IN A NUTSHELL:He was referring to scientific truth, since he was talking to students to encourage them to make new discoveries.
THE DETAILS: Conspiracy theorist Richard Hoagland noted more than once that Neil Armstrong, during a public speech, mentioned “truth’s protective layers”.
These words are seen, by him and by manyotherconspiracytheorists, as a cryptic confession of some secret that involved him. This secret, it is claimed, is clearly tied to his mission to the Moon, Apollo 11.
Let’s gather the facts. The speech being referenced is the one he made at the White House for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first Moon landing, on July 20, 1994, in front of then president Bill Clinton and vice president Al Gore. Armstrong’s Apollo 11 crewmembers, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins, were also there (Figure 9.13-1).
Figure 9.13-1. Neil Armstrong”s speech at the White House (1994).
Here is a transcript of Armstrong’s short speech:
Wilbur Wright once noted that the only bird that could talk was the parrot, and he didn’t fly very well [laughter from the audience], so I'll be brief. This week America has been recalling the Apollo program and reliving the memories of those times in which so many of us here, the colleagues here in the first rows, were immersed. Our old astrogeology mentor, Gene Shoemaker, even called in one of his comets [laughter from the audience] to mark the occasion with spectacular Jovian fireworks [he is referring to the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet, which crashed into Jupiter on July 16-22, 1994] and reminding us one again of the power and consequence of celestial extracurricular activities.
Many Americans were part of Apollo, about one or two in each thousand citizens, all across the country. They were asked by their country to do the impossible -- to envisage, to design and to build a method of breaking the bonds of Earth's gravity and then sally forth and visit another heavenly body. The principal elements -- leaving earth, navigating in space and descending to a planet unencumbered with runways and traffic controls -- would include the major requirements necessary for a spacefaring people.
Today a Space Shuttle flies overhead with an international crew. A number of countries have international space programs. During the space age we have increased the knowledge of our universe a thousandfold.
Today we have with us a group of students, among America's best. To you we say: we’ve only completed the beginning. We leave you much that is undone. There are great ideas undiscovered, breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of truth's protective layers. There are places to go beyond belief. Those challenges are yours -- in many fields, not the least of which is space, because there lies human destiny. Thank you.
This is the context in which Neil Armstrong speaks the words in dispute: he is addressing students, to whom he is passing the torch, inviting them to discover hidden truths just like any scientist does when he or she tries to unmask the secrets of nature, which tends to protect them; he is also asking them to do so in any field, not just in space.
In other words, conspiracy theorists are forcing an interpretation of Armstrong’s words to adapt them to theire predefined argument.
IN A NUTSHELL:Because of his Nazi past, not because of any suspicion that he might have faked the Moon landings. And his name was removed from just one school.
THE DETAILS: Some conspiracy theorists allege that some German schools that had changed their name to honor Project Apollo’s master rocket designer, Wernher von Braun, have since changed it again to remove all mention of his name. This is said to have occurred because the schools discovered that the Moon landings were faked with the German scientist’s help. These schools, however, are not identified by the promoters of this theory.
Actually, only one German school that was named after von Braun is known to have subsequently changed its name again: a Gymnasium (high school) in Friedberg, Bavaria, was named after him in 1979, shortly after his death in 1977.
In 2012 this Wernher-von-Braun-Gymnasium was renamed to Staatliches Gymnasium Friedberg, but not due to von Braun’s involvement with the Apollo program: the name was changed because von Braun had been a military member of the Nazi Party during World War II as a rocket scientist. Before surrendering to US troops in 1945, he had designed rocket weapons such as the V-2 for the German army.*
IN A NUTSHELL:No. Two of the ten astronauts had nothing to do with the Apollo project: the compilers of this death list are cooking the books. Also, being a test pilot of experimental, high-performance aircraft and spacecraft has always been dangerous and deadly. Test pilots died often, in the Fifties and Sixties, outside of the American space program as well, as witnessed by any aviation history book.
THE DETAILS: The Fox TV program Did We Land on the Moon? states that “Between 1964 and 1967, a total of ten astronauts lost their lives in freak accidents. These deaths accounted for an astonishing 15% of NASA’s astronaut corps.”
Bill Kaysing then adds that “to keep something that’s a lie wrapped up and covered over, you’ve got to eliminate all the people that can talk about it”. The implication is that these “freak accidents” were staged to keep under wraps the secret that the Apollo missions would be faked. Conspiracy theorists, here, are no longer talking about doctored photographs: they’re openly making accusations of murder.
The program shows photographs of ten men without bothering to identify them (Figure 9.11-1).
Figure 9.11-1. From 33:44 onwards, Did We Land on the Moon? talks about ten allegedly mysterious deaths without naming the people shown.
Because of this lazy lack of identification, patient, time-consuming historical research is necessary to find their names and check whether they actually did die in freak accidents and what their involvement in the Apollo program was.
It turns out that two of them weren’t even part of the Apollo program. Further details on these men are in the chapter Remembering the fallen, but here are the key facts.
Figure 9.11-2. Fox TV fails to identify this man. He‘s USAF captain Theodore C. Freeman.
Figure 9.11-2 shows Theodore Cordy Freeman, USAF captain, aeronautical engineer and experimental aircraft test pilot. He died in 1964, two years before the first test flight of the Apollo spacecraft and three years before the first flight of a Saturn V, in a plane crash caused by a bird strike. He had been selected as an astronaut for the Gemini and Apollo projects but was never assigned to a specific mission.
Figure 9.11-3. USAF major Edward G. Givens, not named by Fox TV.
The man in Figure 9.11-3 is Edward Galen Givens, Jr.: USAF major and test pilot, selected and trained by NASA in 1966 as an astronaut for the Apollo Applications Program, a planned series of flights that were intended to follow the first lunar landing. He was on the backup crew of Apollo 7. He died in a car accident in 1967.
Figure 9.11-4. USAF major Robert H. Lawrence, Jr. He is not identified by Fox TV and was not part of the Apollo program.
Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr. (Figure 9.11-4) was a USAF major and test pilot, selected in June 1967 for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory project, which intended to place military space stations in Earth orbit to perform reconnaissance of enemy territories. He died on December 8, 1967 in the crash of his F-104 trainer, flown by his student. He was not involved in the Apollo program.
Figure 9.11-5. USMC major Clifton C. William, not identified by Fox TV.
Figure 9.11-5 is a photograph of Clifton Curtis Williams, Jr., major of the Marines and test pilot, chosen for NASA’s third group of astronauts in 1963. He was part of the backup crew of Gemini 10 and Apollo 9. He died in 1967 when the T-38 supersonic trainer that he was flying developed a malfunction and crashed.
