UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE

INTERNATIONAL TRAINING & EDUCATION CENTER

The Conspiracy Theories about Moon Landing

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS

Nguyen Trong Tan

College English 112

September 2015

Content

Introduction ................................................................................................................... 4

Body ................................................................................................................... 4

Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 7

Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 8

On July 20, 1969 Apollo 11 was the first spaceflight that landed the first humans on the Moon,

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. This event became one of the biggest successful in the world

and made United States became the first nation that set foot on the moon. Apollo 11 effectively

ended the Space Race and completed a national target proposed in 1961 by the U.S. President

John F. Kennedy in a speech before the U.S. Congress: “before this decade is out, of landing a

man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.” (Kennedy, 1961)1 However, there were

a lot of conspiracy theories against the moon landing in 1969. The most notable claim is that the

manned were faked and that two Apollo 11 astronauts did not actually walk on the Moon.

Conspiracy theorists claim that NASA and others knowingly misled the public into believing the

landings happened, by manufacturing, tampering with, or destroying evidence including photos,

telemetry tapes, radio and TV transmissions, Moon rock samples, and even some key witnesses.

All the conspiracy theorists are called the moon landing hoax. Much third-party evidence for the

landings exists, and detailed rebuttals to the hoax claims have been made. Since the late 2000s,

high-definition photos taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of the Apollo landing sites

have captured the lander modules and the tracks left by the astronauts so that all the author

conspiracy’s has managed to maintain public interest in their theories for over 40 years, despite

the rebuttal and evidence of a third party. Opinion polls were conducted in different locations

have shown that between 6% and 20% of Americans and 28% of Russian respondents believe

that the moon landing was fake (Unknown, Moon landing conspiracy theories in popular culture,

2015).

The first conspiracy was two years after the moon landing has ended. Bill Kaysing – a America

senior technical writer wrote the book “We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion

Dollar Swindle”, despite having no knowledge of rockets or technical writing, he claimed that

1 Online NASA Moon Landing. John f. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Retrieved from : http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-

Legacy/NASA-Moon-Landing.aspx

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that the chance of a successful manned landing on the Moon was calculated to be 0.0017% and

despite the strict supervision of the Soviet Union, it would be easier for NASA to fake the moon

landings than to actually go there. After the book was published, there were many conspiracy

theories happened after this. Firstly, there was a conspiracy about the flag, which the flag placed

on the surface by the astronauts fluttered despite there being no wind on the Moon, the

conspiracy was explained by NASA is that the flag seemed to vibrate when the astronauts had to

move it into position, without air resistance, the movement causes the free corner of the flag to

rotate like a pendulum in a while. The next conspiracy was very famous because it was against

physic theory: the Van Allen belts. It is believed that the astronauts could not have survived the

trip because of exposure to radiation from the Van Allen radiation belt and galactic ambient

radiation. Dr. James Van Allen, the discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belts, rebutted the

claims that radiation levels were too harmful for the Apollo missions. “There are two main Van

Allen belts - the inner belt and the outer belt - and a transient third belt. The inner belt is the

more dangerous one, containing energetic protons. The outer one has less-dangerous low-energy

electrons. The Apollo spacecraft passed through the inner belt in a matter of minutes and the

outer belt in about one and a half hours.” (Editor). It can be seen that the Soviet Union did not

want to go to the moon because of the risk and the Van Allen belt is the best way to prove the

dangerous of going to the moon. When first publishing the picture of Neil Armstrong set foot on

the moon, NASA faced a lot of problems because of the strange of the picture. First, the lunar

modules made no blast craters or any sign of dust scatter which can be seen very clearly of under

the Apollo 11 module picture. The question is why a lunar module which stands for almost

twenty tons did not made any blast crater or sign of dust when landed. NASA had answered that

because “the lunar regolith is very compact below its surface dust layer, making it impossible for

the descent engine to blast out a "crater"” (Tikekar, 2013).

