Alex H

Landing on the Moon

On July 24, 1969 two astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took

the first steps on the moon, or did they? Let’s start with some background info. On October 4, 1957 the

Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1. Shortly after the Soviet Union put the first

man in space, Yuri Gagarin, on April 12, 1961. After that America put their first astronaut into space,

Alan Shepard on May 5 1961. The space race had begun.

The first space craft that was supposed to go to the moon was the American Apollo 1, sadly just

seconds before it was set to launch a fire broke out in the cockpit and all three men were killed.

Although Apollo 1 was never meant to go to the moon it was a tragic start to the Apollo program. The

first spacecraft to actually go to the moon was Apollo 11, flown by Michael Collins or so they say. Did we

really land on the moon?

One hoax that is believed to prove that the astronauts never went to the moon is the stars. The

cameras should have picked up pictures of the stars and the astronauts should have seen a amazing

night sky view. Although that sounds very convincing, the cameras that were brought to the moon had

to be low quality so that the pictures could be sent back directly from the landing module (or LM) to

Earth. The stars were there, we just couldn’t see them with the low quality pictures. Why couldn’t the

astronauts see the stars? The answer is the moon itself. Think about it, when there is snow outside and

you look directly at it during a sunny day the sunlight will reflect off of the snow and hurt your eyes, the

same is true for the moon. The moon’s white surface acts a snow and prevents the astronauts from

seeing the stars.

Think that’s not enough proof? Well there’s more! On the Apollo 11, 14 and 15 missions

astronauts placed corner reflectors on the moon’s surface. Corner reflectors are mirrors that look like a

pushed in triangle. Corner reflectors allow any light that is shined into the center to bounce back to

exact location it was shot from. Scientists wanted to find out the exact speed of light but to do that they

needed a really long distance, the Earth would not work because although gravity does bend light, the

Earth bends to much for the light to bend around. The distance between the Earth and the Moon was

perfect, and with the corner reflector to make sure that the laser came straight back to Earth scientists

were able to find out the exact speed of light. How else would the corner reflectors get on the moon if

we hadn’t landed and put them there?

Although there are many other questions about weather or not we landed on the moon, I

believe that we did land on the moon. For every major event in history there is always someone who

Alex H

thinks it didn’t happen and has a reason why, for example, when Adof Hitler died many people believed

that he was still alive living in hiding. Not all of these counter points are crazy though for example, one

of the most popular conspiracies is the existence of Area 51 a secret military base located in the middle

of the Mojave desert. Although the government denies the bases existence when you even get near the

base armed guards tell you to get lost. Kind of weird to have armed guards guarding nothing in the

middle of the Mojave desert.

In conclusion, although there is evidence against Apollo 11 landing on the moon there is no

proof. The corner reflectors on the moon that were used to measure the speed of light would also be

hard to explain if we had never landed on the moon. We even have rovers on Mars and we are still

denying that we landed on the Moon? For every event in history there will always be people that say it

didn’t happen and why. Although some conspiracies may have some truth to them, take Area 51 for

example, The conspiracy that on July 24, 1969 Neil Armstrong never took the first step on the moon has

absolutely no truth to it. There is proof that we landed on the moon and although there is conspiracy

that we didn’t, I believe that we did land on the moon.