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Moon landing conspiracy theories

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The Apollo moon landing hoax accusations allege that the Apollo Moon Landings were faked by NASA. Nearly all interested scientists, technicians and space enthusiasts have rejected the accusations as baseless.

One of the earthrise photos. The Flat Earth Society used these photos as evidence of a faked landing, since they show a spherical earth.
File:GPN-2002-000032.jpg
Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong in NASA's training mockup of the moon and lander module. Hoax proponents believe the entire mission was filmed on sets like this one.

Origins of the accusations

Hoax proponents argue that the Moon landings of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969 and subsequent missions never happened, but were instead staged and filmed on Earth. Several public media reports and artworks are believed to have helped to fuel the growth of the hoax accusations:

In 1967, British playwright Desmond Lowden wrote a play called The News-Benders, in which all major technological advances since 1945 were shown to have been simulated; the play was (ironically) televised in January 1968 and showed a Moon landing faked with models.

In early 1969, the now-defunct Flat Earth Society challenged the veracity of the Apollo missions (Schadewald 1980) (also see the external link to the Flat Earth Society). They were convinced that the various "earthrise" photos from Apollo 8, with the Moon in the foreground and the spherical Earth in the background, were fakes. The primary basis of their claim was that it did not square with their belief that the Earth is flat (Newsweek, January 13, 1969).

In 1971, there was a brief sequence in the James Bond movie Diamonds Are Forever which appeared to show a Moon landing being simulated.

In 1974, two years after the final Apollo mission was completed, the first published attempt to establish the hoax arguments was Bill Kaysing's self-published book We Never Went to the Moon (Plait 2002:157), although perhaps the best known is NASA Mooned America by Ralph Rene.

In 1978, the film Capricorn One was released. Its story portrayed a NASA attempt to fake a landing on Mars. It is generally believed that skepticism of the Apollo program grew the most significantly in popularity as a result of that movie. However, in Capricorn One, the need for the fake arises out of complications affecting a genuine mission, rather than existing as a fabrication from the very beginning.

In his 1994 book A Man on the Moon Andrew Chaikin says that at the time of Apollo 8's lunar orbit mission in December 1968, such conspiratorial stories were in circulation.

President Clinton in his 2004 autobiography, My Life, states (on page 156): "Just a month before, Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong had left their colleague, Michael Collins, aboard spaceship Columbia and walked on the moon, beating by five months President Kennedy's goal of putting a man on the moon before the decade was out. The old carpenter asked me if I really believed it happened. I said sure, I saw it on television. He disagreed; he said that he didn't believe it for a minute, that "them television fellers" could make things look real that weren't. Back then, I thought he was a crank. During my eight years in Washington, I saw some things on TV that made me wonder if he wasn't ahead of his time."

Conspiracy theory

The hoax accusations are a type of conspiracy theory, because the hoax argument centers on suggestions that conspirators in the possession of secret knowledge are misleading the public in pursuit of a hidden agenda (Barkun, 2003).

Especially notable is the extent to which the conspiracy theory is elaborated to dismiss new evidence. Typically, any rebuttal is cited as further evidence of the conspiracy. For more on this, see the motives section below.

Motives

Several motives have been put forward by hoax proponents for the U.S. government to fake the Moon landings - some recurrent elements are:

  1. Distraction - The U.S. government sought to distract the public from the Vietnam War. Conspiracy theorists argue that lunar activities stopped abruptly, with planned missions cancelled, around the same time that the U.S. ceased its involvement in the Vietnam War, although that assertion is not chronologically correct.
  2. Cold War Prestige - The U.S. government considered it vital that the U.S. win the space race with the USSR - until Apollo, they were losing badly, with the Soviets claiming the first man-made satellite in earth orbit, the first man in space, the first man to orbit the earth, the first woman in space, the first crew of three astronauts onboard one spacecraft, the first space walk and the first to have two spacecrafts orbiting simultaneously. Going to the Moon, if it was possible, would have been risky and expensive. They argue that despite close monitoring by the Soviet Union, it would have been easier for the US to fake it and consequently guarantee success, than to actually go.
  3. Money - NASA raised approximately 30 billion dollars going to the moon. This could have been used to pay off a large number of people, providing significant motivation for complicity.
  4. Risk - The available technology at the time was such that the landing might fail if genuinely attempted.

Characteristics of the accusations and scientific rebuttal

Scientists such as Phil Plait observe that "pseudoscientists ignore ... holes in their logic, and instead focus on small, niggling pieces that the debunker may not be familiar with." By getting scientists bogged down in technical details such as why stars aren't visible or how a retrorocket landing might work, they overwhelm the non-technically trained audience into doubts, while distracting from larger issues like how to get tens of thousands of educated people in countries that were (at times) near war with each other to all keep silent for 40 years. Bart Sibrel responds to this by pointing out a common tactic of NASA proponents, to take a claim that hoax proponents do not make (for example that there are tens of thousands of conspirators), and then 'debunk' it.

