AHC: A much larger "Sputnik Is A Hoax" movement among right-wingers in the late 1950's. Hey, the great philosopher W. V. O. Quine believed that at first! (As Seth Benardete remarked, Quine's initial reaction was "as a Republican from Ohio.") https://books.google.com/books?id=NhiVf2hr5fIC&pg=PA91 Nor was he alone: "Some staff at the newly founded *National Review,* for example, even suspected a hoax..." https://books.google.com/books?id=Q9MR704IfZUC&pg=PA119
Sputnik as Fake News, or WI More Sputnik "Truthers"
- Thread starter David T
- Start date
The issue was, anyone with a radio receiver could pick up Sputnik's beeping. Pretty hard to get millions of people to ignore that kind of concrete reality that they can independantly confirm.
But couldn't the conspiracy-theorists just say that the beeping was caused by something else, and the Russians and their fellow-travelers were just telling us it was caused by Sputnik, and if you were someone who was scientifically illiterate(and yes, that would include me), and wanted to believe it was a hoax, you would accept that explanation?
And you can bet that the theorists would be able to find at least one person with relevant scientific training who'd be willing to back them up. Basically, the equivalent of molecular biologists who continue to push the non-HIV AIDS hypothesis in the year 2017, for whatever reason they may have.
marathag
Banned
You mean like the Woodpecker?
Hams are pretty smart on how radio propagation works on on objects either side of the ionosphere
As a friend of mine pointed out, "there was lots of naked-eye evidence for the Moon landings and there are people who think that was phony." And there were as many crazy conspiracy theories in the 1950's as today. (E.g., Robert Welch's belief that Ike was a Red.)
BTW, the weirdest thing about Sputnik was its effect on Little Richard's career: "In October 1957, Little Richard embarked on a package tour in Australia with Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran. During the middle of the tour, he shocked the public by announcing his decision to follow a life in the ministry.[59] Little Richard later explained that during a flight from Melbourne to Sydney that he had seen the plane's red hot engines and felt angels were holding it up.[60] During the Sydney performance, Little Richard saw a bright red fireball flying across the sky above him and was deeply shaken.[60] He took the event, later revealed as the launching of the first artificial Earth satellite Sputnik 1, as a sign from God to repent from performing secular music and his wild lifestyle and enter the ministry.[59] Returning to the states ten days early, Little Richard later learned that his original return flight had crashed into the Pacific Ocean solidifying his belief he was doing as God wanted..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Richard
BTW, the weirdest thing about Sputnik was its effect on Little Richard's career: "In October 1957, Little Richard embarked on a package tour in Australia with Gene Vincent and Eddie Cochran. During the middle of the tour, he shocked the public by announcing his decision to follow a life in the ministry.[59] Little Richard later explained that during a flight from Melbourne to Sydney that he had seen the plane's red hot engines and felt angels were holding it up.[60] During the Sydney performance, Little Richard saw a bright red fireball flying across the sky above him and was deeply shaken.[60] He took the event, later revealed as the launching of the first artificial Earth satellite Sputnik 1, as a sign from God to repent from performing secular music and his wild lifestyle and enter the ministry.[59] Returning to the states ten days early, Little Richard later learned that his original return flight had crashed into the Pacific Ocean solidifying his belief he was doing as God wanted..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Richard
Cook
Banned
As a sign he was taking too much drugs more likely.
Sputnik 1 was launched at 10.29pm, Moscow Time, on October 4, 1957. Moscow, at the time, operated on Moscow Standard Time, which was UTC + 3. Sydney at the time was on UTC + 10 hours; so Sputnik was launched at 5.29 am Sydney time, on October 5th, 1957, long after Little Richard's concert had finished. Besides which, Sputnik took off from Baikonur in Kazakhstan on a trajectory that took it due east; it was several days before the path of its orbit took it over Australia at a time of day when it was visible; just before sunset in Sydney on October 9 in fact.
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There is a solution to that problem: "Here come the Men in Black; they work for J. Edgar Hoover..."
In 1957, Conservatives of such reactionary behavior were kept to backrooms, basement cellars and backwoods towns, speaking only among themselves without tainting anyone else. Conservatives of higher regard -- clearer mind, more moderate beliefs -- were only somewhat less sidelined in the public narrative. People who would be so radical as to disbelieve Sputnik believed fluoride was a plot, Kennedy was a Communist, and so was Eisenhower for that matter, and the Russians were hiding in the television set. And why disbelieve Sputnik, in such a case? Why disbelieve that the terrible menace had not shown how it truly was a threat, with an artificial moon in the sky, violating American airspace, perhaps capable of dropping bombs from orbit?
It would have been as expensive, extensive, and intensive to fake a moon landing as to actually make a moon landing occur. To fake it, you would have had to have all the systems in place to build and test the hardware, all the employees, all the scientists, and have actually built the thing and launched it. It would be like setting out to lie about building a car, founding a factory, hiring workers and engineers, creating the components, putting them together, and saying "Aha, now we've tricked them into thinking we built the car and that they can drive it"....when you've actually built the car and people could drive it. And there is the underlying point that if we faked it, the Soviets were recording it and would have said so in a second.
And yet, despite the most convincing evidence of all (i.e. that the Soviets would have been shouting from the rooftops if they thought it was a hoax), there are still some people who believe that humans have never landed on the moon.