I am a big fan of conspiracy theories though I am not a big believer in them, really I just find it interesting to see the ideas people come up with and how they rationalize things. There are a lot of theories you can tell straight of that bat are just fiction but then there are some that are hard to disprove or prove and a small portion that turn out to be true. I am going to be posting a series of blogs discussing a range of theories and sharing my opinion on them.
The moon landing being faked is one of the most widely believed conspiracies of the modern era and there are some very convincing arguments on each side. It is a very hard subject to decide upon as all governments cover things up and have secrets however usually that doesn't sway my opinion too much. Although the American government is specially well known for their unconventional methods, extreme tendencies and secrete operations on and off their own soil.
There is also a lot of gray area surrounding many aspects of this event but as I say they really are gray area they don't unequivocally prove either side of the debate. I like the fact that there is this gray area because it makes for some interesting discussions.
Russia
A big part of the controversy is the fact that America was competing against Russia to be the first people to the moon, which of course cases the speculation that America faked the landing to get a leg up on Russia basically a power play. This is a very reasonable argument however I think that if Russia was far away in tech from getting to the moon they would not believe America got there unless there was substantial proof that America had in fact set foot on the moon.
Russia is well known for secret operations, cheating to the point where they are considered experts, from government spies to Olympic athletes taking steroids, you need something covered up you look at Russia for inspiration. So I think Russia is the last country you could hide something like this from.
Photos:
Again there is a lot of debate about the photos being faked how they were all taken in a studio and so on. NASA after all is a business and they are in the business of science which needs a lot of funding especially when building rockets, so one of the things NASA do is edit the photos they take, from taking multiple images and putting them together, copy and pasting certain areas and editing colours.
This would seem suspicious if it wasn't for the fact that NASA is a business, they need to bring in as much money as they can so that they can expand so they take photos and make them look as good as the possible can to show to the public to gain more interest. So I don't see much issue with the photos being edited however I do find it strange that they don't have a place where they release all the unedited photos they have taken not only for transparency.
If NASA and other space programs around the world were to release all their photos most would be uninteresting however you would gain millions of eyes millions of workers to scan over every single image to pick out every small detail and maybe catch things they missed, also if someone was to spot something significant people could spread awareness till the news finds its way back to NASA.
My opinion:
I have had a few long discussions on whether the moon landing is real or fake and in the end I always seem to lean toward it being real although there is still that bit of doubt that I just can't shift. There are other points I could discuss however I find myself coming to the same conclusion I do think that the Americans landed on the moon however there is still the conspiracies on what they found on the moon...