Apollo 11 ~ Greatest Adventure or Greatest Fake?
A critical look at a conspiracy theory There are some people who believe that the Apollo 11, and subsequent Apollo, Moon landings were faked on a movie set on earth. These Conspiracy Theorists, or CTs as the writer shall term them, have made many claims to assert that Apollo astronauts were filmed and photographed on this alleged movie set, and that the giant Saturn V moon rockets, launched with great publicity, flew only into earth orbit.
This essay intends to examine, and refute, some of the claims of fakery made by CTs. Evidence-based counter-arguments will show the greater likelihood that Apollo astronauts landed on the moon. The reader is encouraged to undertake further critical research on CT claims not addressed here.
A reasonable way of addressing, and refuting, Apollo conspiracy arguments would be to use extracts from the 2001 made-for-television documentary entitled "Conspiracy Theory: did we land on the moon?" (produced and directed by John Moffat for Nash Entertainment Incorporated in 2001). This documentary was distributed by RG International TV. It was aired on Fox Television USA in February 2001 and later by Television New Zealand (TVNZ) in New Zealand. In spite of the question in the title of this documentary, it presents claims only for the negative. Thus, this documentary is considered a sufficiently cohesive vehicle to be used as the sole source of CT claims and arguments to be refuted here (and it will be referred to in the text as "the CT documentary").
On 6 May 1968, a Lunar Lander Research Vehicle (LLRV) crashed on earth while its pilot was undergoing training in the unique flying techniques which he would be later required to use during the final landing phase culminating in the first landing on the moon (ref.1). This machine was one of five earth-only atmospheric test craft used by NASA for assessment and training of astronauts in the handling techniques they would need, to fly a lunar landing craft to the surface of the moon. These training craft could not operate in space (ref.1). They were designed to operate only in earth's atmosphere.
Yet the CT documentary claims that this LLRV crash is the reason that at least the Apollo 11 moon landing mission was faked, because the "only" lunar landing craft that NASA had (as the CT documentary claims this to be), was destroyed in a crash only "a few months" before the Apollo 11 mission of July 1969. However, the CT documentary clearly showed video of a LLRV craft crashing (ref.1, pictures of LLRV).
The major article carried by international news media at the time, reported that in December 1968, Apollo 8 was to fly to the moon without a lunar lander (ref.2). The given reason, verified by NASA, was that there were no lunar landers ready. But these same reports also said that delivery from the contractors to NASA of lunar landing craft was reasonably on schedule and imminent. Subsequent news reports proved the truth of this. The next three Apollo flights flew with a lunar lander (ref.3): Apollo 9 in March 1969, Apollo 10 in May 1969, while Apollo 11 in July 1969 took the third lander down to the lunar surface.
In 1968 and 1969, news of the Apollo flights might reasonably have been considered among the greatest news since the human species evolved, in the sense that the first tentative steps were being taken to visit another world. Therefore it becomes difficult to understand how the producers of the CT documentary, which has the apparent aim to present only "proof" that the moon landings never happened, were evidently in ignorance of the breadth of detail of some of this most widely-disseminated news. Nevertheless, the CT documentary makes the claim that no lunar lander could be ready for the Apollo 11 flight. This claim is clearly false, based on strong evidence to the contrary. The CT documentary offers two false premises (that the LLRV was a lunar lander, and that no landers were subsequently ready) in support of that false claim. Thus, this claim of the CTs must be seen as a Straw Man argument.
In another argument which the CT documentary presents in order to show that the moon landings were faked, there is shown a photograph of an astronaut (see top left), fully visible with good detail, standing on the moon. The narrator in the CT documentary, one Mitch Pillegi, explains that this photograph, according to NASA, was taken by a fellow astronaut. Pillegi claims that this photograph had to be faked, because, as he claims, there is only one source of illumination on the moon, and that is the sun behind the astronaut. Therefore (so he reasons) in a genuine moon picture the astronaut in the photograph ought to have been in (black) silhouette. But this is a picture showing reasonably good frontal detail of an astronaut with the sun behind him. Pillegi claims that the only way the front of the astronaut could be lit up to show the detail it does, is for a spotlight to be trained on the front of the astronaut, standing (as he claims) on the fake moon movie set somewhere on earth where the photograph was really taken.
