Absurd Secret

Of Course Men Went to the Moon

One hears from time to time of the most lunatic of all conspiracy theories, that mankind never went to the Moon, and that photographs supposedly taken during the six manned lunar landings were faked in a secret studio. In a book called ``NASA Mooned America'' published at the author's expense (one is hardly surprised) a self-taught engineer named Ralph Rene explains his strange beliefs. He sees sinister explanations everywhere. When Neil Armstrong first stepped on to the Moon, who took his picture from outside the spacecraft? Why are no stars visible in the lunar sky? Why does

the US flag in the TV pictures flutter when there is no air on the Moon? How could the astronauts have survived the experience - they ought to have been killed hundreds of times over by micro- meteorites. These absurd questions are worth quoting to show how dangerous it is to build scientific theories in isolation, and to make the reporter's worst blunder - to write without checking one's facts. A camera was fixed to the outside of the spacecraft to snap Armstrong as he emerged. (Why didn't Rene think of that?) It is obvious why no stars were seen: daytime sunlight blotted them out. The flag didn't flutter or droop. It couldn't; it was wired to keep it rigid. And micro-meteorites hitting the Moon's surface are small and intermittent. They don't fall like rain in a monsoon. But the most serious objection to Rene's conspiracy theory is that about 25,000 people would have had to be part of the conspiracy. It would not be possible to fake the pictures without all these people knowing it or eventually getting to know it. Most of us have had experience in keeping a secret, in family or office, and there is always a maximum number of people who can safely be told the secret if it is to remain one. The bigger and more sensational the secret, the smaller this number must be. (Recall the tiny amount of people who were allowed to know in advance the date and place of the D-Day landings.) If the ``faked Moon landings'' story was true, it would not have been safe for more than half a dozen people to know it. Any more, and there would have been almost daily revelations of the truth. The fact that there have been no such revelations except from people like Rene strongly suggest that the story is false. But could the story have conceivably been true? No, there is an absolute proof that we really went to the Moon. It lies in the fact that the Moon-rocks returned to Earth were made of non-terrestrial basalt, as the hundreds of geologists who examined them can testify. There is no way that these rocks could have been faked. Had they been taken from meteorites, they would have shown signs of oxidisation. Only rocks which had lain for billions of years in a vacuum could have such characteristics. Why do some people believe such things? They are not being over-imaginative but the opposite. Their lack of imagination persuades them that because they could not figure out how to fly to the Moon, then nobody else could either.