Hoax proponent, Bart Sibrel states in his book that "It is not difficult to make up a plausible-sounding argument to refute almost any claim. However, we have yet to see any such argument that does not fail under critical examination." In response Phil Plait notes that hoax proponents such as Sibrel continue to spread such arguments as 'stars in photos', despite being unable to respond to rebuttals to them as described below. Plait reports that when pressed in debates or face-to-face contact, the conspiracy theorists misdirect and change the subject.

Public opinion

While not asking about whether the landings were faked specifically, soon after the missions Knight Newspapers (later to become Knight-Ridder) found that more than 30 percent of respondents to their poll were suspicious of NASA's trips to the moon.

According to a 1999 Gallup poll, about 6% of the population of the United States has doubts that the Apollo astronauts walked on the Moon. (Plait 2002:156) "Although, if taken literally, 6% translates into millions of individuals," Gallup said of this, "it is not unusual to find about that many people in the typical poll agreeing with almost any question that is asked of them; so the best interpretation is that this particular conspiracy theory is not widespread." By comparison, in a 2001 Gallup poll 45% of Americans concurred with the statement that "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years", and in a 2003 ABC poll, some 70% of Americans suspect some form of conspiracy surrounding the John F. Kennedy assassination.

Fox television's 2001 TV special "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Really Land on the Moon?", airing to 15 million viewers may have given a boost to the theory, despite the allegation of many errors of fact and presentation in the program by the website called "Who mourns for Apollo?" . Fox claimed roughly 20% of the public had doubts about the authenticity of the Apollo program after the show.

James Oberg, a vocal NASA proponent, estimates that "perhaps 10 percent of the population, and up to twice as large in specific demographic groups" .

Hoax believers' arguments

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 A brief treatment of some of the evidence hoax believers' count as proof that there were no manned lunar missions is given below. For more detail and discussion see the external links.

Photographs and films

Critics have alleged various issues with photographs and films apparently taken on the Moon.

Challenges and responses

1. Issues with crosshairs (fiducials) that were etched onto the lenses of the cameras.

a) In some photos, the crosshairs appear to be behind objects, rather than in front of them where they should be, as if the photos were altered.
  • In photography, the light white color (the object behind the crosshair) makes the black object (the crosshair) invisible due to saturation effects in the film emulsion. The film particles that ought to have been black were exposed by light from the adjacent brightly lit particles. Ironically, this saturation effect would not happen if the crosshairs were drawn on in post, and so is evidence of genuine photos. Attempting to alter photos that already have crosshairs would make the compositing process far more difficult.
The 'classic' Aldrin photo, with reticles not centered.
b) In the 'classic' Aldrin photo, the reticle (etched cross-hair on the camera) is too low. Since the cross hairs are in a fixed position on all the images, a lower reticle on this image indicates that the image has been cropped. This is so even on the 70mm duplicate transparency NASA issues. The 70mm transparencies should show the entire 'full' image. Hoax proponents believe that the only explanation for this is if the original full transparency needed to be cropped because of an embarrasing artifact like a piece of stage scenery were in shot.
  • The actual photo AS11-40-5903 or AS11-40-5903 high resolution is chopped off just above Aldrin. Duplicate transparancies are not necessarily exact copies of the original. The publically-released version of the photo was cropped and recomposed by NASA within hours of the film being made available, with extra black space was added at the top of most released versions for aesthetic reasons. This webpage has NASA's history of the photo.
c) In other photos, the reticles are not in a straight line, or appear in the 'wrong' place, indicating that the photo has been doctored.
  • The debunking website, Clavius.org explains that the methodologies that the conspiracy theorists propose for doctoring the photos with "wrong" reticles are often contradictory and generally require absurd lengths to explain the "inconsistencies" when there are reasonable explanations. In particular, prints were often cropped and rotated which cause the illusion of reticles occurring off-center or "not straight".

2. The quality of the photographs is implausibly high.

  • The astronauts were trained in the use of their gear, and shots and poses were planned in advance as part of the mission. NASA selected only the best photographs for release to the public, and some of the photos were cropped to improve their composition. There are many badly exposed, badly focused and poorly composed images amongst the thousands of photos that were taken by the Apollo Astronauts. Many can be seen at the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. Photos were taken on high-quality Hasselblad cameras with Zeiss lenses, using 70 mm medium format film.

3. There are no stars in any of the photos, and astronauts never report seeing any stars from the capsule windows. Yuri Gagarin commented that the stars were astonishingly brilliant (see the external link below), and some NASA photos do show stars. The stars in the photos may have been removed, because professional astronomers would be able to use them to prove (through parallax measurements) that the photos were not taken from the moon. (See, for instance, the photos above.)

