An Epistemological Study of Apollo 11: Is There a Noble Lie?

This essay is divided into three parts: (1) a discussion of when, if ever, lying is noble, (2) proof that, in no uncertain terms, the Apollo manned lunar voyage and landing record is fraudulent, and (3) discussion of what the Apollo lie means and if it was justified. While readers less interested in an inquiry into the nature of truth (epistemology) are welcome to scroll down to the second part due to the length of this piece, the Apollo record, when skeptically analyzed, forces epistemological questions far more interesting than answering simply whether or not two or a dozen men landed on the Moon. Ask yourself: how do you know what you claim to know? 

I. The Noble Lie
Is there such a thing as a noble lie? We're all familiar with "white lie," the common sense adage to gracefully avoid giving a harsh opinion, especially regarding an inconsequential matter, to someone we care for. We recognize the possible good, at least to ourselves, in avoiding telling a spouse she looks fat in a certain outfit, when asked, for the purpose of avoiding upsetting her. But we also understand the bad in avoiding a confession of marital infidelity, especially if it's for that same purpose. Avoidance of the truth is, perhaps always, innately recognized as wrong. But its wrongness is amplified proportionally to how consequential the matter lied about is.

In legal terms, we use the word "material" to describe this effect. A lie often has criminal potency the more likely we can infer it changed the behavior of someone from what she otherwise would have done had she been given the correct information. Had she known your opinion was that she looked fat in a certain outfit, while scorned feelings were likely, she probably wouldn't have divorced you over the matter. The same may not be said for marital infidelity. The more material the mistruth, the more immoral we recognize it as.

This distinction belies an epistemological question. What value does truth have? Is its value measured by its consequences? Or does it have a value in and of itself as a good measured independent from the effect of happiness the information bestows on people? If information is used as a means to secure the greatest happiness while avoiding the greatest displeasure for the greatest number, as found in utilitarianism, then there is no truth the right lie can't be superior to. If you tell your spouse you love her, wouldn't she be even happier to hear you were her first and only love, even if that embellishment were not true? If so, and there would be no way for her to ever know the truth, would the aforementioned fib serve a greater good than the truth?

Let's say we recognize the unpleasant truth as greater than the pleasant lie. Is that relative greatness merely a result of the likelihood that the truth will eventually come out anyway and more greatly anger or harm the subject lied to than if the truth could be kept forever hidden? Or do we recognize that, even if the truth could forever be hidden, the unpleasant truth, despite its negative effects, is superior to the undiscoverable lie, even with that lie's positive effects. The woman with the five-carat solitaire diamond ring may have trouble enjoying the attention from her peers if she knows the ring to be fake. But if she believes the ring real and her peers and fiancé all believe the same, and all go on their whole lives none the wiser, was there any harm in the lie? Did the lie not bring happiness?

At the individual level, we innately understand the immorality of the lie relative to the truth, regardless of the results of material happiness. We might refer to people who have no unpleasant gut reaction or sensation of guilt after lying as psychopaths or sociopaths. We may share disdain for these personality traits once they're revealed. But would it be unjust for liars to go on their whole lives undiscovered, even if no material harm ever comes to others? If someone lifts $10 from your wallet, what if you never become aware of it? The thief is $10 richer. Is the aggregate happiness of humanity not increased? Only your discovery that the $10 is missing would result in a decrease in your happiness to offset the $10 increase in happiness of the thief. And what if your would-be $10 purchase from that $10 would've lead to a chain of events resulting in your untimely demise? Could we measure the $10 theft as an inadvertent act of good?

We feel the gravity of the lie the closer it is to the individual level. A visceral gut reaction, because we recognize innately that the truth is a good in and of itself, greater to, separate from, and regardless of its consequences. But when we scale the lie to governance of society and world relations, its effects become more diffuse. After all, this is the justification for what we refer to in government as "intelligence agencies," charged with lying for the greater good of the people their employer, a government, represents. When at war, it is good to lie about the location of your troops if your goal is to win a battle. How about during peace time? What lies are good and what lies are evil? How do we know?

Plato, using Socrates as his character conduit in the Republic, argued some direct lies to the citizenry, entirely unrelated to securing military advantage, can be good, in what has been translated as the "noble lie" or "grand myth." Plato advocated telling citizens they were all born of metals under the ground of their city: blended of gold, silver, iron, and/or bronze, attributing them to rulers (aristocrats), soldiers, and artisans and/or farmers respectively [*1]. The intended effect was two-fold: (1) to instill a sense of citizen loyalty to their nation by tying their blood, literally, to the land under their city-state and (2) to get the citizenry to accept assigned classes, so a farmer born of bronze would accept his social role relative to the gold ruling class. When judging the aggregate happiness of the people within a jurisdiction, would such a lie not serve in creating a more peaceful and harmonious social order? Would even a false sense of fealty and acceptance of social roles induced by such a lie make a nation less susceptible to conquest, or perhaps become more powerful and prosperous relative to other nations? Or, is such self-serving sophistry a rouse to enhance the powers of the gold class?

Even at the individual level, Plato, again using Socrates as his character conduit, justifies lying [*2]. If you're holding a weapon for a friend, and he comes asking for the location of the weapon, with an apparent intent to kill another he is angry at, is it just to lie to your friend about the location of the weapon so that his head cools, along with his desire to kill, by the time he discovers the location? This assumes the logical alternative, outright refusing to tell your friend the location of the weapon, would result in your own harm or your coercion into revealing the location of the weapon. If your friend would kill you for refusing to reveal the location of the weapon, are you justified in lying to him about the location? Under threat of death, is lying justified? This contrived scenario, requiring evidence of specific circumstances, may appear as a dubious means to justify lying as a principle, but it's perhaps arguable as a limited exception if the right circumstances can be shown. But we can only do so from a utilitarian point of view akin to sparing your wife's feelings with the knowledge she might kill you for rendering the wrong opinion of her appearance.

Would similar circumstances justify a government's agent lying to another to avoid capture or killing? More information would be needed to make that judgment akin to the circumstances that could be demonstrated in the hidden weapon example. What if our government's agents are selling weapons to a revolutionary faction wishing to take over another nation's government? Maybe the target government the agent is lying to is evil, and we are justified in facilitating its demise. But maybe not. Or, maybe the agent has information that, if known publicly, could cause a civil war within our own nation, putting millions of domestic lives at risk. Regardless, we couldn't know the answer to these questions, because we're forbidden from knowing the details of such lies. Governments have a label to describe truth that would allow its people to judge the ethics of these lies: "classified." Disclosure of "classified" information is deemed criminal by any government, especially when the disclosure comes from an original government source as opposed to from a news publication receiving the information second-hand.

We have an interesting conundrum. Under some circumstances, a government's agents may be justified in lying. Perhaps those circumstances could make a lie noble. But we can't examine those circumstances until information is declassified. And when should it be declassified? That decision proximately falls upon the bureaucrats, who might face consequences from the public they purportedly represent, to decide.

These bureaucrats report to a leader, a president the public of nations often elect, who, of course, may "declassify" the information. But who is to say this president even knows all "classified" information? Who controls that information's passage to the president? How could a president decide what information to declassify? If a president asked for all classified information for perusal to make such a decision, how would he know all the information was served to him? The truth will eventually out, of course, but likely long after the liars could be held accountable for lying under what the public may later deem unjustifiable circumstances.

