Hi I have made post about this before, but maybe it’s time to open your eyes again on the subject. What else we have not been talked about? About the dark side of the Moon and other planets like Mars?
Here is previous post about this:
>> https://www.auricmedia.net/real-life-prometheus-mona-lisa-in-space/
Apollo 20 & The Alien Mothership
Beginning in April of 2007, an individual with the user name ‘retiredafb’ began posting a series of video clips on YouTube. These were described as from ‘Apollo 20′, a secret joint U.S./Soviet space mission in 1976 to examine a crashed UFO near the crater Izsak on the far side of the Moon. The Apollo 20 story offers a chance to examine the methodology and mindset of exopolitics advocates regarding evidence and its use in reaching conclusions.
The postings drew the attention of Italian journalist Lusa Scantamburlo, who conducted an on-line correspondence with ‘retiredafb’ over the spring and summer. Retiredafb said his real name was William Rutledge, and that he had been born in Belgium in 1930, emigrated to the U.S., and worked for the aircraft manufactories Avro and Chance Vought. He later worked for Bell Laboratories and the U.S. Air Force. Rutledge said that he had studied Soviet technology, such as the N1 Moon rocket, the ‘AJAX plane project’, and the ‘Mig Foxbat 25′. He said that he was skilled in computer navigation and had volunteered to be an astronaut for the Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory. This was a space station for reconnaissance missions, cancelled in 1969, and never flown. He was not selected and worked on the KH-11 reconnaissance satellite before retiring.
The Apollo 15 mission, according to Rutledge, photographed a crashed alien mothership on the far side of the Moon, which was never visible from Earth. The following year, the Apollo 17 mission also photographed the alien ship. Plans were made for two secret NASA/U.S. Air Force Space Command Apollo missions to examine it. These were Apollo 19 and 20, which were launched from Vandenberg AFB in California, rather than the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (The Apollo 18 mission was the American half of the joint U.S./Soviet Apollo Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) flown in 1975.)
The Apollo 19 mission was to explore the roof of the spindle-shaped mothership by climbing the ‘Monaco hill’. Rutledge gave few details of the mission. He did not give a launch date, or the full crew list. Rutledge did say the name of the Apollo 19 Command Module (CM) was Endymion, while the LM was called Artemis. He also said that one of the crew was ‘Stephanie Eilis’, the first U.S. black woman in space. According to his account, Eilis was born in 1946 in the Ivory Coast and arrived in the U.S. at the age of seven months. She worked at Grumman on the Apollo Lunar Module (LM) navigation system. Rutledge also said that she was his girlfriend.
The Apollo 19 mission ended in tragedy. Rutledge said that telemetry was lost at the end of the engine burn to send the spacecraft to the Moon. The reason was not understood at the time, but Rutledge believed it was due to a collision with a ‘quasi-satellite’ or a meteor.
Despite the loss of the first mission, plans went ahead for Apollo 20. Rutledge was the mission commander; Lena Snyder, also from Bell Labs, was the CM pilot; while Alexei Leonov was the LM pilot. A Soviet cosmonaut, he was the first man to walk in space, and the commander of the Soyuz which docked with Apollo 18 during the ASTP mission. The Apollo 20 CSM was named Constellation, while the LM was Phoenix. The mission control was at Vandenberg rather than Houston. The call sign ‘Vandenberg’ was used in the audio posted on YouTube videos. Three hundred people were involved with preparing the Saturn V at Vandenberg. Why Rutledge, Snyder, and Eilis were selected for the Apollo 19 and 20 crews was not made clear. Rutledge said only that he had been picked because he did not believe in God.
The Apollo 20 launch was made from Vandenberg AFB on August 16, 1976. The launch was seen, but people did not know it was a Saturn V booster. The YouTube videos included shots of Snyder entering the capsule (with his back to the camera), the launch itself, video from the LM as it prepared to land, photos of the mothership from orbit, and surface photos of a city on the Moon. This was described by Rutledge as only debris, except for one building.
Rutledge and Leonov entered the alien ship and found “…many signs of biology… vegetation in the ‘motor’ section, special triangular rocks which emitted ‘tears’ of a yellow liquid which has some special medical properties, and of course signs of extra solar creatures.” Two alien bodies were still in the mothership – one was in very poor condition, while the other was an intact female body. Dubbed ‘Mona Lisa’, she was 1.65 meters tall. Unlike her earthly namesake, Rutledge said she had six fingers on her hands. ‘Piloting devices’ were attached to both her fingers and eyes, while two cables were on her nostrils. Rather than clothes, she was covered in a thin transparent protective layer. Rutledge commented that the body “seemed not dead not alive.” He and Leonov attached their biomedical sensors to her body, and telemetry was received by mission control.
