This essay appeared first on dailyread.com a few years ago... it's still valid today
We've all heard the loonies talking about how the whole entire Apollo Program (1966-1975) was a hoax, and I generally just ignore these whackos.

I mean, hell, my dad was an Apollo engineer. I lived in Cocoa Beach as a kid, and personally saw the Saturn Vs take off. They were not faked. Periodically I get forwarded messages from ludites saying stuff like, 'hey, I don't understand the laws of motion or conservation of energy, and won't allow mobiles above my kid's crib because they're black magic and flaunt the laws of God and Nature, but I'm pretty sure that rockets won't work in a vacuum because there's no air for them to push against, and that proves we didn't go to the moon! Whadya' got to say about that? Huh? Huh, mister 'I think I'm so big because I have indoor plumbing?' what've you got to say about that?'

Generally, I say nothing.

Occasionally my friends will say 'my cousin Earl's friend Joe, who failed out of barber college and is a longshoreman in New Hampshire says the golf ball they hit on the moon went way too far, and that proves we didn't go to the moon, doesn't it?' I'm more patient with them because, of course, they're my friends. I explain their question to the best of my ability, and theoretically that's the end of it. I can understand cynicism, much of history is bunk, and much of my website is dedicated towards debunking elements of Religious History in particular. Still, you have to have some facts to back up your assertions, no matter how tenuous. You can't just say, "I'm pretty sure that George Washington had wings and could fly, but this has been covered up by the people who don't believe in Angels in our secular humanist government, which, by the way, is in league with Satan," and get away with it unless you had something to back it up. A letter from Ben Franklin describing the fact, or Cornwallis commenting on how Yorktown was lost because 'George commanded the skies' or something like that. Something!

I'm amazed by the number of educated people who are willing to disbelieve an established historical fact based on the strength of absolutely no facts whatsoever. Of course, a recent CNN poll showed that 60% of Americans remembered watching the Kennedy Assassination live on TV when it happened in 1963, and all of those who said they remembered seeing the president shot went on to describe the famous Zapruder film. The problem with this is that the Assassination didn't happen on Live TV. Announcers broke in to regular broadcasts to announce the president had been shot after the fact, and then it was just talking heads for hours until the mobile news units got on the scene. The Zapruder footage was from a private super-8 camera, and was not made available to the public until years later. My point being that people's memories are wonky and very malleable. 60% of Americans have 'created' a memory to fill a space in themselves that needed filling for some reason. There is no conspiracy here, except perhaps an unintentional one of ignorance. Likewise, I wonder if the reason 11% of Americans refuse to believe in the moon landings is because, for some reason, they have some similar space inside themselves that they can only fill through baroque theories and bad science. I begin to wonder if, for all those people who believe Apollo was a Hoax, perhaps it wasn't really about the perceived Hoax itself, but rather something within themselves that needed to disbelieve it.

Someone should do a study.

In any event, in 1980s, the few people who poo-pooed the moon landings were openly laughed at. In the 90s, however, as paranoia became the new Great American Sport, conspiracy theories became something of a cottage industry. A lot of people started making their living off of them. One such person was Bart Sibrel of Tennessee, who makes his living selling books and tapes 'proving' that something which happened really didn't happen by the use of specious reasoning, circuitous illogic, and really bad grammar. Basically, Sibrel is of the National Enquirer school of journalism, in that he hassles former astronauts, and misrepresents things they say. The Astronauts, and NASA folk in general, have learned to stay away from Mr. Sibrel and others of his ilk.

Some of you may remember hearing about Mr. Sibrel on the news. After years of badgering Buzz Aldrin for an interview, which Mr. Aldrin consistently but politely refused, Sibrel and a friend with a camcorder literally ambushed the old guy in a hotel lobby in Los Angeles on 9/9/02. According to witnesses, Sibrel was aggressive and threatening, and kept advancing on Aldrin while Aldrin kept trying to get away from the younger man. Finally Sibrel and the cameraman backed Aldrin into a corner, and yelled, "You are a coward and a liar." At this point, the five-foot-eight-inch, one-hundred-and-forty-pound right-handed seventy-two-year-old retired astronaut threw a left hook and KOed the six-foot-three, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound, thirty-four-year-old assailant, knocking him on his conspiracy-loving ass.

