We Continue With Our 'UFO' Theme
Because, love though I do the television series, the comic and those wonderful Dinky kits, they do have plot, logistics and organisational holes that one could drive a fleet of Mobiles through. Don't complain, at least on the blog we're not focussing on trains or how to return from an orbital environment to Earth. Art!
PUT YOUR EYES BACK IN! This is Lieutenant Gay Ellis, who is one of the senior HER EYES ARE UP HERE members of UP HERE the staff working at Moonbase, the secret human base on the Moon, and those purple wigs are in fact anti-migraine devices (it says here). She and the near-exclusively female personnel of Moonbase help to keep Hom. Sap. free from alien attack. Thank you Ms. Ellis!
Let us now examine a bit of the background of 'UFO' the program itself, because there is little more enjoyable to Your Humble Scribe than going over plot holes with a travelling electron microscope. Art!
Hence today's title. 'S.H.A.D.O.' is the acronym for 'Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organisation', which is the ultra-secret organisation formed to combat the sinister predating alien invaders. So secret they have a title that gives them away and a neat emblem. There's a disconnect there somewhere. Perhaps they have an alternate acronym to explain away the real one? <Conrad begins to imagine* ->
Let us now look at Lieutenant Ellis's work environment - Moonbase. Art!
Thanks to the wag who added the Eagle!
You can see from the schematic above that Moonbase is a lot more sophisticated than a pressurised shed perched on the regolith. In fact you can get an impression of it's size by looking at the Eagle transport perched on the landing ramp; two of Hom. Sap. fit into the cockpit. Now compare that to the rest of the structure.
My point, which I am wending my way towards, is that Moonbase is an enormous structure, which will have taken an awfully long time to assemble, either in situ or by ferrying modular components from Earth. There will have been many trips by whatever spacecraft was used as a freighter, plus on-site accommodation for work crews.
Nobody noticed?
Yes yes yes, the global media might well have been suborned into silence by The Powers That Be, because being alive and free (and making money) is infinitely more preferable to being kind of dead.
HOWEVER! Art?
There are tens of thousands of amateur astronomers out there, with powerful telescopes. Moonbase is so large it will be visible to such astronomers with their telescopes, so how do you keep them all quiet?
That's quite beside the regular shuttle launches needed to keep Moonbase supplied and to rotate personnel. Conrad is making a wild assumption here, that there are the equivalent of 'trainspotters' for spaceship launches, who would patiently log all such events, because you might have an exclusion zone around whichever base they launch from, but such a launch would be visible from fifty miles away. Art!
Very not invisible
AHA! I just noticed an image that explains how the Moon module is launched. Art!
From a lifting body, which is a lot less dramatic than a VTOL launch, but which raises it's own concerns, because to lift a monster vehicle like the Moon shuttle requires a lot of power and a lot of runway, bringing back the visibility issues. At least they don't have the SHADO emblem proudly displayed.
That's not all about the Moon and SHADO - let us also refer to their anti-Ufo Interceptors. Art!
Here you see the underground bunkers that house the Interceptors, which is a very sensible security and protection measure - a spacecraft hidden under the lunar surface cannot be spotted by a nosy astronomer in his backyard, and they are robustly protected from any roving UFOs out to cause mischief.
However - twice in this Intro! - look at the volume of regolith that has been excavated to create those bunkers. You're talking thousands of tons being shifted here - and, again, nobody noticed? Conrad also rather thinks the three bunkers being next to each other is unwise and is most probably done for visual effect, since putting them at a safe distance from each would decrease risk.
Of course, I could be overthinking this .....
Darling Daughter Recommends
One of the more fruitful outcomes of a meeting with DD is that she updates Your Humble Scribe with whatever films she and Tom have been watching, and since her taste in films and television runs along the same lines as mine, these are worth making a note of. Thus -
I don't need to tell you it's a horror film, do I? Next!
Definitely a film about happy bunnies, fluffy lambs and gambolling kittens. Or not. Derelict asylums and hospitals have a peculiarly depressing presence, so much so we may have to do an item on them. Next!
Patently a film about the tattoo industry. How horrifying can that be? Unless you get squeamish at the sight of blood and needles <digs further> aha, an Australian film that was a howling success, making $92 million on a $4.5 million budget. Conrad guarantees that there will be a sequel with that box office. No, I shan't give the plot away. Next!
"Guess who's coming to dinner"? A homicidal maniac? Or the chair of the local Rotary Group? Hmmm which is more probable I wonder?
A Touch Of Domestic Harmony
We have reported on this matter a few times, as Conrad has occasion to travel via the Snake Pass to visit Richard in the bucolic shires of Sheffield. Now I have an excellent photograph to pair an item with. Art!
This is one of the dangerous stretches where the road drops to the Derwent Valley, where another stretch has become undercut and needs traffic controls thanks to now being one-way. Art!
A triumvirate of Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and Derbyshire councils have gotten together to undertake repair and enhancement of the Snake Pass. Hooray!
'On This Day'
Since I'm typing up this blog for 21st August on 20th August - O how diligent I am - this is actually what happened yesteryon in 1672. Art!
This is Dutch statesman Johan De Witt, who was allowed to jitterbug off this mortal coil on 20th August 1672 in Holland. He had been to visit his brother Cornelius in prison, whom had been experiencing all the splendour of an Early Modern prison, with free torture thrown in. When both left the prison they were set upon by a mob; tempers in Holland were running rather high as the country was at war with France, England and a couple of Teuton principalities, when being at war with any one of those would be a sickener.
'Lynched and partially eaten' said the 'On This Day' website, which gave Conrad pause.
Yes, it's true. The mob killed both men, then stripped them naked, and carved out their livers for a quick post-murder snack.
Thank heavens the Cloggies are rather more civilised nowadays!
Conrad Counsels Caution
I recall this story breaking several weeks ago, and was immediately sceptical. Art!
"During a raid on a Ukrainian command centre in Ochakiv, a town in southern Ukraine, Russian special forces allegedly captured two British colonels, Richard Carroll and Edward Blake, as well as an unidentified agent from MI6, the United Kingdom’s intelligence services."
The first clue that this was utter twaddle is that no 'main stream media' anywhere mentioned this. Secondly, the Ruffians would not dare boast about kidnapping and abducting foreign nationals; instead they would quietly dispose of them so nobody was any the wiser. Thirdly, the 'photograph' was very obviously AI-generated. The 'France 24' website reporting this disinformation tracked it's source back to Ruffian disinfo sites, peddling it to other Ruffian sites, from where it was picked up by fellow-travellers.
Very time-consuming. It took Your Modest Artisan all of 30 seconds Googling to find out neither 'British officer' existed.
Right, off to get a bit of melon and an espresso!
* Always a dangerous thing
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