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54-654: Plait's first book received generally favorable reviews within the academic and astronomy communities and was the first volume in the Bad Science series by John Wiley & Sons Publishing Inspired by the author's web site, "Bad Astronomy", the book attempts to explore twenty-four common astronomical fallacies and explain the scientific consensus concerning these topics within the field of astronomy . The book explains and corrects many ideas relating to space that, according to Plait, are mistaken but nevertheless often portrayed in popular movies. Plait also dedicates much of

108-584: A hoaxed journey to Mars in a spacecraft that looks identical to the Apollo craft, might have given a boost to the hoax theory's popularity in the post- Vietnam War era. Dégh sees a parallel with other attitudes during the post- Watergate era, when the American public were inclined to distrust official accounts . Dégh writes: "The mass media catapult these half-truths into a kind of twilight zone where people can make their guesses sound as truths. Mass media have

162-588: A huge propaganda win for the Soviets. Instead, far from calling the landings a hoax, the third edition (1970–1979) of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia (which was translated into English between 1974 and 1983 by Macmillan Publishers , and was later made available online by TheFreeDictionary.com ) contained many articles reporting the landings as factual, such as its article on Neil Armstrong. Indeed their article on space exploration describes

216-607: A large spotlight was used in place of the Sun. 12. Who filmed Neil Armstrong stepping onto the Moon? 1. The astronauts could not have survived the trip because of exposure to radiation from the Van Allen radiation belt and galactic ambient radiation (see radiation poisoning and health threat from cosmic rays ). Some conspiracists have suggested that Starfish Prime (a high-altitude nuclear test in 1962) formed another intense layer on

270-406: A painted background was used. 7. The number of photos taken is implausibly high—up to one photo per 50 seconds. 8. The photos contain artifacts like the two seemingly matching "C"s on a rock and on the ground. These may be labeled studio props. 9. A woman named Una Ronald (a pseudonym created by the authors of the source ) from Perth, Australia, said that she saw a Coca-Cola bottle roll across

324-423: A permanent space station and crewed flight to Mars. Many Moon-landing conspiracy theories have been proposed, alleging that the landings either did not occur and NASA staff lied, or that the landings did occur but not in the way that has been reported. Conspiracists have focused on perceived gaps or inconsistencies in the historical record of the missions. The foremost idea is that the whole crewed landing program

378-559: A terrible impact on people who lack guidance." In A Man on the Moon , first published in 1994, Andrew Chaikin mentions that at the time of Apollo 8 's lunar-orbit mission in December 1968, similar conspiracy ideas were already in circulation. Those who believe the Moon landings were faked offer several theories about the motives of NASA and the United States government . The three main theories are below. Motivation for

432-530: Is that of Apollo 11 , which has lain on the lunar surface since being blown over by the Lunar Module Ascent Propulsion System . Despite being demonstrably false and generally regarded as pseudoscience , opinion polls taken in various locations between 1994 and 2009 have shown that between 6% and 20% of Americans, 25% of Britons, and 28% of Russians surveyed believe that the crewed landings were faked. Even as late as 2001,

486-713: The Fox television network documentary Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? claimed NASA faked the first landing in 1969 to win the Space Race . An early and influential book about the subject of a Moon-landing conspiracy, We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle , was self-published in 1976 by Bill Kaysing , a former US Navy officer with a Bachelor of Arts in English. Despite having no knowledge of rockets or technical writing, Kaysing

540-573: The National Science Teachers Association , Deborah Teuscher, Director of Pike Planetarium, praised the work as "interesting, accurate, and fun to read," recommending the book as a resource for science teachers, scientifically interested lay persons, and high school and college students as a supplement to an astronomy unit. Publishers Weekly gave a generally favorable review, stating of the planned John Wiley & Sons "Bad Science" series that "[i]f every entry in

594-586: The "Conspiracy Theories" episode of his television show Penn & Teller: Bullshit! in 2005. Physicist David Robert Grimes estimated the time that it would take for a conspiracy to be exposed based on the number of people involved. His calculations used data from the PRISM surveillance program , the Tuskegee syphilis experiment , and the FBI forensic scandal . Grimes estimated that a Moon landing hoax would require

