Origin Story: We Never Went to the Moon pp. 10-12

 Kaysing begins, as all conspiracy theory books do, with how he arrived at the knowledge of the conspiracy. Kaysing worked for seven years at Rocketdyne, “the firm that built the main propulsion units for Apollo…”

Let’s be clear that Kaysing is trying to pull a fast one on the reader already. He’s not claiming that he worked on the propulsion engines, he’s just saying that he worked at the company which made them. He’s curiously leaving out what his position was at Rocketdyne. If he worked on the boosters that would be front and center. This is very similar to the infamous Area 51 “whistleblower” but actual liar, Bob Lazar. Lazar claimed that he worked at Los Alamos but then leaves it at that. In reality, he worked for a company that developed film for the government at Los Alamos. We are meant to think he did something important at Alamos because that’s where “the Bomb” was made. I’m sure that film development is an important part of whatever was going on there, but that’s not why Lazar mentions it. Kaysing wants to imply that he’s got first hand knowledge of the booster operation, but that’s not something he would imply if it were true—he’d state it directly.

Kaysing explains that he just wasn’t interested in the Moon shot. Which, ok, fine. History books give the impression that the entire world was interested and watching, but this wasn’t the case. Some people were busy with other things and others just didn’t care. I cannot sympathize with this position in the least, but if it wasn’t his thing, it wasn’t his thing.

“I decided I did not believe that Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin or anyone else was going to the moon. And consequently, I could not generate the least enthusiasm for watching a phony performance.”

I’m going to assume that the rest of this book is why he made this decision. He should however give us a bit of teaser as the phrase “I decided” just impresses on the reader that all of the sudden he thought, “nah, this is fake.”

Somehow the “fire on pad 34” was a clue. This refers to the tragedy of Apollo 1, where the oxygen rich capsule caught fire, and the three astronauts were unable to exit the capital. This doesn’t help us though, because the two events are unrelated. The fire is one thing, but accidents happen; how this contributes to the idea that we should doubt the Moon landing.

Kaysing then explains that “I watched none of the moon ‘landings’ nor did I pay much attention to print media presentations.”

This I cannot abide. So this major event is happening, this entirely world changing event; Kaysing thinks its fake and tunes out? No. If I knew the thing was fake, I would absolutely watch it more. If I knew the election was rigged, I would have followed every return that night; if I knew the Bills-Chiefs game was fixed; I would have watched it. I would want to see how the hoax was perpetrated. This isn’t just me either. The former owner of InfoWars, Alex Jones, live-streamed the damages award for his trial. Conspiracy Twitter, otherwise known as X, was lit up on election night. People watch events, but they also watch the ones that they suspect are hoaxes. We want to see not only the hoax, but other people’s reactions to it. People like Kaysing also want to brag that they were never fooled, and they knew when they saw it.

His motive is then related to other events which took place in the 70s: notably Watergate and then the “Energy Crisis.” I’m not going to get into Watergate, check Wikipedia on that—it’s so well known that the unimaginative press calls every scandal “something—gate.”

The Energy Crisis as a hoax is a strange claim. I assume he’s talking about the fuel crisis from the OPEC embargo. It’s a little hard to claim that this was fake since the OPEC nations literally stopped exporting oil. The US does have its own oil supply, but only idiots think that if you switch the one off you turn the other on. Because Oil is global commodity it is subject to the commodity market. Kaysing is either claiming a vast global conspiracy because he needs further justification for moon landing denialism or he’s calling it one because he doesn’t understand how the world works. Either is plausible.

There is an important detail in Kaysing’s conspiracy—he doens’t think that any Apollo astronauts made it to the Moon…ever. It’s not just 11, but no one, by the writing of this book has gone to the Moon. This is an important thing to remember because Moon Landing denialists come in a few different stripes and that’s before you get to Moon Denialists like the Flat Earth people.

Kaysing asks why the Apollo 11 Astronauts didn’t send a visible signal from the Moon. I guess the transmission wasn’t enough, but subsequent landings have left mirrors that can be “pinged” with a laser. Kaysing wants everything to have happened on the first trip there, which is absurd considering that no one really knew what the surface of the Moon was going to be like. The point of the first voyage was to prove that it could be done, bringing a whole bunch of stuff would have impeded that. I read that it takes 100lbs of fuel to get 1lb of stuff into orbit. While Kaysing thinks it would be a simple thing to ignite a chemical or set some mirrors up; that’s a logistical problem that needed solving…and eventually was solved.

He then begins JAQing off (Just Asking Questions), and a whole slew of them right in a row means I’ve got to deal with a few of them. The first is the Dutch, “Why did the Dutch papers, circa 1969, question the authenticity of the landing? And more importantly, why did the American press ignore the otherwise interesting sidelight?”

Latter first: I have no idea what this means. Perhaps he’ll explain in later chapters.

The former is odd for a few reasons. What Dutch paper? This is an important question because Soviet intelligence was everywhere in the 60s. This alleged newspaper could have been one of their plants. Let’s assume it’s a real article, that only means one newspaper had a few questions about the landing. Without knowing those questions it’s impossible to know if they can be answered.

Kaysing goes from there to a slew of other questions and we’ll hold off on those until next week. I think he’s priming us for the rest of the book, if that’s the case, it’s a breath of fresh air from Cooper. Let’s hope it is the case.