No stars visible observing The Moon and Mir from the Space Shuttle Discovery
File:Atlantis Docked to Mir.jpg
Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with Mir, no stars visible from the Soyuz spacecraft
Zarya from the Space Shuttle, no stars visible.
  • Stars are also never seen in Space Shuttle, Mir, International Space Station Earth observation photos, or even sporting events that take place at night. The sun in the Earth/Moon area shines as brightly as on a clear noon day on Earth, so cameras used for imaging these things are set for daylight exposure, with quick shutter speeds in order to prevent overexposing the film. The dim light of the stars simply does not have a chance to expose the film. (This effect can be demonstrated on Earth by attempting to view stars from a brightly lit parking lot. You can only see them if you somehow block out all illuminated objects from your field of view, and then let your eyes adjust for night vision. Otherwise, it is like taking a picture of the night sky with exposure settings for a bright sunny day. Science fiction movies and television shows do confuse this issue by depicting stars as visible in space under all lighting conditions.) Stars were seen by every Apollo mission crew except for the unfortunate Apollo 13 (they couldn't see the stars due to the fact that oxygen and water vapor created a haze around the spacecraft). Stars were used for navigation purposes and were occasionally also seen through cabin windows when the conditions allowed. To see stars, nothing lit by sunlight could be in the viewers field of view.(Plait 2002:158-60).
  • Stars are not dramatically brighter in space (above the Earth's atmosphere). Professional astronomer and two-time space shuttle astronaut Ronald A. Parise stated that he could barely see stars at all from space. He had to turn out all of the lights in the shuttle to even glimpse the stars (Plait 2002:160).
  • The distance from the Earth to the Moon is very small compared to the distance to the stars, so no parallax effect would have been observable. (The nearest star, Alpha Centauri, is over 100,000,000 times farther away than the Moon, and most stars are much farther away than that.)

4. The color and angle of shadows and light are inconsistent.

  • Shadows on the Moon are complicated because there are several light sources; the Sun, Earth and the Moon itself. Light from these sources is scattered by lunar dust in many different directions, including into shadows. Additionally, the Moon's surface is not flat and shadows falling into craters and hills appear longer, shorter and distorted from the simple expectations of the hoax believers. More significantly, perspective effects come into play, particularly on rough or angled ground. This leads to non-parallel shadows even on objects which are extremely close to each other, and can be observed easily on Earth wherever fences or trees are found. And finally, the camera in use was fitted with a wide angle lens, which naturally resulted in subtle versions of "fish eye" distortion. (Plait 2002:167-72).

5. Identical backgrounds in photos are listed as taken miles apart.

  • Detailed comparison of the backgrounds claimed to be identical in fact show significant changes in the relative positions of the hills that are consistent with the claimed locations that the images were taken from. Parallax effects clearly demonstrate that the images were taken from widely different locations around the landing sites. Claims that the appearance of the background is identical while the foreground changes (for example, from a boulder strewn crater to the Lunar Module) are trivially explained when the images were taken from nearby locations, akin to seeing distant mountains appearing the same on Earth from locations that are hundreds of feet apart showing different foreground items. Furthermore, as there is no atmosphere on the Moon, very distant objects will appear clearer and closer to the human eye. What appears as nearby hills in some photographs, are actually mountains several kilometers high and some 10-20 kilometers away. Changes in such very distant backgrounds are quite subtle, and can be mistaken for no change at all. As the Moon is also much smaller than the Earth, the horizon is significantly nearer in photographs than Earthbound observers are used to seeing (an eye 1.7 m above completely flat ground will see the horizon 4.7 km away on Earth, but only 2.4 km away on the Moon). This can lead to confusing interpretations of the images.

6. The number of photographs taken is implausibly high. When the total number of official photographs taken during EVA of all Apollo missions is divided by the total amount of time of all EVAs, one arrives at 1.19 photos per minute. That is one photo per 50 seconds. Discounting time spent on other activities results in one photo per 15 seconds for Apollo 11. This is even more remarkable considering that many locations in the photographs are situated miles apart and would have taken considerable travel time, especially in bulky pressure suits. On top of this, the cameras were neither equipped with a viewfinder nor with automatic exposure, which means that taking good pictures would take considerably longer.

  • The astronauts were well trained before the mission in the use of photographic equipment. Since there were no weather effects to contend with and the bright sunlight scenes permitted the use of small apertures with consequent large depth of field, the equipment was generally kept at a single setting for the duration of the mission. All that was required of the astronauts was to open the shutter and wind the film to take a picture. In these conditions it is possible to take two photographs a second. The camera was in a bracket mounted on the front of their spacesuit, so they looked straight ahead at what they wanted to photograph; no viewfinder was needed. Also, many of the photographs were stereoscopic pairs or sets of panoramic images, taken immediately after each other. The Apollo Image Atlas (external link below) shows that 70mm magazine S of Apollo 11 has 122 photos taken during the walk on the surface - less than one per minute. In addition, by looking at the photographs in sequence, one can see that very often several of them were taken in rapid succession.

