[rerevisionist]

Jodrell Bank and Bernard Lovell; and Americans, Russians, and Jews Bernard Lovell: Useful Idiot? Crypto-Jew? Dupe? Genuine Scientist? Shrewd Personal Fraudster?

Interesting questions, spurred by a recent announcement that Jodrell Bank (yes, it's still there) is hosting a 'moon-lander' fraud in March 2015.

Bit of background:   Bernard Lovell 1913-2012.
Physics degree of some sort from Bristol University.
1937: joined Prof. Blackett's research team at Manchester.
1939: (Lovell then 25). First book Science and Civilization, No 63 in a series called 'Discussion Books' published by Thomas Nelson. Mostly by obscure authors, Bernard Lovell, Barbara Ward, R B Cattell, Philip Leon [Plato] are there. Gordon East, LSE lecturer, 'The Geography Behind History' is a 1938 title.
1940s:

A key influence was Patrick Blackett, a distinguished physicist with a background of commitment to socialist and humanitarian causes. Wilson had met Blackett in the late 1940s. Thereafter, according to the astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell, the 'Blackett-Wilson relationship' flourished. [Blackett: A Biographical Memoir, Royal Society, 1976] In the 1950s Blackett joined a group which met regularly at the Reform Club to discuss the formation of a 'scientific and technological policy' for the nation, and for Labour in particular. .. included.. Bernal, Bowden, C P Snow, Florey, Wynne-Jones, Lockspeiser, B R Williams, C F Carter, Peart, Bronowski, D M Newitt and Ritchie-Calder... Leading Labour front-benchers—Gaitskell, Callaghan, Robens—sometimes came to meetings. None however took as much interest as Wilson, who began to deputize for Gaitskell, and became a regular attender. Blackett's relations with Gaitskell were strained, partly because the defence establishment regarded the physicist as virtually a fellow-traveller.
    [Endnote says: Sir John Slessor to George Brown 17.5.63 in 'George-Brown papers', urging against appointment of Blackett as Scientific Adviser at the Ministry of Defence, upon the ground.. disastrous effect on Anglo-American defence policy relations, undermining scientific cooperation with the US in the defence field.' (Impossible to tell Slessor's exact wording)]
    He got on much better with Wilson.. delighted with the outcome of the Leadership contest..
    It was a mark of Wilson's seriousness.. that he gave Crossman, who might have expected something better [sic], the science portfolio. .. [Wilson said] it was now a major job, linked to 'advanced socialist planning'. .. Crossman's .. team included Judith Hart.. throughout the summer she toured campuses.. 'University people were very co-operative and on our side. That was the background of Harold's 1963 Scarborough speech.'
    .. Blackett set about creating .. sub-groups.. including the Provost of King's, Noel Annan, the physicist Vivian Bowden and the scientific publisher.. Robert Maxwell. .. Wilson absorbed the doctrine .. 'that you can get sensational results from Government assistance in private sectors of science, through the N R D C ['National Research and Development Corporation] and developing contracts'. [Endnotes add that Blackett 'also advised Crossman on defence and disarmament issues' (to what extent, characteristically, isn't revealed) and Lovell is the source for the statement about sensational results.] [Ben Pimlott, Harold Wilson 1992]

1946: Lovell set up equipment to broadcast and receive radio waves; radar, in fact. Reported to have detected meteors (which of course are usually small). University of Manchester made him Professor of Radio Astronomy in 1951.
1948-1957:

When Bernard Lovell first proposed building the telescope in Jodrell Bank in 1948, he estimated that it would cost around £60,000 to build. After work began in 1950, it was soon clear that these figures were wildly optimistic; and, in 1952, a more “realistic” sum of £333,000 was agreed on, to be shared equally between the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and the Nuffield Foundation. The telescope ultimately cost £670,000 as the building work was plagued by strikes, bureaucratic delays, delivery failures and escalating raw material costs. Lovell faced possible imprisonment for the alleged overspending of public money.
...
Lovell’s 250-ft-diameter device proved its worth as the only telescope in the western hemisphere capable of tracking it [Sputnik 1]. [Website called Anatomy Liver]

1957: New large radio telescope completed (250 foot dish; I think with plane reflectors, not parabolic. At the time, the world's biggest).