Figure 9.11-6. US Navy test pilot Elliot M. See, not identified by Fox TV.
The man in Figure 9.11-6 is Elliot McKay See, Jr., US Navy engineer and test pilot, selected as an astronaut by NASA in 1962. He also supervised the design and development of spacecraft guidance and navigation systems. He had been chosen to command Gemini 9, but died on February 28, 1966 together with astronaut candidate Charles Bassett when their T-38 jet crashed during a low-visibility instrument-only landing.
Figure 9.11-7. USAF major Michael J. Adams, not identified by Fox TV. He was not part of the Apollo program.
Figure 9.11-7 shows Michael James Adams. He was a USAF major and test pilot, selected as astronaut for the Manned Orbiting Laboratory military project. He died on November 15, 1967, when his X-15 experimental hypersonic rocket plane broke up as it was flying at five times the speed of sound. He was not involved in any way with the Apollo project.
Figure 9.11-8. USAF captain Charles A. Bassett II, not identified by Fox TV.
Charles Arthur “Art” Bassett II (Figure 9.11-8) was a USAF captain and test pilot. Member of NASA’s third group of astronauts, selected in October 1963. He was assigned to Gemini 9 together with Elliot McKay See, but died with See on February 28, 1966, in the crash of their T-38 trainer.
Figure 9.11-9. Virgil I. Grissom, Ed H. White and Roger B. Chaffee, not identified by Fox TV.
The last photo shown by Fox TV without identification shows Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom, Edward Higgins White, Roger Bruce Chaffee. As already described in the previous chapters of this book, these three astronauts died together in a fire on the launch pad, during a spacecraft systems test, on January 27, 1967.
---
To sum up the allegedly suspicious deaths:
two involved military astronauts (Michael James Adams and Robert Henry Lawrence) who had nothing to do with the Apollo project;
four (Charles Bassett, Elliott See, Theodore Freeman and Clifton Williams) occurred in three accidents with T-38 supersonic training jets (they were test pilots);
one (Ed Givens) was the result of a car crash;
and Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in the Apollo 1 fire.
Ten deaths over three years was sadly par for the course in the high-risk world of test pilots in those days, as Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff mercilessly recounts, so statistically there’s nothing particularly suspicious about these events.
What is suspicious, instead, is that the Fox TV list includes two people who were not part of the Apollo project. It’s easy to create an atmosphere of mystery if you inflate the number of deaths by 25%.
IN A NUTSHELL:He died after he testified; not an effective way to silence a witness. Safety inspector Thomas Baron died in a car accident after testifying in writing before Congress and after publishing his criticism of the safety of the Apollo spacecraft.
THE DETAILS: Thomas Ronald Baron was a safety and quality inspector who worked at the Kennedy Space Center from September 1965 to November 1966. He reported to his superiors many acts of worker negligence, poor workmanship and disregard for safety rules.
Figure 9.10-1. Thomas Baron.
His reports, however, were not based on direct observation, but on second-hand notes from other people, and this caused them to be taken lightly. He submitted some of his remarks to NASA at the end of 1966 in a 55-page report; some of his warnings were heeded, while others were considered groundless. Baron felt disregarded and sidelined and so leaked his criticism directly to the press. This decision led North American Aviation (the manufacturer of the Apollo Command Modules) to fire him in January 1967.
Baron began to draft on his own a more detailed 500-page report. After the Apollo 1 fire, which took the lives of Grissom, White and Chaffee on January 27, 1967, Baron delivered this report to the committees of the US Congress that were investigating the disaster and on April 21, 1967 testified before a subcommittee governed by Congressman Olin Teague.
One week after testifying, Baron and his family were killed when their car was struck by a train at a level crossing. His full-length report was never made public and has since vanished.
If the facts are told in this way, they certainly lend themselves to a conspiracy theory: Baron was killed to silence him and make sure that nobody found out that the Apollo project was in deep trouble or was a sham.
However, this theory clashes with a basic logic flaw: Baron died after he had talked to the press, after delivering his extended report to Congress, after testifying before the commission subcommittee, and after the very serious problems in the design of the Apollo command module had become public in the most tragic and inescapable way: with the death of three astronauts. Silencing Baron at this point would have been absolutely useless.
Moreover, while the nature of the accident that killed Baron and his family might seem freakish and suspicious at first glance, if you consider the logistics of coordinating a train to pass at the exact time when Baron’s car is passing and making sure Baron can’t see it and avoid being struck, it seems an absurdly complicated way to go about eliminating an embarrassing witness.
What happened to the 500-page report is unclear. The transcripts of Baron’s testimony (which are publicly available) indicate that the report was discussed and that the Congress committee was reluctant to include it as an official record because its size made it awkward and costly to duplicate and print it, especially if the report included hearsay, which would have been legally inadmissible anyway.
NASA and North American Aviation, the organizations that had most to lose from its publication, never had the opportunity to destroy it, since Baron gave it directly to the Congressmen. It is unknown whether the report was returned to Baron or simply discarded.
Either way, it mattered little whether the report was saved or not: NASA and especially North American Aviation were already in the spotlight for the Apollo 1 disaster and their omissions had already been made public. Baron’s report would have made no difference before the coffins of Grissom, Chaffee and White (Figure 9.10-2).
Figure 9.10-2. Gus Grissom’s coffin at the Arlington cemetery, escorted by Alan Shepard, John Glenn, Gordon Cooper and John Young. Photo 67-H-141. Scan by Ed Hengeveld.
IN A NUTSHELL:No. The accident in which Grissom died actually revealed the problems with the Apollo spacecraft in a tragic way that nobody could ignore.
THE DETAILS: In the 2001 Fox TV program Did We Land on the Moon?, Scott Grissom (Figure 9.9-1), son of astronaut Gus Grissom who died with Ed White and Roger Chaffee in the fire of their Apollo 1 Command Module during a ground test on January 27, 1967, stated that the spacecraft “was intentionally sabotaged”.
Figure 9.9-1. Scott Grissom in the documentary Did We Land on the Moon? (2001).
Some Moon hoax proponents claim that Grissom was killed because he was an outspoken critic of the Apollo program and was about to announce that the spacecraft would never be able to get to the Moon.
In other words, allegedly Gus Grissom was going to disclose that the Apollo spacecraft was dangerously unsafe and unreliable and so someone decided to shut him up by making him die in an onboard fire that disclosed to everyone that the Apollo spacecraft was dangerously unsafe and unreliable. A flawless plan.
Scott Grissom’s accusations are not backed by any hard evidence. The Fox TV program says that “the cause of the fire is still a mystery and the capsule remains locked away at a military base”, but this statement is twice incorrect and misleading.
