“That is one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Many people are familiar with this well-known quote by Neil Alden Armstrong, as he first stepped on the surface of the moon. On July 20, 1969, he took the first step on the moon for humankind. About 46 years have passed since that glorious historical event. However, some people continue to argue that humans have never landed on the moon. What are their grounds in believing the moon landing to be a hoax?
First, why did we go to the moon? The background of sending Apollo 11 to the moon goes back to the age of the Cold War. On April 12, 1961, Yurii Alekseevich Gagarin (Yurii Gagarin) of the Soviet Union successfully completed the first space flight in human history in Vostok 1. The pride of the United States of America (USA) was hurt, and not to be outdone in technological superiority, it announced its plan for Apollo. After much trial and error, Apollo 7 succeeded in its first manned space flight, and it was broadcasted live on TV. With arduous preparation and a budget of about 25.4 billion dollars, which was huge at the time, USA landed Apollo 11 on the moon on July 16, 1969. About 700 million people watched the landing and surface activity; memorial medals and posts were made and many children cultivated dreams of becoming an astronaut. However, that memorable event was soon tarnished by rumors of hoax.
The first person to assert the possibility of a moon landing conspiracy was William Charles Kaysing in his book, We Never Went to the Moon. He insisted that Apollo 11 did launch but claimed that it just circled near the earth for eight days during when a fake video of a moon landing was shown on TV. He also participated in a show on Fox TV and laid the foundation of the moon landing conspiracy. Since then, many people have insisted that the moon landing conspiracy is true. Could the landing really be a fraud? Here are some of most powerful claims of the conspiracy believers.
The first claim is that “the moon landing and activity scenes can be made on a set.” They say that scenes of a landing on Mars from a low-budget movie called Capricorn One are extremely similar to those of the moon landing. Since scenes made on a movie set resemble scenes of the moon landing, then the moon landing scenes could have been made on a set. The second claim is concerning pictures and videos. All of the pictures were supposedly taken on the surface of the moon but there are no stars seen in space. Moreover, space is a vacuum, but the flag in the picture is fluttering. It cannot flutter in vacuum. The conspiracy theorists also raise a question about a picture. There is a “C-shaped thing” on a rock in the picture on the moon. They insisted that it could have been left there by mistake while placing props for the scene. Therefore, they conclude that these were artificial scenes taken on a set. The third claim is regarding technological problems. To get to the moon, a spaceship must pass through a powerful radiation field called the Van Allen radiation belt. Conspiracy theorists find it suspicious that the spaceship could pass through the Van Allen belt and block radiation at that time with the technology available in the 1960s. While passing through the radiation field, astronauts would have been exposed to large amounts of radiation. And at that time, the performance of landing shuttle and commander ship was behind that of a car. Could it be possible for the spaceship to have successfully landed on the moon with that level of performance? The Apollo project was planned to go upto Apollo 20, but the project just stopped, and humans have never gone to the moon after Apollo 11’s landing. The conspiracy theorists say that this is because humans have never gone to the moon at all. Are their claims valid?
The objections to these claims by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) strongly dispute the believers’ ideas. First, the movie Capricorn One was filmed in 1977, and at the time of the moon landing in 1969, there was no Computer Graphics technology (known as CG). So there was no technology to make such detailed scenes. In addition, when filming the movie Capricorn One, they may have had to use some miniatures, and the result was not that good. The landing scene in the movie was very shoddy when compared with the scene of the moon landing. In addition, the “C” on the rock in the picture is not present in the original picture. That picture does not belong to NASA but to the image library of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. The “C-shaped thing” could be a kind of dust that may have gotten mixed when filming the picture because its focus is not the same as that of the picture. A created moon landing is too absurd. It is also possible that some believers manipulated the picture.
How about pictures and videos? Stars are not visible in space in the picture because it was daytime on the moon during the filming, and exposure was done on the surface of the moon, which was very bright. Therefore, relatively dim stars are not seen in the picture. Rather, it would be odd if stars would have appeared in the picture. The flag in the picture is not fluttering although it may look like that. The flag is made to be wrinkled to unfold easily and when the flag is fixed on the surface, a pulse goes through the pole and makes it move. Because space is a vacuum, it is hard to stop the moving flag, and it looked like it was fluttering. This can be checked in the video that the astronauts filmed on the moon.
Third, scientific problems did not exist. The Van Allen belt consists of alpha rays and beta rays. Alpha rays can be blocked by a piece of paper; beta rays can be blocked by a thin aluminum plate. It was once thought to be harmful for astronauts to pass through, but the travel time through the belt is very short and rays can be blocked by the spaceship and the spacesuit. Therefore, there is no problem in passing through the Van Allen belt. There was also no need for a high-performance computer to be loaded on the spaceship because the onboard computer mainly corrected flight orbit by receiving data from the earth. There was no need to process complicated data for a spaceship and it was safe to use a technologically not too advanced computer in an emergency situation. The most concrete evidence for the moon landing is the reflective panel installed on the moon. It is still used to calculate distance from the earth to the moon using a laser beam at the McDonald Laser Ranging Station and Station de Telemetrie Laser-Lune.
NASA is on the winning side of the argument because they conceived of the Apollo project and executed it. In addition, NASA’s explanations are more logical than the believers’ claims. The USA did not send additional manned spaceships to the moon and Barack Obama stopped Project Constellation, which aimed to launch additional manned spaceships into space. Apollo 11 was launched during the Cold War, so the USA could justify the tremendous expenditure, but today it is not that easy to invest such a large budget on space projects. It is indeed a true fact that humans travelled to the moon and that humankind took a giant leap. As time goes on, space developments will increase and the conspiracy will be proven false. Humankind’s space history just started in 1969. Look at the moon in the night sky and imagine that your footprints will be marked on the moon someday. Don’t you feel a lump in your throat?
ldyoverd@ajou.ac.kr
Reference
NASA JSC (Johnson Space Center) History Portal. web.