Richard C. Hoagland

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According to his biography at the Enterprise Mission, Richard Hoagland is a former space museum curator, NASA advisor, and science adviser to Walter Cronkite and CBS news. In the 1990s, he started a program at Dunbar Senior High to get students involved with mission planning and data acquisition. This eventually grew into the Enterprise Mission, which he claims to be supported by many NASA senior officials, and he has visited NASA centers multiple times[1] (and so do a lot of tourists and journalists every year).

He is also on the Board of Directors for American Antigravity.[2] He has been a frequent guest on Coast to Coast AM. And oh yes, he's a raving conspiracy theorist.

Contents

[edit] Credentials

[edit] Europa

A page on the Enterprise Mission website implies that Hoagland was the first to hypothesise that a vast liquid-water ocean exists deep under the ice surface of Europa (one of Jupiter's moons) and that life may have evolved in that ocean.[3] The page cites the acknowledgements of Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two, where Clarke credits Hoagland with the idea (Europan life-forms are involved in the book's plot).

While this is a somewhat plausible hypothesis and one that scientists itch to test,[4][5] Hoagland was not the first to propose it.[6][7] His popular-science article for the popular-astronomy magazine Star and Sky did introduce the idea to Clarke, though.[7]

[edit] Face on Mars

Richard Hoagland's other most famous theory is that the Face on Mars in Cydonia Mensae was made by aliens. He offers up as proof many coincidences about ratios of angles formed by structures in Cydonia Mensae. However, a detailed explanation by Ralph Greenberg, a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington, points out many statistical problems in the approximation rates and many other coincidental ratios taken from random numbers.[8]

[edit] Claims

A non-exhaustive list (an exhaustive list would be, er, exhausting to compile):

  • The Face on Mars has been created by extraterrestrial intelligence.
  • The Abydos helicopter is, well, a representation of a helicopter.[9]
  • The Apollo 1 astronauts were murdered.[10]
  • Iapetus, one of Saturn's moons, is artificial.[11]
  • There are semi-transparent glass structures on the moon.[12]
  • 9/11 was a Masonic, Jewish, US Government conspiracy.[13]
  • NASA has covered up nearly everything found by space exploration.
  • The Norwegian Spiral wasn't only a failed Russian missile test; the missile was intercepted mid-flight with a torsion field weapon, most probably - by "Nazi-derived off-world colonies", in order to intimidate Obama, who was accepting his Nobel Peace prize in Oslo at that time. Apparently, the intimidation ploy succeeded and Obama cancelled the Constellation program, "blackmailed (...) Into "imprisoning" Humanity on Earth ...."[14]

[edit] Mockery

Hoagland uses number of classic conspiracy theorist techniques. We'll spare you an in-depth analysis, and just mock them.

[edit] OMG numbers!

Look! When I calculate the letters in "hero", I can find a way to make it meaningful! Isn't that amazing?

[edit] Evil people

Evil societies, instead of using their vast resources and influence to just fucking buy the planet, sit in the background and waste their money manipulating our heros. Of course! I knew it all along! DAYLIGHT SAVINGS IS A MASONIC CONSPIRACY TO ROB US OF OUR SUN!!! Plus, at their headquarters, they have an entire branch of people devoted to fitting their schedule to match obscure astronomical events... man, that's one hell of a handicap.

I imagine, every now and then, they have a conversation that goes like this:

"Jenkins, are we ready to implement our ultra-secret super-awesome plan?"
"Yes sir, but we missed the passing of the constellation Orion at a 33° angle over the earth... I'm afraid we'll have to wait another ten years for it to come around again"
"Damn you, Orion! Always foiling our plans!"

[edit] Blobs

"Ain't that funny? By analyzing photographs blown up to the point where we can see the pixels, I can read whatever I want into the pixels."
*Connects random blobs on photograph to make letters spelling out 'Richard C. Hoagland is a sexy beast'*
"OMGasecretmessages!!!!!!"
"And those fuzzy black-and-white blobs right there—here, I'll zoom in on them for you—" *zooms in to where you can't make anything out anymore* "OMG buildings! OMG a wall! OMG a face!"

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. The Enterprise Mission biography of Hoagland
  2. http://www.americanantigravity.com
  3. The Enterprise Mission - Europaimg
  4. Carolyn Porco: Could a Saturn moon harbor life?, TED talk by the leader of the Imaging Team of the Cassini mission.
  5. A Submarine for Europa, Universe Today
  6. Hoagland's Credentials, Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy
  7. 7.0 7.1 Gary P. Posner, The Face Behind the "Face" on Mars: A Skeptical Look at Richard C. Hoagland
  8. Greenburg's letter to Hoagland
  9. The "LostTombs" Revisited: "Success Has a Thousand Fathers ...", Part VI, The Enterprise Mission
  10. http://www.enterprisemission.com/lib7.htm
  11. http://www.enterprisemission.com/moon1.htm
  12. http://www.v-j-enterprises.com/hoag526.html
  13. http://www.enterprisemission.com/tower2.htm
  14. A "Nobel Torsion Message" Over Norway? Part II and Part III, The Enterprise Mission
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