Home UFO/ Space Smithsonian Magazine’s Reply to Moon Hoax

Smithsonian Magazine’s Reply to Moon Hoax

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moon walkingMoon Walking, Photo: NASA

by Mary W Maxwell, LLB

On September 19, 2022 I published, at GumshoeNews.com, an article entitled “Was the Moon Landing a Hoax”.  It was also published at GraniteGrok.com under the name “Moon Landing Hoax Confession,” as its main thrust has to do with a man who died in February 2022, saying he has held his father’s secret confession for twenty years. The video of that man is new — a fortnight ago, and was posted by a longtime critic of Apollo, Bart Sibrel.

The video struck me as persuasive, although it contains no more than a statement, an allegation. I put it forward for comment and many readers at Gumshoe contributed links to other worthwhile statements of complaint about the validity of the US’s 1979 moon landing.

Today I tried to find some good comeback to the conspiracy theory. My research ethics tells me to look for many such pieces, but the moon topic is not on my very pressing agenda, so I am going to shortcut here by reporting only one item, the one from Smithsonian Magazine.

On May 16, 2019, preparing for the 50th anniversary of the moon-landing. Roger D Launius wrote a 3800-word article that begins with “Yes, the United States Certainly DID Land Humans on the Moon.” The magazine says: “Moon-landing deniers, says space scholar and former NASA chief historian Roger Launius, are full of stuff and nonsense.”

I will now print excepts.  I have not cherrypicked, to use “poor” rebuttals, hiding strong one.  No. There are no strong ones.  Launius has given us what I consider reinforcement of the hoax-theory. That is, his counteracting of the claims is so amazingly thin that it makes me feel more certain (I am by no means completely certain) that we didn’t land on the moon.

If any organization should be relied upon to make a good list of at least some major criticisms — even just the famous one of the Van Allen Belt problem, it would be Smithsonian.  In the olden days I believe they would do so. Please have a look at these (or save yourself the time, if you want to take my word for it that Launius has NOT given strength to the official story).

The numbering here is mine, as is the bolding. Otherwise, it is straight from the 2019 article:

  1. The first conspiracy theorist to make a sustained case for denying that the U.S. landed on the moon was Bill Kaysing, a journalist who had been employed for a few years in the public relations office at Rocketdyne … in the early 1960s. His 1974 pamphlet We Never Went to the Moon laid out many of the major arguments that have been followed by other conspiracy theorists since. His rationale offered poorly developed logic, sloppily analyzed data and sophomorically argued assertions.

Kaysing believed that a failure to land on the moon sprang from the idea that NASA lacked the technical expertise to accomplish the task, requiring the creation of a massive cover-up to hide that fact. He cited as evidence perceived optical anomalies in some imagery from the Apollo program, questioned the physical features of certain objects in the photographs (such as a lack of a star field in the background of lunar surface imagery and a presumed waving of the U.S. flag in an airless environment), and challenged the possibility of NASA astronauts’ surviving a trip to the moon because of radiation exposure.

