The Eagle Never Landed
On television yesterday, I heard a news
commentator casually toss out the statistic that
three-quarters of the world's population believe
American astronauts never landed on the moon. The
seeming absurdity of the comment made me highly
suspicious—enough to do a little research on
this alleged phenomenon myself. If there were any
truth in this statement, I wanted to understand how
such widespread skepticism could be possible.
My brief Google tour led me to a multitude of
"experts" offering homemade videos and
self-published books, all purporting to prove that
mankind's giant leap took place on a sound stage.
Amateur Web sites galore showcase photographic
"evidence"
that reveals NASA's extensive deception (which the
agency has handily debunked).
Conspiracy theorists of every stripe claim that the
U.S. faked the moon landing to gain a strategic
advantage over the USSR during the Cold War, and
staged astronaut "accidents" (such as the Apollo 1
tragedy) to seal loose lips.
The few references I found which actually quoted
poll numbers could not be called scientific by any
stretch of the imagination. Nevertheless, even
those polls claimed that only about seven percent
of people—not seventy percent—believe the
moon landing never happened. That's still a lot of
ignorant people, though.
Speaking of ignorance... Fox aired a sensational
special devoted to the "hoax" back in 2001,
apparently trying to boost ratings during sweeps by
giving the aforementioned conspiracy theorists
national air time. Amazingly, the program prompted
so many people to contact NASA that the space
agency had to post the following notice on its home
page: "A recent TV program resurfaced old questions
about whether NASA really sent astronauts to the
moon between 1969 and 1972. We did."
A 1978 movie called "Capricorn One" turned the
moon landing conspiracy theory into a "what-if"
drama. In the movie, NASA launches a spacecraft to
Mars, secretly keeping the astronauts on Earth and
faking the Mars landing on a sound stage. When the
empty spacecraft inadvertently burns up on
re-entry, the astronauts go on the run to expose
the truth before NASA can kill them to keep the
hoax intact.
I'm still not any closer to understanding the
skepticism which could lead otherwise rational
people to believe NASA staged the Apollo lunar
landings. I've certainly learned more than I ever
wanted to know about the conspiracy theories
themselves, but I don't understand the thinking
behind them. "Capricorn One" just arrived in the
mail from Netflix, however, so maybe I'll feel
differently after watching it. Or not.
Development note: I've
noticed that this site doesn't look like it should
in Netscape Navigator. Rather than waste time
jury-rigging it to look right in a
soon-to-be-obsolete browser, I'll just add the
cliché "This site best viewed with Internet
Explorer."
©2003 Michael
Strickland ALL RIGHTS
RESERVED
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Daily Chuckle:
The gene pool could use a little
chlorine.
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Today's
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Previously...
2/5:
Pope:
Potter No Problem
2/4:
Time
for Another Rewrite
2/3:
A
Matter of Opinions
2/2:
Suicidal
Bravado
2/1:
Godspeed,
Columbia
Archive: JANUARY
2003
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