How Do We Actually Know We Landed on the Moon?

[Music] to begin with on july the 20th 1969 the world looked on in ore as 39 year old astronaut neil armstrong stepped off a ladder of the lunar module eagle and onto the surface of the moon becoming the first human to set foot on a natural celestial object this moment watched on television by over 650 million people worldwide has gone down in history as one of mankind's greatest triumphs redefining what humanity is capable of achieving over the next three years a total of six apollo missions and 12 astronauts would visit the moon leaving behind scientific instruments and returning mineral samples that helped expand our understanding of the moon the earth and the solar system also most of us have been led to believe despite the apollo program being one of the largest most expensive and most public undertakings in human history for nearly 60 years a once small but ever-growing dedicated group of conspiracy theorists have maintained that the whole endeavor was in fact an elaborate hoax a piece of hollywood flimflammary aimed at pumping up america's self-image and winning a propaganda victory against the soviet union according to this theory no humans have ever set foot on the moon and the famous images beamed into millions of households were instead filmed on a sound stage on earth while anyone with a passing knowledge of history and conspiracy should be able to recognize these claims as total nonsense they have gained a surprising amount of traction with a 2005 poll revealing that nearly 25 percent of americans aged 18 to 25 doubt that humans had ever walked on the moon yep one in fall despite living in an era when humans have access to more information than ever showing that we did in fact land on the moon but how did this conspiracy theory come about in the first place and what hard observable evidence is there that the apollo moon landings actually took place while there were doubtless plenty of people in the 1960s who doubted that humans were capable of reaching the moon the moon landing conspiracy theory as it exists today was started by one man named william kasing born in 1922 in chicago casing served in the u.s navy during world war ii and in 1949 obtained a bachelor of arts from the university of redland in california he then worked a variety of jobs including as a salesman insurance claim examiner and cabinet maker until landing a position as a technical writer for california-based aerospace company rocketdyne deciding he'd had enough of the rat race in 1963 kasen quit rocketdyne and traveled the country in a trailer with his family earning a living writing books on a wide variety of topics including cooking farming taxes motorcycles and travel however he maintained an active interest in the ongoing manned space program and as the years passed he became more and more convinced that the united states government was being less than honest about the nation's space flight accomplishments in 1976 four years after the apollo program ended casing propping himself up as an expert thanks to his very brief time as a technical writer for rocketdyne laid out his ideas in a self-published book titled we never landed on the moon america's 30 billion dollar swindle according to casing sometime in the late 1950s he managed to get his hands on a top secret nasa study examining the feasibility of landing on the moon the report concluded in his words that the chance of success was something like .0017 in other words it was hopeless thus when nasa announced in 1969 that apollo 11 had successfully landed on the moon casing was immediately skeptical central to his doubts was the apollo 1 disaster of february 21 1967 in which a fire on the launch pad resulted in the deaths of astronauts gus grissom edwell and roger chaffee and set the apollo program back by months as casing later explains as late as 1967 three astronauts died in a horrendous fire on the launch pad but as of 1969 we could suddenly perform mad flight upon manned flight with complete success it's just against all statistical odds according to casing sometime in the mid-1960s nasa realized that it would not be able to meet former president john f kennedy's goal of landing a man on the moon by the end of the decade but rather than emit defeat nasa decided instead to fake the whole thing to accomplish this the astronauts were secretly removed from the saturn v rocket just prior to launch and the empty rocket fired into space the astronauts were then flown to a secret sound stage on groom lake air force base in nevada better known as area 51 where the landing and space walk were faked for the cameras and when it came time for the astronauts to return to earth they were packed into the capsule flown over the pacific ocean in a military transport plane and parachuted into the water for the us navy to recover casing never revealed which secret report he read contained the infamous .0017 probability of success nor how nasa came up with such an incredibly precise figure indeed there is no evidence that nasa conducted any sort of moon landing feasibility study in the 1950s the agency only having been established in its modern form in july 1958 but as we shall see this is far from the largest gap or the most ridiculous claim in casings theories for example when asked why nasa would bother with such an elaborate