That Pillegi's reasoning is false can be easily explained by effects which have routinely been used by professional photographers on earth for decades at least (ref.4). It will be shown that there were always at least three, and sometimes four, sources of natural light on the moon which were intrinsic with the presence of Apollo astronauts on the moon, given the concession by Pillegi that the Apollo astronauts were there in daylight and his acknowledgment that Apollo astronauts would not have taken photographic floodlights on a real journey to the moon.
In the case of the astronaut photograph under discussion, all four light sources were available, of which two and possibly three would light up the front of the astronaut in the diffuse (that is to say, there are no sharp shadows on the front of the astronaut) way actually displayed in the photograph.
The four natural light sources lighting up this particular photograph are: 1) the sun, 2) the bright and scattered glare reflected in all directions off the rough lunar surface, and this scattered light source must be acknowledged as very bright, for this same light from a full moon lights up the earth quite well at night from 400,000 km away, 3) the earthshine on the moon, reasonably much brighter than moonshine on earth due to the approximately 16 times greater potential reflective area of the larger earth, and 4), in this photograph, the white spacesuit of the astronaut who is holding the camera is a source of diffuse reflected light into the photographic subject (the astronaut in the photograph).
It should be noted that these first three natural light sources listed were available for all photographs taken by Apollo astronauts. The last light source on the list would be available only when an astronaut was holding the camera and was standing relatively close to the subject.
Pillegi appears unaware of these most simple and oft-used passive techniques of lighting of a subject in order to minimise frontal shadow in a photograph. These lighting techniques are not normally considered intrinsically available to earth photography, but they are very easy and cheap to set up in any photographic studio or in professional outdoor shots in order to minimise shadow (ref.4). Studios can, and routinely do, have white-painted boards, white blankets or sheets of newsprint for strategic placing to softly fill in shadow on the subject. Outdoor shots on earth have been known to use people to hold one or more whiteboards to fill in shadow with diffuse light (the writer has personally done this for professional publicity photographs).
Therefore Pillegi's argument is Straw Man because of his misrepresentation.
It is realized that this strong counter-argument to Pillegi's claim removes this photograph as evidence for either side in the Apollo fakery debate. The photograph could equally as well have been taken on the moon as on earth.
Incidentally the CT documentary takes pains to point out, twice, that there were no stars visible in any lunar photographs shown. No one can argue with this observed fact. Interestingly, the CT documentary makes no further mention of this phenomenon. Perhaps older viewers especially are supposed to recall what many of them were taught in secondary school science, that stars would be able to be seen from the lunar surface in daylight. This indeed was a common belief among some academics in the 1950s and 1960s (evidenced by congruency in school science instruction and other science books read during that period by this writer). But Arthur C. Clarke, B.Sc., F.R.A.S., Chairman, British Interplanetary Society at the time, in one of his early factual books (ref.5), argued that while it was an almost universal understanding that stars would be visible on the moon in daylight, it was not so. He argued that, given the glare from the lunar surface, that eyes (and by reasonable extrapolation, cameras) which were adjusted to see surface features clearly, could not see the stars because of their relative dimness compared to the brightness of the moonscape. He also, in his 1951 book, thanks an academic colleague for pointing out this little-realized hypothesis of the time (ref.5), thus proving he was not alone in this belief.
Therefore, any implicit argument the CT documentary may have been subtly trying to make about the significance of the plain black sky in lunar photographs, becomes irrelevant to the point of being able to suggest that either side of the debate could, with probably nearly equal justification, raise an Appeal to Authority argument, but one such argument would be a fallacious appeal.