There was some talk of a lawsuit, since they had footage of Aldrin punching Sibrel, but, as Phil Plait of the Bad Astronomy website pointed out, '…if footage of Buzz on the surface of the moon is faked, then obviously the footage of Buzz punching out Sibrel must be faked too.' No charges were ever filed.

My point being that most of the people who pervade these hoax myths are at best emphatically uneducated, and at worst dangerous and violent. Are these the kinds of people who are to be taken seriously about anything?

Periodically – a couple times a year – I receive a forwarded Email with a title on the order of 'Top Ten Reasons Why We Didn't Go To The Moon' or some slight variation thereof. It's a fair representation of what the anti-moon nuts are blathering about. As I'm sick of replying to this crap, I'm going to reproduce the Email below, along with my answers once and for all. Anyone asks me about this stuff from here on out, I'm going to refer them to this essay, and give no other answer.

Here we go:

>>>The Lunar Lander's guidance system was not even as powerful as calculator built in 1980.<<<

The Pyramids were built without a computer. Leif Eriksson discovered America in 1000 AD without even a compass. The Wright Brothers flew with no guidance system whatsoever. Luke Skywalker blew up the Death Star without a targeting computer. What's your point? For what it's worth, on the first lunar landing, the lander's guidance computer was shut down during the final approach. The first man on the moon landed more or less by hand. People can, and do, do impressive things without the benefit of computers.

The early spacecraft were too small to house really useful computers, given the size and weight of computers in those days. As a result, the absolute minimum amount of computerized equipment was built into the capsules and landers. Very large and powerful computers were built on the ground, however, and if the astronauts had a question or a problem or what have you, they simply called Ground Control and asked. Ground Control fed it to their computers, and then radioed the answer back to the spacecraft. That's what Ground Control does. That's their job.

>>>None of the following astronauts can be contacted for a "Official" interview: [list deleted]<<<

Most of the early astronauts who are still alive (Remember, this was 30 years ago, a lot have passed on in the generation since we did anything meaningful in space) are willing to give interviews to any reputable person who asks for one. 'Reputable' does not include semi-coherent conspiracy buffs, or burly guys from Tennessee who threaten and berate you in public. All of the astronauts have agents who screen requests for interviews, and the fringe ones are filtered out. There's nothing unusual or conspiratorial about this; after all, who really would want to be trapped in a room with a guy calling you a 'coward and a liar?' Likewise, what heart surgeon would really agree to be interviewed by a militant Christian Scientist? What Psychiatrist would really agree to be interviewed by a scientologist? Come on!

>>>The Flag that was planted in the lunar surface can not be seen by the most powerful earth telescope as well as the Hubble Space telescope.<<<

You'll note that I'm leaving the bad grammar in these statements. I think it speaks volumes about the people who are making these allegations.

Simply put, the moon is 250,000 miles away, and "The" flag (There were six, total, all of which flopped over when the LEM lifted off) is about two feet by three feet. Obviously it's not possible to see something so tiny over such a great distance from a telescope based on earth. No telescope ever built – including Hubble - has the resolution to pick out such a tiny detail over such vast distances. And if you could, there's still the question of trying to actually find the flags on the surface: the moon is 1/4th the size of earth, which is a hell of a lot of surface area to scan in order to find such a tiny detail. Michael Collins, who piloted the Columbia while Armstrong and Aldrin were on the lunar surface, was unable to locate the lander with a telescope he had aboard his spacecraft, and he was just 59 miles above the lunar surface at the time, even though he knew approximately where they were. It was like trying to find a postage stamp on the Ross Ice Shelf.

>>>Nasa cannot provide a video of astronauts in total weightlessness for over a period of 1 minute " the total time an aircraft can free fall out of the Earths atmosphere simulating weightlessness " this is how these films are made with weightlessness.<<<

Clearly our inquisitive friend can not formulate a sentence at anything better than a fourth grade level.

