The catalyst for this article was discussions i had with two intelligent people who argue that man never set foot on the Moon. One has serious doubts and the other rejects the idea completely and it is the latter which has an extensive background in aerospace.
These recent discussions were certainly not my introduction into such claims however as i looked into this many moons ago (pun intended). There are many people who disbelieve that man walked on the Moon, some very smart and some just plain stupid, and the number seems to be growing. Smart people are just as easily fooled as is the dummy however.
If you've read some of the content on this website, especially in the history section, you'll know my beliefs are not main stream. I'm not sure they ever were. I enjoy finding fault with a given narrative and following the trail of breadcrumbs to a sound, or at least a logical conclusion. If you accused me of being a conspiracy theorist, i stand unapologetically guilty, however i'm also a conspiracy 'factist', if you will. I'm interested in truth, not confirming my own biases. Truth is not always easily discovered, however in this case there is a lot of evidence readily available and, in the end, that which is presented by the debunkers fails miserably when measured against the official claim.
My questioning of mainstream narratives began at an early age and when i delved into the validity of the Apollo Moon landings, i would not have been surprised in the least had the evidence led me to conclude that the whole thing was a big fat hoax as many believe. Matter of fact, i would have preferred such a result because it would have been yet another well deserved nail in the coffin of mainstream government bullshit.
I cannot prove beyond any doubt whatsoever that man set foot on the Moon. I wasn't there and i don't have physical access to the evidence. I've also learned to be critical of any claims i can't vet for myself, however there is indeed a wealth of evidence that strongly suggests we did, in fact, walk on the Moon and i'll lay out a tiny fraction of that evidence here. Yes, images, communications, telemetry and other evidence can be forged, however this overlooks the massive heap of evidence to the contrary as well as simple logic and reasoning. Simply put, the evidence which i've considered that the debunkers bring to the table ranges from completely retarded to inconclusive and much of it resides on the retarded end of the scale.
CLAIM: The entire Apollo 11 Moon landing was filmed using a miniature section model of the Moon hung upside down on a ceiling.
ANSWER: I don't know about this particular debunker, but personally i haven't yet been able to a) miniaturize myself to fit the scale of a model, b), managed to walk on my ceiling, or c), managed to kick up dust and drop things and have them fall up. Lastly, the morons who assembled the American Moon "documentary" in question rely on discussions about potential pitfalls that arose very early during the planning stages of the space program when a great deal of questions had no concrete answers, as though nothing further could be learned and nothing could possibly be changed during subsequent research and development.
CLAIM: Wikileaks released video showing the moon landing was shot in a studio.
ANSWER: Wikileaks never published any such information. The video is a compilation which includes behind the scenes footage from the filming of Capricorn 1 (1970) and actual footage of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. Even the "fact checking" website Snopes, founded by a criminal and staffed by prostitutes, actually gets this one right.
Links to the full videos:
CLAIM: The Apollo missions never left Earth orbit.
ANSWER: If that was the case then there should be evidence of sightings of the Command Module as it orbited Earth in the night sky due to light from the Sun reflecting off of it as is the case with satellites.
CLAIM: There can be no combustion in a vacuum.
ANSWER: Fuels that contain or produce oxygen as they burn will burn in an oxygen deprived environment.
CLAIM: There is nothing in a vacuum for a rocket engine to push against.
ANSWER: Every reaction creates and equal and opposite reaction, even in a vacuum.
CLAIM: The intense radiation level of Earths Van Allen Belts were not survivable by a human given the minimal protection offered by the craft.
ANSWER: While "minimal" is an exaggeration, the claim is not entirely without merit. That aside, the level of radiation doesn't matter if you pass through the belts quickly enough. From Apollo Rocketed Through the Van Allen Belts | Popular Science:
By February of 1964, NASA was confident that Apollo crews would be passing through the belts fast enough that the spacecraft’s skin and all the instrumentation lining the walls would be enough protection.
[...]
To monitor radiation exposure during the flights, Apollo crews carried dosimeters on board their spacecraft and on their persons. And these readings confirmed NASA had made a good choice. At the end of the program, the agency determined that its astronauts had avoided the large radiation doses many feared would ground flights to the Moon. Over the course of the lunar missions, astronauts were exposed to doses lower than the yearly 5 rem average experienced by workers with the Atomic Energy Commission who regularly deal with radioactive materials.
