In 2002, NASA hired James Edward Oberg, to write a book intended to challenge those who claim the Apollo Moon landings were a hoax. Oberg was a former rocket scientist, MSNBC News space consultant and analyst and journalist, and, it was later discovered, a moon landing conspiracy theorist. But NASA soon cancelled the project, declining to give the reasons for this. NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs said criticism that NASA was displaying poor judgement and a lack of confidence in commissioning the book caused the agency to abort it. For example, then NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe said:
In 2006, some of the recordings of the Apollo era were declared missing. The question of what happened to the recordings was seen by conspiracy theorists as confirmation of their beliefs, and in 2009, NASA revealed that the tapes were erased.
The arguments about the moon conspiracy theories are detailed and complex. Some of the major points and counterpoints are listed below.
Moon conspiracy theorists think that NASA faked the Apollo mission with a secret program. According to James Longuski, the complexity of the conspiracy theory scenarios make them impossible. More than 400,000 people worked on the Apollo project for almost ten years, and 12 men who walked on the Moon returned to Earth to talk about their experiences. Hundreds of thousands of people would have had to keep the secret. Longuski says that it would have been a lot easier to actually land on the Moon than to create such a large conspiracy to fake it.
1. In some photos, the are seemed to be partially covered by objects. Some conspiracy theorists suggest that the NASA composed the photographs by "cutting and pasting" objects over the background images.
2. In some photos, the crosshairs are rotated.
3. The letter "C" appears on some rocks. This is maybe a designation by the studio props.
4. The book "Moon Shot" contains a fake photo of Alan Shepard hitting a golf ball on the Moon with another astronaut.
1. The Apollo 16 crew could not have survived solar flares when they were on their way to the Moon.
2. During the Apollo 15 mission, David Scott did an experiment by dropping a hammer and a falcon feather at the same time. Both hit the ground at the same time.
Blueprints and drawings of the machines used in the Apollo project are missing. Some Apollo 11 tapes containing telemetry and high quality video of the first moonwalk are also missing. Moon landing conspiracy theorists believe that this is because they never existed, since the mission was faked.
Dr. David Williams (NASA archivist at Goddard Space Flight Center) and Apollo 11 flight director Eugene F. Kranz acknowledged that some of the Apollo 11 tapes are missing. When the recordings were sent back to Earth to be shown on TV, they were converted to a different format which was lower quality. Now the lower quality tapes are available, but the original high quality videos received in Australia are missing. Some pictures of the original high quality image are still available, and videos have been released from other missions too, like the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package.
Some people at NASA are looking for the tapes to help them plan for future missions. They believe the Apollo 11 tapes were sent for storage at the U.S. National Archives in 1970, but by 1984 all the Apollo 11 tapes had been returned to the Goddard Space Flight Center. The tapes may have been stored rather than re-used, and efforts to determine where they were stored are ongoing. Goddard was storing 35,000 new tapes per year in 1967, even before the lunar landings.
On November 1, 2006 Cosmos Magazine reported that 100 data tapes recorded in Australia during the Apollo 11 mission had been found in the basement of the Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia. One of the old tapes was sent to NASA for analysis.
On July 16, 2009, NASA said that it must have erased the original Apollo 11 Moon footage years ago so that it could reuse the tape. On December 22, 2009 NASA issued a final report on the tapes. Senior engineer Dick Nafzger concluded that approximately 45 tapes of Apollo 11 video were erased and reused. For the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, Lowry Digital of Burbank, California restored the low quality videos. Some pieces of the restored footage are available on the NASA website.
Some conspiracy theorists say that some astronauts were killed as part of a cover up. In a television program about the conspiracy theory, Fox Entertainment Group listed 10 astronauts and 2 others who conspiracy theorists said were killed.
All the deaths except for Irwin's were related to their job with NASA or the Air Force. Mike Adams and Robert Lawrence were not involved with the civilian space program. James Irwin already had several heart attacks before his death. All except two of the deaths happened at least one or two years "before" Apollo 11. Also, Brian Welch was speaking out "against" the moon hoax, so he would not have been a good target to be killed.
As of November 2018, four of the twelve Apollo astronauts who landed on the Moon between 1969 and 1972 were still alive, including Buzz Aldrin. Also, nine of the twelve Apollo astronauts who flew to the Moon without landing between 1968 and 1972 are still alive, for example Michael Collins.
During 1961 to 1972, at least eight Russian cosmonauts died:
Additionally, the chief of their spaceflight program, Sergei Korolev, died in January 1966.
Conspiracy theorists say that telescopes, for example the Hubble, should be able to take pictures of the moon where Apollo landed, and if people really did land on the moon, then the pictures should show the scars on the moon's surface and equipment it left behind. They believe that our major observatories will not take pictures of the landing sites because it would expose the cover-up.
NASA has said that images have been taken of these landing sites, but the pictures taken by Hubble are too low quality to see very much detail. In 2009 NASA released pictures from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter showing the Apollo landing sites in more detail. These photographs have not convinced the conspiracy theorists because the pictures were taken by NASA, and they think NASA is behind the cover-up.
Bart Sibrel (a conspiracy theorist) says that the Soviet Union had much more time in space than the United States before the Apollo Program. The Soviet Union put the first satellite in orbit in October 1957 named Sputnik 1. They also put the first animal in space in Sputnik 2, and were the first country to safely bring back an animal from space in Sputnik 5. Yuri Gagrin was the first man to orbit the Earth in Vostok 1, who was also from the Soviet Union. Sibrel believes that since the Soviet Union was so far ahead of the United States in the Moon race, the United States had to fake the landings to win.
On January 27, 1967, Apollo 1 caught fire and killed 3 astronauts. Two years later, NASA said that the problems which caused the fire were fixed. Bart Sibrel believes that the problems could not be fixed, so NASA decided to fake the landings to win the Moon race.
NASA says that the Soviet Union's achievements were not as impressive as the United States. According to the "Encyclopaedia Astronautica", the US spent 1,864 hours in space, while the Soviets spent 697 hours at the completion of Soyuz 5. Apollo 7 launched in October 1968, 21 months after the Apollo 1 fire, with an astronaut on board. By Apollo 11, the Uninted States' lead was even bigger.