One Giant Leap for Mankind, One Grand Illusion for Humankind

Gabby Muehlenbeck, Design & Communications Coordinator

6 minute read

On July 20th, 1969, the United States Apollo 11 mission was set for landing and Neil Armstrong was the first man in existence to place his left foot on the rocky terrain of Earth's moon… Or did he? For decades, the world has been led to believe that the United States had the technology and capability to send not just one, but three men into space with two of them later walking on the surface of the moon in the late 1960s. Yet the doubts remain. How could the astronauts have practiced enough to pilot a spacecraft when the first Microsoft Flight Simulator wasn’t released for another two decades? How was the US able to finally find the edge of the flat Earth so they could drop a craft into space, let alone land it on the moon? The answer is simple: it’s because they didn’t. From my abundant Google, YouTube, and Facebook groups research, classic theories like the waving flag and the C rock show that there is much more evidence than what meets the eye as to why the moon landing was so clearly and obviously a hoax.

In the midst of the space race, the Soviet Union sent the first man into space. It was a race to the finish line with every advanced country putting plans into action to be the first to set foot on the moon. The United States had to one-up everyone else, especially the USSR, because the US always has to be top dog. To make up for this utter humiliation by getting beat out by Russia (there's a word for this emotion... envy?) the plan was simple: the US had to go to the moon! Erm wait, I mean, they had to FAKE the moon landing! Or, did the US actually get the idea for a moon landing not from a so-called “space race,” but what Barbie’s Miss Astronaut accomplished in 1965. Was this a race against Russia, or Mattel?

Now that you’re sufficiently full of rage, and probably already typing or mentally drafting your comment on this column, let me reveal the actual truth early and say I understand that the moon landing is not a hoax. As a hardworking member of the space industry (am I being paid-off by Big Space?) I see every day the tremendous effort that is taken to overcome unbelievable odds to launch a satellite safely into orbit, let alone to send astronauts to the Moon. Today, April 1st, on a day that is normally full of pranks and lies and chocolate made to look like…things it’s not, I wanted to take a chance to expose some of the common moon landing conspiracies and show the amazing physics that lies beneath.

Hoax-proponents often point to the American flag, which appears to ripple in photographs as if caught in a breeze - an impossibility in the vacuum of space. However, they then fail to talk about the flag being frozen in mid-ripple after the astronauts stop touching it, something only possible in the vacuum of space. Additionally, questions are raised about the absence of stars in lunar sky photos, arguing that the celestial bodies should be visibly glittering in the darkness, while ignoring the fact that the astronauts were on the surface during the lunar surface day, hence the sun was out. In comparison to the overwhelming brightness of our local star, of course the stars would be hard to see, even if the sky was black like our normal nights. Skeptics present another anomaly in that the varying shadows in the lunar images, “supposedly” cast by the sun, suggest multiple light sources as found in a studio setting. These discrepancies, along with the theorized improbability of 1960s technology, serve as cornerstones for those who believe the moon landing was a meticulously crafted hoax, staged to assert US superiority during the space race. As far as the C rock goes, well, have you ever found a potato chip that is miraculously shaped like Massachusetts and tried selling it on eBay for a quick buck? Or tried getting it into your local museum? Stranger things happen than a rock having a marking that looks remarkably similar to the letter ‘C’.

As we wade further into the sea of skepticism, let's pause for a moment and consider the logistics of pulling off such an astronomical hoax. If the United States decided to fake the moon landing, the budget for such a fabrication would have been, quite literally, out of this world.

Imagine the casting calls for astronauts with the Right Stuff to pretend to walk on the moon, not to mention hiring Stanley Kubrick or his lookalike to direct the whole shebang. They wouldn’t have been able to save costs on the rocket either, as thousands watched in person as the very real Saturn V launch with all 6.2 million pounds of aluminum and fuel into space. The set design alone, creating a convincing moonscape in a studio, would have involved truckloads of gray paint and enough paper-mâché to make the art department weep. Let's not forget about the special effects required to simulate zero gravity, all in an era when CGI stood for "Can't Generate It." However, one must wonder - could they have borrowed set elements from Star Trek and Doctor Who? (How many of the great minds from film and television were in on this?)

Orchestrating a live broadcast from the moon to millions of viewers around the globe would have required the kind of technological wizardry that, frankly, would have been more challenging than actually going to the moon. The conspiracy would have also needed the complicity of thousands of NASA employees, scientists, engineers, and, of course, the astronauts themselves - all sworn to secrecy under the penalty of being sent to an actual moon prison (had it existed). Furthermore, we can see evidence to this day of human activities on the moon, even bouncing lasers off the surface for more accurate readings than ever before. The reality of this evidence has even been a backdrop for comedy on The Big Bang Theory (or a multi-decade crossover episode by Hollywood!).

BBC Apollo 11 studio with Cliff Michelmore, James Burke and Patrick Moore, 1969 (Science + Media Museum)

Here's the kicker: the cost. Faking the moon landing with such an elaborate ruse would have racked up a bill so astronomical that it would have made the actual moon landing look like a budget holiday. We're talking about Hollywood blockbuster expenditures, but without the box office returns or the popcorn sales to show for it (man, I could really go for an ice-cold soda pop and buttery popcorn right now).

Additionally, if the driving motivation of this space race was to overcome the USSR excellence in space, what reason would the Soviets have to not discredit their American competitors? Not in planning, nor performance, nor in the years after as the Soviet space program dissolved into the Russian Space Agency? This expands the logical evidence supporting the Apollo moon landings, as the more than 411,000 people involved, from around the world, have been mathematically found to have revealed any hoax in approximately 3 years and 8 months.

In light of this, it becomes evident that the US embarked on the more sensible path: ACTUALLY landing on the moon. Because, as it turns out, it was cheaper, easier, and far less complicated to just strap three brave souls into a rocket and catapult them into the annals of history than to concoct the most elaborate hoax of the 20th century.

As we celebrate April Fool's Day, let's tip our hats to the ingenuity and determination that propelled humanity to the moon. For in the end, the greatest prank was not on us, the viewers, but on those who believed that faking such a monumental achievement would be easier than simply doing it. The United States of America, in its relentless pursuit of winning the space race, didn't just win; it “came in peace for all mankind” and did so with a spectacular display of courage and innovation that continues to inspire dreamers and space enthusiasts around the globe. And that, dear friends, is no joke.

“Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself” - Charlie Chaplin

Recommended column to read next: Apollo I, Challenger, and Columbia: A Retrospective