Why do some people believe the moon landings were a hoax?

and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There is Chuck Britt. Why you tickled, Josh? I'm just you know exactly why things take place and transpire before the stuff starts recording, true, and we just bring it exactly and sometimes we bring it laughing. It's a rainbow kind of world out there. So Chuck, let's talk about whether or not we landed on the moon. I have no intro for this one. Let's just get into it. Okay, Yeah,

let's go to town. There are people that think that we did not land on the moon in nine that is true, and actually there is a guy who worked for oh, I don't remember. Maybe the rocket Dine Systems rocket Dine Systems, which I believe it's a private, private aerospace contractor UM. A guy named Bill Casing UH he wrote technical publications for that company, and in UH he calculated nine He calculated there was a point zero zero one four percent chance of landing a man on the

moon and returning him safely home. He was wrong. Ten years later we had been on the moon returned him safely home, we think, or yeah, or did we UM? I don't think we should take a conspiratorial tone. I also don't think we should take pot shots at the crackpots who think this. So what are we going to talk about? Well, I think we can discuss the merits of this stuff. In my opinion, skepticism goes both ways, right, Skepticism is always focused on the people who question reality,

and I think that's I think that's BS. I think I think there's plenty of times where you can question what's what's being VEGGI Yeah, So I'm I'm big on that. Actually, And if I was around in nineteen nine, I probably would have um, you know, not probably about in nineteen SI you would have been woodstock the whole ship bang maybe So yeah, so um, all right, let's get down to it. All right, let's do it. Do you want

to tee off? Uh? Yeah, um, Like we said, a lot of people, well I don't know how many, but there was a conspiracy theory going around still is today

that we never landed on the Moon. And there are quite a few points that people make to try and back this up from the footage of the moon landing, and they basically think it was staged for the purposes of, um, making the Russians so disheveled at the fact that we got to the Moon before they did that they would scrap their program and just say, you know, the Americans are so far ahead of us because they're already on

the moon and we can't do that. Well, not just that now, chinal pride as well, like you know, back in the in the sixties. This is like at the height of the Cold War, and basically the Soviet Union and the United States spent much in political and actual, you know, financial capital to make one another look bad. It was pretty much the role of each of these nations that the world was polarized, and what better way to make the other one look like jackass than by

beating him to the moon. There's the space race. Yeah, um, so I see that the theory behind this, this whole thing. Yeah, but you know, Kennedy said, in what nineteen sixty we're going to put a man on the moon, And by nineteen sixty nine we had that is enormous, Like, we had no moon landing program right by then, We've been shooting satellites into space and we had men who had orbited by then. But within nine years we actually landed

somebody on the Moon. Right, And this is nineteen sixties technology too, so it's not I mean, today it would seem like that would be the hardest thing in the world to do, but back then it was just unheard of. Right. Okay, So, like you said, most of the bones of contention that people used to pick this idea apart um are are based on the footage, correct of you know, there's actual evidence here saying you know what, what what's going on?

What does this explain this? Right? There's five main points that are generally brought up in this discussion. There's actually a few more, but yeah, in this article there, Yeah, there's there's five are our esteem colleague John Fuller waited through the muck the muck and picked out the best ones, polished him off. There you go, let's talk about him. Okay, what's the first one. Well, the first one that I'd

like to mention is actually not the first one. The first one I'd like to mention is the quote unquote sea rock is in the letter C. Yeah. Have you seen the C rock? Yeah? I looked up a picture today and uh, basically, there's a rock in the foreground of a photo and the shot is of one of the astronauts walking away from camera towards the lunar rover, and there's a big moon rock in the foreground that looks like it's got a very clear letter C on it.

It is clearly a C. It's clearly I mean, it doesn't look like some sort of aberration or anything like that. It's just it looks like the letter C carved into it, or maybe like stamped with like metal and a chisel perhaps something like that. But it definitely looks like a C. I would agree with you, And so, of course, theorists, we're not going to calm conspiracy theorist's calm theorists. Theorists think that this could be a prop, like a stage prop,

that was marked. You know, moon Rock Cy put it here, Moon rock By put it there, and then it just kind of got by the camera department who was filming this big hoax. And I like that you you put that one first, because this one, in my opinion, has the weakest explanation from the scientific community in NASA for that C on that rock spill it. And that is basically that there was a hair on the lens or something like that that had to do with UM when the photo was taking it. That's not really a C.

It's like a hair or scratch. It doesn't look anything like a hair or scratch. It looks like clearly it looks like a cue. That that is definitely one UM. One that I like is the the different shadow lengths. Correct, have you seen pictures of them with the different shadows have not their wildly varying in length, And there's you know, they're there guys standing next to one another on the Moon, but and then one shadow is ten ft long the

others is forty. So I guess the the the basic basic idea behind this is evidence that there the moon landing was faked, is that um, there was some sort of faulty studio light. Yeah, Like, the basic idea is that this is all done on a sound stage. Now, in my opinion, this one is actually the weakest argument for the moon landing being fake. Uh. The first of all, the moon is not a flat, smooth surface. It's very rock and dusty, and it has all sorts of features

to it. Uh. And anybody who has ever stood, you know, on a along a desert or something similar to the moon and seen their shadow, they've noticed that the shadows don't always act the same way. Um. And what's more, in my opinion, if NASA was actually going to go to the trouble of faking a moon landing, they would have noticed this, and they wouldn't have released it with with the with the with the shadows like that badly off.

That's my big point. As a matter of fact, they probably would have gone the other way and and the shadows would have looked uniform or something like that, right exactly. That's my point. This is ninety nine. This wasn't like n you know, they were actually making I looked up films that released in nineteen sixty nine, and you know some really good movies you got French connection was that sixty nine. No, like Putch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

that that kind of thing. But anyway, some really good movies and filmmaking an advance to the point where they could have easy easily gotten someone to make the shadows match and light it properly, and that they wouldn't have had some cracked team of like you know, interns out there filming the moon landing. You know, so I don't know. That didn't hold water with me. Well what's your what's your next best argument or a Well, I'm gonna go

ahead and skip over to um the American flag. A lot of people um seem to notice that when they're putting the flag up that it appears to flap in the breeze. Of course, this is on the Moon. There's no atmosphere, so there would be no breeze. Uh. But what they say, what the government says, is is that this was a special flag. And actually I didn't know this. I felt like a dummy. It's got a wire running across the top of it, which is why it hangs

uh square, Otherwise it would just hang motionless. Right, So when you have a flag with like a taught wire and you're putting it up. It's it's gonna move around a little bit more, and it's not gonna look like a regular flag. So it's not, in fact the breeze blowing. It's just you know, by virtue of the fact that

I had a wire running through it. Right. And as Fuller points out, if they if they had created a sound stage UM and filmed it like this and and the wire wasn't in there, they would have had to have created a vacuum in it, which would have been really difficult. Another part of that that has to do with that vacuum sound stage that would have been virtually impossible to do UM is the dust that's being kicked up right when they walk. When they walk or when

the lunar rover is tires the tires are spinning. Um. This is not so much in a piece of evidence, but in an explanation or something that people have noticed is that supposedly it's it's kind of clouding UM and and apparently it hasn't. It doesn't cloud at all. The dust is kicked up and it runs its course in that thin atmosphere and then falls back down. And so that that kind of actually proves that this thing either was filmed in the sound stage, within a vacuumized sound stage,

or on the moon. Acca Trazer would actually kind of suggest the vacuumized sound stage, I think at that point. But still, well, they can create an entire vacuum a sound stage, but they can't light it properly. Is that that's a great point, Chuck, Come on, that's a great point, and that kind of reveals what's going on with this. This is never going to be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. I think. I think people enjoy kind of poking at

one another on this. Yeah, like making NASA scientists respond like they don't have anything else today. Yeah. The fact that, um, they could never have pulled this off though they can't, They couldn't have duped the entire scientific community all over the world. Not only that, yes, Russia as well, Like you would drink if Russia would go public with this faster than you could say, lick it split. Um, there

is somebody has actually explained that as well. UM. Supposedly right after the moon landing, UM, a guy named Ralph Renee points out that UM, the US or did sending very secret humanitarian aid massive amounts of grain to the Soviet Union very quietly. Um, And basically that we wouldn't normally do that through our normal policy. We had no reason to send them humanitarian aid. They were our greatest enemy.

But we're doing it secretly. And if we were doing it, wouldn't we have said, hey, you know, we're we're helping out our our enemy because we're all humans. That kind of thing, right, wouldn't have been more public. It's it's kind of a tenuous argument, but it's something to chew over. Right said, they could have kept the Russians quiet. To that, Josh, you know, I'm starting to you're starting to win me over, Chuck,

you are. But you said one reason that that this whole thing would have been fake, the moon laning would have been faked, was um, because of of the space race the Cold War? What about money? Well, true, it would have cost a lot a lot of money to put in. In fact, did cost a lot of money

to put someone on the moon. From from nineteen fifty eight to UM ninth or two thousand and eight, by my by my calculations, NASA has gotten about fifty billion dollars in change and funding over those over the fifty year period. That's a big slush fund. If you think about it, is it's just like you have no money to account for any longer. It's in space. That's our bailout, right now, Why isn't this settled? Think about this. We're going into space all the time. True. The reason why

is that the last we went to the moon. Oh another explanations that it served as a distraction for the Vietnam War, right right, America is like, well, we're going to the moon, you know, forget about the American soldiers.

