# Have we really been to the moon or what? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 9, 2006, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656 "2006-03-09T06:15:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/21 "2006-03-09T17:22:01Z")
There was an odd philosophical theory in the 18th century which stated that the further away we get from a reported event in time, the probability that it is true decreases (owing to inventions, accretions, distortions, etc, which accumulate over the passage of time.) Therefore, reasoned these sages, the probability that Julius Caesar was assassinated will eventually become so highly improbable as to be almost certainly untrue. Thus, if we wait long enough, maybe it won’t be true that we went to the Moon! ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/22 "2006-03-09T17:56:25Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > By the way-who was “bambi”? (She was MEGAhot!) I was always more of a ‘Thumper’ fan myself. 😉 Of course the Moon landings were faked, guys. That’s why they framed up O.J. Simpson. It’s all part of the vast \ conspiracy to keep the people from asking too many questions about cow-mutilating black helicopters. Ditto with the Stepford Model 12 Mark II android known as ‘Paris Hilton’. The one-armed man did it. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/23 "2006-03-09T18:33:14Z")
> [@](#): > > “Diamonds Are forever”? > > * * * > > What a coincidence! i was watching that old james Bond flick last night-why did the director put in the sequence about JB stealing the lunar rover from the “poney moon landing” mock-up 9in "Willard White’s las vegas underground lab)? That was reallly quite hilarioous-I guess it was a sop to all those conspiracy nuts 9who deny the moon landings). By the way-who was “bambi”? (She was MEGAhot!) Even though the IMDB entry on this flick claims that the scene with the “Moon landing” in **Diamonds are Forever** was a reference to the “faked landing” conspiracy nuts, I don’t buy it. I was around at the time, and saw the film when it was new – there simply was _noo_ big movement claiming it was all faked at the time. That idiocy started years later. (There probably were a couple of nuts claiming this – there’s always some small residue of nuts – but it certainly wasnt the widespread meme it is now. You wouldn’t find it even in the National Inquirrer). I didn’t hear about this until that movie with OJ and the faked Mars landing came out. I think that’s what gave a lot of people the idea. Back in 1971 we saw a lot of simulation, and that’s what I supposed that scene to be. But the full-fledged network of “lunar landing” conspiracists that’s around today simply didn’t exist then. ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/24 "2006-03-09T18:38:29Z")
Exactly WHAT would be the point of faking the moon landing, anyway? You would have to swear hundreds, possibly thousands of people to secrecy-and sooner or later, the whole thing will come out. surely, the scene in “DAF” was just for fun-although if anybody could have faked the moon landings, it would have been howard Hughes/Willard White. Yep, that banbi was hot! ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/25 "2006-03-09T18:43:14Z")
> [@](#): > > surely, the scene in “DAF” was just for fun Yer missin’ my point – back in 1971 virtually _no one_ would have thought that they were faking the moon landing. The idea didn’t exist. Outside of a few nuts, the meme wasn’t there. People looking at that scene didn’t think “Oh – they’re acting as if the whole moon landing was a fraud, and they’re faking it here!” Too long a chain of inferences, with nothing to suggest it. People thought – “Oh, it’s an astronaut training program!” or something. ---
**Author:** ![Mayo\_Speaks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c57346/32.png) [@Mayo\_Speaks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mayo_Speaks)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/26 "2006-03-09T18:48:38Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > That photo has no caption. How do we know that is Armstrong and not Aldrin? I don’t know who it is, but it’s not ANYONE’s first step on the moon. The flag and some bit of equipment are already set up. These were done only after both men were on the surface. Also, if you look really closely at the “sky”, you actually _can_ see stars faintly! Take that, conspiracy theorists! Actually, it’s just dust on my monitor. I’ll change my vote. CONSPIRACY!! ---
**Author:** ![ralph124c](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/8797f3/32.png) [@ralph124c](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ralph124c)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/27 "2006-03-09T19:23:28Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Yer missin’ my point – back in 1971 virtually _no one_ would have thought that they were faking the moon landing. The idea didn’t exist. Outside of a few nuts, the meme wasn’t there. People looking at that scene didn’t think “Oh – they’re acting as if the whole moon landing was a fraud, and they’re faking it here!” Too long a chain of inferences, with nothing to suggest it. > > People thought – “Oh, it’s an astronaut training program!” or something. What about the obvious refernces to Howard hughes (“Willard White”). When DAF was made, wasn’t there a lot of speculation about where Hughes lived, what he did, or was he EVEN alive? That Moon Rover" was cool-it was faster than a Ford galaxy! Like i said, i wonder why this scene was included… it sorta made for a few laughs, possibly! ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/28 "2006-03-09T19:28:21Z")
> [@](#): > > What about the obvious refernces to Howard hughes (“Willard White”). When DAF was made, wasn’t there a lot of speculation about where Hughes lived, what he did, or was he EVEN alive? That Moon Rover" was cool-it was faster than a Ford galaxy! Like i said, i wonder why this scene was included… it sorta made for a few laughs, possibly! Irrelevant to Moon Conspiracy theories – speculating about Howard Hughes was its own ground for nutjob theorizing and idle speculation. Of _course_ Willard Whyte, with his reclusive persona, aerospace companies, and double initials, was modeled on Huward Hughes. They were making fun of him on “Green Acres” , too, in the 1960s (with a character named “Howard Hewes”). But it’s got nothing to do with loony Moon theories. ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/29 "2006-03-09T20:11:33Z")
If you’ve got a few spare hours, [these](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=134945&highlight=moon+hoax) [past](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=60144) [threads](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=60779) make entertaining, if occasionally infuriating, reading. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/30 "2006-03-09T20:23:05Z")
