Just wanted to drop some common bulletpoints and information from an author by the name of Guy P. Harrison.
It includes things intended to persuade on why this conspiracy is outlandish, and why the most common arguments are invalid. I will link the original article as well, but I would like some feedback.
• The US government has lied about other things. Of course it has, and will again. However, pointing out that the US government is capable of lying does not prove that it lied about Apollo. Watergate is not evidence of Moongate.
• The absence of stars in photographs. Cameras were set for the proper exposure to photograph well-lit astronauts wearing white suits and the highly reflective Lunar Module, not the faint light of distant stars in dark space. Had the cameras been set to properly capture the light of stars, the astronauts would have been overexposed.
• No blast crater under Lunar Module. In order to land, the Lunar Module’s descent engine was throttled back and shut down prior to contact with the surface of the Moon. If the vehicle’s engine had been engaged at anything near its ten-thousand-pound thrust capability, it could not have landed.
• The flag moved. The American flag that was displayed on a rod extending horizontally from a flagpole did not move because of wind. It moved because of the astronaut’s manipulation of the flagpole during his effort to drive it into lunar soil.
• They lied. Hundreds of thousands of NASA personnel and contractors might have lied and then kept lying about it for all these decades, but I doubt it. Over the years I have interviewed more than twenty Apollo engineers, mission control personnel, and astronauts. Maybe they lied to me about their work and personal memories, but I doubt it. There are too many people telling the same story. Faking a Moon landing would be easy compared to the challenge of getting thousands of conspirators to keep the lie all these years.
• The US lied because it was determined to win a public relations war with the USSR. And the Soviet Union could have won by exposing such a vast American fraud. But the Soviets, also technologically sophisticated in space, knew the landings were real and acknowledged it.
• NASA could have faked it. Maybe NASA could have produced convincing video on a terrestrial sound stage that was good enough to fool non-experts. But why do it so many times? There were nine missions to the Moon, six of which landed. The Apollo 16 and 17 crews each spent three days there. Why? If this was all a daring PR stunt, why increase the risk of discovery with multiple missions? Why make it necessary for so many astronauts and ground personnel to lie and maintain the cover up? If this were a hoax, doesn’t it seem more likely that NASA would have faked one landing, had a big parade, and then promptly shut down the operation?
Like all conspiracy theories that are short on evidence, the Moon-hoax claim relies on the absence of good thinking. Please don’t let irrational beliefs like this one set up shop in your head without a fight. Force unusual claims to earn their way in with an abundance of evidence and logic. Make sure you understand and never forget how vulnerable the human mind is to falling for even the craziest of claims. Never forget that believing nonsense is only human. None of us are immune.
There is no shame in this vulnerability. But there is no excuse for anyone to embrace nonsense as a result of being intellectually passive and lazy. Get your own house in order when it comes to conspiracy theories. Be diligent. Work at culling your own bad conclusions within and then offer a helping hand to your fellow humans so they might do the same.
- Guy P. Harrisonhttps://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/about-thinking/201607/the-greatest-conspiracy-theory-all-time