You don’t know what marxism is. You don’t know what fascism is. You think taxation is evil, but don’t know what it is either. There’s a running theme here, have you spotted it? (Hint: the theme is that you don’t fucking know anything)

If you hate America so much, why don’t you leave it?

It’s just another Rob Hood sockpuppet; someone forgot to give him his meds earlier, so he is haunting Greg’s blog with his usual conspiracy freakshow. You can see more of his work on other recent posts here.

Once you are familiar with his shtick, he’s not hard to sniff out: Watch – his next post will mention ‘flouride’ and Canadians again.

*Freaks in this instance includes:
Conspiracy theorists, paranormal investigators, general insane morons, conservatives/fascists, people with massive hero AND martyr complexes, and people who believe in magic. You seem to fall into all of those categories.

Yes, the lens covers were indeed meant to fall off. They’re not actually fragments, though. That’s the complete cover that you see in each image. There were two on each spacecraft; the reason why Mr Ksanfomaliti thinks it appears to have moved is because he sees it on two images taken in different directions. Of course, the Veneras didn’t have any ability to turn their heads around; there were two fixed cameras, so obviously the second image is taken by a second camera which would have its own cover.

Check out this fantastic link for the surface images:
http://www.mentallandscape.com/C_CatalogVenus.htm

Amusing factoid: on Venera 14, one of the two camera port covers unfortunately landed right where the spring-loaded sensor arm was destined to land. Consequently, although previous missions had returned useful information about the surface composition of Venus, Venera 14 diligently returned data on the port cover. On that page, if you scroll down to the Venera 14 images, you can see this in the Camera 1 images.

Problems with the idea:
1) If Phobos-Grunt can’t withstand passing through American radar, it’s never going to survive the cruise to Mars either.

2) It’s doubtful *any* American radar can disrupt even an incompetently designed spacecraft.

3) The spacecraft went nowhere near HAARP in Alaska, and the radar facility at Kwajalein Atoll (which the director of Roscosmos mentioned at one point) was inactive during the time that Phobos-Grunt failed.

As far as physically shooting it down, that’s patently absurd. There were two “debris shedding events” while the spacecraft was in orbit, but they were pretty minor. The spacecraft was even photographed by uber-astrophotographer Thierry Legault; it appeared completely intact, but backwards. Honestly, all signs point to a technical fault.

If you read up on the other two probes sent to Phobos, back in the 80s, Phobos 1 and Phobos 2, those really aren’t mysteries either, and are widely believed to have been computer malfunctions. (That’s right, Russia has sent 3 probes to Phobos, not 30.)