Scientists for the [space program], you may have read, proved stories from the [Bible] they'd previously dismissed as [myth].

If you've seen the story, supposedly penned by one Harold Hill, president of the Curtis Engine Company in [Baltimore], MD, and a "consultant" in the space program, you may know the [gist]. (I'm sure it's a [Chick tract] too).

Essentially, scientists checking [orbit]s over the life of an artificial [satellite] -- hundreds or thousands of years, Hill says -- found a missing day years in the past.

They were stumped. Until, that is, a gentleman among them remembered [Joshua 10] and [2 Kings 20], and found various miracles that took a day out of the history of the world. The whole story is at [http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/joshuas_long_day_nasa_computers.htm], among many other places. But is it true?

Well, there really is a [NASA|space program]. And Baltimore. In fact, [Cecil Adams] says there's even a Curtis Engine Company¹ that was at the time in the presumably [capable hands] of Harold Hill², although he was not in any real sense a "[consultant]" at NASA.

The [resemblance]s to [reality] stop there, however. The story isn't true -- from one angle, [folklorist]s have traced the central concept back to the [19th century]; from another, the details of the story are simply impossible.

For one thing, NASA has no need to [calculate] orbits across the millennia. Satellites only last about 12 years, and few interact with much of the [cosmos] during that [timespan]. Even if these calculations were necessary, there's no need to determine the positions of any [celestial body|celestial bodies] in the [past] until we find a way to launch satellites in the past.

In fact, future positions of things are determined by applying [orbital speed] to their current positions. Past positions have nothing to do with it, and so events in the past are irrelevant.

Furthermore, despite references in the tale to "standards," there's no [frame of reference] against which a missing day would show up. Time is a human construct; there's no "universe [calendar]" with which there'd be a discrepancy if a day were missing.

The fundamental problem with the missing day story is that it's inappropriate. The Bible is not a scientific document, despite the insistence of some. Science doesn't address matters of [faith], and statements of faith shouldn't require scientific support. The trouble with applying science to religion is that scientific conclusions are subject to refutation. If I had become a believer on first hearing this story, learning that it's [apocryphal] would be a serious blow.

¹http://www.curtisengine.com/ -- the Web site says the company has "[no comment|no information]" about the story.
²Mr. Hill passed away sometime prior to June 1998.

Sources not mentioned in text:

http://imagine.[Goddard Space Flight Center|gsfc].nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970325g.html
http://www.[snopes].com/religion/lostday.htm
http://[alt.folklore.urban|tafkac].org/science/missing_day.html

The Missing Day