Debunking 5 IDIOTIC Moon-Landing Conspiracy Theories - Yes, WE WENT TO THE MOON

Since starting the Stuff That Happened YouTube channel, I’ve worked on videos about various historic subjects including the 9/11 attack, the Oklahoma City bombing, presidential assassinations, and of course, NASA and project Apollo – the space program that successfully sent the first human beings to the moon.  What I didn’t expect from the comments section was a massive amount of conspiracy theorists who believe 9/11 was an inside job, Oswald was completely innocent, and of course, the moon landing never actually happened.  People love a good conspiracy theory, but I had no idea how deep it went.  I entered into Conspiracy-theory filled rabbit hole on YouTube and discovered just how many of these people exist, and even include actual Flat Earthers who seem to genuinely believe the Earth is a flat like a pancake. I didn’t know these people really existed. I refuse to even entertain these individuals who must be either lying, mentally ill or simply complete idiots.  

I will, however, be glad to respond to a few Moon landing conspiracy theorists in today’s video.  Every single piece of “evidence” these theorists come up with can easily be explained and completely debunked and today, I’ll go through 5 of the most common reasons people say the moon landing had to be faked.  None of them hold up at all and, when you really study the moon landing in depth as I have for many years, it becomes clear that it would have taken a lot more work to fake this whole thing as opposed to actually just going to the moon.  Today, I’ll be talking about 5 ridiculous theories in order from least stupid to most stupid.

5. How did Astronauts survive the Van Allen Radiation Belt?

At least this one is an interesting question.  Moon landing conspiracy theorists absolutely love that the Van Allen Radiation Belt exists.  The Van Allen Radiation Belt is a doughnut-like zone of charged particles that surround the Earth and have a high amount or radiation that could certainly be lethal if a human was exposed to it for too long.  And that’s the key idea – don’t stay in there too long and you might be okay, especially if you’re in a space suit and spacecraft built by engineers who were perfectly aware of the Radiation Belts.  They did plenty of research, testing, and planning and understood how to attack the potential problem.  

When going to the moon, the NASA scientists, engineers and technicians have to determine exactly when and from where to depart and where the Earth and Moon will be not only now but when the Astronauts arrive as everything is constantly moving.  They also planned precisely when and where the astronauts will pass through the Van Allen Radiation Belt and planned it so they would enter at a trajectory and location that would minimize exposure to the radiation.  They understood the energy distribution of the belts and where they could bypass the most dangerous parts, and how to get through them as quickly as possible.  

Using the unit rem, the crews were studied after each mission to see how much radiation they withstood and if they were in any danger.  The Apollo 11 crew received .18 rem each on average.  They would’ve had to have received around 300 in a short amount of time to be killed.  The radiation damage they received was not even strong enough to cause mild radiation sickness. While there were still risks during these missions of solar storms that could’ve indeed harmed the astronauts, the Van Allen Radiation Belts were just another one of millions of obstacles and challenges that experts had to figure out in order to accomplish the feat of going to the moon.  Conspiracy theorists who claim it would be impossible to get through the Van Allen Radiation belts are not fully educated or knowledgeable on the real facts and are simply using another easily debunked excuse to explain how we never went to the moon.  The reality is the astronauts had plenty of protection and spent a minimum amount of time in the belts.  They were never in any danger of being harmed from the radiation.

4. Where are the stars in the photos?

Several photographs taken on the moon show a night sky with no stars.  Where are the stars?  Conspiracy theorists say this alone proves it was all filmed in a studio.  Right.. the entire thing was faked and the conspirators were smart and thorough enough to actually fire a real rocket up into space that people watched, record fake communication throughout the entire mission with fake problems and solutions along the way, create fake photographs of the Earth back in the 60’s and 70’s that look better than any modern day CGI, and record all this fake footage as if they made it to the moon and it was all good enough to convince the entire world, including the Soviet Union, that it was real.  But they forgot to add the stars to the fake sky.  Or, maybe there’s a more logical explanation?

The cameras the astronauts were using were traditional film cameras, and cameras have different shutter speeds and apertures that change how much light is captured when a photo is taken.  The faster the shutter speed and the smaller the aperture, the less light is captured.  These settings can be changed on expensive cameras, and are set in order to get the best photograph of the main subject, which in this photo, is the astronaut.  A fast shutter speed will make the main subject sharper, making for a better photo. Because the astronauts were trying to take photos while wearing heavy suits and gloves, it was decided to set the cameras to a very fast shutter speed, in order to make sure most of the photos they took would be in focus and sharp.  But the fast shutter speed also prevents other more dim objects from being picked up.  The stars are just very faintly lit background objects that were simply too dim for the camera to capture.  It’s really that simple.  If they wanted to capture the stars, the main object in the photo, whether the astronaut, flag or even the Earth, would’ve likely been overexposed and the photo would have looked horrible.

3. The U.S. Flag is waving in the wind, but there is no wind on the moon

Oops, it looks like the conspirators blew it and forgot that there’s no wind on the moon.  Do moon landing conspiracy theorists really think that NASA and every one else involved in going to the moon would want the flag to just droop there pathetically? While planning the trip to the moon, they already knew they would want to plant the U.S. flag on the surface when they got there and it was no secret that the moon had no wind and no atmosphere.  So, unless something was done about it, the flag would just droop down miserably towards the moon’s surface due to gravity and look that way forever.  Obviously, that wouldn’t be ideal.

