Idiot Moon Landing Deniers

 

The Moon Landing Was Faked, Probably by the Same People Who Hide Your Socks

By Someone Who Has Watched the Internet

There is a group of people—let us call them “moon landing deniers,” because that is what they are—who believe that the Apollo missions were staged. Not “mistaken,” not “exaggerated,” but staged, like a middle-school production of Oklahoma! except with more rockets and fewer confused parents asking why Curly McLain is wearing sneakers.

According to this theory, the United States government, in 1969, decided to pretend to land humans on the Moon. This required... 

(1) convincing hundreds of thousands of engineers, scientists, astronauts, technicians, and politicians to keep a secret for more than fifty years; 

(2) doing so flawlessly; and 

(3) doing it with technology roughly equivalent to a microwave that could barely pop corn without burning half of it.

The deniers’ primary evidence includes evidentiary statements such as: “The flag waved.” This is true. The flag did wave. But this is because it was mounted on a pole with a horizontal stabilizer rod at the top, which caused it to ripple when the astronauts twisted it into the lunar soil. But the deniers respond, “Aha! WIND!” They say this as though NASA forgot to notice the presence of wind on the Moon, which, according to most scientists, has no atmosphere. This is the Moon’s most famous feature, other than being round and causing werewolves on Earth to become naughty.

Another popular argument is: “Why are there no stars in the photos?” This is because the photos were taken with short exposure times to capture bright objects, such as astronauts and the Sun-lit lunar surface. Stars are dim. They did not show up. This is how cameras work. If you take a picture of your friend standing in front of a bonfire at night, you will not capture the Andromeda Galaxy either, unless your friend is the Andromeda Galaxy, in which case you should probably stop being friends because that is unsettling. Also, on a clear blue sky day, how many stars do you see in the sky? Exactly. Same reason. The daylight is what scientists call "very very bright". Stars, not so much. Well, the Astronauts were roaming around on the DAYLIGHT side of the Moon. Get it?

But logic is no match for the deniers, who counter with their most devastating point: “It just doesn’t look real.”

This is a powerful argument, often delivered by someone who has watched a documentary on the History Channel at 2:30 a.m. hosted by a man with aggressively confident eyebrows. Compared to that, thousands of hours of telemetry data, Moon rocks analyzed by scientists worldwide, and the fact that you can still bounce lasers off reflectors left on the Moon by astronauts are obviously suspicious.

(About those reflectors: Deniers say they could have been placed there by robots. Which is interesting, because if we had robots capable of autonomously landing on the Moon in 1969, that would actually be more impressive than sending humans, and would raise the question of why we were still struggling to make a toaster that didn’t incinerate Pop-Tarts.)

The deniers also claim Stanley Kubrick filmed the landings. This is unfair to Kubrick, who was a perfectionist. If he had filmed the Moon landing, it would have been four hours long, deeply symbolic, and the astronauts would have spent 45 minutes staring silently at a space helmet while ominous music played. Also, Kubrick insisted on realism, which means he would have filmed it on location. On the Moon.

Perhaps my favorite argument is that the Van Allen radiation belts would have killed the astronauts instantly. This argument is usually made by people who are deeply concerned about radiation but remain unconcerned about consuming energy drinks whose ingredients appear to have been scraped off the floor of a chemistry lab.

In reality, the astronauts passed through the belts quickly, received a dose of radiation comparable to a few medical scans, and went on to live long lives—many of them long enough to become grandparents, which is not something ghosts typically do.

But the core problem for moon landing deniers is this: if the government faked the Moon landing, it would be the only government project in history that went perfectly, on schedule, under budget, and without a whistleblower writing a tell-all book titled I Faked the Moon and All I Got Was This Lousy NDA.

So yes, it is healthy to be skeptical. Question authority. Think critically. But at some point, you have to accept that humans really did strap themselves into a glorified tin can, ride a controlled explosion into space, and walk on the Moon.

Which, frankly, is already crazy enough without adding a conspiracy involving sound stages, fake astronauts, and a flag with alleged wind powers.

Besides, if ANYONE would want to discredit the Moon landings it would have been the Soviets. They were our main competition in the "Space-Race", which they were pretty much winning until we pulled off this beauty. Even THEY admitted we did it.

You want more? Okay. We sent up an orbital satellite around the moon that took photos of every moon landing site. You want more? Okay. The Indians sent up an orbital satellite around the moon that took photos of every moon landing site. Literally EVERYONE except these tin-foil hat, crystal-fondling numbskulls know we succeeded in landing 6 missions to (12 men on) the moon. Not one mission. SIX.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go investigate the far more plausible conspiracy that my dryer is secretly eating socks and selling them on the dark web.