There is so much going on between nations right now concerning Moon exploration, that I hardly know where to start. Maybe we should start with the fact that Ken Johnson, a person who was formally the head of the Data and Photo Control Department at NASA's Lunar Receiving Laboratory during the Apollo landings, has dropped a bombshell. He states that he was ordered, all those years ago, to destroy photos that were taken by the astronauts that show ruins on the moon. He secreted them away instead. The photos have been released and some of these photos have made it to the Internet. Some of the photos are also in a newly released book entitled, "Dark Mission", that prompted NASA to ask for Johnston's resignation. Johnson was abruptly fired by NASA this week. It is said that they are using the excuse that he criticized the agency. Johnson said he was entitled to free speech by law, but NASA didn't apparently see it that way. He goes on to state that the US recovered technology from the moon. Some have said that we have recovered weapons technology that is so powerful it could wipe out an entire civilization. I hope that this is not the case. It seems to me that if there are ruins on the moon and this technology did exist, then those who have occupied these ruins may have destroyed themselves with their own weapons. I would hate to see the human race go the same way. Johnson states that he saved all the photos he was supposed to have destroyed. I am told, but haven't received a copy of the book yet, that the photos in the book are not of the best quality, but quite frankly I can't wait to read the book. Mr Johnson will be interviewed by me in the near future.

It is now being said that NASA is really not what we thought it was all of these years. Supposedly it is really a military organization cloaked in a civilian agency. It does not have to answer even to the Congress of the United States and therefore, it is said, that it has been squirreling away many discoveries that it has made over all these years. The discoveries are not even known to the Congress or any of the civilian agencies of government. At least this is what I have been led to believe. There has also been allegations that NASA is disregarding the safety of shuttle launches, to get the shuttle program over with more quickly, so that they can move on to the new replacement vehicle and thus be closer to taking it to the moon.The last space shuttle launch this October, was said to have been done against the advice of many of the experts. This really makes one wonder why NASA would do this, if the last launch tragedy resulted from almost the same situation? Risking people's lives just to push a program forward is a pretty callous thing to do.

All of a sudden, United States has been making a lot of noise about setting up bases on the moon. For years not a peep ever came out about going back there and suddenly a couple of months ago, it became a top priority. Why was this? It is now being said that the US is running a bit scared. So what is causing us to feel this way? Well it turns out that many countries have announced their intention of landing on the moon. If indeed there is advanced technology on the moon, we probably don't want anybody else to happen upon it. It is quite simple really, we want it all for ourselves. China, Japan, India and even Russia have announced their intentions of going there. This is not the same world that existed in the 1960s. Today many other nations have the capability to actually land on the moon and return. Those that do not have this capability will still acquire it, as it becomes a lot more commonplace. All one has to do is look around and they will see that even the tiniest nations have giant jet airliners in their fleets. It is only a matter of time before everyone is traveling in space.

We have been partners with the Russians in quite a few space operations over the last few years. Even the escape rocket attached to the international space Station is a Russian rocket. We use Russian rocket engines in our own rockets, because they are a lot more efficient and less prone to breakdowns since they have 30% less parts. Knowing all this, do you think that we will partner with the Russians when we go back to the moon? They want us to. They announced yesterday that they are quite disappointed and that they have been told that we are going to do this on our own. They say that they are really taken back and don't understand this stance. Again could this boil down to the fact that there is something on the moon that we don't want them to know about? Wouldn't it be better to share whatever we find with all the peoples of the earth, rather than stow it away in some locker in a secret military warehouse somewhere, where it will be waiting to be turned into a weapon? We never seem to learn our lesson. How are we ever going to advance as a planet, unless we all get along much better than we have been? It is time that we started thinking about ourselves as citizens of the earth.

When Johnson was asked if he was afraid because he released the stories and pictures of what was on the moon, he replied, "I have nothing to lose. I have quarreled with NASA and I got fired." Regardless of what he says, I think it certainly took an inordinate amount of guts to do what he did. We certainly need more people like him. He couldn't have been the only one who knew what was going on. Why have no others stepped up to the plate. Loyalty is one thing, but when you are told to do something that is completely wrong, to deceive the public, you just have to draw the line. Orders are not always lawful. If we go back to the days of Vietnam, we will notice that some orders given to the military are unlawful and those that carried them out were punished. During the war Lieutenant Calley and his men were charged with murder, when they wiped out a good plot of a village known as My Lai. He had lined up about 500 women, children and the elderly and had his men shoot them down. While the order that was given at NASA to destroy the photos is certainly not in the same class as the order given to kill all those people, it is still just as wrong. Even aside from being morally wrong, it is such a shame to think that knowledge would be destroyed this way by bureaucrats looking to protect their discoveries.

All this has to make you wonder if any of the stories we have heard over the years about aliens being on the moon are actually true? Many of the astronauts that have landed on the moon have come out and said that they don't believe we are alone, we always assumed when we heard this that they were talking about having seen UFOs. They did photograph some UFOs and some of those photos are readily available on the Internet, but this may not have been what they were talking about at all. They may have been referring to ruins that they had seen while they were on the moon. This casts a whole different light on things. It has to make us wonder if there is still a race living there and if not, where did these ruins come from? Could it be that since the Earth is billions of years old and man is said to be only about one million years old, that beings have existed on the earth before and were more advanced than we are now? Could they have gone to the moon and built settlements there. Could it be that this was so long ago that the moon might even have had an atmosphere at the time? There are just so many questions and so few answers.

It looks to me that since we cannot halt the progress of space technology by other nations, we have to work together with them. After all, what do we gain by keeping technology that we find to ourselves, when they will just do the same thing when they discover something worth keeping? I really just don't get it. it is a shame to see a headline that states, "USA and Russia Cold War over the Moon". This is the exact headline that appeared in an edition of Pravda, a Russian newspaper..Let's all get back to the moon and explore what is up there. It is just so important to the history of mankind. The people have a right to know what is going on. Why should discoveries made off world always be classified as top secret? I don't know about the rest of you, but I can't wait to see what more will come out on this.