For Years I heard some say the Apollo moon landings were a hoax. I used to think "what is it with these people... do they think the Earth is flat as well?" In 2009, on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo program, I heard this accusation for the last time, and decided to exam the evidence for myself... I invite you to do the same.
There are many discrepancies and unanswered questions. Though the photographic evidence supports staged Apollo moon landings, we have to be careful not to discount everything; as these types of events are often a mix of fact and fiction. We have to evaluate every bit of evidence for validity. Maybe we landed on the moon, but covered up the actual events with a staged moon landing... maybe we orbited the moon but didn't land... maybe we never made it past low earth orbit. It's hard to tell what really happened - the story behind the photos, but we can be reasonably sure the photographic evidence available to the public of the Apollo moon landings were staged events. What do we do with this knowledge? For starters we use it to remind ourselves that we can't have blind faith in the story tellers - we need proof... and the burden of proof lies with the story tellers - not the audience!
On October 4, 1957, the Soviets launched the first satellite into orbit: Sputnik 1. On April 12, 1961, the Russians then sent the first man in space: Yuri Gagarin. So began the political posturing known as the space race. NASA Administrator James Webb is quoted as saying "If we had gotten Shepard into space before Gagarin, it would be over. We'd have beaten them, and that would be that."
If you look into the Apollo story, you will find many holes...enough to make you stop and think. On May 25, 1961 President John F. Kennedy announced the decision to go to the moon before the end of the decade. Being a political move, the space race was a cookie jar worth lying about - at risk was national pride. Our ideological and technological/military superiority were on the line. Our country went into overdrive to develop the technology to make JFK's dream a reality.
Six years later, on January 27, 1967 (two years away from JFK's deadline), the crew of Apollo 1 was killed in a capsule fire. This was just days after Apollo 1 commander Gus Grissom held an unapproved press conference, in which he said we needed at least ten more years to develop the technology required to fly to the Moon .
There were so many technological hurdles to overcome - a major one was the lunar lander (LLTV): it was an awkward and unstable machine to fly, and some wanted to give up on the concept. After seven years of development, it was still crashing... yet it was scheduled to land on the moon in one year - and it hadn't even overcome critical failures, or been tested in space or sent unmanned to the moon to see how it would handle real life use.
We never saw the LLTV's successor, the LEM (as seen in the Apollo photos) tested on earth. We were told that after many years of failures, it was somehow able to pass all the tests for space flight, moon descent and ascent, and manned use in just two Apollo missions (9 & 10) within a three month period (March - May 1969) ... and then it was ready for manned missions two months later for Apollo 11. Seven years of fundamental failures on basic tests, and then it breezes through the all the really difficult advanced stuff in three months; and we land astronauts in it two months later...?
Even after two supposed successful lunar landings, astronauts are still seen flight testing the LLTV in 1970. Why would one practice for an upcoming mission on the LLTV - old, faulty technology? Why not practice with the equipment you are actually going to use (LEM) - especially when you said you already used it on the first two moon landings? You can not find any record of the lunar lander's technical specifications - we are told they were destroyed, and this destruction was standard operating procedure. Does that make sense? How do you expect to improve the technology, if you destroy the history of its development?
There is 100% certainty that some of the NASA moon photos have been altered - this opens the door to doubt. As I looked into the matter, discrepancies accumulated very quickly, and at some point, I simply had amassed enough proof to change my mind on the matter. What a bummer... oh well... we'll just add the moon landing to the long list of historical deceptions (this isn't the first time a major historical event didn't occur as written in our history books - and it certainly isn't the last).
It is time to rethink our thought processes, and take more responsibility for what we accept to be true. In Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink", he says the first thing a true master (vs a mere "expert") does when evaluating a supposedly ancient artifact for validity is to pay attention to the gut feeling that arises regarding the artifact within the fist few seconds of seeing it. My initial feel when first looking at the Apollo photos is that it is a stage. What's yours? Truth continues to be stranger than fiction!
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Altered Photo of Collins, Gemini 10
1967 - gravity testing simulator
1964 NASA publicity photos with astronauts Borman and Elliot |
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| Proof that pictures of the moon have been tampered with: this is the exact same flag on two different Apollo missions. |
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| The second flag in the above photo has been reversed, and reused for a second Apollo "landing" | |
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| Cross hairs (on camera lens) should show up on top of everything. Here they are behind an object. |
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| The moon is too bright to look at directly through a telescope... |
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| (1)...yet the moon scape looks dark up close. (2) notice the dark background relatively near. (3) No sense of distance |
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| (1) Here is a sense of distance (miniature lander on a set). (2) Notice how the background now has hills and is very light. When moving astronauts are in the same picture, the background is never lighted in this way; nor are there hills that rise above the lander to block out the sky. Anything up close always has a back backdrop and a horizon that seems to end about 50 feet away. See next picture... |
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| Apollo 17 discrepancies: (1) Top two pictures: 2 different views of the same landing site. (2) Bottom picture: same set with two different lander locations (2 images merged for comparison) |
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| Same background - different location of lander. Note the lettered hills to the left, and the shape of the hill to the right. |
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| No sense of distance |
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| A: the "sun" seen from the moon; B: sun seen from space; C: filter on moon "sun"; D: why doesn't "C" look more like D (filter on sun seen in space)? |
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Comparison: spot lights (left); moon "sun" (right) |
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| (1) No blast marks on moon from landing; (2) very dark |
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Cheap prop used on the set
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Early prototype of lunar lander.
LLTV test flight May 1, 1968
The LLTV tests revealed serious problems with flight stability.
Apollo 11, July 16, 1969 with the LLTV's successor,
the LEM (there is no record of it being tested on earth).
LLTV test flight 1971 – still having technical problems even after the 1969 "moon landings" with the LEM!
Why are they still testing the LLTV?
Langley Air Force Base 1967 - LEM simulator facility
Langley Air Force Base 1967 - LEM simulator facility.
NASA already had the ability to stage a moon landing.
Aug 1967 - NASA already had the ability to stage space flight.
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| Horizontal tread...the official astronaut boot tread |
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| ... so where did the oblique tread come from? |
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| (1) Another oblique tread (2) the temperature on the light side of the moon is 212 degrees F (boiling)... how would we expect photographs and plastic to react to such a temperature? Is that what we see happening here? |
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Film prop: "C means "center of scene". Some have evidence that Stanley Kubrick was hired by NASA |
