Ancient Aliens on the Moon (11 page)

Enhanced Apollo 15 photograph AS15-88-12013.

All planets with dense atmospheres and solid surfaces, like the Earth, have a visible “air-glow limb.” From orbit, it appears as a fairly solid line above the visible horizon, the solid rocky part, of the planet below. The Earth’s is strong and distinct, as the above image from the International Space Station shows. But while the Moon’s “air-glow limb” from AS15-88-12013 is similar, there are dramatic differences.

For one, it is denser in some places than in others. Notice how the light scattering is thicker above the whiter highland areas in the picture above, and thinner in the areas above the darker maria, or lowland areas. If we were really looking at an atmosphere, it couldn’t pick and choose the areas where it decided to be thicker. As the view of the Earth’s air-glow barrier shows us, it is visually uniform in density.

So what we’re seeing in AS15-88-12013 has to be something else.

It has to be, in short, some sort of transparent (like glass) intervening medium that is scattering the light above and around the lunar disk in this photograph. It has to be our miles-high glass dome, caught under the perfect lighting conditions to capture its gauzy, translucent effect. It has to be the same structures we saw in the famous
Surveyor
6 photograph, only this time, photographed from lunar orbit (or at least near lunar space).

While all this makes a circumstantial case to reinforce the “miles-high glass dome model” of Ancient alien ruins on the Moon, it doesn’t completely seal it. For that, we need the crucial ground truth. Images and or testimony from the astronauts that were actually there, in situ, as they say, on the surface of the Moon and saw these majestic ruins for themselves. Fortunately, we have it. And in droves.

¹
“In Situ Rock Melting Applied to Lunar Base Construction and for Exploration Drilling and Coring on the Moon,” Rowley, J. C. & Neudecker, J. W.,
Lunar Bases and Space Activities of the 21st Century.
Houston, TX, Lunar and Planetary Institute, edited by W. W. Mendell, 1985, p.465, 1985lbsa.conf. 465R

A
t this point in the mid-1990s, there had been a significant movement forward in the study of lunar anomalies. Early researchers like Steckling and Leonard had opened the doorway to close examination of the NASA photographic records of the Moon, and Hoagland had blown it wide open with his findings. But what was missing was that critical ground truth we talked about—direct evidence from the lunar surface that these miles high glass dome structures existed.

Most of the time, when someone uses the word “dome,” it implies a watch crystal like, single piece structure over a crater or some other low lying surface feature. Inside such a structure, it would be possible to create an Earth-like environment. But Hoagland’s model, giant multi-layered scaffolding type structures, actually makes more sense. A naked, watch crystal type dome would be vulnerable to the kind of high-velocity impacts that Moon has experienced for most of its 4.5 billion year life. But a multi-layered, reinforced glass dome would act almost like an atmosphere in terms of the protection it would provide over eons of smaller impacts and the inevitable degradation they would cause. I’m not saying there aren’t “watch crystal” type domes over some lunar craters—in fact we’ll study a few later— but they would be the last line of defense for an Ancient Alien civilization on the Moon. The scaffolding would be the first and presumably the most robust. At this point, all that was left was to find some evidence of it—from the ground.

Skyscrapers on the Moon over Sinus Medii and “Los Angeles.”

In early 1995, Hoagland was on a lecture tour in Seattle and met Ken Johnston, a Boeing engineer at the time, and a former test pilot for Grumman Aerospace. After his tour of duty in the Marines, Johnston had gone to work at NASA in the mid-1960s as a Lunar Module test pilot at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston. There he and his team subsequently trained all of the Apollo astronauts to fly the Lunar Module, while simultaneously being part of the extensive spacesuit development program (“I was ‘capsule size,’” Johnston would later joke).

Johnston later moved across the center, going to work for Brown-Root Corporation and the Northrop Corporation in MSC’s Lunar Receiving Laboratory (LRL) during Apollo. This consortium had the prime contract for the processing of the actual lunar samples coming back from the Moon, and Ken’s key function was as supervisor of the data and photo control department. This was the section of the LRL that handled all of the critical photographic and written documentation for the Apollo program. After processing elsewhere in the Lab, the films and samples went through Johnston’s office for cataloging and long-term storage.

