One of the biggest conspiracy theories out there is the idea that the moon landing was faked. What do I believe? I don’t know, and I really don’t think it matters anymore. If we suddenly found out that the moon landing really was a hoax, what would change?
Let’s look at this conspiracy theory. The United States has a history of deceiving the public for political gains. If they felt that they could convince the public that they won the space race without actually going to the moon, why wouldn’t they take advantage of the opportunity?
What would a hoax take? You would have to create everything seen in photos and video, and everything needed to create the illusion of what wasn’t happening was real. You would need everyone who claimed to be in space and everyone personally responsible for deceiving the public to remain quiet. You would need to know what people expect to see to become convinced and have the ideas necessary to fake everything. You would probably need to leave artifacts on the moon (the trickiest component). Some people could take on multiple roles. It’s hard to figure out how many people would actually be needed, but I would suspect it to be somewhere in the double digits.
That last sentence might cause some problems. I have seen an argument that 400,000 people would have had to be on the conspiracy. The problem with this argument is that it relies on everyone involved in any way with the program being informed of the deceit. If they faked the moon landing, why wouldn’t they try to make it as authentic as possible? Why wouldn’t they build and launch rockets? Would engineers need to be informed? How about the person responsible for fuelling? Even people talking to the astronauts wouldn’t need to know where they really are.
As bizarre as it seems, the conspiracy theorists also seem to exaggerate the size of such a conspiracy. Who would know more about space than the people at NASA? If someone in NASA insists that the conspiracy theories are ridiculous, the theorists will simply dismiss the claim based on the idea that they are part of the cover-up. What are these people thinking? Why would people at NASA today be involved in a moon landing conspiracy? Just imagine the hiring process. “Welcome to NASA. We faked the moon landing.”
Technically speaking, I don’t think it’s possible to prove that the moon landing really did happen. Even if we found something in the videos that we can’t replicate on Earth, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t have ideas that elude us regarding execution of their plans. Since the moon landing, our understanding of space has improved. The best evidence for the moon landing being real is the lack of legitimate evidence that anything was fake. While photos have been used to try to prove the conspiracy theories, everything seen in those pictures has been explained.
The thing that bothers me most about the debates over the moon landing’s legitimacy is the exaggerated involvement that a conspiracy would require. This is why I wanted to write about a conspiracy that I feel is no longer relevant. Now, I can make a quick comparison to a different beast of a conspiracy theory, global warming.
There is a huge difference between some of the people at NASA and an overwhelming majority of the global scientific community. We are no longer talking about double digits. While I don’t know how many scientist out there study the climate, I’m sure the numbers have to be in the thousands at the very least. For scientists who should have a basic understanding and are following the climate discussions, we should easily surpass the 400,000 that some insist were involved in the moon landing. I am willing to bet that there are a number of people who find the idea of all those people conspiring to fake a moon landing to be pathetic while dismissing the larger numbers of scientists supporting global warming.
If the moon landing conspiracy theory is as ridiculous as so many people claim, what does that make global warming conspiracies? I guess that since I believe that true knowledge does not exist, I should probably acknowledge that it’s theoretically possible that this is all a hoax. It’s just not realistic. I would rather trust the scientific community on this matter than to trust the deniers.
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