Richard C. Hoagland and Edgar Mitchell discuss and debate moon anomalies

 

The Art Bell Show, Wednesday, May 15, 1996 featured a “debate” between Richard C. Hoagland and Edgar Mitchell regarding the Apollo 14 mission to the moon.

 

http://www.enterprisemission.com/debate.html

 

A few notes:

 

Hoagland’s position was that digital images from the mission show some sort of artificial structure in the area where the Apollo 14 astronauts landed. Edgar Mitchell, a member of the Apollo 14 crew, found nothing to suggest such structures in the Apollo 14 digital images provided by Hoagland, and took the position that Hoagland was pushing his data way too hard.

 

Mitchell: There is certain evidence that simply doesn't fit with our model of how the moon is put together.

[For example: “There were two scientists who were looking at the tracking data from the unmanned lunar orbiters, before Apollo. And they noted that there were these funny residuals in the Doppler tracking data, meaning the spacecraft was speeding up and slowing down. And the consensus was that there were mass concentrations (MASCONS) under the maria that were affecting the gravity field and thereby affecting the motion of spacecraft orbiting close to the moon.”]

Mitchell ultimately supports Hoagland saying however that he would much prefer to look at any anomalous phenomenon as having a basis in anomalous physics, without having to hypothesize extraterrestrials as a cause. “…on Mars, the McDaniels Report suggests one of two things: It's either bizarre geology that we don't understand or perhaps it's extraterrestrial or rather it's an unnatural structure.”

 

Dr. Mitchell, has emphatically stated that he was not precluded by NASA from discussing anything that he either saw or experienced during his Apollo 14 flight. “It was not even discussed …. Good Lord, we would have loved to have been able to discuss something about that, or to have had something to discuss. It simply wasn't there.”

 

Hoagland: Ed, we have a study from Brookings that was commissioned in '59 and was delivered to the Congress in '61, which we call the Brookings Report, which is a several hundred page document with a section related to specifically to the implications of NASA's confirmation of extraterrestrial intelligence, either by means of radio or artifacts, and they claim that you might find them, NASA might find them someday, from the perspective of '59 on the moon, Mars or Venus. There, then, is another sections of Brookings related to the recommendation that consideration be given to withholding such a discovery from the American people for reason of fear of social dislocation or social disturbance.

 

Mitchell: Let's say that at the time that was done it was undoubtedly considered a prudent policy to write such a thing into effect. In practice, what has happened, however, is that I know of no administrators since that time who have really considered extraterrestrial intelligence, or anyone at NASA at that level of operation that gave it practical consideration of something that needed to be done.

Hoagland: I am quoting from the law, the enabling legislation on page 11 in section I, it says, "The administration (meaning NASA) shall be considered a defense agency of the United States." EM: I'll have to admit that's an interesting bit of language.

Mitchell: I'll have to admit that's an interesting bit of language.

Hoagland: Yeah, Art, I just want to say possible structures. I agree with Ed that we must take this step by step. I'm extremely heartened to hear him concur that there are enough interesting things in the photographs he has seen to want to know more. That's the first step in real science and real curiosity, to want to know more. So I will totally concur that the model we're presenting are tentative.

Mitchell: Basically, when people asked me, "What did it feel like to be on the moon?" Being a super rationalist and a Ph.D. and all of that, I didn't think it was a germane question. I thought if you ask me what did I do on the moon, or what did I think about on the moon, I could have told you. But what I feel, I didn't know. And so I set out to... I started thinking about that question. First of all, it irritated me because I didn't have an answer to it, and eventually I asked myself, "Should I know what I felt like on the moon?" So I went to some good friends of mine, Dr. Jane Houston and her husband Bob Master, and said help me find out what I felt like on the moon, and that began the investigation of inner experiences for me back in 1972 and led to the approaches that I have taken in understanding experience and the psychic experience and all this whole subject matter of consciousness that we've been looking at for 25 years.