In an earlier thread see here Jay mentioned that he had heard versions of the moon hoax story that appeared pre 1974.

The following may or may not be relvant to this matter but may have some bearing on just how the moon hoax thing got started.

In the editorial ("7/20/69") for the November 1969 (Vol. LXXXIV No. 3) issue of Analog, then editor John W Campbell Jr wrote of the Apollo Eleven footage:

(November 1969 Analog, Page:6)

This comparision between the actual Apollo footage and the output of Hollywood is also made at an earlier point in the editorial:

(November 1969 Analog, Page: 4)

Now these were the thoughts of a well known science-fiction author, and more to the point someone who knew that the landings were genuine:

(November 1969 Analog, Page:5)

I'm therefore wondering just how many people had thoughts similar to the one expressed in the first quote and then discussed that impression amongst friends, given the way rumor spreads I'm quite sure that at some point, "It (the footage) gave me the impression I was watching a movie..", became "I'm sure the footage (of the moon landing) I saw was a movie..."

Of course I could be totally wrong ops:

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We all know those Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

John Sladek, The New Apocrypha, pg 34.

Wow, where's Wolverine? I just did a search, he's been gone since July. This is right up his alley.

Maybe this will bring him back

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We all know those Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

John Sladek, The New Apocrypha, pg 34.

I'd say the hoax started with a 'belief' that mankind was never 'meant' to go to the moon.

It was the turning of the theoretical into reality that brought home to so many people that the technological advances always written about in Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, etc, were going to start to happen with (or shortly after) the Apollo moon missions.

Not with the scientists who understood Apollo was possible, but the general public. We (meaning me and what I remember my parents talking about during Apollo 11 - I was nine... ) were used to looking at 'science' as a blend of years of theoretical research turning into occasional breakthrough (like the atomic bomb during the crisis of war).

We weren't used to the idea of the universe being understandable enough for our technology to land men land on the moon.

Some of us weren't/aren't ready to admit the universe is indifferent to technology: Whether or not what we think the universes' rules are doesn't matter a whit to what will and won't get us killed.

Now it's as if me & Joe Public are not willing to admit to the idea of the universe being much more complex than we thought it was during Apollo, and gleefully trouncing NASA for every failure.

And what 'we' aren't realizing is that the game is still played whether the contestants know the rules or not.

If we at least don't figure out the rules, we don't stand a chance, any more than the dino's did...

Doug.

This material comprises some additional thoughts on the item I wrote at the start of this thread, I am someone who is not so much interested in the how (eg the hoax claims made) but the why (eg what inspired the HB to make the claims) of the Moon Hoax.

From an (admitedly sketchy) study of history there does seem to be need within humanity to 'explain away' extraordinary achievements, I do not for example posess any information on contemporary European reactions to the news that the last 18 survivors of Magellans' expediton had sailed so far west that they returned from the east, thus proving that the Earth was if not spherical, then at least cylindrical :-? . So the following examples will have to suffice for the moment.

In the Eighteenth century James Bruce visited the source of the Blue Nile in what is now Ethiopia. On his return his account of his travels was, to his dismay and anger, viewed as amusing fiction. It was not until 1868 and the British invasion of Ethiopia that the truth of Bruces account was accepted.

In August of 1858 the first TransAtlantic telegraph cable was laid to wild celebrations, when it failed less than a month later, claims appeared that the whole thing had been a fraud and that the messages supposedly sent via the cable had in fact been sent via ship in advance to create the impression that the cable existed/was working. The laying of the second and third TransAtlantic cables in 1866 should have silenced the claims but when the first account of the project appeared in 1892, the author, son of one of the main backers of the project included a chapter devoted to proving that the 1858 cable was real.

Doubts about whether or not Peary reached the North Pole are still strong enough to see them appear at the Museum of Hoaxes website. One also wonders if such claims would have been made about Admunsen reaching the South Pole had there not been British (Scott) and Japanese (Shirase) expeditions in the area at the same time.

