Apollo 11 Moon Landing Revisited: Hoax ~vs~ Debunk

[Vixen]

What I don't understand about the Moon hoax is how the US could have pulled it off, multiple times, without the Soviets knowing about it. Surely, if it was fake, they'd know. They had spies and informants everywhere. Yet, they went along with it? And the Soviets had their own unmanned Moon mission at the same time, which failed. So they faced the humiliation of their own failure and congratulated the capitalists for beating them to the Moon? Yeah, that doesn't make any sense.

As Trevor Weaver points out in the OP video, they had no proof, so who's going to take them seriously except assume it's sour grapes. If a sovereign nation's president says something officially happened and produces a load of photos to prove it, what did you expect the Soviets to do (they collaborated with the US on a lot of space projects anyway)? Surveys showed there was indeed a high degree of scepticism from the Soviet public but who cares about public opinion (except to manipulate it)?

 

[Steve]

Dictionaries agree:

Many dictionaries omit the word bonkers but, like the dictionary I quoted above, use outstandingly bonkers conspiracy theories as examples.

Believing the moon landings were faked is at least as bonkers as believing Covid-19 was a hoax, and the other three examples you gave were less bonkers than believing the moon landings were faked. (There are historical examples of deaths caused by contaminated or poorly administered vaccines, of plots to replace populations, and two-tier policing.)


"Conspiracy theorist" is an accurate, factual way to describe people who believe those historical events were broadly hidden from scrutiny.

I prefer "conspiracy fantasist". Calling their "bonkers" (thx Vixen ) ideas a theory seems to give them too much credit. A theory, in the vernacular, should at least be coherent.

 

[JayUtah]

As Trevor Weaver points out in the OP video, they had no proof

Weaver is not a reliable reporter and simply declares that there was no proof. The Soviets were well positioned to know whether the Apollo engineering efforts were genuine or were a coverup and were capable of obtaining proof. We similarly had inside information about the Soviet space program and the ability to surveil their efforts and confirm or disconfirm their claims.

 

[Mojo]

Amazing General Motors invented a fold up EV buggy (or, rather one with a battery/engine in each wheel) yet never mass produced it. It was designed to 'fold up' to fit into the Lunar Module. Meaning the astronauts had to assemble it before use. An amazing invention yet how come these fold up cars never made it to the market, not even today. Instead we had poor old Sir Clive Sinclair inventing the C5 and get mocked and laughed at for it.

"They never mass-produced moon buggies, so the Moon landings were faked" is possibly the stupidest argument yet posted in this thread.

 

[Steve]

Suppose you did buy a lunar rover
Where would you use it?

I suspect Vixen would use it at the bottom of the Baltic Sea to look at sunken ferries.

 

[PitPat]

At least Tang had a reason to be mass produced. I miss it.

 

[Steve]

"They never mass-produced moon buggies, so the Moon landings were faked" is possibly the stupidest argument yet posted in this thread.

It is right up there.

 

[Vixen]

Dictionaries agree:

Many dictionaries omit the word bonkers but, like the dictionary I quoted above, use outstandingly bonkers conspiracy theories as examples.

Believing the moon landings were faked is at least as bonkers as believing Covid-19 was a hoax, and the other three examples you gave were less bonkers than believing the moon landings were faked. (There are historical examples of deaths caused by contaminated or poorly administered vaccines, of plots to replace populations, and two-tier policing.)


"Conspiracy theorist" is an accurate, factual way to describe people who believe those historical events were broadly hidden from scrutiny.

Some can see the bigger picture and understand how classified information works. So you might say, "It's a bonkers conspiracy fantasy that Prince Philip had a mistress for years and they had a daughter together" and you can, because it is classified information (for 50? 70? years). People like yourself can describe people who espouse this as being stark raving mad, but do you know what...?

You can't get past what you've been told in the newspapers. As they are not allowed to mention it you can make a decision to hurl abuse at anyone who mentions it ...because, er, it's not official.

