The Apollo moon landings were real based on mountains of evidence. On the other hand, there is not a shred of evidence which is verifiable which show proof the landings were faked.
The most obvious flaw which is never explained by those who support the landings were faked is that Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin placed equipment on the surface which contains special reflective mirrors. This device is still used to today to reflect laser beams back to Earth. The laser pulses are fired at the reflectors and their round trip time is measured in order to determine the exact distance to the moon with incredible accuracy.
Additionally, radar returns and telemetry from the Apollo spacecraft during the flights clearly show they were a quarter million miles away. This is hardly refutable and surely the Russians would have been able to refute the landings since they had the political motive to embarrass the United States. Even today, the well respected Russian Space Agency does not deny the moon landings.
Third, analysis of rocks returned show glass which could not have possibly formed on Earth based on the age of the rocks. It’s hard to argue with rocks. Techniques to accurately determine their age and make-up has been around for a long time and is unquestioned. Again, the people who support this was all a hoax do not have answers for the actual physical evidence of rocks.
Last, there are now powerful enough telescopes on Earth to locate the landing sites which clearly show hardware and the work area. Of course, it’s hard to convince astronomers who are scientists to waste valuable telescope time to locate moon landing sites since it’s pretty obvious from the data we did land. But those who believe we did not land would suggest even this evidence was doctored.
Those who support that the landings were a hoax have offered no evidence or absolute proof. They suggest various things like backgrounds were are the same in some videos or the lunar lander did not leave a crater. As for backgrounds in videos or photos, the volume of data including photographs and video required a substantial manual effort to add description, cataloging and other things to properly archive the library of evidence gathered. Any similar looking backgrounds is likely simple human error in archiving the information.
As for the infamous “where’s the crater” which should have been produced by the lunar lander, it’s clear based on facts that the descent engine, though powerful, was only powered to about 10% of rated thrust. Further, the material under the few inches of powdery surface material where the landings occurred was quite hard. If a lunar lander with 3000 pounds of thrust landing in a typical paved parking lot, would we expect a huge crater? No, hardly a dent in fact. The descent engine was simply not powerful enough.
I do have a challenge for those who believe we faked the moon landings. If the moon were orbiting Earth at a distance of say 1,000 miles, could we have landed on the moon? After all, we have the Shuttle and Space Station in orbit at around 200 miles up. Landing on the moon, though a complicated act is nowhere near impossible. In fact, it’s easier than submerging seven miles into our own Pacific ocean.
As Carl Sagan once said, extraordinary claims like faking moon landings require extraordinary evidence. So far, those who support we did not land on the moon have not provided any evidence at all, let alone extraordinary evidence. On the other hand, there is a mountain of extraordinary evidence which shows we did land; a total of six times and twelve humans walked around, collected rock samples and returned safely to the Earth.
