Exactly!!! What people don't realize is that everyone of our houses, cars, etc... can be seen from space..... with telescopic cameras!

It doesn't make my house somehow different from eveything else just because I can pull it up on google earth for god's sake!:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Claim: The Great Wall of China is the only man-made object visible from the moon.

Status: False.

Origins: The claim
I'm not gonna jump off. YOU jump off! that China's Great Wall is the only man-made object that can be seen from the moon with the naked eye is one of our more tenaciously incorrect "facts," a bit of erroneous speculation which was spawned decades before we had the means to demonstrate it true, and which continues to have currency despite having long since been proved false. Some less specific versions of the Great Wall claim maintain it is the only man-made object that can be seen from "space," but although the term "space" is rather non-specific, it is not difficult to show the Great Wall claim to be false for any reasonable definition of the term.

If we take "space" to mean a low Earth orbit such as the one travelled by the Space Shuttle (roughly 160 to 350 miles above Earth), the Great Wall claim fails twice. First of all, it's not the only object visible from that distance: NASA's Earth from Space photographic archive (particularly the Human Interactions section) shows that pictures taken from low orbit reveal human-built structures such as highways, airports, bridges, dams, and components of the Kennedy Space Center. Secondly, even though other objects are visible at this distance, according to Shuttle astronaut Jay Apt, the Great Wall is barely discernable, if not invisible:

We look for the Great Wall of China. Although we can see things as small as airport runways, the Great Wall seems to be made largely of materials that have the same color as the surrounding soil. Despite persistent stories that it can be seen from the moon, the Great Wall is almost invisible from only 180 miles up!

An object that can barely be seen from a height of 180 miles up is obviously not going to be visible from the moon (roughly 237,000 miles away), as confirmed by Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean:

The only thing you can see from the moon is a beautiful sphere, mostly white (clouds), some blue (ocean), patches of yellow (deserts), and every once in a while some green vegetation. No man-made object is visible on this scale. In fact, when first leaving earth's orbit and only a few thousand miles away, no man-made object is visible at that point either."

(The Great Wall of China can be discerned in radar images taken from space, but not in ordinary photographs.)

Where did this belief come from? The exact source is unknown, but the earliest citing we have comes from Richard Halliburton's Second Book of Marvels, the Orient, published in 1938, which states that "Astronomers say that the Great Wall is the only man-made thing on our planet visible to the human eye from the moon." Halliburton was an adventurer-lecturer whose travel writings were extremely popular and sold quite well during the first half of the twentieth century (and who wasn't above spinning tall tales in order to enthrall an audience), and if he himself wasn't the originator of this factoid, he undoubtedly helped it to spread widely.

Whatever its source, since the Great Wall claim antedates man's launching of satellites (and thereby the possibility of photography from space) by decades, it was not the outgrowth of a misinterpreted photograph taken by satellite or a manned space mission. The Great Wall of China extends for some 1,500 miles (although it is actually a series of walls rather than one contiguous wall), and the claim that it is visible from the moon was probably an attempt to find a concise way of conveying the grand scale of the wall to people who had never seen it (outside of black-and-white photographs that could only reproduce small portions of the wall) and of asserting the triumph of man's mastery of the vastness of nature (i.e., even if we couldn't travel into space ourselves, we'd already constructed a man-made object of such large scale that it would surely be visible all the way from from the moon).

ok... well you cant really see anything from space with your eyes, just water...

:uhoh Are you serious?

lol@the idiots who didn't believe

Of course it's big - office space for his cronies in the oil industry, what else?

why the hell do i even post pics?

Too easy to find out why !!

option 1 : Bush will open a franchise business, so every country he blow will have a whitehouse franchise.

Today iraq ... tomorrow iran :upsidedow


option 2 : it's a new factory facilities to build weapons of mass destruction, so iraq will finaly have weapons of mass destruction, no need to lie anymore !


Of course I am just kidding.

because your an expert at it, and you make me laugh :thumbsup

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

if you are surprised at the embassy in iraq being the biggest in the world then you truly have no idea what an embassy's primary function is.

That embassy construction has been underway for a couple of years now and most likely the next embassy to get blown off the face of the earth for obvious reasons.

Any country who thinks they need an embassy covering 104 acres clearly has a problem - tho it's not unusual for US embassies to be "compounds" rather than simply an embassy.

Ever compared US embassies to those of other countries? They are more like fortresses - that says it all. There is a serious problem with "relationships" - mainly because there are no "relationships".

I agree... To host the CIA secret operations, it does take a lot of space.
To store the equipment to create turmoil in the region is also space hungry...