In all, Rutledge said he and Leonov spent seven days on the Moon exploring the alien ship. This was about twice as long as the Apollo 15, 16, and 17 crews had each spent on the surface. Rutledge said that since 1990, he had lived in Rwanda under a false identity, and had not spoken English during that time, only Kinyarwanda and French.
Rutledge gave little explanation as to why he released the videos, saying only that it was because of “The wonder of it all”, and “2012 is coming soon”. As for the secrecy of the two Apollo missions, he claimed the reason was “not a problem of panic, but simply a problem of economy”. Rutledge said that all currencies on Earth are based on the value of gold, but exploding stars spread large amounts of gold in young star systems. “This means that it is the most common substance in the universe, no more value than a piece of plastic”.
Scantamburlo was impressed by Rutledge’s videos and information, calling them “coherent and plausible, and it shows a detailed knowledge of Aerospace history, of Geology, Chemistry and of Space exploration history….” He continued, “Waiting for the rest of Rutledge’s testimony, we should prepare ourself for the wait and new Copernican revolution: we are not alone in the Universe and, at last, historical and technical evidences are supporting it beyond any doubt.”
In attempting to support the claim that secret Apollo launches were made from Vandenberg AFB, Scantamburlo wrote that the Saturn V booster was listed in an April 19, 2006 Air Force report, and claimed that documents from the 1960s indicated Air Force interest in using the Saturn V booster. From this, he argued, “The fact that the Apollo 20 would have been launched from Vandenberg AFB, according to Rutledge’s testimony, is now supported by strong circumstantial evidence.”
Despite his comments, Scantamburlo did note a problem with the YouTube video of the Apollo 20 liftoff. This clip had an opening frame listing it as film of the Apollo 11 launch, made in July of 1969. Rutledge explained that he was no longer in Africa, and that the videos were being converted from analogue to digital by friends in Rwanda for uploading to YouTube. They apparently made a mistake.
Dr. Michael E. Salla, a leading figure in the exopolitics faction of ufology, wrote a commentary about the Apollo 20 videos on June 24, 2007. Dr. Salla was impressed by Scantamburlo’s work, saying his report “…demonstrates a sincere effort to verify a number of the details provided by Rutledge….’”
Salla also found inconsistencies in Rutledge’s account. One of these dealt with the Apollo 20 mission patch. Salla noted, “…the Apollo 20 insignia that is shown in a number of his films shows only the names of the three astronauts (Rutledge, Synder and Leonov) and the name of the Apollo mission. This is inconsistent with the 1975 insignia of the joint Apollo-Soyuz mission which had both the ‘Apollo’ and ‘Soyuz’, and the names of the three astronauts/cosmonauts on them.”
The second inconsistency was Ingo Swann’s account of his remote viewing of artifacts and aliens on the far side of the Moon for a “covert intelligence agency” in 1975. Salla wrote that, “Swann deduced from what he had been told that there was a concerted effort to gather intelligence using remote viewing since physical access to the moon had been curtailed.”
According to Swann, this was probably because the aliens had decided no further landings would be permitted. Salla continued that other whistleblowers had also indicated that this “…is the real reason why the Apollo moon landings were quietly terminated after the 1971 Apollo 17 mission.”
Salla noted that if Swann’s statements and conclusions were true, they would be inconsistent with a secret Apollo 20 landing on the Moon. This, combined with the Apollo 20 patch error, “…could lead to the conclusion that Rutledge’s testimony and videos are a sophisticated hoax to deceive the public.”
Yet having said this, Salla continued, “…Rutledge’s video evidence and testimony may be the final straw that breaks the camel’s back concerning UFO secrecy.” If Rutledge’s claims were proved to be true, and the inconsistencies were successfully explained, Salla predicted that, “…this will lead to an escalation of public disclosures. More officials will recognize that the secrecy system is imploding and will wish to be on the winning side of history as that part of the government that played a proactive role in preparing the public for disclosure of the extraterrestrial presence.”
The same was also true, Salla wrote, if the Apollo 20 story proved to be a hoax, as it may be “…an attempt to raise the public’s awareness of extraterrestrial life through partially valid information.” Salla concluded his commentary by writing: “I recommend considering Scantamburlo’s report due to the possibility that this is a genuine disclosure of a secret mission to investigate an ancient extraterrestrial mothership….”
