Monday, August 16, 2010

The pornography of pessimism

     Somebody invented that expression to describe the appeal of Gerald Celente, whose economic forecasts run the gamut from dire to catastrophic. It might equally apply to Richard Hoagland's forecasts of just about anything.

     Fresh from his abject failures on the topic of Gulf oil, Hoagland popped up on Coast to Coast AM briefly soon after the failure of one of two ammonia pumps on ISS. Pornographically, he announced that this could spell the end of the entire US manned space program — and he couldn't resist pretending that he had "inside information" to reinforce that piece of nonsense. "We're not being told the true seriousness of this," he announced.

     After three heroic EVAs, most recently on August 16th, Douglas Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson successfully replaced the failed unit with a backup. For three solid weeks, full information has been available from many sources, not least NASA PA itself. The EVAs have been on live NASA TV. Will Hoagland be on C2C-AM soon to apologize for misleading the audience?

7 comments:

Chris Lopes said...

Hoagland never misses a chance to connect events in the news to his growing mythology. Since that news tends to be bad (at first), his line is bound to be negative. Of course now that the ISS is fixed, we will get the usual "we are not being told the truth" and "there is much more going on here than is being said". He'll play that song for a while until something else happens in the news that he can add as "stunning confirmation" to the Fantastic World of Richard C. Hoagland(tm). Fear is a great way to sell books and DVD's.

Biological_Unit said...

The truth is that millions of Americans can watch America rotting right in front of their eyes by stepping out on their front porches.

Chris Lopes said...

BU, you are a pessimist, I get that. Hoagland though, is something different. He may or may not believe the sky is falling, but he is determined to make a buck or two by telling other people it is. He will (for the price of a book, DVD, or conference fee) detail how he thinks the world is circling the drain, and what you can do about it. His world view is his stock and trade, and that world view is of the "to hell in a hand basket" variety.

Of course he does offer salvation of a sort. If we can get to the "ship" that is Phobos, we can get all the "good stuff" the ancients left behind and have "Star Trek for real" in our life time. All we have to do is go there and the elites with the "secret space program" will be out of business. A nice little bedtime story to say the least.

Biological_Unit said...

Thermodynamics has won at a crawl.
The low-hanging energy fruit have already been picked.

RCH is a Snake-Oil salesman, but he's so up front about it that people admire him for it. He's a glib, cunning Sociopath.

Chris Lopes said...

Ex Pat, have you ever heard the 2009 broadcast of C2C with Hoagland and Joseph Farrell? Someone posted a link to it on his FB page so I spent some time listening to it (on a long road trip). Among other informative delights, Hoagland mentioned he believes (is stunningly certain no doubt) that the Apollo space craft used some form of anti-gravity technology. Maybe I haven't been paying attention, but that was the first time I'd heard that.

expat said...

I don't think I've heard Hoag/Farrell but that pseudo-idea has been around for a while, along with the demonstrably false statement that "the LM could not possibly have taken off under the power of its ascent engine."

Chris Lopes said...

The exact quote comes in at about 8:15 of this video (actually just audio of the program). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQG5vi_VUrM&feature=related

I had never heard that one from Hoagie, so it was a bit of a surprise. Considering the fact that he actually covered the program, he has to know that is total nonsense.