And to torture people, you need more than a 10 x 10 room ....

What is the surprise ?? The Americans invaded a country while the whole world was watching .... ( literally ) ...

Do you think they are not building permanent military bases ... I presume you need links also .. :1orglaugh

Meanwhile, all YOUR calls are logged and analyzed... Back to the USSR ....


Freedom my ass ....

Thanks for the intelligent post, Webby!...didn't quite understand why everyone went off on a rant about seeing the fucking great wall from space...who gives a fuck..that wasn't the point! So everyone can eat my shorts...

listen you fucking retard.... i was not challenging anyones ideas. much less supporting bush or the US. my intent was a simple comment on the fact that embassies serve a purpose. its not to process visa applications. primarily, they exist for espionage and spy operations and support of those operations in that country and the region. diplomatic missions are the least of what they do. it shouldn't be surprising that when the US has the chance to plant the biggest piece of soveriegn US soil somewhere in a fucked up region, they do it.


it must fucking suck for you to be canadian, living in constant fear that your country is going to melt someday and dribble into north dakota

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Fucktard ???? LOL ... you just say the same as I did, except you butter it up with morals and valor ... still smells like shit because it is shit.


BTW, in Canada, we do not live in fear ... I think you need to catch up on your local news ....
Harper never says " fear ", "terror" , " spying ", "nukular " and so on...

We haven't threaten lately any countries , and have not invaded nobody ....

LOL ... you guys are so fucking fucked...

morals and valor? what the fuck are you talking about you dumb fucking lunatic? i simply pointed out that the primary function of most countries embassies are to support espionage operations in that country and the region. what does that have to do with morality or valor? it shouldn't surprise anyone that a country and governmet is doing what it believes to be in its own long term strategic interests.

you are so hung up on pointing out how fucked up everyone else is that you can't even see that you are nothing more than the other side of the same coin.

:2 cents:

if you really and truly thought your life was so great and wonderful, you would be busy enjoying it and you would not devote most of your time to attacking others.

That embassy is ridiculous.

Stop attacking ( hating ) AmeriKa ....

Amerika:

Stop hating (attacking) the world ...

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

The USA is certainly not going to be leaving IRAQ umm EVER! They will stay there with a big enough presence to make sure they can build a nice democratic (hopefully) balanced country.

They certainly didn't just blow half a trillian on that war to hand it over to the Iraq's and hope they don't go into cival war and another hardline dictator takes his place.

Thats not an embassy project, its Bush's palace being built for when he's run out of the USA.

Forced Democracy, the next big thing :thumbsup
:1orglaugh

It's just "GYF"! GFY gets it's panties in a twist sometimes :1orglaugh :thumbsup

Serious Matt - it that is either the intention or ends up thru other circumstances, - it's going to cause serious shit all round, - both to Iraq and the US.

The funding spent on the "war" so far will look like peanuts in relation to what will be actually spent on the end. The final result? Total disaster.

When the US inserts troops, historically they usually do not withdraw all troops. The US is building a permanent military base/bases as well as the embassy.

True true. Personally i'm more worried about Iran. If you read up on the hard line leader of IRAN he is a total nutjob who thinks he is on some special mission from mohammad to bring about some Shite prophecy. Basicly he is the type of person if he had a Nuke he might just nuke Isaral with it. Seriously! Watch the Middle east turn into a absolute nightmare over the coming 2 years. Israel (with US help) will bomb Iran's nuke program and it will cause a shit storm like we have never seen before.

Buying Crude Oil futures anyone? :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

so why not just save some $$ and convert one of Sadam's old palaces??
Or just wants to spend some good old US greenbacks??

Kuwaitis are working on that building...

It is called " payback "

Also, most of Saddam palaces were used by troops as camps ... between them and looters, there is not much left ... Same with the marvellous Suspended Gardens: most of it destroyed...

I was just about to post this :)

lol :1orglaugh

thats seriously scary :Oh crap

i wonder how many more people are going to get killed in iraq :( its fucking sad

You are all mistaken. It is not an embassy, it is a future wal mart.

Bingo! We have a Winner!!

And for the GFY conspiracy whackos look who's sitting next to him. :)

http://www.medaloffreedom.com/SamWal...orgeHWBush.jpg

Good idea! :thumbsup Mind if I jump the queue? :1orglaugh

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

probbly

bush was like "I'm building a building." I was like "Wayyyy to go"

seriously

Of course it wasn't the point, but you just looked like an idiot on several posts, again.. and it's getting on my nerves. So if you're wrong, and make stupid posts.. I can eat your shorts? That's logical.