 

[JayUtah]

Some can see the bigger picture and understand how classified information works.

That would not be you. You have absolutely no experience with the American system of classification.

You can't get past what you've been told in the newspapers.

Asked and answered. That is not the reason people here believe that Apollo was authentic.

Granted, some people simply accept the mainstream narrative of many historical events with little additional interests in the details or in debates over them. However, the farther one delves into the history and technology of Apollo, the more evidence arises of its authenticity. The question is not whether disinterested people can support their beliefs, but whether highly informed people can support their beliefs—or stated better: whether high informed people form a belief in the conventional narrative because that's where the available information and expertise point.

No, you are not the smartest person in the room just because you believe something other than the mainstream narrative.

The hoax claims rely on ignorant presumptions and outright lies about how the natural world works and how the engineered solutions for Apollo worked. The issue then is not whether disinterested people can detect those failures, but simply whether reasonable answers exist. We can supply reasonable answers to all the hoax claims, and far too often that answer is to correct the erroneous basis of the hoax claimant's argument.

You're still struggling with the notion that the nice, cordial, cheerfully smiling hoax claimants in your OP video are pleasantly lying to you. You're ever so close to getting it with the Marcus Allen star claim, but it's clear you don't want to be confronted with the facts about your sources and their credibility.

 

[JayUtah]

"They never mass-produced moon buggies, so the Moon landings were faked" is possibly the stupidest argument yet posted in this thread.

Agreed.

Suitable light electric passenger vehicles have been mass-produced since the 1950s. Naturally they are engineered for their environment, requirements, and marketability, just as the LRVs were engineered differently for theirs. For example, for most of their history these Earth vehicles used lead-acid batteries for cost and recharge ability. The LRV batteries used non-rechargeable batteries with a much higher energy density and a much higher unit cost.

The foldability of the LRV is strictly a requirement of its particular mode of transport to the Moon. Foldability is generally not a feature people want in cars. But here is one early example.

Wealth Circal™ on Instagram: "Parisian mechanic built this insane microcar back in 1951. Front wheels simply fold underneath the body by hand. Width drops to motorcycle size in seconds – park literally anywhere. Tandem seats, tiny engine, convertib

155 likes, 0 comments - wealthcircal on December 21, 2025: "Parisian mechanic built this insane microcar back in 1951. Front wheels simply fold underneath the body by hand. Width drops to motorcycle size in seconds – park literally anywhere. Tandem seats, tiny engine, convertible roof too...

www.instagram.com

 

[W.D.Clinger]

You can't get past what you've been told in the newspapers. As they are not allowed to mention it you can make a decide to hurl abuse at anyone who mentions it ...because, er, it's not official.

When you can't get past what you've been told on YouTube, you're not in a good position to lecture folks who understand the English language well enough to read both primary and secondary sources.

As a numbers person myself, with a credible degree of scientific literacy, I have been able to read and to understand a substantial number of historical and scientific documents that have proved to be far beyond your ability to read and to understand. That doesn't make me special. It makes you special.

As I have mentioned, one of my cousins worked in the Apollo program and its immediate predecessor. His grandmother and I watched the Apollo 11 moon landing on live TV. My cousin is a primary source. Your YouTube videos are not primary sources. Most of your YouTube videos were produced by conspiracy theorists seeking to make money off of folks as gullible as you. I admit that some of your YouTube videos may have been produced by true believers who are every bit as gullible as you.

 

[Foster Zygote]

This was the 1960's, remember? There was no photoshop or easy way of manipulating photos, with negatives. Digital didn't really arrive until the nineties.

That must be why special effects involving multiple photographic elements never existed until digital digital photography was invented.

Multiple exposure effects have been around almost as long as photography. Exposing the stars onto the film wouldn't have required Photoshop, just expertise in visual effects for film.

All these images were created without any digital processing, with multiple VFX elements photographed separately.







