Loony landing
June 6, 2009
Forty years after man went to the moon, conspiracy theorists still insist it was all a fake. It's a pattern with all the great events of history, writes John Huxley.
'If you believed they put a man on the moon, man on the moon, If you believe there's nothing up my sleeve, then nothing is cool … " - from Man On The Moon by R.E.M.
Forty years on it remains one of mankind's crowning achievements; a moment in time and space etched forever in the memories of those old enough to have watched it happen live on murky, monochrome television pictures bounced round the world via a NSW bush tracking station.
At least, that's the official version of the Apollo moon landing on July 21, 1969, Sydney time. But Glen Nagle, the education manager for the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex, is constantly confronted with a different perspective: that the man on the moon is no more than pie in the sky.
"The question of conspiracy theories crops up here every other day. Members of the public come in, and yeah, yeah, they know we're exploring the universe. But, nah, they don't believe man landed on the moon. Fifty per cent who come through have their doubts."
More disturbing is the level of disbelief among children. "I often do a quick hands-up with school groups that come through. 'Who here thinks we didn't land on the moon?' Again, about half the hands go up."
Nagle attributes such scepticism to naivety, stupidity or, more likely, misinformation. "They've probably been told to do a project on the moon landing, got on the internet and found all this conspiracy stuff pop up."
Thousands of sites - some sophisticated, some merely scatterbrained - argue the landing was a complete or partial hoax. One leading sceptic argues that man did walk on the moon, but pictures were faked to prevent the Soviet Union drawing detailed information from the real photographs.
There is no shortage of tell-tale signs that the landing was rigged, probably in a Hollywood studio. No stars can be seen. Pictures taken miles apart have the same background. The United States flag flies in the still moon air. A Perth resident even claims to have spotted a soft drink bottle in one frame.
Nor is there any shortage of US Government motives for faking it, says the Wikipedia site on "Apollo moon landing hoax conspiracy accusations" - first port of call for many amateurs boldly going in search of information.
Motives include beating the Russians, boosting support for more NASA moon shots, distracting Americans from unpopular ventures such as the Vietnam War, and fulfilling president John Kennedy's pledge to put man on the moon before 1970.
Despite comprehensive debunking, the moon landing remains among the more persistent of many thousands of conspiracy theories "out there". Each claims to expose the truth behind what "they" tell us happened. Popular targets include:
- The deaths of politicians such as John Kennedy (engineered by the CIA) and celebrities such as Princess Diana (the royal family);
- Events such as September 11 (Zionists), the global financial crisis (a secret cabal of central bankers operating from a bunker at Denver International Airport); Hurricane Katrina (then president George Bush);
- The spread of swine flu. Within days of the first case being identified, in the small southern Mexican town of La Gloria, the first conspiracy theories had been spawned, accusing authorities of burying flu dead to prevent panic, or beating up the risks to distract the world from its financial woes.
Today cases of flu conspiracy theory have reached pandemic proportions, as the myth-busting website retardzone.com reveals. Its top plague theory suggests the drug maker Baxter is the evil corporation behind "a massive conspiracy that goes all the way to the top".
No less preposterous theories can be found closer to home. Some Australians still insist Harold Holt was whisked away in a Chinese submarine, that Gough Whitlam was dismissed on CIA instructions, even that the Port Arthur massacre was staged by supporters of gun control.
So pervasive has the "conspiratorial imagination" become that it sometimes seems that Western societies have regressed, adopting a medieval attitude towards calamitous acts, says a leading sociologist, author and academic, Frank Furedi.
"Back in the Dark Ages people regarded accidents, disasters and other acts of misfortune as the work of hidden forces. Misdeeds were often said to have been caused by people who had been manipulated by evil forces. This primitive outlook is making a comeback."
Increasingly, Furedi suggests, life is interpreted through the prism of a Hollywood blockbuster - like Australia's current favourite movie, the conspiracy-riddled Angels & Demons - "where powerful, evil forces pull all the strings".
But why? As with conspiracies, there are many theories. The authors of clavius.org, another myth-busting website, suggest several reasons.
They are devised to explain variations and inconsistencies, or fill in the gaps, in official accounts. They are created for entertainment, or mischief. "Real life is boring. It's more exciting to believe that strange lights in the sky are visiting aliens and not an airliner's landing lights," they say.
They are someone's ego trip, invented to make the theorist appear intelligent, in the know, on the inside, with access to secret information unavailable to others.
And, most convincingly, they are the product of a society that distrusts authority, that increasingly contests, challenges, doubts virtually every aspect of public life; what Furedi, who teaches at the University of Kent,calls a "crisis of causality", an inability to understand and explain events.
Peter Curson an international security expert at Sydney University, says many people are overwhelmed by the complexities and perceived dangers of modern life. "They feel a loss of autonomy, that they have lost control, that they are being manipulated. In times of crisis, especially, they want answers, they want to know who is responsible, who is to blame. In some cases, they want to know who can be made a scapegoat."
In part, this sense of incomprehension, distrust and suspicion is the fault of governments and the media, whose traditional role as sources of reliable information has been eroded.
"We've been disappointed with politicians, and grown tired of the mainstream media, whom we used to rely upon to keep the bastards honest," suggests Les Posen, a clinical psychologist who monitors the impact of new technology.
Little wonder, he says, that people "play silly buggers on the internet".
That, at least, is indisputable. For all its blessings, new technology has upset the traditional hierarchy of knowledge and authority, transforming consumers of information into users and purveyors, and empowering them with audience reach and resources unimaginable a decade ago.
With tools such as Photoshop, YouTube and Facebook, everyone can be a conspiracy theorist, everyone can devise and disseminate their own moon-landing story. "That's frightening," Nagle says.
Of course, the existence of some conspiracies - the Watergate break-in, for example - is proven by thorough investigation. And innocent mistakes happen, though their effect is magnified by the internet, which spreads fiction as well as fact. Nagle quotes a virulent hoax email doing the rounds, which says that later this year Mars will appear as large as the moon in the night sky. This August, Mars will be close to Earth - though not as close as in 2003 - but will require a 75-power magnification telescope to compete with the moon viewed through the naked eye. This qualification, contained in the original official statement, has been omitted.
More worrying, obviously, is the intellectual laziness of consumers, and the wilful intention of users to deceive. "Sadly, for many people it is easier, or more convenient, to believe a lie than go to the bother of discovering the truth," Nagle says.
Some conspiracies, he concedes, are laughable, but the claim the moon landing was faked angers him. "They undermine one of the most astounding things man has done. They dishonour the Australians [primarily at the Parkes and Honeysuckle Creek tracking stations] who played an important part in bringing the pictures back."
For Nagle, they prove the observation about a sucker being born every minute.
Though some moon-landing data has gone missing, every accusation made by "deniers" has been demolished. The absence of stars? The sun was shining, cameras were set on daylight settings. The background was common? Incorrect, it was similar.
And, the flapping flag? The flag appears rippled because it had been folded for storage, and the horizontal rod from which it was suspended could not be fully extended.
But what does Nagle tell moon-landing doubters? Does he go through the minute details of the massive undertaking? Does he tell them it would probably have cost more to fake the landing than to do it?
No. "I ask them, 'do you really think that the Russians were so stupid to believe they hadn't been beaten in the space race'." They were beaten, fair and television-screen square.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/loony-landing-20090605-byhj.html?page=-1
