Why do so many people believe the moon landing was faked?

Question

I know this question has been asked before,but not nearly so often as people have stated it never happened. Before I started viewing the Astronomy and Space section,I thought

most people accepted the moon landing as fact,backed up as it is by a mountain of scientific evidence.I still think that,but it has surprised me how many people don't. People who disbelieve it are up there with those who believe the Holocaust

never happened or the U.S.government was behind 9/11,but

with one big difference-there's a whole lot more of them. Every

single time I view this website I see a question challenging this

event. One person said he accepted YouTube's evidence the

moon landing never happened because of some documentaries they had,so he would take YouTube over the scientists. Yet anyone who does a little research can find plenty

of evidence it happened,and there was no reason to fake the

first landing or the many others that followed. What is the reasoning here-or is there any?

Answer 1

I'm going to paraphrase president Carter:  There are lots of people who stand to gain by discrediting authorities and by destroying the social and political fabric of society.

In the past, the original Moon Hoax hoax were the result of people who, for "religious" reasons, knew (better than the rest of us, it seems) that such a feat was impossible.  One person who was very active in that was the leader of the Flat Earth society (it the Earth is flat, then you can't orbit it, a necessary first step in going to the Moon).

The modern Moon Hoax hoax is simply one of the many attempts to discredit authority and destroy people's confidence in science and political leaders.  Part of it, I believe, is "mind terrorism".  What better way to weaken a country than to destroy the ability to think logically.

Others have a selfish interest in destroying that confidence.  Some is for control (if your religion requires the brainwashing of kids into believing your own c**p, then you can't have these kids believing what these obvious representative of Satan tell them about the world).

Others are simply into greed.  If you feel that popular pressure may reduce your profits, you must discredit whoever provides the popular pressure.  Global warming does not exist, please continue buying our SUVs or our coal or our oil.  

The terrorist will kill us all if we are not allowed to listen to your phone all the time.

and so on.

For these people, perpetuating the Moon Hoax hoax is just another way to keep young minds off balance.

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Since the USSR could have received the TV transmission on all their radio telescopes (the Moon was over the Pacific at the time of the "small step for [a] man"), they would have known right away if the signal had not come from the Moon and the "fake" would not even have lasted until the end of the TV broadcast.

Answer 2

Pretty much because they're idiots who believe everything that they read on the internet that fits their personal agenda.  Another reason is the poor quality of education, science education in particular, that they receive in public schools.  I grew up with the space program and it was a very exciting, inspirational time that encouraged me and many others to become engineers and scientists.  What is there now to inspire kids today?  Nothing.  Kids are totally obsessed with their cellphone texting, Xbox, and whatever.  They are totally dumbed-down from when I was their age.  So that's the kind of absurd beliefs you get.  And don't forget all the "I heard the world is going to end in 2012" morons, too.

Answer 3

Generally I group Moonhoaxers in those rough categories:

1. The frauds like Kaysing, Sibrel, Rene etc.

They claim the landings were faked, because they want to sell their books, videos etc., whether they believe it themselves I don't know.

2. The government-haters

They just want it to be fake because they hate the government, and just want to believe it MUST be lying.

3. The fullblown idiots

They think they understand everything better than mainstream Science, quite often they also believe in other retarded Conspiracies like Hollow Earth, Illuminati, Reptiloids etc. They just can't accept the fact that others may be smarten than they are, so if they can't grasp a concept, it must be wrong.

4. Those who are just gullible

They may have heard or seen the works ofthe above, and didn't bother to check the facts.

Answer 4

My opinion is pretty simple. They think it was faked because it's fun to do so. Science is hard - many consider it sufficiently difficult that it's not worth the effort. So when something comes along that explains science in a way that is easy to understand, and simultaneously entertaining - why not? The current trend in civilized societies seems to be toward higher entertainment value and lower intellectual effort. It's fun to make all those geek scientists squirm - they don't know so much and I can demonstrate it! - and all those folks who claim they were there - (me, for example) - they were in on the BIG LIE.

