Apollo and Fox TV: The Deception of the Century

By Clas Svahn

The deception of the century it was called when Sweden's "Channel 5" on April fools day this year showed the programme "Conspiracy Theory: Did we land on the Moon?". But in spite of the date the programme was no joke. Millions of Americans and many Swedes now believe that the Moon landings were just one big bluff.

The programme was shown in the form of a documentary but it more looked like a personal attack against Nasa from American conspiracy maker Bill Kaysing and British photographer David Percy. Behind the showing of the programme was Fox TV, the same company who in 1995 showed the very dubious "Autopsy Film", now widely regarded a hoax.

In the programme, Kaysing and Percy accused the American space organisation Nasa of setting up the scenes from the Moon in a studio in the Neveda desert, purported to be Area 51. No Apollo ship or astronaut landed on the Moon but circled around the Earth a week or more before landing in the Pacific Ocean, according to the conspiracy makers.

But it was not Nasa who lied but Fox and Channel 5 who gave their viewers only one side of the story.

Basically, Kaysing and Percy are given the opportunity to present their accusations in the simplest manner. In contrast the few answers from Nasa representatives that made it to the finished programme, were complicated and difficult for the viewers to understand.

Although dealing with the Moon landings only one astronaut took part in the programme, Brian O'Leary, who doubted that Nasa really landed an astronaut on the Moon. "I cannot say with one hundred percent certainty that they went to the Moon" he says. What was not in the programme is that O'Leary left Nasa in 1968 after only one year training without flying a single mission in space. Neither mentioned were the fact that O'Leary for a number of years has been on the new age circuit.

What the 750,000 people who were involved in the Apollo programme and the 12 astronauts who really landed on the Moon, thought about the claims, was not shown.

"Conspiracy Theory - Did we land on the Moon?" was produced by Bruce Nash and broadcasted in the US on the 15th February 2001. When Fox TV showed the film in the US, it issued a warning text at the beginning: "The following programme contains controversial material. The theory expressed is not the only possible explanation. Viewers are invited to draw their own conclusions based on the presented information".

The warning text shows that it was not made as a documentary film, but as a one sided version where the 79 year old Bill Kaysing, who once worked as head of technical information at Rocketdyne Research Department in Santa Susana, between 1956-1963, before going public with his bizarre theory. "There is no possibility that Nasa landed a man on the Moon", says Kaysing in the programme and refers to a study from 50 years ago, which at the time showed that the chances of doing so were as low as 0.0017 per cent. That these figures had changed dramatically after the first successful launches were never mentioned.

Let us look closer the "facts" shown as proof for the claim that the Moon landings were a bluff.

1. No stars are shown in the pictures from the Moon.

The films and photographs on the Moon were made in very bright sunlight and earthlight and the camera shutters were adjusted to expose the astronauts and the Moon's surface. The Ektachrome 64 film used is not sensitive for small light sources as the stars and it would have required several seconds exposure to getting them on film. You could test this by a simple experiment: Go out in the street on a dark and clear night and ask a friend dressed in white to stand beneath a street lamp. Take a picture of him and try to get some stars on the same exposure. No luck? Well, the astronauts had the same problem.

2. The American flag moves even though there is no wind on the Moon.

In all the scenes shown in the film, one sees an astronaut twist and pull on the flag before it moves. In no instance does the flag move solely by itself without an astronaut touching it. An object, which is made to swing, continues to do so in vacuum as in air. If a wind had blown one would also have seen the fine Moon dust fly around in the same scene, which we do not do.

3. There is no crater after the Lunar Module (LEM).

The powerful break of the motor is carried out many hundreds of metres high and during the final stage of the landing, changes to a very light downwards force. In vacuum the blow from the motor spreads rapidly. The motor also shuts down two metres above the surface. The landing place was carefully picked; the ground was firm with a minimum of minute dust on the surface. Nasa would not risk the Lunar Module sinking down in deep layers of dust. That the dustlayer is so small is also shown by the fact that the astronauts were not sinking down into the deep layers.

4. Why is there no noise heard from the engine during the landing?

The motor were sitting in another part of the Lunar Module than the astronauts and since the sound from it did not have any air to transfer through it was not heard in the part were the astronauts were standing. The microphones which did pick up sound, were mounted inside the astronauts' helmets, isolated from the surrounding area. There were no external microphones in the LEM.

5. How come footprints are seen around the landing area when the starter motor would have covered them by dust?

See point 3. The minute dust disturbed would have been cast far away from the area of the footprints since there is no air to prevent movement of the dust. Very little dust could have fallen near the Lunar Module.

6. The dust should have fallen down on the feet of the Lunar Module but none is seen.

As one finds no air on the Moon, the dust fell quickly back down to the ground and landed before the Lunar Modules feet had reached the ground (see point 5).

7. There is no visible flame from the LEM's exhaust when it lifts off from the Moon.

The Lunar Module's fuel contains hydrazine and dinitrogen textroxide, which ignites when mixed and then produces a transparent flame which is not seen by naked eye.

8. Nasa astronauts circled around the Earth for 8 days before they were brought back down. They never landed on the Moon.

If the Apollo ship had circled around the Earth instead of continuing on towards the Moon, this would have been detected by the thousands of amateur radio buffs who listened in to the conversations between Apollo and ground control in Houston. Also, the Russians would have picked up any signal coming from a rocket in orbit instead of being on its way to the Moon. They would surely have told the world about it.