charade kasin claimed without any concrete evidence to support it that the agency was working with the defense intelligence agency to deceive the soviet union and claim a major propaganda victory he also accused nasa and major aerospace companies of going along with the scheme in order to secure lucrative government contracts stating they both nasa and rocketdyne wanted the money to keep pouring in i've worked in aerospace long enough to know that's their goal as for how nasa managed to dupe the soviets when the latter were closely monitoring all american spacecraft launches casing had an equally simple answer nasa simply broadcast fake signals to full ground stations into thinking a spacecraft was on its way to the moon how exactly this was accomplished casing never specified moving on from there in his book casing claims that the faked moon landings were taped live with only a seven second delay between recording and broadcast this meant that if a fly were to buzz across the sound stage the recording technicians would have only seconds to react and avoid giving away the whole charade and just how did neil armstrong buzz aldrin and michael collins spend their free time in between filming sessions well according to casing they flew to las vegas rented a room at the sands hotel and hung out at casinos and strip clubs casing even claims that the astronauts had such a good time in vegas that one of them allegedly buzz aldrin got into a fist fight over a stripper and the three could only be lured back to area 51 for filming by providing them with buxom showgirls and we really are not making this up cheese sandwiches no matter what objections were leveled at his theories casing always had ready answers albeit ones devoid of any supporting evidence for example when asked where the moon rocks the astronauts collected came from cason claimed they were either meteorites recovered from antarctica or fakes created in a nasa geology lab but what neither casing nor subsequent conspiracy theorists have been able to explain away is how nasa and the us government were able to keep such a massive conspiracy under wraps as anyone who has ever tried to keep a secret knows the greater the number of people involved the harder it is to stop the truth from leaking out for your reference at its peak the apollo program employed nearly half a million people nationwide but in the five decades since the project ended not a single one of them has come forward with credible evidence that the endeavor was an elaborate sham always one with a ready answer kayson claimed that nasa only let those who needed to know that the project was a hoax while letting everyone else believe that their work you know the work that if complete to the satisfaction of the countless scientists and engineers involved ignorance of the conspiracy would in fact allow a man to walk on the moon was genuine anyone who did know of the hoax that threatened to spill the beans was either paid off promoted threatened or in certain cases murdered despite the sheer absurdity of his claims and the fact that his book was hardly a bestseller kasing's writings soon gained a small but dedicated following and laid the groundwork for the thriving moon landing hoax community had casing been any other man at any other time his ideas would likely have been ignored and disappeared into history but his experience working at rocketdyne brief as it was lent his theories an air of credibility as a supposed expert despite the fact that he wasn't even a little bit of an expert and people ran with it his ideas also fit perfectly into a cultural shift then taking place in america while the 1950s and 1960s had been full of optimism about a bright technological future and celebrations of american exceptionalism by the mid-1970s the american people had become thoroughly disillusioned with their country the disastrous quagmire of the vietnam war the watergate scandal and the revelations about top secret programs like mk ultra mind control experiments caused people to lose trust in their government with this eroded trust in those in authority conspiracy theorists of all kinds popped up like mushrooms which has only gotten worse and worse in the modern era with the root cause being more or less the same on some levels kaysing's ideas were also given an unexpected boost by the 1978 film capricorn 1 written and directed by peter hyams in the film nasa realizing that its upcoming manned mission to mars is doomed to fail decides to fake the whole thing instead just as in casings hypothetical apollo scenario the three astronauts are removed from the capsule just prior to launch and the empty rocket is fired into space the astronauts are then flown to a sound stage on a remote military base where the mars landing is staged for the cameras however when the empty spacecraft burns up on re-entry due to a faulty heat shield the us government decides that the astronauts must die to avoid revealing the hoax resulting in a fraught chase across the desert the idea for capricorn 1 came from the same feeling of distrust for the u.s government that drove casing to develop his own theories with writer director heim's later musing there was one event apollo 11 of really enormous importance that had almost no witnesses and the only verification we have came from a tv camera heims went on to explain whenever there