Was the Moon landing real?

Was the Moon landing real? Did we land on the Moon? Were the Moon landings faked?

You have probably heard the rumors. Astronauts never walked on the Moon. That it was all faked on a soundstage in Hollywood. And that the Government has been lying to us for 40 years now.

It’s all untrue. Nine crews of astronauts flew to the Moon between 1968 and 1972. Six Apollo missions landed 12 astronauts on the lunar surface. There are photos, videos, tracking records, and other ironclad evidence that proves men walked on the Moon.

Was the moon landing real? Hoax Theory gains traction:

So, where did these stories come from? Although rumors of fake spaceflights were floating around for years, the hoax theory didn’t gain traction until 1974 when William Charles Kaysing published a book titled, “We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle.” Kaysing claimed to be a former Rocketdyne employee who had access to inside information about a hoax.

In his book, Kaysing said that NASA lacked the technology to put a man on the Moon. He also pointed to supposed anomalies in images sent back during the Moon flights, including the absence of stars in photos take on the lunar surface. He also claimed that the film used by astronauts should have melted due to high radiation.

Kaysing had no engineering or technical training to make these claims. He also charged that NASA had deliberately murdered the Apollo 1 and Challenger crews to keep the astronauts from exposing the secret. And he even sued Jim Lovell, who flew to the Moon twice, after the former Apollo astronaut called him “wacky.” The case was dismissed.

Although all of Kaysing’s “evidence” was easily explained away by experts, that had no effect on the conspiracy theories, which continued to evolve in a society that had grown distrustful of government after the Vietnam and Watergate.

Kaysing’s charges were amplified by the Flat Earth Society, which accused NASA and the Walt Disney Company of conspiring to fake the Moon landings. The society claimed that 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Stanley Kubrick directed the landings, working from scripts written by Sir Arthur C. Clarke. A bemused Clarke sent a letter to NASA which read:

“Dear Sir, on checking my records, I see that I have never received payment for this work. Could you please look into this matter with some urgency? Otherwise you will be hearing from my solicitors, Messrs Geldsnatch, Geldsnatch and Blubberclutch.”

Was the moon landing real? Hoax Theory flaws:

One of the biggest flaws in the Moon landing hoax theory is that the United States was engaged in a space race with the Soviet Union, which was capable of monitoring flights to the Moon. The Soviets would have gleefully exposed any effort by the Americans to fake such missions. Instead, they acknowledged America’s achievement.

Despite the best efforts of NASA to knock down these falsehoods, doubt continued to persist. In 1999, Gallup found that 6 percent of Americans had doubts that the Moon landings occurred and another 5 percent had no opinion.

Two years later, the Fox Television network aired a program called, “Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?” which featured Kaysing as an expert. Public skepticism about the Moon landings rose to about 20 percent after the program, which promoted the hoax theories rather than debunked them.

Links for "Was the moon landing real?"

A debunking of the moon hoax theory

Fox TV and the Apollo Moon Hoax

 

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