Lovell frankly admitted that it was mainly the prospect of using the new radio telescope to track the first Sputnik, scheduled for launch by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, that spurred his efforts to complete the instrument by that time. By supplying a much-needed boost to the prestige of the project at a time when it was being seriously threatened by rapidly rising costs, this application of the instrument guaranteed its success and Lovell’s personal fame. Ever since, the giant radio telescope at Jodrell Bank has been a vital tool for pinpointing the exact locations of Earth satellites, space probes, and manned spaceflights, as well as for collecting data transmitted by instruments in some of these vehicles. [Encyclopaedia Britannica]

1958: NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) founded by Eisenhower ('Swedish Jew' war criminal remember).
1959: BBC Reith lectures on BBC radio, by Lovell: The Individual and the Universe
1959-1963: Reports of deaths of would-be astronauts proliferate, mostly of Russians. There were Senate Committee hearings. Then there were reports of US 'astronaut' deaths, not investigated officially.
1963:

... when he was taken on an unexpected tour of the Soviets' new radio-telescope and space-tracking facility in the Crimea, which he was deeply impressed by. On his return to Moscow, Lovell was quizzed on his plans to build a larger telescope at Jodrell Bank, which at the time was the only telescope facility capable of tracking Soviet nuclear-tipped rockets. The Soviets made it clear that if Lovell remained in the USSR and built the facility there, they would give him the money. [Institute of Physics website. Note that Lovell's diary notes in the USSR are online, in typed format; presumably correctly transcribed.]

1967: Pulsars discovered. Such is my scepticism I wouldn't be at all surprised if this was a PR stunt.
Nov 1968: Bernard Lovell said the project to travel round the moon was wasteful and silly, and dangerous. But, inconsistently, he went on to say the Russians were far ahead of the Americans and on the verge of achieving magnificent space feats. Even after Apollo 8 flight he said "My guess is that the Americans will be looking rather like small fry by the middle 1970s." Lovell also said the supposed 'rainbow bomb' didn't work properly (in e.g. Nukes in Space DVD).
1975? Lecture at Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. He said (my notes)

(i) The impact of science on art was 'disastrous'—he is a church organist; (ii) Banal views on science education: favoured teaching such things as Ohm's Law, and the Nuffield science syllabus; but he did not seek an overview of science: "Learn science? Might just as well want to 'learn art'!" (iii) Expressed surprise, and regret, that girls were still 'discriminated against' in science education; (iv) Commented on the tiny percentage of persons he thought qualified to become Jodrell Bankers, but this didn't disappoint him—maybe adaptation to prevent abuse of science through nuclear means etc was occurring.

c. 1988: An 'astrologer' called Parker on a London radio show said Sir Bernard Lovell told him that he'd discovered he could water divine, but he couldn't tell that to his scientific colleagues.
c. 1998 Jodrell Bank has been used in conjunction with the Arecibo radio telescope as part of Project Phoenix, searching for extra-terrestrial radio sources.

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COMMENTARY

This of course is a tiny subset of what might be said. It's hard to guess whether Lovell had any idea of the truth of NASA or 'nuclear bombs'. It seems unlikely; and yet he *might* have been part of a long-term plan. The fact he wrote a book at 25 (what did he know about civilisation, or for that matter science?) suggests an eye for publicity. The rather feeble justification for the telescope—meteors had already been known to be detected by radar—plus the careful timing of 1957 suggests the equipment was built as part of the 'Cold War' hoax. Note that it was claimed to be the only telescope capable of detecting Sputnik's beeps—suggesting the possibility that the Sputnik enterprise was faked. For one thing, the telescope was supposedly liable to interference from mobile phones, when these had been invented; so it might have been fed a fake signal, just as 'pulsars' might have been faked.
    Lovell's 1963 ventures to the USSR and Crimea are also troubling. His notes express surprise that cables seemed to be buried; suggesting he was duped with something like a stage set. Incidentally, he doesn't express surprise that the equipment was, presumably, copied from the west, probably via so-called Jews. He May have been an idealist of sorts: told that the west was capitalist, and the USSR not, he might, if ignorant of Jewish roles, have tended to favour the USSR. Indeed, predictions that the USSR would soon outstrip the USA were common throughout the period after 1917, the Jewish coup against Russia.
&nbso;   The same puzzles and possibilities surround Blackett and Slessor: Blackett may have been a Jew or crypto-Jew; but he may have been a genuine humanitarian, who of course would have to be headed off by Jews. Maybe Slessor had that role?
    Lovell sounds rather like Patrick Moore to me, gullible and naive, but pleased to be offered fame and fortune, and not scrupulous how this was retained. Lovell liked playing church organs and playing cricket; who knows that he may have been a Christian. Anyway: RIP, if you deserve it, Sir Bernard.