- Thread Author
- #1
Yesterday, while browsing the Space(dot)com website, I came across an article about an Atlanta-based rapper named BoB who kicked off a crowdfunding campaign to raise $1 million, ostensibly so he can build and launch one or more satellites to settle the "question" of Earth's shape once and for all. Nevermind that even if he was to raise that amount of cash, it still would fall woefully short of what it would actually cost to do so, and instead, amounts to a publicity-stunt.
https://www.space.com/38305-flat-earth-bob-nasa-astronauts.html
But it did elicit responses from the Twitter accounts of 3 astronauts, being Terry Virts, Buzz Aldrin, and Scott Kelly, the last of whom embed a video in his tweet of circumnavigating the Earth in space, and when reading some of the comments by other Twitter users, they claimed the the video was faked CGI, and that NASA's space program has been/still is all an elaborate hoax, including their trips to Moon and landings. Several also mentioned CMDR Kelly's suggestion that the donations to BoB's crowdfunding satellite efforts, go instead to Puerto Rico disaster relief...and instead demanded that NASA's annual budget be donated instead. This is so typical of science/climate change/astronomy denier hypocrites, most who have no problem with our government spending almost 3/4 trillion annually on the MIC.
https://twitter.com/StationCDRKelly/status/913079786066526209/video/1
But some are also Flat Earthers, who believe that our Sun and Moon are merely 3000 miles above the Earth. never rising or setting, and that the Cosmos is only 100 miles higher than both. I haven't dug very deeply into everything on their site/wiki as yet, but have read a few topics in their forums w/o registering. There are some members who do believe that Earth is an oblate spheroid, and are quite actively disputing Flat Earthers' (or who call themselves as "Zetetics") claims. Their pretzel logic and wildly absurd observations/calculations are quite amusing, especially given that their relatively tiny amount of adherents, will somehow quickly continue to grow globally into a majority. Still, it is kinda disturbing to me that such people still exist now in the 21st century, when space exploration via rocket is over a half century passed, and via telescopes, centuries.
When I was a still a child in the mid-60s, I came down with measles, and while convalescing, my late mother bought two large illustrated books on astronomy and earth science, which I read voraciously. One had a chapter on ancient civilizations, and showed a drawing of a flat Earth being carried on the backs of 4 huge elephants, who themselves were standing upon the shell of an even more gigantic turtle below them. Never did I think that many people still believed that our world was flat in the early days of US/USSR space race, until the advent of the internet, where the nuttiest of the world's crackpots can mingle freely.
https://wiki.tfes.org/The_Flat_Earth_Wiki
https://www.space.com/38305-flat-earth-bob-nasa-astronauts.html
But it did elicit responses from the Twitter accounts of 3 astronauts, being Terry Virts, Buzz Aldrin, and Scott Kelly, the last of whom embed a video in his tweet of circumnavigating the Earth in space, and when reading some of the comments by other Twitter users, they claimed the the video was faked CGI, and that NASA's space program has been/still is all an elaborate hoax, including their trips to Moon and landings. Several also mentioned CMDR Kelly's suggestion that the donations to BoB's crowdfunding satellite efforts, go instead to Puerto Rico disaster relief...and instead demanded that NASA's annual budget be donated instead. This is so typical of science/climate change/astronomy denier hypocrites, most who have no problem with our government spending almost 3/4 trillion annually on the MIC.
https://twitter.com/StationCDRKelly/status/913079786066526209/video/1
But some are also Flat Earthers, who believe that our Sun and Moon are merely 3000 miles above the Earth. never rising or setting, and that the Cosmos is only 100 miles higher than both. I haven't dug very deeply into everything on their site/wiki as yet, but have read a few topics in their forums w/o registering. There are some members who do believe that Earth is an oblate spheroid, and are quite actively disputing Flat Earthers' (or who call themselves as "Zetetics") claims. Their pretzel logic and wildly absurd observations/calculations are quite amusing, especially given that their relatively tiny amount of adherents, will somehow quickly continue to grow globally into a majority. Still, it is kinda disturbing to me that such people still exist now in the 21st century, when space exploration via rocket is over a half century passed, and via telescopes, centuries.
When I was a still a child in the mid-60s, I came down with measles, and while convalescing, my late mother bought two large illustrated books on astronomy and earth science, which I read voraciously. One had a chapter on ancient civilizations, and showed a drawing of a flat Earth being carried on the backs of 4 huge elephants, who themselves were standing upon the shell of an even more gigantic turtle below them. Never did I think that many people still believed that our world was flat in the early days of US/USSR space race, until the advent of the internet, where the nuttiest of the world's crackpots can mingle freely.
https://wiki.tfes.org/The_Flat_Earth_Wiki
Last edited: