Ask HN: Why so many Americans believe the man moon landing was fake?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28088433

by mardiyah • 5 years ago

12 45 5 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Why the longer it gets, so many more Americans believe the man moon landing was fake?

java-man• 5 years ago

Failed education system.

sjg007• 5 years ago

Some may argue the education system is working as designed.

MattGaiser2• 5 years ago

There are people who have an ideological view and accept anything that fits that ideological model.

"Plandemic" types are anti-government, so they like the idea that the pandemic is to control them.

wayneftw3• 5 years ago

Can the opposite exist too? i.e. people who are always pro-government and never question authority?

The Milgram experiment tells me: yes.

Both types are following their ideological model no? I see a lot of anti-conspiracy ideologues out there who won't even acknowledge actual, known historical conspiracies. They brush them off like "that would never happen today"...

krapp3• 5 years ago

The credibility of the Milgram experiments and the common interpretations of them are currently in doubt. [0,1]

So no, there may actually not be people who are always pro-government and never question authority.

[0]https://digest.bps.org.uk/2017/12/12/interviews-with-milgram...

[1]https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01902725198619...

MattGaiser2• 5 years ago

It depends on how it is defined. In many scenarios I don’t question authority, but it is usually because I have no stake in the outcome but rather whether I am in good terms with the authority.

Ancapistani2• 5 years ago

I think it has less to do with the moon landing itself than about inherent and blind distrust of government.

I say “blind” because I also inherently distrust government, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to argue if a government official declares that the sky is blue. The people who legitimately believe the moon landings were faked typically seem to do so because they believe that everything the government says is false. It’s an article of faith for them as much as it would be for someone with blind trust.

csw-001• 5 years ago

Slightly different take here - maybe it's not distrust but disbelief, rooted in individuals' personal experience with the government. More than once I have been in water cooler chats with other government technology contractors who (jokingly) muse "can you believe we made it to the moon?" or (less jokingly) "do you think we will ever be able to do 'moon shot' program again?" I often find it hard to square my personal experience working inside government bureaucracies with the fact that a government project of this scale and ambition was so successful - generally ending on the question "what changed?" or "if they could do that then, why can't we do even XYZ now?"

underseacables• 5 years ago

Cognitive dissonance. Some people need to feel different and counter to a given culture, probably as a defense mechanism. Denying the moon landing is a vocal demonstration of sticking ones head in the sand.

m_myers• 5 years ago

I don't understand where this question is coming from. How many Americans have you met who believe the moon landings were fake? For me that number is 0.

Beware of polls showing a small percentage of people believe something. Anything under 10% is subject to the Lizardman's Constant[0]; i.e., there are enough pranksters, people who misheard the question, et cetera, to form a measurable part of the population.

[0] https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...

dghlsakjg• 5 years ago

Are there actually that many that believe this? Or is it just so patently absurd that we talk about them a lot?

guenthert• 5 years ago

There might be multiple reasons, but I'd think for quite a few it's the same as the flat-earth theory, namely getting a kick out of teasing nerds.

version_five3• 5 years ago

I'd be very curious to know how many people actually believe that. I speculate that it's vanishing small.

With these kind of "conspiracy theories" some people like to engage in the thought experiment, essentially thinking through what would have to be true for the conspiracy theory to hold. They adopt a position about it to engage in debate, sometimes as an intellectual exercise (even if a low brow one) and sometimes just to troll. I've got caught by such people before, that are really just being outrageous because they want attention, but at the end of the day they don't really believe it. Flat earth is the other classic example of this.

Conspiracy theories are also the ultimate strawman, and it serves a lot of interests to promote the belief that lots of people believe in absurd conspiracy theories, and that those who disagree with anything mainstream almost certainly do so because they are stupid enough to believe in some outrageous conspiracy theory.

Ironically, the idea that lots of people believe in conspiracy theories is in a sense a conspiracy theory in itself.

dagw• 5 years ago

First obvious question is "do many Americans actually believe that"? How many Americans believe the moon landing was fake, and is that number a big number?

I suspect what you are seeing is that a very small number of people have been given a very big megaphone, making them look like a much bigger group than they actually are. Plus you will always have a group of people who will say outrageous things "for the lulz" without actually believing any of it.

Ancapistani2• 5 years ago

I think it’s much more common than you might think. Anecdotally, I’ve met many people who shared the assertion when the topic came up in conversation - and it’s not a common topic, either.

ScoopWitch• 5 years ago

for the same reason some don't believe in vaccination

IIAOPSW• 5 years ago

Contrarianism is a shortcut to skepticism. Believing the opposite of what you're taught is easier than actually questioning the official narrative and sometimes believing and sometimes not. Contrarianism is about saying "look how smart I am, I figured out the real truth^tm", not about actually figuring out the real truth^tm.

mimixco2• 5 years ago

Here are the most popular reasons. Please do not attack me personally; I'm only trying to summarize the viewpoint for someone who asked:

1. The Van Allen belts are filled with lethal, impenetrable radiation. An attempt to "clear them out" using a bomb (called Starfish Prime) only made it worse. In 2021, there's still no fix for this nor a launch module that can carry the shielding that would protect people.

2. The computer technology required to plan and command a space module simply didn't exist at the time. Too much math is required too fast for realtime control, especially given the delays caused by the distance.

3. Werner von Braun, the primary proponent of the moon launch, did not believe that the moon could be reached directly because the necessary rocket would be too heavy to take off. There's no fuel that could do it and get there. From the beginning, he proposed a "build a base nearby" approach, not a direct moon landing. When that was rejected, he quit the program.

4. Video and photo evidence is highly suspect and contains many anomalies which, with contemporary computer-aided evaluation, can be shown to contain lighting and reflections which could not originate on the surface of the moon unless ancillary lighting was carried there, which NASA says it was not.

5. NASA has been historically obtuse on contemporary answers to many of these questions. If the landing took place, the answers should be public and obvious.

6. In 2021, there is no battery or air conditioning technology which would work for the times and temperatures required on the moon. Since it doesn't exist today, it probably didn't exist then.

7. Any developed technology gets easier and cheaper. Moon landings have not only not gotten cheaper, they've never been "repeated." No other country has made an attempt to send humans. Being as old as it is, space tech should be mature, cheap, and easy and it's not.

8. It's enormously difficult to send people even into Low Earth Orbit, as evidenced by the problems with contemporary private attempts and even with the ISS. There is no evidence other than the moon landing to show that people could leave earth's orbit and return to land safely.

The most widespread contemporary viewpoint among moon deniers is that the project was originally intended to succeed but, when that was proven to be impossible (first by the Soviets), a PR plan based on movies and photos was delivered instead. It's not unreasonable given the era and general beliefs at the time. A moon PR program delivered many national benefits and changed the way we view tech, both of which are good things.

Many moon deniers hope that some of these issues will come to light specifically so that real space exploration can move forward and free man from a sci-fi fantasy of the 50's.[0]

[0] https://www.aulis.com/

sergiotapia• 5 years ago

Please don't attack me personally, I'm just curious and love reading these sci-fi fantasy type things.

What would be the counter-arguments to these points that seem very reasonable for someone who never really looked into the landings at all.

krapp3• 5 years ago

Any number of rebuttals can be found online for these, many probably on the Moon landing conspiracy theory wikipedia page[0].

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing_conspiracy_theori...

wayneftw3• 5 years ago

If someone says "Well, I think it could have been faked." then I bet many here would automatically label that person as a conspiracy nut.

Life's a lot better when you don't know everything because it leaves room for new information. I certainly don't know everything, but I often get cast aside as a nutter for not immediately agreeing with common assumptions.

Imagine showing a deep fake to someone from just 20 years ago? They'd believe it. It's not hard to imagine that some secretive area of military science is 20-50 years ahead of what civilians know about.

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 5 years ago

I don't think any reasonable person could honestly believe there is any significant possibility[0] it could have been faked. The Soviet Union would have had a vested interest in proving it was a hoax if it were, yet they uttered not a peep of protest.

Faking it and keeping that information from getting out, especially over this time span, would be a ludicrously wide-ranging and leakproof conspiracy that continues to this day.

[0] Because really, anything is possible. We could all be a Boltzmann Brain that came into being mere instants ago, that's just a useless thing to invest any serious consideration into.

l332mn4• 5 years ago

In fact, the Soviet union was there at the time of the US moon landing, as their automated Luna 15 craft crashed into the lunar surface.

tmn• 5 years ago

There are plenty of videos of people detailing why they believe footage is fake. You can go look at that. Most of it comes down to sketchy details in footage. I've looked at such videos and some of it can be convincing, but not conclusive by any means. With regards to the moon, I think we just have a hard time intuiting how gravity will play out, so it's easy to make arguments that motion should look different than the videos shows. The only reference points are the ones they're 'debunking'.

