The Conspiracy Mentality

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Here we are, a matter of hours away from the exact moment 50 years ago when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, and the idea that the whole thing was a hoax seems as popular as ever. Why?

It seems like the trope of “people in power lying to you” is a very attractive one to certain personality types. One might even say it is addictive. The trouble is, it tends to lead them to being sucked in by multiple conspiracy theories, not just one.

For example, the crossover between those who believe we never landed on the Moon with those who believe an alien spacecraft crashed at Roswell is, I think, quite high. Which gives an opportunity to those of a scientific mindset, like myself, to play the good old Consequences game, aka “collision of the conspiracies”.

Namely, if the US Government really has access to advanced alien technology that is capable of crossing the light-years, then surely the job of ferrying a few men to this little rock that is, by comparison, just a hop, skip and a jump away from us, would be a piece of cake?

Because this is how science works: every idea has consequences. Every theory has to be part of the same reality, because there is only one reality. Nature does not divide itself up into compartments; the compartments exist only inside our heads.

Of course there are real instances of people in power lying to us. But in the real world, they are more on the scale of the Panama Papers, or the NRA trying to undermine Australia’s gun laws, than trying to fake the most wondrous technological achievement in the history of humanity, in the full view of the entire world.

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In a way, the type of person who sees a conspiracy theory behind around every corner can be just as annoying and as confused as the guy who is always outraged about something and the guy who always manages to find something offensive regardless of what he’s looking at.

This can be considered a massive downside of the internet in general and especially social media, because what allows you access to all of the world’s knowledge and makes FOSS possible also gives anyone and everyone a platform and a megaphone. The various tech. companies try to “solve” this problem by steering people away from info the executives disagree with, but the technological barriers facing the creation of an alternative continue to shrink.

In short, this is something we’ll have to deal with. On the initial point though, there have been many cases throughout all of history where people in power (government) lie to the citizenry, in part because of the corrupting force that is the pursuit of power itself. Without a strong moral foundation, it is very rare for a person to actually improve himself once a position of power over a nation-state is acquired, though I don’t think we can assign a blanket statement either way on this.

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If it is so, why does US is paying Russia to get their astronauts to ISS. I don’t follow space exploration but it doesn’t make much sense to me.

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Here’s a very good web-site to spend a lot of time on:

https://aulis.com

… this is not a “conspiracy theory” site. This is a treasure-trove of factual information postulated by people who obviously want human space exploration to charge ahead, unimpeded by the past.

Like it or not, “there’s an un-shielded thermonuclear reactor out there,” a mere 96 million miles away from us, and the only(!) thing that is protecting us from it is the same thing that makes your magnetic compass point not-quite North. We do not have any technology today which can equal it. Even today, a fair number of our more-adventurous sattelites get “zapped.”

“Oh, there’s so much that we just can’t do … so much that we just don’t know …” But there are unfortunately quite a few things that, today, we do know …

We do now know that there is absolutely no way that our astronauts could have survived the things that our 1960’s predecessors – and yes, I was there – said that they did. Let alone to “play golf.” They would have had a much better chance if hey’d been locked inside a microwave oven … had such a thing existed at that time.

Yes, in those much-more innocent times, it might have seemed harmless, maybe even politically expedient, to persuade the public that the bold promise made by a martyred President had actually come true within the decade, as he had so boldly promised. But today it has become an impediment to future space exploration beyond the magnetosphere. (Which, still today, is an obstacle that we cannot reliably venture beyond … "Yet!™" …)

Like it or not, before we can proceed to the future, we must “come clean” regarding the illusions of the political past. (Perhaps, without unnecessarily condemning these residents of our past – most likely, they meant no harm.)

I’m sorry to say that it is at times like these that I feel … mortal. To realize that perhaps these things will not be achieved within my lifetime. However, you may be quite sure that I’ll be sitting there on some celestial cloud with a bottle of champagne in my celestial hands, waiting to celebrate the first landing of a human foot upon the Moon, and then to say … “Cowabunga! Now, on to Mars!”

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The bell curve the defines average intelligence means that half the population is below average intelligence. The ubiquity of the internet courtesy of low cost smart phones has removed the barrier of normative censure and allowed support systems for cognitively dissonant belief systems. My addition to the conspiracy theory trope is that the psychopaths in charge and who control the majority of the social media are ruthlessly fuelling the rise of these falsehoods in order to dilute the impact of truth on the global conscious and ameliorate their responsibility for pillaging the Commons. Just saying…

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NASA has a probe orbiting the moon right now and it took a photo of the landing site.

If only consumer-grade telescopes got a lot more powerful, you could then buy one and see for yourself.

The biggest misconception going around is that the Van Allen belts are solid walls of radiation, when in reality you can sometimes find a path where the levels dropped to a safe value. Even then, there’s alleged reports that many Apollo astronauts later in life endured cancers as a possible result of radiation damage.

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Aaaaaaargh, I feel for you!

