Blinded by the Light of the Silvery Moon? (The Great Moon Hoax)

Member Name: Rumblefish

Product:	The Great Moon Hoax
Date:	28/08/01 (929 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A compelling and fascinating hoax theory.

Disadvantages: Not a shred of real proof. But then that's why it's just a theory.

At least one Moon landing hoax has definitely, indisputably taken place. It happened in 1835 when Edgar Allen Poe published an article in the Southern Literary Messenger, purporting to be true, about an unemployed Dutch bellows mender named Hans Pfaall. Pfaall’s goal had been “to force a passage, if I could, to the Moon”, and had duly built an enormous balloon in which to make the journey. Despite the thinning atmosphere that caused spasms and bleeding, the voyage (launched on April 1st needless to say) was a success, and Pfaall landed in a crowd of ugly little Moon people, who “stood like a parcel of idiots, grinning in a ludicrous manner”. After a five-year residence on the moon, Pfaall entrusted one of the Moon people to drop off a letter to the mayor of Rotterdam negotiating his return. However, though the lunar messenger did reach Rotterdam (by balloon, naturally), he vanished into the heavens without waiting for a reply, having no doubt been, Poe mused, “frightened to death by the savage appearance of the residents of Rotterdam."

History does not record exactly how many readers were fooled by Poe’s article, but its place as an amusing but very minor entry in the canon of famous hoaxes suggests that relatively few people were willing to accept the utterly preposterous notion of a man landing on the Moon.

Yet many people today genuinely believe that another hoax, its nature the very reverse of that perpetrated by Poe, occurred over a century and a quarter after Hans Pfaall made his fictional journey. That is to say, many people genuinely believe that the Moon landing of July 20, 1969, and indeed the entire Apollo program, was completely staged, and that no human being has ever been near to, let alone stepped foot upon, the dusty lunar surface.

This particular conspiracy theory has been the subject of several books, numerous websites, some startling television, and even Hollywood movies. O
ne of the earliest references to the alleged hoax can be found in the 1971 James Bond film, DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER, when 007 stumbles upon a secret film set on which acting astronauts are hopping across an artificial lunar landscape (Bond being Bond, he not only takes the discovery in his stride, but even makes his escape in the lunar module). More pointedly, the 1977 film CAPRICORN ONE spun an enjoyable yarn about NASA faking the first manned mission to Mars by whisking off the three astronauts to a secret desert studio to simulate the landing (in the bizarre manner in which cover-up and conspiracy theories seem to be linked, one of the astronauts was even played by O J Simpson).

In fact the doubt over the authenticity of the Apollo program is probably partly due to its timing at the height of American paranoia and public distrust of government-sponsored organisations. In the years prior to the Moon landings, there had been the assassinations of John F Kennedy, his brother Robert, and Martin Luther King. In the years after it the Watergate affair was exposed. The very day that Neil Armstrong is said to have stepped onto the Moon, Senator Edward Kennedy was being charged with leaving the scene of an accident after the death the previous day of a campaign worker at Chappaquiddick, the alleged “cover-up” for which has dogged Kennedy ever since and probably prevented him becoming US President (this incident was referenced in the 1981 Brian De Palma / John Travolta thriller BLOW OUT). Films like CAPRICORN ONE and BLOW OUT were among the last in a long cycle of conspiracy films to emerge from Hollywood after the euphoria of the Sixties (see also THE PARALLAX VIEW, THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR, THE CONVERSATION etc.), which were nearly all superb pieces of cinema, and nearly all totally cynical about political influence and power games in the United States.

The Moon hoax debate was re-ignited earlier this year by a Fox television show called CONSPI
RACY THEORY: DID WE LAND ON THE MOON? The tone of this sensationalist documentary can be best deduced from the fact that it was presented by Mitch Pileggi from THE X-FILES, and we can probably look forward to it being repeated on Channel 5 every six months for about the next ten years. However it did serve its purpose of bringing the debate into the limelight, and of all conspiracy theories doing the rounds, this one is currently one of the hottest.