7. The photos contain artifacts like the two seemingly matching 'C's on a rock and on the ground (the rock is seen in NASA photos AS16-107-17445 and 17446). They could be "prop continuity markers". Hoax proponents argue that the first copies of the photos released do show these marks, and that later releases may have been doctored, and that attempts to debunk this problem focus exclusively on one example on the rock, ignoring the second on the ground and the coincidence of two, allegedly identical artifacts on the same photo.

8. A resident of Perth, Australia, pseudonymed Una Ronald, claims to have seen a Coke bottle in the frame which was edited out of later versions, and claims that many articles appeared discussing this in The West Australian newspaper at the time. Western Australia was the only place in the world that got their feed 'live' without delay.

  • No such newspaper reports can be verified. Una Ronald's true identity has been kept secret, and her claims have only been relayed by one source. Analysis shows that what she probably saw was in fact an optical artifact caused by a reflection inside the camera lens. Its motion precisely mirrors Aldrin's in the shot. (see Coke Bottle and Una Ronald) It should be noted that the resolution of the video transmissions from the moon were far below that of ordinary television, and were converted to standard video by pointing a camera at a video screen, similar to the old kinescope method of recording live TV shows -- a process vulnerable to added reflections at the conversion site. Inverted ghost images of Aldrin appear throughout the video.

9. The 1994 British hardback version of Moon Shot by Alan Shepard and Deke Slayton contains a photograph of Shepard playing golf on the moon with another astronaut. The picture is an obvious fake, there being no one else to take the shot of the two, and the artwork was poor (such as the grapefruit sized "golf ball"), and yet it was presented as if it were a real photo.

File:A14golf.jpg
The photo mockup
TV image of the same scene
  • The picture is a mockup made from several individual shots from the Hasselblad cameras (which had already been stowed at that point), and does not appear in the 1995 UK paperback version, although at no point is its nature mentioned in the book. It was used in lieu of the only existing real images, from the TV monitor, which the editors of the book apparently felt were too grainy to present in a book's picture section.
  • The Lunar Module and its shadow come from a left/right reversal of AS14-66-9276. The astronaut on the right is a left/right reversal from AS14-66-9240, the TV camera has been removed. The astronaut on the left is a left/right reversal of AS14-66-9241, again with the TV camera removed. The flag is from AS14-66-9232 or one of the similar photos. Some of the equipment came from a photo similar to AS14-67-9361. The golf club, ball, and some shadows have been added. See this webpage for the dialog and discussion of the activity that the faked photo depicts.

Shepard duffed the first ball and hit the second one fairly cleanly. Houston said something to Shepard about slicing the ball to the right, yet a slice is caused by uneven airflow on the ball. This is impossible without an atmosphere.

  • Shepard also stated that the ball went "miles and miles" (off-camera of the TV broadcast), which was clearly a joke, like the comment about the slice. Shepard later said, "I thought, with the same clubhead speed, the ball's going to go at least six times as far. There's absolutely no drag, so if you do happen to spin it, it won't slice or hook 'cause there's no atmosphere to make it turn." A slice comes from hitting the ball off the outer end of the clubhead, vs. hitting it square in the middle of the clubhead, vs. hooking it, which is hitting it off the inner end of the clubhead. Shepard did, in effect, "slice" the ball at first, and as he notes, being in the virtually non-existent lunar atmosphere, the ball did not curve laterally as an earthbound slice would.

Ionizing radiation and heat

Challenges and responses

1. The astronauts could not have survived the trip because of exposure to radiation from the Van Allen radiation belt and galactic ambient radiation.

  • The Moon is ten times higher than the Van Allen radiation belts. The spacecraft moved through the belts in just 30 minutes, and the astronauts were protected from the ionizing radiation by the metal hulls of the spacecraft. In addition, the orbital transfer trajectory from the Earth to the Moon through the belts was selected to minimize radiation exposure. Even Dr. James Van Allen, the discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belts, has rebutted the arguments that radiation levels were too dangerous for the Apollo missions. Dosimeters carried by the crews showed they received about the same cumulative dosage as a chest X-ray or about 1 milligray.
  • The radiation is actually evidence that the astronauts went to the Moon. 33 of 36 of the Apollo astronauts have early stage cataracts that have been shown to be caused by radiation exposure to cosmic rays during their trip. (see Ms. Irene Schneider on The Space Show). (Plait 2002:160-162)

2. Film in the cameras would have been fogged by this radiation.

  • The film was kept in metal containers that prevented radiation from fogging the film's emulsion. (Plait 2002:162-63)