One of my Ouma’s (grandmother) favourite quotes was “Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.” Her favourite riddle was “What was the vice admiral’s vice? The rear admiral’s rear!” So, go figure…

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I don’t question whether they went to the Moon or not …
I question the fact that in 8 years, since Kennedy announced that they would go to the Moon, in 1961 starting the NASA program, and they succeeded in 1969 … with the technologies of the time, starting practically from scratch … and now not they succeed more, I mean, it’s since 2004 that Bush had promised to re-go to the moon … and they left it for now until 2024 … with all the modern technology we have … what’s wrong? ? :face_with_monocle:

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In my experience, I can often find answers to questions and dispel conspiratorial ideas just by googling.

https://www.businessinsider.com/moon-missions-why-astronauts-have-not-returned-2018-7
https://www.cnet.com/features/apollo-took-us-to-the-moon-in-1969-why-havent-we-gone-back/
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/physics/45-our-solar-system/the-moon/the-moon-landings/121-why-hasn-t-nasa-gone-back-to-the-moon-beginner

These aren’t the best sources, I guess, but the reasons they list for not returning to the moon (money and politics mostly) make sense. Also, the Challenger disaster really loomed large in the public’s consciousness, at least in my part of America. None of the articles listed above mention it. That I do find strange.

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I am well aware of these images, and I know for example that the “paths” on that particular image do not agree with the footage taken during that mission and the mission reports. Furthermore it is extremely unlikely that any “moon buggy track” would be anywhere that distinct, given the size of the nearby impact craters. Nonetheless, my purpose is not to debate the small stuff – let alone here.

Never mind the Van Allen radiation belts, which collect and concentrate radiation streaming from the Sun: that ionizing radiation streams continuously from the sun, creating auroras not only on Earth but also on Neptune. (The interaction produces more electricity in the sky than is generated by man everywhere on Earth, and the auroras are every bit as big on other planets as they are here.) Dental technicians have to step out of the room when they use X-ray machines. The human body does not tolerate exposure to ionizing radiation, let alone a field strong enough to ionize vast reaches of the upper atmosphere, not only here but on Jupiter. Every magnetic planet has an aurora.

NASA launched various probes to “explore” things such as “radiation on the lunar surface,” so that they can “design” space suits and other equipment to keep explorers “safe” if they are there “more than a few days.” All of which is well-and-good except for one wee thing: “what about 1969?” And this is precisely what I meant about Apollo now serving as an impediment to future human space exploration. We can’t afford to keep lying about this.

Most unfortunately, Apollo falls apart at nearly every angle of inquiry – from radiation to rocket power to the lighting of photographs to re-entry paths. Even though, on television, “it all happened so perfectly … in fact, too perfectly.” There’s nothing “perfect” about it. It’s something that we still don’t know how to do. There’s a lot of technology needed that we simply do not have. … … Yet!!

John F. Kennedy’s bold promise might come true some day, and I sincerely hope that it does, but it simply didn’t come true “before this decade is out.”

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I’ll tell you the real motivation …
the program has become too expensive … and since you Americans no longer have your Russian friends / enemies who compete with you Americans, you have become lazy, slow, hungry for resource demands and unmotivated …
I see no other explanation. (conspiracies aside)
:wink:

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The Russians quickly and very wisely gave up on any “race to the Moon.” They did succeed in launching several unmanned probes. It is unquestionably true that “procuring government funding” was part of the motivation for Apollo, but quite honestly I also think it was because some people very badly wanted a bold promise made by a martyred President to “come true before the decade was out.” It captivated the American imagination for many years and remains to this day part of its dogma.

Even though it aroused the suspicions even of a six-year old at the time: “wait a minute, how long does it take for a radio transmission to reach the Moon?” (Answer: 1-1/2 seconds one way. Any comment and any subsequent reply to that comment should be separated by at least three seconds of silence.) In, for example, the “Tranquility Base here” sequence, the astronauts and Mission Control were speaking back-and-forth to one another without such delays and they never, ever talk over each other. Oops. I noticed, and wondered, but didn’t say anything to spoil the moment.)

The American people badly wanted to believe it, so they did. Were they wrong? Was NASA wrong? One must consider the times in which they did it.

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The men of the past are no longer there … They really believed it, with all their soul.

They were true explorers, and they imagined the world as it should be … but too much modern comfort made us lazy and suspicious of the genius of the past.
(this book is from 1986)

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Um, I’m pretty sure America still has enemies that are investing in space exploration/domination (the impetus for the Space Force, I think), but besides that, SpaceX and Blue Origin are american companies, right? So I would think the generalization is a bit off the mark. To address the politics of it, we’ve been experiencing gridlock for the longest time and it’s made addressing almost any issue very difficult.

