Why do so many people think the Apollo moon landings were faked?

Question

I just don't understand their thinking!

Answer 1

I'm not sure, myself, but it's very disturbing. Some people more readily believe in aliens traveling hundreds--millions!--of light years to do tests on (or have sex with) human beings than they do in humans traveling less than 400,000 kilometers to do some exploring, collecting and observing. {sigh}

Then again, some people more readily believe in faith healing, Ouija boards, spontaneous human combustion and the tooth fairy than they do in science. To disturbingly-many people, astrology is of more value than astronomy, the devil can be heard when a record or tape is played backwards, and the "face" on Mars is a monument created by some super race (not just a natural rock formation with happenstance lighting).

Physicists, chemists, and biologists are often perceived to have lesser credentials -- and are given less heed -- than celebrity "experts" who dispense advice and "secrets" of all kinds. Perhaps Scientology has finally been branded a pseudoscience by the public (owing to nothing more than the luny, self-righteous antics of its most vocal practitioner)... but there are still celebrities who are paid by magazines and other media to advise us on relationships, substance abuse, saving the world, and numerous other aspects of our lives.

These all are symptoms of a planet-wide ailment, and the danger is much greater than many people realize. Lack of reason, lack of skepticism, and lack of education (especially in science) are the culprits.

Why then, in a culture that seems to buy *anything*, have some people chosen not to believe the moon landings were real? After all, landing on the moon is rather pedestrian compared to talking to the dead, or zapping a pyramid into existence.

How, one has to wonder, can humans believe everything from faith healing to chain e-mails offering wealth or easy-as-forwarding solutions to world problems, yet doubt the numerous credible historical accounts and evidence of the moon landings? How can those same people swallow other television news stories whole?... or Joe Blow's Blog?... or anyone here on this site?

I think there are several reasons for the disbelief in the Apollo missions...

-People don't trust the government.
-People don't trust the media, unless they *want* to believe a story.
-There's a huge lack of understanding of our natural world, and of science. Those who can't understand *how* we reached the moon assume no-one does, and therefore conclude it isn't possible.
-Science ignorance also explains many of the crackpot bits of "evidence" for their ideas (which I won't dignify by referring to; you can find them).
-A lack of appreciation for what human beings are capable of.
-People looking for excitement just get a kick out of the drama, the "deception" and the secrecy... cloak and dagger. And out of "knowing" something you don't... and being the one to let you in on it.

It makes me chuckle to read that some folks believe billions of dollars were spent in this "moon hoax," that the special effects were unprecedented yet they didn't bother to get some very basic things (like lighting) right, and that anyone believes hundreds of informed space-program workers could keep this great lie a secret for all these years. It's certainly not a lack of *imagination* that keeps these people skeptical. Personally, it sounds a heck of a lot easier to me just to go to the moon.

Clearly people pick and choose what to believe. They seek comfort, advice, and fun to deal with (or take their minds off) the troubles in their lives. Whatever provides that comfort, excitement, easy answer, or sense of hope quickest and most painlessly is what many people choose as the "right" way to learn. *Whoever* provides it is the person or group to trust, no matter the credentials.

The Web wasn't around when this hoax started, but it provides an unprecedented forum to the expert and the ignoramus; to the reliable researcher and to the crackpot. It is one reason the conspiracy theories continue. There is a danger to the undiscriminating reader (of any subject), and to each of his/her unskeptical pupils... those who'd believe the earth is flat as long as someone said they saw it in print.

Answer 2

Although my wife's father performed fuel calculations for the original Apollo landing, I'll spare you that speech. Instead, I will encourage you to watch two programs. The first show is called Conspiracy Moon Landing that it currently showing on the National Geographic Channel and it pretty much obliterates all of the popular conspiracy theories.

I would also encourage you to watch a movie called Capricorn One. Made it 1978, it is a fictional story about a fake mission to Mars. Although it is a science fiction story, it is a good example of how utterly impossible it would be to fake a moon landing for any length of time.

12 men walked on the moon from 1969 to 1972 and we have neither the resources nor the technology to pull off that big of a hoax for so long. Hundreds of thousands of people have worked on the space program. It would be far easier to put someone on the moon than to try and fake it and keep it secret for nearly 40 years.

The landings came at a time when our space program was ultra competitive with the former Soviet Union. Remember how big of a deal it was when Sputnik was put into orbit? They had the technology to monitor our moon shots and transmissions. Don't you think they would have called us out if they had evidence that it was all fake?

Perhaps the most definitive proof of our trip to the moon is what we left behind. For the last 35+ years, scientists have been beaming lasers to the moon and measuring the return times. How are they doing this? The beams are reflected back by equipment left on the moon on at 3 different locations.

Case closed.

Answer 3

In addition to not being able to see stars (due to glare of lights brought by the astronauts), I have heard people say that the American flag was waving when they blasted off (supposedly impossible in a vaccuum.)

But they forget that when the LEM blasted off, it was spitting out rocket exhaust which spread in all directions and caused the flag to flap. The flag was held extended with a steel spring (otherwise it would have hung straight down, limp) and the springiness of the steel may have contributed some odd periodicity to the waving.

Don't forget that the Russians were tracking our ships by their own radar! We weren't invisible to them! They would have taken genuine delight in being able to say that we faked the moon landings. But they weren't able to say that, because they were real. Their instrumenst tracked our ships going out to the moon, they could tell that they landed, and they could detect when they blasted off again. What is so hard to understand about this?

Then again, what about the Moon rocks that were brought back? They are in the Smithsonian right now, some of them. You say they are fake rocks...? What about the samples that NASA has made available to research scientists the world over...?

