier claimed Soviet space accomplishment -- launching a space vehicle that orbited the moon and took pictures of it -- which was similarly brushed aside by
NR as a hoax.
(Both articles are by the same author.)
originally published in National Review. October 24, 1959, pages 421 to 424
The Emperor's New Lunik by M. Stanton Evans
Could the saga of Luniks I, II, and II be the outstanding scientific hoax of the generation? Consider these contradictions in Soviet claims.
On October 4, 1959, the Soviet Union announced that it had launched a revolutionary new space vehicle that would loop around the moon, photograph its hidden side, and return to circle the earth in a huge, oblong orbit. The vehicle was called Lunik III.
Within hours of the announcement, the free world had greeted the feat with all the tribute it could muster from the generous vocabulary of sportsmanship. Comment by a British astronomer named Patrick Moore suggested that the Good Losers of the West could even force themselves to be downright enthusiastic about the deeds of the enemy. "We've simply got to hand it to the Russians," Moore was quoted. "This should surely dispose of any allegations that Lunik II, which crash-landed on the moon, was a fake."
Lunik III, however, turns out to be a less definitive achievement than Moore and other sportsmen have been willing to allow. Far from laying to rest all doubts about the authenticity of Lunik II, the third moon shot stirs up some questions on its own account.
This is a 4-page article. I wish I could provide a link so people could read the whole thing for themselves, or even simply reproduce all the text related to the "contradictions" and "discrepancies" that led Evans to conclude this was a Soviet hoax, but that is just too much typing and too much space, so I'm going to try to excerpt/summarize the key bits. Stanton's text is in blue,
NR's headings are in bold black, and my paraphrases are in unbolded black (and in brackets). I've tried to be fair, but since most of the persuasive power is in Evans' style rather than substance, a lot is lost in my summaries.
... Lunik III is said to be "proved" by radio signals received by Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope in England. But a key matter has yet to be settled: how does Jodrell Bank -- and, by extension, anyone else -- know that the signals being received were from a rocket heading for the moon?...
[Evans spends half a page on the following:
(a) An LA laboratory had trouble plotting Lunik's orbit from the radio signals.
(b) Jodrell Bank couldn't measure the "doppler shift".
(c) Jodrell Bank didn't measure the intensity of the signal.]
Wow! I find that pretty unimpressive. But the smooth flow of the words, and the length at which he goes on, makes it
appear as if he is giving significant reasons to believe it's a hoax.
... Richard Booton, the man responsible for reducing Jodrell Bank's signals to "proof" of the Soviet claim, stated that once a Lunik is "up in the air," we "don't know anything."
I'd love to see this quote in full! It sounds similar to the way some creationists and paranormalists take quotes out of context to make it sound as if scientists admit they don't know anything about their pet subject.
Lloyd Mallan's Investigation
The strange saga of the Luniks properly begins with a science writer named Lloyd Mallan, who took an extensive tour through the Soviet Union last year, and returned to America convinced the Communists were several decades behind this country in scientific and miliitary development.
When Lunik I was announced on January 2 of this year, Mallan conducted a thorough personal investigation...
Mallan thereupon charged that Lunik I was a hoax -- an allegation he made in True magazine, before a congressional committe, and in a book called Russia and the Big Red Lie...
In no instance to date has anyone been able to explain away the facts that Mallan has assembled, or been able scientifically to challenge his interpretation of them...
True, as I recall, was a "men's adventure magazine, " mainly noted for tales of hunting, fishing, fighting commies, etc. It probably was not the first choice magazine for people looking to get a scholarly article published.
I am not sure if
True is available in microfilm or bound volume at any library I am likely to visit this year, but I will keep an eye out for it.
Radio Signals
[Evans doubts that 160 minutes was enough time for Jodrell Bank to establish where the signals were coming from, and doubts the signals the US tracking station picked up could have been from Lunik.]
Other aspects of the alleged launching have been just as confused as the matter of the radio signals:
1. The Soviets said Lunik III was an "automatic interplanetary space station." This drew an almost immediate rebuke from Dr. Fred L. Whipple ... "I suspect," he said, "they are using a fancy term to give people the impression they have something they do not."
[2. Tass, the Moscow Planetarium, and a couple of Soviet scientists gave different estimates of how long it would take Lunik III to reach the moon.
3. Two Soviet statements had estimates of how close the rocket would come to the moon.
4. Tass and the Moscow Planetarium did not agree precisely on where Lunik would be at particular moments.
5. The estimates of how close Lunik would be to Earth when it settled into orbit did not agree.
6. Some reports said the radio signal would sound like a honk, others said it would sound like a violin.
7. Soviet reports were unclear about the rocket's guidance system.]
8. The Soviets even managed to muddle the question of whether the rocket was going to circle the moon... On October 7, the director of Russia's most important Sternberg Astronomical Institute was reported as saying that "the rocket's flight behind the moon might not include a complete turn."