II. On Musty Apollo Lunacy
There are countless historical examples of what we might label "intelligence agencies" lying. Yet, to examine the ethical mechanics behind a lie, we should examine the most profound lie. (1) A lie that the public most unquestioningly believes and also reacts most viscerally or mockingly toward any suggestion of its untruth. (2) A lie regarding the most boastful accomplishment of humanity that many, especially those of the baby boomer generation, live vicariously through (i.e. "we" went to the Moon). (3) A lie that is most easily proven a comical farce, and has grown so old and stale its musty stench is painfully obvious to open-minded generations taking even a cursory look at the evidence. The focus here is a subject outside the epistemological comfort zone of many: the Apollo missions purporting to have landed men on the Moon. We, if you're bold enough to come along for the ride, must first unequivocally prove they were fraudulent.



I document evidence of the fraud in Apollo's photographic record with a series of analyses you can view here [*3]. Instead of criticizing dubious explanations for how the film in the cameras survived radiation outside the protection of Earth's magnetosphere (let alone the astronauts themselves), for those young enough to know the graining results of putting photographic film through an x-ray machine, or film's exposure to the extreme vacuum of the Moon [*4], I prefer to focus on issues of logical continuity.

 As one of many examples, let's take six official-record photos from NASA's public Flickr account [*5], where they tell us to get the highest-resolution versions, of the last Apollo mission, Apollo 17:

When we angle our view from different perspectives, of course, an object will slightly shift location relative to the background. But "perspective" can't account for the ridiculous shift in positions of the circled "lunar lander," the craft alleged to have landed on the Moon, between photos.



Background scenery appears to "shrink" in size as we move closer to foreground objects, as anyone approaching a stop sign understands. But does this scale of "perspective" make sense between these photos?



Let's observe the lunar module from three sides. Given the scale of the background in the main photo below, do the differing perspectives make sense?



Could the different positions of the lunar lander result merely from the angling perspective of the camera? Let's examine the "perspective" explanation for these photos appearing mutually exclusive with the lunar lander positions.





The rear (aft) of the lunar lander is facing the camera in the right photo. But the side is facing the camera in the left photo, despite the topography matching perfectly with the photos taken further away.

We'd have to imagine a giant "V" angling a 90-degree separation between the mountain ranges in the left and right photos for the shift in perspective to remotely make any sense. But, in the bottom three  photos below, the foreground rock starting in the alleged southerly direction does not angle 90 degrees when compared to the foreground slope lining up with the alleged westerly direction. And we see a straight line of separation between the foreground and background in all three photos. But the view of the mountain range in the left set of photos is purported as southerly and the right set as westerly, so claims the Lunar Planetary Institute [*6]:



The straight line of separation in the background and non-angling position of the rock and slope in the foreground are mutually exclusive with this 90-degree turn in perspective needed for the left photos to be facing south while the right photos face west. The photos are mutually exclusive. They make no logical sense of continuity. Thus, to the degree the same laws of physics are universally applied to both the Earth and the Moon, the above photos are unequivocally fake unless we speculate the "lunar lander" took off and re-landed at multiple locations in Apollo 17 or that it was towed around the Moon by the equally ridiculous lunar rover with its mutually exclusive sets of tracks it made:



If the photos for Apollo 17, the last Apollo mission, are fraudulent, what does that say about the odds the photos in the prior Apollo missions alleged to have landed on the Moon were also faked?

The same oddity I reveal from Apollo 17 is present in the Apollo 15 photographic record, which I analyze in great detail here [*7]:

We need to demonstrate a 90-degree turn in perspective for these six photos to make sense. Compare the circled lunar soil patch above to the 90-degree turn in perspective I make for a snow patch below:

[UPDATE: I've added a street comparison as well to help illustrate my point]



Note how the snow patch turns in perspective while the lunar soil patch does not. Thus, the alleged lunar photos are not turning 90 degrees in perspective.



The photos are taken with the camera facing the same direction. Yet we see the front of the lunar lander facing the camera in the left photo and the aft facing left (implying the front should be facing right) in the right photo.



The only reasonable conclusion to be made: a false backdrop is being used. The photographs were faked.



As an amusing aside, note the shoeprint they photographed on Apollo 15 at AS15-86-11670 and 11671.



I could cite many other examples of mutual exclusivity in camera positioning, among many other technical errors [*8]. But fake photos do not mean the event in question never occurred. If I lie to you by showing you vacation photos of my family in front of a fake backdrop of the Eiffel Tower as proof I went to Paris for my vacation, maybe I never went to Paris, but maybe I "faked the photos but went anyway." What other evidence of these purported Moon landings do we have?

We can't point a telescope to the Moon and see the Apollo artifacts on the landing sites for ourselves [*9]. Instead, we rely on digital images provided to us from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter satellite [*10].



I present the most detailed image of a "landing site," that of Apollo 15 created on March 5, 2012 [*11]:



Curious. What is that single dark line from the "descent stage" of the lunar lander to the alleged lunar rover vehicle (LRV)? We see two sets of tracks marked by the black arrows but only one for the dark line. Was there a motorcycle the Apollo 15 astronauts brought to the Moon they never told us about? And why is one object, the LRV, black and the other, the "descent stage," white?

After we've proven the on-the-ground photographic record was fake, this digital image, taken decades later, is dubious. And the fact that it's an Adobe Photoshop file, along with many other Apollo photos and the other LRO images, doesn't help in credibility [*12]:




It might be more credible to present half-eaten cookies and snowy footprints to the fireplace as evidence of a visit by Santa Clause than to accept this image as evidence the Apollo 15 astronauts landed on the Moon.

But what about the "retroreflectors," allegedly placed on the Moon by Apollo astronauts, where laser beams from Earth can supposedly be bounced off of? What would distinguish bouncing a laser off the one of these tiny reflectors versus a bare surface area of the Moon? The Apollo 11 one wasn't even angled appropriately, considering (1) the Moon orbits the Earth's equator, (2) the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the Moon's equator, and (3) the reflector was not flatly placed, which would be required for a "bounce" back to the Earth but, instead, angled 28 degrees, as discussed in Mary Bennett and David Percy's excellent book, Dark Moon [*13].



And we can't distinguish a laser bouncing off a retroreflector from bouncing a laser off a separate flat surface of the Moon, as discussed in a Swiss paper by Andreas Marki. [*14]:




What about the "moon rocks" brought back from Apollo? How do we know they are genuine Moon rocks? One of the alleged rocks was revealed by the Dutch as petrified wood [*15] and another, from Apollo 14, revealed as an Earth rock that (millions of years ago) bounced from Earth to the Moon (presumably by meteors knocking debris into orbit) [*16].

How about we travel to the Moon ourselves to take a closer look? A bill passed in the United States Senate, no doubt to be law soon, makes it illegal to independently send even an unmanned craft to verify the landing sites without explicit U.S. government permission [*17]. To wit: nobody is allowed to send a craft to the Moon that can fly over or near the Apollo landing sites without explicit permission from the United States government, and international agreements to enforce this policy are strongly emphasized and encouraged under the law.




Prohibited activity in this bill includes flying anything with the possibility of an "unintentional orbit" of the Moon. Imagine sending a drone to space and being fined for the drone having a greater than 50/50 chance of accidentally orbiting the Moon:



While the photographic record is comically fraudulent, and all the above-referenced means of "knowing" are unreliable, perhaps we can infer the events nonetheless occurred by our reliance upon the word of those in authority. We call this testimonial evidence. The surviving astronauts claim they walked on the Moon. But an FBI interrogation trainer analyzed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's (Apollo 11) interviews (one each) and discovered telltale verbal and body language signs of deception [*18].