NASA (not "Nasa") has a training aircraft called the "Vomit Comet", which can simulate weightlessness by flying long, parabolic courses, and then going into a powered dive. Then the people inside the plane and the plane itself are falling at the same speed, which makes them effectively weightless for thirty or forty seconds, then the plane pulls out of the dive, and normal gravity resumes. This is presumably what the author is talking about. The weightless sequences in Tom Hank's movie, "Apollo 13" were filmed aboard a set on the Vomit Comet, and, indeed, none of those scenes go more than thirty seconds or so without a cut. The author is alleging the same thing was done with the real Apollo missions.

This is ludicrous. All the Apollo missions sent live video footage of their crews back to earth, though after Apollo 14 these were commonly not broadcast live outside of NASA headquarters, for lack of interest from the news media. These were all shot on one portable camera, passed from astronaut to astronaut, with no cuts in the shot. I personally have seen clips that lasted more than seven minutes in length, with people and things floating in the background the whole time. The author has not done his (or her?) research, but then, that's not surprising: had any research been done, they wouldn't have made such stupid allegations in the first place.

>>>The "Live" video feed that was fed back to earth was impossible for the "compression" technology of the time. The "3 meter" dish would of required a far more advanced and powerful signal generation. As well the computer buffer couldn't even bufe the amount of data even necessary for the most reduced black and white video signal at extremely low frame rate.<<<

I begin to wonder if perhaps our author is not a native English speaker? I admit to not having a ready answer for this question, as I don't know much about broadcasting, however I do know that (A) there was no 'compression' at all of the signal, as that wasn't a technology that existed at the time, and (B) the "S-Band" frequency used during Apollo was specifically developed by NASA because of it's ability to carry a lot of information. Even so, NASA got better with practice. The Apollo 11 footage was very grainy black & white footage, and there wasn't much of it. By Apollo 17, they were able to generate hours of good quality color video.

>>>The shadowing off every picture in Nasa's database shows that there are too many light sources there should be only one " the Earth reflecting light"<<<

Actually, there should logically be two light sources: The Earth reflecting light, and the sun itself. All the Apollo landings took place during the lunar day, and were timed for the local 'Lunar Dawn' when the sun made all shadows their longest. This was for landing safety reasons so the pilot could tell the difference between a pebble and a boulder.

There is a third light source, however: the moon itself. The moon is the second-brightest object in the sky, it reflects a lot of light. Without any atmosphere or surface vegetation to absorb or diffuse that light, it's bounced right back up again. The effect has been compared to standing on dirty snow.

Therefore, when looking at pictures from the moon's surface, there really are a myriad a lot of light sources. This is not proof that they're fakes, however, but substantial evidence that they're real.

>>>It's impossible to be sitting on the sunny part of the moon as it would melt the 3 astronauts above<<<

Lunar Surface Temperature at high noon is about 280 degrees Fahrenheit. This sounds like a lot, but since there's no atmosphere, the heat doesn't act the same way it does on earth. It gets absorbed by the soil, and/or bounced off into space, but it doesn't linger like a blanket around the moon like it does on earth. Most of the heat striking the astronauts simply bounced off. The remainder was dissipated by numerous layers of insulation on the moonsuits they wore, and a Liquid Cooled Garment underneath, which was sorta' like a union suit, with hundreds of tiny flexible pipes in it, which circulated cool water around inside, thus keeping the astronauts cool. There was also additional thermal protection on the gloves and boots. Presumably the heat might have built up and been a problem has the moonwalkers just been sitting around outside for long periods of time, but they were pretty damn active while they were there.

I should also point out that insulating suits have been fairly commonly available since the 1940s, and many modern flame-retardant suits used by rescue teams are rated to well above 300 degrees.

