by Ingo Swan

1998

from Driveway Website

During 1998, two major scientific developments were announced concerning the “discovery" of water and atmosphere on the Moon.

It is important to mention these because they are certainly relevant to this book/ and because in some quarters they have again aroused enthusiasm about the possibility of colonizing the lunar satellite. These recent developments are momentous and wonderful, to be sure. The Moon is no longer the dead, arid, airless and uninhabitable satellite that ALL official sources since the 1920s have insisted it was.

Not only is the Dead Moon Dictum now almost magically and abruptly overturned, but these two lunar developments make it seem as though official science is marching onward in some kind of full-disclosure fashion.

However, one must keep in mind that this is the same Moon that was the expensive colonizing target of the American and Soviet 1960s Space Age efforts, the same Moon that was frequently orbited, upon which men walked, and the same Moon no one went back to. And if one knows something of the Moon’s many shocking oddities and anomalies, it is clear that there are numerous lunar factors still lingering in the cover-up scenarios.

As we have seen, those factors are not insignificant. Collectively accumulated by numerous unofficial observers utilizing official documents, evidence for them is copious, direct and quite compelling. As to the water, it is said to be in the form of ice, mostly at the poles and buried about half a meter beneath the lunar surface. The estimates are impressive regarding how much of it there is: some six billion metric tons.

This is said to be enough to sustain upwards of 100,000 lunar colonists for a century and also provide a fuel source of oxygen and hydrogen for Moonbases and space travel.

While this is exciting news, if the evidence is taken into account for earlier-known lunar clouds and mists clearly visible in some official released photos of the 1960s, then one cannot think that ALL of the lunar water is only in the form of sub-surface ice. As any dictionary or encyclopedia will confirm, a cloud Is defined as “a visible mass of particles of water in the form of fog, mist, or haze suspended at some height in air or atmosphere.” Thus, if the Moon did not have an atmosphere, the mass of water particles would have nothing in which to suspend.

As to the lunar atmosphere, the American Geophysical Union recently indicated that although,

“conventional wisdom says the Moon is devoid of atmosphere, and in layman’s terms this may be close enough to the truth, the space just above the lunar surface is not a total vacuum.”

(See: AGÜ Release No. 98-26, 17 Aug 98)

There is, of course, no doubt that the lunar atmosphere is not like Earth’s. But even if more tenuous and not as thick, the lunar atmosphere now OFFICIALLY exists, as does the lunar water. Thus, the UNOFFICIAL sources of the past that referred to the existence of lunar water and atmosphere have turned out not only to be correct, but ironically vindicate their authors.

One of the sardonic fallouts of this is that the materials, including official NASA photography, published by the unofficial sources (see bibliography) might be read with renewed interest. Official NASA photos that clearly show lunar clouds and mists have been available all along - dating especially from the days of the Lunar Orbiters and manned Apollo craft.

The presence of clouds and mists is an undeniable indicator of available water vapor and atmosphere. So one can wonder WHY their existence was unequivocally denied by officialdom in the direct face of the available photos. Only the amounts of the water and atmosphere would have been in question. Yet the official stance held that there was none of either. One can hypothetically deduce, as almost all eagle-eyed unofficial analysts did, that the lunar water and atmosphere cover-up was not in the name of science.

It obviously involved other factors - which, themselves, must have had some kind of strategic importance regarding why a cover-up should exist in the first place and then be maintained for over sixty years. Indeed, if one thinks this through, there was no NEED during the 1960s Space Age to cover-up water and atmosphere, since these would have added a great deal to the enthusiasm to colonize the Moon. Just beneath the surface of the irony, though, are a number of factors that probably will be smoothed over, if not completely erased from lunar history.

The evidence for lunar water was scientifically noted and written about by the early selenographers of the latter part of the nineteenth century and early decades of the twentieth. Later, the analyses of the selenographers were confirmed by official NASA photographs.

To emphasize, as most of the unofficial analysts pointed up, lunar clouds and mists drooping over crater rims can be seen in numerous official NASA photographs that were achieved during the 1960s. And so it is to be rapidly conceded (or should have been at least) that where there are clouds, then water and air are not far off. After all, it takes air and water to make clouds.

As but three examples of NASA photos showing clouds, the following have been published in several unofficial sources:

• An unmistakable Mackerel type cloud bank can easy be identified just off the crater Vitello (NASA Lunar Orbiter V photo, No. MR 168).