  1. As John Schwartz wrote of the conspiracy theorists in the New York Times, “They examine photos from the missions for signs of studio fakery, and claim to be able to tell that the American flag was waving in what was supposed to be the vacuum of space. They overstate the health risks of traveling through the radiation belts that girdle our planet; they understate the technological prowess of the American space program; and they cry murder behind every death in the program, linking them to an overall conspiracy.” [Why is a science-type magazine quoting the New York Times???]
  2. Ted Goertzel, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University who has studied conspiracy theorists, told Schwartz that “there’s a similar kind of logic behind all of these groups.” …“They feel if they’ve got more facts than the other side, that proves they’re right.”
  3. Kaysing … speculated that the chance of landing successfully on the moon stood at 0.017; on what this calculation was based is a mystery and does not square with NASA estimates at the time, which stood at approximately 87 percent for at least one successful landing before the end of the 1960s.
  4. Professional moon-landing denier Bart Sibrel has asserted that Apollo spacecraft crews had faked their orbit around the moon and their walk on its surface by using trick photography, but did accept Earth orbital missions. [i.e., the spaceship could travel but it was unmanned] Humans could not go to the moon, Sibrel and deniers of his ilk claim, because going beyond the Van Allen radiation belts would have given them lethal doses of cosmic radiation. While there is indeed radiation both in the Van Allen belts and beyond, and radiation’s risks to human health are real, contentions that it would not be survivable are nonsense, and almost no papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals make this claim. [No mentiion of what is in these papers.]
  5. Conspiracy theorist Richard Hoagland made the claim that the astronauts that went to the moon had been hypnotized and any memories of extraterrestrial encounters were removed. Most interestingly, Hoagland has argued that NASA deviously orchestrated the origins of the moon-landing denials as a disinformation campaign to mask the discovery of extra-terrestrial structures on the lunar surface.
  6. While the various claims of the moon-landing deniers have evolved over time, their reasons for making these claims have rested on several types of “evidence.” The most significant are anomalies found in photographs…. While Apollo imagery documented in graphic detail what took place on the moon, the use of that same imagery to raise questions about the entire enterprise is an irony too great to ignore. Some 25 images have been invoked in such claims. … images that do not show stars in the background, despite conspiracy theorists’ insistence that they should be clearly seen; the fact that dust was not present on the landing pads of the spacecraft; the assertion that shadows and lighting on the moon are uneven…. For each of these charges, there are completely reasonable, understandable, and convincing explanations, most relating to the nature of photography and the vicissitudes of shadows, lighting and exposure of film in a vacuum. [No explanation provided here by Launius.]
  7. Deniers … cast doubt on the NASA account of the Apollo program. One of the persistent beliefs is that the “blueprints” for the Apollo spacecraft and Saturn V rocket have been lost, or perhaps they never existed. This is simply untrue. The National Archives and Records Administration maintains a regional Federal Records Center… where the records from the Marshall Space Flight Center are housed. Those records include more than 2,900 linear feet of Saturn V records, including drawings and schematics. A similar story about the loss of the original broadcast video from the Apollo 11 landing has been used to cast doubt on the whole endeavor, causing NASA to undertake an unprecedented search for the tapes, finding some but not all that were missing.
  8. On September 9, 2002, Sibrel confronted Buzz Aldrin at a Los Angeles hotel and called him a “liar, a thief, and a coward.” At that point Aldrin, then 72 years old, hit Sibrel with a right hook that sent him to his knees. While Sibrel pressed charges, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office declined to pursue the incident. Most people who viewed video of this altercation expressed concern that Aldrin might have hurt his hand.
  9. [Pot calling kettle black]: There can be no question that the February 2001 airing of the Fox television special Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? changed the nature of the debate. In this instance, a major network presented a conspiracy scenario without any serious rebuttal that might have been offered. As USA Today reported: “According to Fox and its respectfully interviewed “experts”—a constellation of ludicrously marginal and utterly uncredentialed ‘investigative journalists’—the U.S. grew so eager to defeat the Soviets in the intensely competitive 1960s space race that it faked all six Apollo missions. While the program claimed to “let the viewer decide” about the validity of the claims for denial of the moon landings, it made no attempt whatsoever to offer point and counterpoint, thereby giving the viewers a seriously biased view of the issue and skewed evidence in favor of a hoax.
  10. The most egregious violation of propriety came in the Fox show when conspiracy theorists claimed that ten astronauts and two civilians had died “under mysterious circumstances” during the Apollo program…. No question, shoddy workmanship and poor procedures led to those astronauts’ deaths, and it was a tragic loss. But the deaths of Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were an accident and not murder. Some moon-landing deniers have claimed that NASA had them killed because Grissom was on the verge of exposing the Apollo program as a fraud. There is not one scintilla of evidence to support this accusation. To be sure, astronaut Ed Givens died in an automobile accident, and astronauts Ted Freeman, C. C. Williams, Elliot See and Charlie Bassett died in aircraft accidents, but these were far removed from the conduct of Project Apollo.
  11. Two scientists who have argued against the value of human spaceflight even came forward to counter the Fox special’s charges. Robert Park, director of the Washington office of the American Physical Society, dismissed the “documentary” with this statement: “The body of physical evidence that humans did walk on the Moon is simply overwhelming.” Marc Norman at the University of Tasmania added, “Fox should stick to making cartoons. I’m a big fan of ‘The Simpsons’!”
  12. NASA had refrained from officially responding to these charges—avoiding anything that might dignify the claims—the Fox show required that it change its approach. After the Fox program first aired, NASA released a one-paragraph press release titled, “Apollo: Yes, We Did.”