>>>During 1969 a project called "Above Black " was started cost of which was approximately that of the Apollo 11 mission approx $25 billion utilizing the money which was intended for the Apollo 11 mission. In order to research space travel what better way to get the funding to do it than fake a " Mission to the Moon " then use the money to actually figure out a way to achieve space travel. Better to send up a billion dollar decoy and say 24 billion for research then kill men failing to attempt it.<<<

I'm not entirely sure I understand this statement, but it seems to be saying that Apollo was merely a shuck to distract people while monies appropriated for it were actually used elsewhere. I will admit that budgeting for any space program is something of a black art – no one wants to admit how much things cost to the taxpayers who have a habit of bitching and moaning ceaselessly about such things, however the overall Apollo budgets are a matter of public record. The numbers do not agree with the allegations above, they're not even close. Total NASA budget for FY 1969 came to 2.025 billion dollars. This is far short of the alleged '25 billion' cited above. And, in fact, that 2.025 billion included not one, but two lunar landings, and a flyby mission as well. In today's dollars, that would equal about 9.48 billion, still far short of '25 billion.' In fact, the entire budget of the Apollo program from it's inception in 1962 to it's premature end eleven years later came to just 19.98 billion dollars, still far short of '25 billion.'

All I've been able to find out about Above Black is that some retired Air Force guy claims to have been a part of it, wrote a book about it, and that it was allegedly a NASA project to communicate with aliens using telepathy or some such dipshit stuff. NASA and the USAF say the guy's a loon or a liar, take your pick.. Seeing as the stated budget would exceed NASA's total budget for most of the decade of the 60s, I'm going to side with NASA on this one. I can find fairly detailed information about USAF/NASA projects like the X-20 DynaSoar and the MOL, what their budgets were, and how much was spent on them before they were cancelled, and yet I can't find any budgetary info on Above Black. Always follow the money. If you can't find any funding on record for something, odds are it didn't exist.

'Ah,' you say, 'But what about Covert Operations and other black projects?' Well, yeah, there's a lot of those. The Military is given an allotment each year for 'unspecified projects' that they use to fund this kind of stuff. But I can guarantee you that no one got $25 billion for a project to psychically communicate with aliens. I tell you three times, I tell you three times, I tell you three times: all the Apollo money is accounted for, all the Apollo money is accounted for, all the Apollo money is accounted for!

>>>Why haven't we been back since? If it was done in 1969 surely its not beyond our abilities now * we still cant do it *<<<

This is a legitimate and embarrassing question. The short answer is 'politics.' The longer answer is this:

In the late 1950s, the Russians started quietly talking about going to the moon, but only as a test target. They really wanted to go to Mars. The moon was just a proving grounds for their Mars Mission Technology. To this end, they started developing their huge N1 booster rocket. President Kennedy was (Evidently) unaware of this when he announced the US was going to the Moon, basically as a means of upstaging the Russians, who had a lot of high-profile successes in space up to that point.

The Russians, for their part, never admitted to being part of the 'space race' or the 'moon race', and kept their N1 project secret. It became apparent early on that the N1 would not be ready to fly to the moon until mid-1972 at the earliest. Baring severe US accident, they knew they couldn't win that particular race, but they weren't all that interested in it anyway. The N1 was fundamentally supposed to be a tool for getting people to Mars. If they got someone to the moon first, so much the better, but if it didn't work, well, no big deal.

Even so, the race was neck-and-neck until 1968. The Russians were planning to send a crew to circumnavigate the moon, which was well within their capability. We pulled ahead when we (Dangerously) swapped the Apollo 8 and 9 missions, thus moving our own circum-lunar flight up by six months or so, and beating them to the punch. Following this, the USSR canceled it's Circum-Lunar flights, and went back to the development of the N1 and it's L3 lunar lander module.

In July of 1969 virtually every American supported the Apollo Program. Polling data isn't available, but it's estimated at 85% to 90% approval. Public opinion is fickle, however. In January of 1970, Vice President Spiro Agnew gave a speech on the steps of the capital about how we could keep going, and have a man on Mars by 1982. He was openly booed! Having accomplished their goal, most Americans felt Apollo should be discontinued, and it's monies used elsewhere on more pressing problems. Congress, sensing the change in public opinion, began to wane in their once-fervent support for NASA, and as of 1970, the Agency's budgets began to fall year after year. In FY 1970, the Apollo 20 mission (Originally planned to be the final one) was cut for lack of funding. In FY 1971, the Apollo 18 and 19 missions were cancelled for the same reason.

