The Space Race of the 1950s was between the United States and the Soviet Union over who would develop the best form of technology to get to space. This led to President Kennedy declaring a commitment to getting a man on the moon. In 1969, NASA landed its Apollo 11 on the moon where astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were the first people to walk on the moon. This moonwalk was a nationally televised event that millions of people tuned in to watch.
There are still many people who believe the moon landing is a hoax. The conspiracy theory is that the moon landing was filmed on a movie set, here on Earth, as propaganda to trick the world into thinking that the U.S. won the Space Race. The moon landing being fake was first joked about in 1971 in this James Bond movie (links to the scene) where Bond ran through a movie set designed to look just like the moon landing images as actors are in the middle of filming.
Later, the 1977 movie Capricorn One is really what stirred up conspiracy theories of a fake moon landing. The plot of Capricorn One Is about the U.S. government having a failed Mars mission, and to prevent public outcry, they created fake footage of astronauts landing on Mars to fool the world and protect their reputation.
One example of how this conspiracy theory is used for the moon landing is that people say the American flag appears to be moving in the wind, but the moon has no wind, so why does it look like this?
Well, a mechanism of the flag pole had failed, and the weak gravity on the moon is what prevented it from fully expanding after being folded up during the mission. This is why it’s crumpled up and appears to be moving from the wind. Here is a video of the astronauts raising the American flag on the moon in 1969, and you can tell that the flag isn’t blowing in a breeze, but it’s moving only when the men are adjusting it.
Another claim is that the moon landing was fake because you can’t see stars in any footage. Since the moon doesn’t have any air pollution or lights like large cities do, we should be able to see stars shining bold and bright in the background, right? Well, the astronauts could see the stars in person, but we can’t see them on camera due to the camera’s exposure settings and the sun’s light reflecting off the surface.
Most of these claims use the propaganda device of Chery-Picking, which is a tactic that conspiracy theorists often use for their arguments. Cherry-Picking is when someone only uses facts and details that support their argument. This can confuse the average person who isn’t educated on the subject. The conspiracist picks and chooses what important information to leave out that doesn’t align with their argument to mislead the other person.
The moon landing was not a hoax. These are only two theories out of a handful, but all have been disproven. With the thousands of images, videos, communication audio records, and scientific data, there is more proof that we did in fact, land on the moon in 1969 than it being faked on a Hollywood movie set.
- https://lighthouse.mq.edu.au/article/july-2019/how-the-moon-landing-changed-the-world ↩︎
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