They also had some explanation about the fuel: At landing, the engine thrust divided by the

nozzle exit area is only about 10 kilopascals. Beyond the engine nozzle, the plume spreads and

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the pressure drops very quickly. Rocket exhaust gases expand much more quickly after leaving

the engine nozzle in a vacuum than in an atmosphere. The effect of an atmosphere on rocket

plumes can be easily seen in launches from Earth but cannot be seen from the moon. Secondly,

the lack of stars in the picture when Apollo 11 took a picture of the Earth but it was easily

answered by some experts and NASA too.” All manned landings happened during the lunar

daytime. Thus, the stars were outshone by the sun and by sunlight reflected off the Moon's

surface. The astronauts' eyes were adapted to the sunlit landscape around them so that they could

not see the relatively faint stars. Likewise, cameras were set for daylight exposure and could not

detect the stars” (Unknown, Moon landing conspiracy theories, 2015). However, some did not

believe of the NASA’s answered because they think that the picture was published on the

newspaper so NASA is smart enough to use a dark background instead of showing stars so they

can easily explain what happened. Finally, the conspiracy which is involved in the photo is the

strange objects and the strange reflection of shadow. The angle and color of shadows are

inconsistent. This suggests that artificial lights were used. NASA had given an explanation is

because Sun is not the only light source when took photo on the moon. Shadows on the Moon

are complicated by reflected light, uneven ground, wide-angle lens distortion, and lunar dust.

There are several light sources: the Sun, sunlight reflected from the Earth, sunlight reflected

from the Moon's surface, and sunlight reflected from the astronauts and the Lunar Module. Light

from these sources is scattered by lunar dust in many directions, including into shadows.

Shadows falling into craters and hills may appear longer, shorter and distorted. About the strange

object, NASA believed that just a reflected of the lunar module while it was filming the astronaut

stepping on the moon.

USA government has suffer a lot of pressure before landing on the moon because at that time ,

USA faced a space race between them and the Soviet Union but the Soviet Union was faster and

was sending the first human in the moon, Yuri Gagarin. Despite ignoring all the

recommendations, the US decided to make an extremely difficult decision. Going to the Moon

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would be risky and expensive, as exemplified by President John F. Kennedy famously stating in

a 1962 speech that the United States chose to go because it was hard. The American must win

the space race. Besides that, there were conspiracy theories about the NASA funding program. It

is claimed that NASA faked the landings to forgo humiliation and to ensure that it continued to

get funding. NASA raised about US$30 billion to go to the Moon. NASA also did some works to

hide their results like deleting all the tapes, the recordings between Houston and Apollo 11 crew.

However, it was just rumor and cannot be proved. To answer the entire hoax, NASA had given

an official sheet responding to recent claims that the Apollo Moon landings had been hoaxed in

June 1977. The fact sheet is particularly blunt and regards the idea of faking the Moon landings

to be preposterous and outlandish. NASA refers to the rocks and particles collected from the

Moon as being evidence of the program's legitimacy, as they claim that these rocks could not

have been formed under conditions on earth. NASA also notes that all of the operations and

phases of the Apollo program were closely followed and under the scrutiny of the news media,

from lift off to splashdown.

In summary, the moon landing is an extremely important event to the USA and all around the

world so there will be a lot of suspicion to this event and the moon landing hoax is a result of all

of this confusions. Although NASA already gives an explanations and the presence of retro

reflectors on the moon to show us the exactly the time but suspect still happening until today. In

my opinion, I think the moon landing was actually happened but at that time, this thing is

impossible so that everyone did not believe it at all.

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Bibliography

Kennedy, J. F. (1961). Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs. Online

NASA Moon Landing. JOHN F. KENNEDY PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM.

Retrieved from : http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-Legacy/NASA-Moon-Landing.aspx

Editor, A. (n.d.). NASA admits they cannot get past the Van Allen Radiation Belt. Aetherforce.

Retrieved from : aetherforce.com/nasa-admits-they-cannot-get-past-the-van-allen-radiation-belt/

Tikekar, T. (2013, August 22). Debunking the Apollo 11 Moon Landing Conspiracy Theories.

BUZZLE. Retrieved from : http://www.buzzle.com/articles/debunking-the-apollo-11moon-

landing-conspiracy-theories.html

Unknown. (2015, September 2). Moon landing conspiracy theories. Wikipedia. Retrieved from :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories

Unknown. (2015, August 19). Moon landing conspiracy theories in popular culture. Wikipedia.

Retrieved from :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theories_in_popular_culture

Cain, F. (2014, April 14). How Do We Know the Moon Landing Isn’t Fake? Universe Today.

Retrieved from : http://www.universetoday.com/111188/how-do-we-know-the-moon-landing-

isnt-fake/

Mike Bara and Steve Troy and Richard C. Hoagland. (n.d.). Who Mourns For Apollo? or Was It

Really Only a Paper Moon?. Studyphysics. Retrieved from :

http://www.studyphysics.ca/apollo1.pdf

PHOTOS: 8 Moon-Landing Hoax Myths -- Busted. (n.d.). National Geographic. Retrieved from :

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/07/photogalleries/apollo-moon-landing-hoax-

pictures/

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