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Conspiracy file · 1961–1972

Apollo Missions

NASA's program to land people on the Moon. Six crews landed between July 1969 and December 1972 and twelve astronauts walked on the surface. Since 1976 a persistent theory has said the landings were staged.

Also known as Project Apollo · The Apollo program · The Moon landings · The Moon hoax

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Apollo Missions: Fake Moon Landing Playset
From Fake Moon Landing Playset

The story

Project Apollo began with a deadline. On May 25, 1961, President John F. Kennedy asked Congress to commit to landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before the decade was out. At its peak the program employed about 400,000 people and drew on more than 20,000 companies and universities. The cost reported to Congress in 1973 was $25.4 billion.

It started badly: a launch-pad fire killed the Apollo 1 crew on January 27, 1967. Apollo 8 reached the Moon's vicinity in December 1968. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed in the Sea of Tranquility while an estimated 650 million people watched on television. Five more landings followed, the last in December 1972. The crews brought back 382 kilograms of rock and soil.

The doubts reached print in 1976, when Bill Kaysing, a former technical writer at Rocketdyne, self-published We Never Went to the Moon. The 1978 film Capricorn One put a faked NASA mission on screen, and a 2001 Fox special carried the argument to about 15 million viewers. Polls keep finding a small, steady share of Americans who think the landings were staged: 6% in Gallup's 1999 survey.

Watch

Capricorn One: A movie about fake NASA programs and conspiracies w/ @Aniosaru777 · Paranoid AmericanWatch on YouTube

Memorandum for the recordSubject: Apollo Missions

On the record

  1. On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy asked Congress to commit to landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before the decade was out.
  2. A cabin fire during a launch-pad test on January 27, 1967 killed the Apollo 1 crew: Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee.
  3. Apollo 11 launched on July 16, 1969 and landed on July 20. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin spent 21 hours 36 minutes on the surface while Michael Collins stayed in lunar orbit.
  4. Six missions landed between July 1969 and December 1972, and twelve astronauts walked on the Moon. Apollo 13 (April 1970) was aborted after an oxygen tank exploded; its crew returned safely.
  5. The six landings returned 382 kilograms (842 pounds) of lunar rock and soil: 2,200 separate samples from six sites, according to NASA's curation office.
  6. Apollo 11, 14 and 15 left laser reflectors on the surface; Lick Observatory detected the Apollo 11 reflector on August 1, 1969. In 2011 NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter photographed the Apollo 12, 14 and 17 sites, showing the hardware left behind and the paths the astronauts walked.
  7. In 2009, after a three-year search, NASA concluded that the original Apollo 11 moonwalk tapes had probably been erased and reused. It released restored broadcast footage instead.

The theory

  • Bill Kaysing (We Never Went to the Moon, 1976) argued that NASA lacked the technical ability to reach the Moon and staged the landings instead.
  • Kaysing and later writers point to the pictures: no stars in the lunar sky, no blast crater under the lunar module, shadows that fall at different angles, and a flag that seems to ripple where there is no wind.
  • Some proponents argue that the Van Allen radiation belts would have made the trip impossible for a human crew.
  • Bart Sibrel's film A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon (2001) presents Apollo as a Cold War deception run by the CIA and the Nixon administration.
  • Some versions name the film crew. In 1980 the Flat Earth Society said the landings were staged by Hollywood, sponsored by Walt Disney, scripted by Arthur C. Clarke and directed by Stanley Kubrick.

Timeline

  1. 1961President Kennedy asks Congress to commit to a Moon landing before the decade is out (May 25)
  2. 1967The Apollo 1 fire kills Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee (January 27)
  3. 1968Apollo 7 is the first crewed flight (October); Apollo 8 flies to the Moon (December)
  4. 1969Apollo 11 lands on July 20; Apollo 12 follows in November
  5. 1970Apollo 13 is aborted after an oxygen tank explodes; the crew returns safely
  6. 1971Apollo 15 carries the first lunar rover
  7. 1972Apollo 17, the last landing (December)
  8. 1976Bill Kaysing self-publishes We Never Went to the Moon
  9. 1978Capricorn One, a film about a faked NASA mission, is released
  10. 1999Gallup: 6% of Americans say the landings were staged, 89% say they were not
  11. 2001Fox airs Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? (February 15)
  12. 2002Buzz Aldrin punches Bart Sibrel outside a Beverly Hills hotel (September 9); prosecutors decline to charge him
  13. 2009NASA says the original Apollo 11 tapes were probably erased; the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter sends its first pictures of the landing sites

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