VIDEO: Moon Landing Conspiracy Theory

Some people think it’s stupid to believe man has landed on the moon. Others think it’s stupid not to believe. Wherever you stand on this issue, this conspiracy theory will, if not intrigue you, at least entertain you.

Anyone can write on Evonews. Start writing!

According to Wikipedia, the most notable claim is that the six manned landings (1969–72) were faked and that twelve Apollo astronauts did not actually walk on the Moon.

Various groups and individuals have made claims since the mid-1970s, that NASA and others knowingly misled the public into believing the landings happened, by manufacturing, tampering with, or destroying evidence including photos, telemetry tapes, radio and TV transmissions, Moon rock samples, and even some key witnesses.

Much third-party evidence for the landings exists, and detailed rebuttals to the hoax claims have been made. Since the late 2000s, high-definition photos taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) of the Apollo landing sites have captured the lander modules and the tracks left by the astronauts.

In 2012, images were released showing five of the six Apollo missions’ American flags erected on the Moon still standing; the exception is that of Apollo 11, which has lain on the lunar surface since being accidentally blown over by the takeoff rocket’s exhaust.

Conspiracists have managed to sustain public interest in their theories for more than 40 years, despite the rebuttals and third-party evidence. Opinion polls taken in various locations have shown that between 6% and 20% of Americans and 28% of Russians surveyed believe that the manned landings were faked.

Even as late as 2001, the Fox television network documentary Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? claimed NASA faked the first landing in 1969 to win the Space Race.

An early and influential book about the subject of a moon-landing conspiracy, We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle, was self-published in 1976 by Bill Kaysing.

Despite having no knowledge of rockets, or technical writing Kaysing, a former U.S. Navy officer with a Bachelor of Arts in English, was hired as a senior technical writer in 1956 by Rocketdyne, the company which built the F-1 engines used on the Saturn V rocket.

He served as head of the technical publications unit at the company’s Propulsion Field Laboratory until 1963. Kaysing’s book made many allegations, and effectively began discussion of the Moon landings being faked.

The book claims that the chance of a successful manned landing on the Moon was calculated to be 0.0017%, and that despite close monitoring by the USSR, it would have been easier for NASA to fake the Moon landings than to really go there.

In 1980, the Flat Earth Society accused NASA of faking the landings, arguing that they were staged by Hollywood with Walt Disney sponsorship, based on a script by Arthur C. Clarke and directed by Stanley Kubrick.

Folklorist Linda Dégh suggests that writer-director Peter Hyams’ 1978 film Capricorn One, which shows a hoaxed journey to Mars in a spacecraft that looks identical to the Apollo craft, might have given a boost to the hoax theory’s popularity in the post-Vietnam War era.