I tend to respond to Conspiracy Theorists with sociological arguments over technical ones because people are more likely to understand those.
One of my usual arguments against the Moon Landing as Hoax CT is that the Russians were industriously trying to beat the US to it and there is no way they would have let the US fake it and get away with it.
Or would they? Is there anyone out there claiming that the fake landing fooled the Russians? Could the Russians have faked a landing and fooled the US? How could each country verify or refute the claim from the other that there was indeed a landing and not a fake one?.
That’s always been the number one most obvious anti-hoax proof as far as I’m concerned - people seriously think that our Cold War enemies, who were watching space like a hawk, wouldn’t have said anything if we faked it? To think that requires an assumption of a conspiracy so big and stupid and completely impossible that it boggles the mind.
Friend of mine worked for NASA in the 60s. He said it was well known the Russians were nowhere near having the ability to go to the Moon. The “space race” was played up by
NASA in order to make sure they had plenty of funding. Every time they needed more money they would just say “you don’t want the Russians to beat us do you?” and the money would flow.
That’s pretty hard to credit. The fact is that the Soviet Union was generally ahead of the United States in space travel. They had an unmanned mission land on the moon in 1959, a soft landing on the moon in 1966, and regular multi-crew multi-day missions by 1969. They were clearly on the verge of a manned lunar mission at the same time as Apollo 11.
Probably the only thing that kept the Soviets from putting a man on the moon first was the unexpected death of Sergey Korolyov in 1966. Not only did his death cost the Soviets their top administrator, but their space program was consumed by infighting for several months as people scrambled to be named as his replacement.
It was not worth their while. They were ahead in ‘robots’ that did not need all the paraphanalia of life support. The same has been true of more distant space missions, never mind all the problems of getting people to Mars and back, sens machines there that can stay for as long as they keep working.
All the Big Conspiracy Theories have to come back to a Secret World Leadership so powerful in terms of suppression and control that it would far easier for them to just take over. Imagine it true: the Soviets knew there were no moon shots but pretended to have lost out because their Secret Leadership commanded it. Aliens who had collaborated with the Nazis (but still failed to use any of their advanced technology in war) subsequently chose the USA (instead of another secretive science-obsessed police state ten times the size with more than half barely inhabited - very likely!). And in all the time since, the US never threatened the Soviets with these craft and went on developing entirely fake space and military projects at vast expense? They didn’t instead establish manned bases all over the system to show the Soviets they hadn’t a chance?
The Soviet space/spy program had to spend an inordinate amount of rubles to upgrade their equipment to be able to track the U.S. Apollo spacecraft. And then after they spent all that money… They couldn’t see anything at all! (that’s because the so-called moon spacecraft weren’t there, of course). So, to avoid embarrassment, they reported to their superiors complete success: their tracking equipment worked, and recorded the American moon landings.
No complicated high-level collusion between the soviets and the U.S. gov’t required at all. Just the low-level tech grunts covering their asses.
Maybe this is a stupid question, but didn’t the landing itself happen at night time (for us)? Couldn’t people have pulled out their telescopes and watched dots bouncing around the moon?
For a play off. First of all the Soviets spent money on the race, by admitting defeat that cleared up a lot of money.
OK America won, let’s move on.
The race to the moon didn’t have many real applications, it was mostly a matter of pride. Although we certainly learned a lot and science was helped by going to the moon, that was secondary.
It was kind of like an expensive Olympics, you have the race and someone wins and you move on. Like the Berlin Olympics were a succsessful propoganda piece for the Nazis, but so what? You just move on.
We’ve discussed this a bunch. Search for the relevant threads. The short answer is nothing, not even Hubble today, can see anything as small as the LM at the distance from the Earth to the Moon. And certainly noody with a ground based telescope in 1969 could see people, especially not looking through the atmosphere & all its distortion.
The command module/LEM was seen in Moon orbit from ground based telescopes. Just for the brief while it was lit by the Sun but passing over the dark Moon background near the terminator.
My alma mater’s Astronomy department actually did this several times and sent the video feed out to one of the networks where it was shown in real time. I knew those folks. They didn’t have anywhere near the capacity to fake something like that.
Blasts from course corrections were also seen from Earth telescopes.
Though recent (automated) lunar probes have indeed imaged the landing sites in high enough resolution to see signs of left over equipment and tracks on the surface left by those original explorers.
The illuminati benefited from the buildup of nationalism and the channeling of money through the industrial-military complex*. Since the illuminati have always been multinational, it was in their interests to get both the US and the USSR to do this at once. However, since landing on the moon was impossible, the illuminati got both sides to quietly permit the other side to fake landings, so that both could maintain national pride.
*After all, the illuminati started WWII… and then Korea. After Korea, they used the space race… which ended just as Vietnam started. Carter messed things up a little, but Reagon managed to get the industrial-military complex back on track despite the lack of a war. You see how the industrial-military complex controls everything?