What about the laser reflectors we left on the moon? Scientists the world over have verified the distance between the Earth and the Moon by shining lasers up there. The reflectors were not just dropped from orbit to land so precisely that they can be used for this accurate measurement!

In short, there are several good types of independent verification that we reached the moon: the radar tracking of hostile governments, the moon rocks brought back, and the verifiable reflections of artifacts left on the moon.

Answer 4

I don't know why so many people think the Apollo moon landings were faked, but i know why Apollo moon landings were REAL.


The Claim: The American flag appears to wave in the lunar wind.

The Science: If you look closely, you will notice the flag's edges are pulled taut. This effect, which was done purposely as to not allow the flag to just hang flat, it was created by inserting a stiff wire into the fabric. The "flutter" was created as the astronauts worked to erect the flag. As the wire was adjusted, "Old Glory" appeared to wave.


The Claim: If the astronauts had left the safety of the Van Allen Belt the radiation would have killed them.

The Science: The Van Allen Belts are created by Earth's magnetic field, and protect the planet from dangerous solar radiation. The belts collects this radiation, and traps it in a layer surrounding the Earth. But unless you deliberately caused your spaceship to hover within this layer, for many hours or days, the radiation exposure is well below dangerous levels. The Apollo astronauts passed through the Belts in less than four hours total for the trip. "It's not much more serious than getting a chest x-ray," said Plait. Outside the belt, the radiation drops to low levels that are only dangerous over extremely long periods of time.


The Claim: Multiple-angle shadows in the Moon photos prove there was more than one source of light, like a large studio lamp.

The Science: The astronauts were taking their photos on a hilly, brightly-lit landscape while the Sun was close to the horizon. Imagine taking a photograph of someone on a rolling, uneven field of snow during a full, low-hanging Moon. The contours of the ground would produce shadows of many different lengths.


The Claim: In the Sun, the Moon's temperature is toasty 280 degrees F. The film (among other things) would have melted.

The Science: No one was leaving bare film out on the hot lunar surface. All material was contained in protective canisters. In addition, at the time the Apollo missions landed, they were either at lunar dawn or dusk. As a result, the temperature was more easily manageable.

The Claim: To leave a footprint requires moisture in the soil, doesn't it?

The Science: Not always. If you take some dry fine-grained dust such as talcum powder and dump it out, it's easy to make tracks in it that hold their shape. The particles hold their positions due to the friction between them.


The Claim: Space is filled with super-fast micro meteors that would punch through the ship and kill the astronauts.

The Science: Space is really amazingly big. While there are indeed an uncountable number of tiny pieces of debris travelling through the Solar System at speeds in the neighborhood of 120,000MPH, the volume of space keeps the density low. The chance of any given cubic yard of space having a micro-meteor passing through it is incredibly close to zero. Additionally, the astronauts suits included a layer of kevlar to protect them from any tiny fragment they might encounter.


The Claim: When the Lunar Excursion Module (LEM) landed, its powerful engine didn't burrow a deep crater in the "dusty surface."

The Science: Beneath the layer of dust, the Moon is made of fairly densely-packed rock. What dust and loose dirt there was though, was "kicked up" as referenced by the astronauts and captured in their landing films.


The Claim: There's no way that big moon buggy they were driving could have fit into that little landing module!

The Science: The rover was very cleverly constructed to be made out of very light materials, and designed to fold up to about the size of a large suitcase.


The Claim: Space is littered with little points of lights (stars). Why then are they missing from the photographs?

The Science: If you've ever taken a photograph outside at night, you'll notice that faint distant objects don't show up. That's not because the air blocks them -- it's because the brightness of the nearby objects washes out the film. In fact if you were standing on the day side of the Moon, you'd have to somehow block the landscape out in order for your eyes to adapt enough to pick out the stars.

Answer 5

Because we have not gone back in all that time. People see the progress in making computers more powerful and cheaper and just assume the same has happened with rockets, so it should be much easier to go to the Moon now than it was in 1969. Sadly, that is not true. The space shuttle main engines cost way more and do not perform better than the old Saturn-V third stage J-2 engine, to the point that NASA is considering using the J-2 instead of the Shuttle engine in the new CEV launcher.

Answer 6

There's a lot of info on this at http://www.apfn.org/apfn/moon.htm

In a nutshell there is a lot of things about the still shots and video that just doesn't add up taking in to account that the moon has no atmosphere and some simple dynamics.

For example why is the American flag fluttering when there is no wind on the moon? Or who took the photo of the craft leaving the moon? Why weren't the cameras effected by solar radiation? The list goes on.

Answer 7

There are two types of these people:

1) Jokers who enjoy the sport of seeing how many people they can get to believe in a massive "conspiracy hoax."

2) People gullible enough to believe people in category #1. These are people who distrust government and scientists *so much*, that they are willing to believe a massive conspiracy involving literally *thousands* of NASA employees, engineers, astronauts, astronauts' families, politicians, journalists, etc.

The problem is that this gullibility is the same thing that allows them to believe that there are *still* WMD's in Iraq, that global warming is a myth, and the earth is only 6,000 years old. I.e. that when the experts all say the same thing ... that this alone is evidence of a "conspiracy" by said "experts."

Answer 8

It's because there are no stars in the backround, people are not going back, the technology is not good enough, blah, blah, blah. All that the people who think that the moon landings are faked are telling lies and are crazy.

Answer 9

Many people think this because the footage displays strange casting of shadows, and reflections that shouldn't appear. Also, the technology of that time was fairly primitive, so the concept of surviving a journey into space, then back is almost inconcievable.

Answer 10

There isn't very solid proof of the landings...well, that and some people are just downright crazy and want to make everything into a conspiracy