In short it would appear that extraordinary claims advanced without the appearance of verification attract claims of fraud on the part of the participants.

But the best parallel may be drawn between the Apollo Moon Landings and the TransAtlantic cable, both were major and risky technological projects carried out under the glare of the media and both were greeted with major celebrations when they succeeded.

But I suspect that rumors that these events were faked started shortly thereafter, in the case of the Moon Landings, Campbell's editorial written around September/October 1969, shows how the idea that it was filmed in a studio may have gotten started, rather ironically because it was worse in appearance than contemporary Hollywood output (eg 2001:A Space Odyssey).

Finally, both events were accompanied by failure, in the case of the TransAtlantic cable, it stopped working less than one month of completion and in the case of Apollo there was a failure to follow up the achievement. In both cases these failures probably gave additonal impetus to claims that they had been faked.

In the first case (1858) these claims were relatively simple and didn't require much detailed 'explanation'. eg. "They shipped a months worth of messages over the Atlantic to give the impression there was a telegraph cable across the ocean.".

In the second case the claims are more complex and it is this need for more detailed 'explanation' that might explain the delay between Apollo 17 (1972) and the first books/articles outlining the hoax claims in or around 1974.

I'd also like to thank DALeffler, for his post above which seems to suggest that this may in fact be how it happened.

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We all know those Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

John Sladek, The New Apocrypha, pg 34.

You typed this in 5 minutes?

Just kidding.

Yes and boy are my fingers tired!

Just kidding

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We all know those Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

John Sladek, The New Apocrypha, pg 34.

I think you answered your own questions, with your first post. Great material, too!

But who am I to say, my fingers aren't tired from typing.

Rule #1: S/he's never wrong, only mistaken, until facts (made up or not) prove him/her right.

Rule #2: S/he never forgets a chance to throw rule #1 right back at you...

Doug (Think you can get away with dreams? Ya, ya'd think so...)

By Jove, you could be right.

But even if that is the case, it is still only a chain of speculation based upon supposition and a very slender thread of evidence.

In the same vein, here is my further speculation on the form that the Moon Hoax took in its early stages. This is based on only two pieces of evidence, the editorial that appears at the start of this thread and an unreferenced footnote in "A Thread Across The Ocean:The Heroic Story of the TransAtlantic Cable", by John Steele Gordon, which claims that at the time of the first Moon Landing there were rumors that the event had been filmed in a TV studio.

The Campbell editorial establishes that at least one individual and thus likely others made comparisons between the televised moon landings and (probably) "2001:A Space Odyssey". This is understandable since that film made an impressive, albiet flawed, attempt to simulate the lunar environment.

Given also that the actual Apollo footage seemed of lower quality to that in the film, then the idea that some people might decide it was filmed in a TV studio, is not too much of a stretch. One thing that might have also contributed to this was an episode of "Star Trek" ("Tomorrow is Yesterday"), which contains reference to a moon launch "...next Wednesday.". By coincidence Apollo 11 was launched on a Wednesday and some early versions of the hoax claims could have mentioned this as a 'whistle-blow'.

It is thus somewhat ironic that the claims that only Hollywood could have produced the Moon Hoax, probably began as:

"Of course its fake, they can do better in Hollywood." #-o

I think I'll leave it at this point, as I have reached the limits of the slender evidence at my disposal

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We all know those Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

John Sladek, The New Apocrypha, pg 34.

I would argue that this isn't the reason that the hoax claims started, but rather is the reason that the hoax claims had some traction. If messages and news had continued to flow across the Atlantic, no one would have given credibility to the hoax claims. But when they soon stopped --- hmmm, maybe it was a fake after all. Similarly, if NASA had been launching spacecraft to the Moon continuously over the last 30 years, the Fox mockumentary never would have been aired. But I think that there still would have been people in 1969 saying (at least to themselves) -- "Gee, that looks like it was faked"

edited once to add last sentence.

edited a second time to note that Walter stated essentially the same thing in this thread http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=15869. I wasn't trying to steal your thoughts, honest :P

Some other possible precursors to the "hoax".