President Nixon, who was never a huge supporter of the Space Program anyway, realized that Apollo was quickly turning into a political liability. He knew, however, that we couldn't stop going on incredibly expensive trips to the moon if the Russians were still planning on going there. The White House began casting about, trying to find an escape from this dilemma.

Meanwhile, in Russia, the N1 turned out to be an engineering nightmare. They'd built 10 of the beasties, and launched four. All four blew up, one of which destroyed it's launch pad and killed 26 technicians on the ground. It became apparent the Soviet Union wasn't going to Mars, and if that wasn't the goal, then what was the point of busting their asses and spending a billions of rubles to do something the Americans had already done better anyway? Added to this, the cost and logistics of keeping the whole program secret was bewildering, and, they were pretty sure, the CIA had found out about it anyway. But they couldn't just give up if the Americans were gonna keep going to the moon. The Kremlin began casting about, trying to find an escape from this dilemma.

On May 24th, 1972, Richard Nixon and Russian Premier Kosygin met in Moscow and signed an agreement providing for cooperation in the exploration of outer space for peaceful purposes. This was the origin of the eventual Apollo/Soyuz Test Project, which took place in 1975, as well as an aborted Joint US/Russian space station which was supposed to have been aloft by 1977, but never happened. Ever the master of detent, Nixon basically agreed that we wouldn't go to the moon, or try to go to Mars, if they would stop trying to go to the moon. Dilemma resolved, sadly. 5/24/72 was essentially the end of the Space Race, and, really, nothing of any great interest has been done in space since then.

The Russians scrapped their 6 remaining N1s, and didn't admit their existence until the 1990s. The US killed any plans for going to Mars, or establishing a more permanent presence on the moon. In December of 1972, during the final days of the Apollo 17 mission, Nixon made a speech saying "Men from Earth will not return to the Moon during this century." For the next thirty years, we've wasted our time tooling around in orbit.

We had 3 remaining Saturn Vs. One was used in 1973 to put up Skylab. Another was intended to put up the joint US-Russian "Skylab-B" space station, but the Carter White House killed that in 1977, and the final two Saturns were turned into lawn ornaments. Very big, very impressive, but basically very useless. In 1979, NASA admitted they no longer had the means of getting to the moon, and probably could not get back without another decades' worth of research and development.

And that, Virginia, is why we haven't been back since.

>>>The USA was in a race for space with Russia and faked the mission to help save face with the Russian superiority regarding space travel.<<<

As I've said, the US was neck-and-neck with the USSR until about 1968, when we pulled far ahead. The Russians didn't figure they'd be able to land prior to mid-1972 at the earliest, which is why they never publicly admitted to being part of a 'moon race.' By the time of the Apollo 11 landing, the CIA was aware of the N1's annoying habit of exploding, rather than flying. There was no reason to fake a landing simply to beat the Russians, because by then the people who make these kinds of decisions were well aware that the Russians weren't going anytime soon.

But let me ask you this: Assuming we did feel the need to fake a landing, why would we have faked six of them? You're in a race, you fake winning, you say, 'thank you very much, goodnight,' and that's the end of it. Why continue the charade for another four years, particularly when it's apparent the Russians aren't going to be able to get to the moon at all?

>>>You can see the studio reflection in the gold foil of the studio where it was filmed.<<<

Groan. I promise you, you can't.

There was gold foil lining the bottom of the lander. I've looked at literally thousands of shots of it, and you can't see very much reflected, as the foil is kind of crinkly, but what you can see are rocks, occasionally the Astronauts themselves, and maybe any piece of equipment they happened to have set up nearby. I promise you, you can't see any studio lights or cameras or what have you.

>>>Flags don't sway in space see the Videos and you can clearly see the choppy editing of the poor film editing of 1969 where the Astronauts didn't jump up and down to show their weightlessness live for the world to see. The reason they didn't do that is that it was beyond the Producing ability of 1969 film editing to show weightlessness.<<<

I think there's two statements here, but I can't be sure where they begin and end.

In any event, the flag on the moon does not 'wave.' It wobbles a bit when they set it up, but this subsides quickly when they stop fooling with it, and then it's rock-steady. Incidentally, there was a wire through the top of the flags to hold them open on the moon. Otherwise, they would have just hung there limply.

