The Moon Landing by Hunter Sims

In the late 50’s and 60’s, after world war II, The United States and Russia both took a major interest in space. Each country worked fast to beat the other in producing new state of the art technology to make advancements towards space travel. Russia struck first by entering space and orbiting the earth. The U.S. then developed a spacecraft capable of reaching the moon. The United States finally set off towards the moon and landed on the surface July 20,1969, therefore ending the space race. Shortly after the moon landing conspiracies began to surface and become popular: The moon landing was acted out and filmed in a studio, U.S. and Russia agreed to work together to make the moon landing believable, or the moon landing was all created using green screens and editing. Let’s inspect the different conspiracies for the moon landing with the most popular conspiracy being that the moon landing was acted out and filmed in a studio.

In 1969, the Apollo 11 mission headed towards the moon for the first time carrying Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins (Dunbar). Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin both landed on the moon while Michael Collins remained in orbit around the moon. Neil Armstrong was said to be the first person to set foot on the moon with Edwin Aldrin behind him. Neil and Edwin were the most crucial characters in the execution of the “moon landing”. Let’s examine and analyze these main characters who were so important in this Apollo 11 mission.

Neil Armstrong is a well-known astronaut who was placed on Apollo 11 to be the first man to ever walk on the moon. Neil Armstrong was born on august 5, 1930 in Ohio. From a very young age, Neil showed a lot of interest in anything involving flight and aviation. His love for aviation was said to bloom when he skipped Sunday school without his mother knowing to take his first plane ride with his father (“Neil Armstrong: A Man Out of Time.”).

“Like his mother, Neil was a voracious reader with an understanding well beyond his years. He was consumed with learning. “The way mother treated him fostered a high level of self-confidence,” notes his sister, June. His brother Dean adds that Neil didn’t display anger and tended to avoid confrontation, but ‘I don’t think he ‘scared’ that much.’” (“Neil Armstrong: A Man Out of Time.”).

This quote describing Neil Armstrong makes perfect sense as he was said to be very smart in his early years, and although being shy he showed no sense of being scared showing his true bravery. Not knowing much about the moon’s surface, NASA was taking a huge risk to establish an even bigger achievement for the United States and they believed Neil was one of the best options to send up there. What most Americans don’t know about Armstrong is he attended Purdue college that required 3 years of active duty and Armstrong was faced with bad luck when he was called to service in 1949, only a year before the Korean war occurred, where Armstrong then flew 78 missions with a very close call:

As the Essex Panther strafed a column of trucks near Wonsan, flack knocked the jet into a spinning dive. In its cockpit, the young fighter pilot instinctively regained control over the hurtling plane, recovering into level flight a mere twenty feet off the ground. The Panther immediately collided with a telephone pole, clipping three feet from its right wing. Again the pilot managed to regain control, and he staggered back up to 14,000 feet, reaching friendly territory before ejecting safely. Two days later, Ensign Armstrong returned to VF-51. (“Neil Armstrong: A Man Out of Time”)

Neil Armstrong then went onto astronaut training where he was chosen for the Apollo 11 mission, tasked with landing the spacecraft onto the moon, therefore giving him his fame in the space industry.

            Neil’s crewmate Edwin Aldrin is often forgotten as he was the second man on the moon, yet he was still an important aspect of the Apollo 11 mission. Edwin Aldrin was born on January 20th, 1930 and flew in the Korean War like Neil did. Aldrin flew over 60 combat missions in F-86’s before he went to the moon, proving that he has had a passion for flight since he was a young kid (NASA). After his career with NASA, he retired and wrote an autobiography, “Return to Earth”, and still to this day pushes for advancements in space technology and manned missions (NASA).

            Neil and Edwin are both a big reason why the space industry has gotten as far as it has today. At the time, they were the best astronauts for the Apollo 11 mission, and they successfully landed on the “moon” for the first time, striking the debate of many moon landing conspiracies.

There are many people that believe the moon landing was faked. These people have made up a few conspiracies on the moon landing to gain support for their claims. Although some of the things the conspirators say will tend to make you raise an eyebrow, everything they claim can be proven wrong. Let’s examine the most popular conspiracy made up about the moon landing; The moon landing was filmed in a studio. People believe this conspiracy because they think the United States wanted to get the upper edge on Russia and make them believe that they really visited the moon, therefore Russia backs off from the space race thinking that we have more advanced technology. Others argue that is not a viable reason to fake such a big thing, claiming that the United States government and NASA had nothing to gain from faking the moon landing. Popular reasons that the moon landing is believed to be filmed in a studio are: There are no stars in any of the pictures taken on the “moon”, shadows in the pictures don’t match up which suggests the use of multiple set lights that would be found in a studio, and there is a rock seen in one of the pictures with what looks like a letter “C” which suggests it is a prop used in a studio.

