Is the Moon Landing a Fake?

Question

I was recently told of the theory that the moon landing was a Fake! That is so hard to beleave, but what if it really is a Fake? Makes you wonder what other government fed lies we have been told. So, does anyone know? Did man actually stand on the moon or was it just a movie set in the desert? Are there other well accepted world events we beleave but are untrue also? If so what are they and how do you know this?

Answer 1

1) Twelve 12 American astronauts have walked on the moon.

Apollo 11: Neil Armstrong & Buzz Aldrin
Apollo 12: Pete Conrad & Alan Bean
Apollo 13: << failed to land on the moon >>
Apollo 14: Alan Shepard & Edgar (Ed) Mitchell
Apollo 15: David Scott & James Irwin
Apollo 16: John Young & Charles Duke
Apollo 17: Eugene (Gene) Cernan & Harrison Schmidt


2) Why haven't we been back?

a) American astronauts visited the moon on six occasions.

b) The "moon race" was an extension of the cold war. It was mostly about national prestige. We got there first and achieved our primary objective. There was some good science: surveys, measurements, sample collection. But it was mostly about being there first. Once we achieved our primary objective, there was no political will to go back. There still isn't. Perhaps, if we discover He3 or something else valuable, there will be.

c) I used to travel to Crested Butte, Colorado every year to ski. Because I don't go anymore, does it mean that I never went?


3) What about the Van Allen radiation belts? Wouldn't it have killed the astronauts?

The existence of the Van Allen radiation belts postulated in the 1940s by Nicholas Christofilos. Their existence was confirmed in *1958* by the Explorer I satellite launched by the USA.

The radiation in the Van Allen radiation belts is not particularly strong. You would have to hang out there for a week or so in order to get radiation sickness. And, because the radiation is not particularly strong, a few millimeters of metal is all that is required for protection. "An object satellite shielded by 3 mm of aluminum will receive about 2500 rem (25 Sv) per *year*."

"In practice, Apollo astronauts who travelled to the moon spent very little time in the belts and received a harmless dose. [6]. Nevertheless NASA deliberately timed Apollo launches, and used lunar transfer orbits that only skirted the edge of the belt over the equator to minimise the radiation." When the astronauts returned to Earth, their dosimeters showed that they had received about as much radiation as a couple of medical X-rays.


4) The U.S. government scammed everyone?

In 1972, there was a politically motivated burglary of a hotel room in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. There were only about six or eight people who knew about it. However, those people, including Richard M. Nixon, the President of the United States, failed to keep that burglary a secret. It exploded into a scandal that drove the President and a number of others from office.

If six or eight people couldn't keep a hotel room burglary a secret, then how could literally thousands of people could have kept their mouths shut about six faked moon landings? Not just one moon landing, but six of them!


5) What about the USSR?

Even if NASA and other government agencies could have faked the six moon landings well enough to fool the general public, they could NOT have fooled the space agency or military intelligence types in the USSR. The Soviets were just dying to beat us. If the landings were faked, the Soviets would have re-engineered their N-1 booster and landed on the moon just to prove what liars Americans are. Why didn't they? Because the landings were real and the Soviets knew it.


6) Why does the flag shake? Where are the stars? Who took the video of Neil Armstrong?

Take a look at the first two websites listed below. They deal well with all of the technical questions.


7) Finally, please tell us what you would accept as definitive evidence that the six moon landings were real. Is there anything?

Answer 2

Regarding Dwight's post: I just have to point out that the moon landing was BEFORE Watergate, you idiot.

Now onto the landing...come on people. Theres a Laser Ranging Retro Reflector (LR3) up there on the moon. We have been bouncing lasers off of it since 1969, when it was placed up there by the Astronauts. Below is a link to the actual Press Kit for the 1969 landing. Read through it. On page 46 and 47 there is a detail of the planned deployment of the LR3, including the planned deployment position relative to the lunar module. Why cant people accept that we, as a species, have always done the impossible...the apollo team was no different. They were given a challenge and they did it. We havent gone back because there hasnt been a reason...there no cold war, no space race anymore. Maybe when Europe and China start landing men on the moon the competion will be there to do it again. Until then, to the American government will continue to view it as an unimportant side mission and not worth the money. Maybe if there was oil on the moon...:)

And to add...i DO have a high-level security clearance, and you give the government waaaaay too much credit...

Answer 3

I'm still undecided.

On one hand, I don't think the American mission had at the time the capability to land successfully a probe on the Moon. What would happen if the landing was unsuccessful, for example? There is no known to me escape plan or Plan B either. And USSR had already been successful having sent an astronaut around the Earth so time was critical for USA to also display some achievement in space at the peak of the Cold War era.

