This conspiracy theory is a crock

In the process of getting my free novella Yes Houston out to people via Facebook ads, some rather interesting comments have bubbled to the surface from people who’ve seen fit to offer their own “expert” commentary.

Without doubt, my favourite was the guy who told me: “The Moon landings never happened — do your research.”

I was dumbstruck by the audacious idiocy embedded in that accusation and chose not to buy into a debate. If I had, it would have gone like this: Can you please cite what you see as credible research for this assertion? Because while I’d never go so far as to throw all conspiracy theories out with the bathwater, MY research shows the Moon landings definitely did occur.

There is simply no way on God’s blue-green Earth the Apollo missions were faked. The photographic evidence alone is overwhelming – where are those images supposed to have come from? Did NASA have some special effects lab mocking up thousands of images, many over and underexposed, breathtaking in their revelatory detail of the lunar surface? If so, someone had an incredible imagination. You simply couldn’t have made that stuff up convincingly, certainly not with 1960s technology.

Thousands of people saw the rockets take off into space. Hundreds of reporters and US Navy men saw the capsules parachuting back into the Pacific days later. Thousands of people built the rockets and the lunar landers. Loads of astronauts died, including three inside the capsule of Apollo 1.

Were those deaths also faked? Or worse, were they carried out deliberately? If so, why? The Apollo 1 disaster almost finished off the entire space program. Wouldn’t that have been the perfect time to can the whole operation if they couldn’t pull it off?

The truth, of course, is that this theory is a total crock. All involved in the space race — on both sides of the Iron Curtain — are nothing but proud of their links to one of humanity’s greatest-ever accomplishments. Which is what makes me sad about the whole suggestion. Why would anyone want to undermine that?

The plaque Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong left in the Sea of Tranquillity say it all: “We came in peace for all mankind.” Take that away, and all of us will be forced to die a little.

But here’s the kicker… the reason we never have to worry: we now have telescopes powerful enough to reveal the detail on the lunar surface at all of the Apollo landing sites. We can SEE that they’re real.

Unless the Moon itself is a fake.