So why and how would NASA fake the moon landings? Well the motives for such a hoax are obvious, and are essentially no different than the generally accepted motives behind the Apollo program, hoax or otherwise. The manned Moon missions occurred at the height of the Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, and the Americans were desperate to prove their superior strategic capability by being the first to set foot on the Moon. With the bloody war in Vietnam raging, and the US still haunted by the Cuban missiles crisis and the death of the Kennedy’s, the American government was also anxious to ease unrest domestically. Whether it was staged or not, the first Moon landing could certainly scarcely have occurred at a more opportune time (and neatly met JFK's prediction that the US would land on the Moon before the end of the decade). If, as some have suggested, the US was simply not capable of sending a man to the Moon, they simply faked it to score all the PR blows genuine landings would have given them. As to how they achieved this, the common theory is that the Apollo rockets did indeed take off (albeit unmanned), but when they vanished from view they were jettisoned into the South Atlantic, where they still reside. The films and photos purporting to be taken from the Moon were actually taken in a secret studio, probably in the Nevada desert.

Some of the specifics of the hoax theory are complex and confusing, and unless you really loved Physics at school, often rather boring. Furthermore, th
e goalposts are always changing as more and more evidence and counter-evidence is presented, and what is compelling and persuasive to one person might be laughable and desperate to another. Certainly though there are a number of key questions which recur in any discussion as to the authenticity or otherwise of the Apollo missions, and which have not, and may never be, fully resolved:

- HOW COULD THE APOLLO ASTRONAUTS HAVE SURVIVED THE RADIATION? The Earth is surrounded by bands of radiation known as the Van Allen Belts, which, it is argued, would be lethal to astronauts travelling through them. Every manned mission in space history (including the Mercury, Gemini, Soyuz, Skylab, and Space Shuttle missions) has been conducted well below the Van Allen Belts…except the Apollo missions. The usual response to this is that only sustained exposure is lethal and that the Astronauts passed through the Belts too quickly to be affected.

- WHY ARE STARS NEVER VISIBLE IN PHOTOGRAPHIC FOOTAGE FROM THE APOLLO MISSIONS? In an atmosphere-free environment, such as that on the lunar surface, stars should be clearly visible, yet none are ever seen in films or photographs from the Moon landings. Is it because the distances and constellations of stars were too difficult to be replicated by NASA, leading to stars being omitted altogether? No, says NASA, it is because photographic conditions are different on the Moon and the stars are there, but too faint to be seen.

- WHY ARE FLAGS SEEN TO BE FLUTTERING WHEN THERE IS NO WIND ON THE MOON? Since there is no wind, say the hoax theorists, those American flags should be hanging limp on their poles, not fluttering majestically. But they are only seen fluttering when an astronaut is holding them, say the anti-hoax theorists, so it is not the wind that is making them flutter.

- WHY ARE THERE DIVERGENT SHADOWS IN SEVERAL OF THE APOLLO PHOTOGRAPHS? Close examination of several photographs from the Apollo mis
sions, say some, reveals shadows that should be parallel but are not, and could only be caused by studio lighting. Others respond that such shadows, though perhaps unusual, can occur quite naturally depending on factors of distance and perspective.

- WHY DID THE LANDING MODULE LEAVE NO BLAST CRATER OR ANY RAISED DUST? Hoax theorists claim that at the speed the LEM landed it should have left a quite a large crater and its feet should have been covered in dust, yet there is no sign of any disturbance beneath the LEM whatsoever, or a spec of dust on its feet. But the speed of the LEM’s descent was not as great as has been suggested, goes the counter-argument, and dust behaves differently in the vacuum of the lunar surface than it does on Earth.

These are the most prominent arguments, but there are many, many more. Inevitably every question has an answer, and again, it is down to the individual how convincing these answers are. A few examples:

Q: Why is flame not visible from the lunar lander's engine?
A: Because the type of fuel used doesn’t produce a flame.