At the same time USSR, that I'm sure was monitoring the situation very closely from the Earth, never protested saying this incident was fake.

Answer 4

Wow, again...
It's just tragic that this question keeps coming up, and even more so when you understand that those of you who believe in a "hoax" have absolutely no understanding of either science or common sense. A few points for the "hoaxers" .

-The shadows are NOT in the wrong places. They are exactly where shadows are supposed to be given both the level of the ground and the perspective at which they were taken. A simple study in photography and/or physics will show you this.

-The hubble CANNOT, in fact, resolve images as small as the lunar buggies, nor anything else that still sits on the moon. It was designed to view galaxies thousands of light years across not to view images along the order of a few meters. And there are no Earth-based telescopes with this ability either.

-The flag did have a horizontal rod going across its top. Obviously, if this wasn't there the flag would have rested against the vertical pole. It was made of a plastic material, not cloth, which gave it its wrinkled appearance simply because it didn't extend all the way to the end of the horizontal pole. In addition, the flag was NOT waving, except when the astronauts were trying to work the pole into the lunar surface. Air or no air the end of the flag would have moved when the pole was shaken around. It's called inertia, look it up. Incidentally, for those who are so smart and KNOW it was a hoax: If the flag was waving from some sudden wind why exactly don't we see any dust flying about?

-The dust on the Moon has a resiliant silica quality which can hold its form. It is not beach sand. Thus, there are footprints.

-Regarding the dust from the rovers...hoaxers argue that the dust should have stayed off the ground longer. Please study your physics. In the videos, you can clearly see the dust rising from the lander wheels in a parabolic arc and immediately falling back to the ground. This is EXACTLY what happens in a vacuum environment like the Moon. On Earth dust is held aloft by air. The Moon, of course, has no air and thus the dust immediately falls.
And since you now understand that, understand this: If the video was shot on a sound stage like you people believe it would have been impossible to fake the way the dust fell. It would have required a vacuum chamber larger than any that even exixts today.

-The Moon is NOT a weightless environment. It's gravity is approx. 1/6 of the Earth's.

-No stars in photos...answered a thousand times. Learn and understand photography and the properties of light. Or better yet go outside on the next sunny day and take a picture of the sky and tell me how many stars are in the photo. Atmosphere or not, you can't take pictures of very faint objects when you are being washed in sunlight. It simply doesn't work.

-Radiation...This is the favorite of those who want to make themselves sound smart but have no clue what they're talking about. The Van Allen Belts can indeed be dangerous if subjected to them for extended amounts of time. The Apollo astronauts were not subjected to this.

-The cover up...The Russians, our worst enemy and space rival at the time, had every capability to track the lunar missions to the moon and back. And yet they never cried hoax. Interesting.

-During the time, NASA employed nearly 400,000 people, both under contract and in-house. Parts had to be made, engines built, plans devised, people prepared, see where I'm going? How do you keep a secret with that many people for so long? Answer, you don't.

-Okay, so you say, "well, only a handful of people knew about it..." Alrighty then, what about the thousands who actually made all the components and were told these components had to take men to the moon. Either these people say it cannot be done or they're in on the lie.
So you have two conclusions...Either you understand that 400,000 people were actually in on an impossible lie or that it was possible to send a man to the moon.

Oh, and every one of you who says that because we haven't been back to the moon in 30 years proves that we never went...that statement borders on idiocy that I can't even fathom. I went to Florida once, saw what I needed to see and then left. I haven't been back. Does that mean I never went? And that doesn't even take into account the inherent expense and danger of going to the Moon.

BTW, if the government was so smart and so good at creating and maintaining such an elaborate hoax how could they have made so many idiotic "mistakes" and allowed everyone to figure it out? Are we assuming that the world's best scientists are not bright enough to notice these? Please.

-These things go on and on, too numerous to discuss here. I suggest you people learn how to read and discover things for yourselves before you start believing mocked-up truths that have absolutely no basis in reality.

It's incredibly sad when people begin taking such a monumental human achievement and start wrapping it in myth, all because their understanding of what was and what is possible is beyond their own level of thought.

I would LOVE to edit this some more. Anyone else have a some powerful "evidence" they would like refuted? Step right up

Answer 5

It was real. All of the supposed "evidence" has been countered, many many times. Faking it would not have been possible with the knowledge and technology of the times, nor would such a fake have stood up to modern forensic analysis. Plus, the more people are involved in a hoax, the more likely it is that the information will leak or one of them will admit it outright. The number of people needed to fake a moon landing, including multiple launches that hundreds of people witnessed (unless everyone who went down to watch them was a hired patsy-including the news media people) would have assured that a leak would have happened somewhere along the line.