CLAIM: There's no blast crater or radial dispersion of material under the Lunar Excursion Module which would have resulted from its engine.
ANSWER: The Moon is a rock; gravity is 1/6th that of Earth so not as much thrust is required to land as would be necessary on Earth; in some instances the engine was apparently shut down just prior to the Lunar Module contacting the surface in order to avoid debris from damaging it; dispersion of the dust can be seen in some photographs captured from the Command Module, the Japanese Space Agency Selene probe, the Indian Chandrayaan-1 probe, all of which would have to be co-conspirators.
CLAIM: The Lunar Module was too fragile to withstand space travel.
ANSWER: This claim often seems to hinge on a "thin foil" being the only barrier to space in parts of the Lunar Module which is a gross exaggeration. This argument is then used to insinuate that the entire 36,000 lb. machine was fragile.
CLAIM: Lack of a radial disbursement of material under the Lunar Modules engine nozzle cannot be explained by shutting down the engine on the Lunar Module before touchdown since this would have risked damaging the fragile vehicle.
ANSWER: The Lunar Module had some serious shock absorption capability with the primary struts having 32 in. of compression travel; the Lunar Module could sustain a fall of approximately 40 feet; the Lunar Module weighed approximately 36,000 lbs. on Earth, but far less on the Moon; considering its Earth weight alone, much less the added load and tremendous vibration it needed to withstand during the Apollo launch, the Lunar Module was obviously not the flimsy contraption the debunkers would have us believe.
CLAIM: Stanly Kubrick confessed to filming the Apollo 11 Moon sequence.
ANSWER: "In a statement released through a spokesperson, the [Kubrick] family made it clear the film published on YouTube was a complete hoax, using an actor who was purporting to be the Clockwork Orange film director." (source)
CLAIM: The U.S. flag is blowing in the wind on the "Moon".
ANSWER: Momentum happens in a vacuum too when the pole to which the flag is attached is adjusted. And if the Apollo 11 mission was filmed in a studio, well, there's no wind there either. Lastly, this assumes those perpetrating the hoax were too stupid to recognize such a blatantly obvious oversight.
CLAIM: There's a photo of a Coke can on the Moon.
ANSWER: See the last part of the answer above. There was plenty of other equipment left on the Moon however as is evidenced in photographs captured by probes sent by several countries, as well as those captured by the Apollo Command Module, all of which the debunkers avoid. Such equipment includes 70+ vehicles, vehicle tracks, sensors, transmitters, seismometers, reflectors, Lunar Modules, payload transport pallets, solar panels, cameras, foot prints, and the Apollo 11 service module which may still be orbiting the Moon, all of which would have to be forgeries by several countries, all of which would have had to be co-conspirators. Lastly, forging this much evidence is utterly unnecessary as it only increases the risk that the hoax would be exposed.
CLAIM: Converging shadows prove that the light source was much closer to the areas being photographed than the Sun would have been, therefore the Moon photography was performed in a studio.
ANSWER: Easily debunked using a light bulb and 2 fingers to create shadows on a table. Shadows can indeed converge, especially when they are produced by irregularly shaped objects resting on an irregular surface, and this is not dependent on the distance of the light source. There is also the matter of perspective.
CLAIM: There are no stars in the photographs allegedly taken from the Moon.
ANSWER: There's no stars because the camera exposure was set to account for the bright, highly reflective surface of the Moon. Ever notice how many fewer stars you can see with the naked eye during a full Moon? Now imagine the light from the Sun as seen on the Moon with no atmosphere in between.
CLAIM: There are no stars in photographs taken from the Moon because it would have been impossible to create an accurate representation of the visible universe.
ANSWER: They couldn't have used enlarged photographs of the universe as a backdrop? Or plotted stars on a backdrop from photographs? Also see the above answer.
CLAIM: The astronauts said they didn't see any stars.
ANSWER: While some of the Apollo astronauts did in fact state they didn't recall seeing any stars from specific perspectives, some also stated that they could see stars when standing in the shadow of the Lunar Module, when orbiting the back side of the Moon, or when looking through optical devices. Also the astronauts had darkened visors to protect their eyes during the Moon walks. Also see the above answers.