First of all, the specific cause of the fire, i.e., the exact component that triggered it, is not known, but the general causes of the blase are not a mystery at all: seconds before the first report of fire by the crew, telemetry tapes recorded a short-circuit in the spacecraft cabin, which was built with materials that became highly flammable in a high-pressure (1.13 atm, 16.7 psi), pure-oxygen environment such as the one used for the specific test that was being run on that fatal day. In these conditions, the slightest spark, for example due to static electricity or faulty wiring, could trigger a raging blaze, and it did.
Figure 9.9-2. The Apollo 1 hatch opening shows the charred interior of the spacecraft.
The crew was trapped in the spacecraft by the complicated double hatch, which opened inward and therefore was pressed shut by the sudden internal pressure build-up caused by the heat. Grissom, White and Chaffee died within seconds due to inhalation of toxic gases from the fire.
The tragedy forced NASA and its contractors to review all their procedures and rethink the redesign of all the Apollo spacecraft that was already in progress, focusing on the need to minimize the risk of fire.
In the course of twenty-one frantic months, all flammable materials were replaced by self-extinguishing ones, the nylon spacesuits were replaced with fire- and heat-resistant models, a hatch that could open outward in less than ten seconds was introduced and the onboard atmosphere was changed to 60% oxygen and 40% nitrogen at sea level pressure during liftoff and 0.3 atm (5 psi) of pure oxygen for the remainder of the flight. Apollo 7 was the first flight to introduce these fixes.
Figure 9.9-3. Part of the remains of the Apollo 1 spacecraft. Source: Chariots for Apollo.
Secondly, the Apollo 1 capsule is not “locked away at a military base”, as if to suggest some secret that has to be kept under wraps: records show that at the end of the inquiry into the accident the capsule was taken to NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, where it remained until 2007. After that date it was placed in an environmentally controlled warehouse at the same center, which is not a military base (NASA is a civilian agency), although there is a military facility nearby.
On 27 January 2017, exactly fifty years after the fatal fire, a memorial display was opened to the public at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex. This display describes the Apollo 1 disaster and the lives of its three astronauts and includes the original hatch of the spacecraft.
Figure 9.9-4. The Apollo 1 display opened in January 2017 includes the three layers of the complicated double hatch of the original spacecraft. Source: NASA. Credit: Kim Shiflett.
The mystery, in other words, is entirely fabricated by Fox TV’s sensationalist scriptwriters.
Moreover, the alleged motive makes no sense also because Grissom was far from being a lonely voice in the desert as regards the flaws of the Apollo spacecraft. Indeed, a major redesign of the spacecraft was already in progress and NASA’s post-accident report stated openly that “deficiencies in design, manufacture, installation, rework and quality control existed in the electrical wiring... No design features for fire protection were incorporated... Non-certified equipment items were installed in the Command Module at time of test.”*
IN A NUTSHELL:Because it’s not a NASA Moon rock. Everything points to a mistake or to a hoax orchestrated by two Dutch artists in 2006. NASA has never authenticated the “rock” (there are no documents tracing its origins), it’s far too big to be a donated lunar sample, and its background story is nonsensical. It was reportedly donated privately in 1969 to a retired prime minister instead of being given, as was customary, to a representative of the then-current Dutch government; it wasn’t put on public display as a Moon rock would have deserved; and real donated Moon rocks were encapsulated in transparent plastic, while this one is not.
THE DETAILS:* In August 2009, several media outlets began reporting that the curators of the Dutch national museum in Amsterdam, the Rijksmuseum, had discovered that an exhibit that had been presented for years as an Apollo 11 Moon rock was actually a chunk of petrified wood (Figure 9.8-1).
* I am indebted to Diego Cuoghi for sharing his research into many of the details of this story.
Figure 9.8-1. The fake “Moon rock” and its descriptive card. Credit: Associated Press.
The reports stated that the alleged Moon rock had been donated on October 9, 1969 by J. W. Middendorf II, who was the US ambassador to the Netherlands at the time, to a former Dutch prime minister, Willem Drees, during the world tour of the Apollo 11 astronauts following their historic mission. When Drees died, in 1988, the item was reportedly put on display in the museum.
However, in 2006 Arno Wielders, a physicist and aerospace entrepreneur, saw it and warned the museum that it was highly unlikely that NASA had donated such a priceless Moon rock just three months after returning from the Moon and before any further samples were brought back by later Apollo flights. Moreover, the lunar samples donated to other countries were tiny fragments, whereas this “Moon rock” measured 55 by 20 millimeters (2.2 by 0.8 inches).
A phone call to NASA’s lunar rock sample management office confirmed these doubts: the curator stated that the item could not possibly be a Moon rock.
The investigation conducted in 2009 by Xandra Van Gelder, chief editor of the museum’s Oog magazine, confirmed that the exhibit was a fake. Van Gelder reported that NASA hadn’t authenticated the specific item but had merely stated that it was likely that the Netherlands had received a Moon rock, since the US had donated small samples to over 100 countries in the early 1970s.
Van Gelder also noted that the history of the item was suspicious. Real samples would be donated by the US government to the people of a country through a representative of the then-current government, not to a former prime minister who in 1969 had been out of office for eleven years. The US ambassador explained that he had received the exhibit from the US State Department, but he could not recall the details of the matter.
In addition to its inconsistent and implausible history, the fakery, if intended, wasn’t particularly subtle. The reddish color of the item was completely different from the usual color of lunar samples. Petrologist Wim van Westrenen, of the Amsterdam Free University, reported that he was immediately aware that something was wrong. Spectroscopic and microscopic inspection of a fragment taken from the item found quartz and cell-like structures typical of petrified wood.
Further anomalies become evident if the item is compared with a real sample donated to the Netherlands and stored at the Boerhaave museum (Figure 9.8-2).
Figure 9.8-2. At the top, encapsulated in clear plastic, a genuine sample of Moon rock donated to the Netherlands by the US. Credit: Museumboerhaave.nl.
The real Dutch sample is encapsulated in plastic and accompanied by a national flag and by plaques that clearly identify it as fragments of Moon rocks retrieved by Apollo 11 and “presented to the people of the Kingdom of the Netherlands by Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America”. Specifically, the plaque states that “this flag of your nation was carried to the Moon and back by Apollo 11, and this fragment of the Moon’s surface was brought to Earth by the crew of that first manned lunar landing.”
The alleged “Moon rock” is not encapsulated or mounted in any way and is simply accompanied by a gold-colored card. This card doesn’t even say it’s a lunar sample and spells center with an incongruous British spelling (centre) and hyphenates the name of the mission (“Apollo-11”).
