Veth R., Koning, F. (2016). The Moon landing by American astronauts in 1969. IJmuiden, Nederland: Vellesan College Press.
I. Abstract
II. Introduction
This story is one much people know, but not everybody believes. That brings us to our main question. Is the First Moon landing in 1969 really happened or just a giant hoax?
To answer this question we are going to use four different aspects. The first aspect is going to be, [1] What are the influences of The Cold War on the first moon landing . Another aspect we are going to use is: [2] What would America’s motive be to fake the first moon landing. The last aspect we are going to use is [3] What can be judged about the moon landing based on “the live taken” video.
III. Background
July 1969. It’s a little over eight years since the flights of Gagarin and Shepard, followed quickly by President Kennedy’s challenge to put a man on the moon before the decade is out.
It is only seven months since NASA’s made a bold decision to send Apollo 8 all the way to the moon on the first manned flight of the massive Saturn V rocket.
On the morning of July 16, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins sit atop another Saturn V at Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The three-stage 363-foot rocket will use its 7.5 million pounds of thrust to propel them into space and into history (NASA administration, 2014).
IV. Results
[1] The anniversary of the moon landing may excite space-mad members of the human race, but far more earthy desires motivated the quest. Little is mentioned in current tributes of the overtly political dimension that propelled the extraordinary event. It was hard to ignore, writes Rita G. Koman in the 1994 winter issue of the Organization of American Historians’ Magazine of History that the space race “became part of the general arms race with the Soviets.” The historian Walter A. McDougall saw the entire space effort as nothing less than “a paramilitary operation in the Cold War”. The remarkably parochial aspect of the Cold War battle has tended to pass into the background, erased by a universal narrative of glorious human achievement.
President John F. Kennedy decided, after consulting the findings of the National Aeronautics and Space Council chaired by Vice President Lyndon Johnson, to “shift our efforts in space from low to high gear”. Early on in his Presidency, Kennedy had bragged that “this generation of Americans intends to be the ‘world’s leading spacefaring nation’.” All of this in the name of America’s quest for world leadership, which was seriously compromised by the technological feats of the Soviet Union.
The entire space program became organized around Kennedy’s mission to put a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s, a feat that would be attained by three phases: Project Mercury, comprising six missions into space; the intermediary Project Gemini; and the largest component, Apollo. NASA had received a series of bruising setbacks from their Soviet counterparts in the 1950s and 1960s. On the launch of Soviet satellites, historian Robert Dallek cites Vice President Johnson’s desperate question: “How long, how long, oh God, how long will it take us to catch up with the Russians’ two satellites?” Project Mercury was trumped by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gargarin in April 1961. The fact that the first man in space was a Soviet Commie was hard to stomach.
Space, in fact, became the externalizing factor for the global war with the USSR and its allies, a frontier for future military engagement. In so doing, the obsession with space acted as a vent for failed social experiments at home, an ‘open door’ in the cosmos. It was far better to do what John Quincy Adams had warned America against: embark on quests in search of monsters to destroy. As Carl Dreher of The Nation (September 25, 1967) wrote, the country had been afflicted by a “social pathology” in its Cold War missions. Both the war in Vietnam and “the journey into space impair our ability to find solutions for the deterioration of American cities, and specifically for the problem of Negro disaffection”.
Despite such tensions, Dreher had to concede, given the sheer magical nature of the enterprise, that any proposed cuts to NASA’s relatively minute budget (relative, that is, to America’s war outlays in Indochina), should be opposed. The warriors of aerospace had to be defended, their gains in technology used. What was good for them, intoned Dreher, was good for the country. Thus was born that continuous tension: the relevance of space exploration vis-à-vis the problems of domestic crisis and atrophy.
The jitters of the space race also produced casualties for science as well. The sheer desperation of reaching the moon made NASA focus more on man-made flights rather than solid and consolidating scientific development. Safety was compromised in the name of reaching targets. The deaths of three astronauts in the flash fire of Apollo 2 on January 27, 1967 may well have been the outcome of such a skewed emphasis.
Any analysis of the moon landing must consider the entire gamut of factors. Technological achievements should not be neglected and the annals of human existence will continue to extol it. But one would be loth to ignore the competitive, even destructive spirit of this race, which saw powers militarize a frontier beyond earth while ignoring problems on earth. Not even this achievement in space could distract Americans long enough from pressing wars on earth (Binoy Kampmark, 2009).
[2] Some people have suggested that NASA stood to gain financially from a successful landing. In fact NASA only had a small part in the budget – the research and development was virtually all outsourced to private companies. NASA themselves had very little to gain.
Most conspiracy theorists concentrate on the deadline angle. President Kennedy had set the goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade. Clearly it would have been something of a disappointment to have failed (let’s ignore the fact that the end of the decade was technically the end of 1970, not 1969). But how severe would the blow have been?