So, engineers got to work in order to figure out a way to make the flag spread out so it could be seen proudly.  And that wasn’t the only problem.  They also had to figure out where to put it so it wouldn’t get damaged during the mission, and it would be accessible to the astronauts.  They had to encase the flag in a heat resistant tube and attach it to the lunar module ladder.  Then, to make it waive, they created a flagpole with a horizontal rod that was sewn into a seam on the top of the flag that caused it to extend outward, preventing it from dropping down.  Notice the top of the flag is perfectly straight.  What appears to be waves or ripples in the flag is because the Apollo 11 astronauts had trouble getting the rod all the way out and it caused some wrinkles, which actually ended up looking good.  There was also plenty of natural wrinkles in the flag just from it being stored during the trip.  So, future Apollo astronauts did the same thing and did not extend the rod all the way.  

2. We didn’t have the technology to the go to the moon in the 1960’s.

Says who?  Obviously, we did have the technology because we did go to the moon.  What we didn’t have in the 1960’s was the technology to use CGI and special effects to create incredible realistic images of Earth taken from the moon and incredibly breathtaking realistic close-up photographs of the lunar surface. But conspiracy theorists think all the thousands of photos taken over multiple successful missions to the moon are completely fake.  

As for getting to the moon in the 1960’s, engineers, scientists and regular space and technology enthusiasts around the world were perfectly aware of the technological advancements that occurred throughout the 50’s and 60’s as the goal of walking on the moon got closer and closer.  Although the computing power of the time was nothing like it is today, they still had all the ingredients to send humans to the moon and bring them back.  A few of the main ingredients included a powerful rocket that could escape Earth’s gravity, a spacecraft with life support systems that could keep the astronauts alive, a flying vehicle that could land on the moon, spacesuits that could keep the astronauts alive and somewhat comfortable, a way to communicate between mission control and the astronauts, a way to track and guide the spacecraft, and a way to get the astronauts back home safely.  

Some of the smartest people in the world worked tirelessly on all of these objectives for decades. Even when they came up with a plan to do it all, we didn’t just jump in a rocket and head to the moon.  Thousands and thousands of tests and missions were performed, and three astronauts even died during one of these tests in which things went horribly wrong.  Improvements were made every step of the way and billions of dollars were spent on Apollo missions that had no intention of walking on the moon.  They were just steps in the right direction, testing one function or another.  

Apollo 8, for instance, went all the way to the moon and back but never even took along the Lunar Module, the vehicle used to land on the moon.  It wasn’t part of the mission.  If they wanted to fake the whole thing, why not just do it then?  Or at least do it for Apollo 9.  But no, Apollo 9 was just to do a full test on the Lunar Module.  Then there was Apollo 10 – billions more dollars were spent just to do a full dress rehearsal and further testing.  With each mission, an entire Saturn V rocket along will hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment and fuel would be used up or discarded forever, because each mission was necessary to build up knowledge, ability and understanding towards the final mission when Neil Armstrong finally stepped foot on the moon.

This argument is simply moronic.  Of course we had the technology.  Every single piece of technology used in the mission existed in 1969 and it’s all laid out in the Saturn V flight manual along with other manuals and documents from that period.  We had the technology because we decided to go to the moon and so that’s where the genius engineers and scientists focused their attention.  If JFK had said, we choose to have cell phones and we will have cell phone by end of this decade, and then hundreds of billions were spent to do so, it probably would’ve happened.  

1. Why Haven’t We Gone Back?

And at #1, the single dumbest thing conspiracy theorists say in regards to the moon landing being possibly faked – why didn’t we go back?  As if that is any real evidence at all.  As if going to the moon is like taking a drive to Omaha.  When humans first made it to the moon in 1969, it was one of the most historic and amazing feats in human history.  Just landing and walking on the moon was the principal goal of the Apollo 11 mission and we actually did it.  Then we used the Apollo technology to go 5 more times and did plenty of geographical surveying, brought back lunar samples, conducted surface experiments and took lots of photographs.  It was ridiculously expensive, and the federal government spent over $25 billion, which equates to over $320 billion today.  Project Apollo was simply becoming too costly and national support was completely falling off, so the project was canceled after Apollo 17 in 1972.

After that, why would we be in a huge hurry to go back?  The country had spent an insane amount of money to accomplish the feat, during a time of war as troops were fighting in Vietnam and there was much unrest in the United States.  Space missions continued with SkyLab and then the Space Shuttle in 1981.  We also were focused on creating the International Space Station.  Tragedies occurred like the Challenger and Columbia disasters, which didn’t help public support for space programs.  Meanwhile, other wars and conflicts were happening, and going back to the moon just wasn’t a big priority.  Furthermore, as technology improved, any ideas of returning to the moon would require an entirely new program utilizing new technology and of course, an insane amount money.  But what would the purpose be?  We’d already been there, walked on it, gotten samples, done testing.  The purpose would have to justify the enormous cost.

So, that purpose would have to be to creating some kind of permanent settlement with a lunar base and lunar satellites.  That means even more planning and more technology and more money. So, we couldn’t and wouldn’t just go to the moon willy nilly whenever for no reason.  It would have actually made no sense for us to have returned to the moon too quickly.  America had other things on its plate and the right time to return simply hadn’t come.  Now that over 50 years have passed, we are preparing for another mission to the moon with the Artemis program, but to use us not having gone back since 1972 as some kind of evidence for a conspiracy makes literally no sense at all and shows no understanding for the massive cost, technology and effort that goes into a mission to the moon.