This conspiracy theory is about the first moon landing being a hoax created by NASA that Apollo 11 was staged. This conspiracy theory first came to the attention of the public when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took their first steps on the moon and placed the American flag. This conspiracy theory has been going on since the mid-1970s. They say that NASA has tampered with most of the evidence about the Apollo 11 astronauts landing on the moon.
The first person to start the Apollo 11 moon landing was Bill Kaysing. He gave many reasons for people to believe this hoax and he gave his ideas on why it was being faked. He implied that he had worked with NASA before as a technical writer and knew 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.
World War 2 had already ended and the Cold War was just beginning. The two most powerful countries, America and the Soviet Union, were unofficially at war. The conspiracy theory was that America had staged the landing on the moon to scare off the Soviet Union. Another main popular belief 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 Russian Soviet Union. The space race against the Russian Soviet Union was a race to see who got to space first and allegedly the United States won. One simple reason why the moon landing could have been staged was to show who was the stronger nation, with the competition rising during that era {space race}. The US felt like there was no hope to beat the Soviet Union and decided to stage the moon landing to make the Soviet Union believe that America had landed on the moon first.
At the beginning of the space race, America was behind the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union had already set animals into space and the first person into space so how could the US possibly keep up. 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 why are there no stars appearing in the pictures or videos? 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 show why these beliefs are real. The shadows shown in the video were also facing the wrong direction and were supposed to be parallel. People may also say that Earth-based telescopes should be able to see any evidence of the lunar landing sites. Some people believed that there was too much radiation for those humans to be able to go through which made part of this impossible.
Ruling out the conspiracy theories these astronauts brought back moon rock which was studied closely and proven to be real. The moon landing being staged simply isn’t true because of the evidence against the theory. When a rocket would take off many people would go to the site and watch it. The actual pods in which the astronauts were are in museums if you wanted to see them in person. While it is true that the Soviet Union was ahead of America in the beginning, it only inspired astronauts and people working in NASA to work harder and push themselves even though that led to failures and the lives of the Apollo crew dying because of a fire. The moon landing did happen and was not staged by America to make the Soviet Union believe America had landed on the moon first. The moon landing being staged is an interesting theory, but it is just a theory. The theory has a lot of loose ends that could have been explained with facts we know about the space race or interviews with the astronauts.
Katelyn Brown – De La Salle Institute – DMSF Class of 2026
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