Let's assume the astronauts confessed they never walked on the Moon. We could still avoid concession to the Moon-landing fraud by moving our evidentiary goal post. It is possible for someone to say they never went somewhere when they really did. How could we know these confessions would be true?

We touch on a fascinating epistemological question. How do we prove a negative? Proving you robbed a store would require evidence like eye-witness testimony and/or video footage. But is proving you didn't rob the store even possible? We'd have to show an alibi in the record proving you were somewhere different at the time of the alleged event.

But the Apollo telemetry data, original tapes containing spacecraft positioning, health conditions of the astronauts, among other data, has been destroyed (taped over) [*19]. A copy of the video record can presently be purchased from a company called Spacecraft Films, costing $500 for a DVD record of the entire "unedited" Apollo footage, if they choose to send it to you, as some report never receiving their copy after payment [*20].

Nonetheless, around 1999, filmmaker Bart Sibrel, along with photographer David Percy, received alibi-type evidence for the Apollo 11 astronauts, the very first alleged to have walked on the Moon, regarding the time they are alleged to have been 130,000 miles away from Earth, a little past the half-way point of their roughly 240,000-mile voyage to the Moon. Sibrel produced a documentary, A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Moon [*21], using footage mailed to him from the Johnson Space Center in response to his request for unedited Apollo 11 footage. Percy featured the same footage in his documentary with Bennett available on Aulis.com, What Happened On the Moon? An Investigation Into Apollo (relevant scene at 12:07) [*22].

This footage shows the Apollo 11 astronauts falsifying their journey half-way to the Moon or 130,000 miles away (over 10x the diameter of the Earth).



They are caught in low-Earth orbit, only about 200 miles up, or 0.15% of the alleged distance, while reporting to be "130,000 miles out" and showing the computer's time recorder display at 34 hours. A copy of the full footage is available here [*23] on Seb Menard's channel. I will give times for each scene from the footage I reference, links beginning a few seconds before each scene I highlight, and screenshots of the corresponding highlighted scenes so readers can view for themselves as I explain.

The footage was marked "not for general public distribution."



A few years after Sibrel, Bennett, and Percy published their documentaries, Spacecraft Films, in 2003, published the leaked footage with a few curious omissions, such as the above-referenced disclaimer.  Also missing from the Spacecraft Films version is a voice prompting Neil Armstrong by saying "talk" (0:25) after another voice says, "Apollo 11. Houston, Goldstone says the TV looks great. Over." [*24].



This mysterious voice prompting Armstrong is never heard again in Sibrel's recording. Why did Spacecraft Films cut out this voice if they claim the footage they present is unedited? Of course, the moment we speculate that the voice is an intelligence agent prompting Armstrong to speak, we are automatically deemed "conspiracy theorists" by detractors. As we are dealing here only with hard evidence the Moon landings were a fraud, there's no need for such speculation. I merely point out (1) the obvious red flag of an omission from what is purported as "unedited footage,"  and (2) the official Spacecraft Films release corroborates Sibrel and Percy's footage, proving this footage is indeed part of the record and not some elaborate fakery of a fakery.

If someone claims the evidence I present is fake, that implies that my evidentiary burden would be met if only my evidence were proven genuine. But once I prove this footage is not fake, a dishonest person will shift the goalpost and say, "Well, if the footage of them caught faking it is not fake, then there must be some other explanation." But there is none. And, as you will see, logical continuity for the Apollo 11 record is destroyed.

A break in the footage appears around the eighteen-minute mark. Then we hear Neil Armstrong, our most famous astronaut, claim to be "130,000 miles out" while filming the Earth from the circular porthole window of the Apollo 11 command module (18:41), claiming he has the TV camera lense pressed up against the window. [*25].



In later uncut frames, we see the shot was faked by turning the lights off inside the spacecraft to represent "space" outside the window, while the blue of Earth is a small bit of earthshine from a much larger Earth coming through the small circular porthole window with the camera not pressed up against the window but from the back of the spacecraft (30:34) [*26]. Alternatively, David Percy suggests a color transparency of the Earth could be placed in the window with the Sun or Earth illuminating it. A floodlight for operation of the TV camera in the dark is seen in the upper-left corner, in a scene that was likely mistakenly recorded.



A few seconds later, we see a fake covering, likely used to mimic the Earth's terminator line dividing night and day, over the porthole window (30:52) [*27].



A minute later, the spacecraft interior is illuminated and we see the "black" of space is really the interior walls of the spacecraft with the blue of Earth enveloping the entirety of the circular window and the same floodlight in the upper-left. This proves the spacecraft was orbiting Earth at the time and faking a view "130,000 miles out" by using the circular outline of the porthole window (along with some overlay material) to represent a false view of the "entirety" of Earth along the dark interior of the spacecraft with lights off and other windows covered (32:05) [*28].



About two minutes later, uncut, we confirm they were in low-Earth orbit (33:41) [*29], as we see white lacey clouds above the Earth's ocean visible from another window, proving Armstrong and crew weren't "130,000 miles out" but merely about 200 miles up in low-Earth orbit (0.15% of the distance):



Maybe they were faking a view of Earth as a practice shot for the real footage they'd later capture (which we mysteriously never see). Since the Earth-Moon voyage allegedly took three days to arrive, and 130,000 miles represents the approximate half-way point between the Earth and Moon, we would not expect the astronauts to still be in low-Earth orbit 34 hours after launch. Nonetheless, just two minutes later in uncut frames, we hear the astronauts verbally reporting the mission elapsed time as "34 hours and 16 minutes" while showing 34:16 on the mission computer's time display (35:39) [*30].



Curious. Let's assume they were faking the half-way footage as a "practice shot" while in low-Earth orbit. Why would they be doing so at the 34-hour-16-minute mark? Why would half of their three-day alleged mission duration from Earth to arrival at the Moon be spent in low-Earth orbit, only 200 miles away out of the approximately 240,000 total-mile journey to the Moon? This conflicts with the official record where "translunar injection," the rocket blast to initiate exit from low-Earth orbit to the Moon, began at the 2-hour-50-minute mark [31].



To be precise, it occurred at the 2-hour-50-minute-13-second mark, which was the same time NASA promised a week before in its pre-released Apollo press kit! Okay. The record time was off by a few milliseconds from the press kit time below [*32]:



Let's piece the evidence together. Can you solve the below puzzle?



A similar question could be asked of Apollo 13 astronauts who allegedly orbited the Moon. As Bennett and Percy discovered in their prior-mentioned book and documentary, Apollo 13 astronauts are filmed escaping from the command module to the lunar module after an oxygen tank explosion almost 56 hours into their mission, about 200,000 miles into their voyage [*33]. But you can see the blue outline of Earth and earthshine from the window (1:25:20), evidencing they were about 200 miles up in low-Earth orbit or 0.1% of the alleged distance [*34].



Apollo 13's translunar injection occurred, according to the official record, at the 2-hour-41-minute-47-second mark [*35]. A low-Earth orbit view should not be visible from the window after 55 hours into their three-day journey.



Bennett and Percy note that the Apollo 13 craft was scheduled to land on Fra Mauro, an area which would have been on the night side the Moon at the scheduled landing time [*36].



They speculate that the oxygen tank-explosion "accident," which cancelled their "landing" plans, may have been a means to avoid showing impossible sunlight on a landing that conflicted with lunar-phase records of a dark landing area. In other words, somebody probably realized an error was made in calculations, and the "accident" was used to prevent this error from being used to expose the fraud. This is the basis for the title of their book, Dark Moon.

