Richard Hoagland Press Conference Update

I haven't seen a thing on the Hoagland press conference as of yet.

My guess is that this is because it was little more than some free publicity for his latest book, complete with grainy photos. I could be wrong, and I do actually hope that I am, but something tells me he didn't exactly deliver with rock solid proof of his claims yesterday.

If anyone's heard anything more on this story, though, I'd be interested to hear it.

Richard Hoagland Press Conference

Today I was sent an e-mail by a friend of mine with details of the press conference Richard Hoagland is hosting at the National Press Club next week.

I'm actually curious to see what comes out of this even though I'm cautious with anything Hoagland does these days. At times I've thought that he's put out some interesting info, and made some nice connections. Other times, particularly more recently, I feel like he has no problem stretching(or possibly even more than that) a story to make it more sensational and to claim more headlines.

As I've said before, much of that seems to be human nature. Once people get headlines, sometimes they feel like they have to go bigger and more wild to keep getting headlines. I think that has happened to quite a few people who are at heart decent researchers over the years, and maybe that's part of why I'm wary of any claim Hoagland makes these days.

In the end, call me cautiously optimistic that something interesting comes out next week. If he's got legitimate proof of more happening on the moon than is known, then it's certainly going to be worthwhile. If he throws out a bunch of speculation that's light on the proof and big on attempts to grab headlines, then it's probably going to do more harm than good.

Going along with the About.com article on the moon which I wrote about recently, Victoria Hardy of the American Chronicle has written an article about the possibilities of past and/or current habitation on the moon. It contains links to many of the information that's supposedly been leaked from various sources about what NASA/JPL really knows about the moon. For example:

Karl Wolfe, states that while he was in the Air Force he was shown photos of the moon taken by the Lunar Orbiter, before the Apollo landing, which clearly displayed artificial structures. Mr. Wolfe had a top-secret clearance and worked with tactical air command at Langley AFB in Virginia. He claims that in the photos he saw towers, spherical buildings, large things that were similar to radar dishes and some structures that were half a mile in size.

According to only one document I could find, it was reported in March of 1996 that NASA scientists and engineers participating in the Moon and Mars exploration met in front of the Washington National Press Club to discuss their findings. Although they spoke cautiously, they announced that man-made structures and objects were discovered on the Moon. The article goes on to say that there is evidence of lost cities on the Moon. An unnamed mission control specialist is quoted as saying, “Our guys observed ruins of the Lunar cities, transparent pyramids, domes, and God knows what else, which are currently hidden deep inside the NASA safes, and felt like Robinson Crusoe when he suddenly came across prints of bare feet on the sand of the desert island.”

Are these stories really true? I certainly don't know, but I've always thought it was strange that we abandoned the idea of putting bases on the moon shortly after visiting for what really amounts to no apparent reason. At this point I wouldn't bet all my money on the existence of ancient cities on the moon, but I wouldn't bet against it either, as far out as it seems. If you take ancient Indian texts about vimanas and Native American stories of the Second World at all literally, you have to consider the possibility that either man, or visitors, harnessed the power of flight long ago.

About.com's paranormal area has an interesting article on the far side of the moon, commonly misidentified as the "dark side" of the moon, and the possibility of current or previous inhabitants. Beginning with the reason we only see one side of the moon, the article rehashes many of the various anomalies and secrets about the far side.

When we look up at the Moon, we always see the same side. This peculiarity results because the Moon rotates just once for every orbit it makes around the Earth. The Moon is slightly lopsided, so over millions of years, gravitational forces have slowed its rotation so that the one side always faces our planet.

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To bolster this claim, authors at such websites as Alien Presence on the Moon, site the words of Milton William Cooper, allegedly a former intelligence officer with the US Navy. In a 1989 press release from Cooper (again allegedly), he swears under oath that he was privy to information that the US government has knowledge of alien craft visiting Earth. “LUNA is the alien base on the far side of the Moon,” the release states. “It was seen and filmed by the Apollo Astronauts. A base, a mining operation using very large machines, and the very large alien craft described in sighting reports as MOTHER SHIPS exist there.”

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The UFO Casebook website says there are actual NASA and military photos of the bases on the far side of the Moon. “There is a HUGE alien moon base complex on the far side of the moon,” the website says. “This sounds silly but it is true and we have solid proof… straight from the military. In 1994, the US Navy sent a satellite called Clementine to the moon to image it for two months. During that time, the satellite took 1.8 million images. Out of those images, 170,000 images were made available to the public. The rest were classified. Classified moon craters?”

As the article states, the only way to really know what's on the far side of the moon is to get full access to pictures that are taken. As NASA prepares to return astronauts to the moon, including taking samples from the far side, here's hoping that everyone gets full access to what they find there.

There were a couple of exciting announcement from NASA on the space exploration front this past week that are certainly worth noting.

In the first, NASA has announced plans to set up a polar moon base which they hope to permanently staff by 2024. While I certainly think they could pull it off sooner if they wanted to, and I have my doubts that this program will survive the next 18 years through however many administrations there might be in that time, I think this is a major step toward colonization of other planets and moons. Which, I believe, we must undertake in my lifetime if we hope to survive as a species. As we stand, all of our proverbial eggs are in one basket, and that basket's not in the best of shape at this point, not to even mention the possibility of a catastrophic natural event, meteor impact, nuclear warfare, etc.

Secondly, NASA announced that they've found evidence of water flowing on Mars. While I've seen people presenting evidence that they've found on NASA photographs of this for years, it's very exciting to see NASA jumping on board on the idea that there might be liquid water occasionally flowing on Mars. I think as we explore more in the universe we're going to find that there are more similarities on "alien" worlds than we expect. We're also going to find that there are many strange things we've never thought of, in all likelihood. However, if there's confirmed water on Mars, it certainly opens up the possibilities for not only life, but manned exploration and, eventually, permanent habitation.