3. The Moon's surface during the daytime is so hot that camera film would have melted.

  • There is no atmosphere to efficiently couple lunar surface heat to devices such as cameras not in direct contact with it. In a vacuum, only radiation remains as a heat transfer mechanism. The physics of radiative heat transfer are thoroughly understood, and the proper use of passive optical coatings and paints was adequate to control the temperature of the film within the cameras; lunar module temperatures were controlled with similar coatings that gave it its gold color. Also, while the Moon's surface does get very hot at lunar noon, every Apollo landing was made shortly after lunar sunrise at the landing site. During the longer stays, the astronauts did notice increased cooling loads on their spacesuits as the sun continued to rise and the surface temperature increased, but the effect was easily countered by the passive and active cooling systems. (Plait 2002:165-67)

4. The Apollo 16 crew should not have survived a big solar flare firing out when they were on their way to the Moon. "They should have been fried".

  • No large solar flare occurred during the flight of Apollo 16. There were large solar flares in August 1972, after Apollo 16 returned to Earth and before the flight of Apollo 17 .

Transmissions

Challenges and responses

1. The lack of a more than 2 second delay in two way communications at a distance of a 250,000 miles (400,000 km).

  • The round trip light travel time of more than 2 seconds is apparent in all the real-time recordings of the lunar audio, but this does not always appear as expected. There may be some documentary films where the delay has been edited out. Principal motivations for editing the audio would likely come in response to time constraints or in the interest of clarity.

2. Typical delays in communication were on the order of half a second.

  • Claims that the delays were only on the order of half a second are unsubstantiated by an examination of the actual recordings.

3. The Parkes Observatory in Australia was billed to the world for weeks as the site that would be relaying communications from the Moon, then five hours before transmission they were told to stand down.

  • The timing of the first Moonwalk was moved up after landing.

4. Parkes supposedly provided the clearest video feed from the Moon, but Australian media and all other known sources ran a live feed from the United States.

5. Better signal was supposedly received at Parkes Observatory when the Moon was on the opposite side of the planet.

  • This is not supported by the detailed evidence and logs from the missions.

Mechanical issues

Challenges and responses

1. No blast crater appeared from the landing.

  • No crater should be expected. The Descent Propulsion System was throttled very far down during the final stages of landing. The Lunar Module was no longer rapidly decelerating, so the descent engine only had to support the module's own weight, which by then was greatly diminished by the near exhaustion of the descent propellants, and the Moon's lower gravity. At the time of landing, the engine's thrust divided by the cross-sectional area of the engine bell is only about 1.5 PSI (Plait 2002:164), and that is reduced by the fact that the engine was in a vacuum, causing the exhaust to spread out. (By contrast, the thrust of the first stage of the Saturn V was 459 PSI, over the area of the engine bell.) Rocket exhaust gases expand much more rapidly after leaving the engine nozzle in a vacuum than in an atmosphere. The effect of an atmosphere on rocket plumes can be easily seen in launches from Earth; as the rocket rises through the thinning atmosphere, the exhaust plumes broaden very noticeably. Rocket engines designed for vacuum operation have longer bells than those designed for use at the earth's surface, but they still cannot prevent this spreading. The lunar module's exhaust gases therefore expanded rapidly well beyond the landing site. Even if they hadn't, a simple calculation will show that the pressure at the end of the descent engine bell was much too low to carve out a crater. However, the descent engines did scatter a considerable amount of very fine surface dust as seen in 16mm movies of each landing, and as Neil Armstrong said as the landing neared ("...kicking up some dust..."). This significantly impaired visibility in the final stages of landing, and many mission commanders commented on it. Photographs do show slightly disturbed dust beneath the descent engine. And finally, the landers were generally moving horizontally as well as vertically until right before landing, so the exhaust would not be focused on any one surface spot for very long, and the compactness of the lunar soil below a thin surface layer of dust also make it virtually impossible for the descent engine to blast out a "crater". (Plait 2002:163-65)

2. The launch rocket produced no visible flame.

  • Hydrazine (a fuel) and dinitrogen tetroxide (an oxidizer) were the Lunar Module propellants, chosen for their reliability; they ignite hypergolically –upon contact– without a spark. Hypergolic propellants happen to produce a nearly transparent exhaust. Hypergolic fuels are also used by several space launchers: the core of the American Titan, the Russian Proton, the European Ariane 1 through 4 and the Chinese Long March, and the transparency of their plumes is apparent in many launch photos. The plumes of rocket engines fired in a vacuum spread out very rapidly as they leave the engine nozzle (see above), further reducing their visibility. Finally, most rocket engines use a "rich" mixture to lengthen their lifetimes. While the excess fuel will burn when it contacts atmospheric oxygen, this cannot happen in a vacuum.