— end of quotes from Smithsonian Magazine

Gumshoe’s “Library”

To save any interested reader from having to go search the Comments under my previous article, I shall now list a few links that readers provided there. (My article itself had no substance about the moon landing, I was only chatting about my conspiracy history and providing the Akers video).

First, the video of the son of Cyrus Akers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu5Z75ji3aU

Second, from BBC, the final 13 minutes of entry, with conversation form ground control:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae6VJ6YU8uo&t=43s

Third, a nine-minute talk with clips (allegedly from official) saying that we don’t have the ability, yet, to travel above Low Earth Orbit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpPMoIv1lxI&t=29s

Fourth, a page of sketches of the computer guidance for Apollo:

https://newatlas.com/apollo-11-guidance-computer/59766/#gallery:13

Fifth, on of Dave McGowan’s many pages on the “Moondoggie”:

https://centerforaninformedamerica.com/moondoggie-14/

Sixth, a answer form Quora (by a person who does not present his credentials, concerning the amount of radiation a crew is exposed to:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2018/11/13/how-much-radiation-are-iss-astronauts-exposed-to/?sh=4e1a9d5718a9

Seventh, sarcastic commentary:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK8tZS5XAHU&t=231s

Eighth, a tw-minute clip of interview with Stanley Kubric:

www.bitchute.com/video/DOGeuB9uBumq/

Ninth, Bart Sibel’s conspiracy theory.  I suggest you first listen from 20- to 22-minute mark where the narrators aks us to consider amnesties to attract whistleblowers. Yay!

www.bitchute.com/video/nG4j11WLBwMU/

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38 COMMENTS

  1. The Van Allen belts are code for the firmament created on day two of our creation. The “firm”(our firm, u know genesis), gets lots of tuning, till week out.
    The actors at ground control were “spiellbinding”. Its a really good litmus test, for the rabbit hole theorists. wink

    Doesn’t go anything like this, a Joe

    • That’s great, Simon. Thanks for the memories.

      Are you Aboriginal? It has just occuured to me that the spirituality of Aboriginals — as oft described by Diane DeVere — may be accounted for by the fact that the stars are sooo much more visible from the Outback.

    • David Bowie is of most interest to investigative types because of the way he told us kids everything about Orwellian scenarios but he clearly knew a lot more. The question in my mind is when (if ever) did he quit the freemasons and what levels did he go through ?

  2. Dear Editor Dee, there should be no indenting of the Number 1 paragraph, as the whole thing is really an indentable quote from Launius. Mary did not enter into the text, other than by occasional commentary always in square-brackets.

    By golly it’s nice to have you back in town, Dee.

  3. Electromagnetism is 10^ 39 times stronger than gravity. Objects approaching or falling onto a charged body, one that lacks an atmosphere, will rotate in the same way as tornadoes do. We saw this when the Euro vehicle left its transporter to land on the comet/asteroid. It rotates as it leaves. No wonder it landed and then cartwheeled away across the rock. The Mars missions hardly ever succeeded for Russia/CCCP. The possible successes involved a landing by a bouncing ball that peeled away after landing. Venus expeditions had much more success.

