Key arguments for suggesting that the 1969 moon landing (Apolo11) was a fake:

• The video is also level just acting. This has been proven by many astronomical analyses.
• There is no scientific basis for the return flight, and there is no video footage of the return to Earth. That is, it is impossible to return to such a simple ship, with assumptions about the heliocentric model.
• Many theories that the earth is spherical, and the moon is spherical, the moon does not rotate on its own axis, etc., are all implausible. The immobile earth, being a realm, and the moon in relation to the Larmor precession cycle would make more sense. Learn more: Mystery of the Black Sun

Moon-landing hoax still lives on. But why?

The moon-landing hoax still lives on, more than 50 years after Apollo 11 — the first crewed mission to land on the moon. 

Phil Plait has mixed feelings about the moon-landing hoax.

Plait — known as "The Bad Astronomer" to his many thousands of readers on Syfy — told Space.com he is frustrated that he and others like him still have to debunk the hoax theory from time to time, 50 years after the first moon landing. Then again, Plait became famous because he's so good at debunking in the first place. 

The moon-landing hoax still lives on and there seems to be no convincing some people. Here astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module Eagle during the Apollo 11 mission in July 1969. Mission commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70-millimeter lunar surface camera. (Image credit: NASA)

Back in February 2001, Fox Broadcasting ran a documentary titled "Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?" Plait coincidentally had a pile of research ready from a book he was working on, and a friend sent him an advance copy of the show so that he had time to write up a response.

Plait's essay on his personal blog, which he published shortly after the show aired, quickly generated thousands of views years before Facebook, Twitter and today's social media even existed. Fox's TV show propelled Plait's writing to a large audience, and his 2002 book "Bad Astronomy: Misconceptions and Misuses Revealed, from Astrology to the Moon Landing 'Hoax'" (Wiley) helped as well. Plait remains a popular science commentator nearly two decades later.

"I kind of wish it had never aired," Plait said about the Fox documentary, "because it opened a huge Pandora's box. On the other hand, it's exposing a wound to sunlight. That thing was there anyway, festering. Let it get out to the public, and let it heal, and let it kill the infection. But yeah, it's troubling. Just to know that if Fox hadn't aired that, who knows what my career path would have been."

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped onto the lunar surface on July 20, 1969. Even back then, some people were sceptical that the feat was technologically possible. The James Bond movie "Diamonds Are Forever," for example, had a joke about faked moon landings just two years later, in 1971. 

But what really propelled the conspiracy theory into popular culture, Plait said, was the 1978 Peter Hyams film "Capricorn One," which portrays a faked human landing on Mars. (Also, a 1976 self-published pamphlet by Bill Kaysing, "We Never Went to the Moon," was popular among conspiracy-minded people of the day.) 

That was over 40 years ago, but moon-hoax enthusiasts are still with us today. 

"The X-Files" brought all sorts of space conspiracies into the public consciousness in the 1990s and 2000s, and the rebooted version of the show addressed the moon landing in a 2018 episode. The conspiracy was also addressed in many other fictional TV shows, from "Futurama" to "Friends." 

Meanwhile, some documentary films and reality-TV efforts — a 2008 episode of "MythBusters," for example — tried to chase away the conspiracy theory by educating people. Other filmmakers, such as the folks behind the 2002 mockumentary "Dark Side of the Moon," spoofed moon hoaxers. 

Opinion polls over the years regularly show that around 5% of Americans believe the Apollo moon landings were faked, former NASA chief historian Roger Launius told the Associated Press. That's more than 16 million people, assuming a U.S. population of 327 million.

NASA has done a lot of debunking work over the decades, including a 2018 offer to NBA superstar Stephen Curry to view moon rocks at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston after Curry said he didn't believe in the moon landings. (A few days later, Curry said he made the comments in jest.)

In early 2019, NASA spokesperson Allard Beutel recited a pile of evidence supporting the moon landings to The Washington Post. He mentioned the returned moon rocks, the ability to bounce laser beams off gear the astronauts left behind and images NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter took of the Apollo landing sites in 2011. Nevertheless, even former astronauts have found themselves in the fray. 

Space shuttle astronaut Leland Melvin tackled the topic in the 2019 Science Channel series "Truth Behind the Moon Landing," which also features Space.com Editor-in-Chief Tariq Malik as a guest. And in 2002, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin punched moon-landing denier Bart Sibrel in the jaw during a taped confrontation. (Police later said Aldrin was provoked, and no charges were filed.)

