Fake moon landing. I couldn’t believe that there are folks that’s still spreading the theory that the NASA (National Aeronautics Space something, too lazy to check) (Okay, I’ll check, dammit)(it’s National Aeronautics Space Administration) and the faked moon landing in 1969.
I am a believer that it actually happened. I read about it a lot and became a huge fan of space age related stuff when I was a kid (I have written
about it here
and here).
I was not quite aware that such a conspiracy theory movement existed for a long
time. Not until I read the news that Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, the second astronaut of the Apollo
11 spacecraft that made it to the moon, punched a goddamned conspiracy theorist. Here’s the detail
from history.com (makes a good script):
On September 9, 2002, astronaut
Buzz Aldrin—the second human to set foot on the moon—is walking outside a
Beverly Hills hotel when a conspiracy theorist starts harassing him and
accusing Aldrin of lying about the Apollo 11 moon landing. Incensed, Aldrin punches
his heckler in the face.
“You’re the one who said you walked
on the moon when you didn’t,” Bart Sibrel told Aldrin as he walked by his
filming crew outside the Luxe Hotel. “Calling a kettle black …”
“Will you get away from me?” an
irate Aldrin warned the man in the incident caught on video.
Sibrel responded, “You’re a coward
and a liar and a … ”
Aldrin, then 72, socked Sibrel in
the jaw right when he finished the sentence with “thief.”
Yes, Aldrin clocked the mother. That piqued my interest. I
read about it somewhere and put the folder at the back of my mind. I thought
it will go away like the midnight beggars you ignore. Nope, it kept coming
back.
In fact, these deniers existed all the way back when the
moon landing was actually taking place. One famous theory later actually
pointed out that Kubrick directed the whole segment. The same Stanley Kubrick, right after the
success of 2001: A Space Odyssey (which started production in 1965 and was
released in 1968).
A perfectionist, Kubrick would have balked at the prospect
of shooting some grainy footage, let alone let NASA pull him this way or
another. Kubrick who directed 1980s The Shining, is known for being a hard ass to
the point of pushing Shelley Duvall in it to the brink of insanity that it
traumatised her for life. I don’t think NASA scientists would particularly
welcome Kubrick’s iron-fisted approach.
Now, let’s look at the best argument against the conspiracy
theorists. This is by Rick Fienberg, the press officer for the American
Astronomical Society, who holds a PhD in astronomy. And he is quoted here:
“About 400,000 scientists,
engineers, technologists, machinists, electricians, worked on the Apollo
program,” Fienberg points out. “If in fact the main motivation for believing in
the moon hoax is that you don’t trust the government, you don’t trust our
leaders, you don’t trust authority, how can you feel that 400,000 people would
keep their mouths shut for 50 years? It’s just implausible.”
And allow me to tell you this: it won’t go away. Skepticism is
good at a healthy level, as that enhances knowledge through the need to do more
research and come up with an agreeable consensus backed by evidence.
By the way, this is how the article ended:
To those who know the moon landing
was real, conspiracy theories that it was a hoax may seem silly and innocuous.
But their consequences aren’t: they spread misinformation, make people
susceptible to other false theories and could earn you a punch from Buzz
Aldrin.
The previous pieces on Spage Age (yes, Spage. It was a typo
first time around, I maintained it):
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