AS10-32-4862

Having read Hoagland’s first book,
The Monuments of Mars
, Johnston wrote a letter of introduction and offered at Hoagland a chance to review Ken’s collection of about 1,000 old NASA photos and other memorabilia. But the story of just how Johnston came to possess the photographs is very interesting and worth retelling.

As head of the LRL photo lab, it was Ken’s responsibility to catalog and archive all of the Apollo photographs taken by the astronauts. As part of the archiving process, the LRL eventually developed four complete sets of Apollo orbital and handheld photography, comprising literally tens of thousands of first-generation photographic negatives and prints. Ken also had responsibility for managing the 16mm mission films from the on-board “sequence cameras” (modified military gun cameras), operating from the Command Module and Lunar Modules during various phases of the missions, including lunar orbit and descent/ ascent. One of his duties was to frequently screen these on-orbit films at MSC before members of the various scientific and engineering teams.

Ken Johnston at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston.

During his time at NASA, he’d had a couple of strange experiences which had nagged at him over the years. One was during just such a screening of the 16mm films which he recounted on the popular
Coast to Coast AM
national radio program:

“Well, on that particular case—this was Apollo 14—after we had received the film, right after the astronauts had returned to the Earth, it had been processed in the NASA photo lab. It was my responsibility to put together a private viewing for the chief astronomer—that was Dr. Thornton Page and his associates and contributing scientists. I took the film over and set it up into what is called a ‘sequence [projector]’; it’s kind of like one of the gun cameras they use in the military [but in reverse—a projector] — where you can stop, freeze frame, go forward, back up and zoom in.

“And we were viewing the Apollo 14 footage, coming around the backside of the Moon as we were approaching a large crater. Now, due to the sun angle on the front side [of the Moon] that you would be looking at (you’d probably be looking at more of a crescent at that point on the backside) in the shadows in the craters, covering about half the crater, this particularly large crater showed a cluster of about
five or six lights down inside the rim.

“And this column or plume—or out-gassing or something, coming up above the rim of the crater, where we could see that— at that point Dr. Page had me stop and freeze, and back up; and go back and forth several times. And each time, he’d pause a second and look… and he finally turned to his associates and said: ‘Well, isn’t
that
interesting!’ And they all chuckled and laughed, and Dr. Page said: ‘Continue.’

“Well, I finished up that viewing and I was told to check it [the on-board sequence camera film] back into NASA bonded storage in the photo lab. The next day, I was to check it back out and show it to the rank-and-file engineers and scientists at the [Manned Spacecraft] Center.

“While we were viewing it the second time—and, several of my friends were sitting next to me—I was telling them: ‘You can’t believe what we saw on the backside of the Moon! Wait until you see this view.’

“And, as we were approaching the same crater… and we went
past
the crater—
there was nothing there!

“I stopped the camera, took the film out to examine it—to see if anything had been cut out—and there was no evidence of anything being cut out. I told the audience that we were having ‘ technical difficulties,’ put it back in and finished.

“That afternoon, I ran into Dr. Page over at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory and asked him what had happened to ‘the lights and the out-gassing or steam we saw,’ and he kind of grinned and gave me a little twinkle and a chuckle and said: ‘There were no lights. There is nothing there.’

“And he walked away. And, we were so busy… I didn’t get a chance to question him again.”

Johnston had also observed various oddities with the still camera images. Once, while passing through a classified building on the Center he normally didn’t frequent, Ken observed artists airbrushing the “sky” in various photos. That in itself wasn’t unusual, as press release prints were regularly cleaned up. What bothered Johnston in this case was that these weren’t
prints
that were being airbrushed, but rather
photographic negatives—
meaning that, after that drastic process had been applied, the original data could never be reproduced in the form it had originally been taken.