Lunar Landing Conspiracy

The first manned lunar landing was on July 20, 1969, in the Apollo 11. There have been six manned landings and a number of unmanned landings since this first small step for man. The US is the only country successful of conducting manned missions to the moon. Or are they? Many conspiracists believe that none of these manned trips have ever happened.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin explored the Moon’s surface on foot for about two and a half hours while Michael Collins piloted the Apollo 11 orbiter around the Moon. Almost 50 years later and it is still a widely celebrated piece of history. Conspiracies about whether or not this landing, or any for that matter, actually happened have been around for many years. Here we will discuss a little more in depth about a few theories on why the manned missions could not have happened.

A popular theory as to why the Moon landings would have been impossible to accomplish is due to something called the Van Allen belts. There are two large belts of radiation that form around the Earth. It is shaped by the Earth’s magnetic field and high-energy particles from the Sun’s wind. The claim is humans could not have possibly made it past these belts, at least not without being hit with lethal doses of radiation. Scientist like to debunk this theory by stating that the ISC [international scientific community] was aware of the Van Allen belts thanks to past unmanned missions. They state that, luckily, the timings of the launches were when the Van Allen belts were at their lowest intensity.

A lot of conspiracists believe that the landing was faked due to the footage of the flag placed on the moon. From a photographic and cinematic point of view, the flag appears to be flapping in the wind…But wait a second, there is no air on the Moon so how can it possibly be flapping? This theory is often proven wrong by examining videos and images and claiming the flag only moves when the astronauts move it, and that it remains in the same position when left standing.

There is an infamous, labeled rock from the Apollo 16 lunar mission. The theory is that it is a prop like one would see from a movie. Movie props are usually marked with numbers or letters so that the setup guys know where to put them. The theory states that someone made a mistake and placed the prop the wrong way. Many argue that the label isn’t there, and that it must be a small hair or some type of particle on the machine that copied the image. Some believe that the image was later altered to try and disprove this theory by providing an image of the “original” rock, and the image that was copied with a mysterious particle in the machine that must have caused the misunderstanding.

There are a great number of theories on if these lunar missions have ever occurred, manned or unmanned. Some believe that it started with the Space Race during the Cold War and that they faked the results to “win” this race and just kept rolling with it ever since. Others believe that they were hoaxes that were somehow brought to a stop and that is why we haven’t sent a manned mission since 1972. The question it really brings about is why would our government go through so many resources and expenses just to “fake” these expeditions? We may never know for ourselves unless we hop onto a shuttle with a round trip ticket to the Moon.