Assuming Apollo astronauts really did go to the moon, the presence of a living Charlie Duke, Apollo 16 Lunar Module (lunar lander) pilot, at a social occasion with the writer in 1999 (ref.6) contradicts two claims made in the CT documentary. First, it states that any astronaut going through the Van Allen radiation belts which surround the earth, would be "fried" from the radiation (going through these belts is necessary for journeys to the moon). This claim is false, and here is a strong reason why. If there were any truth that the Van Allen belts would kill people, then America's Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, would surely have told the world that their own research, undertaken years before the Apollo moon missions, had proved it (ref.7). It was in December 1968 that Apollo 8 took the first astronauts through the Van Allen belts. However, the Soviets said nothing when the astronauts from that, and all subsequent lunar missions, came back alive. They knew the Van Allen belts were harmless to astronauts passing through, for they had sent up their Kosmos 110 capsule on February 22, 1966, containing two dogs and a range of smaller animals for the express purpose of flying the animals through the Van Allen belts repeatedly for 21 days (ref.7). Then they brought the capsule safely back to earth. The dogs had survived the radiation. The reference (7) makes no mention as to the fate of the smaller animals.
It should be stated that in those years, the Cold War was a bitter one. The Soviet Union would have taken great delight in showing up the US as fakers over Apollo. Instead, on this subject, the Soviets said nothing during the Apollo moon mission years, their only comment on the Van Allen issue had been the routine press release in 1966 about the flight of Kosmos 110 (as recalled by the writer), reporting that only a harmless dose of radiation would be received by an astronaut going through the Van Allen belts on a possible journey to the moon.
The argument in the CT documentary in support of the mortal danger of the Van Allen radiation belts, is thus shown to be false, due to the independently published truth of the matter (ref.7).
In a second display of ignorance involving Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke, the CT documentary also states that the Apollo 16 mission went to the moon at the same time as the largest solar storm of the century. The narrator, in making this claim, appeals to the authority of one Ralph Rene, described as an author/scientist, although no evidence was provided that this man had any formal science qualifications. Therefore (the documentary claims), the Apollo missions had to be faked, because if they were true, the Apollo16 astronauts would have been killed by high levels of radiation from this solar storm. Indeed, had the Apollo 16 astronauts been subject to the known level of radiation from this storm, they would certainly have been killed. Unfortunately for the CTs, the quality of their research is shown for what it is, by the knowledge on record that while the solar storm was genuine, and while it was also the most powerful storm of the century, it did not occur when the Apollo 16 astronauts were in space. Apollo 16 left earth on April 16, 1972 and returned to earth April 27, 1972 (ref.8, p11 and p219). The solar storm (ref.9), which lasted no more than several days, happened in August 1972, halfway between the Apollo 16 and the December 1972 Apollo 17 (ref.8, p233) missions.
Thus, this erroneous argument is a fallacious Appeal to Authority.
As a last example of the quality of argument in the CT documentary, the claim is made that the Apollo missions took off from earth and then stayed hiding in earth orbit for a time, then returned to earth. No supporting arguments are offered, therefore it is a baseless claim. However, strong inductive argument can be proferred in favour of the Apollo lunar missions being genuine. It is known from many news media reports from the 1950s and 1960s (read, heard and seen by the writer), that the Soviet Union had, years before Apollo, proven to the world that it had the technology to launch unmanned missions to the moon, to orbit the moon and take photographs, to soft-land spacecraft on the moon, and to remotely control these spacecraft from earth. Assuredly the Soviets could have, and would have, monitored the Apollo missions of their Cold War enemy all the way to the moon and back with their own proven technology. Had they been able to catch the US out in a lie over Apollo, they would have been delighted to do so. Their silence, in this case, is eloquent.
Given the 400,000 people who allegedly worked on the Apollo programme (ref.8, p98), one could reasonably expect, if it was all faked, that a disgruntled fake worker would have revealed such a "truth" sometime in the last 40 years in an attempt to gain his or her moment in the media spotlight, with the resultant big pile of money from the Hollywood rights. Compare this to the requirement for military secrecy of wartime inventions of World War 2, for the British at least. It was 30 years of keeping quiet by government order. It could be reasonably conjectured that even after a much shorter period of secrecy for a peacetime alleged fake like Apollo, somebody would talk.
