New World University: Moon Landing
Did we go to the moon in 1969? Is the moon even real? Or is it just cheese?
Each week Local will present New World University, a column that breaks down and discusses popular conspiracy theories.
Moon Landing
Theory: July 20, 1969. One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Or was it? The theory goes that the US faked the first successful moon landing in order to win the Space Race against the Soviets and what the world saw on TV was actually faked. The theory ranges from the government staging it themselves to hiring Stanley Kubrick to do it, while the moon we saw was either a Hollywood soundstage or Area 51.
One piece of evidence theorists use is that the flag is seen rippling in a picture space even though there’s no wind. They also typically cite the 1960’s deaths of ten astronauts and two civilians who worked at NASA and claim that they were all actually killed as part of the cover up.
How it Started: The theory seems to have gotten its start in 1976 when a man named Bill Kaysing published a book called We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle claiming that the chance of a successful moon landing was only 0.0017% and that it would have been easier to fake it.
The Flat Earth Society (ugh) jumped in on this in 1980 and basically created the idea that Hollywood was behind it and that Walt Disney of all people was the sponsor.
To be fair this started in the post-Watergate area, so it wasn’t exactly a time when Americans were feeling trustworthy of their government.
Real or fake: I think the theory is fake, but NASA is doing a really bad job of proving it’s real. There are a lot of reasons I think the moon landing really happened starting with the insane number of people that would have been involved if there was really a cover up (over 400,000 people worked on the Apollo 11 project in the span of a decade!). Do you really think that many people would keep their mouth shut? It’s easier to go to the moon than to get that many people to all keep a secret.
There’s third party evidence of the moon landing (the first party is NASA, second party are the theorists) from independent observatories who were tracking the Apollo 11 mission. One technician at WHAS Radio was even able to record lunar transmissions from the Lunar Module.
That rippling image of the flag proving there’s wind and therefore not taken in space? Yeah, actually NASA set up the flag so it would hang straight out instead of flop down for the #aesthetic. It just got wrinkled on the way up.
Another reason I think it really happened: the Soviets. There was no way they weren’t spying on this mission and keeping a close eye on it. They definitely would’ve known it was fake and totally ratted us out.
That being said NASA needs to get it’s shit together regarding this. Did you know that NASA taped over the original footage????? How could they be that stupid?? And yes, I know “you’ve already seen the footage, that can’t be possible.” But what you’ve seen is the grainy ’60s version that aired live on TV. NASA didn’t watch that. Instead they got crystal clear footage sent straight to Houston from the Lunar Module. Crystal clear footage that probably could’ve settled all of this once and for all. And they just let it get lost. Come on, NASA!
