Obituary, Ralph Rene, Author of NASA MOONED AMERICA

Dear Friends,

The PO Box today was loaded with mail since I hadn’t had a chance to check it over the holidays. There were about probably thirty pieces of mail.

As I went through it a lonely white post card caught my attention. It was a typewritten note on an index card addressed to me personally from Ralph Rene, author of the 1992 classic self published tract, NASA MOONED AMERICA, as well as "World Trade Center Lies and Fairytales" and other alternative theoretical tracts. I had interviewed Ralph for Paranoia in 1994 and we used to talk on the phone frequently back in the day. I also received several letters from him in the last few years; when he was onto something new he would send it to me or he would comment on something he saw in Paranoia.

My heart sank as I read the postcard twice to confirm that I was indeed reading a suicide note mailed from Scottsburg, Indiana and post stamped on December 17. The card read as follows:

“On _________ (on the line handprinted in black ink the date 12-10-08) I exercised my option to walk away from the loneliness of the past few years and 34 years of continuous pain. The final straw was when my doctors sent me for a pre-operation stress test mandated by their mal-practice insurers. It was a test that an Olympic athlete with a sprained ankle couldn’t pass, let alone a man on a walker. This took away my last chance for hip joint surgery. What they didn’t factor in was that I was a survivor.

I always did my best for my friends, my fans and the world in general, sometimes with detriment to myself!

Good-by,

René”


As you can see, the note is confusing. René, as he always called himself, claims he’s a survivor. What did he mean? Also the card was mailed on the 17th but he had filled in the blank on the 10th!

So I did an internet search and found the following video. Ralph Rene indeed did commit suicide on December 10, 2008. I presume he had several of these cards written out to friends and someone mailed them out afterward. I don’t know any of the details surrounding this at this time.




Rest in peace weary traveler. Thank you for your dedication and commitment at all times to what you felt strongly was the truth.

Ralph was an early proponent of the Apollo moon landing hoax theory and got a lot of press on this subject. Ralph’s research and scientific arguments for the moon landing hoax were quite convincing. I always had a hard time reconciling the work of Richard Hoagland and Michael Bara with the work of Ralph Rene. His reasons for believing Apollo never landed on the moon are as follows:

• Astronauts (whom he called “Astro-nots”) could not have survived the radiation that they would have been exposed to while passing through the Van Allen radiation belt.
• Photos taken on the moon do not show stars in the background.
• He pointed out the letter "C" on a rock in a photo insisting it was a Hollywood prop rock.
• The gloves on the Apollo space suits would have expanded in the vacuum of space to the point where they would be immobile.

More of Ralph Rene's Space Oddities:

· A camera panned upwards to catch Apollo 16's Lunar Lander lifting off the Moon. Who did the filming?

· One NASA picture from Apollo 11 is looking up at Neil Armstrong about to take his giant step for mankind. The photographer must have been lying on the planet surface. If Armstrong was the first man on the Moon, then who took the shot?

· The pressure inside a space suit was greater than inside a football. The astronauts should have been puffed out like the Michelin Man, but were seen freely bending their joints.

· The Moon landings took place during the Cold War. Why didn't America make a signal on the Moon that could be seen from Earth? The PR would have been phenomenal and it could have been easily done with magnesium flares.

· Text from pictures show only two men walked on the Moon during the Apollo 12 mission. Yet the astronaut reflected in the visor has no camera. Who took the shot?

· The flags shadow goes behind the rock so doesn't match the dark line in the foreground, which looks like a line cord. So the shadow to the lower right of the spaceman must be the flag. Where is his shadow? And why is the flag fluttering?

· How can the flag be brightly lit when its not facing any light?

· And where, in all of these shots, are the stars?

· The Lander weighed 17 tons yet the astronaut's feet seem to have made a bigger dent in the dust.


And so many more questions posed by a man who ran out of time.

For more about Rene, read these links or just do a search of his name to locate his prolific work, interviews, documentaries and such:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Rene

http://science.krishna.org/Articles/2000/12/00227.html


There are a bunch of youtubes about Rene’s work here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/greenmagoos


I’ll try to write more later after I process this.

If anyone knows anything else, please let me know here.

Joan d'Arc

P.S. I have been contacted by Jarrah White, who has done several video projects based on Rene's work (posted on youtube). He has explained to me that Rene got into a car accident on December 8, and the van he was riding in rolled over. Ralph was hurt but was sent home from the hospital in one day, of course, to fend for himself because America only bails out the rich. After this he was in significantly more pain than he had been previously. In short, he went home and wrote the post cards and then wrote one note to a friend asking that friend to mail the cards.

The good news is, as Jarrah tells me, Rene had no idea just how many friends he has. There will be a service for him in New Jersey in June and hundreds of people will be attending. I will post information on that when I have it in the coming months.