A History of the Space Race and the Moon Landing Conspiracy Theory

Throughout history, the United States and the U.S.S.R. have been competing in what is known as the Space Race. This all began when the Russians sent the first satellite into space in 1958 called Sputnik. Soon after, Americans did the same. The U.S. followed in the footsteps of the U.S.S.R. with sending animals into space. When they sent the first human into space, Yury Gagaran, it became evident that the race to the moon had begun.

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy made a speech saying f?We will go to the moon in this decade amongst other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard. After he was assassinated, NASA decided to pursue his plan and in 1967 the Apollo program began.

In 1969, NASA landed Apollo 11 on the moon and the race was finally over. This was a major leap not only for Americans, but also for mankind. Videos and photos that were taken on the moon were shown to the public and unfortunately, it caused skepticism.

There are people who feel that Apollo 11 never really landed on the moon and that it was staged in a studio. Although these Moon Conspiracy Theoristsu have convincing arguments, NASA and other scientists have proved them to be wrong to show that Apollo 11 did in fact land on the moon and that it was not the aceultimate camera trickau. Moon conspiracy theorists such as Ralph Rene, David Milne, David Percy and James Collier have investigated several different aspects of the moon landing and have come up with reasons for each of why it could not have been possible.

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The skepticism started when Rene noticed on the videos and in the still photos (even though it is impossible to see a flag waving in a still photo) that the American flag seemed to be waving about as it was being placed into the ground on the moon. This brought him to wonder how that was possible if there was no wind or air on the moon. In response to the still photos, the conspiracy theorists can be proved wrong through the fact that the waving appearance is actually just wrinkles on the flag from its packing.

The material of the flag was a very light nylon that is lighter in lunar gravity than in our gravity, which caused the wrinkles to overcome the gravity for longer. In the videos, the movement of the flag was a simple product of the assembly process. When Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were putting the flag into the ground by rotating it back and forth, it caused the flag to move back and forth, creating a afcefluttering or waving motion. No wind or breeze was required to make the flag look like it was moving. The conspiracy theorists, in their infinite wisdom, also felt that the 841 pounds of moon rock that have been brought back to the earth by the nine astronauts who have landed on the moon over history are not really moon rocks. They felt that the moon rocks could have easily been fabricated in a laboratory, but no such process in which this could happen has been brought to the attention of scientists who study planetary science. A conspiracy theorist said that one possible way to fake a moon rock is to put it in a aceradiation oven, but no such oven exists.

Bill Kaysing, a conspiracy theorist, said that NASA has access to ovens that reach 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit and this temperature could produce any mineral that they choose, but according to physicist J. R. Keller, cemelting a composite mineral and allowing it to solidify sets up convection patterns in the molten mix and the resulting pattern is preserved in the solid where it can be examined. Convection is a function of gravity, and lunar rocks exhibit convection patterns that were obviously produced in the much less lunar gravity. To top it off, lunar rock samples have almost no water trapped in their crystal structure, and common substances such as clay minerals that are always seen on Earth are totally absent in Moon rocks. Particles in moon rocks that were produced by volcanic activity some 3 billions years ago could not have been formed on earth because water breaks up these minerals in only a few million years. If the conspiracy theorists had any expertise in geology or mineralogy, they would know that their ideas are not physically possible. Conspiracy theorists have also questioned the way that the astronauts were walking on the moon and they claim that the leaping appearance could easily have been staged if the fake astronauts ran and the camera played the footage back in slow motion. In all actuality, the moonds gravity is only 1/6 of earthas gravity and the jumping that could take place on earth is not nearly as high as someone on the moon could jump.

Scientists attempted to stage the experience just as the theorists proposed and when the fake astronaut jumping was played back in slow motion, he did not get nearly as much height and leverage as Neil and Buzz, nor did he cefloata the way that Neil and Buzz did on the moon. It is physically impossible to capture the image of a person in a acefloatinga motion on earth. David Percy and Ralph Rene raised the argument that when the spacecraft landed on the moon, it should have blasted away several layers of the moons surface and caused a giant crater to form. They backed this up using the fact that when shuttles are launched, they cause huge blasts and flames. In response to this, NASA representatives have said that when the spacecraft was getting ready to land, the thrusters were turned off so that it would be able to gently glide across the surface to ensure that no damage would be done to the machine. If photos are observed carefully, slight indents in the dusty surface can be seen from where the spacecraft landed along the surface. Still photographs have caused a great deal of controversy between NASA and conspiracy theorists because they are the most detailed pieces of evidence. Rene and Milne claim that the shadows in the pictures come from different directions, but on the moon where there is only one source of light (the sun) this would be impossible. Additional light sources prove that it had to have been staged in a studio. Common sense proves this wrong.

The moons surface is very bumpy and filled with rocks and craters. Even though the light is coming from a common direction, the imperfections on the ground of the moon cause the shadows to break up and bend different ways. If you go outside and look at the shadow of a tree where the sidewalk and street meet, you will see that the shadow bends because the ground is seeing the light from two different angles. Also, the photographic equipment used by the astronauts on the lunar surface was a shortened wide-angle lens. The hand-held Hasseblad 70mm cameras used by the astronauts will distort otherwise parallel shadows. Outdoor photos from earth will show the same effect. Conspiracy theorists also say that the foreground of many images of the astronauts on the Moon are filled in with light, while the shadows remain absolutely black. again proving that there are multiple light sources. They basically think that an astronaut with his back to the sun should be as dark as the shadows around him. Being that there is no other light source on the moon, it had to have been filmed in a studio with lamps and reflectors. The answer to this issue is that there was in fact a reflector to make the images so definedthe moonas surface itself! The moons surface dust is a bright gray color that contains a lot of glass beads with reflective minerals in it (this is know due to scientists studying rocks that have been brought back to earth and have been proved to be impossible for them to have originated on earth).

When sunlight hits the lunar surface, it causes the light to reflect off the ground and hit whatever is on the surface. In this case, it was the astronauts. Why were there no stars in the background of any of the photos? This question is a very good one that was raised by the theorists. They feel that since NASA knew that it would be impossible to recreate the brightness and order of the stars in the actual sky, they felt it would be easier to leave them out completely. NASA and other scientists have a valid response to this concern. Actually, anyone with the slightest knowledge of photography could answer this question. Any brightly lit foreground object must be photographed with a very short exposure time in order to ensure that the image is not badly overexposed. Any background pinpoint light sources, such as stars that are literally trillions of miles away, will not show up at all. In order to capture the images of the stars, the cameras would have needed to have a long exposure time which would make the images in the foreground look like one big blob of light. Rene came up with the idea that it would be very difficult if not impossible for astronauts in space gloves to take a picture because their hands canat bend well to release the shutter. The cameras were specially modified to be able to be operated while a person is wearing a space glove.

The way it really went was that the cameras used on the Apollo missions had the shutter release as a large trigger on the pistol grip. Some astronauts who took pictures on the moon actually admitted to unintentionally taking pictures because they held the pistol grip wrong from time to time. The shutter speed control on these standard 500/EL cameras had to be modified in order for someone with space gloves to be able to operate them also. Big clumsy gloves do not impair people of taking pictures when the camera is modified to work with the gloves. The argument that the astronauts could not have survived the trip due to radiation from the Van Allen Belts (a pair of torodial shaped belts of high-energy electrons and ions trapped in the Earth’s magnetic field.) was brought to the attention of the public through the conspiracy theorists. The Van Allen Belts do contain an amount of radiation that would kill a human, but since NASA was aware of this, they were able to figure out a way to avoid contact. The solution to solve this problem was to keep the spacecraft at low Earth orbit altitudes and then to send it through the belts at a high speeda’25,000 mph. This allowed the spacecraft to pass through the belts in less than one hour and only absorb 1 rad. There was also protective shield on the spacecraft itself, which turned out to be unnecessary because the high speed allowed them to avoid dangerous radiation. Solar flares were actually more of a concern to NASA than radiation was, so conspiracy theorists questioned how the spacecraft avoided them.

The answer to this is simplethere werenat any major solar flares during the time of the Apollo missions. Apollo landing conspiracy theorists have thought of some convincing arguments as well as some insensible arguments to prove that none of the six Apollo missions that were said to have landed on the moon actually did land on the moon. If this were true, NASA would have had to have staged six different landings at six different time periods and make them all look believable. Furthermore, at the time of the first Apollo landing, the U.S. was still in large competition with the U.S.S.R. If it were not possible for the Apollo missions to land on the moon, the Russian space organization could have told the world that it was impossible and publicly embarrass us. If the U.S.s space competitor did not accuse us of creating a fake moon landing, why would anyone else? If it were so easy to film a fake landing in a studio, couldnt the Russians have done the same thing? The conspiracy theorists have been proven wrong in all of their arguments and concerns, leaving the Apollo missions actually landing on the moon to be the only possibility.