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648-575: The "late 1972" claimed by Sibrel. (See Vietnam War below.) In fact, the Soviets had been sending uncrewed spacecraft to the Moon since 1959, and "during 1962, deep space tracking facilities were introduced at IP-15 in Ussuriisk and IP-16 in Evpatoria (Crimean Peninsula), while Saturn communication stations were added to IP-3, 4 and 14," the last of which having a 100 million km (62 million mi) range. The Soviet Union tracked

702-602: The Apollo 11 landing as "the third historic event" of the space age , following the launch of Sputnik in 1957, and Yuri Gagarin 's flight in 1961. Conspiracist Bart Sibrel responded, incorrectly asserting that, "the Soviets did not have the capability to track deep space craft until late in 1972, immediately after which, the last three Apollo missions were abruptly canceled." Those missions were canceled, not abruptly, but for cost-cutting reasons. The announcements were made in January and September 1970, two full years before

756-656: The Apollo missions at the Space Transmissions Corps, which was "fully equipped with the latest intelligence-gathering and surveillance equipment." Vasily Mishin , in an interview for the article "The Moon Programme That Faltered," describes how the Soviet Moon program dwindled after the Apollo landings. In May 2023  Dmitry Rogozin , former director general of the Russian space agency  Roscosmos , expressed doubt that U.S. astronauts landed on

810-460: The Moon landing is fundamentally accurate, allowing for such common mistakes as mislabeled photos and imperfect personal recollections. Using the scientific process , any hypothesis may be rejected if it is contradicted by the observable facts. The "real landing" hypothesis is a single story since it comes from a single source, but there is no unity in the hoax hypothesis because hoax accounts vary between conspiracists. According to James Longuski ,

864-630: The Moon was calculated to be 0.0017%, and that despite close monitoring by the USSR , it would have been easier for NASA to fake the Moon landings than to really go there. In 1980, the Flat Earth Society accused NASA of faking the landings, arguing that they were staged by Hollywood with Walt Disney sponsorship, based on a script by Arthur C. Clarke and directed by Stanley Kubrick . Folklorist Linda Dégh suggests that writer-director Peter Hyams ' film Capricorn One (1978), which shows

918-465: The Moon, and Kaysing claimed in his book that this could have been used to "pay off" many people. Since most conspiracists believe that sending men to the Moon was impossible at the time, they argue that landings had to be faked to fulfill Kennedy's 1961 goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." In fact, NASA accounted for the cost of Apollo to

972-399: The Moon. He complained of not receiving a satisfactory answer when he asked his agency to provide evidence. He said his colleagues at Roscosmos were angry about his questions and did not want to undermine cooperation with NASA. Conspiracy theorists claim that NASA faked the landings to avoid humiliation and to ensure that it continued to get funding. NASA raised "about US$ 30 billion" to go to

1026-556: The US Congress in 1973, totaling US$ 25.4 billion. Mary Bennett and David Percy claimed in the 2001 book Dark Moon: Apollo and the Whistle-Blowers , that, with all the known and unknown hazards, NASA would not risk broadcasting an astronaut getting sick or dying on live television. The counter-argument generally given is that NASA in fact did incur a great deal of public humiliation and potential political opposition to

1080-577: The United States to engage the Soviet Union in a Space Race can be traced to the Cold War . Landing on the Moon was viewed as a national and technological accomplishment that would generate world-wide acclaim. But going to the Moon would be risky and expensive, as exemplified by President John F. Kennedy famously stating in a 1962 speech that the United States chose to go because it

1134-482: The Van Allen belt. 2. Film in the cameras would have been fogged by this radiation. 3. The Moon's surface during the daytime is so hot that camera film would have melted. 4. The Apollo 16 crew could not have survived a big solar flare firing out when they were on their way to the Moon. 5. The flag placed on the surface by the astronauts fluttered despite there being no wind on the Moon. This suggests that it

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1188-582: The Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.226 via cp1108 cp1108, Varnish XID 228159950 Upstream caches: cp1108 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 08:51:52 GMT Moon Landing Hoax Moon landing conspiracy theories claim that some or all elements of the Apollo program and the associated Moon landings were hoaxes staged by NASA , possibly with

