Does anyone know the origins of the hoax theory? Where, when did it come from? I would really liek to know!
Thanks

Welcome to the board, curious. While we are waiting for some serious answers to your question, I’ll provide a flip response.

It Came From Outer Space!
You can’t beat “B” sci-fi movies from the fifties.

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Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.

Buzz Aldrin and some other astronauts have said the hoax theory has been around since the missions were flown.

The earliest claimed reference is in 1971 Diamonds Are Forever (the movie, not the book) in which Bond runs through a simulated lunar landscape. Conspiracists claim the astronauts were faking the landings, but the scene can also be interpreted as training.

The earliest documentable reference is Bill Kaysing's 1974 book We Never Went to the Moon.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Obviously 35 year old memories are best taken with a pound of salt, but I remember one of the US TV networks I watched during the landings mentioning, in the midst of the coverage, that some group was claiming the landings were faked. The reporting was in the spirit of "and now, for some comic relief, here's what some kooks are saying about the landing."

I gusse it spawned because some people are close-minded. They say soming can't happen (like landing a man on the moon) and if it does they say it was faked or something. And some just can't admit that something of that importince really happen. It's sad but it's the world we live in.

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I AM A GOLDEN GOD- Robert Plant, Led Zeppelin

Over here in the UK before the lunar landing there was a radio programme on the BBC which if I recall correctly was titled, 'So what if it is made of green cheese?'. This was a tongue in cheek look at the moon with some previous 20's/30's sci-fi stuff, romantic poetry and creative writing thoughout the ages stretching back to the Greeks. The whole tenure of the show was gentle satire that in a peculiar way highlighted the extrodinary technical achievements of the Apollo missions. It was as if everyone knew we would never look at the moon again in quite the same way as before.

The nearest I can come to that feeling is some 90+ sols ago when the first Martian space hopper came to a stop with all systems go.

Even now the fat lady hasn't even finished gargling yet never mind hitting a top 'C'. I think Casini could still upstage them all for sheer awesome beauty with a few holiday snaps.

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:-s What about that Sojourner Pathfinder, then?

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JohnOwens wrote:
Bit of poetic licence on my part ops:

Pathfinder was of course a very special 4th of July treat back in 1997 and provided the background for engineering and research with Spirit and Opportunity. Being a Brit, I was disappointed that Beagle 2 pancaked during entry/landing on Christmas Day 2003 so I tend to automatically think of Spirit (now 100 sols and still counting =D> ) as the first of the current operational rovers.

The latest missions with both rovers and the impressive detail from the 1997 Global Surveyer that bull's eyed the landing sites (not forgetting the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA's Mars Express, resolution down to 13m/pix!) are really the bee's knees whole picture that will keep planetary post grads busy for years to come.

Sorry for not making that clear in my original post in which I tried to draw a parallel between Apollo and now, no disrespect to Pathfinder was intended

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By asking questions we sometimes get the wrong answers, from wrong answers we learn to ask the right questions.

I think the film Capricorn One (1978?) was the first hoax mission that had a lasting (and, of course, damaging) impact. I am ashamed to admit I am related to someone who saw the film and subsequently had an epiphany - "Of course! This is essentially what happened with the moonlandings!" Since then, his views have become entrenched.

I'd forgotten about the James Bond film Jay mentions. But if you look at that film in the context of the science fiction of the time, you'll find a lot of the artwork played with that sort of thing. You'd get images of, say, a naked woman posing on the moon's surface. The artist was not suggesting that she was actually on the stage set of a faked landing; rather, the artist was playing with absurd juxtapositions. Surrealism-lite rather than conspiracy theory.[/i]

I remember this as well. I had just graduated High School and was "into" checking out "counter culture" beliefs. This was one belief that everyone I knew just laughed about (considered "weird" even by "hippie types"!). I don't remember anyone taking it seriously until much later on, perhaps after that movie "Capricorn One", that Paul mentioned.

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An open mind is like an open window...without a good screen you'll get all sorts of weird bugs!

I was in 6th or 7th grade when C1 came out. My mom took my brothers and me to see it, but at the time, and even when I got older, I never saw that the film could possibly be viewed as evidence of faking the moon landings. Despite my relatively young age, I noticed several major plot holes, including the fact that a much larger spacecraft would have been required for a Mars mission, that practice tapes couldn't possibly fool ground controllers for any length of time, and that an LM couldn't possibly land on Mars. I suppose that caused me to discount C1 as a potential source of hoax evidence, even after I started studying the moon-conspiracy theories.

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