So, enjoy! I had the idea to do this, and as much as I try to preserve the ideal of pure-honesty, I couldn't pass up the chance to take a swing at a silly-old argument denouncing one of mankind's greatest achievements. I'm not, in point of fact, an expert on these matters, so my argument pro-'the moon landing happened' is typically one of: Whether we did or not doesn't really matter in my or your day to day life, unless one of us ends up working at NASA or something, so given the choice between two worlds to believe in, one in which we landed a dozen people on the freaking moon or one in which it was all a big lie, which would you prefer to believe in? I know I'd rather be idealistic and believe in an awesome world where anything's possible, but that's just me.
Moon Landing Hoax by Mackinley Clevinger, March 22, 2016
It is an often cited statistic, one that even I have used to describe the impressive nature of mankind’s advances in science, that in the year 1969, on July 16, two Americans did set foot on the surface of the moon and reign in an era of space exploration and the cultural dominance of the United States of America. It certainly was a fascinating display of the kind of results that can be gained by rolling up your sleeves and getting down to serious business, and the effect this act had on the world was certainly the intended one. To everyone’s perceptions, America was the big dog in the park again, seen as more advanced and more capable than anyone else; just as America wanted it. The point of this exercise wasn’t to put people on the moon, you see; it was to make the world think they had.
To put it bluntly, America did not, in fact, put any one or two men down onto the moon’s surface; they merely landed an unmanned craft there to gather the footage necessary to run in the background of a prepared green-screen set in which two men would say their iconic and most assuredly scripted lines while prancing about and tricking the world into believing that the U.S. was more capable than it truly was. Now? It is a stated and true fact that America has achieved the deed of landing men on the moon since then, and the advances of space exploration and research have been factual; it is merely that first event in 1969 which was a lie spun by America when they realized that time was running out on reaching that celestial body before the Soviet Union, and that failing to reach their target would both look poorly on the U.S. in the eyes of the world and give victory off the space race to a rival nation.
It was vital to the world’s sense of peace and unity that no conflict break out among the stars, a conflict that would surely be reflected upon the Earth below and bring ruin during a time when the world feared nuclear retaliation for any first move made to ensure personal safety. A sky full of satellites and drones locked in combat would rain destruction on the Earth, both in debris and in violence breaking out on land between the countries warring in the sky. This eventuality could not be permitted, so one country had to come out as the winner of the space race, one that was more interested in a lasting peace than in using a new foothold as a strategic point to launch a new war effort from. There was no doubt in the mind of John Kennedy; America had to be the first to reach the moon and land a man there to walk on its surface. Or, rather, America had to seem like it had done such an act.
“We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win ...” (Kennedy, 1962.) He says it himself; completing this feat would not be a simple measure. It would grow easier when the actual attempt was made in future flights through the cosmic void that lay between us and the moon, but America was beginning their venture behind Soviet Russia, spurned by their record-breaking first artificial satellite Sputnik, launched in 1957. The history books would have us believe that in this span of time, a mere dozen years, America, acting alone in their quest as any foreign aid would diminish the image of a sole-American effort winning them the price, was capable of first catching-up to Soviet Russia, and then go beyond that to send living, breathing men into space on that long trip, which would end in them being dropped back off to the surface of Earth safe and sound. Twelve years to make the largest leap in technological prowess anyone has ever seen in a field that only just then, in 1962, received the public support of the government? It boggles the mind, and for good reason. Seven years to get the Apollo Program to fruition for the express reason of making America look impressive to the rest of the world? America backed the program in full, not to actually achieve anything, but to look like they had; and when the Apollo Program wasn’t going to make ends meet, corners were cut to speed it up in a last-ditch back-up plan.
What made the American government lose faith that NASA could deliver on time? The 1967 Apollo 1 cabin fire, an event soon followed by budget cuts that canceled numerous future missions, a clear sign that the interests of the American government in an actual manned launch had waned, replaced with the need for one thing from NASA: footage. Why did America have to go to all the trouble and expense on such a short time frame when all they really needed was the background? They could get actors on the ground, they could build a set on the ground, but they couldn’t get that shot of the sky from the moon without stepping into territory that could easily see their claim for space dominance be revoked once someone else made it up there. The only recourse for this would be to drop an unmanned shuttle on the moon and film the backdrop for an on-Earth scene they could put together using film from numerous unmanned spacecraft, only receiving the crucial footage needed from the secretly unmanned Apollo 11 mission, the knowledge of whether or not they would get the crucial footage they needed when they publicized it as America’s last word on who was king of the stars completely unknown to the men and women who took a chance on what may very well have been another failure to receive the footage they needed to complete the video evidence of their landing on the moon. They had to act fast in July of 1969, as the Soviet Union had successfully managed to orbit the moon with satellites that contained living animals in 1968, a feat they were sure to replicate with living humans, followed soon after with an attempt at landing on the moon, taking away the trophy America so desperately sought and needed to maintain a peace among the stars.
Apollo 11 was a success, but not in the way we think we know today. America got its footage, and was able to put together the video so famously known, wherein the actor playing Neil Armstrong actually messed up that famous line ‘That’s one small step for man, and one giant leap for mankind’ in which he was supposed to say ‘one giant leap for America, so take that you commie – ‘ You can imagine the rest. However, there was no time to re-shoot the footage; they were broadcasting the moon landing ‘live’ through the use of a second, more mobile craft that landed alongside the primary lunar lander, the background image of the stars what they cast over the set’s green screen, moving strategically alongside an on-Earth cameraman. The entire event was incredibly well-orchestrated, and if it had been released as a stand-alone film instead of as a ‘real’ moon landing, would certainly have won awards.
The completion of America’s space-charade set them up as the undeniable victors of the space race, completing the act of landing on the moon for real sometime later after additional dummy landings to cement the idea that they had truly done it. Twelve men did, in fact, walk on the surface of the moon, but instead of being across six Moon landings, was actually done in three. Later, the films would be swapped out by almost perfect duplicates of on-sight recreations of the original, America forced to use the dummy line instead of the politically questionable one Neil Armstrong’s body double gave during the live broadcast, the ‘delay from space-travel’ actually the time it took for the film to process and look genuine, the reallocated funds from NASA in their goal to have a manned landing instead put into the film industry, the excess funds birthing the goliath industry that we know and love today.
Who knows what may have happened if America had stayed the course with NASA, and let them have their time and funds to perform this amazing, if fictitious, feat. What we do know is that by performing this subterfuge and faking out Soviet Russia and the rest of the world, we managed to escape a real-life recreation of Star Wars, a franchise that hadn’t even existed at that point but would thanks to Hollywood’s immense payroll from this event, and the fact that there was still an America, and planet, left to house the development, production, and release of that incredible movie series. It is thanks to John Kennedy’s dream, the people at NASA, the film industry, and the American Way that we were able to have the history we do today, and while it may not live up to the image we always imagined it being, you can’t deny that a little lie half a century ago isn’t going a long way towards creating a better today.