A History of Moon Hoaxes
Go to google and type in site : moon hoax and you'll get back over 670,000
websites that reference in some way or another that the moon landings were
faked or we have never been to the moon at all.
How did we get from one of the greatest technological achievements of the 20th
century to believing that it was a massive cover-up by NASA the CIA the
government or a combination of all three and why almost 50 years after the first
Apollo missions with all the scientific proof available do an increasing number
of people believe in a radically different version of reality.
One of the first reported instances of people not believing but the moon landings were
true came on December 18th 1969 when the New York
Times science reporter John Noble Wilford in an article called "A moon
landing? what moon landing?" remarked that a few stool warmers in the Chicago bars
are on record as suggesting that the Apollo 11 moonwalk last July was
actually staged by hollywood on a nevada desert. Six months later on 15th June
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".
The article was based on a pole of 1721 U.S. citizens
that were asked "Do you really completely believe the United States has actually
landed men on the moon and return them to the earth again" the poll results
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 US and the Soviets the U.S. could
not be seen to lose the race to the moon
but when they realized that it couldn't be done NASA faked the missions and used
the funds to buy the silence of potential whistleblowers.
Another one says that we could never get to the moon because the astronauts would have been
killed by the radiation in a Van Allen belts which surround 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 it's this bad science that is
the underpinning of most of the moon hoax theories. 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 for 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 and that the astronauts had had their memory of any alien encounters
erased by hypnosis.
He also said that the moon landing hoax he's had been created by NASA themselves
to act as disinformation to put people off the bigger picture of the aliens
they had found. You may well recognized a similarity to the plot of the 1968
stanley kubrick film "2001, A Space Odyssey" which in turn was based in 1964
short story by Arthur C Clarke called "The Sentinel". This was well before the
moon landings and any of the subsequent moon conspiracy theories so you can see
where these ideas can come from.
Over time the same early themes have been recycled again in again with
changes added here and there. 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
Rocketdyne incorporated, 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" which was republished in 1981 and
2002 is acknowledged as the first to lay out many of the arguments which have
been taken up by the subsequent conspiracy theorists. It's here that we
see the bad science at work as he puts forward the missing stars in the photos
of the astronauts, the flag-waving when there is 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.
He also puts forward the assumption that NASA did not have the technical
expertise to operate moon landings and that the F-1 rockets were so unreliable
the ones on the Apollo 11 rocket were faked with smaller B-1 type engines
inside of them.
This later 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
owner of amazon. 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 and that you didn't need to be a trained
professional to know a hoax has been perpetrated. Kaysings theories
subsequently became even more extreme when he alleged that NASA had staged
the Apollo 1 fire and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster because the
astronauts were about to reveal the hoax and they had to silence them in a
convincing manner.
Hollywood has also helped to popularize the moon hoaxes with films like The 1978
"Capricorn one" which deals with NASA faking a Mars mission due to technical problems
discovered just before the launch that would have killed the astronauts they had
continued and the ensuing cover up. In 2001 the conspiracy theorist received a
huge boost with the fox TV documentary called "Conspiracy theory: Did we land on
the moon" the program aired on mainstream TV and bill Kaysing was one of the main
contributors. Because this came out over 30 years after the moon landings it
reintroduced for conspiracy theories to a new audience many of which without a
technical understanding would have found it compelling in its arguments. 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 US 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 the refusal of
NASA to talk about the allegations because they thought they were just too
absurd to warrant a reply just helped the conspiracy theorist arguments.
An opinion poll conducted in 1964 marked a high point for the public belief in the
government with 76% of people saying that they believe that the
U.S. government would do what is right most or all of time.
By the early 1990's that figure had fallen to less than 25%.
It's one thing to create conspiracy theories but you still need people to believe in them
this is where the emphasis moves from a hoax creators to the believers and
evangelizes that embrace and repeat the conspiracy theories often with little
regard for poor and incorrect understanding of the science that these
theories are based on. Belief is the major component here.
There is a basic tenant in psychology in that once someone firmly believes in
something over that be conspiracy theories, politics, religious beliefs,
aliens, ghosts or whatever, no matter what proof is forwarded to the country
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 fanatical hostility when
repeatedly challenged.
In fact there is a phenomenon known as the backfire effect
where the more aggressively someone asserts a particular viewpoint with
scientific proof like NASA, the more it pushes the conspiracy believers in the
opposite direction and reinforces their convictions. So why are some people drawn
to the alternative viewpoints and others not.
This tendency cuts across age, race, gender, occupation and political standing.
One area does show a difference though is education. Research 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. 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 have control over their
lives. This is believed to trigger some people to see non-existent patterns and
attribute conspiratorial explanations.
Compared to the 60's, 70's and even 80's the world is now a very different
place. The so-called surveillance society with its privacy issues leaks about
eavesdropping on web browsing and emails, job uncertainty, poverty, terror attacks
and a highly unequal society and living in a rapidly changing an unpredictable
world all contribute to the feeling of lack of control for great deal more
people than it did in the past.
The Internet has made things worse in a way with a world of information both
good and bad just a google search away. The problem here is of "Confirmation Bias"
this is the tendency to only believe the evidence that supports your point of
view 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 feeling control it doesn't actually give you any control.
