A young collegue with a teenage daughter brought up the issue of the moon landings in work the other day, saying that her daughter had expressed the idea that the moon landings were all faked, citing the infamous 'flapping flag' meme as proof. My collegue was seriously curious as to whether this was actually true and amazingly, appeared to believe that the landings were all staged. To this end, she couldn't honestly correct her daughter and give her any concrete evidence that the events took place.
I was absolutely amazed that such a closeted view still holds any credence, given the massive advances in space travel and technology taking place on a daily basis. I pointed out that evidence of manned landings are actually visible on the surface of the moon (albeit with a very large telescope) and that without the advances made by NASA during the space race, we would not now have an International Space Station, or rover on Mars etc.
She was also curious as to whether there would be any return to the moon, to which I gleefully pointed out the efforts by Elon Musk and other private companies to reach the moon, in order to mine the huge swathes of rare minerals and also the strategic military importance of the moon.
Looking online, it appears that the moon landing fakery is a huge concern and that it is very widely believed that it was all staged.
The 1978 film 'Capricorn One' captured the essence of the hoaxed mission perfectly, but despite the overwhelming degree of evidence - testimony, scientific data, photographs, samples and radio transmission recordings - its still a very wide believed that NASA staged the whole programme.
In the 2014 epic 'Interstellar', school teachers inform a student that the books her astronaut father had given her, detailing the previous centuries space missions, are all bogus and that they have introduced the corrected versions which show how the US government deliberately faked a multi-billion dollar space programme in order to push the U.S.S.R into bankrupting itself in the ensuing space race.
Whilst part of this story may have a grain of truth in it - the Soviet space programme was pressed so hard by the Kremlin that many pilots lost their lives due to hurriedly staged missions and the loss of the
N1 rocket which devastated the Tyuratam launch facility, effectively ended any chance of Russia reaching the Moon first - the blinkered attitude of the two actors does appear to hold true with a large portion of the modern audiences.
There are several excellent sites which effectively debunk the hoax conspiracy theories, including
The National Space Centre and the 2001 inspired
Clavius site. the former is aimed at a school age audience, but Clavius does a really thorough and effective job of discounting all the current theories.
With ready access to the photographic material being provided by current rovers and probes on mars and the asteroids, theorists are having a whale of a time finding fault with NASA's offerings, with some excitable bloggers posting photographs of what they claim to be snakes, crabs and even facehuggers present in the materials recorded by the Curiosity Rover and alien skulls, coffins and even a totem pole appearing in others! Is this just a case of pareidolia - seeing recognisable shapes and patterns where none exist - or is there something more sinister going on ? I know what I believe!