1242-600: The aid of other organizations. The most notable claim of these conspiracy theories is that the six crewed landings (1969–1972) were faked and that twelve Apollo astronauts did not actually land on the Moon . Various groups and individuals have made claims since the mid-1970s that NASA and others knowingly misled the public into believing the landings happened, by manufacturing, tampering with, or destroying evidence including photos, telemetry tapes, radio and TV transmissions, and Moon rock samples. Much third-party evidence for

1296-573: The astronauts either using harnesses or slow-motion photography to make it look like they were on the Moon. 1. The Lunar Modules made no blast craters or any sign of dust scatter. 2. The second stage of the launch rocket or the Lunar Module ascent stage or both made no visible flame. 3. The Lunar Modules weighed 17 tons and made no mark on the Moondust, yet footprints can be seen beside them. 4. The air conditioning units that were part of

1350-490: The astronauts' spacesuits could not have worked in an environment of no atmosphere. 1. There should have been more than a two-second delay in communications between Earth and the Moon, at a distance of 250,000 mi (400,000 km). 2. Typical delays in communication were about 0.5 seconds. 3. The Parkes Observatory in Australia was billed to the world for weeks as the site that would be relaying communications from

1404-583: The book to debunking the idea of a Moon landing hoax and explains why astrology should not be taken seriously. A part of the book describes the Moon's tidal effects and explains the Coriolis effect , why the sky is blue, the Big Bang and other related topics. Many of the book's topics and arguments also are found on Plait's page at the Slate magazine blog site, but Plait explores them in greater depth in

1458-433: The book. He states that the book is intended to debunk popular myths and also to describe science in an easily comprehensible way. Tormod Guldvog writes in his review that "It is indeed a gem when it comes to teaching things about common astronomical phenomena. Plait discusses common ways bad astronomy is communicated, in the media, in the classroom, and perhaps, most of all, in our own minds." Reviewing Bad Astronomy for

1512-399: The conspiracy theories are impossible because of their size and complexity. The conspiracy would have to involve more than 400,000 people who worked on the Apollo project for nearly ten years, the twelve men who walked on the Moon, the six others who flew with them as command module pilots, and another six astronauts who orbited the Moon. Hundreds of thousands of people would have had to keep

1566-415: The first moonwalk. However, five hours before transmission they were told to stand down. 4. Parkes supposedly had the clearest video feed from the Moon, but Australian media and all other known sources ran a live feed from the United States. 5. Better signal was supposedly received at Parkes Observatory when the Moon was on the opposite side of the planet. Blueprints and design and development drawings of

1620-507: The grid. Conspiracists often use this evidence to suggest that objects were "pasted" over the photographs, and hence obscure the reticle. 2. Crosshairs are sometimes rotated or in the wrong place. 3. The quality of the photographs is implausibly high. 4. There are no stars in any of the photos; the Apollo 11 astronauts also stated in post-mission press conferences that they did not remember seeing any stars during extravehicular activity (EVA). Conspiracists contend that NASA chose not to put

1674-497: The ground." Part IV, "Artificial Intelligence", attempts to tackle various conspiracy theories and alternate worldviews, including the so-called Moon Landing Hoax , Young-Earth Creationism , Immanuel Velikovsky 's book Worlds in Collision (which asserts that a relatively young Venus was once a part of Jupiter ), extraterrestrial claims regarding unidentified flying objects (UFOs), and astrology . In "Appalled at Apollo",

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1728-531: The horizon. Part III, "Skies at Night are Big and Bright", concentrates on the viewing of objects farther away than the radius of the Moon's orbit around Earth, including the optical "twinkle" effect when viewing some stars, the brightness and color of stars, observation of meteors and asteroids, and using astronomical observations to study the beginning of the universe. Plait's chapter on meteors and asteroids delves into terms and distinctions and explains, for example, "why small meteors are cold, not hot, when they hit

1782-516: The household or classroom, including the effect of the equinox on an egg's ability to balance upright without falling onto its side, the Coriolis effect's rumored effect on direction of whirlpools in household plumbing, and astronomical misunderstandings inherent in common English idioms, such as "meteoric rise" and " dark side of the Moon ". "Idiom's Delight", the chapter dealing with scientific inaccuracies that appear in everyday expressions, such as