Q: Why are identical backgrounds visible in different locations, suggesting a movie set?
A: It’s an optical illusion, photographic conditions being different on the Moon.

Q: How did the Lunar Rover fit in the LEM, when specifications suggest it was far too big?
A: It was folded up.

Q: Why is it that when footage of astronauts walking on the Moon is doubled in speed it looks as though they were filmed walking on Earth?
A: It doesn’t. They look odd.

Q: Why are crosshairs on some stills seemingly positioned behind objects?
A: It is due to the light, and that can happen to any photograph.

Q: Why do some Moon rocks have apparent prop markings, similar to those used on film sets?
A: None of these markings are visible on the original NASA photographs.

Q: How did the untested LEM make six
flawless landings when its prototype crashed in training?
A: That wasn't a prototype, but a training vehicle. The LEM had been successfully tested by NASA frequently.

Q: How could photographs be taken on the lunar surface when the film would have melted in 250F temperatures?
A: On Earth the film would have melted, but not on the airless Moon.

Q: How did the Apollo 11 mission go so smoothly, when every prior Apollo mission was plagued with problems - on average around 20,000 apiece?
A: The Apollo 11 mission also had many problems, but the astronauts simply overcame them.

Q: Why is some of the dialogue between Houston and the astronauts so strange and contrived, Houston at one point even referring to the first manned landing as “a good show”?
A: Coincidence. It doesn’t mean a thing.

And so it goes on… Of course the problem with many of the counter-arguments is that they derive from NASA or NASA data, which is like using the CIA and CIA data to demonstrate that the CIA didn’t assassinate John F Kennedy. In that sense the conspiracy may never be fully disproved, and for similar reasons the evidence that man really did land on the Moon will never convince those who suspect a hoax. For example, NASA might have plenty of Moon rock, but hoax theorists insist that some geologists who have examined this rock contend that it is actually from Earth.

Perhaps one of the reasons that people generally find this conspiracy theory even more difficult to swallow than most, leading to some quite vicious and angry rebuttals, is that it puts in doubt arguably the most celebrated moment in the history of mankind. It is far easier to accept that political machinations are behind an assassination or a scandal than an amazing feat of endeavour that united the world in awe and admiration.

On the other hand, NASA’s behaviour over the years perhaps does not inspire automatic faith in t
heir integrity. There is little doubt that politicking and the demands of television have played an unhealthy role in NASA missions in the past, and the 1986 Challenger Shuttle disaster has been at least partially attributed to some very questionable management decisions, to put it mildly. Of course it is still a big reach to suggest that the entire Apollo program was staged, but some people go further than the orthodox hoax theory by even suggesting that NASA has killed to protect its secret. Extreme hoax theorists claim that the 1967 launch-pad fire that killed Grissom, Chaffee, and White, the Apollo 1 crew, was an act of murder to prevent the three astronauts “whistle-blowing” on the deception behind the Apollo program (this, again, is echoed in CAPRICORN ONE). In addition, it is claimed that many people associated with the Apollo program have since died in extremely suspicious circumstances.

Interestingly people generally say the Moon landings must have taken place because that is what “common sense” tells us. I was not yet born when Armstrong, Aldrin and company are said to have walked on the Moon, yet though I don’t bat an eyelid at, say, virtual reality, digital TV, or the internet (which were still decades away when the Apollo program began), I find it absolutely staggering that man has walked on the lunar surface. In fact when I look up at the Moon in the night sky, my instinct - my “common sense” - tells me that it actually can’t possibly have happened at all. On the face of it, isn’t it actually far easier to believe that Neil Armstrong’s famous steps took place in a television studio than on a rock floating in space around 240,000 miles away?

Indeed if the Moon landings really were just an elaborate hoax, NASA’s greatest trick was probably not in staging them. Rather it was in persuading the world that they didn’t stage them.

I wonder what Edgar Allen Poe
would make of it all?

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