was something on the news about a space shuttle they would cut to a studio in saint louis where there was a simulation of what was going on i grew up in the generation where my parents basically believed if it was in the newspaper it was true that turned out to be my generation was brought up to believe television was true and that was too so i was watching these simulations and wondering what would happen if someone faked a whole story in the wake of casings book and heim's films the moon landing hoax theory took on a life of its own with others adding their own sensational details to the conspiracy at one point theorists determined that the moon landing sequences had been directed by none other than legendary filmmaker stanley kubrick for no other reason that his 2001 a space odyssey released a year before apollo 11 was one of the most realistic science fiction films ever made featuring groundbreaking special effects why kubrick would agree to help the us government perpetrate such a hoax has never been adequately explained though most conspiracy theorists simply turn to the tried and tested excuse that he was bullied or blackmailed into it later theorists have speculated the kubrick secretly confessed his involvement in the hoax via subliminal messages hidden in his 1980 horror film the shining these supposed clues include the infamous room 237 allegedly meant to represent the 237 000 kilometer average distance between the earth and the moon and the fact that in certain scenes the character of danny torrance wears an apollo 11 sweater perhaps more than any other part of the moon landing conspiracy this claim in particular strains credibility after all how could kubrick infamous perfectionist that he was ever allowed neil armstrong to flub his iconic line that's one small step for a man one giant leap for mankind the fact that all these theories crumple so easily under the weight of the slightest scrutiny helps explain why in 2001 casing released an updated edition of his book titled conspiracy theory did we land on the moon in this he revises many of his claims for example in the first edition casing claims that the giant rocketdyne f1 engines used in the first stage of the saturn v were discovered to be too unreliable so nasa instead hid several h1 rocket engines from the earlier saturn 1b rocket inside the f1 engine bells this is one of the easiest of casings claims to debunk as even a cursory look at the h1's dimensions and performance reveal that not only could these engines not a bit inside the f1 as casing described but they would not have had enough thrust to lift the saturn v into orbit even with the propellant tanks partially drained furthermore close-up footage taken by nasa of saturn 5's lifting off clearly showed the f1 engine's working just as advertised with no smaller engine clusters inside faced with such rebuttals casein revised his story that the f1 engines actually did work as intended but that the rocket was ditched in the ocean as soon as it was out of sight interestingly this particular theory does contain a small grain of truth of the type that allows successful conspiracy theories to gain traction and take off early in the f1's engine development rocketdyne did indeed encounter serious issues with combustion instability that threatened to kill the entire apollo program however through diligent trial and error engineers as they are want to do for being engineers managed to solve the problem in time and not a single one of the 13 saturn 5s launched suffered any sort of serious failure other changes in the 2001 edition of casing's book regard the role of astronauts in perpetuating the hoax while in the 1976 edition casing claims that the astronauts never left the earth and spent the entire mission hanging around in area 51 las vegas in his revised version they actually did fly into space but remained in earth orbit while pre-recorded footage of the landing was broadcast around the world there's no word on whether they still had cheese sandwiches and strippers with them while circling the globe throughout his life kasen continued to level various outlandish accusations at nasa including that the apollo on fire was deliberately set in order to stop astronauts grissom white and jaffe from spilling the beans on the upcoming hoax conspiracy for those following along with casing's narrative this would mean that he is saying that the fire was a a deliberate action inflicted by nasa upon itself and be an example of nasa's incompetence that forced the agency to fake the moon landings incredibly casing went even further claiming that nasa deliberately blew up the space shuttle challenger in 1986 in order to silence teacher in space christa mcauliffe why would nasa do this when mcauliffe's mission was a publicity stunt meant to rekindle public interest in space travel well according to casing christa mcauliffe the only civilian and only woman aboard refused to go along with the lie that you couldn't see stars in space so they blew her up along with six other people to keep that lie under wraps adding to the long list of casings claims that are ridiculously easy to debunk it is worth pointing out that christa mcauliffe was not the only woman on board nasa astronaut judith resnick was also killed in that tragedy given these outrageous accusations it's no surprise that casey and his followers