Conspiracy Theories, Skepticism, and Critical Thinking

 Our fourth explanation for how the Moon landing is faked is also our final section of this chapter. Remember that in the first three, we are all operating under a grand assumption that the author is taking as a fact, that the “Apollo Simulation Project” was real. I don’t mean, faking the Moon Landing, I mean the logistical angle for it all. He’s assumed the location, the base, the existence of the facility, and he’s even captioned one of the pictures he’s used for proof as an “ author’s conception.” The conspiracy theory is an assumption as well, but that is the entire book in action. Here we need to consider the nuts and bolts of the theory and all he’s been telling us is this is what could be the case. He’s claimed that the entire landing was faked in the Pacific, and I said he’s way overcomplicated that scenario. Now he’s got to explain how we the common folk know the Moon Landing happened. There are a few ways we know about it: photographs, radio transmissions, and television...

 We left off with a surprisingly detailed section on where the conspiracy was pulled off. There are details incorrect and information missing, but we did just come off the Cooper and Protocols double feature so in comparison, this is much better. Kaysing claims that everything took place in an Airforce town and the program itself he calls “ASP.” It’s not just the Asp though. He claims that deep withing the caverns on the facility, was built a soundstage named “Copernicus.” He writes, “ It soon earned the name ‘Cuss’ because of problems in lighting and sound. ” And…nope. This isn’t what happened. I’ve done sound and lighting for television. Sure, you can have problems with it; but what sound do we need to fake the Moon Landing? Everything would be recorded and edited in afterwards. He even writes later on the same page, “ A plus for the project was the advantage of filming silent .” I also feel like our conspiracy theorist picked the name “Copernicus” because it sounds cool and the...

 Kaysing has promised to explain how the US Government faked the Moon Landing. So far, he’s only explained that sometimes, the government lies. I know, I shudder every time I read that. He gave us a list of things the government lied about claiming that they were faked—when none of them were fake. The closest he gets is the Gulf of Tonkin. He’s going to build on his earlier “work” by explaining what the Defense Intelligence School (DIA) is and it’s relationship to the Apollo Simulation Project (ASP). Conspiracy theorists love acronyms. In reality the DIA is the military’s intelligence operation. They take Naval Intelligence, Army Intelligence, Airforce, Coast Guard, Space Force (?) reports and evaluate the national military urgency of them. They then report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and ultimately the president. It’s not a mysterious organization, but most people are unaware that it exists like the National Reconnaissance Office that is in charge of spy satellites. We also must ...

 Last week I began with a comment about the layout of this book. I remarked that each chapter seems to be a small snippet of the theory and that the book lent itself to a chapter-by-chapter dissection. This would be a change from the previous works where the chapters were significantly longer, denser with conspiratorial content, and terrible writing. This chapter however decided to be more like we’ve been used to and now I have to split the chapter. It’s not a problem, it’s just frustrating because I had gotten used to it already. This chapter is going to explain to us “how” NASA faked the Moon landing. The chapter begins with a quote from the book “Manhattan Project, the Untold Story.” Coincidentally, I believe that I read this book while I was in high school (I followed this with the 1995 Dark Sun, about the making of the hydrogen bomb). Originally it was published in 1967 (I read a revised edition for the 50th anniversary of the bomb), and is the story of the people who worked o...