If it was a hoax, it was the biggest conspiracy in history. For starters, of course, you’d need every single employee of NASA to be in on it. That’s pretty straightforward. But you’d also need every single ham radio operator in the world, too: The transmissions could be picked up by amateur equipment, and were clearly coming from the Moon. Then, you’d need to bring in all of the scientists who worked with the data, also not a small group: Even today, there are still new grad students going to work on projects using the corner reflector left behind on the surface. Now add in a significant portion of the governments of the USSR, China, and pretty much everyone else in the world. Plus, of course, all of the film crews, special effects guys, etc. who were needed to allegedly do the actual faking. We’re talking millions of people here, easily. And _not one single one_ of those people has ever squealed. Man, that is _hard_. It’d have been a heck of a lot easier to actually do it in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![jjimm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba8739/32.png) [@jjimm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jjimm)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/31 "2006-03-09T20:49:52Z")
> [@ralph124c](#): > > Exactly WHAT would be the point of faking the moon landing, anyway? It’s quite obvious: Kennedy had announced the manned mission, but NASA realised that it it wasn’t going to happen. Rather than lose face, they faked a successful outcome. They launced an unmanned probe to the moon to fuck with the Soviets, while keeping the astronauts in Area 51 or wherever. > [@](#): > > You would have to swear hundreds, possibly thousands of people to secrecy-and sooner or later, the whole thing will come out. But what about the “whistle blowers”! That’s why they made sure the black crosses were behind stuff and… er more stuff (rather, of course, than telling anyone about it). In seriousness, I asked my dad, who worked for NASA on the Skylab mission, what he thought of the moon hoax, and he, typical scientist, told me that the _evidence_ presented to him convinced him of Skylab and Apollo 17, for which he was an observer: “I saw the Saturn V disappear from view, and a few days later I saw the command module appear to drop into the ocean on parachutes and the astronauts appear to get out of it. Therefore for at least _one_ of the launches, _if my senses are to be believed_, astronauts did at least leave the atmosphere.” Despite this reticence, he did then add “and if the whole thing was a hoax, I reckon the achievement of keeping everyone quiet about it would be a much more amazing achievement than actually going to the moon.” 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/32 "2006-03-09T21:03:31Z")
**Tevildo** , thanks for posting that. Another myth busted! ---
**Author:** ![Walloon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/fbc32d/32.png) [@Walloon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walloon)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/33 "2006-03-09T21:13:22Z")
> [@This space intentionally blank](#): > > I don’t know who it is, but it’s not ANYONE’s first step on the moon. The flag and some bit of equipment are already set up. These were done only after both men were on the surface. No one said it was. [This](http://24.73.239.154:8081/moonshot/mission-3.jpg) is the photo to which the hoax site, and my response, were referring. It shows Buzz Aldrin stepping off the ladder onto the moon, and was taken by Armstrong. The photo that **Tevildo** supplied is one of Armstrong taken by Aldrin. If you follow the text link that **Tevildo** supplied, it explains exactly when and under what circumstances it was taken. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/34 "2006-03-09T22:35:25Z")
As a rough rule of thumb, I figure that one person can keep a secret (if he decides to); two people might have a 50-50 chance of keeping a secret; three might be able to do with probability 1 in 3. As for 100 people, I am quite sure that there is less than 1 chance in a 100 of their keeping a secret. For all of NASA, fuggedaboutit. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/35 "2006-03-09T22:48:01Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > There was an odd philosophical theory in the 18th century which stated that the further away we get from a reported event in time, the probability that it is true decreases (owing to inventions, accretions, distortions, etc, which accumulate over the passage of time.) Therefore, reasoned these sages, the probability that Julius Caesar was assassinated will eventually become so highly improbable as to be almost certainly untrue. > > Thus, if we wait long enough, maybe it won’t be true that we went to the Moon! In 18th century, Julius Ceasar assassinates _you_! ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/36 "2006-03-09T22:48:29Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > There are no still photographs of Neil Armstrong on the moon, only television images. Actually, there are numerous photographs in which Armstrong is visible in the reflection of Aldrin’s visor. [Famous example.](http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/alsj/a11/as11-40-5903.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/37 "2006-03-09T22:52:55Z")
Dang, **jjiim**. Your dad would make a good Fair Witness™ ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/38 "2006-03-09T23:05:02Z")
> [@Walloon](#): > > No one said it was. Yes, they did. That’s one of the key components of the conspiracy theory. Sure it’s bullshit; that was his point, not that anyone in THIS thread had made that argument. ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/39 "2006-03-09T23:26:21Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > There was an odd philosophical theory in the 18th century which stated that the further away we get from a reported event in time, the probability that it is true decreases (owing to inventions, accretions, distortions, etc, which accumulate over the passage of time.) Therefore, reasoned these sages, the probability that Julius Caesar was assassinated will eventually become so highly improbable as to be almost certainly untrue. > > Thus, if we wait long enough, maybe it won’t be true that we went to the Moon! This is the guy, if anybody’s interested. [John Craig](http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Craig.html) , a Scottish mathematician (1663-1731). “In 1699 he published Theologiae Christianae Principia Mathematica which applies probability to show that the evidence of the truth of the gospels is diminished through time. He claimed that it reaches 0 in the year 3144, and so “proves” that this is an upper bound for the second coming.” In other words, Christ has to come back by the year 3144 otherwise he will never have existed at all! ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2006, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656/40 "2006-03-09T23:52:57Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > In other words, Christ has to come back by the year 3144 otherwise he will never have existed at all! Give or take a few years, of course. Nobody’s mentioned the camera crosshairs disappearing behind objects. Yes I know why that happened. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/have-we-really-been-to-the-moon-or-what/347656.md?page=3)