Moon-Landing Conspiracy Theories
This has to be one of my biggest pet peeves of all time: those who say that the whole Apollo program was faked. There was even a TV show on recently that raised questions that sounded good; however, let’s look at the evidence point-by-point. Remember that the assertion of the conspiracy theorists is that the WHOLE program, including six Moon landings over a period of around 3 years, was a sham.
Their Points
The speed of Apollo development
Yes, it’s “incredible” that the U.S. space program sprang from what seems like nothing in 1957, to a moon landing in 1969. But the theorists don’t consider the decades of plodding work that Von Braun and Goddard did before Sputnik, since the 1930s. The amount of brainpower that went into developing the concepts required for a space program was so great that the term “rocket science” is now used to describe something that’s unbelievably complex and advanced.
In addition, the whole U.S. government geared up for the Apollo program after Kennedy’s “blessing” in 1960. The resources of the whole nation, one of the richest on Earth, were poured into research and development. If you don’t understand how a program could advance so far in such a short time, compare an IBM PC from 1990 with an IBM PC from 1999—the same time interval.
The lack of landing-engine noise
The program mentioned that “there was no noise from the landing engine” as the Apollo landing module Eagle descended toward the surface of the Moon. Did they even listen to the quality of the sound that was broadcast? An obvious point is that the human ear is more sensitive than ANY microphone by orders of magnitude. The sound was very scratchy for clearly-stated words by Armstrong—how do you think any low-level rumble would sound? This isn’t Armageddon. Additionally, I’m guessing that the engine wasn’t running non-stop during the last few meters of the descent anyway; in a lightweight LEM, with low gravity, you wouldn’t need to run a powerful rocket engine full-force; a smooth landing would be a sequence of engine thrusts timed to brake descent into lower and lower fall rates until the craft “settled” to the surface. You wouldn’t want to heat the surface below explosively, and you sure wouldn’t want to blow rock dust against your landing gear too violently.
One more obvious point: there’s no air on the moon. The only way you’d hear the engine is through the vibration of the craft—and that itself would likely be a low enough frequency as to be undetectable by the microphones on the Eagle.
The lack of a landing crater, and the subsequent footprints
The skeptics point to the lack of a landing crater under the LEM as evidence that it didn’t descend with a rocket-exhaust plume under it. For previously-stated reasons, I don’t see that this is a big problem. Furthermore, the rock dust on the surface of the moon—regolith—isn’t like dust in your house; it’s fairly heavy. It’s made of rock, not skin and dust mites; therefore, it doesn’t surprise me that you wouldn’t make a big hole in it if you weren’t blowing much exhaust on it. Also, the depth of the regolith varies—it isn’t like they landed the Eagle on a beach. You can see that from the footprints left by the astronauts.
Theorists also say that the Eagle should have virtually cleared the regolith from the landing site, and they point to the presence of the astronauts’ footprints as evidence that the landing must have been staged. From previous points, it should be apparent that the Eagle didn’t come down like a blowtorch; it’s not surprising that there was enough regolith a few meters from the craft to make footprints visible.
The missing reticle
The photos from the Moon were taken with cameras that had aiming reticles (crosshairs) etched into their lenses; thus, you get pictures that are clear, but still have marks that help you view them as a grid. One of the “problems” that the skeptics point to is of a picture of the lunar surface with the American flag in the foreground. The reticles are clearly visible except for one that seems to extend behind the flag. (See “Mistakes in general” below.)
Nobody noticed this fact: the part of the flag behind which the reticle seems to extend is quite bright. If you’ve ever looked at a picture of a very bright object, you may notice that the edges of the object can seem to “bleed” over the outline of the object; light from the object actually exposes film just outside of the spot on which it’s focused. This causes even more of a problem when the interfering image is quite narrow; the bright light coming around the image seems to “merge,” thus almost completely obscuring the image.
To test this at home, get a powerful flashlight and a needle. Turn out all the lights and sit facing a light-colored wall at about arm’s length. Turn on the flashlight and hold it beside your cheek, aiming at the wall. Hold the needle in the circle of light near the wall; you’ll be able to see the shadow of the needle quite clearly. Then move the needle back towards the flashlight lens; you’ll notice that the needle’s shadow becomes distorted and light seems to “cut through” it altogether in places.
The waving flag
One of the video images from an Apollo mission shows two astronauts planting the American flag in the lunar surface. The video seems to show the flag flapping in a breeze; since there’s no air on the Moon, skeptics say that this is evidence that the ceremony was staged on Earth.