It's really quite sad, because they are denying their heritage of intelligence and technology and exchanging it for sloth and short term entertainment. There is nothing that scientists can do to convince them. It's like alcoholism. You either wake up some time, or you continue to wallow in it.

Answer 5

There are believers that the moon landing was fake for the same reason there are religious peoples.

They are self-righteous. While religious peoples view themselves as more "faithful", peoples who believe the lunar landing was fake view themselves as "enlightened".

It's all about wanting to feel superior.

Answer 6

why do so many people believe the Moon landing was faked?

I guess the simplest explanation is, people are very often morons.

1) there is quite a good deal of distrust in the government.  If you cant trust your government not to lie, torture, spy... then I guess its not such a far stretch  to believe that they faked a Moon landing.

2) There is a strong resurgence of nationalism in the Space Race, both of which, nationalism and the Space Race, I personally thought was over.  Guess not.  It must be hard for a country like India to do something for the first time, that was done by the US 40 years ago... and done better.  Guess they get a little snippy.

as to the objections about the Moon being "too hot' to land people on, well, you gotta point... so, the astronauts were not geared with Bermuda shorts and flip-flops.

Answer 7

in this world teeming with billions of people ,everybody wants to stand out 'be different;everyone wants to have a say,have an opinion;that's one the reason why some people don't believe in the moon landing.(more people disbelieve in this because the moon landing i believe is the greatest scientific achievement of mankind and creating controversies on this issue is even more exiting,whereas 9\11 and the holocaust are tragic events and people dont like to create controversies on these issues)

also majority of the people on earth  lead mundane and monotonous lives so these kinda conspiracy theories intrigues them a lot.it gives people something to talk about,argue and debate on over a couple of drinks.

thats why some people like to believe that aliens had landed on earth and humans were abducted and all.

so it has nothing much to do with science or anything but more to do with human curiosity and pshycology.

there was this time some years back when people were saying that the world was gonna end soon!and this news was shown on cable t.v.!the so called prophet had even given us a deadline..it was on the month of may(i forgot the exact date).....i didnt go to school that day!!..hehe..

so these kinda news makes our lives interesting,these arguments and controversies are created by men  to entertain ourselves..

Answer 8

The U.S. wanted to be the Soviets in space because of the arms race. One reason why people believe it's fake. Another, there aren't any stars in the video. Another, The moon is too hot with the sun hitting it and too cold without the sun hitting it to land a human on there safely. Those are some reasons.

Temperatures on the Moon are both hotter and colder than those on Earth. In other words, the temperature range is more extreme! If you were camping on the Moon, you could not only heat up beans at local noon, you could boil water to do your dishes with! The temperature on the Moon when the Sun is overhead is just above the boiling point of water (100 degrees Celsius, 212 Fahrenheit).

If you were to spend the night on the Moon (you might as well because it's a long trip home to Earth), you'd have to have a warm sleeping bag, because temperatures reach a low of -173 degrees Celsius. (-279.40000000000003 Fahrenheit)

Since the Moon and the Earth are approximately the same distance from the Sun, they receive sunlight of the same strength. So the temperature of the Earth and the Moon should be the same. It is the Moon's lack of atmosphere that creates such extreme temperatures. The Moon doesn't have an atmosphere to absorb sunlight like the Earth does, and so the surface gets very hot. The Moon's lack of atmosphere also lets heat escape during lunar nights so that it gets rather chilly on the surface!

Answer 9

it's ironic how they managed to do it in 1969 yet they are having problems right now (like the death of a few years ago, missing tiles leading to overheating, problems with blast off etc.) I'm not sure.

Answer 10

There *was* a reason to fake the first landing.  The space race!  We had to prove to the rest of the world, and the Soviets in particular, that we were technologically superior.  But if we couldn't land someone on the moon, I don't think we would have fake it anyway.

But you're right, the same ppl who believe we didn't go to the moon are often the same ppl who believe the holocaust didn't happen, etc etc.  Well actually I think it's just Germans who think the holocaust didn't happen but I know what you're saying and I agree.  It's because all these people have one thing in common: they are extremely gullible.  Not just that, but a good many of them (particularly the ones who spread this kind of c**p) actually *want* to believe it.  They WANT a conspiracy.  I'm not exactly sure why as of now, I think it's some kind of gratifying narcissism, have to believe there is a conspiracy (or many).  But for most of the ppl, I think they're just gullible.

