Made in a Hollywood basement - Did they or didn't they land on the moon..?

Well, in my humble opinion I would venture to suggest that the moon
landing that we saw in the footage, photo's and other paraphernalia was
in fact all staged, and that the real moon landing, whenever that was
I'm not sure, was a much less spectacular, and much less eventful
happening. The moon footage and photo's were all done in time to afford
America victory in the 'space race', and the suspicions around that I
feel can never truly be rebutted, in light of the fact that to the day
the united states remains a world superpower, who has a direct influence
on almost every major event (or at least how it to be perceived by the
rest of the world) in the world. The movie 'Wag the dog' is a perfect
illustration of the power that the US media has over the way a war, or
the rest of the world views any other current world event, and also just
how much one can tamper with footage/photo's to achieve the desired
result.

Some of the most plausible motives for the US government staging this
hoax are distraction and cold war prestige. Distraction - the lunar
missions definitely took peoples attention from the Vietnam war, and the
frantic lunar activity strangely came to a halt, with planned missions
being aborted, around the same time that the US stop their involvement
in the Vietnam War. Cold War Prestige - It was imperative for the U.S.
government win the space race with the USSR. Going to the Moon, if at
all possible, was quite risky and pretty expensive. It would have been
much easier (and cheaper) to fake the landing, ensuring sure-fire
success.

There are many people who believe, and many who don't, and I will now
work through my opinion on their comments, which I got off www.bbc.co.uk

Bob Builder - "How is anyone supposed to believe that a space-craft
with the total computer power of a pocket calculator made it to the moon
and back?"

I do believe that there must have been some serious risk involved in
the first mission. The available technology at the time was such that
there was a good chance that the landing might fail if genuinely
attempted, and therefore I think they would have at least have taken
'precautionary' measures like maybe prerecording the mission, and taking
photo's, to ensure the 'success' of the mission.

Harry Faulkner - "I still believe it was real. And just think what a
coup it would have been for the Soviet Union to be able to show that it
was all faked. If they had even so much as a whisper that it was faked -
and their intelligence was very good - they'd have screamed 'fake' at
the top of their voices. They never did."

The Soviets, with their own competing moon program and an intense
economic and political and military rivalry with the USA, would be
expected to have cried foul if the USA tried to fake a Moon landing, if
it wasn't for the fact that, according to the Theorist Ralph Rene,
shortly after the alleged Moon landings, the USA silently started
shipping hundreds of thousands of tons of grain as humanitarian aid to
the allegedly starving USSR. This may act as evidence of a cover-up, the
grain being the price of silence.

Geoff Pollard - "The conspiracy theorists always ignore one important
factor... the moon rocks that were brought back. These were distributed
world wide to the scientific community and universities for evaluation.
Surely if they had been faked then someone would have blown the whistle
by now."

In response to that, I only have two words: Piltdown Man. Piltdown was
a major archaeological hoax, which was successfully perpetrated for over
40 years. Many other hoaxes have been successfully staged over the
years, and I have no reason to believe that in this one there isn't some
hint of untruth.

Sources:

http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Apollo_moon_landing_hoax_accusations

http://www.braeunig.us/space/hoax.htm
www.bbc.co.uk

Miss Annamarie Martin
Department of Biodiversity and Conservation biology
University of the Western Cape
Private BagX17
e-mail - 2318859@uwc.ac.za
Blog - http://www.marypoppins.iblog.co.za/