They Promised Me The Moon

I give up. I can no longer be all zwitterion about lunar landings. From time to time, people ask me questions about conspiracy theories or email me links to web sites and YouTube compilation videos that claim to "prove" the moonwalks were fake. All of it is easily refutable, often with laughable ease, through 9th grade science and basic common sense.


Professional heckler Joe Rogan is a notorious moon landing denier, and I'll admit, his working himself into a froth is rowdily entertaining. He's still a whack-job, but at least he's funny. My favorite clip ever was on Penn Jilette's radio show, where he started ranting about "the impossibility of passing through the radiation belt discovered by Robert Van Allen."

Well, Captain Brainiac -- that would actually be James Van Allen -- and all Gemini, Apollo and Shuttle astronauts passed through this radiation belt, as does the Hubble on each orbit. But this gives you an idea of the quality of arguments by the non-scientists who fall into the category of typical conspiracy theorists.

However, I choose not to get into arguments about the Van Allen Belt, alleged film footage anomalies, or Neil Armstrong's reclusive nature. Even when I dip my toe in the lunatic pool, I confine myself to humor, such as a newspaper outlet who actually fell for a deliberately false report that the moon landings were a hoax.

This past weekend, however, an alert reader who shall remain nameless (in case this was all just random irritation to generate a backlink to his blog) quite literally attacked me on personal level about championing the industry that perpetrated the "greatest hoax of all time."

Really, you took time out of your life to do this? In the immortal words of Bad Astronomer Phil Plait:


NASA sent twelve American men to the moon between 1969 and 1972. Millions of people watched the launches, and thousands of people watched the splashdowns.

Multiple Mission Controls and Deep Space Network sites in United States, the Soviet Union, Spain and Australia all tracked missions over the duration of the entire Apollo program, monitoring navigation and communications throughout. By the end of the program, Alexei Kosygin (Soviet Premier 1964 – 1980) took not only a congratulatory but conciliatory stance about the US and USSR's space programs.

Why in the world… indeed, why in ANY world, would two superpowers embroiled in a political "Cold War" arrange the first cooperative space voyage if they did not have faith in one another's technologies? With distrust at every level of society and government on both sides, I don't see these two nations faking another space mission, as a team, with no whistle-blowers over all this time.

Honestly, if Russia believes we pulled it off – and they had a lot to gain if we didn't pull it off – that alone leads me to believe... we pulled it off.

Hey, that flag shouldn't be fluttering like that!

Untold hours of film footage. Innumerable technical companies and contracts involved. Thousands upon thousands of workers were involved in multiple countries, and you'll be pretty hard pressed to find anyone who worked (or still works) for any space program who isn't absolutely fiercely proud of it.

Geologists all over the world have seen the 800+ pounds of lunar soil and rock samples brought back to Earth from the moon's crust, and not one educated scientist who spent time in the Lunar Sample Laboratory at Johnson Space Center has come away saying he thought the rocks were fake. Or Earthly.

Could it all still be an elaborate, international, 4-decade-long prideful prank? Will the Cubs win a World Series? You think whatever you like. I think not.

If you really want a good conspiracy theory, go read about the Apollo 18 mission that never happened... or did it?