Moon hoax

Caught faking!

The Moon hoax is a conspiracy theory that claims that the entire Apollo Program was a fraud.

The Moon hoax conspiracy theory, like most such theories, is the work of a handful of individuals, notably started by Bill Kaysing in his supposed tell all book, We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle, which claims to have volumes of "inside" knowledge because of his time working as a publicist and librarian at Rocketdyne. This effort was later taken up by a "self-taught" engineer Ralph Rene. The advent of the internet has allowed dozens more conspiracy theorists to grab the coattails of the "Grand Moon Hoax" for instant internet fame.

Moon Hoax Claims

Included in the many handwaving and quote-mining concepts put forth as evidence of this theory are:

• Moon rocks were fabricated in a lab in order to make the Apollo program look legitimate, and these fake rocks have fooled every geologist that has examined them (or a majority of those geologists are in on the deception).
• The named Apollo astronauts never left the Earth as part of the missions (or Earth orbit, depending on which hoax nut you ask), and all of the Apollo telecasts were staged in a studio on Earth in a secret location (Area 51 being a favorite). They claim that this was done with either wires used to support the spacesuit clad astronauts or slow motion being used to make the actions look low gravity. Included in this claim is the assertion that the director of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick, was the man responsible for filming the fake moon footage.
• A publicity photo of one of the Apollo missions contains an image of a rock showing a letter "C" engraved on it, indicating that it is actually a set prop, proving that the mission was completely staged, and a prop man had ignorantly placed the prop rock incorrectly.
• Moon photos are all too perfect and could not have been taken by non-experts in bulky space suits. Also they claim that the television video was made poor in order to help hide the fake moon set. They further claim that many pictures from the film cameras do not match the images on the television cameras. Many pictures are claimed to have been made with multiple light sources because the images show shadows that appear to not be parallel.
• Moon photos do not show stars, and they should be completely present.
• It was not possible for manned spacecraft to travel to the Moon because any passage through the Van Allen radiation belt is automatically lethal. They also claim that any craft built with the sufficient shielding to be able to allow a living human past the belt would be too heavy to launch into space.

Failed Claims

Moon hoax theories are easily debunked by examining the very evidence that they claim to use, and then you find out that nearly every piece of supposed "evidence" is either quote-mining, deliberate misrepresentation of the scientific data, or outright lies. Those that don't fall into one of those categories are usually just emotionally charged statements or bare assertions. If there is a logical fallacy, expect to find it in use by a Moon hoaxer. They also love to make use of proof surrogates, making verifying their bare assertions next to impossible because they are based on fake sources.

Keep in mind this is not intended to be a definitive or complete list.

Debunks of their claims include:

• Moon rocks contain minerals, elements, and isotopes that can only be found in rocks that are subject to millions of years of exposure to cosmic and solar radiation. Most of their rock-related claims are just bare assertions. The rocks can be faked because they say it is possible; nothing more is usually given.
  • These isotopes are not possible to simulate in an Earth environment and still be able to have the correct exposure ages for those isotopes, and any artificially created versions would be easily detected.
  • While it might be possible to generate the correct amounts of primary radioactive isotopes that are created by the cosmic rays, it is impossible to have the various amounts of trace elements that are part of the decay cycle of the isotopes in question.
  • Moon rocks do not contain minerals that would indicate they were meteorites collected on Earth in order to fake stellar exposure due to the exposure to water and an oxygen atmosphere, which causes chemical changes in the minerals of the rocks and their replacement with other minerals commonly found in Earth rocks. Also, the Moon hoaxers do not realize that the heat of passing through the Earth's atmosphere changes the apparent exposure ages of meteorites, rendering them useless for this purpose. It would take more then removing the charred crust of the meteorite to change that.
  • These rocks show no signs of exposure to an oxygen atmosphere at the time they solidified from molten rock, and they show signs that they solidified in a low-gravity environment.
  • Moon Hoaxers love to point to trace amounts of water in Moon rocks as proof of fakery. When they make these claims, they fail to understand that there is a difference between water being present and water taking part in the mineralogy of rocks. While trace amounts of water have been detected in Moon rocks and soil samples, they contain no minerals, such as Mica, that are generated by exposure to large amounts of water. Water generated minerals have a distinctive crystal structure that is absent in Moon rocks. Before satellites confirmed finding water in Lunar soil, many geologists figured the trace amounts of water present were from contamination during transport back to Earth (those that didn't noted that the water had no effect on the rocks mineralogy). This scientific assumption being discredited is not proof of any kind of coverup. It just shows how the scientific method works.
  • Moon rocks have thousands of tiny craters on their surface caused by micrometeorites that could not be simulated in an Earth environment without the simulation being obvious. This claim also includes one of the best examples of proof surrogates used by hoaxers.
  • Numerous minerals are unique in Moon rocks that were unknown before the Apollo missions.
• None of the Apollo astronauts, death bed or otherwise, have ever denied that they traveled to the Moon. In fact, they all talk about the extraordinary experience that the missions were and how much they changed their outlooks on the universe in general. To quote them in any amount would be unnecessary.
• When you actually examine the Apollo photographs you find that Moon hoaxers are manipulative bastards. They make claims using them hoping you never go to look at the originals and just take their word for it.
  • None of the original pictures of the "prop" rocks, including images taken just before and after the one in question, show this letter "C", and all versions of the picture can be traced to a single mimeograph duplicate of the negative. In fact, the letter "C" can easily be shown to be a small hair that had fallen onto the glass plate of the mimeograph machine just before the duplicate was made. Furthermore, movie producers don't actually use engraved letters on props for the very reason that the supposed "C" exists.
  • The non-parallel shadows argument is one of the best examples of their outright lies. Firstly, they claim flat terrain when it is obviously not and they crop pictures to keep that from being visible. Also the claims of the shadows showing multiple light sources because they appear to point in different directions, is complete misrepresenting how light works. You can't have multiple light sources without having multiple shadows. This especially apparent when you look at a rock that they claim shows more then one shadow but every object surrounding it has only one. The extra shadow is a part of the rough ground near the rock rather then an actual extra shadow because if it was then every object nearby it should show the same effect, they don't so it can't be.
  • In all of the photos taken on the Moon, only the best were released to the media, thus it is easy to claim perfection, but when you look at the Apollo photo archives, those are not the majority of the pictures taken. In fact, a large number of photos taken by the Apollo crews are of poor to moderate quality. The images taken by the Apollo crew look and appear to have actually been taken by real humans beings on a bright surface with bulky space suits. Furthermore, the cameras themselves were specially built to make it possible to operate them in large heavy gloves without needing to sight through a viewfinder. Numerous terrestrial camera designs can be easily operated and get good results without requiring a viewfinder.
  • The photos taken on the moon were using cameras set for use in daylight conditions. Using those settings, it is not possible to resolve stars behind a bright foreground, like the surface of the moon (or a lit parking lot for that matter) without long exposure times, rendering the main part of the images overexposed. Also, stars are not as bright as the hoaxers like to pretend that they are, and in the conditions in which the photographs were taken on the Moon, even planets would be difficult (not impossible just difficult) to resolve in the background.
  • Whenever the Moon hoaxers claim there is a discontinuity between the television and film photos they always use stills that skip over details that they want to claim do not match. Yet if you go and watch the TV film in its entirety you will see that the things they claim as not being present ARE THERE just hard to see and they then select images from the TV transmission where the detail is the least visible.
  • When they make claim of wires, they take advantage of reflections and lens flares of those reflections off of the PLSS stowable VHF antennas. They also take advantage of film artifacts from worn copies of the films of the landings to call scratches in the film, that are clearly over the top of the images, visible wires. They are hoping that you won't notice that the claimed 'wires' are not vertical but at angles suspension wires would not possibly be at. When they try to use film artifacts, they seem oblivious to the fact that the supposed wires do not move with the astronauts. To a Moon hoaxer, the only thing that matters is that they can use a still with those lines over the top to claim suspension wires.
• Claims about wires and/or the use of slow motion show that Moon hoaxers don't understand how gravity works. Moreover, whenever they show footage sped up to make it look plausible, they never speed it up the correct amount to "restore" Earth gravity. To make things worse, if you actually go and do it how they claim that it was done, you find that unsupported parts of the astronaut's suit will not behave like they should on the Moon: they behave like they would in full Earth gravity. To make the use of wires even more implausible, wires will only solve half of the issues when simulating Lunar gravity, as they will allow the person in the rig to jump up with the proper forces, but on the way back down the suspended person will fall at 9.8 m*s^2 until the wires can catch the astronaut. This means that even with an ideal wire suspension rig, the astronaut will go up at the correct speed, but their hang time and fall times will always become wrong for Lunar gravity. This would be true even when using giant vacuum sets they sometimes like to claim were used. Sir. Isaac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space. He will get you every time.
  • While you can suspend the astronaut to give him the correct weight for being on the Moon, you can't cheat gravity. Anything not attached to the magic invisible wires has to behave correctly for the gravity field that contains it.
  • Slow motion does not produce good results for the same reason: mainly because the amount of speed change, 246%, results in massively exaggerated movements that no natural human could pull off. Once again, you can't cheat gravity. While the objects now fall at the correct rates, they have to be performed at heights that the motions of the astronauts on film wouldn't be able to pull off in normal Earth gravity.

