“Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?” is an infamous 2001 Fox tv special that created an uproar as the entire country began to question whether the Moon landing was a hoax. I don't consider myself to be a conspiracy theorist but this TV special makes some compelling arguments. While it is fun to entertain the thought that the moon landing was a politically-driven hoax, it is even crazier to imagine that no person has ever actually stepped on the moon. It is celebrated by our society as one of man’s greatest achievements, but imagine if it was a complete lie! The documentary-style tv special investigates several aspects of the Moon landing that don’t add up. Shadows that indicate an additional light source to the Sun, the waving American flag that shouldn’t have waved in an airless atmosphere, and the appearance of identical desert backdrops on a number of missions indicate that the lunar videos could have been filmed on a soundstage at Area 51. The absence of rocket engine sounds in the audio files, lack of a crater under the lunar module, and the extremely low odds of the module successfully landing are a compelling argument that maybe we never made it at all. There is an entire episode of Mythbusters dedicated to disproving the theories in this documentary but you still have to wonder if man actually made it to the Moon. Whether you buy into conspiracy theories or not, “Did We Land on the Moon?” is a must-see just to be a part of the pop culture phenomenon that suddenly made everybody question one of the most common truths in textbooks and amongst those who lived through the Space Race.
[Pictured: Why is this flag waving? And why aren’t there any stars in the background?]