3. The rocks brought back from the Moon are identical to rocks collected by scientific expeditions to Antarctica.

  • Chemical analysis of the rocks confirms a different oxygen isotopic composition and a surprising lack of volatile elements. There are only a few 'identical' rocks, and those few fell as meteorites after being ejected from the Moon during impact cratering events. The total quantity of these 'Lunar Meteorites' is small compared to the more than 840 lb (380 kg) of lunar samples returned by Apollo. Also the Apollo lunar soil samples chemically matched the Russian luna space probe’s lunar soil samples.

4. The presence of deep dust around the module; given the blast from the landing engine, this should not be present.

  • The dust around the module is called regolith and is created by ejecta from asteroid and meteoroid impacts. This dust was several inches thick at the Apollo 11 landing site. The regolith was estimated to be several meters thick and is highly compacted with depth. In an atmosphere, we would expect a rocket engine to blast all the surface dust off the ground for tens of meters. However, dust was only removed from the area directly beneath the Apollo landing engine. The important observation here is "atmosphere". Powerful engines set up turbulence in air which lifts and carries dust readily, far beyond the engine itself. However, in a vacuum, there is no air to disturb. Only the actual engine exhaust's direct pressure on the dust can move it. (Plait 2002:163-65)

5. The flag placed on the surface by the astronauts flapped despite there being no wind on the Moon.

  • The astronauts were moving the flag into position, causing motion. Since there is no air on the Moon to provide friction, these movements caused a long-lasting undulating movement seen in the flag. There was a rod extending from the top of the flagpole to hold the flag out for proper display. The fabric's rippled appearance was due to its having been folded during flight and gave it an appearance which could be mistaken for motion in a still photograph. The top supporting rod of the flag was telescopic and the crew of Apollo 11 found they could not fully extend it. Later crews did not fully extend this rod because they liked how it made the flag appear. A viewing of the videotape made during the moonwalk shows that shortly after the astronauts remove their hands from the flag/flagpole, it stops moving and remains motionless. At one point the flag is in view for well over thirty minutes and it remains completely motionless throughout that period (and all similar periods). (See inertia) See the photographs below.
Buzz Aldrin saluting the flag (Note the fingers of Aldrin's right hand can be seen behind his helmet)
Photo taken a few seconds later, Buzz Aldrin's hand is down, head turned toward the camera, the flag is unchanged

6. The Lander weighed 17 tons yet the astronauts feet seem to have made a bigger dent in the dust.

  • The astronauts were much lighter than the Lander, but their boots were also much smaller than the lander's pads. As pressure is what makes the 'dent', and is force over an area, you make the pressure much smaller by making the area a little larger. An example would be driving a car (heavy) on sand, then getting a person (light) to walk on the same surface. You will often find the depth of tracks to be about the same.

Moon rocks

The extensive payload of moon rocks brought back from the Moon are still analyzed by scientists to this day as some of the only samples returned from another body in the solar system. Hoax proponents have been known to argue away this point by suggesting that Wernher von Braun's trip to Antarctica two years prior to Apollo missions was to collect lunar meteorite rocks to be used as fake moonrocks. Because von Braun was a former Nazi, it is suggested, he would have been susceptible to pressure to agree to the conspiracy in order to protect himself from recriminations over the past .

While it is true that rocks dislodged from the Moon by meteoric impacts occasionally land on Earth, and a handful of rocks believed to be from the moon and Mars have been found in Antarctica, there are only a few of these objects in our collections and the rest of the rocks collected on Earth are entirely different in composition and in their detailed structures from those found and returned from the Moon. Furthermore, detailed analysis of the lunar rocks show no evidence of their having been on Earth prior to their return during Apollo. They are also entirely consistent with our understanding of the environment that they existed in on the Lunar surface since their formation many billions of years ago and with the detailed geological context that they were documented to have been sampled from. They are almost entirely composed of heavily shocked rocks consistent with the meteoroid environment on the Moon's surface. Many of them are older than any rocks found to date on Earth.

The first Antarctic meteorite discovery was made by the Australian explorer Douglas Mawson in 1912. A later expedition was mounted in 1969 by a Japanese team. The first United States led team began searches in the mid to late 1970s and discovered more meteorites in 1981, which were identified as being similar to the lunar samples returned by Apollo which in turn are similar to the few grams of material returned from the Moon by Soviet sample return missions (see ANSMET). The total collection of identified Antarctic lunar meteorites presently in the collection at JSC amounts to only about 2.5 kilograms, less than 1% of the 381 kilograms of moonrocks and soil returned by Apollo.

The physics of the process is well understood. It is not favourable in orbital dynamics for an object to leave the Moon and impact Earth, the most favourable outcomes are the complete escape of the object (thus entering solar orbit) directly, or a chaotic orbit around the Moon, Earth or both which eventually results in the object being ejected from the system or re-impacting the Moon. The Moon being the least massive object, it becomes a sort of "kink" in Earth's gravity well, and this makes it more likely than Earth to be struck by any incoming object.