Plait said there is a danger in talking about the moon-landing conspiracy and other clearly debunked space conspiracies like it, such as vaccines causing autism or humans not being responsible for climate change. It's possible, he said, that by airing any of these debates, the media gives legitimacy to the conspiracy. Plait said he sometimes struggles about whether to address a conspiracy in his blog; he tries to discuss ones that are widely talked about already.

But it's a tough job in fast-moving social media. Plait said he recently commented on what appeared to be widespread Twitter backlash about the new version of "The Little Mermaid" starring black actress Halle Bailey, only to discover the backlash was itself likely faked. Plait took down his original tweet and wrote a correction. (The genesis of the viral tweet was from a troll account, according to a tweet by Buzzfeed's Brandon Wall.)

Plait said we should remember that conspiracy beliefs often have real-life effects. For example: "Because of the anti-vax movement, babies are dying, kids are dying, older people are dying, people with compromised immune systems are dying." Extreme weather events driven in part by climate change are killing people as well, he said.

Plait clarified that he did not blame any particular political position for this strife — not even the alt-right, as it doesn't "play into their ideology" (which he said targets people of certain religious groups). But nevertheless, he added, "All of this stuff has been corralling the imagination of the American public and forcing it in a direction to not think critically, and to react instead of sitting and thinking a moment about things, and to doubt — even when you can lay a paper trail from Point A to Point B right in front of someone. They won't believe it." 

But Plait still tries. He remembers being on a radio show not too long ago, going over the usual arguments conspiracy theorists use — for example, why are there no stars in the sky in Apollo pictures of the lunar surface? (The reason is the cameras had fast exposure times and the stars were too faint to show.)

"Then somebody called in with some bizarre, trivial thing that made no sense at all," Plait recalled, "and bless him, the radio host jumped in and said, 'Listen. This guy said your 10 biggest claims are wrong. At what point do you back down?'"

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that the film "Capricorn One" was directed by Stanley Kubrick. It was directed by Peter Hyams. 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:

To see some of the wildest moon-landing conspiracy theories debunked, check out out this article by history.com. If you want to know why we know that we went to the moon, this article by the Institute of Physics has got you covered. Still looking for even more moon-related content? Why not check out this list of 38 moon movies on Rotten Tomatoes.  

The universe is an egg and the moon isn't real: notes from a Flat Earth conference

Flat Earthers believe this photo of the Earthrise taken in 1968 from Apollo 8, is a fake. Photograph: -/AFP/Getty Images

Welcome to the Flat Earth UK Convention, a raucous departure from scientific norms where people are free to believe literally anything.

“When people ask me what I believe, I can’t say that I believe in anything 100%”, Gary John tells the audience during his opening address. “Apart from that we don’t live on a globe”.

That unshakeable belief is one of the few points of total agreement for the 200-strong audience at this week’s gathering. There is less consensus, however, on what form the Earth actually takes: some believe it to be a disc with the Arctic circle in the middle; some believe that circle is under a dome, above which there may or may not be an expanse of water; others believe the Earth is just one in a series of ponds in a vast expanse of ice; and other still believe the Earth exists beneath four cosmic rings within a giant egg-shaped universe.

Most do not believe in space; none believe mankind has ever travelled there.

One speaker, Manchester-based musician Darren Nesbitt, dismisses the circular model of the Earth entirely, correctly critiquing that the Sun would have to travel faster in the South to make it around the outer-edge of the circle, which does not match our observations.

“You can’t just trust YouTube”, he implores the audience during his talk, “you have to be your own authority”.

The Earth, according to Nesbitt, is more likely a diamond shape, with East-West travel facilitated by 4D space-time warps along the edges, allowing for a “Pac-Man” version of reality – where a traveller might sail off one side of the screen, and appear at the other side. That diamond is propped up on seven circular pillars, “because God likes the number seven”. This version, he explains, fits the evidence better, and is supported by the Bible, in the book of Job.

Several speakers throughout the weekend take time to highlight that evolution is a myth, accompanied by occasional heckles of “monkey men!” from audience members.

To their credit, there are members of the Flat Earth community who are determined to disprove the globe model through scientific experiments: some use high-powered lasers over bodies of water to try to attempt to observe any curvature, others creating complex 3D models to explain the movements of the Sun and stars.