The inductive conclusion is therefore strongly made that the Apollo moon landing missions were real.
References.
1: Mark Wade, Apollo LLRV (internet: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/apoollrv.htm, 1997 - 2008)
2: Self-reference. The major news articles circa 1968 - 1972, were, aside from the Vietnam war, to do with the exploration of space. Given that the tenor of the articles was to do with arguably the greatest advancement in human evolution since the species began - that of taking the first steps to exploring another world - the writer reasonably claims retention of memory from that great time, and therefore begs to be a legitimate source of reference.
3: Television documentary produced for BBC Worldwide Ltd, True Adventures of the 20th century (London: Nugus/Martin Productions Ltd, 1996).
4: Writer's personal experience as a member of a photographic society, and a sometime professional photographer.
5: Arthur C. Clarke, B.Sc., F.R.A.S., Chairman, British Interplanetary Society, The Exploration of Space (London: Temple Press Ltd, 1951), p114.
6: The writer was privileged to meet Charlie Duke on a social level in December 1999, when he stayed with acquaintances of the writer in Christchurch New Zealand for a short time. Naturally, the poor man was besieged with questions. The reference is therefore "I personally asked an astronaut".
7: Tara Gray, A Brief History of Animals in Space (internet: http://history.nasa.gov/animals.html, 1998)
8: Charlie Duke, Moonwalker (Nashville, Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1990), p11, p98, p219, p233.
9: Panagiotis Marchavilas, "The Stormy Sun Affecting the Human Life and the Technology", The Eggs e.g.u. Newsletter, Issue 26, (internet, http://www.the-eggs.org/articles.php?id=95, 2009), subheading "Travelling Outside the Earth's Atmosphere", sub-subheading "Solar Cosmic Rays" and sub-subheading "Galactic Cosmic Radiation".
A critical look at a conspiracy theory There are some people who believe that the Apollo 11, and subsequent Apollo, Moon landings were faked on a movie set on earth. These Conspiracy Theorists, or CTs as the writer shall term them, have made many claims to assert that Apollo astronauts were filmed and photographed on this alleged movie set, and that the giant Saturn V moon rockets, launched with great publicity, flew only into earth orbit.
This essay intends to examine, and refute, some of the claims of fakery made by CTs. Evidence-based counter-arguments will show the greater likelihood that Apollo astronauts landed on the moon. The reader is encouraged to undertake further critical research on CT claims not addressed here.
A reasonable way of addressing, and refuting, Apollo conspiracy arguments would be to use extracts from the 2001 made-for-television documentary entitled "Conspiracy Theory: did we land on the moon?" (produced and directed by John Moffat for Nash Entertainment Incorporated in 2001). This documentary was distributed by RG International TV. It was aired on Fox Television USA in February 2001 and later by Television New Zealand (TVNZ) in New Zealand. In spite of the question in the title of this documentary, it presents claims only for the negative. Thus, this documentary is considered a sufficiently cohesive vehicle to be used as the sole source of CT claims and arguments to be refuted here (and it will be referred to in the text as "the CT documentary").
On 6 May 1968, a Lunar Lander Research Vehicle (LLRV) crashed on earth while its pilot was undergoing training in the unique flying techniques which he would be later required to use during the final landing phase culminating in the first landing on the moon (ref.1). This machine was one of five earth-only atmospheric test craft used by NASA for assessment and training of astronauts in the handling techniques they would need, to fly a lunar landing craft to the surface of the moon. These training craft could not operate in space (ref.1). They were designed to operate only in earth's atmosphere.
Yet the CT documentary claims that this LLRV crash is the reason that at least the Apollo 11 moon landing mission was faked, because the "only" lunar landing craft that NASA had (as the CT documentary claims this to be), was destroyed in a crash only "a few months" before the Apollo 11 mission of July 1969. However, the CT documentary clearly showed video of a LLRV craft crashing (ref.1, pictures of LLRV).