[9. The Soviets weren't sure if Lunik would succeed in taking pictures of the unseen side of the moon.]
Evans spent a page on that! Going on at such length gives a
surface appearance that he's building a real case, but when one tries to summarize it the lack of real substance becomes obvious.
I especially liked reason # 1: that the Soviets calling Lunik an "automatic interplanetary space station" was grounds for suspecting this was a hoax.
...None of the Soviets' claimed exploits has produced any kind of data which are probably the result of a real venture into space. Their "findings" are almost invariably: (1) results "in good agreement" with those reached by American or other free world scientists (i.e. saying the same thing); (2) information which could easily be derived from laboratory tests; and (3) disclosures so vague as to be meaningless.
The Communist habit of seconding American findings was at last broken in the case of Lunik II... In the course of hitting the moon, the Soviets said, they discovered -- in so far as their instruments could determine -- that the moon had no magnetic field. The announcement, however, omitted to say how sensitive the Soviets' instruments were...
In short, the Soviets could quiet easily have issued their statement on the likelihood -- attested to by a number of authorities -- that the moon has no magnetic field, and still leave themselves a perfect alibi in the event that the probabilities -- and their scientific "discovery" -- were proved in error. They could simply say, our instruments weren't sensitive enough to pick it up. And there need have been no instruments, or moon rockets, to begin with.
Cute!
If the Soviet findings matched US ones, that indicated the Soviets were simply copying, and hence was indicative of a hoax.
If the Soviet discovered something that the US hadn't found yet, but it was what previous discoveries had led us to suspect was true, that indicated the Soviets were simply guessing, and hence was evidence of a hoax.
(And if the Soviets had discovered something before the US did, and which previous discoveries had not led the US to expect? Why, that would have indicated the Soviet discovery was false, and thus been even stronger evidence of a hoax!)
Major Discrepancies
Evans next recaps "a dozen major discrepancies" about Lunik II which he had previously listed in an item in the October 3, 1959, issue of National Review Bulletin, which I do not yet have. He attributes these mainly to Lloyd Mallan and to "hints... circulated in the press generally."
1. Lunik was announced at a bad time of the month for a moon shot.
2. The announcement of the moon shot coincided with a visit by Kruschev to the US, indicating the Soviets had planned the timing of the announcement.
3.Moscow predicted the moon shot's trajectory, but] the margin of error in available scientific knowledge on the moon's mass and gravity would make such accurate prediction impossible.
4. East Germany also made a media announcement of the moon shot, but their announcement came out before the Soviet one did. (Evans fails to say how much earlier.)
5.A Massachusetts radar installation failed to track Lunik.
6. Some stations were unable to pick up the Lunik II radio signals at all, but Jodrell Bank (which had been given the coordinates) was able to pick the signals up] exceptionally (I might say suspiciously) loud and clear.
Had to quote Evans directly on that bit! I love it -- the fact the radio signal came in
clearly is evidence of a hoax.
7. Jodrell Bank was able to pick up the Lunik II radio signals (for which they had been given the coordinates to point their satellite) but they had been unable to pick up the signals for Lunik I (for which they had not been given coordinates).
8. The positions wired to Jodrell Bank were given in terms of "azimuth and elevation" (earth-sky coordinates) rather than "right ascension and declination" (space coordinates)...
[9 and 10. The radio signals are alleged to have come from slightly east or slightly west of the moon] ... which means they could not have been coming from a vehicle on its way to intercept the moon.
[11. The signal strength did not diminish steadily.]
12. Jodrell Bank did not have the exact original frequencies of the Soviet space-radio transmitter with which to compare a so-called "doppler shift" at the end of a moon trip [and so it would have been easy for the Russians to have faked this bit of evidence.]
The article goes on for another page with 2 more sections, "Transatlantic Phone Calls" and "Odd Contradictions", but there is little of substance in these. Mostly Evans talks about trying to call up various scientists and not being happy with the answers he got or the way he was treated.
He then concludes:
The story of Luniks II and III... is primarily one of uncritical acceptance of Soviet representations about what they had done... JOdrell Bank got its signals by pointint its antenna in accordance with Communist instructions; it did not measure the signals for intensity; Dr. Lovell never paused to think about which side of the moon the signals were coming from; and finally, Jodrell Bank had no exact frequencies for measuring the so-called "doppler shift" in the signal, which has been everywhere cited as incontrovertible proof that Lunik II hit the moon.
It is up to those who would have us accept Soviet claims to resolve this mass of contradiction and plain error into a scientific demonstration. Until some such feat of reconciliation occurs, the Soviet luniks must be considered unproved.