These are some of the claims made in the programme. After investigating the conspiracy makers claims, one wonders how anyone could believe them. One of the other claims is that since all of the photos from the Moon are perfect and show the astronauts perfectly exposed and always in full figure (never any heads missing as one would have expected since the cameras were mounted in a fixed position on the astronaut), all must have been photographed in a studio. This is so absurd, that I myself am certain that Bill Kaysing has not bothered to check the most elementary facts regarding other claims as well. During the time that I visited Nasa's photo archives at The Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston last summer, I could browse through piles of badly taken photos; badly exposed, many with half of the astronauts missing and others with lens flares and other artifacts made by the Sun. Surely Bill Kaysing could have made the same trip. That so many photos were good, was because of the astronauts' professionalism and training before the journey to the Moon. And of course, these were the pictures printed in magazines, books and newspapers after the landing. The bad ones are still in the archives for everyone to see but never made it to print.

Despite it being possible to check most of these "facts", millions of Americans are prepared to believe what is being said in the TV-show. According to the programme, 20 per cent of the Americans feel we did not set foot on the Moon (in the translated Swedish subtitles the figure is 25 per cent). The real figure from a Gallup-poll from 1999 is 6 per cent, but this figure is not mentioned in the show.

Also in the programme is a reference to the science fiction classic "Capricorn One" from 1978. The film is about how Nasa faked a Mars landing scene in the same way as Kaysing and Percy claims Nasa made the Moon landings. In the TV-show the fact that the Apollo scenery is strikingly like the scenery in "Capricorn One" is taken as proof that it was all a bluff - a remarkable way of using facts. "Capricorn One" was made five years after the last Moon landing and the director used the original Apollo photos to make the film as accurate as possible.

David Percy, who is a photographer, is also in the programme. He infers that the still photos from the Moon are faked. This is his "proof":

9. The shadows from the Moon pictures are not falling in the same direction in some of the pictures. This shows that Nasa used many lights in a studio.

That the shadows from different objects do not fall in exactly the same direction is completely natural and applies to pictures taken on Earth as well. How they fall is due to how the ground sits and on the fact that two-dimensional pictures are trying to reproduce a three dimensional landscape. If one used many lights, as Percy states, the objects on the ground would cast multiple shadows. There are no such pictures from the Moon. Certainly the light from Earth also casts shadows on the Moon but the Suns's considerably brighter light drowns this.

10. How come one can see details of the astronauts' clothes on the Moon where they find themselves in shadow and with their backs towards the light?

For three simple reasons. 1/ The Sun's light is very bright since no atmosphere obstructs the light. Much brighter than on Earth.

2/ The Earth also shines on the Moon (during all Apollo missions the Earth was above the Moon's horizon, calculated for communication reasons), and put extra light on the astronauts.

3/ The Sun and Earth reflects light very effectively on the lighted Moon's surface. Look at the full Moon one evening and see how bright the reflection of the Sun's light shines on Earth even though being 385,000 kilometers away. This light is spread through ground reflection also to areas in shadow. The same effect is established when one looks at an object in shadow here on Earth.

11. How come many details are shown also in shadow areas?

There are many different light sources, which can light up the object in shadow (Earth, Sun, the bright Moon dust, see 10). The Earth is such a powerful source that shines 68 times brighter on the Moon's surface, than the full Moon does on the Earth. The Moon dust also reflects light in different places as sand on a beach does on Earth.

12. There is the same background on many photos which shows that the same scenes were used.

In the programme, two photos from Apollo 15 are shown. According to the show, the pictures should show the exact same area - but one with the Lunar Module and one without. Something that is not possible other than the pictures being altered or taken in a studio. But if one looks more carefully at the pictures, it exposes the TV bluff. Since I have had access to both of the still pictures it is easy to see that the background is somewhat dislocated horisontally in the two pictures which shows that the pictures are taken with some 20 metres between. This has made the foreground change radically but the background just slightly. This movement also made the Lunar Module to go out of the view finder and "disappear" from the picture. You could easyly duplicate this effect here on Earth.

13. In two sequences from Apollo 16, which are said to show different places on different days, the background shows that they are taken in the same place.

The clips that is shown in the TV film are without question taken at the same place. According to the editor of Lunar Surface Journal, Eric Jones, the pictures are taken within 3 minutes between. A labeling error during editing did make the scenes seemingly to be taken on different days. Which they are not.

14. Why does the cameras hair crosses on some occasions disappear behind objects in the picture?

Nasa's Hasselblad cameras had many fine hair crosses in it, which are seen on the pictures from the Moon. One picture from Apollo 11, shows clearly how one part of the equipment conceals the hair cross. One Apollo12 photo shows how the flag and the astronaut cover two crosses. According to space expert James Oberg, this is due to the crosses being concealed when a white bright overexposed object "eats out" the crosses in the film. If you want to see an example of this please go to Ian W. Goddard's home page (see source) or to my own Swedish version of this article published on www.dn.se/moon.

15. If one shows the pictures from the Moon at double speed, it shows the astronauts moving at the same speed as they would on Earth.

But the dust which is cast up from the Rover's wheels, falls in a parallel track and not as dust spreads when in the air. This argument really shows that the films were shot on the Moon in vacuum conditions and not the opposite.

16. The Van Allen belt would have killed the astronauts as they passed through.

Certainly it would have been life threatening to spend a long time in the Van Allen belt but the Apollo astronauts passed through the belt in an hour, which was completely harmless. The life-threatening dose is around 300 rem, the astronauts received a total of 2 rem.

The moon conspiracy programme has been constructed so that without the specialists knowledge needed the viewer cannot investigate and judge the truth of the claims. The programme is deceitful and made not for information but for disinformation. I am sorry to say that Fox TV and "Channel 5" exploited this in full.

Sources: Fortean Times 94 & 97; Trelleborgs Allehanda 16/5 - 94; letter from Nasa 28/7 - 94; Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy homepage:www.badastronomy.com; Ian Goddard's homepage: users.erols.com/goddard/moon01.htm