The major article carried by international news media at the time, reported that in December 1968, Apollo 8 was to fly to the moon without a lunar lander (ref.2). The given reason, verified by NASA, was that there were no lunar landers ready. But these same reports also said that delivery from the contractors to NASA of lunar landing craft was reasonably on schedule and imminent. Subsequent news reports proved the truth of this. The next three Apollo flights flew with a lunar lander (ref.3): Apollo 9 in March 1969, Apollo 10 in May 1969, while Apollo 11 in July 1969 took the third lander down to the lunar surface.
In 1968 and 1969, news of the Apollo flights might reasonably have been considered among the greatest news since the human species evolved, in the sense that the first tentative steps were being taken to visit another world. Therefore it becomes difficult to understand how the producers of the CT documentary, which has the apparent aim to present only "proof" that the moon landings never happened, were evidently in ignorance of the breadth of detail of some of this most widely-disseminated news. Nevertheless, the CT documentary makes the claim that no lunar lander could be ready for the Apollo 11 flight. This claim is clearly false, based on strong evidence to the contrary. The CT documentary offers two false premises (that the LLRV was a lunar lander, and that no landers were subsequently ready) in support of that false claim. Thus, this claim of the CTs must be seen as a Straw Man argument.
In another argument which the CT documentary presents in order to show that the moon landings were faked, there is shown a photograph of an astronaut (see top left), fully visible with good detail, standing on the moon. The narrator in the CT documentary, one Mitch Pillegi, explains that this photograph, according to NASA, was taken by a fellow astronaut. Pillegi claims that this photograph had to be faked, because, as he claims, there is only one source of illumination on the moon, and that is the sun behind the astronaut. Therefore (so he reasons) in a genuine moon picture the astronaut in the photograph ought to have been in (black) silhouette. But this is a picture showing reasonably good frontal detail of an astronaut with the sun behind him. Pillegi claims that the only way the front of the astronaut could be lit up to show the detail it does, is for a spotlight to be trained on the front of the astronaut, standing (as he claims) on the fake moon movie set somewhere on earth where the photograph was really taken.
That Pillegi's reasoning is false can be easily explained by effects which have routinely been used by professional photographers on earth for decades at least (ref.4). It will be shown that there were always at least three, and sometimes four, sources of natural light on the moon which were intrinsic with the presence of Apollo astronauts on the moon, given the concession by Pillegi that the Apollo astronauts were there in daylight and his acknowledgment that Apollo astronauts would not have taken photographic floodlights on a real journey to the moon.
In the case of the astronaut photograph under discussion, all four light sources were available, of which two and possibly three would light up the front of the astronaut in the diffuse (that is to say, there are no sharp shadows on the front of the astronaut) way actually displayed in the photograph.
The four natural light sources lighting up this particular photograph are: 1) the sun, 2) the bright and scattered glare reflected in all directions off the rough lunar surface, and this scattered light source must be acknowledged as very bright, for this same light from a full moon lights up the earth quite well at night from 400,000 km away, 3) the earthshine on the moon, reasonably much brighter than moonshine on earth due to the approximately 16 times greater potential reflective area of the larger earth, and 4), in this photograph, the white spacesuit of the astronaut who is holding the camera is a source of diffuse reflected light into the photographic subject (the astronaut in the photograph).
It should be noted that these first three natural light sources listed were available for all photographs taken by Apollo astronauts. The last light source on the list would be available only when an astronaut was holding the camera and was standing relatively close to the subject.
Pillegi appears unaware of these most simple and oft-used passive techniques of lighting of a subject in order to minimise frontal shadow in a photograph. These lighting techniques are not normally considered intrinsically available to earth photography, but they are very easy and cheap to set up in any photographic studio or in professional outdoor shots in order to minimise shadow (ref.4). Studios can, and routinely do, have white-painted boards, white blankets or sheets of newsprint for strategic placing to softly fill in shadow on the subject. Outdoor shots on earth have been known to use people to hold one or more whiteboards to fill in shadow with diffuse light (the writer has personally done this for professional publicity photographs).