have run afoul of several astronauts and other nasa personnel for example in 1996 apollo 8 and 13 astronaut jim lovell publicly stated this guy is wacky his position makes me feel angry we spent a lot of time getting ready to go to the moon we spent a lot of money we took great risks and it's something everybody in this country should be proud of lovell also wrote casing asking him to tear up your manuscript and pursue a project that has some meaning leave a legacy you can be proud of not some trash whose readers will doubt your sanity in response casing proceeded to sue level for slander and defamation however the case was ultimately thrown out of court and nothing came of the affair understandably kasing's death in 2005 at the age of 83 was met with mixed feelings by those who had participated in the apollo program with few managing to muster much sympathy for a man who accused nasa of multiple murders more recently on september 9 2002 37 year old cab driver conspiracy theorist and documentary filmmaker bart sibrel invited apollo 11 astronaut buzz aldrin to the beverly hills hotel under the pretense of filming a children's tv show on space when aldrin arrived at the hotel cybril and his camera crew ambushed him with cybril attempting to make aldrin swear on a bible that he had walked on the moon cyril then proceeded to call aldrin a liar and a coward at which point in a moment that doubtless illicited cheers throughout the space exploration community the 72 year old astronaut proceeded to punch sabrell right in the face but while these outlandish alternate histories of the apollo program are largely unsupported by evidence and ridiculously easy to debunk many conspiracy theorists point to supposedly incontrovertible physical evidence hidden in photographs and footage of the apollo missions which allegedly proves that the landings were faked so how do these claims stand up here are some of the most common mistakes allegedly made by nasa which according to conspiracy theorists prove that the moon landings were faked on a sound stage no stars appear in the sky in any of the astronauts photographs despite the moon having no atmosphere to obscure them the american flags planted by the astronauts fly straight and appear to flap in the breeze despite being allegedly deployed in a vacuum the shadows cast by rocks the astronauts and their equipment appear to fall in wildly different directions despite the only light source being the sun this proves the photos were taken on a sound stage lit by multiple studio lights in one photograph taken during the apollo 16 mission a rock bears an obvious letter c proving that it is in fact a studio prop and not a natural object in films and photographs the lunar module's rocket engine produces no visible flames leaves no crater on the lunar surface and does not kick up a massive dust cloud revealing it to be nothing but a studio miniature the aiming crosshairs on the apollo photograph sometimes appear to lie behind objects indicating that the photos are actually composites faked in a dark room the crispness of the astronaut's footprints indicates the presence of water in the soil which is impossible if they were taken on the moon the astronauts would never have survived the journey through the van allen belts large zones of lethal radiation surrounding the earth now you might want to be sitting down for the next part because it's going to come as a major shock but these arguments demonstrate total ignorance of apollo equipment and procedures as well as the laws of physics and are all easily debunked for example no stars appear in the astronaut's photograph simply because their cameras were not set up to capture them all the astronaut space walks took place during the lunar day when sunlight reflecting off the lunar surface would have been extremely bright in order to take clear pictures the apertures on their cameras had to be cranked down making the stars far too faint to show up on film photographic procedures also neatly solve the mystery of the disappearing crosshairs the crosshairs themselves were etched directly into the glass optics of the cameras meaning the light reflecting at certain angles could make some parts of the crosshair appear lighter than others when the negatives were subsequently developed enlarged and copied these differences were magnified causing the pale sections to disappear entirely and the crosses appear to sit behind rather than over certain objects as for the mysterious sea on the rock in the apollo 16 photograph this is also merely a photographic aberration the letter does not appear in the original negative and is likely a stray piece of hair or dust that was accidentally captured during the enlargement and copying process furthermore as many veteran film crews and props masters are quick to point out nowhere is it common practice to label props and scenery with large easily visible letters or numbers other purported evidence of the moon landings being fake is easily dismissed by closely examining the apollo hardware for instance nasa planners knew full well that an american flag hanging limply in a vacuum would hardly be the most majestic or patriotic sight which is why the lunar flag assemblies included a thin horizontal rod to keep the flag flying proudly as per flags appearing to flap in the breeze in still photographs this is merely