The Moon Landing Denialist
On this 50th anniversary of the Moon Landing I thought it was a good time to tackle this conspiracy theory.
If you want to read a debunking of the evidence of the conspiracy theory, there are a number of places that you can check for point by point refutations. I don't want to do that here because those other places do it so much better and I will only be offering a distillation of their points. Nevertheless, there are some important points to be made about the moon landing conspiracy theory that are more important than just arguing over the anomalous datum that conspiracists use to drive their point.
Even when I was a conspiracy theorist, this was one theory that I could never swallow. Though I would love to claim that the believer in me was hiding an idealistic skeptic that could not square the evidence with the claims due to an innate epistemological understanding--I cannot honestly do that. I mean, it didn't make sense and I could see that much, but there was something more to moon landing denialism that I only see now with Qanon and anti-vaxxers: the overwhelming desire for the conspiracy theory to be true.
As a confession: I'm a bit of a naysayer. I tend not to get excited about things, and the more excited other people I get reflexively less so. For example, I watched three episodes of the tv show "Firefly" and thought it was "meh." They robbed a train with a spaceship--which leads to the question: why are there trains when they have spaceships? Whatever, it was sci-fi on prime time and it was fine. The show was fine, the dialogue was stilted and forced like all of Whedon's work where the character trait of flippancy is thought to be cool. The female characters are stereotypes (though a little progressive-ish at the time), and the main character is just a Han Solo knock off with a different outfit. When it was cancelled I began to despise the show because of all the people that were lamenting its loss like they were dwarves at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. I even watched the movie Serenity as a cap off a few years later and thought it was...fine. The daylight space battle was pretty cool, but that was the high point. The comments on the IMDB page went to great lengths to point every flaw but then explain that it was ok because it was Whedon's work so we excuse it. No, we don't. A flaw is a flaw no matter what.
Which brings us back around to the moon landing denialist. They want so badly for this conspiracy theory to be true that they cite Nolan's excellent "Interstellar" as proof, because it's mentioned in passing. Though if you point out the context of the "claim" in the movie it makes perfect sense why the government would make this claim as the Earth was dying. It's the desperate desire for this to have been a faked event that makes it seem less and less plausible.
What's more is that there seems to be no real motive for it. Not for the theory--the theory actually has a decent motive in its story: that the US needed a PR win over the Soviets especially during a Post Tet-Offensive Vietnam war. What I mean is that for the theorist to want this one there is no concrete motive other than to push the theory itself. There's always some smaller, or more general motives, but these apply to more theories. The desire to be subversive--take an official story and say that it's not true; the desire to be unique, the desire to claim a secret knowledge that no one else has; the need to feel special.
In order to accept this theory, the conspiracist has to ignore the fact that the Soviet Union's space agency agrees with the official story. They have the most motive to claim the "truth" since they had been scoring perfectly in the space race.
Moon landing denialism is not new either. The first appearance of a publication of the theory is seven years after the event which is pretty quick in pre-internet days. Kayson's book, creatively titled "We Never Went to the Moon" probably stems from the writer's infatuation with the libertarian mindset that the government shouldn't have any programs whatsoever. If he came out and said, "no moon landing because it's just a waste of money (the subtitle of his book is "America's thirty Billion Dollar Swindle") and is impossible anyway," it would be misinformed but at least honest about the why.
That's the real mystery to me. I get the 9/11 conspiracy theorists (political motives usually), the anti-vaccination people (misinformed fear, the desire to appear smarter than medical professionals), even the anti-Shakespeare people (classicism usually). This one I just don't get. Why take one of the most important scientific achievements in human civilization and then claim that it didn't happen? I cannot come up with a reason other than self-aggrandizement.
Also, Stanley Kubrick would not have allowed the "C rock" to appear in a shot. He was as crazy as he was brilliant.
If you want to read a debunking of the evidence of the conspiracy theory, there are a number of places that you can check for point by point refutations. I don't want to do that here because those other places do it so much better and I will only be offering a distillation of their points. Nevertheless, there are some important points to be made about the moon landing conspiracy theory that are more important than just arguing over the anomalous datum that conspiracists use to drive their point.
Even when I was a conspiracy theorist, this was one theory that I could never swallow. Though I would love to claim that the believer in me was hiding an idealistic skeptic that could not square the evidence with the claims due to an innate epistemological understanding--I cannot honestly do that. I mean, it didn't make sense and I could see that much, but there was something more to moon landing denialism that I only see now with Qanon and anti-vaxxers: the overwhelming desire for the conspiracy theory to be true.
As a confession: I'm a bit of a naysayer. I tend not to get excited about things, and the more excited other people I get reflexively less so. For example, I watched three episodes of the tv show "Firefly" and thought it was "meh." They robbed a train with a spaceship--which leads to the question: why are there trains when they have spaceships? Whatever, it was sci-fi on prime time and it was fine. The show was fine, the dialogue was stilted and forced like all of Whedon's work where the character trait of flippancy is thought to be cool. The female characters are stereotypes (though a little progressive-ish at the time), and the main character is just a Han Solo knock off with a different outfit. When it was cancelled I began to despise the show because of all the people that were lamenting its loss like they were dwarves at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. I even watched the movie Serenity as a cap off a few years later and thought it was...fine. The daylight space battle was pretty cool, but that was the high point. The comments on the IMDB page went to great lengths to point every flaw but then explain that it was ok because it was Whedon's work so we excuse it. No, we don't. A flaw is a flaw no matter what.
Which brings us back around to the moon landing denialist. They want so badly for this conspiracy theory to be true that they cite Nolan's excellent "Interstellar" as proof, because it's mentioned in passing. Though if you point out the context of the "claim" in the movie it makes perfect sense why the government would make this claim as the Earth was dying. It's the desperate desire for this to have been a faked event that makes it seem less and less plausible.
What's more is that there seems to be no real motive for it. Not for the theory--the theory actually has a decent motive in its story: that the US needed a PR win over the Soviets especially during a Post Tet-Offensive Vietnam war. What I mean is that for the theorist to want this one there is no concrete motive other than to push the theory itself. There's always some smaller, or more general motives, but these apply to more theories. The desire to be subversive--take an official story and say that it's not true; the desire to be unique, the desire to claim a secret knowledge that no one else has; the need to feel special.
In order to accept this theory, the conspiracist has to ignore the fact that the Soviet Union's space agency agrees with the official story. They have the most motive to claim the "truth" since they had been scoring perfectly in the space race.
Moon landing denialism is not new either. The first appearance of a publication of the theory is seven years after the event which is pretty quick in pre-internet days. Kayson's book, creatively titled "We Never Went to the Moon" probably stems from the writer's infatuation with the libertarian mindset that the government shouldn't have any programs whatsoever. If he came out and said, "no moon landing because it's just a waste of money (the subtitle of his book is "America's thirty Billion Dollar Swindle") and is impossible anyway," it would be misinformed but at least honest about the why.
That's the real mystery to me. I get the 9/11 conspiracy theorists (political motives usually), the anti-vaccination people (misinformed fear, the desire to appear smarter than medical professionals), even the anti-Shakespeare people (classicism usually). This one I just don't get. Why take one of the most important scientific achievements in human civilization and then claim that it didn't happen? I cannot come up with a reason other than self-aggrandizement.
Also, Stanley Kubrick would not have allowed the "C rock" to appear in a shot. He was as crazy as he was brilliant.
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