First, think about this: if a breeze really DID make the flag flap, don’t you think NASA would’ve done something about this video clip? (See “Mistakes in general” below.)
Next: I read in World Book Encyclopedia that the flag planted on the Moon had a rod or wire inserted in its upper edge to let it stand out from the pole—if it hadn’t, it would hang straight down around the pole.
Look at the way that the astronauts are holding the flag. I’m no expert, and I haven’t read anything about the structure of the flag pole, but it looks as though the flag pole is two pieces: a hollow pole that is driven into the surface, and the actual flag pole with the flag attached, which is inserted in the hollow pole. (Many beach umbrellas use this exact design.) The astronaut on the left seems to be—gasp—holding the flag by its attached pole! And if the astronaut were turning this pole back and forth as he inserted it into the hollow base pole, what do you think the flag’s top rod would make the flag do? If you want to try this at home, bend a paperclip in an “L” shape. Hold the “L” upside down, so that the longer piece is pointing directly downwards and the shorter piece is pointing horizontally. Put a piece of Scotch tape along the top piece, extending out past the end of the top piece by about 2 inches. Then hold the long “pole” between your thumb and index finger and rotate it.
The camera lighting problem
Probably one of the best-recognized pictures from the Apollo program is the picture of an astronaut from the waist up, facing the camera, the light coming from behind him. Theorists point to this picture as evidence that the pictures were faked because of two things: one, the Sun was the only light source on the Moon (the Apollo astronauts took no artificial light sources to use for their pictures), and two, the idea that you wouldn’t be able to take a picture of anything “toward” the Sun. It’s the same concept here on Earth: if you’re standing outside watching the sunrise, and someone’s standing a few paces in front of you, you can’t see any details about the person because there is no light shining on them from YOUR point of view—you only see a silhouette.
However, one fact escapes the theorists’ notice: even though the Sun may be the only direct source of light, light bounces off of things very well—especially if it’s intense. The Moon’s surface receives quite a bit more light than the Earth’s surface does, since we have the atmosphere and clouds to reflect sunlight away before it reaches us. In the helmet filter of the astronaut facing the camera, you can clearly see the reflection of the photographer—and it is the light bouncing off of him, in addition to the light reflecting off of the rest of the landscape, that illuminates the “darkward” side of objects on the Moon.
The invisible takeoff plume
The TV program showed a video clip of a LEM blasting off of the Moon’s surface, and pointed out that there was no visible exhaust plume under the jet engine. Instead, they said that the LEM “jerked” up off of its landing base and then rose at a steady speed upward out of the camera’s view. This is proof, the program claimed, that the LEM was sitting on a movie set and hoisted upwards on cables.
Previously, I mentioned my stand that a rocket engine would not have to run under continuous power to land, as the LEM was fairly light in weight (especially in low gravity). I realize that takeoff is much different than landing; however, remember that the lander’s base was left on the Moon, and it is quite possible that NASA didn’t want to damage it more than was necessary. Therefore, it’s possible that the LEM didn’t throttle up to full power immediately. This is even more understandable when you consider that the rocket engine had been sitting around for hours (or days) at –200ºC; Mission Control may have chosen not to run it up to 100% in the first several seconds of takeoff.
Furthermore, considering the low quality of that particular video recording, I wouldn’t have been very surprised if the lander itself wasn’t visible.
Strange coincidences in New Mexico
Yes, it’s true that parts of the area around Roswell, New Mexico have craters. I’ve not heard an explanation for the source of the craters; however, some pretty bizarre geological formations can occur in the desert (note natural stone arches, geometric cracks in mud flats, and hexagonal basalt columns in the Palisades). In addition, the average erosion-plagued construction project probably looks a lot like Mars, but if any manned missions ever make it to Mars I hope nobody will claim that they filmed on a construction site.
Furthermore, it’s possible that there is something amiss at Roswell. However, does that mean that it is THE key to everything mildly weird that’s involved our government in the last 40 years? If I may interject a note of personal prejudice here: in my opinion, any show that throws the name “Roswell” around as the explain-all for government cover-ups or alien activity should be cancelled.
Ability to see the landing sites
The TV program asked why NASA scientists don’t aim a large telescope at one of the landing sites to “clear up” any accusations that humans visited the Moon. Anyone who asks that obviously hasn’t looked through binoculars at a moving target. Think about it: to see any of the evidence left on the Moon, you’d have to zoom in a LOT—somewhere around the magnification power of the Hubble. And at that power, how are you going to find one small point on the whole face of the Moon? Even if you knew the general area of a landing site, it would likely take quite some time, taking picture after picture until you managed to hit the site.