If even Apollo 13, a mission that didn't land on the Moon, was faked, how do we know which Apollo missions were real versus fraudulent? As Sibrel explains in later interviews, the etymology of the word "wicked" comes from the wick of a candle, two strands of wax twisted together: the truth and the lie. Exposing the lie here is a wicked dilemma.

Few lies are outright fabrications; some amount of truth must be blended with a lie to make it believable. Truth and falsehood are perhaps best seen on a spectrum. As the old adage goes, we see through a glass darkly. We can't know the truth with perfect certainty, because we do not have a God's-eye view of reality. This is the difference between a mistake and a lie. To lie is to knowingly deceive by stating a falsehood when the speaker knows it to be false, and, perhaps, also by knowingly omitting the truth at a time one knows another is making a decision requiring that information. A lie more likely to succeed will be blended with as much truth as it possibly can. The cheater best portrays wickedness by saying he went to another woman's house but did not cheat on his wife. Compare this to an amateur cheater who says he never went the woman's house to begin with. Which statement is easier to falsify? The more difficult one makes it to determine where the truth ends and the lie begins, the more wicked the liar.

Detractors from our epistemological review of this Apollo lunacy may demand we mark for them exactly where the truth ends and the lie begins. Could every NASA mission be fake? Does the black void of "space" exist? Is the Earth actually round? Could astronauts orbit the Earth? Could they only orbit the Moon but not land on it? Apollo 8 allegedly orbited the Moon. Was that real?



Just because we can't put our finger on the exact line between the truth and lie, doesn't mean the Apollo narrative we were sold is true. Some aspects of the Apollo missions must have been real. All wicked lies entwine with truth as much as they possibly can. But the lie must be plausible. If NASA showed us footage of astronauts merrily bouncing around the flaming surface of Sun, perhaps bringing back "Sun rocks" as evidence, would we accept that as genuine? A lie must seem logically plausible for people to accept it.

Likely, we can infer astronauts commonly travel into low-Earth orbit, or about 200 to 400 miles "up" and circle the Earth, but that, for whatever reason, be it deadly radiation outside the Earth's magnetosphere, difficulties with spacecraft temperature control, or imprecise navigation and/or fuel for such a journey, traveling beyond low-Earth orbit is not yet technologically possible. This comports with the reality that, after the fifty-year anniversary of Apollo 11, no other manned craft besides, allegedly, an Apollo one (the last of which launched in 1972) has traveled beyond low-Earth orbit (compare 200-400 miles with 240,000 miles). The technical engineering specifications and plans to reproduce an Apollo spacecraft were all lost or destroyed [*37]. As NASA astronaut Don Pettit stated, "I'd go back to the Moon in a nanosecond. The problem is we don't have the technology to do that anymore. We used to, but we destroyed that technology, and it's a painful process to build it back again." [*38].



With this background, it's far more plausible that the footage Sibrel and Percy received in 1999-2000, partially published by Spacecraft Films in 2003, was of the Apollo 11 astronauts faking their voyage and not merely "practicing a shot of Earth" or whatever other possible ridiculous excuse we can imagine.

Sibrel confronted many of the Apollo astronauts with the Apollo 11-fakery footage in his follow-up documentary, Astronauts Gone Wild [*39].



After showing Aldrin the footage of him faking the scene "130,000 miles out," Sibrel presses for a confession:

Sibrel: I know for a fact, I've had this analyzed. And this, this is the window, and you're in... and it is dated by an atomic clock at the Goldstone tracking station, which is on the tape. 

Aldrin: Well you're talking to the wrong guy. Why don't you talk to the administrator of NASA? We're passengers. We're, we're guys going on a flight. We're not … 

Sibrel: I know for a fact that you didn't go. And this tape would prove it in a court of law.

What did Aldrin mean when he referred to himself and his crewmates as "passengers"? The prior-mentioned FBI interrogation trainer later analyzing this interview remarked,

What he was about to tell us in the negative ("we're not") is elevated in importance to the subject (and to us) but it will not be known because the interviewer interrupted the subject. … Had the journalist challenged him without virtue signaling, we may have gotten a significant yield from Aldrin's words. For those looking to learn the truth as to whether or not the lunar landing took place, this was a lost opportunity. [*40].

The casual reader is probably not aware of this confrontation, let alone Sibrel's discovery of the footage of the fakery. Most know Sibrel as the guy Aldrin later punched in the face in a separate confrontation after Sibrel called Aldrin a "liar, a coward, and a thief" for continuing to make money off his musty Apollo fraud (as many astronauts continued to do). Of course, Aldrin faced no criminal charges for his punch, as he is considered a national hero by most baby boomers.

Violence among the Apollo astronauts is not limited to Aldrin. In another interview from Astronauts Gone Wild, Sibrel confronts Edgar Mitchell of Apollo 14 with the same footage, and a few seconds after saying "I don't hit people," Mitchell knees Sibrel in the rear and demands he leave (48:37) [*41].



Sibrel leaves without taking his microphone. On the recording, Mitchell's son is heard saying, "Want to call the CIA and have them waxed?"

It's not just Sibrel, being more confrontational, that can aggravate the astronauts. After a simple polite question to Al Worden of Apollo 15 about whether Apollo astronauts used the "straight-in," as Worden claimed, or "skip reentry," as NASA flight director Chris Kraft stated was necessary,  approach for reentry into Earth's atmosphere upon return from the Moon, Worden stated at a public event: "Chris Kraft is a bad guy. If we could feed him to a bomb, we would." [*42].

 

Let's assume one is justified in punching another in the face for being called "a liar, a coward, and a thief" by the other. Why get violent when no pejorative labels are yelled? Why did Al Worden believe a former NASA flight director should be murdered? Why did Edgar Mitchell react so violently to the footage shown to him? Nobody likes being ambushed and made a fool of, but, if there's a reasonable explanation for faking the Apollo 11 scene (like, they were just practicing before translunar injection), why didn't the astronauts interviewed simply explain the scene or invite NASA officials to review the footage and give an official explanation?

III. What Does the Apollo Lie Mean? Was it a Noble One?
Since the Apollo record is unequivocally fraudulent, meaning no humans walked on the Moon and, likely, no human has traveled outside low-Earth orbit or about 200-400 miles "up," we start to wonder what else they are lying about. But what is the antecedent to they? We don't know exactly. And it's a mistake to assume who they are.

If we see a dead body on the street with a bullet in its head and no gun around the body, we don't need to know who the murderer was to know a murder took place. It's, of course, tempting to speculate who may have done the murder. But our detractors then, who desperately don't want to believe the murder occurred (maybe it was suicide and a dog took the gun and ran away) point to our lack of knowledge of who the murderer was and, then, falsely conclude no murder took place.

This is a common tactic of the internet's irritating brigade of "fact checkers," looking for any detail that can be proven false in someone's explanation and then use that to dismiss the whole of the targeted claim (often of their political enemies) with the smug label: "FACT CHECK: MOSTLY FALSE." American constitutional law scholars, Cass Sunstein, later employed as Administrator of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs under Obama, and Adrian Vermeule published a paper in multiple prestigious law journals, recommending agents of the United States government even infiltrate groups' private discussions about topics like the one here and start "raising doubts." [*43].



When people claim famous filmmaker Stanley Kubric and/or the CIA faked the Moon landings, they are making a claim, partially without evidence. Maybe there is another film maker and/or intelligence agency that was involved in the fakery. We can't know all the behind-the-scenes individuals involved without declassifying government records, assuming they weren't destroyed, as the now-elderly generation who were involved are undoubtedly prohibited from revealing the truth.

