If you鈥檙e planning to go to a party any time soon, be prepared for some
tricky questions. Like: why do photos taken on the Moon show multiple shadows
when they were supposed to be lit only by the Sun? Why didn鈥檛 the lunar module
make a crater when it landed? How did spacesuited astronauts get out of the
lunar module鈥檚 door? And how did Buzz Aldrin light that cigar under his space
helmet?
I made the last one up, but you get the drift. The Internet鈥攖he best
thing for conspiracy theorists since Lee Harvey Oswald went hardware
shopping鈥攊s full of similar conundrums. So, in the spirit of
postmodernism, where all histories are equally valid, here鈥檚 my true account of
Project Apollo, gleaned from the Web.
After the 1967 launch-pad fire, which killed three astronauts, NASA realises
that it is not going to meet JFK鈥檚 goal of getting a man to the Moon by 1970.
The whole enterprise is too dangerous and the crucial technology, the Lunar
Excursion Module, isn鈥檛 ready. So NASA sets up a secret film studio in an
underground cavern鈥攊n Nevada, of course鈥攁nd fakes footage of the
Moon鈥檚 surface. Stanley Kubrick, fresh from making 2001: A Space
Odyssey, is drafted in to direct. The Saturn 5 rockets blasting off from
Cape Kennedy are either empty, or the crew never leave the Earth鈥檚 orbit. (Or
maybe the astronauts were brainwashed, so they believe they actually go to the
Moon.)
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But the faking left a trail of clues. Photographs of astronauts on the Moon
show inconsistencies in lighting and composition, including unidentified objects
and shadows in the wrong places; those famous footprints could have been made
only in damp dust, impossible on the Moon鈥檚 arid surface; it is never explained
why the camera film managed to escape fogging or melting on re-entry; and there
was no airlock on the lunar module, so we are left with the puzzle of how the
astronauts breathed while they threw out their spacesuit backpacks before
blasting off from the Moon鈥檚 surface.
NASA鈥檚 press office won鈥檛 comment on any of this but some people apparently
believe the NASA version does have special merit. Aviation writer and systems
engineer Larry Jacks, for example, is a leading critic of the sceptic鈥檚 true
history. (www.skywardpress.com/acritique_video.htm). And to be fair, NASA鈥檚
lackeys can produce technical facts to counter some of the more interesting
anomalies. For example, it鈥檚 true that the lunar module had no airlock, but air
was piped directly to the crew鈥檚 helmets. Most of Jacks鈥檚 criticisms are
nit-picking stuff, however. An example: sceptics ask what aerodynamic principle
kept the lunar module from tipping? Answer: 鈥淭here is no aerodynamic principle
on the lunar module. It operated where there is no air.鈥�
On balance, though, we may have to surrender our postmodern principles.
NASA鈥檚 version of history has one unchallengeable card up its sleeve. This was
the failure to take a proper colour photograph of Armstrong on the Moon鈥檚
surface. He was hogging the one Hasselblad camera carried on Apollo 11, which is
why all those historic shots were of Aldrin, the second man on the Moon. Diehard
consiparcy fans say that Armstrong stayed out of the frame because he was
ashamed of the fake, but I couldn鈥檛 see Kubrick allowing that. No, the proof
that Apollo 11 really happened is in the cock-up, not the conspiracy.