Debunking the "fake moon landing" conspiracy theory¶

2021-01-18

Some people think that what Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did in 1969 was a "fake moon landing". However, there's no way this is true. The moon, as we see at night, is actually a spherical lump of rock. It looks small only because it's far away from us. In fact, it is 1737km in radius and 7.342e19t in mass, both much larger and heavier than anything humans have made. Despite the United States' unsurpassable power in engineering amidst the Cold War, it was impossible for NASA to build a fake moon identical to the real one in dimension, let alone quietly propel it into the orbit where the latter belongs without the Soviet Union noticing. They would only have a few hours' window in which to perform the manipulations, before the sun sets in USSR. This is as practical as trying to escape an earthquake on a segway. Therefore, what the pioneers landed on fifty years ago was the real moon, not a fake one.

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