1836-429: The involvement of 411,000 people and would be exposed within 3.68 years. His study did not consider exposure by sources outside of the alleged conspiracy; it only considered exposure from within through whistleblowers or incompetence. Moon-landing conspiracists focus heavily on NASA photos, pointing to oddities in photos and films taken on the Moon. Photography experts (including those unrelated to NASA) have replied that

1890-572: The landings exists, and detailed rebuttals to the hoax claims have been made. Since the late 2000s, high-definition photos taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) of the Apollo landing sites have captured the Lunar Module descent stages and the tracks left by the astronauts. In 2012, images were released showing five of the six Apollo missions' American flags erected on the Moon still standing. The exception

1944-610: The lower right quadrant of her television screen that was displaying the live broadcast of the Apollo 11 EVA. She also said that several letters appeared in The West Australian discussing the Coca-Cola bottle incident within ten days of the lunar landing. 10. The 1994 book Moon Shot contains an obviously fake composite photo of Alan Shepard hitting a golf ball on the Moon with another astronaut. 11. There appear to be "hot spots" in some photos which look as though

1998-538: The machines involved are missing. Apollo 11 data tapes are also missing, containing telemetry and the high-quality video (before scan conversion from slow-scan TV to standard TV) of the first moonwalk. Dr. David R. Williams (NASA archivist at Goddard Space Flight Center ) and Apollo 11 flight director Eugene F. Kranz both acknowledged that the original high-quality Apollo 11 telemetry data tapes are missing. Conspiracists see this as evidence that they never existed. The Apollo 11 telemetry tapes were different from

2052-470: The oddities are consistent with what should be expected from a real Moon landing, and are not consistent with manipulated or studio imagery. Some main arguments (set in plain text) and counter-arguments (set in italics) are listed below. 1. In some photos, the crosshairs appear to be behind objects. The cameras were fitted with a Réseau plate (a clear glass plate with a reticle etched on), making it impossible for any photographed object to appear in front of

2106-416: The phrase " light years ahead". Part II of the book, "From the Earth to the Moon", focuses on Earth's orbit and atmosphere and the Moon, with particular emphasis on how photon scattering results in the sky appearing blue, the impact of axial tilt on seasons, the impact of the Moon's presence, and misconceptions regarding the " Moon Size Illusion ", explaining why and how the Moon appears larger when closer to

2160-456: The program by losing an entire crew in the Apollo 1 fire during a ground test, leading to its upper management team being questioned by Senate and House of Representatives space oversight committees. There was in fact no video broadcast during either the landing or takeoff because of technological limitations. The American Patriot Friends Network claimed in 2009 that the landings helped the United States government distract public attention from

2214-474: The scan-converted pictures, and it is this original tape that is missing. A crude, real-time scan conversion of the SSTV signal was done in Australia before it was broadcast worldwide. However, still photos of the original SSTV image are available (see photos). About fifteen minutes of it were filmed by an amateur 8 mm film camera and these are also available. Later Apollo missions did not use SSTV. At least some of

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2268-403: The secret, including astronauts, scientists, engineers, technicians, and skilled laborers. Longuski argues that it would have been much easier to really land on the Moon than to generate such a huge conspiracy to fake the landings. To date, nobody from the United States government or NASA linked to the Apollo program has said that the Moon landings were hoaxes. Penn Jillette made note of this in

2322-690: The section devoted to Moon landing hoax conspiracy theories, Plait examines aspects of the hoax theory and compares its claims against basic laws of physics. Astronomical Society of the Pacific listed Chapter 17, "Appalled at Apollo", on a list of resources stating it was "good ammunition for debunking the notion that NASA never went to the Moon point by point." In the chapter "Misidentified Flying Objects", Plait discusses various ways that cameras sometimes distort images, which Plait writes are often responsible for examples of evidence presented by extraterrestrial UFO proponents. A chapter devoted to astrology explores

