History of Moon Hoaxes

Moon-Landing Hoax Yet Continues, 52 Years After Apollo 11. But Why? You can go to google and type in site: Moon Hoax. You’ll get back over 670,000 websites that reference in some way or another that the moon landings were faked or that we have never been to the moon at all.

How did we get from one of the most prominent technological achievements of the 20th century to believe that it was a massive cover-up by NASA or CIA, or maybe it was a combination of all three? And why, almost 50 years after the first Apollo missions, do an increasing number of people believe in a completely different version of the truth with all the scientific evidence available?

Moon Hoax
Moon Hoax.

When Was The First Non-Believers Registered?

One of the first reported instances of people not believing the moon landings were actual came on December 18th, 1969, when the New York Times science reporter John Noble Wilford in an article named “A moon landing?” What moon landing?” suggesting that Hollywood staged the Apollo 11 moonwalk on a Nevada desert.

Six months later, on June 15th 1970, The Atlanta Constitution led with the story “Many skeptics feel moon explorer Neil Armstrong took his ‘first giant step for mankind’ somewhere in Arizona.”

Fake Moon Landing Scene.
Fake Moon Landing Scene.

The article was based on a poll of 1721 U.S. citizens that were asked: “Do you really completely believe the United States has actually landed men on the moon and returned them to the earth again?”

The poll outcomes showed that less than 5% of responders in Detroit, Miami, and Akron believe they were fake. But this increased to 54% of African-Americans in places like Washington DC. An early conspiracy theme is that because of the cold war between the U.S. and the Soviets. The U.S. could not be seen to lose the race to the moon.

Staged Moon Landing.
Staged Moon Landing.

But when they realized that it couldn’t be done, NASA faked the missions and used the funds to buy potential whistleblowers’ silence. Another one says that we could never get to the moon because the astronauts would have been killed by the radiation in Van Allen belts surrounding the earth.

This is down to a poor understanding of the science of radiation and that thinking all radiation is the same; as we will see, this bad science is the underpinning of most moon hoax theories.

Moon landing hoax.
Moon landing hoax.

Did We Get Help From Aliens?

One theory by William Brian said that we did go to the moon but only with the help of alien technology, and NASA couldn’t risk the public finding out about this as they wouldn’t have to disclose how they got it.

Another by Richard Hoagland says that NASA had discovered large artificial glass structures on the lunar surface. The astronauts had had their memory of any alien encounters erased by hypnosis. He also said that NASA themselves had created the moon landing hoax he’s to act as disinformation to put people off the bigger picture of the aliens they had found.

Clarke in February 1965, on one of the sets of 2001: A Space Odyssey
Clarke in February 1965, on one of the sets of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The Sentinel

You may well recognize a similarity to the plot of the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film “2001, A Space Odyssey,” which in turn was based on a 1964 short story by Arthur C Clarke called “The Sentinel.” This was well before the moon landings and any subsequent moon conspiracy theories, so you can see where these ideas can come from. Over time the same early themes have been recycled again with changes added here and there.

Moon Hoax.
Moon Hoax.

Did NASA Create a Hoax?

One thing that does remain the same, though, is that they are all different. If NASA had concocted a hoax, they could only be one version of it. It wasn’t until 1975 when the first of the so-called evidence-based denials appeared by “Bill Kaysing,” a journalist who had worked with Rocketdyne incorporated.

Bill Kaysing
Bill Kaysing

The makers of the f-1 engines that powered Saturn V Moon rockets. His 1975 self-published booklet titled “We never went to the moon: America’s 30 billion dollar swindle.” This was republished in 1981 and 2002 is acknowledged as the first to lay out many of the reasons taken up by the subsequent conspiracy theorists.

Here, we see the terrible science at work as he puts forward the missing stars in the photos of the astronauts. The flag-waving with no air, the lack of a blast crater from under the lunar lander from its descent, and optical anomalies in photos taken on the moon.

Fake moon landing
Fake Moon Landing Scene.

Did Apollo 11 Use Fake Engines?

He also puts forward the assumption that NASA did not have the technical expertise to operate moon landings. The F-1 rockets were so unreliable that the Apollo 11 rocket’s ones were faked with smaller B-1 type engines inside of them.

This latter point has been proven to be incorrect by the recovery of the actual F-1 engines used on Apollo 11 from the Atlantic ocean by Jeff Bezos, the amazon owner.

Kaysing, who was never a scientist nor engineer, worked as the head of the technical publications and as a publications analyst at Rocketdyne until May 31st, 1963, some six years before the moon landings.

He said he came to these and later conclusions because he had seen documents relating to Mercury, Gemini Atlas, and Apollo. You didn’t need to be a trained professional to know a hoax has been perpetrated.