This is why many hoax nuts now try to claim a combination of both wires and slow motion to try and account for these factors, but gravity will not be cheated, and no matter what they claim, you just can't get it to work. Frankly, the only way to have Lunar gravity is to use Lunar gravity. Sadly for the Moon hoaxers, the only way to pull it off would be on the Moon!

• The claims about Stanley Kubrick being part of the filming, production, and staging of the Apollo missions ignore several details that make it nigh on impossible. First, 2001 was release on April 3, 1968, in the United States (with a special Premier in Washington, DC, on the 2nd), with the filming being finalized a few days before the release. This leaves almost no time available for him or anyone in the production to even begin to start work on any fake Apollo footage. This situation only gets worse when you note that Kubrick was present for the UK premier on May 15, 1968 (this further falls apart when you take into account Kubrick's hate of flying and the small detail of his traveling there on the Queen Mary.) Anyone claiming that Kubrick took part in any Moon hoax filming does not know anything about the famed director and is only hoping to take advantage of the reputation of 2001 in order to give their claims a semblance of credibility.
• The Moon hoaxers often, in their papers and presentations, only show the path of the Apollo missions from above, allowing them to place the ships in the densest parts of the Van Allen belt, thus allowing them to always claim the highest estimates for any and all exposure levels and times. Not only did the mission not travel directly through the belt (they went above or below them), they did not spend more then a few hours inside the most dangerous sections. They also tend to quote reports about the belts before they were extensively studied by Dr. Van Allen and others as part of their evidence, then claim any reports that disagree with initial expectations are part of the coverup. It is simply a case of not understanding how the scientific process works.
• They also like to use calculations based on data about the belts measured at solar maximum during a known solar flare interaction with the belts as a basis for their "calculations." To make it more fun when you go and look at how they make their radiation estimates, calculations and conclusions based on those calculations; you find out that not only do they not understand how particle radiations even works, they have no understanding of the science terms at the core of those figures. This leads to using energy measurements as mass and vice versa (all depending on which one will give them the scariest final answer.) To put it bluntly if they aren't just claiming the radiation is lethal just because it is then they are doing so based on massive misunderstanding of radiation science start to finish.
• Their radiation claims tend to show a complete ignorance of the shielding requirements for radiation, assuming that all radiation exposure is the same as an active nuclear reactor when it is not. Alpha particles, for example, can be blocked with something as mundane as a sheet of paper (though not completely), and only high-energy radiation, such as gamma rays, requires thick layers of heavy lead. Also, unless you are dealing with high concentrations of radiation (which isn't present in the Van Allen Belts), that type of shielding is less effective due to particle interactions with the high density materials. Less shielding can often provide better protection from high-speed particles because of the reduction of secondary effects. To put it simply, sometimes less can be more effective in a low saturation situation like cosmic rays. Bringing up concerns voiced by NASA engineers in reference to a Mars mission is a classic case of outright quote mining.
• The biggest nail in their coffin is the Soviet Union. When cornered on this, they often just claim that the Soviets, hoping to justify their own space programs or blackmailed somehow by the United States, went along with the hoax. This of course ignores that this was 1969 during the height of the Cold War, and hard on the heels of the tense political situations that had transpired mere years before. The Soviet Union would have jumped at the chance to expose such a massive coverup. This also ignores the fact that if the Soviets did know about the Apollo mission being a hoax what was stopping them from doing the same to save face? If the USA missions were all fake and they knew it how could the US even begin to dispute the Soviets pulling the same stunt without having to admit their own subterfuge.

External Links

• Youtube user Phil Webb's debunking of the Moon hoax
• Bogosity episode on the topic
• Shadows on the Moon, case closed
• The "Double Dasher" debunked