Those who desperately want to believe the Moon landings were real will push you into speculation as to the exact "who" behind the scenes they can later prove false and then dismiss the entirety of your evidence. After all, most people are hostile to the idea that the Moon landings could have been faked. They are terrified of the thought.

It's so difficult to accept for most, because it means we can't accept information from authorities at face value [*44]. Life is a lot easier if we can simply type characters into Google and get all of our questions answered. The realization that we can't causes panic in some or, for most, hyper skepticism regarding any knowledge coming from an authority figure. Just about all of our history text books, Google searches, and authorities in the scientific and engineering communities publicly proclaim the Moon landings were quite real. If all these authorities are wrong about an event so fundamental to Americans' pride in their history, what else could they be wrong about? If a pundit in the news media tells us about a "scientific" study that causes government officials to mandate certain behavior (like locking down most of the nations of the world in response to a pandemic, inverting the definition of "quarantine") [*45], can we trust them? It'd be easier to live in a world where we rely on heuristics, gauging the consensus opinion of the political authorities relying on the "scientific" authorities and casually complying with what they tell us.

Most human knowledge is derived from our reliance on the word of those in authority. It's not that we believe X is true; it's that we trust Y individual, and Y individual says X is true. Our belief in X is not foundational knowledge we've discovered but a symbol of our trust in Y. Most of our knowledge is derived this way. We might call this trust "civilization." We have to trust other people to function in society, because we don't have the hours in the day to independently discover all the knowledge necessary to flourish. Thus, to the extent we enjoy living in a civilized society, some reliance on the word of others for our knowledge is necessary.

The danger is when we conflate our reliance on that authority with first-hand knowledge. This is common in the "I-f*cking-love-science" crowd who watch a celebrity science authority like Neil DeGrasse Tyson or Bill Nye and vicariously live through their words as honorary fellow scientists, smugly using their vicarious knowledge as a means to belittle those who apparently don't f*cking love science, like the Moon landing "deniers." A simple Google search will yield a myriad of shallow analyses with smug indignation of the "Moon landing deniers," often emphasizing the word "debunk" as if it meant anything more than to disagree. This is commonly done using two heuristic attacks.

We can sidestep a rebuttal to the evidence of photo and video fraud in the Apollo record by using our first logical shortcut: wondering how the estimated 400,000 individuals involved in Apollo [*46] could have kept quiet. Certainly someone would have snitched [*47]. This notion that all 400,000, most of them contractors working on specific parts, were told they were participating in a fraud is absurd. Did everyone working on the Manhattan Project know they were building an atomic bomb [*48]? "Need to know basis." Compartmentalization.




How could the individuals at ground control distinguish between receiving satellite simulation data versus the "real thing?" Few individuals would need to know the entire scheme. And what would prevent some prior-made simulation photos and videos, no-doubt classified, from being released as the real thing? Recall, the wicked lie entwines as much truth as possible. Getting a craft into orbit and sending signals to government tracking stations was, perhaps [*49], very real and involving hundreds of thousands of people creating very real individual components for the missions. But for what happened after the rocket disappears from view, we must rely on the testimony of the astronauts, considering the video and photographic evidence is proven fraudulent.

The second common heuristic used: "If we faked the Moon landings, the Russians would've told us!" Imagine a wife receiving video of her husband cheating with another woman, and the husband retorting: "My close friend is very jealous of me and would like to date you. He doesn't think I cheated on you. Therefore, it's not me in this video you see, and I didn't cheat on you." We might refer to such a tactic as gaslighting.

But let's entertain this heuristic anyway. If the appropriate then-Soviet Union government officials knew the Americans faked the Moon landing, would they be more likely to (1) publicly cry fowl and shame America in their newspapers or (2) privately threaten to expose the U.S. government in exchange for something?  Ralph Rene made an excellent point in NASA Mooned America! (pg. 41) [*50]:



Of course, the premise for the "Russians would've told us!" heuristic is false [*51]. How many Russians need to tell us before the photo and video records can be admitted as fraudulent? Is it a matter of quantity? Or status in the political hierarchy?



Why are these cheap heuristics so commonly deployed to "debunk" the proofs of fraud? Recall Plato's (using Socrates) explanation of the "noble lie" or "grand myth," telling citizens they were born of the metals under their city to instill a sense of belonging in their community. I am an American. What defines "American?" Is it our blood? Most of us are no longer of the English posterity referred to in the preamble of our Constitution.



Is it a belief in a system of rules governing our geographic boundary? The rules commonly change as we receive new rulers. The rulers need not even change the rules, but simply reinterpret them, as is the way of our English-inherited "common law" system where judges craft the rules when they are being enforced in a court. Is it the American spirit of ingenuity, ruggedness, and/or whatever positive adjectives we might want to ascribe?

To proclaim oneself an American usually means some amount of pride in the label. America is the only nation to have allegedly put men on the Moon, the most boastful accomplishment in all human history, dwarfing anything else by any reasonable metric. What more prideful showing could there be than to proclaim oneself an American, meaning "of the people that went to the Moon?" Once an accomplishment like this is proclaimed by our authorities, and we have lived all our lives by the label "American," what would it mean to take away the Moon landings?

If Plato's hypothetical people were raised believing they were born of the metals under their soil, what would it mean to take that away from them? Their sense of identity would be destroyed. No American would believe he was born of the magic American dirt, but the Apollo missions are a close stand-in, especially for the male ego that needs a sense of accomplishment to flourish. When our favorite sports team loses a defining game, how does that make us feel? Imagine if our favorite team won a championship game, and it were proven our players had rigged it. How comfortable would we be with that conclusion? Would we easily concede our trophy, or would we desperately search for any theory to "debunk" the allegations of rigging? This way, baby boomers can keep their happy memories of sitting in front of their televisions and vicariously experiencing the landings as "we went to the Moon."

It's perhaps extraordinarily cruel to give a people such pride, knowing eventually it must be taken away. The excuses for why the Moon-landing feat can't be "repeated" grow more and more questionable to the general public as we've surpassed their fiftieth anniversary. If no nation lands on the Moon in the future (or fakes it again in a manner that doesn't expose the prior fraud), the lunacy will grow more and more musty as we approach, perhaps, a centennial anniversary of the supposed landings.

Knowing this, why lie about it in the first place? There is no official reason, since there is no public concession by our authorities to the fraud. We can only speculate. What would some good reasons to concoct this musty lunacy be?

In the 1960s and '70s, America was at war with an existential threat: communism, more precisely defined as international socialism. A world government ruled by the working class under the principles of socialism [*52]. Communism and United States sovereignty are mutually exclusive concepts. To be communist is to be a globalist, advocating for global rule by the "working class." Who the "working class" actually is makes no material difference. It means simply those who were not in power before, since we are all "workers" in one way or another.

The Soviet Union had not been staying within its geographic boundaries, but taking over or annexing nations around the world in what we refer to historically as the "iron curtain." To be communist is to have a global goal, and, eventually, the United States would have to be a piece in that ultimate goal as the endgame is a world government. How do you stop other nations around the world from joining the Soviet Union?

One means might be to convince the rest of the nations of the world that you are the more worthy nation to stand by in the contest between America and the Soviet Union. If the Americans can repeatedly land men on the Moon , certainly they could defeat the Soviets. Countries around the world vulnerable to communism might be more likely to accept America as their ally if America was a worthy one. And what better way to establish worth than to convince the world of success in the most boastful accomplishment in humanity's history: landing men on the Moon?