Therefore Pillegi's argument is Straw Man because of his misrepresentation.
It is realized that this strong counter-argument to Pillegi's claim removes this photograph as evidence for either side in the Apollo fakery debate. The photograph could equally as well have been taken on the moon as on earth.
Incidentally the CT documentary takes pains to point out, twice, that there were no stars visible in any lunar photographs shown. No one can argue with this observed fact. Interestingly, the CT documentary makes no further mention of this phenomenon. Perhaps older viewers especially are supposed to recall what many of them were taught in secondary school science, that stars would be able to be seen from the lunar surface in daylight. This indeed was a common belief among some academics in the 1950s and 1960s (evidenced by congruency in school science instruction and other science books read during that period by this writer). But Arthur C. Clarke, B.Sc., F.R.A.S., Chairman, British Interplanetary Society at the time, in one of his early factual books (ref.5), argued that while it was an almost universal understanding that stars would be visible on the moon in daylight, it was not so. He argued that, given the glare from the lunar surface, that eyes (and by reasonable extrapolation, cameras) which were adjusted to see surface features clearly, could not see the stars because of their relative dimness compared to the brightness of the moonscape. He also, in his 1951 book, thanks an academic colleague for pointing out this little-realized hypothesis of the time (ref.5), thus proving he was not alone in this belief.
Therefore, any implicit argument the CT documentary may have been subtly trying to make about the significance of the plain black sky in lunar photographs, becomes irrelevant to the point of being able to suggest that either side of the debate could, with probably nearly equal justification, raise an Appeal to Authority argument, but one such argument would be a fallacious appeal.
Assuming Apollo astronauts really did go to the moon, the presence of a living Charlie Duke, Apollo 16 Lunar Module (lunar lander) pilot, at a social occasion with the writer in 1999 (ref.6) contradicts two claims made in the CT documentary. First, it states that any astronaut going through the Van Allen radiation belts which surround the earth, would be "fried" from the radiation (going through these belts is necessary for journeys to the moon). This claim is false, and here is a strong reason why. If there were any truth that the Van Allen belts would kill people, then America's Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, would surely have told the world that their own research, undertaken years before the Apollo moon missions, had proved it (ref.7). It was in December 1968 that Apollo 8 took the first astronauts through the Van Allen belts. However, the Soviets said nothing when the astronauts from that, and all subsequent lunar missions, came back alive. They knew the Van Allen belts were harmless to astronauts passing through, for they had sent up their Kosmos 110 capsule on February 22, 1966, containing two dogs and a range of smaller animals for the express purpose of flying the animals through the Van Allen belts repeatedly for 21 days (ref.7). Then they brought the capsule safely back to earth. The dogs had survived the radiation. The reference (7) makes no mention as to the fate of the smaller animals.
It should be stated that in those years, the Cold War was a bitter one. The Soviet Union would have taken great delight in showing up the US as fakers over Apollo. Instead, on this subject, the Soviets said nothing during the Apollo moon mission years, their only comment on the Van Allen issue had been the routine press release in 1966 about the flight of Kosmos 110 (as recalled by the writer), reporting that only a harmless dose of radiation would be received by an astronaut going through the Van Allen belts on a possible journey to the moon.
The argument in the CT documentary in support of the mortal danger of the Van Allen radiation belts, is thus shown to be false, due to the independently published truth of the matter (ref.7).
