N&C - Nature & Cultures, The American University of Paris geographic magazine for global explorers No. 8
|
|
Texts, photographs, links and any other content appearing on Nature & Cultures should not be construed as endorsement by The American University of Paris of organizations, entities, views or any other feature. Individuals are solely responsible for the content they view or post.
|
Moon Landing: Real or Hoax?
You likely know someone who believes that the moon landing was fake: either a friend, family member, or coworker, who may even be otherwise rational but insists Armstrong and Aldrin are actors. As many as 12% of Americans believe that NASA didn’t land on the moon, almost 1 in 8 (Hamilton). Why is it so common, and can we chalk it up to just mis- and dis-information? It’s such a common conspiracy that it has become one of the stereotypical conspiracies commonly attributed to conspiracy theorists, endlessly mocked in movies, shows, books, and the like. Virtually no scientists or astronauts have ever supported this notion. Still, people believe it regardless—and perhaps that is part of the appeal: it would be the biggest scandal in history.
Of course, there is outstanding evidence against moon landing conspiracies. No whistleblowers have surfaced over the past 50 years, and no opposing governments, the Soviet Union, or any of our enemies since, have ever suggested a conspiracy either, which seems unlikely if there is any substantial evidence. NASA would’ve had to fake not just videos and photographs of the moon, but thousands upon thousands of documents detailing equipment, geological instruments, exploration strategies, and other research, many of which are readily accessible online. Apropos the commonly posited “proofs”, such as the absence of stars or non-parallel shadows in footage on the moon: these can be easily explained away by anyone knowledgeable in any related field, and these two specific examples can be disproven even by simple observations on Earth. However, I suppose this is missing the point. If you ask people who believe in these theories, I’m sure that many of them are aware of these facts: that you can’t see stars in the same way you can’t from Earth at day, or have even watched the MythBusters episode disproving the inconsistent shadows, but this hardly convinces them that the moon landing was real, rather that they’ve done a great job at covering it up (“NASA Moon Landing Hoax”). The starting point of the conspiracy is a distrust of the government. They’ve lied before (and in fact, very often), so they must be lying about this too. To be as fair as possible, we should analyze the conspiracy through this lens.
|
You do not need to send a team of archeologists on the Moon to look for traces of the six successful Apollo missions (Apollo 13 failed). One of the easiest ways to debunk the fake moon landing conspiracy theories is for anyone (well at least a professional or an amateur astronomer) to simply verify by himself, herself or themselves whether there are any artifacts by using a telescope. Here are six pictures documenting what is visible from Earth.
|
|
|
|
So, we assume the government absolutely cannot be trusted. They must also have means not known to the public; no one can argue the United States government hasn’t hidden things from its people. The motivation to fake a moon landing is, similarly, not completely unbelievable. The United States, amid the Cold War, had promised a moon landing, and beating the Soviets would be important to national pride—and if it was easier to fake than to do for real, then perhaps they would have faked it. From a modern perspective, the technology of 1969 seems incredibly primitive; to send man to the moon with computers several times less powerful than anything you would encounter today is amazing, and to the conspiracists, completely infeasible—whereas the technology for filmmaking and photography were already established and the apparently cheaper and time-saving option. There was no widespread CGI like today, but special effects of the time were advanced enough to allow filming of convincing footage of space from Earth, as shown in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Some have theorized that Kubrick was responsible for filming the fake moon landing—I won’t hold scrutiny to if he specifically was involved, but he showed it was possible, and someone must exist with the skill and discretion to pull it off.
More than behind the camera, there must have been many people in ruse: the astronauts, scientists, and engineers of NASA must all have been either ignorant or complicit. There is a precedent for the United States government to pay, threaten, or kill to cover up wrongdoing, although the scale would have to be greater than any before seen. It is just not feasible by any means that any good portion of the 400,000 Americans, and 20,000 industrial firms and universities, working on the moon landing knew about such a grand conspiracy, and not one ever defected or “spilled the tea”, so to speak. Then perhaps only a few, a manageable amount to be ensured to keep quiet, were told of the ploy, and most of the thousands working on the landing were kept in the dark. This is still a monumental feat, but, again, depending on who you are, this can be seen as either evidence against the hoax or proof of the government’s power and cunning.
|
They landed on the moon! New York, the 20th. (TASS). At 23.18 Moscow time, the moon capsule of the cosmic vessel Apollo 11 with N. Armstrong and E. Aldrin accomplished a landing on the surface of the moon in the Sea of Tranquility. For now, the cosmonauts are staying in their capsule. Their excursion on the surface of the moon is planned for the morning hours of July 21st (read our report on the flight of Apollo 11 on page 5). Being American, the first human landing on the Moon was not cause for great celebration in the USSR. However, it was mentioned by the Soviet Press as a great achievement. The event even made it to the front page of "Pravda". In the middle of the Cold War, with all its resources for espionage and propaganda, wouldn't the Soviet media jumped on the opportunity to report them if there had been the slightest doubt about the authenticity of the Moon missions?