Answer 6

I'll paraphrase an answer I gave earlier to similar question. If you're talking about the first moon landing, many people at the time certainly thought so (many still do today). Most point to the fact that NASA could not reliably get a rocket off the ground just a few short years earlier (at one point even burning up several astronauts in a fire), yet was able to send a rocket to the moon just a short time later, make a perfect landing on an object in space no person had ever landed on before, make a perfect launch from that same unfamiliar object, make a perfect rendezvous and coupling with the orbiter, make a perfect flight back to Earth, and make a perfect splashdown in the designated area.

In other words, for many people the whole thing was just a little too perfect to be believable, especially considering NASA's not-so-perfect record up to that point, and that much of this had never even been tried before (no experience whatsoever). While neither of these prove that first moon landing was fake, both together are certainly enough to raise doubts in the minds of some people.

Some ask why anyone would fake that first moon landing. The answer is not that difficult. The United States, in the middle of a cold war with the Soviet Union at the time, was in a desperate space race which included similar goals to put the first man on the moon. Following President Kennedy's proclamation in the early 60's to do exactly that by the end of the decade, the very reputation of both NASA and the United States were on the line (not to mention the reputation of the very popular slain president).

Others ask if it was even possible to fake that first moon landing. In truth, it would not have been that difficult. In fact, much easier than actually putting a man on the moon. The abundance of witnesses proves there was indeed a launch. However, those who doubt the first moon landing suspect everything beyond that launch is questionable. They suspect the astronauts simply orbited the Earth while the actual moon landing was staged on a movie set with actors and movie special effects (well within the capabilities of the movie industry at the time).

Still others ask how secrecy over a fake landing could be maintained all these years, especially with the number of people involved. In reality, after the actual launch, only a relative handful of scientists and engineers were involved, all dedicated employees with high-level security clearances. In other words, these were individuals used to keeping secrets, with a possible fake landing just one more to keep. Indeed, those scientists and engineers have remained tight-lipped over the years about the specifics of the work they did decades ago - just as the hundreds working on the Manhattan project 50+ years ago have remained silent all these years about the specifics of their work.

Everyone agrees NASA did eventually put a man on the moon, with that first moon landing the only serious dispute. Again, many at the time had doubts, which is perhaps understandable considering an assassination followed by sealed records, Watergate, suspected cover-up conspiracies, secret wars, and so on. In other words, those living through that period certainly had plenty of reasons to doubt just about anything their government said, did, or said it did.

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To lindajune (below); a fake moon landing was well within the capabilities of movie technology of the time, as demonstrated by the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" filmed just a few years earlier.

To Beach_Bum (also below); people form opinions both during and after an event. Other events (before and afterwards) helped to shape that generation's impression of government, which influenced their immediate and later impressions of any one event during that period.

To Otis F: the serious controversy surrounds that first moon landing only, not later missions. You also have details about the Watergate burglary wrong. Since five suspects were arrested at the scene (after a guard noticed a door taped open and called police), there was no later secrecy surrounding the Watergate burglary. The controversy focused on Nixon's involvement and whether there were later attempts to conceal that. Since we do not, to this day, have conclusive evidence of his involvement, that secrecy has held. As for the Russians, they actually did claim our first moon landing was a fraud. However, nobody in the West was going to listen, no matter what the evidence was. Individuals in several other countries also said they detected no evidence (radio transmissions, visual observations, etc) of that first mission. They were ignored also.
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Answer 7

This is an excellent example how you can do some real science. People have opinions but how can you tell what is real? My claim is that the astronauts left what is called a corner mirror on the moon. This is a 3 piece mirror(forming a corner) that will reflect light back in the same direction that it came from. Scientists use this mirror to measure the distance from the moon to earth. There are demonstrations where you can watch them do it. You can go see for yourself.

Answer 8

The problem with people who ask if it was fake is that they are too young to remember the event. They're too young to realize that in 1969 there were no CGI programs, no fancy computer systems and fairly primitive movie technology compared to the technology that is so commonplace today. Young people just don't know the reality of that era.
Yes, it happened. I saw it, millions of others saw it, thousands were directly involved in the entire space program starting in the 1950's.
It happened.

Answer 9

I have seen so many crackpots and conspiracy theorists who would like us to believe that the moon landings were fake. I have yet to see anyone of the many thousands of people who were actually involved in the landings to come out and say they were fake. I think this is interesting--people who weren't involved say it is faked and those who were involved, including all 12 astronauts, say they were real. Don't you think at least one would denounce it as fake if it were so? The landings were real. The crackpots are the ones who are fake.

Answer 10

No the moon landings were not fake. They were real. There is no end to crackpot conspiracy theories.