The Moon Landing Hoax: Still Crazy After All These Years?

Forty years has gone by since man first landed on the Moon, but why isn’t anyone asking why the “Moon Landing Hoax” rumor got started in the first place?


By: Ringo Bones


Given that I’ve always been fascinated by our yet still fledgling efforts to explore outer space. I was hoping that this year Americans will going to be celebrating in a big way about one of their nation’s greatest achievement – if not the greatest achievement – of landing men on the Moon and bringing them safely back to Earth. Like it’s been 40 years. Will we be celebrating this year on July 20, 2009 about the 40th Anniversary of the Apollo Moon landing? Or will America be saving for the “Big 5-0” – i.e. 50th Anniversary (July 20, 2019?) celebration 10 years from now on the Moon Landing. But for better or for worse, there’s one topic that’s rarely been discussed that it has even raised suspicions that there has been a conspiracy of a cover-up on efforts in trying to prove that the NASA Moon landings were a hoax. Although rational methods have proven that the Moon Landings were real, the bad news is that proofs supporting the contrary are easy to “create” yet hard to disprove that ideas like these even attract the attention of the finest minds in the scientific community around the world.

I’ve seen that episode on Mythbusters were they set-up experiments proving that the Moon landings were real and I even watched the reruns. Though I’m convinced, it is very, very easy to cast doubt about the authenticity of Neil Armstrong and company’s heroic accomplishments through criminal trial lawyer-style logic and reasoning. I mean those quartz retro-reflectors could easily have been placed by a robotic spacecraft. Although if America’s robotic spacecraft technology were that advanced in 1969, the air war over Vietnam would have been fought by unmanned aerial vehicles like those currently in use in Afghanistan. Sadly America’s robotic spacecraft technology wasn’t that well developed back in 1969. Just ask any retired aerospace engineer. Even though if you put yourself in the criminal trial lawyers shoes, you’ll be able to easily figure out the nuts and bolts – i.e. what and how behind the Moon Landing Hoax. But the question now is why did this Moon Landing Hoax idea have gained so much credibility after all these years.

First here’s something that’s trapped between the “how” and the “why” the Moon Landing Hoax got started in the first place. Back in the late 1960s – or around July 20, 1969 - people like today’s Rush Limbaugh, Bill “Papa Bear” O’Reilly, Glen Beck, and the rest of Fox News Network ruled America. These “salt-of-the-earth” people could utter their personal opinions and beliefs, though it was mostly their low opinion of African-Americans and Jews (remember Billy Graham’s accidentally captured on TV “stranglehold of the Jews” speech?). Sadly, these are the kind of people who vehemently claimed the achievement’s of NASA’s manned space program even though this feat is supposedly dedicated to all mankind. Add to that the conservative Right Wing’s belittlement of other cultural revolutions in America that’s happening together with the Moon landings. Like the 1969 Woodstock concert, Or the Peace and Love revolution in Haight Ashbury.

Though I’ve heard rumors that there was a movie made in the 1970s about the faking of the Moon landings but to tell you the truth, the earliest that I’ve even heard about the Moon Landing Hoax topic was in the movie Sneakers back in 1992. And to think that R.E.M. ‘s song Man on the Moon makes them appear as Moon Landing Hoax believers’ apologists. Maybe the Discovery Channel should rerun that Mythbusters Moon Landing Hoax episode to celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s landing on the Moon.

But is it possible that the popularity of this Moon Landing Hoax movement is what’s holding back America’s space exploration program? I mean NASA is probably very busy working on a special camera so that viewers will never doubt whether their next Moon landing TV (or Internet Web version whatever) broadcasts in the 2020s will never be accused of being staged in a Burbank soundstage.