| > Arguing the personnel politics of the hypothetically fake Moon landing addresses a different argument than the one that I and the OP were addressing. You assert "imagine that everyone at NASA was working to fake the landing instead of landing. With a unified purpose, it would be enough". I assert "I do not believe that to be the case when thinking about the real people that would be asked to do this in a real-world setting". That's setting aside the physical evidence (i.e., Russia observing the moon lander) entirely. I don't see that as changing arguments, I see it as an extension of your assertion. > In regard to the need to "fool" the USSR, I'd point out that you are making a large assumption that governments are always as antagonistic at the top levels of leadership as the public is led to be and believe. It is not a large assumption to say the Space Race was competitive (and certainly at times outwardly antagonistic), though the politics certainly weren't simply black and white. The moon landing required too much physical evidence, too many whole human beings, and had too many observers to be plausibly fakeable in my view. I'll leave it there vs. getting into a debate on alphabet agency secret-keeping. Occam's Razor isn't perfect, but it's most clearly not on the "fakeable moon landing" side. |