I'll also note, NASA has absolutely been caught releasing fake/edited pictures/videos. That does not mean that moon landing was fake. Sometimes it's just convenient to take something from a training exercise, edit it, and release it as part of some promotional content.

l332mn4• 5 years ago

Incidentally, there was a lot of simulations of what was going on on television during the time, especially leading up to the landing itself. It may have had something to do with why it got stuck in peoples mind that the entire thing was simulated.

villgax• 5 years ago

Being insulated from the rest of the world thanks to the other two3 of their population does lead to things like this

janitor61• 5 years ago

If I were to play devil's advocate: Barring alchemy, I don't believe we've ever had a period of exceptional technological supremacy in the history of mankind that subsequently reverted so completely. In the span of 50 years, we abdicated the position as explorers of space to a civilization trapped within LEO, content with sending probes and taking pictures, and the prevailing explanation for it is "not cost efficient", which in itself is quite depressing.

version_five3• 5 years ago

period of exceptional technological supremacy in the history of mankind that subsequently reverted so completely

This is true for many major engineering works, at least in the west. Many rail systems, dams, tunnels, etc from the 20th century would now be impossible politically or cost prohibitive.

The pyramids may not have been realistically possible any time since they were built

the__alchemist• 5 years ago

Don't discount the value of unmanned missions. Canned primates are easy to relate to, but there's a lot we can accomplish with sensor suites.

Carl Sagan, in his book Pale Blue Dot, has a relevant chapter called 'The Gift of Apollo". Manned missions are exciting to the public, and are valuable for this reason - but their design requirements are often at odds with scientific objectives. I think both types of exploration are important.

In addition to stimulating culture and interest in space travel, manned missions lead to engineering breakthroughs. Both unmanned, and manned missions are important. Manned missions have stagnated, but unmanned is certainly not 'trapped within LEO' !

CRConrad2• 5 years ago

Don't discount the value of unmanned missions. Canned primates are easy to relate to, but there's a lot we can accomplish with sensor suites.

The main thing sensor suites can't do, though, and which manned missions are (were, would be) an ongoing proof of concept of, is colonizing space. If we don't want mankind to perish with this ball of mud in just a few billion years (at the very most), we gotta get out there. We, not just our "sensors".

mimixco2• 5 years ago

Interesting that you bring up alchemy, which is now entirely possible. Lots of metals can be turned into gold (or other things) through radioactive bombardment. Problem is, it costs more than the gold is worth to do so.

l332mn4• 5 years ago

The NASA scientists went on and revolutionised the tech and manufacturing industry after the lunar landing. I'd hardly say this is a case of technological supremacy reverting, rather the opposite. The technical expertise developed thereof had massive benefit for US tech and industry sectors.

In terms of societal benefits, the lunar mission had an extremely high cost for little direct benefit. The moon landing was an effort in propaganda, and an effective at that, aimed to show the world that the US was not lagging behind the USSR in terms of technology. But it would have been foolish to go on and continue to spend such a massive amounts of money, and hogging the best scientists and engineers for decades more, with hardly benefits other than ideological ones.

Synaesthesia• 5 years ago

People are disillusioned with the government and official institutions. You see it in all kinds of anti-government sentiment, it's partly because of the manipulation there's been via advertising and propoganda. And they can tell something is wrong with the system, but they're not sure what exactly.

xx511134bz• 5 years ago

The Internet enables the exposition of discordant data.

jl27182• 5 years ago

I love this question. It’s quintessential epistemology. You’ve flipped the question upside down without realizing it.

First, you talk about ‘other people’, and not yourself, or the person you are asking, who are the only people that anything can be known about.

And then you talk about knowledge of a single unique event that you didn’t experience.

And then you insert a predicate nominative that would reverse a prior belief, “fake”.

Wow, so much to unravel there. First get comfortable asking the first-person active voice question of yourself, with the same level of skepticism you have of the third-person passive pluperfect predicate nominative. I think you’ll be amazed at how confident you are about things you know nothing about.

Signed, - former NASA engineer.