Another questionable issue is the fact that such a rare and important item (there are only 382 kilograms (842 pounds) of Apollo moon rocks in the entire world) surfaced only during an “art exhibition” organized in 2006 by Rotterdam artists Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol and not during a science-oriented event. The exhibition was rather tongue-in-cheek, since it asked visitors what they thought of the museum’s plans to open an exhibition center on the Moon.
However, it is true that on October 9, 1969 the Apollo 11 astronauts actually were in Amsterdam on an official visit.
Figure 9.8-3. The “Moon rock” as shown in the Rijksmuseum catalog (where it was classified as fake).
For all these reasons, the “Moon rock” is now cataloged by the Rijksmuseum as item number NG-1991-4-25 and described as a “piece of black and red petrified wood” and classified unquestionably as “fake”. The words “Moon rock retrieved by the Apollo 11 crew” are described as merely the title of the artwork.
All this suggests an art exhibit that created a fictional backstory which was misinterpreted or deliberately presented as factual. This would explain the fact that the artists who found the “rock” in the storage section of the museum reported in 2007 that “in a drawer they saw a very small rock with a note with it. On that note it said that this stone came from the moon.” Yet the photographs of the note show that it doesn’t say that the stone is a lunar specimen.
Bikvanderpol’s Fly Me to the Moon was a meditation on the social life of a piece of moonrock donated to the national collection by former Dutch premier Willem Drees’s family after his death (Bikvanderpol 2006). Although NG-1991-4-25 was subsequently unmasked as a piece of fossilized wood, this only augments its heritage interest.
Bouquet’s book, on page 210, also references the item with the words “Bikvanderpol (2006), NG-1991-4-25 Fly Me to the Moon, New York: Sternberg”. This appears to be a reference to a book by the same name written by Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol and available for purchase through Google Books and online stores with ISBN 1933128208.
The book, which I purchased in 2019, includes a few photographs of the “Moon rock”: two are shown in Figures 9.8-4 and 9.8-5. The text of the book seems to suggest that a misunderstanding is more likely than an intentional prank.
Figure 9.8-4. Bottom left: the alleged Moon rock in a photograph described as “Drawer with collection of Drees objects” in the book NG-1991-4-25. Scan from my personal book collection.
Figure 9.8-5. The alleged Moon rock in a photograph described as“Card belonging to moonrock”in the book NG-1991-4-25. Scanned from my personal book collection. Credit: Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.
In any case, it is unquestionable that the item was not formally authenticated by NASA and that anyone arguing that this is evidence of faking the trips to the Moon would have to explain why the perpetrators of a conspiracy on which the worldwide standing of the US depended would be so dumb as to manufacture such a crude and easily detectable fake.
IN A NUTSHELL:Because it’s often edited out by documentary makers. To keep the narrative
flowing, they often summarize or edit footage. That’s why sometimes in
documentaries there’s no speed-of-light delay in Apollo’s Earth-Moon
communications. But the delay is there in the unabridged reference
recordings and transcripts published by NASA. Moreover, sometimes astronauts
on the Moon replied before Mission Control had finished talking.
THE DETAILS: In some clips of the footage of the Moon landings, the
astronauts appear to answer the radio messages from Earth too quickly. Radio
waves, traveling at the speed of light, take about a second and a quarter to
cross the gap between the Earth and the Moon, so there should be at least an
equivalent pause between the words uttered in Mission Control in Houston and
the replies from the astronauts on the Moon. If there’s no delay, the radio
transmissions must have been fake, argue some conspiracy theorists.
But why would the hypothetical fakers have been so stupid as to forget to
include the radio delay?
Indeed, these apparent anomalies have far less conspiratorial explanations.
Edits for timing and narrative purposes in documentaries
In documentaries, sound and footage are often edited for conciseness or pacing
with respect to the original recordings. With very few exceptions,
documentaries tend to omit unnecessary dialogue and use mismatched images to
achieve a more dramatic and interesting narration by focusing on key moments.
There’s no real intent to deceive, but the end result is that many
documentaries are not as faithful as one might expect. The extent to which
even award-winning films, such as For All Mankind, present inaccurately
and misleadingly images and sounds of the Apollo missions is detailed by
spaceflight historian James Oberg’s article
Apollo 11 TV Documentary Misrepresentations
(Wall Street Journal, 1994).
For example, the Apollo 11 lunar landing is often portrayed so that it seems
that the very first words spoken on the Moon were
“Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed”. Actually, if you go to
the original recordings and transcripts (available at the
Apollo Lunar Surface Journal
website), it turns out that those famous words were preceded by a substantial
chunk of technical reporting.
Here’s the unabridged transcript, starting from the very first contact with
the lunar surface (Figure 9.7-1):
102:45:40 Aldrin: Contact Light.
Aldrin is telling Mission Control that the Lunar Contact warning light has
turned on: this means that at least one of the 173-centimeter (68-inch) probes
under the footpads of the Lunar Module has touched the ground. Technically,
these are the first words spoken on the Moon.
Once the LM has settled on the surface, the series of technical status reports
continues, as the spacecraft is prepared for its stay on the Moon:
102:45:43 Armstrong: Shutdown.
102:45:44 Aldrin: Okay. Engine Stop.
102:45:45 Aldrin: ACA out of Detent.
102:45:46 Armstrong: Out of Detent. Auto.
102:45:47 Aldrin: Mode Control, both Auto. Descent Engine Command Override,
Off. Engine Arm, Off. 413 is in.
Only at this point does Mission Control speak out: Charlie Duke, future Apollo
16 astronaut, is working as Capcom for Apollo 11. He is one of the few people
who talk directly to the crew in space:
102:45:57 Duke: We copy you down, Eagle.
102:45:58 Armstrong: Engine arm is off.
[pause] Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.
It’s quite obvious that these status reports are of no interest to the average
viewer: that’s why they often get cut in documentaries.
Figure 9.7-1. Audio and onboard footage of the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
Contact is announced at 14:30.
Another frequent example of a cut for narrative purposes occurs seconds later:
Charlie Duke, momentarily tongue-tied by the excitement of the event,
mispronounces the new name of the Lunar Module, i.e., Tranquility Base.
He starts to say “Roger, Twan...”, then pauses and corrects himself:
“...Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You got a bunch of guys about
to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”
In most documentaries this flub is edited out.
Even the famous phrase
“One small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind” is often
presented in the wrong context for the sake of brevity: it’s usually heard as
we see Neil Armstrong jump down the ladder of the LM. But actually, in the
original video recording Armstrong jumps down and lands on the LM footpad,
without touching the ground, describes his surroundings, hops up the ladder
again (to test that he will be able to get back up at the end of the
moonwalk), jumps down again, and only then does he cautiously place his left
foot on the surface of the Moon and utter the historic words (Figure 9.7-2).