Andrew Chaiken mentions comments by America's oldest man in 1972 has be watched Apollo 17 blasting off that he did not believe any of it. How widely publicised were these views at the time?

In 1958 Isaac Asimov published a story where people flew round the moon and say it was a huge set of canvas and scaffolding. All three become psychotic. The story reveals that it was all a simulation that the men had believed it was the real thing. The sting in the tail of this story was not hoaxed moon missions but maybe the moon itself was not real but could it have planted the idea of the moon as stage set?

In the 60's many people believed that some Russian missions were hoaxes or fakes. Images of the farside of the moon from Luna 3 and footage of Leonov's space walk in particular. Could a lack of belief in Russian space achievements (or at least images of them) become translated into a lack of belief in US space achievements in the self doubt that afflicted many in the US in the 70's?

Jon

I wonder if NASA should train Hollywood camera folks to be astronauts. NASA could defer the cost to the movie industry for better quality footage. I bet this would spike a much needed interest in the space travel of today. 8-[

I think publicity was pretty widespread for this story. This is the sort of "human interest" story that newspaper editors always like. IIRC, this guy may have even been born into slavery, which was officially abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1865.

Been there, done that:

Check out the IMAX Footage of the ISS, at your Nearest Science Museum.

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If you Ignore YOUR Rights, they Will go away.

What's funny is that just before it failed the transAtlantic cable was used by the British government to countermand orders that had been sent by ship for troops based in Canada to ship out to help suppress the Sepoy Rebellion- developments in India having made the addtional manpower unnecessary. The British government saved something on the order of 50,000 pounds by avoiding an unnecessary troop movement.

In order for this to have been included in a month's worth of messages supposedly sent in advance by ship, it would have been necessary to predict the course of the Rebellion a month in advance.

I think that a rational person would have drawn one of two conclusions from this: "The cable was genuine" or "who cares about the cable-they've just proved precognition". :wink:

Hi die Nullte

Extraordinary isn't it, that a single person could be born a salve and live to see man on the moon (even if he did not believe it)?

In looking at the genesis of the moon hoax it may not be possible to consider it independently of the rise other great supposed conspiracies, the Kennedy assassination and UFOs. When did the Kennedy conspiracy theories first surface? Theories on UFO coverup by the evil government go back to the 50's Even if people drew no direct link, once they have aquired the conspiratorial mind set then it becomes easier to believe (or invent) new ones)

Cheers

Jon

I can't say that I remember that particular story, though there is earlier one whose authors names I cannot remember which involves faking the presence of life on the moon as a means of unifying the world. (Perhaps this is what motivates the Hoagland crowd )

Unfortunatly when the combined govts of the world blast the moon with ray guns, the aliens occupying the moon get angry and fight back.


Very very possible, those doubts (about the Russians) appeared right after the Luna 2 impact, one promoter even denied the evidence of US radio telescopes

As was discussed on this forum a few years ago the Russians considered some fairly extreme measures to silence the scoffers.

(Edited to add link to the original 'Nuke the Moon' thread')

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We all know those Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

John Sladek, The New Apocrypha, pg 34.

Hi Graham

I will hunt through by Asimov collection to see what i can find.

I also seem to recall a Heinlein story where the first person to go into space is trapped in orbit and dies, despite heroic efforts to see him. Several years later a friend sees him, and concludes that the whole things was a hoax to galvanise the space program. Pre-Garagin obviously, and I would have gread it 20-30 years ago.

Using the threat of an imaginary alien presence in space has featured in a number of stories, I think.


Nuking the moon would have been a step but from Goddard's plan to explode a charge of flash powder

Cheers

Jon

Conspiracy talk started as JFK's limo was speeding away from Dealey Plaza. I have to be careful here, since this is veering OT, and I might incur the wrath of BA. Let's just say that I'm generally very skeptical of big conspiracies. Where others see "conspiracy," I usually see "screw-up." This includes the JFK Assassination.