• A very large cloud bank hangs over the rim of a crater in Mare Moscovience on the Moon’s backside (NASA Lunar Orbiter V photo, No. HR 1033).

However, the same photo shows what seem be two cigar-shaped air borne objects casting shadows on the surface. The photo also shows a very large, circular dome - of which the Moon is known to have many, some of which appear and disappear.

Two large cloud banks are seen hugging the edge of crater Lobachavsky (NASA Apollo 16 photo, No. 16-758). But most remarkable and quite clear in this photo is a large, undeniably round object poised near the top of the crater wall, and casting a dark shadow down-slope. This is not a dome that might be a natural formation. It is a round object, or structure, circular in all dimensions. It reminds one of a golf ball sitting neatly on a tee.

Whatever it is, it must be extremely large since it is clearly distinguishable in the rather low-resolution photograph. So one wonders if the higher resolution lenses of the military Clementine craft zoomed onto THIS particular “structure.” After all, it is said that Clementine "mapped" most of the Moon. However, any high resolution lunar evidence of any kind remains absent. Of course, detecting ice BENEATH the lunar surface does represent some kind of high resolution capability, It therefore seems logical to think that what is ON the surface might be detected, too.

And so once again we are brought back to the conflicting nature of the official and unofficial versions of the Moon.

• The OFFICIAL versions emanated from the combined auspices and gargantuan systems of government, science, academe and major media. The official versions long held that there could not be water (or atmosphere) on the Moon. So all official reports to the public were geared to reinforce the idea of the absence of water.

   

• The UNOFFICIAL versions emanated from numerous individuals - some of whom obviously spent considerable research time, effort and money to produce their books and articles.

Among these, for example, was Fred Steckling, whose 1981 book detailed the existence of lunar water (and much more, such as vegetation and artificial structures).

The unofficial versions were of course trashed by various and sometimes nefarious activities of officialdom. Now that the existence of lunar water has been confirmed, the better of the unofficial sources are vindicated - at least as far as water and atmosphere are involved. However, if the unofficial eagle-eyes could detect evidence for lunar water as early as 1981, then it is almost certain that the same eyes can detect OTHER lunar factors, too, and draw appropriate conclusions about them.

For example, even official low-resolution photos acquired from NASA show many massive golf ball “things" in the most unlikely lunar places. These and the large domes that appear and disappear, are not as hard to detect in the official photos as is the water. This author is not the first to notice that voyaging to the Moon abruptly ceased some twenty-five years ago - and did so after the utterly enormous expenditures of getting there in the first place. In attempting to identify official explanations for this “loss of interest in the Moon,” the one most frequently encountered is (believe it or not) that THE AMERICAN PUBLIC had become disenchanted with costs and results of the NASA Moon program.

It is true that the American public SOMETIMES can influence major affairs. But the Soviet Union also stopped going to the Moon. In the former Soviet Union what the Soviet public thought about anything did NOT matter at all. Anyway, as it turned out on the American side, NASA stopped its expensive Moon colonizing goal - but promptly undertook even more costly space age projects in different directions.

Thus, the Moon disappeared into anonymity behind all of the other space age projects - even though science, NASA and government insiders certainly did know of the water and atmosphere potentials that made the Moon ultra-ripe for colonization. It certainly takes a rather simplistic gullibility to accept that the American efforts to colonize the Moon were abruptly canceled because the public, of all things, had lost interest.

Indeed, during the 1960s twenty manned Apollo craft and launch equipment had been planned, each paid for at great cost, each built and relatively ready to go.
Yet, only seventeen Apollo missions lifted off, while the remaining three were abruptly terminated. So, water and atmosphere on the Moon. We had landed there several times - albeit in locations where nothing more than the soil and rock immediately beneath could be seen.

No high-resolution photos of lunar vistas as seen from the lunar surface were ever released. Great footage, though, of the sand in which the Flag was planted, the one which inadvertently started flapping in the lunar breezes.

Buried in the cover-up are THREE unused Apollo crafts. It is perfectly logical to want to find out why they were left to rust and rot, and why a twelve-year, multi-billion dollar effort should abruptly be abandoned - on the rather ridiculous excuse that the public had become disinterested and non-supportive. Indeed, the disinterested public was NEVER informed that we would not go back to the Moon. Instead, the Moon, fully supplied with water and atmosphere, was simply caused to fade away Into official oblivion.