Remember that the timeline was a goal, not an imperative. No other country was in the race (Russia had tried but dropped out) and it was obvious that even if America was late getting to the moon, they would be years ahead of anyone else. The deadline may have been relatively important for national pride, but it had no critical importance in any other way (Dave Owen, 2012).
[3] The theory that the moon landings were hoaxed by the US government to assert their victory in the space race over Russia, is something which has grown in popularity over time.
Recent polls indicate that approximately 20% of Americans believe that the U.S. has never landed on the moon. After the Apollo missions ended in the seventies, why haven’t we ever been back? Only during the term of Richard Nixon did humanity ever land on the moon, and after Watergate most people wouldn’t put it past Tricky Dick to fake them to put America in good standing in the Cold War.
In this list we present to you some of the proposed evidence to suggest that the moon landings were hoaxes. We include NASA’s explanations to each entry to provide an objective perspective.
- The Waving Flagg
Conspiracy theorists have pointed out that when the first moon landing was shown on live television, viewers could clearly see the American flag waving and fluttering as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted it. Photos of the landing also seem to show rippling in a breeze, such as the image above which clearly shows a fold in the flag. The obvious problem here is that there’s no air in the moon’s atmosphere, and therefore no wind to cause the flag to blow.
Countless explanations have been put forward to disprove this phenomenon as anything unusual: NASA claimed that the flag was stored in a thin tube and the rippled effect was caused by it being unfurled before being planted. Other explanations involve the ripples caused by the reaction force of the astronauts touching the aluminum pole, which is shown to shake in the video footage.
2. Lack of impact crater
The claim goes as follows: had NASA really landed us on the moon, there would be a blast crater underneath the lunar module to mark its landing. On any video footage or photograph of the landings, no crater is visible, almost as though the module was simply placed there. The surface of the moon is covered in fine lunar dust, and even this doesn’t seem to have been displaced in photographic evidence.
Much like the waving flag theory, however, the lack of an impact crater has a slew of potential explanations. NASA maintains that the module required significantly less thrust in the low-gravity conditions than it would have done on Earth. The surface of the moon itself is solid rock, so a blast crater probably wouldn’t be feasible anyway – in the same way that an aeroplane doesn’t leave a crater when it touches down on a concrete airstrip.
3. Multiple light sources
On the moon there is only one strong light source: the Sun. So it’s fair to suggest that all shadows should run parallel to one another. But this was not the case during the moon landing: videos and photographs clearly show that shadows fall in different directions. Conspiracy theorists suggest that this must mean multiple light sources are present -suggesting that the landing photos were taken on a film set.
NASA has attempted to blame uneven landscape on the strange shadows, with subtle bumps and hills on the moon’s surface causing the discrepancies. This explanation has been tossed out the window by some theorists; how could hills cause such large angular differences? In the image above the lunar module’s shadow clearly contradicts that of the rocks in the foreground at almost a 45 degree angle.
4. The unexplained object
After photographs of the moon landings were released, theorists were quick to notice a mysterious object (shown above) in the reflection of an astronaut’s helmet from the Apollo 12 mission. The object appears to be hanging from a rope or wire and has no reason to be there at all, leading some to suggest it is an overhead spotlight typically found in film studios.
The resemblance is questionable, given the poor quality of the photograph, but the mystery remains as to why something is being suspended in mid-air (or rather lack of air) on the moon. The lunar module in other photos appears to have no extension from it that matches the photo, so the object still remains totally unexplained.
- Lack of stars
One compelling argument for the moon landing hoax is the total lack of stars in any of the photographic/video evidence. There are no clouds on the moon, so stars are perpetually visible and significantly brighter than what we see through the filter of Earth’s atmosphere.
The argument here is that NASA would have found it impossible to map out the exact locations of all stars for the hoax without being rumbled, and therefore left them out – intentionally falling back on an excuse that the quality of the photographs washes them out (an excuse they did actually give).
Some photographs are high-quality, however, and yet still no stars are shown. Certainly eerie, considering you can take pictures of stars from Earth in much lower quality and still see them.
6. The “C” Rock
One of the most famous photos from the moon landings shows a rock in the foreground, with what appears to be the letter “C” engraved into it. The letter appears to be almost perfectly symmetrical, meaning it is unlikely to be a natural occurrence. It has been suggested that the rock is simply a prop, with the “C” used as a marker by an alleged film crew. A set designer could have turned the rock the wrong way, accidentally exposing the marking to the camera.
NASA has given conflicting excuses for the letter, on the one hand blaming a photographic developer for adding the letter as a practical joke, while on the other hand saying that it may simply have been a stray hair which got tangled up somewhere in the developing process (Josh Fox, 2012).
V. Discussion
To improve our research report we had to do more research. If we have had done twice as much research our report would be more reliable.
VI. Conclusion
VII. References
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/apollo11.html
http://www.counterpunch.org/2009/07/20/the-moon-landing-and-the-cold-war/
http://www.dave.co.nz/space/moon-hoax/motive.html
http://listverse.com/2012/12/28/10-reasons-the-moon-landings-could-be-a-hoax/
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