Only four days later, Salla posted an update of the Apollo 20 commentary. Salla noted that the video of the ancient Moon city used a sound clip from the Apollo 15 mission. He initially wrote that this suggests that Rutledge’s story and videos were nothing more than an elaborate hoax, and that “…this discovery will suffice to dismiss the whole affair.” But he added, “However, this does raise the question of what the underlying agenda of Rutledge is in performing such an elaborate deception? Is it merely to disinform the public or to direct the public’s attention to something important?”
See original NASA Apollo 15 image @
http://www.lpi.usra.edu/…/apo…/images/browse/AS15/P/9625.jpg
Salla preferred the second option, noting that “…the natural starting point is the … Apollo 15 photo … That is a genuine photo and may depict an extraterrestrial artifact as Rutledge claims.” He also noted “…that a joint mission insignia was not correctly depicted in Rutledge’s Apollo 20 videos.” Salla suggested that Rutledge was “…suggesting that there may have been [a] joint secret mission to discover more about the artifact depicted in the Apollo 15 photo, but that its actual name was not Apollo 20 which would have signified solely a US space mission.”
Scantamburlo also acknowledged the falsehoods in Rutledge’s account in an August 22, 2007 paper. He noted a YouTube user had identified the city on the Moon photo as being a composite of images from the Apollo 17 mission with the fake ruins added. Scantamburlo, like Salla, offered a mixed analysis of the Apollo 20 case. On one hand, he wrote: “…there is the slight possibility that the fake was fabricated on purpose to provide us with a clue in investigating a lunar anomaly.” Yet Scantamburlo added: “However I am aware that now the contradictions of the Apollo 20 case are too many to be simply mistakes made by inexperienced helpers who would live in Rwanda…”
But Scantamburlo then asked, “Is it possible that behind the William Rutledge’s identity [sic] there is an agent of some Secret service of a European country who is trying to push (or to drive) the US government to reveal what it knows about the possible extraterrestrial in the Solar System? Or is he a person in control of some shadow Government scheme to subject the public to a psychological and sociological test in the context of the unofficial and rumoured `Public accommodation program.”‘
To assess controversial issues, modern society draws upon the heritage of the Greeks, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Scientific Revolution. These include rules of evidence, procedures to test a hypothesis, and methods of limiting biases and errors. These are applied on a daily basis to settle scientific, historical, journalistic, and legal questions.
The process has three basic steps. The first is to determine what is required for the claim to be valid or false. The second is to determine what evidence is available regarding the claim. The third is to analyze the collected evidence, and decide what conclusions can be drawn regarding the claim’s validity or falsehood.
If Rutledge’s basic claim is true, the Apollo 20 mission should follow the patterns of the known Apollo flights. This would include the hardware, ground support facilities, and mission profile. Another requirement is that the use of Vandenberg as the launch site would keep the missions secret. If he is a hoaxer, the Apollo 20 mission profile would not match that of earlier flights, and his evidence would have inconsistencies, falsehoods, and errors. To see which best fits the available evidence, we need a little rocket science.
Launching a Saturn V from Vandenberg would require the existence of support facilities for the booster like those at the Kennedy Space Center. The Saturn V was the largest U.S. booster ever built. It stood 364 feet tall, consisted of three stages, and produced 7.5 million pounds of thrust at liftoff. The Saturn V was assembled inside the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). When the VAB was built in the mid-1960s, it was the largest enclosed space on Earth. Once the Saturn V was assembled, it was moved from the VAB to the launch pad on the crawler-transporter. This vehicle is the size of a baseball infield and moves on eight caterpillar tracks. The launch pad is a large concrete mound rising above the Florida swampland. A large launch control center would be needed, and there would be supplies of liquid oxygen, kerosene, and liquid hydrogen to fuel the booster.
A possible option was that an existing launch pad, used for another large Air Force booster, was modified to support a Saturn V. The Titan IIID was the largest rocket being launched from Vandenberg in 1976. This consisted of a modified Titan II ballistic missile “core stage” with two solid fuel strapon rockets. (These were called “Stage 0″ and were on each side of the core stage.) The two strap-on boosters were ignited at lift-off and produced a total of 2.36 million pounds of thrust. After the stage 0 rockets burned out, the first stage engines ignited in flight. The rocket stood 155 feet tall. The core stage and the strap-on boosters were each ten feet in diameter.
