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:

__________________
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

__________________
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.

__________________
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

__________________
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

__________________
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.

__________________
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')

__________________
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.