The Impossibility of the Apollo Missions

**Randy Walsh** (0:38)
Yeah, so I have actually quite a very background, actually started off in the music industry, so I have quite a background in music. And then I went into the health care industry, and I really didn't like it. I didn't like the direction that it was going. So I actually did a, if I can say this, I did a career change in my 30s and got into aviation. And initially, when I got involved in aviation, it was just because I had a love of flying and I just wanted to get a private pilot's license. But from there, I went even further and I ended up getting a commercial license. And then I added various ratings like a multi-engine rating, an instrument rating, all of what you need for the airlines. I knew at that time I wasn't going to get into the airlines because I'd already, at that point, was too old to get into the airlines. They like the airlines. They like to hire people in their mid-20s because they get their investment back over their career because they have to invest a lot of money in training them.
But still, you need the fundamental trainings before you can get into to aviations. But that didn't mean that aviation wasn't close to me. There was lots of other options like bush flying, cargo flying, commuters. I chose instructing and so I added an instructor rating and I started teaching. So I did a lot of ground school teaching as well as teaching in the air and I went from there and I did a little bit of charter flying. Eventually, I ended up several years and I finally retired. I figured I was getting close to retirement age anyway.
So it was from there. You see, the connection to the Apollo Moon Missions and to aviation for me was always close and I always wanted to be, I was really inspired at the time when Apollo 11 launched and then landed on the moon. I was very young at the time and I remember vividly watching this in class. We were all heard it down to the gymnasium to watch this little black and white snowy TV and we watched the launch. And when it was that point, I actually had a love for aviation. I knew I was never going to be an astronaut nor did I want to be. But the next best thing for me was aviation. And so that's just kind of a connection there. So that's how I got involved in aviation. And of course, from aviation, it led into a lot of research. It wasn't until about 20 years later after I started flying, when I realized that something wasn't right with the Apollo missions. And then I just went from there. And I just want to make it very clear to my audience that I don't pretend to be an expert in any of these subjects. I'm not an aerospace engineer, but you don't need to be because a lot of these engineers that started off in the 60s when it came to involving themselves in space missions, they were starting from scratch as well. I'm not comparing myself to them, but what I'm saying is that aviation gave me sort of a leg up on what to expect and the impetus to investigate further. But I must say that most people can investigate this from themselves. It takes a little bit of common sense, and there's some technical stuff to get involved in, but most people are capable of it if they put their mind to it.

**Brian Gerrish** (3:50)
So, what made you suspicious of the Apollo missions?

**Randy Walsh** (3:57)
Yes, very good question. So, that happened back in the mid to late 1990s. Actually, I had a routine day for me. I came home one day from work and switched on the TV, just happened to switch on A&E. For those of you that are as old as I am, you realize that A&E back then was...

**Brian Gerrish** (4:23)
So, just to point out, there was no time at which I came home and turned on the TV. I wasn't even born.

**Randy Walsh** (4:31)
You were just a young age. You didn't even matter.
No internet back then, folks. Sorry to depress you all, but it was the dark ages, let's put it that way. But A&E was actually a really good network back then, not like it is now. It actually had some fairly decent documentaries, and they just happened to be running a documentary the night I come home from work on the Apollo 13 mission. Now, for those of you out there, I'm sure most of your audience will be aware that Apollo 13 had experienced, according to the official narrative, they had experienced an incident, a very serious incident on the way to the moon. We can get into that later, but I remember that really, that whole episode was the first time to really got me thinking about something's not right here, something's not right about these missions because there was a segment in a documentary where they were interviewing all of the three astronauts on board that were on board Apollo 13 I remember the commander, Apollo 13, Jim Lovell, he was talking about what they had to do is, I won't get into the technical part of this, but they had to fire the engines and while they were firing the engine, they had to keep the earth within a grid pattern. They were doing visual and that was what really did it for me. It's really made me question because I was thinking, wait a minute, this person is about three quarters the distance from, well, they were about a quarter ways back to earth when he had swung around the dark side of the moon part and they were using the gravity assist because they didn't have full powerful engines. Again, there's a lot of technical stuff to get involved here, but I'll just give you the basic outline. I remember him saying that and he was paraphrasing himself and he said, okay, I turned to so-and-so and I said, whatever you do, when I fire the engines, keep the earth within a grid pattern on the window. He was actually talking about the optics which is used for star sightings and navigation. It really hit me because he was talking about using visual clues, visual clues to navigate from the moon back to the earth. That's impossible. I know from flying, from my own experience, using visual clues is all right when you're very close to the ground and you have a lot of landmarks to navigate by and even then you can be off course. I mean, you could be a degree off course and an hour later, you're 10, 20 miles off course. I haven't got that exactly correct, but that's the basic outline. I was thinking, wow, you're using visual to navigate back to the Earth from the Moon.