Did America engineer one helluv'a Big Bluff in 1969 and the early 1970s?
id Apollo really land on moon?
Nasa is urged to fight claims that landings were faked, after TV network aired show on 'moon hoax'
CAPE CANAVERAL (Florida) - Is that the moon or a studio in the Nevada desert? How can the flag flutter when there's no wind on the moon? Why can't we see stars in the moon-landing pictures?
The fluttering flag anf a lack of stars made some wonder if astronaut Aldrin did land on the moon during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, or this picture was shot at afilm-set.
For three decades, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) has taken the high road, ignoring those who claimed that the Apollo moon landings were faked and part of a colossal government conspiracy.
The claims and questions like the ones cited here mostly showed up in books and on the Internet. But last year's prime-time Fox TV special on the so-called 'moon hoax' prompted teachers and others to plead with Nasa for factual ammunition to fight back.
So a few months ago, the space agency budgeted US$15,000 (S$26,155) to hire a former rocket scientist and author to produce a small book refuting the disbelievers' claims. It would be written primarily with teachers and students in mind.
BEATING THE SOVIETS
THE story making the rounds went - and still goes - something like this: America was desperate to beat the Soviet Union in the high-stakes race to the moon, but lacked the technology to pull it off. So Nasa faked the six manned moon landings in a studio somewhere out West.
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The idea backfired, however, embarrassing the space agency for responding to ignorance, and the book deal was chucked.
'The issue of trying to do a targeted response to this is just lending credibility to something that is, on its face, asinine,' Nasa chief Sean O'Keefe said in late November after the dust settled.
So it's back to square one - ignoring the hoaxers. That's troubling to some scientific experts who contend that someone needs to lead the fight against scientific illiteracy and the growing belief in pseudoscience like aliens and astrology.
Someone like Nasa.
'If they don't speak out, who will?' asks senior analyst at the National Science Foundation Melissa Pollak.
Author James Oberg will. The former space shuttle flight controller plans to write the book Nasa commissioned from him even though it pulled the plug. He's seeking money elsewhere. His working title: A Pall Over Apollo.
Tom Hanks will speak out, too.
The Academy Award-winning actor, who starred in the 1995 movie Apollo 13 and later directed the HBO miniseries From The Earth To The Moon, is working on another lunar-themed project. The Imax documentary will feature Apollo archival footage. Its title: Magnificent Desolation - astronaut Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin's real-time description of the moon on July 20, 1969.
While attending the Cape Canaveral premiere of the Imax version of Apollo 13 in November, Hanks said the film industry has a responsibility to promote historical literacy. He took a jab at the 1978 movie Capricorn One, which had Nasa's first manned mission to Mars being faked on a sound stage.
'We live in a society where there is no law in making money in the promulgation of ignorance or, in some cases, stupidity,' Hanks said. 'You can go as relatively quasi-harmless as saying no one went to the moon. But you also can say that the Holocaust never happened.'
A spokesman for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington said there will always be those who will not be convinced. But the museum does not engage them in debate.
The spokesman acknowledges, however, that if a major news channel was doing a programme that questioned the authenticity of the Holocaust, 'I'd certainly want to inject myself into the debate with them in a very forceful way'.
Television's Fox Network was the moon-hoax purveyor. In February this year and again a month later, Fox broadcast an hour-long programme titled, Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land On The Moon?
Dr Roger Launius, who agreed to Mr Oberg's book just before leaving Nasa's history office, said the story about the moon hoax has been around for a long time. But the Fox show 'raised it to a new level, it gave it legs and credibility that it didn't have before'.
Indeed, Ms Pollak said two colleagues, after watching the Fox special, thought it was possible that the moon landings were faked. p> Professor Alex Roland, a Nasa historian during the 1970s and early 1980s, said his office used to have 'a kook drawer' for such correspondence and never took it very seriously. But there were no prime-time TV shows disputing the moon landings then - and no Internet. Still, he would be inclined to 'just let it go because you'll probably just make it worse by giving it any official attention.'
Within Nasa, opinions were split about a rebuttal book. Mr Oberg said that ignoring the problem 'just makes this harder. To a conspiracy mind, refusing to respond is a sign of cover-up'.
Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell does not know what else, if anything, can be done to confront this moon madness. 'All I know is that somebody sued me because I said I went to the moon,' says the 74-year-old astronaut. 'Of course, the courts threw it out.'
The authorities also threw out the case involving Mr Aldrin in September.
A much bigger and younger man was hounding the 72-year-old astronaut in Beverly Hills, California, calling him 'a coward, a liar and a thief' and trying to get him to swear on a Bible, on camera, that he walked on the moon.
Mr Aldrin, a Korean War combat pilot, responded with a fist in the chops. --AP |
