The Wildest Moon Landing Conspiracy Theories, Debunked

If you look at the American flag in still pictures from the Apollo 11 mission, it appears to be flapping in the wind.But how can that be, since there's no wind on the moon?The simple answer is, it isn't flapping, Fienberg says.That's because it isn't an ordinary flag.If the astronauts had planted a regular flag on the moon, it would've hung slack like flags do on Earth when there's no wind.The Apollo 11 astronauts had trouble extending the rod all the way, and in still pictures, this creates a ripple effect that makes the flag look like it's waving in the wind.

"One of the first arguments I heard and one of the easiest to debunk…is the fact that there are no stars in the lunar sky," Fienberg says."All of the exposures of the astronauts on the moon are daylight exposures,"."The surface was brightly illuminated [from the sun].And the astronauts are wearing bright white space suits that are highly reflective."The exposure on the astronauts' cameras was too short to capture the space suits and the moon's surface while also capturing the comparatively dimmer stars.The same thing happens if you go onto someone's back porch at night and turn on the lights.

In images from the moon landing, it is possible to see certain objects even though they are in shadow.Skeptics argue that if the sun were the only source of light, this wouldn't be the case.Therefore, the fact that you can see some objects in shadow must be the result of special Hollywood lighting.The problem with this theory is that although the sun is the main source of illumination on the moon, it isn't the only source of illumination.

In one of the pictures from the moon landing, you can see Armstrong clearly reflected in Aldrin’s visor. Some skeptics have pointed out that Armstrong does not appear to be holding a camera, so someone else must be taking the picture. But that isn’t true.Armstrong couldn’t walk around the moon with a regular hand-held camera. In his bulky suit, he needed something that was easy to manipulate. The camera he used on the moon was mounted on the front of his suit, which is where his hands are in the reflection.

Director Stanley Kubrick's film 2001: A Space Odyssey wowed audiences in 1968 for creating a realistic image of outer space.It was so compelling that some conspiracy theorists later wondered if the government had actually hired Kubrick to film the moon landing in a soundstage (possibly like the one James Bond ran through in the 1971 film Diamonds Are Forever).The thing is, the moon landing footage didn't look real because Kubrick filmed it—Kubrick's movie 2001 looked real because Kubrick enlisted astronomical artists and aerospace engineers to help him with it.

The only “evidence” that Kubrick filmed the moon landing has itself proved to be a hoax.Denial of America’s great progress in space exploration and belief in these myths is “more of an ideological thing—a political thing—than it is a scientific thing,” Fienberg notes.To those who know the moon landing was real, conspiracy theories that it was a hoax may seem silly and innocuous. But their consequences aren’t: they spread misinformation, make people susceptible to other false theories and could earn you a punch from Buzz Aldrin.