Appealing Conspiracy Theories I

As a skeptic and positivist, I am usually dismissive of popular conspiracy theories. However, there are a couple that strike a note of truth. In this occasional series, I will discuss the appeals of some of the few theories I find appealing.


The Moon Landing Was Faked

You may have come into contact with people pushing the idea that Neil Armstrong et al never actually made it to the moon, but instead filmed the whole thing in Nevada somewhere. While it may sound like a wing-nut theory, and I'm sure that adjective describes many of its supporters, some of the arguments for it seem to strike a note of plausibility in my mind.

What it has going for it
The biggest reason why this theory raises my eyebrows is the political situation at the time. The United States and USSR were in the middle of the contest of bravado known as the Cold War. Among the battlefields of this war (aside: doesn't this seem kind of silly in retrospect?) was technological achievement: each side strove to out-invent the other, almost like two brothers competing for their father's approval. President Kennedy launched a major broadside in this battle when, in 1961 he dedicated the country to landing a man on the moon "before this decade is out." This put a lot of pressure on the US, for to fail to accomplish this goal would mean a failure to one-up the Soviets (seriously, doesn't this make it sound like some middle school pissing contest?). Furthermore, in 1969, the year in which the moon landing occurred, the U.S. was desperately

So there was clearly a good deal of incentive, but how about motivation? Was Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, so brazen as to dupe the world in such such a way? Well, yes, and Kennedy, too. JFK was a willing perpetrator of all sorts of shifty shenanigans, ranging from having someone break into a municipal office to ensure his election papers were filed on time, to the secretively planned Bay of Pigs operation. LBJ was certainly not above deception, famously accusing an opponent of bestiality with pigs in order to force the man to spend time in his press conferences having to deny it. And Richard Nixon, whose term had just begun when the landing occurred? I think it's safe to say that he was not above secret conspiracies.

With a strong motivation and the people willing to do it, all the ingredients were in place to fake the moon landing.


Why I don't actually believe
As appealing as the theory is because of the political situation and players involved, I just don't think they could have pulled it off. Faking the moon footage, in particular the low-gravity bouncing, would have been astronomical. Bear in mind that Star Wars was still a decade away. Combine that with the sheer number of people that would have had to be in on it--dozens of government officials from two different political parties, hundreds of NASA scientists, all the astronauts, the film crew, etc. I just don't think that it's possible for that big of a secret to remain a secret for so long.