Let's live dangerously

Is it helpful if we differentiate between wild speculation, the sort that happens in ignorance immediately after an event, and the formal presentation of a conspiracy theory in a book, article, or TV program? Please note that when I use the word "formal" I am not actually implying any credibility to the conspiracy theory! Does the length of time between the events tell us anything about how the general population regards the event in question? Can we distinguish between such theories about an unexpected point event (such as an death) as opposed to a well publicised program (like Apollo)?

I think this is relevant because the appeal of the Apollo hoax to many maylie in an understanding of how the public sees and seeks to explain major events. Therefore it is part of a broader spectrum of conspiracist world pictures (or even world views). For me the difference with the Apollo Hoax is the nature of the event that people try to explain away. the Apollo missions were an enormous achievement not just for the United States, but all humanity. Most conspiracy theories try to explain tragic or horrific events (Kennedy shootings, Diana, September 11) or even explain them away (Holocaust deniers)


Best wishes
Jon

A few days ago, I was talking with one guy here at work and he remembers people claiming it was fake from day one. So, I'm guess the hoax idea was around from the start, heck, there were probably people claiming it couldn't be done from the second it was announced we were going to attempt it.

I've heard, and tend to agree with, that some people need to believe in consiracies to maintain a sence of control over their lives. They know a secret that people who have control over them don't want them to know and, therefore, they themselves have some sort of control back.

I think I see some parallels between the way conspiracism views The Powers That Be and the sort of gods the ancient polytheists constructed, like the ones in Bulfinch.

Both sets are isolated, violent, selfish, quarrelsome, untrustworthy, cruel, vindictive (e.g. Diana and Actaeon), scheming, hypocritical (see D & A again- I mean, taking out your outraged modesty on some poor slob who was going about his business when you're the one who's been prancing around naked in a public place? I would think that a goddess would know better), fickle, indifferent to the fate of mere mortals, simultaneously fiendishly clever and jaw-droppingly stupid and generally no better than they should be.

They seem to make a perfect screen on which to project all our own guilts and fears, as well as providing a handy means of explaining what we don't understand.

Makes me wonder if we have a collective need to believe in such beings. ops:

That could certainly explain why some recent HBs such as Eric Hufschmid and Ong are citing 11th of September and WMD conspiracy theories in support of the Moon Hoax Conspiracy. (eg "The Government (allegedly) lied now so NASA must have lied in the past")

(Edited to add link to Ongs profile)

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We all know those Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

John Sladek, The New Apocrypha, pg 34.

Most conspiracists try to draw all the conspiracy theories together under one umbrella of anti-authority rhetoric. Sibrel devotes more time to the Zapruder film in his moon hoax movie than he does to his "exclusive" behind-the-scenes Apollo footage. Apparently the motive is to show a pattern of high-level, widespread deception which makes any one conspiracy theory more plausible in that context.

Unfortunately the context is purely fabricated. It's not a context of other conspiracies, but of other conspiracy theories. The only pattern it demonstrates is the irrational distrust of formal authority and the propensity to fabricate stories to support that distrust. A web of empty accusations is no more plausible than a single empty accusation, but having a plethora of them makes it possible to invoke circular reasoning and fool those who aren't listening critically.

Do we as humans need adversaries, even if they're imagined? I think so. We tend to thrive on conflict and competition.

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

What's funny about 9/11 conspiracy theories is that 9/11 really was a conspiracy. You would think that conspiracy theorists would be in high heaven over that running through the streets with joy. Finally, here is an opportunity to believe in a conspiracy theory that was actually based in fact. But the conspiracy theorists can't seem to buy into the fact that it was a conpiracy of religious extremists and not one perpetrated by our own government.