an illusion caused by the flags being wrinkled in footage of the flags being planted the flags only move while the astronauts are handling them and for a few seconds afterwards as the flags swing like pendulums in the vacuum before finally falling still a close examination of the lunar module propulsion system also reveals wire produced no visible flame and left no visible crater on the lunar surface both the descent and ascent engines on the lunar module were fueled by a combination of airazine 50 and nitrogen tetroxide the reaction of these produces a pale nearly colorless flame barely visible in high definition footage of earth-based rockets like the titan ii ballistic missile this exhaust would have been invisible to the primitive television cameras used to record lunar liftoffs giving the lunar module a cent stage the appearance of a studio model being lifted by a string but what about the lack of a crater well luna gravity is only about a sixth as strong as it is on earth meaning that far less powerful and destructive engines were required to get the lunar module onto and off of the lunar surface indeed the lunar module descent engine had a maximum thrust of around 4500 kilograms about the same as the smallest rocket to achieve earth orbit the japanese ss-520 this engine was also significantly throttled down during the final approach further limiting its destructive potential furthermore much of the lunar surface consists of hard bedrock covered by a thin layer of lunar soil or regolith rarely more than a couple of centimeters deep thus on landing the lunar module would have not blasted a deep crater but merely displaced a small amount of dust but what about the lack of a gigantic billowing dust cloud well on earth dust clouds are caused by fine dust particles becoming suspended in the air in the absence of an atmosphere dust does not billow it simply falls to the ground at the rate of gravitational acceleration but more on that in a bit and speaking of dust according to the conspiracy theorists the remarkable crispness of the footprints the apollo astronauts left in the lunar soil is only possible if said soil contains water proving that the photographs were taken on earth and not on the dry airless lunar surface but this argument ignores the unique properties of the lunar environment the lunar regolith is produced over millions of years by the continual bombardment of the lunar surface by meteorites once settled on the lunar surface the regolith is acted upon by the solar wind and other high-energy subatomic particles further breaking it down into fine and extremely sharp and jagged particles the bombardment also imparts the dust particles with a strong electrostatic charge allowing them to come together much like damp soil does on earth indeed this property proved a major problem for the apollo astronauts as the charged highly abrasive dust stuck to everything including the astronaut spacesuits and it wore down and damaged a great deal of sensitive equipment this electrostatic cling along with the lack of flowing water wind and other erosive forces on the lunar surface also means that the astronaut's footprints will likely remain crisp and perfectly preserved for millions of years until they are finally covered over by slowly accumulating layers of falling dust while the previous examples are relatively straightforward to debunk there still remains the curious phenomenon of the cockeyed shadows in the astronaut photographs at first glance this argument appears to indicate that the conspiracy theorists might actually be onto something after all if the only light source was the sun wouldn't all the shadows be parallel but once again the solution to this supposed mystery is relatively straightforward and was famously demonstrated in a 2008 episode of the tv show mythbusters in that episode host adam savage constructed a scale model of the apollo 11 landing site complete with miniature lunar lander and lit the entire scene with a single spotlight to simulate the sun savage discovered that the uneven terrain caused the shadows to veer off in different directions giving the illusion of multiple light sources but what about the most persistent and seemingly scientific argument against humans traveling to the moon that the astronauts would have been fried by the intense radiation of the van allen belts to the conspiracy theorists credit the van allen radiation belts are a very real phenomenon and do pose a serious grist astronauts venturing beyond low earth orbit the twin donut shaped regions which lie at an altitude of six hundred to thirteen thousand kilometers for the inner belt and thirteen thousand five hundred forty thousand kilometers for the outer belt are the result of the earth's magnetic field capturing and accelerating high-energy subatomic particles from the solar wind and other cosmic sources in certain places the belts are populated by large numbers of protons with energies exceeding 100 mega electron volts which would kill a human within minutes so how did nasa get around this seemingly impenetrable barrier well by doing just that going around it while certain parts are extremely dangerous the van allen belts are not uniform in density with outlying zones containing significantly fewer higher energy particles the belts are also relatively narrow occupying only a fraction of the path