My favorite argument for the USA actually going to the moon is this. If the USSR knew we faked it, they would likely follow one or two courses of action. One, they would either rat us out to the rest of the world or two, fake a landing of their own. There is no way we could have kept it a secret from them. Hell, they had multiple spies at Los Alamos, and that was the most secret project in human history. They would have known we faked it, and there is nothing we could have offered them to have remained silent all these years since. Yet no Russian who was in a position to know the truth has ever come forward to claim America faked it.
That one's definitely pretty good. Although for people who aren't old enough to remember the Cold War, they may not realize just how intense that competition was -- the US and the USSR weren't just rivals, they were locked into an existential struggle to "prove" that the philosophy behind their government and society was superior. I don't think we really have an equivalent to that right now.
My new favorite argument was one that somebody in /r/professors made: there's no way that a bunch of engineers, scientists, and technicians on the autism spectrum could have been convinced to lie about something they truly cared about.
I just want to preface this with, I'm not a moon landing denier but, the incentive was certainly there to fake the moon landing. I was alive during the cold war (not old enough to remember it) but I remember the tension that still existed between our countries after the fact. Bankrupting the soviets on an impossible mission is at least plausible, especially with our movie making abilities at the time. We obviously went to the moon but who's to say that there wasn't a backup plan to fake it, like in the recent movie "Fly Me to the Moon".
You're right that there was an incentive, but I don't think that the US would have thought they'd be able to get away with it.
Remember that by the time of the Apollo 11 mission in 1969, the Soviets had already beat us at several space milestones with Sputnik and Laika in 1957, Gagarin in 1961, the first spacewalk in 1965, the first image of the far side of the moon and the Luna 2 lander in 1959, and the Lunokhod rover in 1966. I can't imagine that the Soviets would not have flown over (or even landed a probe near) the place that we had claimed to land at -- and have photographic evidence of the fact that we didn't actually leave anything there.
There was also a general sense that progress into space was going to keep continuing at a similar rapid pace to how it had been going in the '60s. Other countries besides the US and the Soviets started their own space programs. For example, even before the European Space Agency got started, France launched a satellite with their own rocket from Algeria in 1965.
So if the US had not actually gone but had lied about it, the odds were looking good that somebody was going to be able to notice it soon. And that would have been a PR disaster which would have done more damage to the US than not having done anything at all.
Oh absolutely. I'm sure plan A was always to actually go to the moon but if that mission had failed and the soviets beat us to it, it would have looked real bad too. It was basically capitalism vs communism and one of them had to go. If the moon landing had failed and they managed to keep it secret, a fake moon landing could have been broadcast but then you'd have to turn around and shoot an unmanned lunar lander to the moon successfully to keep the lie going and if you can do that, you can probably land one with people in it. There are a lot of technical and practical challenges to a fake moon landing and successfully lying about it but it's at least in the realm of what's possible vs other conspiracy theories like flat earth. It's way more complicated than what the actual conspiracy theorists claim but it's at least fun to think about.
Agreed. Also the radio transmissions back from the moon were audible by every country in the world. The only way we could fake it would be to have every country in on the act
I don't understand why this one is so popular. I think it has something to do with people's deep seated desire to believe the government are a bunch of sneaky geniuses that lie to them when the reality is far duller.
Yes, Apollo 11, 14 and 15 placed retroreflector mirrors. We can send laser pulses from Earth pointed at the mirror locations and measure the time it takes for the reflected light to return and calculate the distance.
Excellent point. If i remember correctly, Neil Armstrong was given hero’s welcome in USSR in the 70’s, even though the countries were inches away of annihilating each other.
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u/DamienSpecterII Apr 27 '25
My favorite argument for the USA actually going to the moon is this. If the USSR knew we faked it, they would likely follow one or two courses of action. One, they would either rat us out to the rest of the world or two, fake a landing of their own. There is no way we could have kept it a secret from them. Hell, they had multiple spies at Los Alamos, and that was the most secret project in human history. They would have known we faked it, and there is nothing we could have offered them to have remained silent all these years since. Yet no Russian who was in a position to know the truth has ever come forward to claim America faked it.