As to simulating weightlessness being beyond the Special Effects abilities of film in 1969, I would have to say that Stanley Kubric did a pretty damn good simulation of weightlessness in his 1968 film, "2001: A Space Odyssey." Clearly our author is no more learned of Film History than he/she is of the Space Program.

Furthermore, there are dozens of hours of footage of (real) Astronauts dorking around on the surface of the moon in low gravity. There are also a number of shots of astronauts kicking up dust which then falls straight down. There's no air on the moon to slow dust's fall, so it doesn't cloud, it just falls like a rock, while the people lumber by, ostensibly in 'slow motion' in the background. This kind of thing would have been impossible to fake prior to the advent of modern CGI effect.

>>>As well in 1969 no Airplanes had the ability to reach the high altitudes necessary to simulate weightlessness aprox, 40,000 – 50,000 feet<<<

Well now he's just contradicting himself! Earlier he said the weightless scenes were faked on the Vomit Comet, and now he's saying it was impossible for them to fake stuff on the 'Comet. Which is it, boy?

Incidentally, the 'Comet has been in service since the mid-1960s.

>>>(clarification that the video did not show weightlessness meaning in 1969 they just moved still frames to create the illusion as well as the slow moving effect which is very un-matrix like overall a poorly done video).<<<

Huh? What? They appear to be saying that weightlessness was faked by using still shots? Can you begin to understand why I generally just ignore these kinds of things? I'm not even really sure what the guy is talking about here, but anyone with reasonably normal vision looking at Apollo footage can tell they're not looking at stills. There's dust moving around, wires being strung around, all kinds of stuff. I do agree that the Lunar Footage isn't as pretty as the Matrix, but, hell, I also think that Neil Armstrong isn't as pretty as Elle MacPhereson – what in God's name does that have to do with anything?

>>>Astronauts replied instantly to Mission Control in Houston. However radio waves and S-band signals travel at roughly 189,000 miles per second, this means Mission Control couldn't of replied faster than 3 second sicne the moon is over 380,000 miles from the Earth even at it's closest apex. Total trip for the message 1.5 seconds there reply and then 1.5 seconds back. There would be this great of a delay for the sound/image to come back, so altogether you would see a 1.5 second delay after a question was asked and this is if Nasa Astronauts are replying instantly to a questions without even thinking about the question.<<<

Fortunately, this is our last statement. It's got a peck o' stuff wrong with it, however. Firstly, radio (including S-Band) travels at 186,000 mps, and not 189,000. This might sound like a quibble, but does someone really have the right to claim great proof of scientific fakery if they can't even remember a simple – and famous – constant like the speed of light? It may seem a minor point, but it's like claiming to know a great deal about American History, and then saying James Adams was the first US President: it's just wrong, no matter what angle you look at it from.

Secondly, the moon is *not* 380,000 miles from earth. It's roughly 250,000 miles away.

He (or she) is right, we should expect to see roughly a three-second delay between the time a question is asked and the time it's answered, if you're talking to someone on the moon. Guess what? This is exactly what we do see! When the Astronauts are actually on the moon, or in cis-lunar space, we do see the Ground Controllers talking, then staring blankly into the distance while awaiting a reply, and then, a few beats later, getting their answer.

There is also a lot of footage of 'instant answers' as the author alleges, however please remember that Apollos 7 and 9 never left earth orbit, so any communication with them would have been virtually instantaneous. For the missions that went to the moon (Apollos 8 and 11-17) their distance from earth increased during the course of the flight, so communications would have initially been almost instantaneous, and gradually grown longer as they got farther away. Then, when they were coming home again, the lag time decreases. But, again, all the communication w/ them while they're on or orbiting the moon does involve a three-second lag.

I think this was a fair example of the illiterate sheist that's being passed around as 'fact' by these people. I also think I've given a fairly adequate rebuttal. Please feel free to pass this around to your friends, or not, as you see fit.

The bottom line is that it takes more faith to believe in an ill-defined generation-long conspiracy to fake the moon landings than it does to believe that we simply lacked the vision, or lost the will to keep going.

Mahatma Randy

12/02/03