The Science of Conspiracy Theories

NASA faked the Moon Landings

NASA faked the Moon landings.

This one is right up my alley, mostly because I love science fiction and fact. I am a scientist and enjoy an astronomy hobby. I considered the moon landings to be one of the greatest achievements in modern history, an accomplishment that changed the idea of our place in the universe.

This conspiracy theory proposes that NASA faked the Apollo program and especially the moon landings. The people who perpetrate this claim say that NASA deliberately destroyed photos and videotapes recorded at the Moon and TV transmissions from the Moon in order to destroy any evidence. They also believe that the moon rocks are not real, that they're actually from Earth.

Now, I can understand why Russians don't believe that the moon landings were real, but I fail to understand why up to 20%--in some poles--of Americans think they were faked.

Most of this conspiracy nonsense originated from 'We Never Went to the Moon: America's Billion Dollar Swindle' book written in 1974 by Bill Kaysing, a technical writer who worked for Rocketdyne's Propulsion Field Laboratory. Some of it came from the Flat Earth Society that claimed that Stanley Kubrick directed a scripted staged fake moon scene by Arthur C. Clark that was sponsored by Walt Disney. The Flat Earth Society--Give me a break! These fools believe that the Earth is a flat disc centered at the North Pole and with the Sun and the Moon at 3000 miles and the cosmos at 3,100 miles above. Really? Really? What, are we still back in the thirteenth century?

There have been many other books published claiming that the moon landings were faked, and even a movie was made about it: 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon'. This resulted in Buzz Aldrin punching the filmmaker, Bart Sibrel, in the face. Way to go, Buzz!

Many theories have been proposed as to why NASA would fake the moon landings. The most ridiculous one is the fact that Russia was ahead of us in the Space Race; The moon landings represented a political coup and it gave us a propaganda victory over the Russians. The second reason it that NASA needed something spectacular, something that would capture the public's attention and support because they faced a budget cut. Also, the moon landings diverted public attention away from the fiasco of the Vietnam War. All of these ideas are true on the surface, but there is no good evidence to substantiate them the reason NASA would fake the moon landings.

First of all, in order to pull off a hoax of this magnitude, NASA would have had to assemble a massive number of experts and technicians, hundreds if not thousands of them. Someone would have eventually revealed what was going on because the media would offer all sorts of money for this. Then, there are the astronauts involved. Not one of them has ever indicated that they were part of a hoax. I think that Neil Armstrong would be livid about this nonsense.

There have been many technical reasons given for why people think that the moon landings were faked. I'll discuss the most ridiculous ones.
The worst claim is that there were no stars in the photos taken on the moon. This is ludicrous. Cameras were adjusted to film bright daylight on the moon. There is no atmosphere on the moon to filter the sun, and it shines very brightly, and no camera equipment of the day could adjust to show stars. They were swamped out by the sunlight. The same is true of astronauts' eyes. They would adjust for the brightness, not the stars. This would be completely different if they would have been on the side of the moon that was turned away from the sun.

A special Ultraviolet camera and spectrograph was taken on the Apollo 16 and used to record the Earth and stars because Ultraviolet light is brighter from stars than visual light. The recordings match up to UV photos from satellites. The stars were in the correct orientations around Earth.

The angle and the color of shadows were inconsistent. Say what? What kind of cameras and lenses do you think they took to the moon? It wasn't Hollywood equipment. They had to use wide-angle lenses that distort and cause reflected light to be color distorted. Too bad they didn't have iPhones. The moon has an uneven surface with all sorts of variations in lunar dust. This isn't out in your back yard.

A photograph of a rock had a C in it. The original prints don't. The C is probably an artifact. If you've ever worked with silver photography, you would understand this.

A cameraman already on the moon filmed Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon. Give me a break! The camera was mounted to the side of the lander in a Modularized Equipment Storage Assembly that Neil activated before stepping out of the lander.

The craziest claim is that the flag that Buzz Aldrin put on the moon fluttered when there is no wind on the moon. What the heck? The flag was rippled in storage and when deployed flexed to look as if it were fluttering. They wanted it to look that way. What good is a flag if it's not fully deployed.

Footprints in moon dust are well preserved. That's because the regolith (dust) consists of sharp particles that stick together and will not be blown around by wind since the moon has no atmosphere. Regolith also acts like a mirror at times because it acts like tiny glass spheres. This created hot spots in images of the moon, which was another issue.

The second worst claim is that all of the scenes on the moon were done in a sound stage on Earth. If that were the case, the dust that arose from the Astronauts jumping around would not have flew as high on Earth because of the higher gravity. Also, David Scott, on the Apollo 15 mission, dropped a hammer and a feather on the moon, which demonstrates that he was in a vacuum. There's no way they built a vacuum chamber large enough to show the rover moving around. That's ridiculous.

The delays in transmissions from the moon are only 0.5 seconds when they should be 2 seconds. That's because they were edited. The original recordings have the proper delay.

The most egregious claim is that the U.S. didn't have the technology to make the Apollo rockets that took us to the moon, that the Soviets were way ahead of us. The fact is, we had Wernher Von Braun, the Nazi genius responsible for Hitler's V-rockets. He was the brain behind the rocket technology. That put us in front of the Soviets by a big margin.

Several outside evidence that the moon landings occurred have been published, especially after the conspiracy theorists claimed that the Hubble telescope couldn't show the landing sites. That's because the Hubble can't focus down with enough resolution to do that. It takes lunar probes to accomplish that, and on September 1, 2009, India's lunar mission probe produced photos of Apollo 15's landing site that show the rover tracks. China's second lunar probe, launched in 2010, also shows traces of the landing sites. High definition photos taken recently by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of the landing sites have shown tracks and the lander modules left there.

Finally, we get to the moon rocks. The conspiracists say the Von Braun collected rocks on a trip to Antarctica in 1967 to gather meteorites to use for fake moon rocks. You have to be kidding! The fact is that no authentic scientific journal articles have refuted the claim that the rocks came from the moon. They are different from meteorites that are found on Earth because they have been subjected to completely different environmental conditions on the Moon. This hoax idea would never get past geologists and astrophysicists.

The fact is that all of the theories about the moon landings are not backed up with solid scientific evidence. NASA would never get away with something of that magnitude. Someone would have come forth with solid proof. These conspiracy theories are based on erroneous science and bad judgment. I think that the books and movies were made to make money because the idea is sensational, and the public loves sensationalism. On that basis alone, these theories should be refuted. I don't know about you, but the moon landings sure looked authentic to me.

Thanks for reading.