Figure 9.7-2. Photos, live TV and 16 mm footage of the beginning of the
Apollo 11 moonwalk. Armstrong’s famous words are at 3:30.
Conspiracy theorists persistently make the mistake of considering
documentaries to be equivalent to official records. They are not; the only
true reference material is constituted by the original raw data and footage.
Talking over each other
There’s also another even less dramatic explanation for the apparently missing
delays: sometimes the astronauts on the Moon answered the first part of a
message from Houston and then the voice from Earth continued talking, creating
what sounds like an excessively short gap.
The astronauts also sometimes began speaking of their own initiative instead
of responding to a communication from Earth and then Mission Control started
speaking, giving the impression that the astronauts were answering and were
doing so too soon.
Missing delay in Spacecraft Films DVDs
One objection raised by conspiracy theorists is that the Apollo mission DVDs produced by Spacecraft
Films, which offer the unedited recordings of the astronauts’ lunar excursions and have been for years one of the most exhaustive reference sources regarding the Moon landings, sometimes seem to lack the expected radio delay.
These DVDs are an invaluable historical asset for anyone who wants to learn about the Moon landings, but they’re not perfect and they’re not official NASA productions (and today have been surpassed, in terms of completeness for some missions, by Ben Feist’s
Apollo in Real Time website). The author of the DVDs, Mark Gray, is a private individual who gathered all the best audio and video recordings available at the time, from disparate sources, and assembled and synchronized them, trying to be as complete and faithful as humanly possible to the original events.
However, some inaccuracies in such a monumental work of documentation are almost inevitable. Clips that were recorded on videotape are mixed with recordings that were made on film, with separate audio tracks and therefore with all the audio-video misalignments that this mix entails. Moreover, the sources are analog media, which have natural speed variations and fluctuations both during recording and during playback. When merging sound clips from different sources it’s easy not to notice that the radio silence in one clip is not perfectly matched up with the silence in another clip. Most of all, this is irrelevant in terms of the experience of watching these DVDs.
There’s also the basic issue of synchronizing two audio sources (communications from Earth and communications from the Moon) that by their very nature have timing offsets that depend on the transmission time (at the speed of light) and on the equipment used, much as occurs nowadays with live sports broadcasts via satellite or on streaming channels, for example. There isn’t an absolute “now”; there’s no unifying timebase. Synchronization varies depending on where the spectator is.
Quite understandably, therefore, in the recordings on Spacecraft Films’ DVDs or in any other such work there may be moments when the sound is not perfectly synchronized with reality. But using this fact as proof that the Moon landings were faked is an error of method, because it fails to consider the far simpler alternative explanation and it doesn’t explain why the alleged fakers would forget to add the radio delay just here and there. Moreover, it clashes with all the other evidence that the Moon landings were real.
Rather ironically, sometimes conspiracy theorists themselves point out that another highly accurate technical source, the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal, also published the sound recordings of the moonwalks (without accompanying video) as part of its painstaking technical description of the activities of the astronauts on the Moon, and they note that these recordings have the correct delay. Their explanation is that the alleged fakers went back and fixed the missing delays after they were spotted. The more practical explanation is that the Surface Journal only published audio clips and therefore didn’t have to deal with the audio-video synchronization problems of DVD production.
IN A NUTSHELL:They haven’t. They’re preserved on microfilm at the Marshall Space Flight Center and on paper at Rocketdyne and in US federal archives. The F-1 engines of the giant rocket are being studied in detail and used as engineering templates for the next generation of spacecraft. Three whole Saturn V rockets are on public display, available to anyone who cares to examine them.
THE DETAILS: John Lewis, in his 1996 book Mining the Sky, reported that he had tried in vain to obtain the blueprints of the Saturn V rocket:
My attempts to find them several years ago met with no success: the plans have evidently been ‘lost’. The fleet has been destroyed. The plans are gone.
James Collier made a similar claim in his 1997 article Investigator Challenging NASA (published originally by Media Bypass magazine):
I asked for blueprints detailing the scientific thought behind its design. [...] Grumman told me that all the paperwork was destroyed. I was stunned. The LM historical paperwork was destroyed!? Why!? They had no answers.
Some hoax theorists have built on these reports to claim that the blueprints were destroyed to hide the (entirely hypothetical) fact that the Saturn V actually didn’t work and couldn’t reach the Moon as NASA instead claimed.
However, in 2000 NASA clarified* that the blueprints still exist as microfilm at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Moreover, the Federal Archives in East Point, Georgia, store approximately 82 cubic meters (2,900 cubic feet) of Saturn documents and Rocketdyne (the manufacturer of the main engines of all three Saturn V stages) has preserved dozens of volumes of Saturn-related information as part of its knowledge retention program.
Figure 9.6-1. A detail from one of the allegedly lost schematics of the Saturn V. Credit: Up-ship.com.
Moreover, the fleet has not been “destroyed”. There are three full, original Saturn V rockets on display and freely accessible to the public:
one at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida;
one at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas;
and one at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama (Figure 9.6-2).
There is also a complete first stage of a Saturn V at the Infinity Science Center in Mississippi, and a third stage, converted as a spare for the Skylab space station, is at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. D.C.
Therefore, anyone who wished to study in extreme detail the technologies used to go to the Moon could do so by examining these spacecraft, the spacesuits and all the other Apollo hardware stored in museums.
Figure 9.6-2. An original Saturn V on display at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Credit: Spacecamp.com.
In 2013, a team of engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, actually took to pieces one of the original F-1 engines of the first stage of the Saturn V rocket and test-fired its gas generator, the component that powers the engine’s turbopump, which had to inject almost three tons of propellant per second into the thrust chamber. In other words, the fact that these engines really work as advertised is not just a decades-old claim: it has actually been put to the test.
However, it’s very important to avoid the mistake of thinking that if the detailed blueprints of the Saturn V and of the Apollo spacecraft still exist, then it should be trivial to build them again and fly them to go back to the Moon. But the necessary know-how, the unwritten skills of the countless workers who painstakingly built by hand each component of these incredibly complex machines, have been lost to time. The people who knew how to perform these delicate manual procedures have aged or died.
Building a 1960s Saturn V would also entail rebuilding from scratch the entire manufacturing pipeline, i.e., the machines that manufacture the components of the machines that used to build the Saturns. Then it would be necessary to rediscover and recreate the testing and quality control equipment and procedures that were used to flight-quality each and every component. The manufacturing, inspection, and testing methods we use today are radically different from the ones used in the Apollo era.
Accordingly, remaking a Saturn V would be enormously expensive and inefficient. It would probably be cheaper to design a new rocket from scratch.
Figure 9.6-3. This video explains why it would be impractical to build from scratch the giant F-1 engines of the Saturn V rocket.