The problem with this lack of faith in scientific endeavor is where will it
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.
websites that reference in some way or another that the moon landings were
faked or we have never been to the moon at all.
 |
| Bond’s to blame ... Sean Connery in Diamonds Are Forever. Photograph: Allstar/UNITED ARTISTS. |
How did we get from one of the greatest technological achievements of the 20th
century to believing that it was a massive cover-up by NASA the CIA the
government or a combination of all three and why almost 50 years after the first
Apollo missions with all the scientific proof available do an increasing number
of people believe in a radically different version of reality.
One of the first reported instances of people not believing but the moon landings were
true came on December 18th 1969 when the New York
Times science reporter John Noble Wilford in an article called "A moon
landing? what moon landing?" remarked that a few stool warmers in the Chicago bars
are on record as suggesting that the Apollo 11 moonwalk last July was
actually staged by hollywood on a nevada desert. Six months later on 15th June
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".
The article was based on a pole of 1721 U.S. citizens
that were asked "Do you really completely believe the United States has actually
landed men on the moon and return them to the earth again" the poll results
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 US and the Soviets the U.S. could
not be seen to lose the race to the moon
but when they realized that it couldn't be done NASA faked the missions and used
the funds to buy the silence of potential whistleblowers.
Another one says that we could never get to the moon because the astronauts would have been
killed by the radiation in a Van Allen belts which surround 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 it's this bad science that is
the underpinning of most of the moon hoax theories. 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 for 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 and that the astronauts had had their memory of any alien encounters
erased by hypnosis.
He also said that the moon landing hoax he's had been created by NASA themselves
to act as disinformation to put people off the bigger picture of the aliens
they had found. You may well recognized a similarity to the plot of the 1968
stanley kubrick film "2001, A Space Odyssey" which in turn was based in 1964
short story by Arthur C Clarke called "The Sentinel". This was well before the
moon landings and any of the subsequent moon conspiracy theories so you can see
where these ideas can come from.
Over time the same early themes have been recycled again in again with
changes added here and there. 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
Rocketdyne incorporated, 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" which was republished in 1981 and
2002 is acknowledged as the first to lay out many of the arguments which have
been taken up by the subsequent conspiracy theorists. It's here that we
see the bad science at work as he puts forward the missing stars in the photos
of the astronauts, the flag-waving when there is 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.
He also puts forward the assumption that NASA did not have the technical
expertise to operate moon landings and that the F-1 rockets were so unreliable
the ones on the Apollo 11 rocket were faked with smaller B-1 type engines
inside of them.
This later 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
owner of amazon. 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 and that you didn't need to be a trained
professional to know a hoax has been perpetrated. Kaysings theories
subsequently became even more extreme when he alleged that NASA had staged
the Apollo 1 fire and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster because the
astronauts were about to reveal the hoax and they had to silence them in a
convincing manner.
Hollywood has also helped to popularize the moon hoaxes with films like The 1978
"Capricorn one" which deals with NASA faking a Mars mission due to technical problems
discovered just before the launch that would have killed the astronauts they had
continued and the ensuing cover up. In 2001 the conspiracy theorist received a
huge boost with the fox TV documentary called "Conspiracy theory: Did we land on
the moon" the program aired on mainstream TV and bill Kaysing was one of the main
contributors. Because this came out over 30 years after the moon landings it
reintroduced for conspiracy theories to a new audience many of which without a
technical understanding would have found it compelling in its arguments. 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 US 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 the refusal of
NASA to talk about the allegations because they thought they were just too
absurd to warrant a reply just helped the conspiracy theorist arguments.
An opinion poll conducted in 1964 marked a high point for the public belief in the
government with 76% of people saying that they believe that the
U.S. government would do what is right most or all of time.
By the early 1990's that figure had fallen to less than 25%.
It's one thing to create conspiracy theories but you still need people to believe in them
this is where the emphasis moves from a hoax creators to the believers and
evangelizes that embrace and repeat the conspiracy theories often with little
regard for poor and incorrect understanding of the science that these
theories are based on. Belief is the major component here.
There is a basic tenant in psychology in that once someone firmly believes in
something over that be conspiracy theories, politics, religious beliefs,
aliens, ghosts or whatever, no matter what proof is forwarded to the country
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 fanatical hostility when
repeatedly challenged.
In fact there is a phenomenon known as the backfire effect
where the more aggressively someone asserts a particular viewpoint with
scientific proof like NASA, the more it pushes the conspiracy believers in the
opposite direction and reinforces their convictions. So why are some people drawn
to the alternative viewpoints and others not.
This tendency cuts across age, race, gender, occupation and political standing.
One area does show a difference though is education. Research 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. 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 have control over their
lives. This is believed to trigger some people to see non-existent patterns and
attribute conspiratorial explanations.
Compared to the 60's, 70's and even 80's the world is now a very different
place. The so-called surveillance society with its privacy issues leaks about
eavesdropping on web browsing and emails, job uncertainty, poverty, terror attacks
and a highly unequal society and living in a rapidly changing an unpredictable
world all contribute to the feeling of lack of control for great deal more
people than it did in the past.
The Internet has made things worse in a way with a world of information both
good and bad just a google search away. The problem here is of "Confirmation Bias"
this is the tendency to only believe the evidence that supports your point of
view 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 feeling control it doesn't actually give you any control.
The problem with this lack of faith in scientific endeavor is where will it
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.
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