Also, the moon is moving fairly quickly. The Hubble is great for taking pictures of things that are sitting still, like distant galaxies or even planets, but I’d imagine that they’d have to extensively re-program the inflight guidance systems to track something going almost 1 km/sec in an opposing orbit. And why would the scientists give up the ’scope time for such an “oh, we did land on the Moon like we said” task? They feel no need to prove anything.
“Why haven’t we gone back?”
This is a forgivable question for anyone who doesn’t know the cost of the Apollo program. Almost everything in government-funded science has been a cost-benefit analysis: does the benefit outweigh the cost? Back in the 1960s, it did; the American government felt it could not afford to lose the space race, both literally and psychologically.
After the Moon was “conquered,” though, what was left to be gained? Not much. The moon turned out to be interesting in some small ways, but overall it was a dull, lifeless rock. Any practical benefit on the “pro” side of the scale was more than balanced out by one big “con”: the Moon is on a peak 240,000 miles high. You have to climb up the Earth’s gravity well almost 200,000 miles—and that’s expensive, resource-wise, if you’re carrying people and everything required to keep them alive AND get them back home. (Remember, what you’re lugging all the way out there includes every drop of fuel you’re going to need to get back!) The expense is simply no longer justifiable.
Good questions
In all fairness, some of the points that were raised are good questions that give cause for concern. However, do they prove that the whole program was faked, or do they prove that there are as-yet unexplained problems with NASA’s coverage of a landing? Make sure that you don’t overreact to any problems that you may have seen—the problem may not be some far-reaching cover-up; it may be a problem with one part of one mission!
Strange shadow angles
One point that seemed troubling, but not very crucial, is the way that some shadows appear in lunar photographs. The TV program showed pictures where the shadows seemed to point in different directions; if all light were coming from one source, then you’d expect for all the shadows to point in the same direction. Right?
Only if the shadow-producing objects are far away from a straight line drawn between you and the light source. In other words, if you are looking at shadow sources and the Sun is on your right or left, the shadows will look parallel. However, if the shadow sources are nearly between you and the Sun, or you are almost between the Sun and the objects, then the shadows will seem to fan out away from the Sun.
You can try this at home with your flashlight, a light-colored surface (I used a piece of paper on a table), and two coins. Place the two coins on the surface, about 6 inches apart. Hold the flashlight at the same level as the table and turn it on. If you move the flashlight to your right or left so that the beam cuts across your line of vision and the coins are oriented front-to-back, the shadows will seem to be parallel. However, if you hold the flashlight at your chest and orient the coins left-to-right, you will see that the shadows point in different directions, one to the left and one to the right.
The duplicate hills in the background
The TV program showed two pictures of the area around a lander: one showed the lander with hills in the background, and Rover tracks and footprints all around it. The other picture did NOT show the lander OR the tracks. The hills in the background look virtually the same. The question is: how was the picture with NO lander taken? It couldn’t have been taken before the lander arrived. (For instance, it couldn’t have been taken by a previous mission BEFORE the “next” lander arrived, since no two missions overlapped their exploration areas at all—they were separated by dozens or hundreds of miles.) The lander-less picture couldn’t have been taken after the lander took off, either; not only would the lander’s base still be on the landing site, but the tracks would have remained too.
The possibility remains that the two pictures were of two different sites, and the background hills just happened to appear identical. I think this is a good question; however, it doesn’t erode my belief that the astronauts actually went.
The duplicate rocky hill
On one Apollo mission, a “live” video was shown of a rock-strewn hill; an astronaut standing on the hill was remarking about the surroundings. The next day, another “live” video was taken of the same hill, with no astronaut on it. The problem is that the astronauts were supposedly miles away at another site (at least, that’s what the TV program said).
What’s the problem here? The chances that the video feed was actually “live” seem pretty low, and if that’s the case, then NASA lied. However, what does that actually prove? That the whole mission was faked? Not by a long shot. It’s more likely that the “live” videos were carefully delayed before they were broadcast Earthside. This would make a lot of sense during the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the Big Enemy was the Soviet Union and the space program was THE symbol, and the potential weakness, of the free world in the face of Communism. If you were in the place of the administrator of NASA, wouldn’t you “cover your bets,” possibly pre-recording mission footage for use in case a disaster occurred during a mission? Many things can go wrong: a solar flare scrambles communications, a power outage reduces video transmitter power on the Moon, a Moonquake damages the lander or kills someone. Would you leave the sanity of the American public—and the pride of the Western world, and America’s perceived “high ground”—vulnerable to something you can’t plan for? No; you’d likely record programs ahead of time, whether on the Moon “or not,” that you could insert at a moment’s notice. The possibility that such a problem could be considered worthy of a deception was depicted quite well in the move Capricorn One.