IN A NUTSHELL:They are. NASA has always provided access to copies of its technical documents, photographs and film footage for anyone willing to file a formal request and pay for duplication and postage. Now that documents can be distributed at no cost via the Internet, an immense amount of NASA data is available with just a few mouse clicks.
THE DETAILS: Bill Kaysing, on page 7 of his book We Never Went to the Moon, asks this question:
Why is it that NASA’s Apollo records are not classified, but are also not available to the general public?
This criticism was perhaps excusable when Kaysing wrote the first edition of his book, in 1974, but today NASA’s Apollo documents are easily available on the Internet: tens of thousands of pages of manuals, technical diagrams, reports, and all the photographs of all the Apollo flights. A partial list of these archives is in the References section at the end of this book.
Kaysing’s claim, however, was factually incorrect even when it was first made: even then, NASA already provided all public records to anyone who requested them and paid the duplication and postage fees. Such requests, however, were rather rare, since just one of the manuals of the Lunar Module, the Apollo Operations Handbook – Lunar Module, LM 10 and Subsequent, has over 1700 pages, so duplication costs were high.
Some documents were kept confidential for a few years because they discussed military technologies (such as the ones used in the Apollo 11 lunar camera) or technologies that could be used for military purposes by potential enemies, but even these were soon declassified.
For example, even the documentation related to a truly state-of-the-art item like the Apollo guidance and navigation computer was declassified and made available to the public already in 1973, just four years after the first Moon landing and less than one year after the end of the lunar missions (Figure 9.5-1).
Figure 9.5-1. The cover of the design report on the Apollo navigation computer. Note the stamps indicating release to the public in 1973.
IN A NUTSHELL:On the contrary, many astronauts have answered the doubters directly, have taken part in TV debates and have granted interviews to hoax believers, even swearing on the Bible in front of the conspiracy theorists’ cameras.
THE DETAILS: A recurring complaint among Moon hoax proponents is that the Apollo astronauts refuse to debate them and don’t answer their questions. This, they say, suggests guilt.
Actually, the astronauts who went to the Moon have engaged the hoax theorists on several occasions. For example, in 2001 John Young (who flew around the Moon with Apollo 10 and landed on it with Apollo 16) went on NBC’s Today Show to respond to the conspiracy allegations made by Bill Kaysing. He also asked one very pointed question: “If it was a hoax, why did we do it more than once?”. A full transcript of the program is available at Globalsecurity.org.
Some moonwalkers have actually agreed to be interviewed at length by hoax proponents. Gene Cernan (Apollo 10, Apollo 17), Alan Bean (Apollo 12) and Edgar Mitchell (Apollo 14) even accepted the challenge to swear on the Bible, on video, to comply with Bart Sibrel’s insistent demands (Figure 9.4-1).
Figure 9.4-1. Top to bottom: lunar astronauts Edgar Mitchell, Gene Cernan and Alan Bean swear on the Bible that they walked on the Moon, as requested by hoax theorist Bart Sibrel. Stills from Sibrel’s Astronauts Gone Wild (2004).
Others have preferred to reply to these demands with a punch, as in the case of Buzz Aldrin after Sibrel accused him of being “a coward and a liar”, or with a knee to the butt, as delivered by Edgar Mitchell again to Sibrel at the end of the interview in which he had sworn on the Bible. Both episodes are documented in Sibrel’s video Astronauts Gone Wild (2004).
Usually, however, lunar astronauts dismiss the hoax allegations with a few poignant words, such as those chosen by Gene Cernan for the David Sington documentary In the Shadow of the Moon (2007):
I was there, I made the footprints on the moon, and no one can take that away from me.
IN A NUTSHELL:It doesn’t refuse. NASA has published various rebuttals to the allegations since at least 1977. But the agency has stated that it has no plans to produce any more because it doesn’t want to dignify a set of claims that the science community has long dismissed as ridiculous. NASA prefers to work on more positive enterprises and leave to others the task of answering the individual allegations of fakery.
THE DETAILS: Some doubters find it suspicious that NASA won’t simply answer the hoax theorists’ questions once and for all and debate them. It’s as if it had something to hide, they argue.
In actual fact, NASA has already published quite detailed rebuttals. After the Fox TV program Did We Land on the Moon? was broadcast in 2001, the space agency added several pages of debunking material, based on what it had already released in 1977:
Figure 9.3-1. The front page of NASA Facts dated 14 February 2001, currently no longer online but archived at Braeunig.us.
Figure 9.3-2. NASA’s rebuttal, published at Science.nasa.gov in 2001.
However, there’s a limit to how much effort NASA intends to spend in responding to conspiracy theorists. In 2002, in response to the Fox TV program, which had rekindled the “moon hoax” debate, NASA allocated 15,000 dollars and asked aerospace engineer and spaceflight historian James Oberg to write a book specifically on the matter, aimed mainly at teachers and students.
The project was canceled shortly after, following media criticism that it was a waste of taxpayers’ money and gave dignity to ridiculous claims. NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe stated in November 2002 that “The issue of trying to do a targeted response to this is just lending credibility to something that is, on its face, asinine.” Oberg announced that he intended to continue the project with funding from a different source, but so far no formal debunking publication of his has emerged.
Since then, the widespread availability of the Internet has allowed many enthusiasts and experts to reply to the hoax theories directly on their own websites, and NASA has redirected doubters to these debunkers. The References section of this book lists some of the most popular debunking sites in various languages.
Accordingly, any further direct response by NASA has become essentially unnecessary. The ultimate rebuttal is NASA’s overwhelmingly vast library of publicly available documents that provide all the details of the reality of the Moon landings.
IN A NUTSHELL:No, he simply picked his media appearances very carefully after the overwhelming barrage of public events that followed the Moon landing. He preferred technical conferences, in which he was anything but shy and indeed proved to have a wry sense of humor.
THE DETAILS: According to some hoax theorists, Neil Armstrong, first man on the Moon, became a recluse and never appeared on TV, refusing all interviews, after the initial celebrations for the Apollo 11 trip. This absence from the media was allegedly due to his guilt for lying to the entire world.
The truth is quite different. After Apollo 11, he granted countless interviews, such as this one to the BBC (Figure 9.2-1):
Figure 9.2-1. Neil Armstrong interviewed by Sir Patrick Moore for BBC’s The Sky at Night (1970). A transcript is available.
In the 1970s Armstrong even did TV advertising campaigns for Chrysler (Figure 9.2-2).
Figure 9.2-2. Neil Armstrong in a TV advert for Chrysler (1979).
In 1983 he was a guest on the TV show hosted by legendary entertainer Bob Hope, who was Armstrong’s personal friend. They had toured together the American military bases in Vietnam in December 1969. In this TV appearance, Armstrong chatted and joked with Bob Hope (Figures 9.2-3 and 9.2-4).