Individuals featured in the controversy

Main proponents of the moon hoax theories

Buzz Aldrin assault incident

Bart Sibrel made repeated demands (over several years) that Aldrin swear an oath on the Bible that he had walked on the Moon, or admit that it was all a hoax. Aldrin pointedly ignored Sibrel, and Sibrel became much more aggressive with Aldrin and several other Apollo astronauts. Sibrel often gained access to the astronauts by claiming to represent organizations that he did not and assuming false identities. When he challenged Aldrin in September 2002, he approached Aldrin and a young female relative as they were leaving a building, and called Aldrin "a coward, a liar, and a thief". Aldrin punched Sibrel in the face, claiming that he felt forced to defend himself and his companion. Sibrel suffered no permanent injury. Although the Beverly Hills police investigated the incident, charges were never filed.

Stanley Kubrick

It has been claimed, without any evidence, that in early 1968 while 2001: A Space Odyssey, (which includes scenes taking place on the Moon), was in post-production, NASA secretly approached Kubrick to direct the first three Moon landings. In this scenario the launch and splashdown would be real but the spacecraft would have remained in Earth orbit while the fake footage was broadcast as "live" from the lunar journey. Kubrick did hire Frederick Ordway and Harry Lange, both of whom had worked for NASA and major aerospace contractors, to work with him. The 2001 soundstage in the UK was next door to that of 'The Prisoner' starring Patrick McGoohan which had many governmental/conspiratorial themes.

During the mission, however, the supposedly Earth orbiting spacecraft was never noticed during the time it was supposed to be hiding in orbit, and the actual spacecraft was seen during its trans-Lunar coast by observers on Earth. Amateur astronomers were able to sight the Apollo spacecraft, exactly where they should have been, during the trans-Lunar coast and amateur radio operators were able to listen-in on the command module in Lunar orbit . Russian radio telescope observatories not owned or controlled by the USA also tracked the Apollo spacecraft and their transmissions.

Finally, it seems inconsistent with this theory that Kubrick's version of the moon in 2001 did not look very much like the real moon, as the 2001 version has harsh, sharp, rocky features (a style also shared by virtually all astronomical art up until that time), while the real one (i.e. the one in the Apollo footage) has smooth, hilly-looking terrain.

In 2002, William Karel released a spoof documentary film, Dark Side of the Moon, 'exposing' how Kubrick was recruited to fake the Moon landings, and featured interviews with, among others, Kubrick's widow and a number of American statesmen including Henry Kissinger and Donald Rumsfeld. It was an elaborate joke: interviews and other footage were presented out of context and in some cases completely staged, with actors playing interviewees who had never existed (and in many cases named after characters from Kubrick's films, just one of many clues included to reveal the joke to the alert viewer).

Deaths of key Apollo personnel

In a television program about the hoax theory, Fox Entertainment Group listed the deaths of 10 astronauts and of two civilians related to the manned spaceflight program as having possibly been killed as part of a coverup.

  • Ted Freeman (T-38 crash, 1964)
  • Elliott See and Charlie Bassett (T-38 accident, 1966)
  • Virgil "Gus" Grissom (supposedly an outspoken critic of the Space Program) (Apollo 1 fire, January 1967)
  • Ed White (Apollo 1 fire, January 1967)
  • Roger Chaffee (Apollo 1 fire, January 1967)
  • Ed Givens (car accident, 1967)
  • C. C. Williams (T-38 accident, October 1967)
  • X-15 pilot Mike Adams (the only X-15 pilot killed in November 1967 during the X-15 flight test program - not a NASA astronaut, but had flown X-15 above 50 miles).
  • Robert Lawrence, scheduled to be an Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory pilot who died in a jet crash in December 1967, shortly after reporting for duty to that (later cancelled) program.
  • NASA worker Thomas Baron train crash, 1967 shortly after making accusations before Congress about the cause of the Apollo 1 fire, after which he was fired. Ruled as suicide.
  • Lee Gelvani claims to have almost convinced James Irwin, an Apollo 15 astronaut whom Gelvani referred to as an "informant", to confess about a cover-up having occurred. Irwin was supposedly going to contact Gelvani about it; however he died of a heart attack in 1991, before any such telephone call occurred.

Spacecraft testing and flying high performance jet aircraft can be dangerous, and all but one of the astronaut deaths (Irwin's) were directly related to their rather hazardous job. Two of the astronauts, Mike Adams and Robert Lawrence, had no connection with the civilian manned space program. Astronaut James Irwin had suffered several heart attacks in the years prior to his death. There is no independent confirmation of Gelvani's claim that Irwin was about to come forward. Moreover, if there was a coverup (that the Apollo 11 and subsequent landings were faked), the coverup would logically have occurred in 1969 and subsequent years – yet all bar one of the deaths listed above occurred in 1967 or earlier.