Capricorn One Movie
Capricorn One Movie

“Capricorn One”

Kaysings theories subsequently became even more extreme when he alleged that NASA had staged the Apollo 1 fire. And the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster was because the astronauts were about to reveal the hoax and had to silence them convincingly.

Hollywood has also helped popularize the moon hoaxes with films like the “Capricorn one” from 1978. The movie deals with NASA faking a Mars mission due to technical problems discovered before the launch that would have killed the astronauts if they had continued and the following cover-up.

Moon hoax scene.
Moon hoax scene.

Did We Land on The Moon?

In 2001 the conspiracy theorist received a huge boost with the fox T.V. documentary called “Conspiracy theory: Did we land on the moon?” The program aired on mainstream T.V., and bill Kaysing was one of the main contributors. Because this came out over 30 years after the moon landings, it reintroduced conspiracy theories to a new audience. Many of which, without technical knowledge, would have found it compelling in its arguments.

Fake moon landing scene.
Fake moon landing scene.

NASA Did Not Want to Talk About Hoaxes

But the program didn’t offer a reply to be allegations, which included that astronauts and others had died in mysterious circumstances to hide the so-called truth. This is where the U.S. government and NASA have been their own worst enemy in creating an atmosphere of distrust and enabling the conspiracies to develop.

Things like the Watergate debacle, the Iran-contra affair, and NASA’s refusal to talk about the allegations because they thought they were just too absurd to warrant a reply just helped the conspiracy theorist’s arguments.

Opinion Poll 1964

An opinion poll conducted in 1964 marked a high point for the government’s public belief, with 76% of people saying that they believe that the U.S. government would do what is right most or all of the time. By the early 1990s, that figure had fallen to less than 25%.

Moon Hoax Apollo 11
Moon Hoax Apollo 11

It’s one thing to create conspiracy theories, but you still need people to believe in them. This is where the emphasis moves from Moon hoax creators to the believers and evangelizes that embrace and repeat the conspiracy theories, often with little regard for the poor and incorrect understanding of these theories’ science.

Belief is the major component here. There is a primary tenant in psychology. Once someone firmly believes in something over that be conspiracy theories, politics, religious beliefs, aliens, ghosts, or whatever, no matter what, the proof is forwarded to the country.

What is The Backfire Effect?

It can be almost impossible for them to change their minds because they want to believe in them, and for some, it’s to the point of extreme hostility when repeatedly challenged.

There is a phenomenon known as the backfire effect, where the more aggressively someone supports a particular perspective with scientific proof like NASA, the more it pushes the conspiracy followers in the opposite direction and reinforces their convictions.

Moon Hoax Conspiracy
Moon Hoax Conspiracy.

How Many High Scool Pupils Believes in a Conspiracy Theory?

This tendency cuts across age, race, gender, occupation, and political standing. One area that does show a difference, though, is education. The investigation carried out by the University of Miami using long-term empirical data found that people with a high school education were almost twice as likely at 42% to believe in conspiracy theories of all types compared to ones with post-graduate degrees at 23%.

A recent poll carried out by the Fairleigh Dickinson University showed that 63% of registered U.S. voters believe in at least one political conspiracy theory.

False Moon Landing
False Moon Landing

Psychological Testing

According to professor of psychology Viren Swami of Westminster University England, “once you believe in one conspiracy theory, you are much more likely to believe in others.” Psychological testing has revealed that people are more susceptible to conspiracy theories if they feel anxious under stress or feel that they don’t control their lives.

This is believed to trigger some people to see non-existent patterns and attribute conspiratorial explanations. Compared to the ’60s, ’70s, and even ’80s, the world is now a very different place.

“Confirmation Bias”

The so-called surveillance society with its privacy issues, leaks about eavesdropping on web browsing and emails, job uncertainty, poverty, terror attacks, and highly unequal society and living in a rapidly changing and unpredictable world all contribute to the feeling of lack of control for a great deal more people than it did in the past.

The Internet has made things worse with a world of information, both good and bad. Just a google search away. The problem here is “Confirmation Bias.” This is the tendency only to believe the evidence that supports your point of view.

Fake Moon Landing
Fake Moon Landing.

NASA faked the Moon landings

And the tribalism of people that occurs on chat rooms, blogs, forums, and YouTube channels also helps reinforce the false information and the “us and them” view of the world.

Whilst believing that you know that NASA faked the moon landings might make you feel control, it doesn’t give you any control. The problem with this lack of faith in the scientific endeavor is where it will take you in the future.

To some, it seems no matter what NASA or others might do. There will always be some form of hidden agenda. And this negates from the achievements that NASA did 50 years ago and for those which are still yet to come.

Why was the Saturn V rocket painted white and black? There’s a pretty cool answer to this one. Find out here. You will be surprised.

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