Figure 9.2-3. Neil Armstrong on TV with Bob Hope.
Figure 9.2-4. A few stills of Neil Armstrong with Bob Hope during their tour visiting American troops in 1969.
He was also a guest on TV programs all over the world. Figure 9.2-5 shows him on Italian national channel RAI in 1984. In 1999 he and Buzz Aldrin were even guests on the Italian Festival di Sanremo song contest.
Figure 9.2-5. Neil Armstrong interviewed by Italian national network RAI (1984).
However, it is true that Armstrong was famous for being a man of very few words. Apollo astronaut Gene Cernan describes him as follows in his autobiography, The Last Man on the Moon:
This fellow was a year ahead of our class, and so modest that you would never know he had flown seventy-eight missions in Panther jets off the aircraft carrier Essex and won three air medals. His name was Neil Armstrong. Years later, when Neil was a top test pilot for the experimental X-15 rocket plane at Edwards Air Force Base, Smitty dropped by for a visit and soon found himself beneath the house with the quiet aviator, wrapping pipes with insulation tape. Smitty, by then an aeronautical engineer, was naturally curious about the plane, which was the hottest thing in American skies, and asked, “So, Neil, you’re flying the X-15 now?” Neil kept wrapping the pipes and said, “Yup.” End of conversation. Neil was not one to worry about impressing people with mere words, content to let his work speak for him. In fact, he was so quiet that when he made his historic first step onto the Moon and said, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” those of us who knew him were not surprised that he had come up with such a memorable phrase. The real surprise was that he said anything at all.
It is also true that in later years Armstrong chose his media appearances very carefully and protected his own image against anyone who tried to profit from his lunar endeavor.
For example, in 1994 he sued Hallmark Cards for using his name and voice without permission for a Christmas decoration. Proceeds from the settlement, less legal feeds and costs, were donated to Purdue University, Armstrong’s alma mater.
In 2005 Armstrong’s barber auctioned off the astronaut’s hair clippings, which were bought by a collector for 3,000 dollars. Armstrong threatened legal action and the barber donated the proceeds of the auction to a charity.
One of Armstrong’s few personal interviews was granted in 2005 to CBS’s 60 Minutes (Figure 9.2-6) when his biography, curated by historian James Hansen and entitled First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong, was published.
Figure 9.2-6. Armstrong’s interview with 60 minutes (CBS, 2005). A partial transcript is available here.
Another example of his public appearances is this very humorous and at the same time profound video from 2002 (Figure 9.2-7):
Figure 9.2-7. Neil Armstrong is a guest of the Buffini & Company's MasterMind Summit (2002).
Armstrong nevertheless remained an extremely modest and reserved man who preferred to talk about technical matters rather than his personal feelings. He was part of the public inquiry boards for the Apollo 13 accident in 1970 and for the Challenger disaster in 1986. These roles placed him once again in the public spotlight at two dramatic times of the United States’ space program.
He also hosted the documentary series First Flights with Neil Armstrong in 1991 (Figure 9.2-8), in which he explored the history of aviation by interviewing the people who made that history and flew the most extraordinary aircraft. He was also involved in the PBS documentary Kitty Hawk: The Wright Brothers’ Journey of Invention (2003), in which he lent his voice to Orville Wright. In 2010 he again voiced a character, this time for the animated movie Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey together with James Earl Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, Chris Pine, William Shatner and many other famous actors.
Figure 9.2-8. The trailers of the three seasons of First Flights with Neil Armstrong, a series of documentaries on the history of aviation.
More recently, he granted extensive technical interviews to the curators of the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal and appeared in the documentary When We Left Earth (2008).
On a lighter note, in 2009 he celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the first Moon landing by joining Aldrin and Collins at the John H. Glenn Lecture, an annual conference held at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., and attended the gala for the fortieth anniversary of Apollo 12 at the Kennedy Space Center, where he demonstrated a talent for self-effacing humor.
These don’t seem to be the choices of someone who is shunning publicity out of guilt.
Moreover, Armstrong wasn’t at all impossible to reach: for example, in April 2011 some news reports claimed that he had been a follower of Indian guru Sai Baba, who had just died. So I contacted James Hansen, Armstrong’s biographer, to clarify the matter.
Within a day, I received a personal e-mail from Neil Armstrong himself:
Figure 9.2-10. The e-mail Neil Armstrong sent me in April 2011.
In late April 2012, a few months before he died, he granted Alex Malley of CPA Australia a long interview (Figure 9.2-11, partly transcribed here) which was probably the last of his career and in which he told many details of his professional history and of his world view.
Figure 9.2-11. Neil Armstrong interviewed by Alex Malley (2012).
Here’s another indication that the alleged reclusiveness and humorlessness of Neil Armstrong are journalistic myths: a photograph taken in 1966 (Figure 9.2-12), when Armstrong was part of the prime crew of Gemini 8 together with David Scott, while Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon formed the backup crew.
Figure 9.2-12. Top left, Dick Gordon; top right, Pete Conrad; bottom left, Dave Scott; bottom right, Neil Armstrong.
IN A NUTSHELL:They didn’t. Their expressions are not guilty, but serious. Hoax theorists cherry-pick the photos in which the Apollo astronauts are serious and solemn and claim that they always had that expression because they felt guilty of their deception. Actually, there are plenty of photographs and film clips in which they smile, joke and laugh. They didn’t shun public appearances: they held countless public talks, TV appearances and were even involved in a few movies. They also wrote very candid autobiographies.
THE DETAILS: It is often argued that Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin had suspiciously gloomy, guilty, sad and reluctant expressions as they were held in quarantine after their Moon trip (Figure 9.1-1).
Figure 9.1-1. The apparently gloomy expressions of Armstrong, Collins and Aldrin (Apollo 11) as they meet US President Nixon on the first day of their post-flight quarantine.
But there’s a good reason why they’re serious in that quarantine photo: they’re listening to President Nixon’s formal speech, so it would have been rather inappropriate for them to be laughing their heads off. Once Nixon changes to a less formal tone, the astronauts smile and laugh with him (Figures 9.1-2 and 9.1-3).
Figure 9.1-2. The Apollo 11 astronauts laugh with Nixon.
Figure 9.1-3. Another photo of the same event. The astronauts and the President are all laughing. Detail of photo S69-21365.
The Apollo 11 crew is definitely upbeat in the photograph of Figure 9.1-4, taken during post-flight quarantine.
Figure 9.1-4. Left to right, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins in a playful mood during quarantine.
The Apollo 11 astronauts also look quite at ease during their preflight press conference (Figure 9.1-5).