They are dying over there and actually suspiciously. Um, the last time we landed on the moon was V two, towards the end of the Vietnam War, and then all of a sudden, if you look at NASA's funding year by year, it drops in half for about a decade until it started up again in the eighties when you and I were very interested in it as youngsters. Right, So does the tail wag the dog, Josh, or just the dog wagged the tail? I don't. I can't answer that.

But speaking of wag the dog, um, if it was faked, think about how many people were greased by the CIA right after They play their role as like a production assistant or a director or something like that and killed, I mean killed waxed. Yeah, but again, why why why isn't this salt? So we stopped going to the moon or stopped landing on the moon after women back. But we have sent some you know, uh, lunar orbiters around

the Moon with really great cameras. So why don't we just say here is the lunar lander, dummy, and here are the footprints, dummy. Why why you know, why aren't we doing that? You know why? Because it's it's not worth the money to do that, right. No, they're actually going around the Moon and they're act they're they're taking photos of the Moon's surface and they're going over it. The problem is the the camera resolution, which are these incredible cameras are still not picking up They don't have

the resolution to pick up these objects. On the sound, it does sound a little shady. So we'll see. There's a few out there right now. India has the Chan Drayon I believe is the Pronunciation orbiter. Japan has the cagu Ya orbiter. My Japanese is rusty sound, and then the US is the Lunar Reconnaissance orbiter. They're all orbiting the Moon right now, and they all possibly have good enough cameras to send back photos of the Apollo moon landings.

Well hopefully that happens one day. Yeah, so you can just put this to bed once again. I still think people will just say, well, they fake those. You know. It's a good point. We've got India in there in our pockets. So that's it. Uh, well, not quiet. You want to oh no, you got to. No, you have reader mail, so you want to let the moon landing conspiracy one just kind of peter out a Moment's okay,

all right, Listener mail times, listener mail time. Johsh I'm gonna call this one exceptional fan mail, as I like to do. Nice. Now, is this this isn't stuff we should have known? No, no, no, this is an actual, uh really kind of a cool story from Ben in Ontario, Canada. And you're gonna remember this one, Josh, is a good one.

This guy listened to our exorcism podcast and uh I was talking about a positive possession, of beneficial possession, and he has a story about himself and I'm gonna summarize this. Oh yeah, Ben night. Uh he Ben says, eleven years ago he was in a bad bicycle accident and UH came between two busses and was hit by a car he was winning in high school. He says, it is a bad bicycle X. Yeah, he said he was fully conscious afterwards, even though I went over my handlebars and

hit my head on the hood of the car. I was fully aware of the situation and what happened. But he was told he was completely coherent the ambul us in in the e r with the nurses, even okay with his parents. When he brought him home several hours later, they put him to bed and thirty minutes later he woke back up and didn't remember any of it, and it took him a full hour to even find out what had happened to him. So Ben says, I believe during this short time that I was actually possessed by

the Egyptian god Horace. H O r U s Uh. I think that's the one with the dog's head. If I'm not mistaken, I think so okay. So he was possessed by Horace or an ancient priest from the temple of Horace. Uh that this took control of him and kept his brain from shutting down and having more damage than it did. I know there are other medical explanations as to what happened. Heavy impacts can cause a short

term memory to wipe out, et cetera. However, this is the belief that I have about it, and it's backed up to me by the fact that is where it gets good by About two years later, he went to an optometrist and he found marks on the lower outer edge of his eye is and there are similar marks and paintings of the eyes of Horace. And the doctor could not explain this. You've never seen it before and

could not explain how it happened. So maybe I'm just crazy, but and I know some people think that, but it's what I believe happened to me. And then I wrote

you back already. We don't think you're crazy. We think that anyone that thinks they had this whole big cosmic soup figured out doesn't know what they're talking about, and that who knows, you could have very well been possessed by Horace as far as I know, And that's a Thanks for sharing your story, Thanks for thanks for opening up for us, Ben and um anybody else you'd like to do the same, Whether or not you believe yourself to have been possessed by a benevolent spirit or so

such um or if you just want to say hot either want you can send an email to Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com m brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camry. It's ready, are you