    Have we any independant verification of transmissions from the Moon or Mars?

    • Venus expeditions? Yours truly is hopelessly iggorant of these things.

      I wonder if Elon Musk, being too smart to be fooled (?), has said he’s ready for space travel — in order to add to our misinfo about the 1969 deal.

    • A good video explaining the vicissitudes of lighting in such an environment. I noticed that they used pictures from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to get more precise locations of the various objects and the paths the astronauts took.

      Here is the link I provided in the first article – https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/apollo-sites.html

      I suppose the true believers in the ‘hoax’ theory will argue that they were simply photo-shopped, or maybe that NASA was going to get caught out so they sent up further personnel to put the objects and tracks in the right spot, whatever…

  5. If it were true, that man had landed on the moon all those years ago..

    there would be a chain of McDonalds franchises up there by now.

  6. In his daily posting today, Paul Craig Roberts said theis:

    “Shoigu reports that the entire NATO satellite constellation is working against Russia – more than 70 military and 200 civilian satellites are working to reconnoiter the location of Russian units. Shoigu reports that the Western command directs operation from Kyiv.

    “As I said correctly from the beginning, the time-consuming limited operation has widened the war. If Russia is serious, expect the Western communication system and Kiev to be knocked out.”

    https://sputniknews.com/20220921/shoigu-russia-at-war-with-collective-west-rather-than-ukraine-1101029246.html

        • Vladimir Kornilov: Time to drop our illusions, the West is waging a war to destroy Russia
          Moscow’s enemies want to land a fatal blow on the country, some even want to dismember it

          By Vladimir Kornilov, RIA Novosti

          “………..The indicator here is the way in which this provocation was immediately picked up by Western politicians, who are already urgently calling for an “international tribunal” to punish Russia. Meanwhile, the West’s media, in a united push, is putting unfounded statements about “mass executions and torture in Izium” on its front pages.

          This fakery is crass and easily refuted. But it is clear from this unanimous reaction of the West that no one there cares at all how and when the people buried in the cemetery died. The culprit has been appointed in advance – and it has to be Russia. Because only this verdict fits into the overall strategy of the current campaign in Ukraine……………..”

          “…………The ideological touchstone of European liberals, The Economist magazine, has devoted its latest issue to how the West should ensure Ukraine’s victory over Russia. Apart from the traditional advice on further arming the Kiev regime, the magazine explicitly demands that the West must try to drive a wedge between the Russian government and the Russian people. To do this, leaders are urged to bet on Russian liberals who have moved abroad, who in these circumstances can be safely called traitors back home.

          They are now in a situation where Russia’s enemies are now openly talking about using them to carry out an unrealistic plan to dismember our common motherland!

          Thus, we can safely say that the collective West has already moved from talk to action and is openly challenging the very existence of the Russian Federation.

          It’s ideologues and a number of top politicians make no secret of the fact that by exploiting the conflict in Ukraine, they are deliberately helping to create an existential threat to our state. The sooner we ourselves officially acknowledge this, the more effectively we will be able to move to a different stage in both relations with our neighbors and the military operation in Ukraine itself.

          We still adhere to certain gentlemen’s rules of the game, which were adopted after the end of the Cold War. But now the stakes have been raised too high.

          To be clear, I am not calling for us to copy the criminal actions of Ukraine. We, unlike them, do not deliberately kill children, torture prisoners of war, or exterminate civilians.

          But in the face of increasing threats to Russian citizens, we are left with no choice but to act much more forcefully against military infrastructure, even if it’s also used by civilians, in the direction of decision-making centres, and towards those individuals directly responsible for terror and murders wherever they are located, as well as tackling states that pursue hostile policies.

          After all, we should not forget that when an existential threat to Russia arises, we need to present a tough response.