Figure 9.1-5. Aldrin, Armstrong and Collins during the Apollo 11 preflight press conference.
Likewise, the expressions of the Apollo 12 astronauts in quarantine are anything but gloomy (Figure 9.1-6).
Figure 9.1-6. Left to right: Pete Conrad, Dick Gordon and Alan Bean, the crew of Apollo 12, cheer from their quarantine after returning from the Moon.
The Apollo 11 post-flight press conference
Conspiracy theorists and ordinary doubters often mention the press conference held by the Apollo 11 astronauts after returning from the Moon, noting how their expressions are once again gloomy and seem to betray unease. The astronauts utter their words very slowly, with an almost flat tone, as if they were speaking grudgingly. This, it is claimed, is evidence that they are lying uncomfortably.
Figure 9.1-7. A frame from the footage of the Apollo 11 post-flight press conference.
Actually, if you watch the entire press conference (Figure 9.1-7) instead of just its first few minutes, it becomes evident that the three astronauts gradually relax and become more at ease while still choosing their words very carefully. There are many moments of laughter, smiles and outright jokes despite the pressure of it being their first press conference after their historic trip. Here’s an example from 37:53 in the video of Figure 9.1-8:
Reporter: Was there ever a moment on the Moon where either one of you were just a little bit spellbound by what was going on?
Neil Armstrong (grinning): About two and a half hours!
Their moonwalk had in fact lasted two and a half hours in all.
Figure 9.1-8. Full version of the Apollo 11 post-flight press conference.
In other words, the gloomy still image shown by conspiracy theorists has been intentionally selected to give the wrong impression that the astronauts were deeply uneasy. Figure 9.1-9 is a different still from that same press conference: all three astronauts are smiling. Figure 9.1-10 is a sampling of some of the quips and jokes that the Apollo 11 astronauts made during the press conference.
Figure 9.1-9. Another still from the Apollo 11 post-flight press conference gives a far less grim impression.
Figure 9.1-10. A selection of quips, smiles and jokes from the same press conference.
Nevertheless, it has to be noted that almost all the Apollo astronauts were test pilots, unaccustomed to the glare of the media spotlight and trained, like all pilots when they have to report on their flight, to speak clearly and precisely, measuring their words. They were also tired not only from the trip to the Moon but also from the subsequent quarantine. They acknowledge their limited media skills even in this post-flight press conference when the discuss the Goodwill Tour that will take them around the world, visiting kings and presidents of many countries:
Reporter: Gentlemen, you're about to take some tours. I wonder what your feelings are. Is that perhaps the most difficult part of the mission or are you looking forward to it?
Armstrong: It’s certainly the part that we're least prepared to handle! [laughter from the audience]
There’s also another practical aspect to be considered when watching this 1969 press conference with today’s eyes: in those days, portable recorders were rare (only one can be glimpsed in the huge crowd of reporters in the video) and therefore journalists had to write down, sometimes in shorthand, what the astronauts said. The official recording of the event would be released only after it had been duplicated, and this would have taken hours with the analog systems of the period, whereas reporters had to go to press as soon as possible.
Accordingly, the astronauts spoke very clearly and slowly to allow everyone to transcribe correctly and also to choose their words very carefully, since they were quite aware of the great historical importance and of the political sensitivity of everything they said. They were, after all, the first human beings in all of mankind’s history to go to the Moon and back.
Moreover, if Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins had instead been at perfect ease and as cheerful as talk show hosts, moon hoax believers would probably argue that this would prove that they were actors.
Media appearances
Anyone who claims that the Apollo astronauts were reclusive and reluctant to appear in public probably is not aware of the various Goodwill Tours mentioned above: the Apollo 11 crew Tour, for example, visited 23 countries in 37 days and was seen by roughly 100 million people.
Contrary to the claims made by some conspiracy theorists, the other lunar astronauts also were anything but sad and guilty-looking after their flights. Over the decades they have been (and still are) part of countless public talks and television events, as well as movies and documentaries. They have also written about their experiences in their often quite candid autobiographies. Far from shunning the crowd, they have promoted space exploration in many ways, including some unorthodox ones.
Buzz Aldrin, for example, in 1976 was on ABC’s Break the bank; he appeared very light-heartedly on Da Ali G Show (2003), recorded a rap song with Snoop Dogg (Rocket Experience, 2009), was a contestant in the 2010 edition of the US show Dancing with the Stars and guest-starred in TV shows like 30 Rock (2010),Numb3rs (2006) and The Big Bang Theory (2012), as well as in the movie Transformers - Dark of the Moon (2011); his many interviews and appearances include CBC’s Beyond Reason (1977), Conan O’Brien’s Conan(2013), ITV's Lorraine (2016), The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (2016), as well as documentaries such as In the Shadow of the Moon (2007). In his autobiography, Magnificent Desolation, he has also acknowledged very openly his successful fight against alcohol and depression.
#OTD in 1976, the ABC TV network announces Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin will join Joey Bishop, Jimmie Walker, Craig Stevens and other TV celebrities as a featured player on the daytime game show "Break the Bank." It's been only seven years since he walked on the Moon. pic.twitter.com/sBYPOLjk6W
— Chasing The Moon: The Book (@ChasingMoonBk) April 27, 2019
Figure 9.1-11. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin is on ABC’s Break the Bank (1976).
Figure 9.1-12. Aldrin records a rap with Snoop Dogg (2009).
Jim Lovell (Apollo 8, Apollo 13), too, has made a few movie appearances, for example as himself in Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) next to David Bowie and as captain of the ship that recovers the astronauts in Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 (1995).
Figure 9.1-13. Astronaut Jim Lovell with David Bowie on the set of The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976).
Figure 9.1-14. Jim Lovell, with his back to the camera, wears a US Navy captain’s uniform to welcome actor Tom Hanks (who plays Lovell) at the end of the movie Apollo 13 (1995).
Neil Armstrong’s appearances were so many that they require a separate section of this book.
A special mention goes to Alan Bean, Pete Conrad and Richard Gordon, whose video Apollo 12 Uncensored is a hilarious collection of anecdotes and jokes about their lunar landing that certainly doesn’t appear to suggest guilt or unease.
Figure 9.1-15. Apollo 12 Uncensored spends 45 minutes with the Apollo 12 astronauts candidly talking about their mission, showing how much they enjoyed it and were awed by it. At 24:26 they talk about the Playboy photos smuggled to the Moon; at 26:00 they discuss their Hasselblad timer prank.
This Moon hoax claim is probably one of the most significant: it shows very clearly the symptoms of a world vision in which everything, even an ordinary, occasional serious expression, is interpreted as evidence of a colossal conspiracy and the facts are cherry-picked to bend them to that distorted vision.
