I am so sick of this question; yes the US went to the Moon
A. Your conspiracy would be too huge and collapse.
B. Russia would have caught us in the lie.
C. The mirror planted there by Apollo Astronauts is still there.
Yes exposure to radiation is dangerous and NASA keeps track of the cumulative radiation dosage of all astronauts, but the radiation of the Van Allen Belt is not lethal. It is an artifact of the Earth’s magnetic field and it PREVENTS a lethal dose of solar radiation reaching earth. We have had problems with a breech of the Van Allen Belt and the Ozone layer creating the largest blackout in American history. If we had any astronauts in orbit at that time they would have died from fatal exposure, but we didn’t.
Russia was leading in the Space Race, at the height of the cold war and the technology of their captured German scientists was just as good as the technology of our “liberated” German scientists. The U.S.S.R. was watching the US like a hawk and if they had tired to lie about a moon landing then the propaganda victory would have been immense.
No the space race was not the difference between winning and losing the Cold War. The Cold War was merely one of survival. The Space Race was responsible for a lot of our advanced technology from the first portable TV camera carried by astronauts on Apollo 11 to Corning Wear and Teflon for heat shields and a large portion of the plastic industry. Then GPS and the land sat and all our spy satellites all came from the space program.
Radio messages sent to the earth by the Apollo astronauts weren’t just sent to NASA it required a world wide network with satellites based in Spain, Australia, the US and at sea. Those same signals were easy for Russia to intercept, yet you have never heard a single Russian claim that the US didn’t go to the moon. If they tried that the International Community would laugh them out of the UN. Yet still this conspiracy exists?
Then think of the National Inquirer and its rivals. How much would they pay for solid information on the US not going to the moon? Millions, probably billions of dollars would be paid for any proof, yet there has never been a creditable story about the lunar landing hoax. Millions of people including my father were involved in the space program and the race to the moon. There is an old saying “Two people can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.” The chances of everyone keeping such a huge hoax a secret are zero, the lure of money and publicity are too strong.
Where do you think the space rocks and lunar dust came from? They have been loaned to scientists for generations, studied and displayed for years, by people totally independent of the US, yet none of them have claimed that the rocks are a hoax.
Hollywood has been guilty of publishing some huge blockbusters based on thin information and some weird fiction, but they haven’t been guilty of generating huge hoaxes. Tom Hanks did the movie Apollo 13 and then did a documentary on the Moon Program that was released on DVD and shown on the History Channel. Yet all those people would have to be involved in your conspiracy to keep the lunar landing hoax. No one is going to try and make a huge Hollywood Movie without researching the heck out of it to make sure that any claims made are real. The entire plot of Apollo 13 is based on a true story and it takes place AFTER 2 successful lunar landings. Yet Hollywood was stupid enough to base all of that on a hoax? I don’t think so.
Because of the lack of interest in the Space Program we stopped going to the moon. If you watch Apollo 13 you see that interest was flagging back then, yet we kept going to the moon until Apollo 17. After the end of the Apollo program we lost the technology and the capability to repeat the program. That is why NASA is having to reinvent the entire lunar program from scratch. The same stupid thing is going to happen after we abandon the space shuttle. In 50-60 years we are going to have to reinvent the same program all over again.
Conspiracy theories on this scale are examples of Hitler’s tactic “The Big Lie.” If you tell a lie enough times then enough people will start to believe it. P. T. Barnum invented the huge 3 ring circus and he used to say, “There is a sucker born every minute.” To get people to go through the midway faster he would post signs “This way to the Egress.” Egress is a $10 word for exit, but he fooled millions of people into searching for the elusive egress.
The face on Mars conspiracy was the result of a NASA scientist trying to say “Hey, look at this image, it is FREAKING Mars man, we are seeing Mars.” What he said was “Here is a rock formation that looks like a face.” Suddenly the NASA conspiracy to hide signs of intelligent life on Mars was born. Needless to say when NASA examined that spot with a different orbiter, in a higher resolution and at a different angle it didn’t look like a face anymore. It was a chance of rock and light; not a real face.
If you want to find more data to debunk this theory then go to Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Landing_Hoax