CLAIM: The astronauts are too well lit in photographs when they were in shade.
ANSWER: The Moon is highly reflective; lightening of darker areas can be accomplished in the darkroom (known as "dodging").
CLAIM: Photographs taken by astronauts on the Moon are too well composed considering there was no viewfinder on their cameras.
ANSWER: Have you seen all of them? Did cropping photographs suddenly become impossible post Moon landing? Did they not practice beforehand? Is it necessary to forge 8,000+ photographs in order to perpetrate a hoax?
CLAIM: The camera crosshairs in photographs on the "Moon" are behind certain objects.
ANSWER: While that indeed appears to be the case in some of the photographs, it isn't. The crosshairs were on a glass plate in the camera so they could not possibly be behind anything in front of the camera, and if it is posited that the Hasselblad cameras never existed, then a sheet of glass or a filter with the crosshairs on it could be placed in front of the camera lens, or they could be added when printing the photographs. In either case the crosshairs can never be behind anything. The reason the crosshairs appear to be behind certain objects in some of the photographs is because they are washed out when they intersect a bright object, such as a space suit, and, in fact, the crosshairs can be seen in some of the photographs used by the debunkers.
CLAIM: Given the technical challenges it is extremely unlikely that 6 out of 7 Apollo missions could have met with success.
ANSWER: This ignores all that happened prior to Apollo 11. The space program had many failures, including the loss of at least 3 astronauts. So did the automobile industry. Do we not learn from our mistakes? NASA had to be as certain as possible that, as Kennedy stated, we could land a man on the Moon and return him safely to Earth. The space program was a massive effort that, contrary to what some of the debunkers imply, wasn't thrown together over night by a bunch of idiots. All of the debunking videos i've seen feature clip after clip of NASA failures early in the space program while omitting mention of many of the successes. The aircraft industry had many more failures, yet planes are flying today because lessons were learned and changes were made. Furthermore, why fake 6 landings? Why not quit after 1 or 2? Again, the more fakery, the higher the chance of being exposed.
CLAIM: Some of the Apollo 11 astronauts acted strange upon return, as though they had been threatened to not disclose the hoax.
ANSWER: This is another very thin claim, however assuming the astronauts actually did act strange upon return, i think this could possibly be due to having seen things they didn't expect, possibly on the way to the Moon or on their orbit around the dark side of the planet (there is some evidence of artificial structures on the dark side which is never seen from Earth). Another possible answer is their general state of fatigue after having endured such an intense and dangerous mission.
CLAIM: Given the complexity and technological limitations of the time, it would have been impossible for the Service Module to re-dock with the Command Module after leaving the Moon.
ANSWER: This is the only potentially reasonable argument against the Apollo Moon landings that i've heard and, quite interestingly, this argument was made by a friend who spent decades in the aerospace industry, much of that working with missile systems apparently. The basis of the argument is that the docking, given the equipment and technology available at that time, including very limited computing power, would have made it impossible to perform such an incredibly complex, delicate and precise maneuver. I think this argument overlooks the human-in-the-loop factor however. While re-docking was certainly a highly complex operation, which is why it was practiced successfully during the Gemini program, i suspect the automated portion of it (computer controlled burn times, vectoring, etc.) would only have to place the Service Module in the proximity of the Command Module on approximately the same course and velocity after which the pilot could take control and do what the computers may have been incapable of.
One of the most obvious shortcomings of the debunkers is that they conveniently ignore the mountainous body of convincing evidence which contradict their claims, including that provided by countries and organizations other than NASA which orbited the moon and photographed some of the equipment left there during the Apollo program. Such evidence is the result of the work of approximately 400,000 people over a ten year period. One cannot possibly ignore this evidence and proclaim to be objective and when both bodies of evidence are weighed, it is blatantly obvious on which side the credibility lies.
A massive compilation of photographs, video and information for Apollo missions 11 to 17 is contained on the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal website. Also see the MOON HOAX: DEBUNKED! website as well as this fine video from the SmarterEveryDay YouTube channel which explores the construction of the Saturn 5 rocket:
