There are just too many people who would have to be in on a conspiracy, most of them not even Americans or Westerners for such a conspiracy to be possible. I mean, this super secret organisation that controls the world is so good at hiding the shape of the earth, so good that in 200 years no one has come out to claim to be a part of this conspiracy, or at least in the last 500 years, but this same conspiracy cannot hide the fact that the US president left cum stains on an intern's dress? Come on!
From the Rosenbergs to Watergate, from Iran Contra to White Water, from Valerie Plame to Abu Ghraib to Wikileaks. Throughout history people have never been able to keep secrets and bigger the secret the more likely it is to be leaked With Wikileaks someone could leak anything they wanted to and the dumps would be happening for years before anyone found out who the leaker was; it we found out at all. Yet to this day there has never been a single leak.
There currently 73 government space agencies. There are six capable of launching and routinely do launch satellites. There are three with the ability to launch humans into space. There are hundreds of private contractors providing equipment and services to all these agencies. Additionally, there are eight private spaceflight companies.
Collectively, all these agencies and companies have employed millions over the decades. Not a single leak...no deathbed confessions, no one over hearing a conversation they shouldn't have, nobody finding a stray document, recording, or video they shouldn't have. Even with tight compartmentalization you’d still be looking at tens of thousands over those decades and yet nothin’ but crickets.
Not to mention universities and colleges. If we consider only astrophysics/cosmology; every university department would have to be in on it, every university doing research would have to “read in” every professor and grad student involved in that research, and every graduating PhD in history would have to be involved at some level. How many other degrees would involve some aspect of outer space that would require at least some small portion of the graduates needing to be “read in” on the conspiracy?
The number of people who would have to be in the know over all this time is staggering. Yet, somehow, we’re to believe this has been successfully kept secret for centuries without even a inkling that anything was ever leaked.
This is just a small segment of those areas that would need to be involved. It stretches credibility to the breaking point.
My 2¢ FWIW.
Mike