Were propaganda and bluffs in lieu of bullets and bombs a noble strategy to halt the Soviet Union's annexing of nations of the world to create a global socialist order? Not all who believe the Apollo missions were fraudulent believe the fraud was wrong. Filmmaker of Moon Hoax Now, Jet Wintzer, believes the fraud was justified (37:51) [*53].

… I just want to take a moment to actually praise the astronauts involved with the Apollo missions and all astronauts. To strap themselves in these rockets in the Cold War on a mission to change the world. To try and inspire the world. And to try and avoid a real war. This was an attempt to project technological superiority, and if it could be done without firing a shot, then great, more power to them.  And the astronauts have my utmost respect. And it makes me mad when I see other hoax researchers harassing the astronauts. These guys were operating in a chain of command during the Cold War, and they deserve our respect and gratitude.

He doubles down on his praise at the conclusion of his documentary (52:40) [*54].

... I think this is one of the greatest works of art ever created, if not the single greatest work of art ever made. It was a way of fighting a war without violence -- a way of fighting a war, the Cold War, with art. And the people responsible for it ought to step forward and get their due. And if there are restrictions on this knowledge or the truth, they ought to be released, because, as the decades go on, the truth will become more and more clear and the charade will become more and more exposed. … I hope we see the architects of this incredible work of art come forward.

Sibrel (who we see Wintzer attacking in his statements above), being a devout Christian, believes the Moon landings to be a satanic lie. In his documentary, his narrator states (43:03) [*55],

Perhaps some day soon, with the uncovering of this footage and its meaning, the true patriots of America will rise up or come forward and free the citizens and themselves from the sin that so easily entangles and from a federal government that needs the gangrene cut off. Even if the government's destruction would come from the truth, then it is not worthy to stand. And it's better for it to inevitably fall. All of us our mortal. All of will die. Perhaps the seeking of a clear conscience before that hour will motivate the truth into the light. Perhaps as citizens, we should offer amnesty for this and other crimes of history for facts from those involved before the truth perishes with them. … Whoever believes the citizens too immature for the truth are too immature for power. The truth will always set us free.

Which view is correct? To assume the lie was justified assumes perfect knowledge, a God's-eye view, of what would have happened had the deception never taken place. When people put forth a dilemma of two sets of railroad tracks with a runaway car and by switching the tracks we can save ten people laying on one track while our switch kills another laying on the other track, it's tempting to buy into the principle that switching the track is just. But in day-to-day living and policy making, we don't have realistic scenarios where we have such perfect knowledge as to the outcomes of our actions.

Plato's prior-mentioned example of lying to your friend who demands you tell him the location of a weapon is at least plausible, because we have individual-level facts to weigh the pros and cons of lying to your friend from the utilitarian point of view. But when we scale a lie beyond the individual level to that of government policies with a world of billions of people interacting, we can't possibly foresee with any perfect clarity what would happen, but for, our choices in action.

What countries around the world were saved from communism as a result of the Moon-landing lie? Can it seriously be argued that, but for the Moon-landing lie, the Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union would have turned hot? Would the CIA have been justified in killing or taking advantage of the death of an astronaut in order to blame the death on Cuba, to justify an invasion to liberate the Cuban people [*56]?



Of course, most countries have rules prohibiting their intelligence agencies from operating within their home jurisdictions upon their own citizens. The wicked will, of course, find ways around these rules [*57]. Once we accept the principle that it is just to lie for your country and/or another's benefit, why not also lie to get the right rulers in command of your country? If you strongly believe your political party will enact justice for your people, are you justified in cheating to ensure your favored individuals or political party obtain victory? What if you strongly believe your political enemies, were they to gain power, would greatly harm your nation? Would you then be justified in lying to prevent them from rising to power? Where are the bounds of the justified lie? Let's assume we can find it and that there are instances where we can justify lying, even to our own citizenry, to effect the greater good. Politics would need to be a science.

If politics is viewed as a science, with correct outcomes akin to an experiment that proves A is true and B is false, then achieving A through deception may be justified from the utilitarian point of view. But is politics really a science akin to mixing chemicals in a vial and writing in a report "this does this" and "that does that?" People, especially those in the "I-f*cking-love-science" crowd enjoy conflating an is with an ought by ascribing value judgment, such as for taxing the horrors of climate change to keep healthier weather or pimping the glories of vaccines to make healthier people.

Science may tell us a deadly virus can infect X number of people, but it can't tell us a response of locking down all churches is the morally correct approach. Statistical models could predict the number of Americans that will die in car accidents in a particular future year, and that number has historically been in the tens of thousands. How many millions die of diseases related to obesity? Does science tell us personal vehicles for travel should be banned in favor of public transit only? Does it tell us processed foods that cause obesity should be banned in favor of healthy vegetables for consumption only? We see these as political discussions we debate through regulatory compromise and balancing various interests (i.e. those that enjoy driving and eating unhealthy food versus those who would prefer less death, freedom versus safety). But if politics is tied to "science," why can't there simply be a correct answer? Even if science could dictate our policies, "the science" will naturally be wrong on occasion as its reproducibility rate on an audit of psychology studies renders a level of trust in their results about that of a coin toss [*58].

What if, as political philosopher Michael Oakeshott believed, politics is an art we gain from experience as opposed to a science with a correct answer [*59]? Without a right versus wrong outcome, there can be no right versus wrong policy. In governance, we can't measure the happiness or level of flourishing in millions of people, because we have billions of individuals with conflicting value systems within the geographic boundaries of countries. Even if we narrow our goals to enhancing the country the lying agents represent, do the goals of the government and the nation or nations within that government align? Who decides which interests or goals should be facilitated?

Since the Apollo lie is a direct lie to the American people along with the targeted foreigners and their governments, the American people must be the ones to determine whether the Apollo fakery should have been done. But the concept of lying to the American people is mutually exclusive with the political process of Americans voting for representatives by their policies. If politics can't be a science, then faking a Moon landing would certainly be a political decision, as politics is the art of negotiations between persons. Once we take away the voters' ability to review the correct information (i.e. lying to them), the Moon-landing fraud decision is political only in the sense of the government agents' internal debate concealed from the public.

The Moon-landing fraud reveals the fact that the American people do not rule America through election of representatives. The fact that we can prove the Moon landings were a fraud forces this concession. Recall my questions in the first part of this essay about how we could know if a president would know what information to declassify. The assumption that, upon election, officials in power are given all the information about the lies of a government is a naïve one. It is incredibly unlikely that each elected official in an intelligence position is made aware of every single questionable policy of the United States government and given the option to deliver that information to the American public. Are most American elected officials aware of lies like the Moon landing? Almost certainly not. What else are they lying about?

We might concede that a government lying to its own people is unjust. But is our respective government's agents lying to a foreign government and/or foreigners just? If governments are sending agents to our country to lie to us in order to cause harm at our expense to advance their interests, would we be justified in in-kind deception as a form of defense? If we establish one as a liar and recognize he is likely to lie to us in the future, are we justified in lying preemptively to disrupt the harm we recognize he is likely to cause in the future? Perhaps truth is a relationship, and not everyone is owed honesty.

But if lying to citizens is strictly forbidden, how can government agents lie to a foreign government? Americans may ask the government agent the same questions the agent would be directed to lie in answering if asked by a foreigner. We suppose the agent can simply refuse to answer when an American asks the agent, but sometimes a non-answer is a less effective form of answer that might diverge from the goals of the intelligence agency and tip off the foreigners we are intending to lie to. Can we really lie to a foreign government or foreigners without also lying to our own people?