Answer 11

Just as people in Newton time believed that sun revolved around the earth. Huh!!

Nothing just inferiority complex and higher illiteracy level.

Answer 12

gross stupidity, and a total lack of scientific knowledge. like the ppl spouting all the usual nonsense about stars and flags here.

Answer 13

The reason people think they were faked is because of a total lack of knowledge of not only space, but the US space program itself.  First of all, if they were faked, the Russians would be the first to pounce on it, since we were in a race against them. The Russians of all people would want to find some kind of forgery in the landings.  They haven't.

They have no answer to how we got video of the earth from the moon, on Apollo's 15, 16 & 17 where the camera on the Rover was controlled by an engineer at Johnson Space Center.   They also don't know that someone on earth was controlling the camera.  They think a person was holding the camera on those missions.

People point to the pictures and the shadows.  They know nothing about what the uneven moonscape and a wide angle lens does to shadows. You can take a picture here on earth of afternoon shadows that go in different directions too.  All from one source, the sun.

They point to the flag "waving" in empty space.  The flag waved because it had a rod attached to the top of the flag. This can be seen in almost every flag picture.

Those who consider the landings faked point out that the background in the last 3 missions never changes.  They don't realize that those mountains were over 12 miles away.  You can drive for hours next to a mountain that's 12 miles away, and it barely moves.  They only drove a few miles on the moon.  There's very slight differences in the background, but conspiracists don't seem to see that.

People who consider it faked never think about the fact that they needed a film crew in order for someone to film it in the Nevada desert.  If there was a film crew, why haven't they spoken up by now?  You'd think one of them would have enough financial motivation to write a book or go on Oprah.

Lastly, over 400,000 people worked on each mission.  That's a lot of people to keep quiet just for the sake of deception.  It's hard enough to keep one person quiet let alone almost half a million.

Conspiracists basically don't have a leg to stand on, so they dismiss what seems incredible by calling it a fake.

Answer 14

OK, the videos look pretty fake to me, I don't know if it is because the tapes are far from our everyday perception or if they really are faked, but watching them the thought can be entertained.

But lets not get ahead of ourselves, even if the footage was faked (and I'm not saying it was necessarily) - it doesn't mean that the moon landing didn't happen!

Why would it be faked? -- the space-race was kinda during the cold war, and the two US "superpowers" (the USSR + USA) were competing to see which could push further into the "final frontier" -- and hence America had a lot riding on that footage: P.R. at home and overseas, potential scientific secrets to protect.

And remember noone could be sure how the mission would turn out.

Answer 15

Actually, I too think that its totally a fake. First evidence to support this answer is the video in which the American flag is waving in atmosphere-lacking environment of moon.

The space is lacking stars and most importantly, the blast crater. The massive spacecraft landing with huge amount of energy being released probably should form a giant blast crater.

Who else can survive the deadly penetrating radiation of sun, which propagates in the alien environment of moon?

In the video it can be clearly observed how freely and easily the astronauts are walking in the gravitational field of moon which is 1/6 th that of earth, as if they are habituated to it.

Don't u think its ridiculous?

It is believed that the astronomers landed in AREA 51 of United States, which is similar to the moon in many aspects including the craters.

U.S. may have faked it to compete with Soviet Union, which was leading nation in astronomy in 1950s.

Answer 16

I never questioned it when I believed government was honorable. I don't have an opinion on it but it wouldn't surprise me if evidence proved it was fake. I don't give it a lot of thought. It doesn't much matter now.

You are out in left field to categorize Holocaust deniers with those who believe the government was involved with 911.  They are two different fruits. There is obvious evidence that the Holocost existed, and there is obvious evidence that people in the government were involved in 911. Its only a "theory" when there is no evidence of a crime, coverup, motive or gain. For 911 all 4 elements exist - evidence of a crime, evidence of a coverup, motive, and gain. Nice try tho.