Again, just because you don't know how to do something doesn't mean that no one else does.

 

[PSXer]

Doesn't prove it travelled 265,000 miles.

99% of the launch mass never reached the moon. #teachthecontroversy

 

[Foster Zygote]

A conspiracy theorist is someone who believes bonkers theories about say,...

...that millions of engineers and physicists the world over for more than half a century have been too ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ stupid to figure out a big secret blown wide open by a bunch of people who don't know how cameras work.

 

[Foster Zygote]

As you know, Aldrin had a nervous breakdown and became an alcoholic. In his tv interviews he comes across as a buffoon, telling one little girl, 'We never went there'.

This is utter ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊, propagated by people who need so desperately to represent themselves as smarter than most other people that they will deliberately lie. I've seen that entire exchange, and I'm sure you haven't because you just parrot anything that claims to support your beliefs.

Aldrin talked to that girl about his trip to the moon, then lamented that Congress had lost interest in manned space exploration, and stopped sending people. She asks why they didn't go, and he responds, "because we didn't go", with the context being blindingly obvious to anyone with reasonable English language comprehension that they were both talking about not going back.

And if you want to see some real buffoonery, check out this image that someone posted thinking it was a genuine photograph.

 

[JayUtah]

Multiple exposure effects have been around almost as long as photography. Exposing the stars onto the film wouldn't have required Photoshop, just expertise in visual effects for film.

Although @Vixen hasn't expressly raised the point, her sources—to a man—try to explain what they see as other anomalies in the Apollo photographic record by suggesting that the photos were composited, retouched, and altered. The overall conspiracy theory she's drawing from all but presumes such things were possible.

And as you've demonstrated, they were. Part of my apprenticeship was learning negative and transparency retouching skills. We routinely did compositing with razor blades and process cameras.

But Vixen's real claim is simply to reproduce the stupidest part of the no-stars argument, which is already pretty stupid. She says they wouldn't have known where to put the stars, so they just left them out. She thinks the stars look different from the lunar surface than they do from Earth. But the central idiocy of the argument remains: if someone can tell that the stars are in the wrong place, then that person would have been able to put them in the right place instead. Hire that person.

 

[PSXer]

It's too bad that books that showed where stars were hadn't been invented by the 1960s.

 

[JayUtah]

It's too bad that books that showed where stars were hadn't been invented by the 1960s.

And of course planetariums hadn't been invented yet either.

 

[Foster Zygote]

Amazing General Motors invented a fold up EV buggy (or, rather one with a battery/engine in each wheel) yet never mass produced it. It was designed to 'fold up' to fit into the Lunar Module. Meaning the astronauts had to assemble it before use. An amazing invention yet how come these fold up cars never made it to the market, not even today. Instead we had poor old Sir Clive Sinclair inventing the C5 and get mocked and laughed at for it.

So we're running back to rummage through your box of old crap now?

Yeah, why wouldn't anyone want to drive year 'round in something like this?


No AC in the summer, no heat in the winter, no roof for the rain, no windscreen for the rocks and bugs. And don't forget the silver oxide battery that, while powerful, was extremely expensive and wasn't rechargeable. Radio was pretty good, though, and it had an early form of dash-cam. But it needed at least two people to unfold and still weighed 460 lbs., so it's not like you're going to take it into the office with you.

Yeah, I can't imagine why there wouldn't be a huge market demand for that, so we must conclude that it was all faked because engineers didn't have battery technology that the military had been using for years or DC electric motors with harmonic drives, and had yet to crack the challenge of hinges and lock pins.

 

[Foster Zygote]

What do you have to say about the almost certain 'fogging' of the 60's-camera film due to the effects of radiation?

Well I say it's ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊, propagated by a grifter who deliberately exposed unshielded film to massive doses of X-rays, which aren't even the same type of radiation encountered in space, because he knew it would impress scientifically ignorant rubes.