Did we ever land on the moon?

By: Laura Maksoud

Picture by Tech Gen Mag, not picture from actual moon landing

​47 years ago, on the 20th of July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first men to step on the Moon. The entire event was televised, and millions of people watched the historic Apollo 11 mission. But did these people actually watch the two men step on the lunar surface?
 
Conspiracy theorists believe that it was all a hoax fabricated by the government, and that the moon landing was staged in a Hollywood movie set. The main reasons used to support such idea is:

1. The government’s need for a distraction - The US may have used the lunar mission to take the attention away from the Vietnam war; is it a coincidence that American involvement in Vietnam ended at the same time as the beginning of the lunar activities? 
2. The Space Race with the USSR- One of the main priorities of the US government was to win the space race against the USSR (today’s Russia). The trip to the moon was very costly, and NASA ended up raising approximately $30 billion dollars to pay for their project; it was a risk. So why not just fake its success, and use the $30 billion dollars for something else?

 
The first reason why people believe the moon landing was fake is because the American flag, which was allegedly placed on the moon’s surface, was waving as if there were a breeze. But the moon does not have an atmosphere, and, thus, there is no breeze to move the flag.
Photo posted in the “Time” is a screenshot of the footage of the moon landing; you can see the flag upright as if there were wind shifting it.
 
The next reason why theorists believe it was a hoax is because, in the footage, there was no crater to be seen in the sites. A 36,000 pound spaceship would’ve caused a lot of dust to rise, and it looked like it was gently placed on concrete.
 
Another strange proof that the moon landing was made in a studio is the absence of stars in the picture. Can you see any? No, only darkness. You’d expect the surroundings to be covered with shimmering stars but none of that can be seen in any of the footage which was streamed, only making it clearer that it was filmed with a dark curtain hanging in the background.
 
One of the craziest evidence found is the C rock. One particular part of the footage stood out: the lunar rock which had a perfect C carved on it. NASA explains that it was a “strand of hair which fell onto the lens”; now that sounds suspicious to me.
 
Such conspiracies also argue that NASA, or any other movie studio, wouldn’t be able to label their props - there was no reason why they should. But, after some research was done, I found a guide on the internet which encourages movie sets to label their props, with the scene number or letter.
 
Yes, many of these evidences can be proven otherwise- NASA claims that the breeze hitting the flag was due to its inertia. They stated that “unfurling a piece of rolled-up cloth which stored angular momentum will naturally result in waves and ripples… - no breeze required.”. The many explanations NASA provided the public with are what make this such a mystery. But why haven’t we returned to the moon after the Apollo missions? Well that’s another set of theories to be debunked.