This fits in with what ktesibios mentioned about ancient beliefs in gods. There is a tendency to want to believe that what goes on in the world, good or bad, is orchestrated by some agent lurking in the shadows behind the scenes, be it a god or a conspiracy of government officials or big business. On the JFK side, at least one conspiracy theorist suggested that the world we step into each morning is like the world seen in the movie The Truman Show. It is all just props and actors on huge stage, a big play put on in order to deceive us.

Firstly, I'd like to say welcome aboard Jay \/ .

Secondly I'd like to expand on your point with a slight digression from the Astronomical into the historical (BA Permitting). In the 1930's a man named Oscar Hartzell conned a lot of people with the claim that he had located the True Heir to Sir Francis Drake and that said heir was being kept from his rightful fortune.

Hartzell mixed conspiratorial lingo (The Secret Courts of England) into his pitch, even telling his victims that fluctuations in the exchange rate were proof that the payoff was due 'any minute now'.

Is it any surprise then that after his arrest the victims preferred to believe that they had been victims of a Government Conspiracy to claim the Trillion dollar inheritance. In one case investigators were allegedly told that a ship offshore had the first part of the payoff aboard. When the victims were shown the ships true cargo the investigators were told that they (the investigators) had arranged to offload the gold bars making up the payment and replace them with the new cargo overnight.:-?

But to get back to the Moon Hoax, and its part in the 'Grand Conspiracy ', I'd like to move on to Area 51 :-$ , this is a location that has no doubt been annexed by the HBs as the location for the 'secret film studios' :roll: at which the hoax was filmed, the location is perfect, a top secret aircraft testing station, supposedly the resting place for the contents of Wright-Pattersons eighteenth hanger, and right next door (sort of) to the Nevada Test Site, a location with plenty of craters to use in simulating the lunar surface.

In the Moon Hoax Area 51 serves two purposes, firstly and most obviously it is the secret location at which the mission footage was shot.

But in Hoagland style ('We reached the moon & found aliens') Moon Hoax claims, it would serve another purpose, where better to brief the astronauts on what they would 'encounter' than the US govts premier respository of alien remains/equipment.

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We all know those Venusians: Doing their hair in shock waves, smoking electrical coronas, wearing Van Allen belts and resting their tiny elbows on a Geiger counter...

John Sladek, The New Apocrypha, pg 34.

I've seen an interview with Bill Kaysing in which he claims that:
I won't start an OT discussion on this--the fallacies in his first answer should be obvious to anyone with even a passing knowledge of WWII, and his second answer just parrots standard CT drivel.

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--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor

Oh, SpitfireIX, as you know, you've touched on one of my favorite "conspiracy" topics. I'll just have to bite my figurative tongue.

This gives me a chance to slightly modify/clarify my earlier post: I'm generally skeptical of large-scale government conspiracies, particularly those involving the US Govt. Clearly ("clearly" to me, anyway) conspiracies happen. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by one; the WTC was brought down by one. But these were carried out by small groups of private individuals who can keep (for awhile) a secret, and whose commonality of purpose and sheer zeal can carry the day. But in my view the US Govt is so vast, so compartmentalized, so compromised by turf-protecting empires, so weighted down by the sheer inertia that afflicts all large bureaucracies, that it's literally impossible for the US Govt to conspire to do the things they've been accused of. NASA couldn't conspire to do an Apollo Hoax and keep it a secret if they wanted to!

Well, if you really want to talk about it, we can start a thread in BABBlings :-)

You raise a good point--when we speak of conspiracy theories, it's generally understood that we're referring to conspiracies perpetrated by governments, or similarly powerful (or allegedly powerful) organizations. But in actuality, a conspiracy only requires two people--technically, two shoplifters who plan to take turns distracting a sales clerk while the other one steals merchandise are conspiring (although it's often difficult to meet the legal standard of proof of the existance of a conspiracy in such cases).

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--Doug

"When your statics problem becomes a dynamics problem, you're in trouble." --me

Moor's Law: "As you go from freshman engineering to Ph.D., the amount of work required per credit hour doubles approximately every 18 months." --me, inspired by Prof. Scott Moor