And there the matter would have rested - except for the emergence of unofficial versions of the Moon, its anomalies, and its curiosities, and all of which have turned out to be correct regarding lunar water and atmosphere. If one takes the interest and time to read some of these unofficial sources (perhaps beginning with Fred Steckling’s competent 1981 book), then one possible reason hooves into view.

As but two historical examples that help give reality to this reason, the following photos (acquired during the 1960s and identified here by NASA reference numbers) unambiguously show “ajobóme” objects near the lunar surface:

• NASA Apollo 11 photo, No. 11-37-5438 - clearly showing a luminous cylindrical-shaped object in flight above the lunar surface and exhibiting an high-altitude contrail.

  

• NASA Apollo 16 photo. No. 16-19238 - clearly showing a rather enormous, luminous cigar-shaped or cylindrical object casting its shadow on the lunar surface.

  

The cylindrical object in the NASA photo takes on added interest for the following reason. During September 1998, the cable station TNT aired a quite good documentary entitled “Secrets of KGB UFO Files"

It contained some especially impressive footage (acquired circa the late 1960s) of Soviet MIGs encountering UFOs. The footage was acquired via nose-cameras of the MIGs sent aloft to intercept unidentified objects intruding into Soviet air space. Among the several UFOs photographed by nose-cameras was a long cylindrical object moving rapidly above an Earth-side cloud formation. When the object sensed it was spotted, it rapidly put on speed and vastly out-distanced the MIGs chasing it.

The TNT documentary indicated that the object had to reach speed of MACH-3 in order to do this. MACH-3 is VERY fast, and no Earth-side craft is anywhere capable of it.

The size of the fast-moving cylinder was estimated to be two or three times that of the Soviet MIG craft. It almost exactly matches the one in the earlier NASA photo, but which seems to have been much larger. But we need not lean on historical NASA photos for evidence of this kind, or even on past unofficial versions or books. Turn to the Internet, and especially to the weekly UFO ROUNDUP which provides a day-by-day listing of Earth-side UFO sightings that are reported world-wide to this remarkable Internet publication.

Or access CNI News, a twice-monthly Internet news journal addressing UFO phenomena, space exploration and related issues. These two excellent Internet sources reveal an almost obscenely large number of UFO cylinders, cigar-shapes, triangles, boomerangs, discs some of them luminous, All of them are quite busy doing whatever they are doing in Earth-side ’s atmosphere, and sometimes just above tree tops. After the single, most obvious implication of these Internet sources sinks in, IF it does, one might wonder why luminous UFOs are found in the vicinity of both Earth and the Moon.

Another Internet approach is to access the general topics of MOON or MOON STRUCTURES or MOON BASES in the Internet’s search engines. One an come across, for example, an article entitled “Astonishing Intelligence Artifacts(?) Found On Mysterious Far Side Of The Moon,” authored by Jeff Rense, (with computer enhancements by Liz Edwards of Wonder Productions.)

Indeed, the marvelous search engines of the Internet will lead one thither and yon through all kinds of lunar facts and factoids - of which only one-tenth are needed to help fill out a very probable reason for NOT going back to the Moon. That reason is more awesome than six billion tons of lunar water in the form of sub-surface ice. Apparently that reason has been existing for a long time, was discovered to be existing during the lunar adventures and misadventures of the 1960s, and is still existing today.

And behind all the official scenes and cover-ups, that reason seems to be getting more complicated and extensive than ever before. And it is both ridiculous and hilarious that mainstream officialdom still pretends it doesn’t exist, and still struggles to maintain the cover-up. One of the strangest factors about all of this is that the topics of lunar UFOs and structures are seldom integrated into the overall Earth-side UFO situation and its very many books and discussions.

Indeed, in spite of copious lunar UFO evidence, UFOlogists seems to avoid the Moon like the plague-As but one recent example, a new book came out in early 1998, entitled UFO Headquarters: Investigations on Current Extraterrestrial Activity, by Susan Wright.

This book is quite nice because for those not saturated with the UFO information available, it briefly reduces massive amounts of confusion into something easy to read and comprehend. However, it makes no mention of the Moon - even though there are very many available sources regarding it.

It would seem that the phrase EXTRATERRESTRIAL ACTIVITY might include ET lunar activity - in that if ETs do exist then certainly getting to not only to Earth’s skies but to the Moon (and even perhaps colonizing it and its water) would not be impossible for them.

And IF they are loitering in the lunar environment, perhaps they can chase away - well, NASA efforts, of all things.