Have You Ever Believed A Conspiracy Theory? Do we know the exact meaning of what a conspiracy theory even means? Well, a conspiracy theory is “a belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for a circumstance or event,” as said by Google. As we know, there are plenty of conspiracies out there that hold strong proof of the theory being even the slightest bit real, but as for others, well, we can say the opposite. So for this theory, it is a very old and popular conspiracy that people still have even a slightest bit of belief for today. This conspiracy theory is called the NASA Moon Landing Conspiracy.
The main idea of this conspiracy theory is that it was a hoax created by NASA staging the Apollo 11 moon landing. This conspiracy had first started to gain suspicion on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their first steps when landing on the moon and placing the American flag. The people who believe this conspiracy theory had made claims that had been going on since the mid 1970s, and say that NASA tampered with a lot of supposed evidence about the Apollo 11 astronauts actually landing on the moon.
There are many reasons as to why so many people think that the moon landing was fake. The first person to have started this popular conspiracy theory was someone by the name of Bill Kaysing. He made many people believe this hoax and he gave his ideas on why it was being faked. He said that he had worked with NASA before as a technical writer and knew some inside information dealing with some government conspiracies. Bill Kaysing even created a whole book called, “We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle!”, which talks about all of his thoughts about the hoax and his beliefs. This caused more people to become open to also explaining their thoughts about the moon landing mission. Another main popular reason that people began to believe this theory is when people claimed in the mid 70s that the mission had been staged just for the United States to win the space race against the Russia Soviet Union. As for many people it began as speculation, which turned into digging deeper and asking questions such as why the USA flag was moving with no wind on the Moon? Or to why is there no stars appearing in the pictures or videos? And Lastly, Why are the objects still visible in the shadows? These believers told others that “the US lacked the technical prowess to make it to the moon and back'”. Now, there are many facts to debunk these beliefs and to explain why the moon landing is actually real.
First of all, there were many people helping and planning things out with NASA for this important event. There were about 400,000 scientists, technologist, engineers, and more, working on this Apollo 11 Program. With all those individuals helping out with the mission, it would be hard for one of them not to spill the truth to at least one person, after all it’s been over 50 years. Now, to debunk the theory about the USA flag flapping without any wind on the moon. The flag that was placed on the moon was a special flag that was designed by NASA for the astronauts to be able to handle and use better. The flag that NASA designed has a horizontal rod attached to the stick inside and the astronauts had trouble with this part, which is why the photos that were taken had showed a ripple effect that makes the flag look like it was moving from wind, when in fact it was not. For as to why a star hasn’t made an appearance on photos or videos, well, to begin with, stars are naturally dim and as we don’t usually see the stars in the pictures we take of the sky, it goes for the same on the moon. It’s because of the camera and the daylight exposure shown. The exposures and surfaces that were shown by the camera, like the astronauts suits and things around the camera’s focus, like the moon, had made it hard to focus on the stars, and since the the camera was focusing on the Astronauts, that is why there were no stars shown. Lastly, the reason why the objects are still visible, even if there are shadows covering them, is because of the lunar light being another source of light, there isn’t only the Sun that can give light, but also the lunar light, and with the lunar light it reflects on the Sun and other objects causing shadows to be different, which makes objects to be visible.
My final analysis is that this conspiracy theory has many flaws that can easily be proven wrong by just researching the right information. I think before we start to believe in these type of conspiracy theories or just anything in general, we should first research properly until we can think of our final opinion on the topic. With this, the NASA Moon Landing Conspiracy can easily be debunked and is proven to be fake.
Karina Garcia, De La Salle Institute, DMSF
Photo by Neven Krcmarek on Unsplash