The question then becomes what evidence is available that Saturn V support facilities existed at Vandenberg in the mid-1970s? The Saturn V and the Titan IIID had different configurations. The Saturn V had over three times the Titan IIID’s thrust and was more than twice as tall. The Saturn V’s first stage was also circular, was 33 feet in diameter, and had five F-1 engines. Four of the engines were arranged in a square, with the fifth in the center. All five engines ignited on lift-off. With the Titan IIID, only the two solid boosters are ignited at lift off. Because of the difference in thrust, engine arrangement, size, and other factors, the existing Titan IIID pad would have to have been completely rebuilt for use by a Saturn V booster.
No evidence exists that any facilities ever existed at Vandenberg that could have been used to launch a Saturn V. Such facilities would be distinctive, and their use would be apparent. They would take years to build and check out, and involve a large number of people.
Rutledge also claimed that while the Apollo 19 and 20 launches were seen, witnesses did not realize the boosters were Saturn Vs. For his claim to be valid, there could be no public or press access to Vandenberg, and the site would have needed a sufficient buffer zone so that the facilities, preparations, and launches would be hidden from public view. As a result, while outsiders were aware the launches occurred, they did not understand they were secret Apollo missions, and not regular satellite or ballistic missile test firings.
The evidence is that Vandenberg does not meet the security requirements for the claim to be valid. A public road runs by Vandenberg’s main gate, and the city of Lompoc is nearby. Even in the 1970s, reporters were allowed on the base to cover civilian satellite launches. Finally, a railroad line runs through the base itself and past many of the launch pads. On September 20, 1959, a passenger train carrying Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev passed through Vandenberg during his state visit to the U.S. The three nuclear-armed Atlas ballistic missiles at the base were clearly visible from the train. Given the access to the base, hiding a VAB, launch pad, and Saturn V booster would not have been possible.
Nor is it possible to ‘hide’ a Saturn V launch from Vandenberg. It would have been visible not only from Lompoc and other nearby cities, but throughout central and southern California. The sound of Saturn V launch, which was only exceeded by a nuclear explosion, would have caused Lompoc residents to realize this was not a Titan HID or ballistic missile launch.
Another requirement for Rutledge’s claim to be true would be that the Apollo 20 mission would meet the same requirements and limitations as the earlier flights, and share the same limitations as to hardware, duration, mission plans, and timing of events. The Apollo program completed six successful Moon landings between 1969 and 1972. The Command Module and Lunar Module were proven spacecraft, and there would be little time or need to make major modifications to the booster and spacecraft hardware, or to the Apollo mission profile, for the secret lunar missions.
There is ample evidence available that the Apollo 19 and 20 flights would have required fundamental changes in all aspects of their mission plans, compared to the other Apollo landing missions. The most basic difference is launch direction. The Apollo launches from Florida were to the east, so the rocket could take advantage of the Earth’s rotation to increase its payload. Also, both expended stages and malfunctioning rockets would fall into the Atlantic Ocean.
If an easterly launch from Vandenberg was made, the Saturn V would fly over the continental United States. The Saturn V’s first stage, called the “S-1C’” was 138 feet long, 33 feet in diameter, and had an empty weight of 370,000 pounds. After separating, it would break up during the reentry and debris would impact about 355 nautical miles down range. This would be along the Colorado River, on the border between California and Arizona. The falling SAC debris had the potential for causing deaths and injuries. Additionally, the reentry would be visible from the ground. The S-II second stage would impact off the U.S. east coast. Should a launch abort occur during the ascent, debris could potentially fall on cities and towns anywhere along this flight path.
To avoid such possibilities, launches from Vandenberg are made at azimuths between 158 degrees and 201 degrees (an arc from the south south west to the south west). This avoids passing over land, and results in the satellite entering a polar orbit. (A launch to the north would head toward the USSR.)
While these range limits avoid dropping debris on the American southwest, polar orbits have a payload penalty. The rocket cannot take advantage of the Earth’s easterly rotation. For a Saturn V polar orbit launch from Vandenberg, the maximum payload was calculated to be 40 metric tons. The smallest payload for the early Apollo Moon landings was 44 metric tons. This would rule out a Vandenberg launch. If the Saturn V had been launched due west, an azimuth of 270 degrees (which is outside the range limits), the payload penalty would be 13 metric tons, as the rocket would be going the opposite direction to the Earth’s rotation.
A little rocket science also allowed the landing time of the Apollo 20 LM on the Moon to be calculated. Apollo landings took place soon after sunrise. The low sun angle allowed the crew to spot the long shadows cast by obstacles. Therefore, the timing of all the mission events, from launch to the actual touchdown, was determined by the time the Sun was at the proper elevation at the landing site.
