My grandmother flatly did not believe anybody went to the moon. She was born at the turn of the 20th century and didn't have a great deal of education (she was actually quite intelligent, though). I remember when we visited soon after Apollo 11 (I was pretty young) and saying "Wasn't that moon landing fantastic, Grandma?"

"There wasn't any landing. It was fake," she said flatly. It took me some time to realize she was serious. My mother thinks that my grandmother still equated "space" with "Heaven" though she wouldn't actually admit it.

This may sound incredibly silly, but keep in mind that going to the moon was considered fantasy by most people in the '50s. (Even in the 1956 movie "Forbidden Planet" they pegged the moon landing for the last decade of the 21st century!). Many people thought Kennedy's moon landing plan was insane.

The idea that the moon landing and the space program were fake was around from the start. You just had people looking for excuses for their belief. That's why they had traction - and it doesn't matter if the excuses sound silly to us, it only has to make sense to people who don't understand the issue in the first place.