When the intelligence community was asked at a congressional hearing about the intelligence policy of infiltrating and influencing media organizations in other countries, Operation Mockingbird, and whether American media organizations were also infiltrated by agents, then-CIA Director William Colby asked that conversation be moved to a an "executive session" [*60]. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper flat-out lied to the American people in his congressional testimony when he was asked if metadata information was being collected on them [*61].

Is it possible to collect data on only foreigners and not also Americans? If it's not and (1) collecting such data is a violation of what a judge might infer the United States Constitution prohibits on collection of Americans' private information, thus producing a judicial order nullifying such collections, (2) the goal of collecting this data on foreigners is deemed absolutely necessary to effect national security goals, and (3) knowledge that metadata is collected would tip off our potential foreign enemies, is lying to the American people, even under oath, justified?

If lying to the American people is an unavoidable component in lying to foreigners to effect national security goals, then democracy, or politics as an art of negotiation, is effectively impossible. Our most important decisions as a people, how we act as a nation toward other nations and anything domestically that might impact our abilities toward the same, can't be made. Information that would materially change what courses of action we would take is not only prohibited but actively lied about.

Since we can't disentangle lying to the American people from lying to our enemies, we must see politics as a science, with eggheads that can determine the exactly correct courses of action, to entertain the belief that organizations like "intelligence agencies" are justified in lying. In this technocratic philosophy of governance, input of the people is not only unnecessary but counterproductive. Under this understanding of politics, we are best ruled as Plato recommended: by a Philosopher King or enlightened individuals we'd label "aristocrats" bred for intellectual prowess [*62].

Is politics, as an art or what we might call "democracy," compatible with the noble lie? Or do we recognize that all lies are ignoble and any positive outcomes regarding strategic goals of our government are not worth the cost? As that price is democracy itself.

So ask yourself: what did the "Moon landings" really cost us?


--------
FOOTNOTES

[*1] Plato, The Republic, 2nd Edition Penguin Classics, Part IV: Guardians and Auxiliaries, the Three Classes and Their Mutual Relations. Kindle location 2725

[*2] Id. at Kindle location 743.

[*3] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2019/10/on-musty-boomer-lunacy.html

[*4] Experiment by Rob Williams, Marcus Allen, and Scott Henderson. https://www.aulis.com/vacuum.htm
I also recommend reading NASA Mooned America! by Ralph Rene,
 https://www.vinnysblogbookcom.com/uploads/2/8/0/1/28018637/ralph_rene_-_nasa_mooned_america.pdf
and Jack White's Apollo photo studies, which are available here:
https://www.aulis.com/jackstudies.htm

[*5] https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/albums
Although these photos are the highest definition and Flickr is the best resource to obtain them, NASA has altered photos, at least in one instance, when we compare AS17-134-20384 to the photo of the same number taken down from their NASA website but saved at archive.org:





[*6] https://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar/missions/apollo/apollo_17/landing_site/

[*7] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2020/03/an-epistemological-study-of-apollo-15.html

[*8] Find more examples here, riffing off prior discoveries by Jack White, Marcus Allen, Scott Henderson and others: https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2019/10/on-musty-boomer-lunacy.html I encourage readers to download these photo memes and share them with friends and family, asking them to solve the puzzles they present. A highlight from each mission:

Apollo 11


Apollo 12


Apollo 13


Apollo 14


Apollo 15



Apollo 16
UPDATE: I replaced a meme regarding the Apollo 16 "jump salute" where a flap on top of the astronaut's backpack is seen down in the video and up in photo (thus, they'd be mutually exclusive), because the flap's up orientation might be disguised by the camera during the jump, and the flap in the photo is at the front of the backpack, not the back. The below meme is better proof of fraud. There is no way shadows can point toward each other from opposite ends of a plane if photographed under the Sun alone.


Apollo 17


[*9] https://www.space.com/20739-apollo-moon-landing-sites-telescope.html

[*10] https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/multimedia/lroimages/apollosites.html

[*11] https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/apollo-15.html
I also recommend the work of Jarrah White who published an excellent video presentation on the LRO satellite photos here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qr3YrmTOQaY

[*12] The files are marked "Adobe Photoshop." Photoshop origin is also discovered when analyzed using https://29a.ch/photo-forensics/#forensic-magnifier

[*14] Dark Moon. Kindle location 8999, https://www.aulis.com/nasa3.htm

[*14] Paper by Andreas Marki, published on Aulis, https://www.aulis.com/PDF/lunar_ranging2.pdf
I also recommend Trevor Weaver's book at chapter 11, The Apollo Moon Hoax, How Did They Do It? https://www.man-on-the-moon.info/hoaxmoon

[*15] http://www.nbcnews.com/id/32581790/ns/technology_and_science-space/t/moon-rock-museum-just-petrified-wood/

[*16] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/01/earths-oldest-rock-found-on-moon-get-facts-apollo-14-zircons/

[*17] https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/116/s1694/text

[*18] Analysis by FBI interrogation trainer Peter Hyatt. https://www.richplanet.net/astronauts.php
A video version where Rich Hall, who paid Hyatt for the analysis, goes into further detail can be found through his website as well. An excerpt from Hyatt's findings:




[*19] While no original telemetry data tapes are available for any Apollo mission voyage to the Moon, the landmark original Apollo 11 tapes arediscussed by NASA here: https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/Apollo_11_TV_Tapes_Report.pdf  Do you buy their excuses?

[*20] Public complaints on this forum: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=26288.0
And, as of publication of this essay, an F rating from the Better Business Bureau: https://www.bbb.org/us/ga/atlanta/profile/dvd-sales/spacecraft-films-0443-27692234
Complaint here from 2016 is still listed as "unresolved:" https://reportscam.com/spacecraftfilmscom



[*21] A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Moon by Bart Sibrel.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xciCJfbTvE4&t=57s

[*22] What Happened On the Moon? An Investigation Into Apollo by Mary Bennett and David Percy. https://www.aulis.com/moon_pt1.htm

[*23] Footage used in the documentaries found here on Seb Menard's channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4UVDdUX1IA&feature=youtu.be&t=1910 Links to specific areas of interest for footnotes 24-28 start a few seconds prior to the relevant scene to highlight context.

[*24] Relevant scene at 0:25. https://youtu.be/m4UVDdUX1IA?t=18
Speculation for why we hear the phrase "talk" according to Sibrel is that the astronauts would give away the fraud if they spoke too quickly from 130,000 miles out, given the speed of light limits radio transmissions to about 186,000 miles per second. Thus, perhaps, a CIA agent (or another intelligence agency) is counting the seconds and prompting Sibrel to speak. I don't emphasize this as evidence of the fraud, but, instead, point out its omission from the Spacecraft Films version of the footage as suspect. Massimo Mazzuco, producer of the documentary American Moon, highlights examples of astronauts making mistakes in their transmission by speaking sooner than is possible, given the Moon's 240,000 mile distance. I strongly recommending his documentary. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpuKu3F0BvY



[*25] Relevant scene at 18:41. https://youtu.be/m4UVDdUX1IA?t=1105

[*26] Relevant scene at 30:34. https://youtu.be/m4UVDdUX1IA?t=1834

[*27] Relevant scene at 30:52. https://youtu.be/m4UVDdUX1IA?t=1852

[*28] Relevant scene at 32:05. https://youtu.be/m4UVDdUX1IA?t=1910

[*29] Relevant scene at 33:41. https://youtu.be/m4UVDdUX1IA?t=2020

[*30] Relevant scene at 35:59. https://youtu.be/m4UVDdUX1IA?t=2132

[*31] https://www.history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-24_Translunar_Injection.htm