P.S. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. Nobody thought much about how we got there with Apollo, just how to get back with Orion (we didn’t). We had to do some tests on the moon dust, but they sent ‘simulant’ instead, and for good reasons. Apparently it’s harder to get back there than we thought it would be.

jl27182• 5 years ago

While I’m at it, short story:

There was an on-base McDonalds which I believe I was probably the only customer of. They shut that down to become the ‘Lunar Science Institute’ and moved all the moon rocks there. That was when we requested the moon dust and they sent simulant from Goddard instead. The McDonald’s was right next to the old Navy bachelor officer’s quarters, which we opened up to house the intern program. I had a few interns and a big empty lab so they used to hang out in my space. Well anyway, this is where my personal knowledge of the situation ends and the folklore begins, but, one of these kids had a crush on some girl who rebuffed his advances, but at some point acquiesced some form of willingness if they were on the moon to save mankind, something like that. Well, security was not great in that place, and I guess it hadn’t been upgraded since the days of serving Big Macs. He got the moon dust and laid it down on a bed for this girl. I forget how it ended for those two, but, we made do with the simulant.

BenoitP• 5 years ago

I had an engineer coworker who didn't believe it happened. Here is why I think he held that opinion:

He's the son of a politician who acquired power by pushing a fringe but appealing version of a series of events. The difference between the way he talked about it vs the news I read was revealing: it appealed to paranoia thinking but in a very inviting way. It actually fostered interest, a feeling you're in-group, and a us-vs-them mentality.

I think that's the culture he grew up in; where you can uphold an illogical opinion loudly, seeking a debate just for the sake of being at the center. There is no such thing as bad press they say.

And it worked! For a whole 3 weeks we only talked about the moon landings. We reviewed the Apollo transcripts, moon rocks, papers, telescope images of rovers tracks, catadioptric devices. He had an answer for everything!

In the end I had enough, said let's agree to disagree, that he was a clown but a friendly one.

It sort of worked for him IMHO. I'm hearing he has transitioned to sales; where you go see someone who has a very different opinion than you about who belongs their own money.

I'm positive he'll be just fine.

jfengel• 5 years ago

It's interesting that you single out Americans. I don't actually know if it's especially true for Americans, but I do think that events of the last decade or so suggest that Americans do seem to engage an awful lot with conspiracy theories.

I'm sure there are many factors, but I believe that a key one is the American belief in individualism. We celebrate the ability of geniuses who saw past the prevailing ideas and became great. We think America rewards hard work and talent, and that if you're not successful, either you're dumb, lazy, or somebody is holding you back.

And of course you, yourself, must not be dumb or lazy. So it must be the third thing.

It's easy to find that dark, oppressive force if you go looking -- via confirmation bias, cherry picking, and other tactics. And everybody else is either dumb or complicit if they don't see it.

The moon landing hoax is a great meme to believe in. It doesn't actually cost you anything to be wrong -- it's not like Buzz Aldrin is going to punch you in the face (as long as you're carefully separated by the Internet). You can live your whole life believing it without it actually mattering. The worst that can happen is that people get aggravated by your fanaticism -- you can't change your mind and won't change the subject. But that just tells you who your friends are.

Believing in a conspiracy theory makes you feel powerful. Americans in particular seem to crave that need to feel powerful, that they're in on the secret and thus better than everybody else.

Couple that with the particular time of the moon landing -- Vietnam, Nixon, the CIA and FBI doing a ton of genuinely awful stuff, etc -- and distrusting the government is easy. We've never really gotten over that.

It's unclear to me just how much of moon-landing denial is real and how much is just trolling. Trolling and conspiracy theories are two sides of the same coin. People want to feel powerful by knowing a "secret". The secret of trolling is that it's not hard to violate the social contract that allows us to live civilly with one another. That gives you power over other people, as long as you're at sufficient distance to avoid repercussions and sufficiently safe that you don't care what strangers think of you.

Anyway, that's a lot of words and only barely scratches the surface. But perhaps it gives a hint.

LargoLasskhyfv2• 5 years ago

Because of the movie Capricorn One from 1977.

Or was the belief of faking it common before that?

CRConrad2• 5 years ago

But where did the idea for the movie come from -- and the belief that it would sell? Seems at least the movie-makers thought there was enough of a receptive audience for a slick packaging of the trope, so it seems to me they reckoned that a sufficient portion of movie-goers wouldn't find it too outlandish...

(Personally, I mostly remember it for OJ chomping down on that rattlesnake.)

LargoLasskhyfv2• 5 years ago

From the morphogenetic field.

The time was ripe.

It leaked trough the shield.

So the ancient thought painters, in their holy woods,

Painted some tripe, for the greater goods,

of mankind.

To not feel left behind, on the eternal march of progress.

That would burst the bubble, and cause distress!

A real first, and unacceptable mess.

Ask HN: Why so many Americans believe the man moon landing was fake?

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