[nirmel]

Am I the only one who thinks the US didn't actually achieve this achievement, which indeed would have been "insane" if they had? See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxW__ZtZApo Of course they faked it. It's too damn hard, and they weren't about to risk the lives of astronauts.

[simonh]

You’re not the only one, but there don’t seem to be many of you. There’s just way too much evidence it was a real space program and all the counter arguments are weak, flawed or straight up based on absurd misunderstandings and misinterpretation of the evidence.

Even aside from the evidence itself it fails the massive conspiracy with no leaks test. Conspiracies leak exponentially with the number of people in the know. SOE worked this all out running operations in occupied Europe. This is why top secret intelligence operations employ incredibly rigorous procedures. Let’s say you have a spy in a foreign country, you make sure only a tiny number of people know the details, preferably low single digits, you layer and compartmentalise everything, you run decoy operations. Even then it’s incredibly hard, the vast majority of operations eventually leak. Only very few of the best run operations with very few people in the know ever last.

With the moon landings many hundreds, more like thousands of people would have to know. All of the astronauts and their backups, the model and set makers, the film crews, the mission flight staff, the film and video technical production staff. There were six manned landings, they’d have had to do the whole faking thing over and over again for years.

It’s several orders of magnitude bigger than most spy operations, made up of people who aren’t even spies, they’d be mostly civilians with very specific technical skills so you can’t be picky about who you select for it. There is no way this wouldn’t have leaked. Somebody on the inside would have said something to a friend or lover, or got pissed off over something, or changed their political opinions, or got sloppy or just decided to get famous and talk. Especially by now with the Cold War well and truly over. Why wouldn’t they? But no, nothing, not even a hint after fifty years. Ask anybody who knows anything at all about Intelligence operations how plausible that is.

[funnymony]

For brain gymnastics: People who would be in the know are camera man, actors, upward chain of command, final finisher of the set. I could keep it below hundred (pm if you need next fake landing; sun costs extra)

[simonh]

I think you’re lowballing it, but anyway you’re forgetting the enormous rocket* everyone saw take off. It had to go somewhere.

Mission Control had 30 people in the room at a time, and each console had its own engineering room with about a dozen staff, and there were several shifts. Then there were the teams at tracking and communications stations all over the world. That adds hundreds more people at least, possibly thousands. They would all have to know the crew never actually landed on the moon.

*Sorry, silly me, six rockets over a period of three and a half years.

[funnymony]

Easy fix. Do cgi of the control room.

[simonh]

I suppose you could avoid bringing the mission control teams into the conspiracy by feeding them perfectly faked data for the whole of each mission. All you’d need is another huge team of engineers and their support staff to generate all the faked data, and hope the Mission Control teams never saw any discrepancies and figure it out. Problem solved!

[ethbr0]

Who does the CGI?

[LargoLasskhyfv]

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

[michaelmrose]

You should consider spending less time on youtube viewing conspiracy theories or at least don't bring them here. Apollo 11 left a reflector on the moon that we have used since to accurately measure the distance between the Earth and moon since. A good rule of thumb to avoid promoting poorly sourced material is to never use a youtube video to "prove" anything that doesn't have a more legitimate primary source.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

> It's too damn hard, and they weren't about to risk the lives of astronauts.

The same government that exposed its soldiers to nuclear detonations? That did biological weapons testing on its own civilian population?

You're absolutely right, there's no way they would have risked late-life cancer or even a spaceflight explosion on a dozen people who signed waivers of informed consent.

Every single one of us is expendable to our government. If they thought it important, or even just really really wanted to, they'd have killed thousands in the attempt. Anyone who doesn't see that is estranged from reality.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

Too long. Didn't watch. But found https://centerforaninformedamerica.com/moondoggie/ which I've read a long time ago to be convincing.

Recommended.

As well as https://centerforaninformedamerica.com/laurelcanyon/ from that same site.

[nikanj]

The uploader has not made that video available in my country. I wonder if they’re worried about stricter libel laws

[dev_tty01]

Yes, you are the only one.