HOWEVER, does this prove that that particular landing was faked? Again, it’s VERY unlikely. Does it prove that ALL of the landings were faked? No way.
My Position
Instead of simply responding to the accusations brought up by the conspiracy theorists, I have observed several flaws with their own theories.
Gravity problems
To “disprove” the video evidence which shows astronauts operating in low gravity, the skeptics say that the video could have been run in slow-motion. This proves nothing; the fact of the matter is that things do fall more slowly under lower gravity. Sayingthat there could be a different explanation for evidence doesn’t mean that it’s likely. Such a counterargument is like someone saying, “The Sun rises in the east and sets in the west”; another person tries to refute this by saying, “No, it actually sets in the west and rises in the east; the Earth is turning backwards.” It proves nothing.
Mistakes in general
About the “mistakes” in NASA’s lunar evidence: do you really think that NASA would accidentally release incriminating evidence to the press? For instance, the “reticle” thing: do you think that NASA photo wizards would touch up a picture and MISS the fact that they’d “put” the American flag over other marks? If the astronauts planting the flag had really been in a New Mexico sound stage and a gust of wind had blown the flag around, don’t you think they would have called “CUT!” and re-shot that sequence? They know that not all of us Americans are stupid—some of us DO know that there’s no wind on the Moon.
The presence of little “glitches,” then, doesn’t prove that things were faked. In fact, the presence of little “unexplained” problems lets us know that the Moon landings were NOT faked—unexpected circumstances happen in real life much more often than they would occur in a polished mock-up shot in a hangar on Earth.
Failure to ask the right questions
The TV program, and any program that “asks cutting questions that have no answers,” stopped before asking some really good questions. For instance: “Did the U.S. have the technology to get to the Moon?” Sure they did. Once Newton discovered gravitation and came up with calculus, everything was in place; a stopwatch and a decent-sized computer could do the physics and math equations involved to set the requirements of a spaceship that could go to the Moon. After that, everything was details—and scientists can be VERY good at making steady refinements to equipment systems until they work. If you don’t believe that, look at the Manhattan project and the development of the H-bomb.
“How many people would have to be ‘in’ on such a cover-up?” For that question, see the next point.
The extent of the cover-up
On the TV program, a NASA official mentioned that close to half a million people would have knowledge of the space program. It’s conceivable that fewer would know that a mission was truly a fake, but could they really keep it a secret for 40 years? InTimeline, Michael Crichton addressed the problem inherent with any new and amazing top-secret technology: eventually, one of your workers is going to talk—if for no other reason, then they went out drinking and got a little too loose in their speech.
Besides this possibility: can you imagine that every one of the “conspirators” would keep silent this long? If I were an unethical scam artist who was in on the Apollo “fakes,” I would have broken my silence and written a book. It wouldn’t matter if I had signed a nondisclosure agreement; the amount of money I could make off a book deal would more than make up for any suit that NASA would bring.
How many missions could be faked?
Something that wasn’t addressed on the TV program was this: were they saying that ALL of the Apollo missions were faked? They must have; for if one of them was possibly real, then we did visit the Moon.
Think about this, though: seven Apollo missions had to be faked. Could that be done? Pause to think before you confidently say “Yes.” We’re talking about tens of billions of dollars spread across ten years or more.
Additionally, much that went into the Apollo program contributed to later programs. Sure, it seems like we “went to the Moon” but then stopped space exploration almost completely. That’s only because some people don’t focus on the fact that the exploration NEVER stopped. The Apollo program led into the Pioneer Venus program, the Voyager program, Skylab, the Shuttle, etc. When did NASA “become” capable of the technology? And why must it have occurred AFTER Apollo?
Occam’s Razor
In conclusion: I’ll concede the fact that the whole Apollo program may have been faked. No individual is so worldly-wise, so aware of ALL the possibilities that he can safely say that he knows everything about a program of Apollo’s size (and its age in the past of space exploration). However, the precept called Ockham’s Razor is often used when trying to determine the feasibility of an explanation (especially a scientific one). In brief, it says this: ‘All things being equal, the simplest explanation tends to be the correct one.’ Which explanation is simpler: that thousands of people wasted billions of dollars faking six Moon landings, including full audio, video, rock samples, and measurements? Or that through years of hard work and brilliance that a group of scientists could refine the skills and equipment necessary to obey Newton’s Third Law of action and reacton?