When you look at the photos from the moon the first question that might come to your mind is, where are the stars? This is a strong backbone of evidence used by conspirators who are trying to prove the moon landing was a hoax. They believe the stars should be visible in the pictures but they are no where to be found. The most popular and logical answer is, “the lunar landscape is so bright that the camera exposure settings to take a good lunar landscape photo are not sensitive enough to image the much (much Much MUCH) fainter stars that are in the lunar sky. If the camera was set to record the stars, the moonscape would be washed out white and featureless.” (Why The Apollo Moon Pictures Have No Stars). This basically is saying that the exposure on the cameras was not set to capture the stars but only the moons surface. If they wanted to capture the stars they would have to increase the cameras exposure.

People will then bring up the argument that the shadows in a couple of the pictures were not parallel. This shadow phenomenon can easily be explained by the camera lens. The camera lens used in a couple of the photos coming from the astronauts suits are rounded lens, allowing for more peripheral vision in the pictures but at the same time creating a fishbowl effect therefore explaining why the shadows aren’t parallel.

The infamous letter C rock that is believed by conspirators to be a prop which would prove that the “moon landing” was filmed in a studio. The C rock is not even an original picture at all. It is widely believed that someone either tried to reproduce the picture and accidentally let a hair slip into the film before reproducing or a conspiracists wanted to waiver the opinions of more people towards the belief that the moon landing was faked by taking the original picture with no letter “c” on the rock and reproducing copies including the letter “c” in hopes that it will trick people.

The Original Image	Third Generation Copy

 (Roadshow, Astronomy.)

The rock with a “C” on it is simply just a photoshopped picture or a C shaped hair that was on the photograph when creating the third generation copy.

Now that we have debunked the most popular theories we will discuss some of the theories that somewhat correlate to the main conspiracy. There is a select group of people who believe Russia helped the United States fake the moon landing by assisting in the cover up of the operation. This conspiracy is definitely out of question as Russia was a competitor and it is illogical to believe that our competition would help us fake a mission that they were trying to achieve first. Some people will go to great lengths to make things believable to spark controversy on major subjects going on in the world. In this case all of the conspiracies can be proven wrong.

With many controversial points and many conspiracies being made about the moon landing such as: The moon landing was filmed in a studio, The United States and Russia worked together to fake the moon landing, and the moon landing was filmed in front of a green screen and edited to look real, there are many cases of evidence to prove that such theories are in fact false and the moon landing was real. The most common idea to back up the ideas of conspirators being that there are no stars in the pictures taken on the moon, that conspiracy idea was easily debunked by photographers providing evidence on how the pictures make sense using exposure times. The clause that the shadows angles don’t match up in the pictures was a great argument made by conspiracists, but the shadows were easily explained by the camera lens being used by the astronauts. The camera lens happened to be a fisheye which are popularly known to get a wider view almost like a panoramic which therefore disturbs the angles of the shadows shown in the pictures. Finally, the argument was made that it was definitely filmed in a studio because on one of the rocks in a picture had a letter “c” written on it, therefore suggesting it is a studio prop used to film and not an actual space rock. This argument was put to rest when researchers explained that the “C” rock picture was in fact not an original picture and NASA then released the original picture as evidence to back up their facts. In conclusion, we did in fact go to the moon because NASA has much evidence to provide to the public to prove the landing, and most of the main arguments made by conspiracists have been proven wrong or misleading.

Work Cited

Dunbar, Brian. “The First Person on the Moon.” NASA, NASA, www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/first-person-on-moon.html.

“Neil Armstrong: A Man Out of Time.” Biography: Neil Armstrong, A Man Out of Time, www.vision.org/visionmedia/biography-neil-armstrong/17450.aspx.

NASA, NASA, www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/aldrin-b.html.

Why The Apollo Moon Pictures Have No Stars, www.skywise711.com/Skeptic/MoonPics/MoonPics.html.

Roadshow, Astronomy. “The C Rock.” The C Rock - Moon Landing Hoax Truth, moonlandinghoax.org/34.html.