The video of the Apollo 20 launch on August 16, 1976 showed that it took place in daylight. Sunset at Vandenberg AFB on that date occurred at 7:49 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time (2:49 a.m. GMT on August 17). The Apollo 12 mission took 110 hours and 32 minutes from liftoff to the landing on the Moon. Using this as the maximum, the Apollo 20 landing at the alien mothership at the Izsak crater would have occurred no later than 5:22 p.m. GMT on August 21, 1976.
Sunrise at Izsak crater was calculated to have occurred at about 2:00 p.m. GMT on August 22; nearly a day after the maximum flight time. This is extremely poor mission planning. Rutledge and Leonov would have had to make a night landing on the Moon, with only starlight to illuminate the surface. (As the landirig site was on the far side of the Moon, there would have been no earthlight to provide illumination.)
If a morning landing was made, the crew would have had to spend a day or more waiting in orbit. This required additional hydrogen and oxygen for the fuel cells to generate electrical power, as well as food and other consumables. The claim that Rutledge and Leonov spent seven days on the lunar surface also required an additional 1,500 pounds of payload for the LM. A Saturn V launched into a polar orbit lacked the payload for even a normal landing mission.
The second hypothesis is that the Apollo 20 story is a hoax. For this to be valid, evidence would have to be found that the claims were false beyond that which could be explained by Rutledge’s age, faulty memory, and simple mistakes. Scantamburlo and Salla both noted various problems with the YouTube videos and images. The Saturn V launch video, for example, was from the Apollo 11 mission, but had been edited so it started with the rocket in flight, rather than lifting off the pad. This hid the views of the Florida swamps. Vandenberg has hilly terrain with brush and grasslands. An audio clip from the Apollo 15 mission was also used. Other video and photos were either faked outright or were altered. This includes the “flyover” video and the Moon ‘city’ photo. The ‘alien mothership’ itself appears to be a natural geological feature, such as a landslide.
Ironically, Salla’s two objections to Rutledge’s claims were flawed. Salla believed the Apollo 20 patch should have read ‘Apollo Soyuz’, to signify a joint mission. (Soyuz was the name of the Soviet spacecraft that the U.S. Apollo 18 docked with on the ASTP mission.) But since Apollo 20 did not involve a Soyuz spacecraft, the word ‘Soyuz’ would not have appeared on the patch. His other objection, that the aliens had forbidden landings on the Moon, has several problems. Using an unproven phenomenon, like remote viewing, as evidence about the reality of a disputed event is not valid.
In reaching a conclusion as to which of the two hypotheses is valid, one must rely on the available evidence. There is no evidence to support the Apollo 19 and 20 missions as real events. Without Saturn V facilities at Vandenberg, the booster could not be assembled, checked out, fueled, or launched. Without the ability to launch the booster, the whole Apollo 20 story is false on its face. There are also the issues of range safety, lost of payload capability, the landing time vs. sunrise time on the Moon and the added consumables the mission plan entailed. These indicate the claim is false in its details.
In contrast, the hoax hypothesis is supported by the evidence which Rutledge himself offered. The videos and stills were altered or outright forgeries. Assessing the accuracy or falsehood of a controversial theory is based on evidence that can withstand critical examination. In this case, the claims by Rutledge fail the test on numerous levels. This has implications beyond Apollo 20. Ufologists frequently complain that the scientific community is blindly refusing to accept their evidence. The Apollo 20 story implies the problem is not with the scientific community’s outlook, but rather that the UFO evidence lacks sufficient merit to be accepted.
Scantamburlo and Salla made only limited and informal analyses of Rutledge’s claims and evidence. Scantamburlo, for example, pointed to 1960s documents about Air Force interest in the Saturn V as representing “strong circumstantial evidence” that the story was true. These documents are not provided or quoted, nor do they indicate a Saturn V launch capability ever existed at Vandenberg.
The approach taken by both Scantamburlo and Salla in analyzing the Apollo 20 story does not reflect the procedures used by scholars to analyze controversial theories. They accepted the story immediately. In Salla’s case, this was based on his assessment of Scantamburlo’s work. He wrote that it “…demonstrates a sincere effort” to check out the story. Sincerity is not evidence. Both individuals made grandiose predictions that the Apollo 20 story would soon bring about “disclosure.” Very soon, however, they had to backtrack when the flaws, inconsistencies and falsehoods became clear.
Both Scantamburlo and Salla papered over these flaws by claiming they were deliberate falsehoods added to a true story. In short, they claim that obvious falsehoods prove the story is true, rather than a crude hoax. At best, this is wishful thinking. At worse, it is a rejection of the basic tenets of scholarship.
The question remains – who would produce such an extraordinarily elaborate (and expensive) hoax – and why? Please see the following video:
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