Although the ideas have persisted for generations, the modern Flat Earth phenomena is surprisingly recent. When I first encountered the community in 2013, Flat Earth arguments played out on a fringe messageboard, with some dispute over whether proponents actually believed in the theories they espoused or whether they simply enjoyed the intellectual pursuit of arguing an untenable position. However, if there were disbelievers among the 200 attendees at the conference, they were exceptionally convincing; there seems little doubt over the sincerity of modern Flat Earth proponents.

Almost all of the speakers came to the Flat Earth within the last five years: Nesbitt “came out” as a Flat Earther in 2015; Gary John found the movement in August 2015; Martin Liedtke in 2015. Almost all – speakers and attendees alike – credit their conversion to the Flat Earth to YouTube, watching videos like those produced by American Flat Earth star Mark Sargent.

Fame in the Flat Earth world is not without its pitfalls, however, as Sargent’s standing in the UK movement demonstrates. Sargent was booked to speak at the conference, before he gave interviews to the BBC and Good Morning Britain, in which he espoused his belief that the Earth exists under a dome, like a snowglobe. These interviews reflected badly on the community, Gary explained to me during lunch, so he contacted Sargent to air his concerns over the interviews, and how they were perceived by members of the Flat Earth community. In response, Sargent publicly and acrimoniously withdrew from the conference.

Sargent’s influence perseveres, however: one attendee during lunch showed me his favourite proof of the Flat Earth – a video showing a side-view from a plane-tracking software, created by Mark Sargent.

“It shows the height of the planes as they fly”, he told me, excitedly. “If the Earth was round, we’d see their heights all change as they fly over the curve!”

“Isn’t it measuring altitude?” I asked, “So that’s the elevation above the ground. If the ground curved, and the plane’s path naturally curved with it, it would stay the same distance from the ground – which is exactly what we see in that video, don’t we?”

He paused for a moment.

“That’s interesting”, he said, “I’ll have to think about that”.

Dave Marsh, an NHS manager from Derbyshire who came to Flat Earth belief in November 2016, tracked the movement of the moon across the night sky, in order to compare his observations to the “official” records and see if the movement of the moon matched that of the ‘Globalist’ model. The results of his backyard experiment differed from data he found online, leading him to conclude that “the moon is a projection, put there for a reason, which we could study for a thousand more years and never understand”. A more cautious experimenter might look to the accuracy of their equipment before drawing so radical a conclusion, but it’s hard not to admire his commitment.

Other speakers focus not on experimentation, but on observation and “common sense”. Dave Murphy, something of a celebrity in the Flat Earth movement after appearing on Macedonian TV in 2016, dedicated his talk to “debunking the debunkers” – bombastically dismissing arguments from Globalist physicists like Neil Degrasse Tyson. It was hard not to be charmed by Dave’s confidence and charisma as he took us through some of his refutations of the criticisms levelled at his theories, even if his understanding of distance, scale, and the movement of bodies in a closed system left a lot to be desired.

Interestingly, when it came to debunking some of the theories put forward by Flat Earth proponents – including the “transparent moon” theory and the false notion that photographs can show clouds passing behind the Sun – Dave’s delivery shifted completely. Gone was his confident swagger as he poked holes in theories the audience might hold dear. Flat Earth belief may be a broad church, but they are not above turning on their own.

The reluctance to submit their own theories to the level of scrutiny comes as little surprise, though it remains no less disappointing to witness. While the conference did include a debate with physics PhD candidates from Imperial College London and Cardiff University (who spoke with calmness and good-natured warmth in the face of exceptional pressure), self-examination was in short supply.

In fact, one of the most telling moments of the weekend came in Darren Nesbitt’s talk, after he dismissed the disk Earth as being “counter-intelligence” set out to throw people off the scent, and before he explained that the Earth is a diamond, resting on seven circular pillars, operating in a 4D Pac-Man version of reality.

Nesbitt shared what he called the “Flat Earth Addiction” test – seven questions Flat Earth proponents should ask themselves, including “Have people said that you are pushy or obsessive about Flat Earth?”, “Have you thought that if only everyone knew about Flat Earth the world would be a different place?”, and “Have you noticed that you spend less and less time with your family and friends and more and more time talking to Flat Earthers?”.