between the earth and the moon nasa planners were thus able to design the apollo spacecraft's translunar injection or tli course to skirt around the edges of the balan belts and avoid the more dangerous zones the time spent within the belts themselves was also extremely brief around 60 minutes total for both the outbound and return flights meaning the astronauts were exposed to only minimal amounts of radiation the spacecraft itself also incorporated a great deal of radiation shielding in the form of aluminium plates instrument panels and propellant and oxygen tanks further reducing the crew's exposure indeed the astronaut's total exposure upon returning from the moon was found to be .46 rads equivalent to 46 chest x-rays thus while the van allen belts were indeed a known and serious hazard with a little planning this obstacle was easily overcome almost as if nasa has a lot of people working there who know exactly what they're doing but while debunking these common arguments clearly reveals the flimsy evidence on which most moon landing conspiracy theories are built ultimately all this proves is that if the moon landing was faked nasa did not make any obvious mistakes it does not definitively prove that the apollo landings actually took place so how can we physically confirm in the present day that humans actually walked on the moon one method is to shine a laser at the moon all six apollo missions deployed a piece of equipment called the apollo luna surface experiments package or alsep an automated laboratory for studying the lunar environment powered by a radioisotope thermal generator or rtg the alceps were designed to remain on the lunar surface and transmit data on seismic activity subatomic particles and other phenomena back to earth in addition to the main alsep package apollos 11 14 and 15 also deployed a device known as the lunar laser ranging experiment or llr a small array of corner retro reflectors that reflect light back in the direction it arrives these were designed to allow scientists to accurately measure the distance between the earth and the moon to accomplish this a powerful laser such as the apache point observatory lunar laser ranging operation or apollo in new mexico is fired at the lr's on the lunar surface and the time for the beam to bounce back is measured given the extreme distances involved in the small size of the target actually hitting the reflectors is something of a challenge which scientists liken to using a rifle to hit a moving dime three kilometers away furthermore only a very small proportion about one in one sextillion of the photons fired at the moon make it back to earth and require specialized sensors to detect yet despite these challenges using the lrr scientists are able to measure the distance to the moon with an accuracy of a few millimeters the equivalent of measuring the distance between los angeles and new york to within the width of a human hair this extraordinary accuracy has allowed scientists to determine among other things that the moon has a liquid core wobbles about its axes and is gradually moving away from the earth at a rate of about 3.8 centimeters per year the lrs continue to be used for research to the present day the only part of the apollo alcep still in working order while the existence of the lrs should theoretically confirm the reality of the apollo missions unfortunately in this case history does give the conspiracy theorists a plausible out for the apollo lrs are not the only retro-reflectors on the moon in 1970 and 1973 the soviet union landed two robotic lenore rovers on the lunar surface in addition to television cameras spectrometers soil probes and radiation detectors the lenarcodes also carried laser retro-reflector arrays which continued to be used for experiments alongside the apollo lrs thus the presence of retroreflectors on the moon does not definitively prove that humans set foot there simply that humans definitely manage to get things to the moon but if seeing truly is believing then why not send a spacecraft to photograph the lunar surface and bring back direct photographic evidence of the apollo landings well this is exactly what nasa did in 2009 when it launched the lunar reconnaissance orbiter or lro into lunar orbit while lro's primary mission is to map the lunar surface and help find suitable sites for future manned and unmanned missions in the course of this mission the spacecraft passed over and photographed the landing sites of all six apollo missions these photographs taken from altitudes between 20 and 165 kilometers above the surface clearly show the hardware left behind by the astronauts including the lunar module descent stages the alsup instrument packages and the lunar roving vehicles or lrvs as well as the extensive patterns of tracks left by the lrvs and the astronaut's feet of course conspiracy theorists will inevitably claim that these photographs were baked but spacecraft from china india and japan have also independently photographed the apollo landing sites why any of these nations would play along with a 60-year-old american hoax is not clear but if even that doesn't convince you then allow us to reveal our trump card the ultimate evidence that humans did actually walk on the moon and that the entire apollo program was not in fact faked on a sound stage the dust for the apollo 15 16 and 17 