In a second display of ignorance involving Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke, the CT documentary also states that the Apollo 16 mission went to the moon at the same time as the largest solar storm of the century. The narrator, in making this claim, appeals to the authority of one Ralph Rene, described as an author/scientist, although no evidence was provided that this man had any formal science qualifications. Therefore (the documentary claims), the Apollo missions had to be faked, because if they were true, the Apollo16 astronauts would have been killed by high levels of radiation from this solar storm. Indeed, had the Apollo 16 astronauts been subject to the known level of radiation from this storm, they would certainly have been killed. Unfortunately for the CTs, the quality of their research is shown for what it is, by the knowledge on record that while the solar storm was genuine, and while it was also the most powerful storm of the century, it did not occur when the Apollo 16 astronauts were in space. Apollo 16 left earth on April 16, 1972 and returned to earth April 27, 1972 (ref.8, p11 and p219). The solar storm (ref.9), which lasted no more than several days, happened in August 1972, halfway between the Apollo 16 and the December 1972 Apollo 17 (ref.8, p233) missions.
Thus, this erroneous argument is a fallacious Appeal to Authority.
As a last example of the quality of argument in the CT documentary, the claim is made that the Apollo missions took off from earth and then stayed hiding in earth orbit for a time, then returned to earth. No supporting arguments are offered, therefore it is a baseless claim. However, strong inductive argument can be proferred in favour of the Apollo lunar missions being genuine. It is known from many news media reports from the 1950s and 1960s (read, heard and seen by the writer), that the Soviet Union had, years before Apollo, proven to the world that it had the technology to launch unmanned missions to the moon, to orbit the moon and take photographs, to soft-land spacecraft on the moon, and to remotely control these spacecraft from earth. Assuredly the Soviets could have, and would have, monitored the Apollo missions of their Cold War enemy all the way to the moon and back with their own proven technology. Had they been able to catch the US out in a lie over Apollo, they would have been delighted to do so. Their silence, in this case, is eloquent.
Given the 400,000 people who allegedly worked on the Apollo programme (ref.8, p98), one could reasonably expect, if it was all faked, that a disgruntled fake worker would have revealed such a "truth" sometime in the last 40 years in an attempt to gain his or her moment in the media spotlight, with the resultant big pile of money from the Hollywood rights. Compare this to the requirement for military secrecy of wartime inventions of World War 2, for the British at least. It was 30 years of keeping quiet by government order. It could be reasonably conjectured that even after a much shorter period of secrecy for a peacetime alleged fake like Apollo, somebody would talk.
The inductive conclusion is therefore strongly made that the Apollo moon landing missions were real.
References.
1: Mark Wade, Apollo LLRV (internet: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/apoollrv.htm, 1997 - 2008)
2: Self-reference. The major news articles circa 1968 - 1972, were, aside from the Vietnam war, to do with the exploration of space. Given that the tenor of the articles was to do with arguably the greatest advancement in human evolution since the species began - that of taking the first steps to exploring another world - the writer reasonably claims retention of memory from that great time, and therefore begs to be a legitimate source of reference.
3: Television documentary produced for BBC Worldwide Ltd, True Adventures of the 20th century (London: Nugus/Martin Productions Ltd, 1996).
4: Writer's personal experience as a member of a photographic society, and a sometime professional photographer.
5: Arthur C. Clarke, B.Sc., F.R.A.S., Chairman, British Interplanetary Society, The Exploration of Space (London: Temple Press Ltd, 1951), p114.
6: The writer was privileged to meet Charlie Duke on a social level in December 1999, when he stayed with acquaintances of the writer in Christchurch New Zealand for a short time. Naturally, the poor man was besieged with questions. The reference is therefore "I personally asked an astronaut".
7: Tara Gray, A Brief History of Animals in Space (internet: http://history.nasa.gov/animals.html, 1998)
8: Charlie Duke, Moonwalker (Nashville, Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1990), p11, p98, p219, p233.
9: Panagiotis Marchavilas, "The Stormy Sun Affecting the Human Life and the Technology", The Eggs e.g.u. Newsletter, Issue 26, (internet, http://www.the-eggs.org/articles.php?id=95, 2009), subheading "Travelling Outside the Earth's Atmosphere", sub-subheading "Solar Cosmic Rays" and sub-subheading "Galactic Cosmic Radiation".