          Those who threaten our homeland should be constantly reminded of this.

          https://www.rt.com/russia/563196-vladimir-kornilov-it-is-time/

  8. This documentary examines the authenticity of the photographic record of NASA’s Apollo missions. AMERICAN MOON by Massimo Mazzucco.
    The Vericolor III film would have been fogged by lunar heat as the Hasselblad cameras had no insulation. It would fog like leaving a film camera in your car’s glove compartment in the heat of the sun.
    Studio fakery on earth would account for fill-flash into shadow areas as Hasselblad affirmed there was no auxiliary (flash) lighting.

  9. As the US and Israeli psychos push for nuclear and eternal internecine war, you guys debate the Apollo mission. Talk about Nero digging his lute solo while Rome burned.

    “Daddy, what did you do during the war”?

    “Nothing, sweetie, I was busy curled up in fetus position sucking my thumb and whimpering about space jaunt fraud”.

  10. So the current narrative has us heading into ww3, same as the Albert Pike narrative.

    The protagonist, here is Putin and this narrative(chapter) goes back to black Friday 1990. Follow the money from the date of birth of the Central Bank of Russia.
    Its all left punch, then right punch, that the bankers do to setup and then harvest the work of others.
    Gov – > borrows on behalf of the common peep – > CB invents money – > unforeseen circumstance – > invented money chases real assets now at rock bottom prices. Why they call the CB’s reserve banks. When everyone is tapped out, in walks the protaganist( J.P Morgan), chased up with all the fakery.

    The current CBR governor is Elvira Nabiullina, and like the “quantitative easing” much like our RBA stooge.

    Elvira a young Yale World Fellow and:

    https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/who-are-the-women-of-davos-2016/
    “Influential women in economics include Elvira Nabiullina”

    “digital currencies will be the future of financial systems, according to Russia’s central bank governor, Elvira Nabiullina”

    Anyway the usual actors show, I resign, no you can not, but I’m a good one, blah, blah.
    Story telling and acting on the world stage of flim flam.
    Putin would not signal like he is, if any of this bs was true. What he would do is call a preemptive strike, that you would not hear. What you are hearing and going to feel is the left punch before your Gov(central banked), right punch’s you square in the face, again. Hope that’s nu&clear.

  11. https://helenaglass.net/2022/03/26/globalism-is-dead/

    The Goal of Transhumanism: To eliminate ALL physical and mental limitations.

    For decades these ‘experiments’ were conducted on unsuspecting poor people who had no Internet or viability to refuse; Africa, Indonesia, India, and Ukraine. The Ukrainian labs were purportedly working on a means of using DNA of a sub sect – such as Russians – to see if they could be singularly targeted for genocide. Boom!

    Remember, the end race must be ‘pure’. Everyone in the US is an amalgamation of various European and Asian and Indian cultures. We are NOT pure. Which is why Klaus Schwab declared that the US will NOT be a superpower in the future.

    This massive experimentation for transhuman future would also explain their need for live fetus parts. AKA – Planned Parenthood. Everything is connected. And the End Game is a redesigned Human through technology and science which has the ability to be male or female and live for eternity…”

  13. Oh no, not again. So I can only repeat what should be obvious to critical thinkers.
    1/. Rockets cannot operate in a vacuum. Newton’s law is irrelevant where there is no resistance to the expulsion of gas into the alleged vacuum.
    2/. The elusive mythical gravity wave cannot travel faster than the speed of light (which is not a perfect constant – as sometimes taught), and thus cannot act instantaneously upon larger masses allegedly revolving around each other at any significant distance.
    3/. The theory of gravity cannot prevent the escape of any atmosphere into a nearly perfect vacuum.

    • Obviously you never took physics in college (did you even go to college?) Hell, did you even graduate from a dumbed-down High School? Why not give us your observations about the Flat Earth? We stand riveted waiting for your next comment about the physical universe…

      Dee, for Gawd’s sake, this kind of STUPID is lowering the credibility of your site.