missions in 1971 and 1972 the astronauts were equipped with the lunar roving vehicle or lrv a folding electrically powered moon buggy that allowed them to explore a greater area of the lunar surface footage of this vehicle driving around on the lunar surface reveals a curious phenomenon the dust kicked up by the wheels simply falls back in a straight line rather than billowing as it would on earth and it also falls far more slowly this makes sense as the moon has no atmosphere and air is required for dust to billow luna gravity is only one-sixth as powerful as that on earth meaning that objects accelerate toward the lunar surface at only 1.6 meters per second squared well so what you might be asking how does this prove that humans walked on the moon to understand why consider what it would have taken to fake this footage on a sound stage simulating the motion of particulates like smoke fog and dust is one of the most difficult challenges in movie visual effects so much so that even today's most powerful cgi rendering software struggles to achieve realistic-looking results faking the dust would have thus been far beyond the capabilities of analog 1970s visual effects indeed even 2001 a space odyssey whose special effects are often cited by conspiracy theorists as evidence that director stanley kubrick helped fake the moon landings doesn't bother to accurately depict the behavior of dust in a vacuum in an early scene where a spacecraft touches down on the moon the dust billows just as it does on earth thus to achieve a realistic dust effect on earth nasa would have had no choice but to film a full-sized lunar rover or at the very least a remote controlled model in an enormous vacuum chamber a truly monumental undertaking to be fair nasa does operate a large number of vacuum chambers for testing spacecraft prior to launch and the cost of building a vacuum sound stage would have been significantly lower than actually going to the moon but even if nasa had gone to such extraordinary lengths to get the behavior of the lunar dust just right there would still be the problem of gravity while the reduced weight of larger objects like astronauts themselves could theoretically have been simulated using cables and counterweights the slow fall of the lunar dust would have been all but impossible to fake in order to replicate both the effects of vacuum and reduced gravity simultaneously a hypothetical vacuum sound stage would have had to have been mounted in an aircraft such as nasa's infamous kc-135 vomit comet and run through a series of parabolic arcs while the cameras rolled all to achieve a physical effect that most of the general public would not have even noticed that's not to mention in all of this once again the soviets would have liked nothing better than to embarrass the u.s by revealing that the landings were a hoax yet like the rest of us but with far more sophisticated equipment than a tv they closely monitored the spacecraft and every other facet of the manned missions to the moon as you might imagine from all of this given the incredible scope such a deceit would have had to entail spanning hundreds of thousands of individuals virtually all of whom would have had to have been ignorant of the hoax and thus actually doing the real works that would have put a man on the moon when all things considered it actually becomes easier just to go to the moon than to fake it but all the material and historical evidence aside the real question when it comes to moon landing conspiracy theories is this if apollo 11 was fake and only intended to win a propaganda victory why then were the follow-up missions if the apollo program was meant to showcase america's technological superiority why did two missions apollo 1 and apollo 13 end in near or total disaster and if all the landings were faked why did nasa stop at only six viewed objectively with all its triumphs tragedies and random twists of fate the history of the apollo program and the us space program as a whole reads far more like actual messy reality than some carefully orchestrated propaganda hoax but regardless of logic or evidence some people simply believe what they want to believe and don't bother to ever look deeper into the actual hard data on an issue and so it is that the moon landing conspiracy theory among countless others that are also relatively easily debunked with even a cursory dive into the issue doesn't seem likely to disappear anytime soon given the surprising longevity of william kasing's harebrained ideas and the growing popularity of some of them in an era when more information than ever is available for people to look up and disprove the hoax theory it is truly a case of one small step for a man one giant leap for willfully ignorant kind but it doesn't have to be this way and we shouldn't accept it knowing actual facts and listening to and properly interpreting data is insanely important to countless aspects of all of our lives and civilization in general and even when we lack sufficient data to make a clear decision on a given thing if we as a society at least all agree on a core set of facts we're going to come up with solutions that are more amicable to all sides which is again good for everybody you

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Length: 34min 10sec (2050 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 06 2022