[*32] Apollo 11 press kit, see page 21. https://history.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/A11_PressKit.pdf

[*33] https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/missions/apollo13.html

[*34] What Happened on the Moon? An Investigation into Apollo. For relevant scene, skip to 1:25:20. https://www.aulis.com/moon_pt1.htm  Also see Dark Moon. Kindle location 9610. https://www.aulis.com/nasa3.htm

[*35] https://www.history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-24_Translunar_Injection.htm

[*36] Dark Moon. Kindle location 9682. https://www.aulis.com/nasa3.htm

[*37] The Apollo Missions: Hiding a Hoax in Plain Site by Randy Walsh. Kindle location 2445. http://www.randy-walsh.com/about-the-book/

[*38] NASA astronaut Don Pettit really did say this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16MMZJlp_0Y

[*39] Astronauts Gone Wild, a documentary by Bart Sibrel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr6Vcvl0OeU

[*40] Analysis by FBI interrogation trainer Peter Hyatt. https://www.richplanet.net/astronauts.php

[*41] Relevant scene at 48:37. https://youtu.be/Qr6Vcvl0OeU?t=2911 Mitchell also tried selling an Apollo 14 camera and was sued by the U.S. government to block him from doing so, which was settled with Mitchell's compliance and return of the camera. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-nasa-camera-lawsuit/government-sues-apollo-14-astronaut-over-lunar-camera-idUSTRE75T6J520110630

[*42] By David Orbell. https://www.aulis.com/censored.htm

[*43]. Paper published in 2008 in law journals at Harvard and University of Chicago.
 https://ia800304.us.archive.org/22/items/CassSunstein/cass_sunstein_infiltration.pdf

[*44] I strongly recommend reading Dave McGowan, Wagging the Moondoggie, Part I.
http://centerforaninformedamerica.com/moondoggie-1/
His astute observation: "What primarily motivates [people into believing the Moon landings were real] is fear. But it is not the lie itself that scares people; it is what that lie says about the world around and how it really functions. For if NASA was able to pull off such an outrageous hoax before the entire world, and then keep that lie in place for [over five] decades, what does that say about the control of the information we receive? What does that say about the media, and the scientific community, and the educational community, and all the other institutions to we depend on to tell us the truth? What does that say about the very nature of the world we live in? That is what scares the hell out of people and prevents them from even considering the possibility that they could have been so thoroughly duped. It's not being lied to about the Moon landings that people have a problem with, it is the realization that comes with that revelation: if they could lie about that, they could lie about anything."

[*45] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2020/05/persuasive-redefinition-what-does.html
Compare my Black's Law dictionary definition of "quarantine" versus what the World Health Organization recently redefined the term as. The definition is inverted.




[*46] https://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2019/07/14/moon-landing-made-possible-400-000-workers/1559511001/

[*47] Paper by David Robert Grimes. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147905 Of course, criminal penalties for revealing classified information are not part of the mathematical model Grimes uses to "debunk" conspiracy theories using probability. Statistical modeling is a cute way to get people to believe anything, such as when Neil Ferguson's model predicting 2.2 million dead Americans from Covid-19 was used for governments around the world to implement lockdown policies for its people.

[*48] https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/security-and-secrecy

[*49] This paper suggests the footage of the Apollo 11 rocket takeoff from the ground did not gain enough speed to make it into low-Earth orbit, and likely crashed into the Atlantic ocean.
https://www.aulis.com/apollo11saturn_v2.htm
Technicial discussion on the required rocket engine power, and other details, like the effects of radiation outside the Earth's magnetosphere on the astronauts, are valid points but beyond the scope of my work here.

[*50] NASA Mooned America! by Ralph Rene. Page 42. https://www.vinnysblogbookcom.com/uploads/2/8/0/1/28018637/ralph_rene_-_nasa_mooned_america.pdf

[*51] https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2015/06/16/russian-official-proposes-international-investigation-into-us-moon-landings-a47432

[*52] Communist Manifesto, published by Karl Marx in 1848. While we might define socialism as government control of private property with allowance for some personal property (e.g., your own toothbrush), communism is distinguished by its scope. And, as Marx describes, the movement is for the "workers of the world [to] unite."
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf

[*53]. Moon Hoax Now by Jet Wintzer. Relevant scene at 37:51. https://youtu.be/5KsH2M4m4zM?t=2271 Documentary also available at Aullis:https://www.aulis.com/moon_hoax_now1.htm

[*54] Id. Relevant scene at 52:40. https://youtu.be/5KsH2M4m4zM?t=3160

The documentary covers two key components of the video fraud readers may find interesting:
(1) Relevant scene at 40:13.https://youtu.be/5KsH2M4m4zM?t=2413 He cites sounds being made by objects on the Moon, including a hammer striking a core tube in Apollo 12 and a cord with metallic locks on the ends tossed by an Apollo 15 astronaut, hitting the lunar lander, both making loud audible sounds. This is impossible in a vacuum, but NASA speculates the hammer noise could be a reverberation through the pressurized air in the astronaut's suit leading to his microphone, albeit no explanation for the cord with the metallic locks banging off the lunar lander is attempted. NASA covered up of their statement on their Lunar Science for Kids site that Apollo 12's Alan Bean made no sound when he hammered the core tube by removing the page below (found by use of the Wayback Machine):



(2) He produced a supplement to his documentary, showing "... a new segment featuring high resolution footage from Apollo 14 that shows the flag moving multiple times while the astronauts are in the LM after the close of EVA 2. This segment includes the testimony of NASA Jet Propulsion scientist, Stephen Edberg who states unequivocally on nasa.gov that the only time the flag moved was when the astronauts handled it, or when the ascent engine fired at take off."
https://www.aulis.com/moon_hoax_now2.htm

[*55]  A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Moon by Bart Sibrel. Relevant scene at 43:30.
https://youtu.be/xciCJfbTvE4?t=2583

[*56] Declassified CIA document: "Possible Actions to Provoke, Harass, or Disrupt Cuba." https://lettersofnote.com/2011/08/23/possible-actions-to-provoke-harrass-or-disrupt-cuba/

[*57] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/egregious-abuse-of-power-michael-flynn-cites-fisa-report-in-motion-to-dismiss-case-against-him

[*58] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/08/27/trouble-in-science-massive-effort-to-reproduce-100-experimental-results-succeeds-only-36-times/

[*59] Michael Oakeshott. Rationalism in politics and other essays.



[*60] Clip of testimony from then-CIA Director William Colby circa 1975 in the U.S. House of Representatives, along with but separate from Church Committee in the U.S. Senate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfGxQdc0Kg8

U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Otis Pike: Do you have any people being paid by the CIA who are contributing to a major circulation or American journal?

CIA Director William Colby: We do have people who submit pieces to American journals.

Pike: Do you have people paid by the CIA who are working for television networks?

Colby: This I think gets into the kind of uh, kind of details I’d like to get into at an executive session.

Pike: Do you have any people being paid by the CIA who are contributing to the national news services, AP and UPI?

Colby: Well again, I think we are getting into the kind of detail, Mr. Chairman, I’d prefer to handle in an executive session.

[*61] https://thefederalist.com/2019/03/06/four-different-lies-james-clapper-told-about-lying-to-congress/  The 7-minute testimony can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwiUVUJmGjs

[*62] Plato, The Republic, 2nd Edition Penguin Classics, Part VII: The Philosopher Ruler. Kindle location 4054.