Some thoughts about the Moon landing conspiracy theories

This really baffles my mind: It's simply amazing how many people (both those who believe in the conspiracy theories and those who don't) actually don't know that NASA landed 6 times on the Moon (the total number of men who have walked on the Moon being 12).

It's not so puzzling that there are some people who have no idea how many times NASA sent people to the Moon, What's amazing is the sheer amount of people who have no idea, and actually believe there was only one single Moon-landing mission. Most amazingly, even some people who don't believe in any conspiracy theories and object to any such claims don't know that they went more than once.

For any person who has even the most basic knowledge of the Apollo program this may seem like a completely ridiculous thing, but it's true. There are many, many people who believe there was only one Moon landing, period. Even among those who openly oppose the idea of the existence of a conspiracy related to this and who believe the landings were completely genuine.

Most conspiracy theorists actually take advantage of this. Search for Moon-landing conspiracy theory webpages out there, and see if you can find any which mentions how many times NASA sent people to the Moon. While some webpages might make some passing reference to this, most of them conveniently leave this completely unmentioned.

The reason why most conspiracy theorists avoid direct mentions to how many Moon landing missions there were is that thinking about it makes the possibility of a hoax quite less likely.

Think about this: Forgetting for a moment the sheer impossibility of actually pulling it off, if the United States government and NASA wanted to fake the first Moon landing, what was the motivation to do this? To win the "space race" with the Soviet Union. They wanted to be the first to go to the Moon, before the soviets.

Ok, you can argue that's a good motivation. Now, what was the motivation for faking the second flight?

They had already won the "space race". They have got to the Moon before the soviets. So what was there to prove anymore? That they could pull the hoax off a second time? For what purpose?

If the flights were a hoax, think about how difficult it would have to have been in practice:

This was the height of the cold war, and the Soviet Union was watching the USA really closely, especially in matters concerning space travel (because this was a time of nuclear proliferation, when both the USSR and the USA were building intercontinental nuclear missiles, and possibly at least planning satellites armed with nuclear weapons.)
The Soviet Union had both the technology and resources to observe every single moment of any space mission performed by the USA and NASA. Since this was a time of showing technological prowess and the height of the "space race", the Soviet Union would have loved nothing more than exposing foul play on the part of the USA. The Soviet Union had all the motive in the world to observe NASA's actions really closely and to cry foul play if they noticed anything suspicious.
The amount of people closely involved in the Apollo missions is simply staggering. Most of the people closely involved with the missions were not, in fact, NASA employees. Most of the hardware (such as the rockets and the lunar module) were produced by external contractors. If it were impossible to pull off a successful lunar landing due to lacking technology, the engineers employed by these third-party contractors would have noticed and would have started asking questions.
Staging the landings in a studio would have also required quite many people. You have to build the sets in complete secrecy, have the astronauts and photographers do their job in complete secrecy, develop the films in secrecy and somehow fool anyone not involved about where they came from, and to dismantle the sets and destroy the evidence without anybody not involved noticing. All this while at the same time fooling everybody not involed in the conspiracy that the landings were actually taking place, including many experts who were directly involved in the missions.
The radio communications and live TV broadcasts sent during the spaceflights and from the Moon were not particularly secret. Not only were these signals received by many relays around the world (most of which had little to do with NASA) and relayed to NASA (because it's naturally physically impossible for NASA to be in direct visual contact with the Moon 24/7), but radio amateurs all around the world were also following the radio transmissions, which were continuously sent from the correct direction with the correct delay. (It's impossible to send these transmissions from a satellite orbiting Earth. The signals would be coming from the wrong direction because the satellite is too close to Earth and its orbit period is way too fast, so that the source of the signal would be moving very fast rather than remaining stationary on the direction of the Moon. Even a group of satellites couldn't be used for this because there are too few of them, especially in 1969, and sending the radio transmissions from many satellites at once would cause them to be received from many directions at the same time. Someone would have certainly noticed this oddity.)
It's very probable that the Soviet Union was actually triangulating the source of the radio signal in order to watch that the USA was really doing what they were claiming they were doing (rather than, say, putting some satellites armed with nuclear missiles in orbit).
There is no doubt that there's a corner-box reflector on the surface of the Moon, as observatories all over the world (in countries which have zero interest in defending a possible hoax by the USA/NASA) have been measuring it for the past 40 years. If the Moon landings were a big hoax, when and how was this reflector sent to the Moon? Who designed and built the landing mechanism for this reflector so that it could land safely on the Moon without being destroyed by the impact, and all this in the utmost secrecy? How and when was this deployed? Note that this operation had to be timed at the same time as the actual Moon landing mission which allegedly put the reflector there. How was NASA able to send such a secret unmanned mission to the Moon without anybody noticing (especially the Soviet Union)?
The Apollo missions returned over 380 kilograms of lunar rocks. Geologists all over the world have been studying these samples for 40 years and see nothing suspicious about them. There's no doubt that they are from the Moon. How was NASA able to bring over 380 kilograms of Moon rocks without anybody noticing, if the Apollo program was a big hoax?

And that's only a very little part of it. As you may imagine, trying to pull off a hoax of this magnitude would have been staggeringly difficult. The risks of getting caught, of someone whistleblowing, of the Soviet Union detecting foul play, were simply enormous.

So let's assume for a second that it was indeed a hoax and that NASA pulled it off successfully, fooling everybody. So they succeeded in their goal: To beat the Soviet Union in the race to the Moon.

So let me ask once again: What possible reason would there be for NASA to make a second fake Moon landing mission?

Every time you try to pull of a hoax of this magnitude, the risks of getting caught only increase. More people would get involved with each consecutive mission. For example, more scientists were involved in each successive flight because they were interested in actually studying the Moon from as close as possible. More and more people were drawn in to successive missions thanks to their success.

So why take the risk? They had already won the race, so why risk it again?

And that's just with the second flight. They went to the Moon SIX TIMES.

There would have been absolutely no reason to continue the hoax after the first landing. Why take the risk? They could have simply said that the spaceflights are way too risky and expensive, with no actual advantages. Nobody would have questioned these motives.

Curiously, there is a minority of conspiracy theorists who actually acknowledge this. For instance, there's a subset of them who claim that only the first landing was faked, but all the subsequent ones were genuine. There are also those who claim that the landings were genuine but the photographs were faked because it wasn't actually possible to take photographs on the Moon. (This latter theory probably comes from the misconception that there's no explanation for the "artifacts" and other things that conspiracy theorists so much love to point out on the photos.)

But returning to my original point: Surprisingly many people don't know that NASA went six times to the Moon, and believe there was only one landing (as amazing as that may sound to many). Conspiracy theorists love to abuse this misconception by simply not making any mention of multiple landing missions.

This is, in a way, a form of dishonest cherry-picking. These theorists deliberately leave out things which could cast doubts on their readers.

But as I have mentioned several times before (like here), honesty is not one of the most outstanding qualities of conspiracy theorists.

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