Monday 24 July 2023

Today Is...Apollo 11 Returns To Earth

We're all familiar with the Apollo 11 Moon landing because we have Neil Armstrong's unforgettable line and the live space footage and the American flags stabbed into the Moon to remember it by but what we're not quite as familiar with is the trip there and back with three men crammed inside the space equivalent of an Ice Cream van.
It may have been the single greatest human achievement in the history of the entire planet but it didn't stop NASA accidentally erasing the original tapes from the first Moon landing because despite a budget of millions, nobody went and got some extra blank video tapes and to cut costs, NASA had resorted to reusing tapes on later missions and at some point, a NASA employee had taped over it.
For conspiracy theorists, it's further proof that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had travelled only as far as a Stanley Kubrik studio where the Government mocked up the whole thing to stick a finger up to the Soviets while the Cold War was in full swing.
The conspiracy theorists spout how the American flag is flapping as if in a breeze, no stars are visible in the pictures taken from the surface of the Moon and the exposure to radiation from the Van Allen Belt would have killed the three of them instantly but that is to overlook the 382kg of moon rock and the tracks made by the astronauts in the moon dust but with the Internet at their fingertips, the early 21st century in is a very good time to be a douche-bag so what do they think happened?
The story goes that in the midst of the Space Race, someone in the American government saw 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968 and asked Stanley Kubrick to help them fake the Apollo 11 moon landings in order to gazump the Soviet Union who were ahead of America in the Space Race at the time.
Kubrik agreed but afterwards he realised just what a big deal it was and become worried that he might be silenced by the Government so to protect himself, he filled his film, The Shining, with clues about the conspiracy.
Danny wears an Apollo 11 jumper, Room 237 is a reference to the 237,000 miles distance between Earth and the Moon, when Jack types 'All work and no play…', the first word looks like “A11” or Apollo 11. The twins represent NASA’s Gemini space program and the guy in a bear suit represents the Soviet Bear.
If that isn't enough to convince you then how about the final piece of the jigsaw, Jack agreed to look after the Overlook Hotel during the winter just like Kubrick agreed to help America during the Cold War.
I don't know how much more proof anyone would need but it would explain why Kubrik made such a pigs ear of filming the King novel, because he was too busy stuffing it full of fake moon mission hints that he completely forgot how the book finished and just made up his own ending.

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