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in his book 2010-Odyssey-two, Athur C Clarke, he had already foreseen the united world by telecommunications, and that wars would no longer be real wars, but rather minor disputes … and that moon space missions landings would have been made by private companies for tourists …
and somehow got it right …
we’re just a little slow with the march …

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The only thing you guys have to do is produce a photo or video of NASA getting the “soundstage” ready to film a faked moon landing, either that or you guys visiting the “moon set” personally (with cameras) and documenting the trip. Now of course, this does highlight one other unfortunate bit in the age of Photoshop and other cutting edge image editing and CG apps, some people can choose to literally not believe anything unless they personally witnessed it with their own eyes (ie. not via the TV or the internet).

Then there’s the implication that if the Soviets found out the Americans faked it, they would’ve seized on the opportunity to score a huge PR win for communism while delivering a major blow to our nation’s influence on the world.

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Actually, the movie Capricorn One tacitly did just that. The movie demonstrated just how completely the Moon scenes could be reproduced on a sound stage – without going out of their way to say that.

But I referred to “aulis” for a reason. There’s more information there than anywhere else I know of. I’m not going to repeat it, nor defend it, here. To me it’s not a “conspiracy theory.” It is what it is, and that’s that. What happened, happened, and someone obviously thought it was a great idea at the time. “Just a little white lie,” maybe.

The Moon is definitely still a target – as it should be. But it needs to be our first target, long before we consider Mars. One of my concerns, though, is that “because we’ve already been to the Moon,” NASA will try to rush headlong to Mars. Which, like the Moon, is a technical impossibility at this point. I definitely want to see NASA, and other nations, and if need be private companies, all working together to solve the actual obstacles so that, one day, John F. Kennedy’s dare will come true. For real, this time. I think that’s a noble and worthy aspiration – still – for all of mankind. To stand on the Moon, taking selfies and tweeting, and using big hand-held mirrors to send irrefutable flashes of light back to earthbound telescopes so that, this time, everybody knows that it’s real.

One serious but more modest proposal is to first establish a “Midway Island” space station, beyond the magnetosphere, more or less halfway between Earth and the Moon. It would be an excellent place from which to gather data, even if initially it was unmanned except by robots. (NASA and the Air Force have begun to launch unmanned hybrid aircraft which can insert themselves into orbit and remain there for months or years at a time, doing ##CLASSIFIED## things.) Let’s admit what we presently can and cannot do, and expand it every way we can find to do so safely.

We could even first send a robotic mission to the Moon … just as we stopped using bathyscaphes and started sending robots to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. NASA’s gotten really good at robots. We develop a lander system that we think will work, and on its first flight we “man” it with humanoid robots stuffed with sensors. Good start. It can even take a selfie.

I really can’t entirely fault NASA for giving America what it wanted at the time. I was there, albeit six years old, and I guess I wanted it too. And I know what the organization fears it would cost them – possibly, “everything” – if they admitted to what they had done. My concern is simply that they never will, and that in doing so they sabotage their own missions and astronauts. I want us to "get there, for real this time." And then, one day, beyond. But to do that, we’ve got to admit what we can’t do … yet! … and don’t know … yet!

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Yess go burn witches and make crusades, like in the old days of obscurantism !
Maybe a new rebirth can emerge from it.

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To me, the rueful admission that our space science is not yet what we claimed it to be in 1969 is not the purview of witches nor crusades. It is what it is. That decision, long ago, rightly or wrongly, was made and carried out. Time to move on … "to the Moon, and beyond!!"

I just want to stand outside, look up at the moon, and see with my own eyes those flashes of mirror-light. And to know … “we did it. At last, we did it.” Yes, I’d like to still be alive, then.

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On another forum – well I won’t risk mentioning what the topic was so I don’t godwin this up – but there was a multi-page discussion of whether something happened or not (it did). And no matter how much proof was offered, the person kept offering new argument over new argument ignoring the mountains of evidence provided. Anyway, I’m not really here to convince you of anything, but to others who might happen upon the thread and think maybe there’s something there Here’s a link I found that might be useful that addresses not only facts regarding the moon landing but why people might believe in a conspiracy:

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/apollo-11-moon-landing-conspiracy-theories-endured-debunked/story?id=64339363

From the article:

“When people question or have questions about the Apollo landings, we invite them to examine the evidence for themselves: 842 pounds of astronaut-collected Moon rocks studied by scientists worldwide for decades. You can still bounce Earth-based lasers off the retro-reflector mirrors placed on the lunar surface by the Apollo astronauts. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter imaged the landing sites in 2011. An estimated 400,000-plus people worked on the Moon landings, meaning a lot of eyes were watching this take place from inside the NASA community, and all the Apollo missions were independently tracked by the United States’ chief adversary during the Cold War, the Soviet Union, who would not have sent NASA a letter of congratulations if the landings never happened,” Potter told ABC News.

Finally, I believe Buzz Aldrin addressed the conspiracy claims best. Which brings me to one of my favorite recent headlines…

Conspiracy theorist punched by Buzz Aldrin still insists moon landing was fake

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