      • Yeah, for every reaction there is an equal and opposite reaction. Whether a rocket or jet eventually it reaches a TERMINAL VELOCITY where the air RESISTANCE equals the thrust of the engine. – If it was in a vacuum it would continue to accelerate.

        I took Astronomy in college. The study of bodies in orbit is a mathematical science that is well known. When a perturbation in orbit occurs then there is another mass somewhere that is disturbing the orbit. After a bit of observation of the various perturbations and working back through the math, an area is located to look for another body (Hello ‘Pluto’!)

  14. • Neil Armstrong – NASA’s Parrots & Truth’s Protective Layers

    • Onion Moon Landing

    I always make a point of considering both sides … I recall that Dave McGowan pointed me to these:

    • No, The Moon Landings Weren’t Faked. – Jason Major May 22, 2014

    https://lightsinthedark.com/2014/05/22/no-the-moon-landings-werent-faked-and-heres-how-you-can-tell/

    • Bad Astronomy – Phil Plait

    http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/tv/foxapollo.html

    So much effort – obviously a well paid profession.

    Why not just make it illegal to question just like so many other Hoaxes?

  15. “It is commonly believed that man will fly directly from the earth to the moon, but to do this, we would require a vehicle of such gigantic proportions that it would prove an economic impossibility. It would have to develop sufficient speed to penetrate the atmosphere and overcome the earth’s gravity and, having traveled all the way to the moon, it must still have enough fuel to land safely and make the return trip to earth. Furthermore, in order to give the expedition a margin of safety, we would not use one ship alone, but a minimum of three … each rocket ship would be taller than New York’s Empire State Building [almost ¼ mile high] and weigh about ten times the tonnage of the Queen Mary, or some 800,000 tons.”—Wernher von Braun, the father of the Apollo space program, writing in Conquest of the Moon

    more —> http://centerforaninformedamerica.com/moondoggie-1/

      • As a former combat aviator, you had to know where the duct tape worked and where it didn’t. Sometimes you had to put a hose clamp over the duct tape to make it work, just depends where the problem was.

      • Don’t forget the kitchen grade aluminum foil. Worked so well that they used it on the 1977 Voyager 1. We could engage those thrusters like back in 2017. Get the old girl to spin around and grab some more science fiction book cover art of Pluto, sans stars of course.
        I think kbp brings up some good points. Certainly worthy of scientific inquiry. How does a helicopter drone fly on Mars with all that gravity and little atmosphere for the ” air screws ” to gain the required traction.
        Space has little traction, and that matters. If not want to drag race for ownership papers, I’ll put grease on your tires, for Newton

        • “Space has little traction, and that matters. ”

          yeah, but theyre not in space, they are grounded. if i can build a helicopter capable of lift in earths atmosphere..

          if there is even a slight atmosphere on mars, and i dunno if there is or isnt.. then perhaps a helicopter could take off with even a fraction of the force needed on earth, given less gravity?

          https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/

          or maybe, under such circumstances, with less atmosphere, it might actually need proportionately more.. ( i dunno, they couldnt learn me nuffink at skool ) but

          just for geek karma points, id probably have gone for solar powered electro magnetic stuff myself.. ive heard they do that these days with trains? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev

          more speccy

          seems a nice place to visit, but i wouldnt want to live there 🙂

          • I guess that Mars gravity is similar to Earths given the close sizes and density. I can remember the film total recall, but Stanley Kubrick … shows space and the moon, work, in slow-mo, and they say I’m out there.
            Its all relative of course but steam trains were hitting 100mph, a hundred years ago. Classy too, you could even get a haircut without a Cyprus investment.

          • Do you mean Mars gravity on Devon Island … ?

            TOP SECRET NASA MARS MISSION – BASE AND ROVERS LOCATED IN GREENLAND !!

            ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5h6QHIOqj8

            Simulated Mars Environment on Devon Island – Curiosity Images are NASA fakes.

            UNEXPLAINED Mars Rover Finds Interesting Life on MARS

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