|
I mentioned before that moon-hoax conspiracists are likely aware of scientists disproving their evidence, but a theory needs some legs to stand on, and I would be doing a disservice if I didn’t mention them. Quite often, proofs of conspiracies like the moon landing hoax are easily laughed off and met with humorous dismissal. Even if you’re not an astronomer, physicist, or rocket scientist, it is well known that the evidence is flimsy at best and has been debunked countless times. However, I would like to treat these claims with as much integrity as any other. The “no stars” and “non-parallel shadows” are perhaps the most common, along with the US flag planted on the moon appearing to wave in the wind (when, of course, there is no wind on the moon), and the non-existence of a crater at the LEM landing site. As for something not directly related to the photos or videos on the moon, it’s also been posited that the astronauts would not have survived passing through the Van Allen radiation belts unharmed. The Van Allen belts are zones, in the inner region of Earth’s magnetic field, of high energy charged particles trapped from the sun, with a level of radiation some thousand times greater than regular space. You might expect, then, that Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins would be dead, or at least terribly sick and irradiated, by the time they landed on the Moon, and doubly so having to pass through it again when returning to Earth.
Personally, I quite like the Van Allen belt theory because it takes quite a bit more effort and scientific knowledge to dispute than, say, the problem of the flag, the movement of which was caused by the astronauts and not the wind, or the absence of a crater, where in truth no crater should be expected on the hard landing surface. However, the truth is that even Dr. James Van Allen himself, who discovered the belt, said “[t]he claim that radiation exposure during the Apollo missions would have been fatal to the astronauts” is “nonsense” (Windley). Some conspiracists would then say that Van Allen has been paid off or is otherwise in on the hoax, but in any case, NASA obviously knew about the Van Allen belt (it was discovered in 1958) and could plan build the spacecraft and plan the trajectory accordingly: Apollo 11 didn’t pass through the smaller belt, only traversed the weak part of the larger, and was only inside any of them for about 60 minutes, so the level of radiation was low enough to pose no threat to the astronauts. This, and all similar debunking of moon conspiracies, is supported by tremendous amounts of scientific evidence.
Even if you don’t quite understand the scientific evidence, a question arises when trying to analyze these conspiracies: how come, if the US government is so powerful, deceitful, and good at hoaxes, and, for example, stars should have been visible on the moon, NASA would make such an obvious mistake as to omit them? If you wanted to create a set for a Kubrick moon landing, and people expect the rocket to make a crater, why not just build a crater? And then, on the other side of the coin, why, if they truly are so powerful that they pulled off the world’s greatest hoax with no substantiated conspiracy-revealing slip-ups, would they not just do it for real? Is the amount of time, money, and effort to go to the moon that much greater than faking it, and keeping it hidden for all these years? The logistics begin to shatter, because to believe it, you must regard the US as an all-powerful supreme force that can fool its people, and every other world government, while somehow preventing every conspirator, including every astronaut and scientist, from defecting, but is simultaneously too powerless to go to the moon, or too stupid to realize a flag in space shouldn’t wave in the wind. The Apollo 11 mission cost approximately 355 million dollars, which is a lot, but not for a country that spent 85 billion (with a ‘b’!) dollars on its military in 1969. Even if a hoax would have saved money, which it’s likely it wouldn’t have, I can’t imagine the US being a penny-pincher on this issue.
This inherent contradiction isn’t unique to the moon landing, many conspiracy theories are the same. I alluded to it before, but often these conspiracies aren’t really about the evidence (or lack thereof). It’s about mistrust in the government, and usually in science, and the proof is constructed after. As anyone who has argued with a drunk uncle at Thanksgiving will know, sometimes no amount of truth can dissuade someone from believing something they’ve already set their mind on—they’ll just come up with new explanations to justify their view. All that to say, there will always be people who don’t believe in the moon landing. However, and this is important, I don’t blame the conspiracists; and, though frustrating, it is relatively harmless, as far as conspiracies go. It’s an enticing story, but I think the real story is much better. We can never convince everyone, but dispelling misinformation (and disinformation) is something that everyone can help with, and something every budding scientist had better get used to.
Works Cited
- “The First Step: Langley’s Contributions to Apollo.” NASA, NASA, 26 July 2023, www.nasa.gov/history/the-first-step-langleys-contributions-to-apollo.
- Hamilton, Lawrence C. “Conspiracy vs. Science: A Survey of U.S. Public Beliefs.” The Carsey School of Public Policy at the Scholars’ Repository, 2022. 488, https://doi.org/10.34051/p/2022.08.
- “Moon Landing Conspiracy Theories, Debunked.” Royal Museums Greenwich, Royal Museums Greenwich, www.rmg.co.uk/stories/topics/moon-landing-conspiracy-theories-debunked. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023.
- “NASA Moon Landing Hoax.” MythBusters, created by Peter Rees, performance by Adam Savage, and Jamie Hyneman, season 6, episode 11, Discovery Channel, 27 Aug. 2008.
- Safonova, Margarita. “How NASA Worked Around Earth’s Radiation Belts to Land Apollo 11 on the Moon.” The Wire Science, 8 June 2019, science.thewire.in/the-sciences/apollo-11-van-allen-radiation-belts-translunar-injection/.
- Windley, Jay. “Jay Windley’s Letter to James Van Allen.” Received by Dr. James Van Allen, FlatEarth.Ws, 27 July 2004, https://flatearth.ws/james-van-allen. Accessed 9 Nov. 2023.