Who Started The Conspiracy Theory About Moon Landings?

In 1980, the Flat Earth Society accused NASA of faking the lunar landings, arguing that they were staged by Hollywood with Walt Disney sponsorship. Folklorist Linda Dégh suggests that writer-director Peter Hyams’ film Capricorn One, which shows a hoaxed journey to Mars in a spacecraft identical to the Apollo craft, might have given a hint. Moon landing conspiracy theories claim that some or all elements of the Apollo program and the associated moon landings were hoaxes staged by NASA, possibly with the aid of other organizations. The most notable claim of these conspiracy theories is that the six crewed landings (1969–1972) were faked.

The basic template of the conspiracy theory is that NASA couldn’t manage to safely land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s as President John F Kennedy had promised, so it only sent no stars. Some conspiracy theorists reference the lack of stars in the lunar surface. Bill Kaysing, a former US Navy officer who worked as a technical writer for one of the rocket manufacturers for NASA’s Apollo moon mission, started the conspiracy theories.

Despite every single argument claiming that NASA faked the moon landings, every single argument has been discredited. The conspiracy theories began with Bill Kaysing and his pamphlet about “America’s $30bn swindle”. Doubters say the US government, desperate to beat the Russians in the space race, faked the lunar landings, with Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin acting out their plans.

There are six common Apollo 11 Moonlanding conspiracy theories and how to debunk them. Many people still think the moon landing 50 years ago was faked, but the evidence is clear that it wasn’t.