NASA book commission and withdrawal

In 2002, NASA commissioned Jim Oberg $15,000 to write a point-by-point rebuttal of the hoax claims, and, in the same year, cancelled their commission in the face of protests by hoax skeptics that the book would dignify the accusations. James Oberg claims that he intends (funding allowing) to finish the project.


Involvement of the Soviet Union

A primary reason for the race to the moon was the Cold War - a competition of worldwide political and economic status and influence between the US and the USSR that dominated the history of the 20th century. The Soviets, with their own competing moon program and a formidable scientific community able to analyze NASA data, could be expected to have cried foul if the USA tried to fake a Moon landing (Plait 2002:173). They would have scored enormous status in the eyes of the rest of the world by doing so. Conspiracy theorist Ralph Rene argues that the USSR was bought off with secret shipments of grain. There are two problems here. 1) Why would American conspirators trust the USSR to live up to this agreement? They could take the grain and then announce the truth anyway. 2) Would the USSR trade it's national prestige for grain?

Given the lack of supporting evidence from any Communist bloc countries since the openness and revelations following the collapse of the Soviet Union, this is seen by many as a strong argument against such a hoax. For more on conspiracy theories within the Soviet space program, see Soviet space program conspiracy accusations.

Apollo hoax in popular culture and parody

  • In the 1971 James Bond film Diamonds are Forever, Agent 007 steals a moon buggy from a landing hoax set and drives it off to escape from an enemy compound.
  • On an episode of Fox TV's Family Guy, a flashback shows the ending of filming the hoax, with Neil Armstrong walking out of the studio and a pedestrian seeing him. When the pedestrian asks why he is not in space, Neil Armstrong kills him. In other episodes, Peter claims that his 'healing powers' were a fake, "like the moon landings".
  • On an episode of Futurama, when the crew is mysteriously flung back in time to 1947, President Truman requests that Zoidberg, an alien, be taken to Area 51 for study. When informed that Area 51 is the location for the faked moon landing, he orders that NASA be invented and get to work.
  • The video game Duke Nukem 3D contains a level (Episode 3 Level 5) with a motion picture studio with a lunar landscape set.
  • Worms 3D, a videogame by UK Software developers Team17, contains a level depicting a movie sound stage replete with moon landscape and a lunar landing module.
  • One level in Midway's remake of the classic arcade shooter, Area 51, takes place on a moon landing set, complete with a cardboard-cutout astronaut and fake LEM.
  • The Men From Earth song "I Faked The Moon Landing" tells an imaginary story of someone's deathbed confession to assisting with the hoax. Among the many references in the song to popular hoax accusations is the line "that wasn't Buzz next to the LEM / just a guy who looked like him."
  • The group Looper have a song called "Dave the Moon Man" on their album, Up A Tree. It features a character who doesn't believe in the moon landings and repeats several of the arguments mentioned here.
  • The video for the Rammstein song "Amerika" depicts the band on a movie set wearing NASA suits and a heavy theme of the video is the faking of the moon landing.
  • On an episode of Friends, Joey asks Phoebe for a good lie, and she responds, "Okay, how about the whole 'man-landing-on-the-moon' thing? I mean, you can see the strings, people!!"
  • The book The Loony: a novella of epic proportions (published in April 2005) by Christopher Wunderlee tells the story of an astrophysicist's role in assisting NASA in faking the lunar landings. The book details the implications of 'knowing the truth' and the massive coverup.
  • The IMAX movie Magnificent Desolation: Walking on the Moon 3D features a comically botched 'rehearsal' of the faked landing when Neil Armstrong misses his footing on the lunar module steps and is clearly suspended from wires.
  • A 2006 commercial for Red Bull features astronauts who, after drinking Red Bull, "have wings" and are unable to actually set foot on the moon. They are instructed by Houston to return to Earth so the scene can be shot in a studio instead.
  • On an episode of The PJs, Thurston says that if people can fake a moon landing, anything's possible.

See also

References

  • Newsweek (1969). Where are they Now? the Flat Earthers, vol 73, Jan 13, 1969, pg 8.
  • Philip Plait (2002). Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing "Hoax". John Wiley & Sons, ISBN 0-471-40976-6. Chapter 17.
  • Robert J. Schadewald (1980). "The Flat-out Truth: Earth Orbits? Moon Landings? A Fraud! Says This Prophet", Science Digest, vol 83, July 1980, pg. 58-63. (available online)
  • John Noble Wilford (1969). "A Moon Landing? What Moon Landing?", New York Times, December 18, 1969, p. 30.
  • Barkun, Michael. 2003. A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520238052

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