2376-803: The series is as entertaining as Plait's, good science may have a fighting chance with the American public." An April 2002 review for UniSci's "Daily University Science News" also praised Bad Astronomy as the "ideal accompaniment for International Astronomy Day (April 20)" and quoted the author, stating that it is "dangerous to be ignorant about science. Our lives and our livelihoods depend on it." In an October 2002 review for Sky & Telescope , Bud Sadler praised Bad Astronomy for its humor, "easily understood explanations" and "simple demonstrations" to explain what he called "the most egregious examples of ill-informed astronomy." Part I of Bad Astronomy , "Bad Astronomy Begins at Home", focuses on examples of astronomical misconceptions that are typically associated with

2430-495: The stars into the photos because astronomers would have been able to use them to determine whether the photos were taken from the Earth or the Moon, by means of identifying them and comparing their celestial position and parallax to what would be expected for either observation site. 5. The angle and color of shadows are inconsistent. This suggests that artificial lights were used. 6. There are identical backgrounds in photos which were allegedly taken miles apart. This suggests that

2484-407: The telemetry tapes of the other Moon landings because they contained the raw television broadcast. For technical reasons, the Apollo 11 lander carried a slow-scan television (SSTV) camera (see Apollo TV camera ). To broadcast the pictures to regular television, a scan conversion had to be done. The radio telescope at Parkes Observatory in Australia was able to receive the telemetry from the Moon at

2538-534: The telemetry tapes still exist from the ALSEP scientific experiments left on the Moon (which ran until 1977), according to Dr. Williams. Copies of those tapes have been found. Others are looking for the missing telemetry tapes for different reasons. The tapes contain the original and highest quality video feed from the Apollo 11 landing. Some former Apollo personnel want to find the tapes for posterity, while NASA engineers looking towards future Moon missions believe that

2592-550: The time of the Apollo 11 moonwalk. Parkes had a bigger antenna than NASA's antenna in Australia at the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, so it received a better picture. It also received a better picture than NASA's antenna at Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex . This direct TV signal, along with telemetry data, was recorded onto one-inch fourteen-track analog tape at Parkes. The original SSTV transmission had better detail and contrast than

2646-582: The topic, explaining "why astrology doesn't work". Part V, "Beam Me Up", explores additional topics, such as common misconceptions regarding the Hubble Space Telescope and its funding, star-naming companies, and astronomy myths and inaccuracies perpetuated by Hollywood, providing "The Top-Ten Examples of Bad Astronomy in Major Motion Pictures". Wiley Bad Science Series Too Many Requests If you report this error to

2700-475: The unpopular Vietnam War , and so crewed landings suddenly ended about the same time that the United States ended its involvement in the war. In fact, the ending of the landings was not "sudden" (see Space Race above). The war was one of several federal budget items with which NASA had to compete; NASA's budget peaked in 1966, and fell by 42% by 1972. This was the reason the final flights were cut, along with plans for even more ambitious follow-on programs such as

2754-503: Was a hoax from start to end. Some claim that the technology did not exist to send men to the Moon or that the Van Allen radiation belts , solar flares , solar wind , coronal mass ejections , and cosmic rays made such a trip impossible. Scientists Vince Calder and Andrew Johnson have given detailed answers to conspiracists' claims on the Argonne National Laboratory website. They show that NASA's portrayal of

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2808-469: Was filmed on Earth and a breeze caused it to flutter. Sibrel said that it may have been caused by indoor fans used to cool the astronauts, since their spacesuit cooling systems would have been too heavy on Earth. 6. Footprints in the Moondust are unexpectedly well preserved, despite the lack of moisture. 7. The alleged Moon landings used either a sound stage or were filmed outside in a remote desert with

2862-403: Was hard. Hoax theory debunker Phil Plait says in his 2002 book Bad Astronomy that the Soviets – with their own competing Moon program , an extensive intelligence network and a formidable scientific community able to analyze NASA data – would have "cried foul" if the United States tried to fake a Moon landing, especially since their own program had failed. Proving a hoax would have been

2916-574: Was hired as a senior technical writer in 1956 by Rocketdyne , the company that built the F-1 engines used on the Saturn V rocket. He served as head of the technical publications unit at the company's Propulsion Field Laboratory until 1963. The many allegations in Kaysing's book effectively began discussion of the Moon landings being faked. The book claims that the chance of a successful crewed landing on

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