In it, the astronaut claims that NASA blew the lunar module up after they left the moon. This dings my BS meter. What would they use to blow the module up with? I really doubt they’d waste payload mass to bring along explosives just for this purpose. The only thing I can think of is that the Ascent stage was left in lunar orbit where it would (fairly quicky) crash into the moon. Or if it had any propellant left, they may have deorbited it deliberately.
From reading his Wiki page, Mitchell is a UFO/conspiracy nut, so perhaps he’s a conspiracy nut on this as well. Or maybe he’s just talking loosely.
The problem is, the lunar module wasn’t “returned to Houston”. The decent stage remained on the moon. The astronauts returned to lunar orbit in the ascent stage, docked with the command module and returned to earth. The ascent stage eventually crashed into the moon.
The Apollo 14 command module is currently at the Astronaut Hall of Fame in Titusville, Florida.
So if he said NASA blew up part of his spacecraft, he’s mistaken. Maybe the article’s author just mis-understood something he said?
He’s referring to the part they flew back in. Which might have had no further use, except as a possible historical artifact, I suppose. And they might have wished to dispose of it in some way which prevented classified information from being learned from it, though it seems a trifle extreme.
ETA:
OK, that would be the Command/Service Module. Maybe the article’s author misunderstood, agreed.
The Wikipedia article on the Apollo Lunar Modules indicates that the ascent stages for Apollo missions 12, 14, 15, and 17 were deliberately crashed into the Moon. The ascent stages for the other Apollo missions were either left in lunar orbit & eventually also crashed into the moon, or burned up on re-entry to Earth’s atmosphere; the sole exception is the ascent module from Apollo 10, which remains in orbit around the Sun, as far as anyone knows.
The most credible claims I found on the web for why the Apollo 14 Lunar Module ascent stage was deliberately crashed was as part of a seismic experiment (the astronauts left some [del]earth[/del]moonquake measurement equipment behind), but I haven’t found anything authoritative. Anyway, there’s no doubt that none of the LEMs came back to Earth intact, nor would they have been expected to.
I suppose a very conspiracy-minded person could see something suspicious in the fact that those four modules were deliberately destroyed, rather than abandoned as the others were. As a guy, it seems natural to me that you might intentionally wreck something you were going to throw away anyway, just to see what happened.
Found my cite, after the edit window had closed, naturally. On the Apollo 10 Wikipedia page, of all places. The Apollo 14 LM ascent stage was crashed as part of seismic experiments. I suppose this could count as ‘blowing it up’.
Anything in low lunar orbit crashes into the moon reasonably quickly. Because there is no atmosphere you can orbit the moon at very low altitude, but the moon is not homogeneous, and variations in density make your orbit meander and less than stable. Eventually the orbit intersects the surface. No matter what, the ascent module was going to hit the surface some time after the mission. Using the little bit of fuel left, and remotely controlling the stage to deorbit in a known manner, allowed the scientists to calibrate the seismic sensors. I remember being quite sad about this, but drew some satisfaction about the Apollo 10 ascent stage sitting out there intact, somewhere where it can probably outlive all the Earth bound artefacts of the missions.
The inhomogeneities in density - termed masscons - were a real headache for the Apollo missions as they were of such strength that they upset the descent navigation enough that the Apollo 11 landing didn’t actually know where they had landed. A very neat change to the navigation mechanism - essentially tweaking the apparent position of the craft, in real time, in response to integrating the doppler shifts in radio frequency from the descending stage allowed pinpoint landings for Apollo 12 onwards.
It really is. The dude is into high woo and conspiracy nuttery to a heartbreaking degree. He’s got a Ph.D. in aeronautics from MIT and he walked on the moon. After he got back he started talking about alien conspiracy theories and was convinced that he had kidney cancer that was magically healed by a psychic.
