<i>They would have you believe that the United States Government perpetrated a gigantic fraud on its citizenry.</i><p>Well, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that happened, by any government. The “Weapons of Mass Destruction” lie could be described using the exact same sentence, and that wasn’t even twenty years ago.<p>Not defending the moon landing doubters, or conspiracy theorists in general, but: the proper response to these things isn’t to point and laugh. It’s to recognize their origins - a (often justified) loss of trust in institutions and governmental narratives - and work on addressing and fixing them.<p>Edit: commenters seem to be focusing on a single example, which I presented as an illustrative point for a much deeper and more important phenomenon. You’re missing the forest for the trees.
Armstrong's exact argument about the vast numbers conspirators that would be required to keep perfect secrecy is exactly what I use when people try to claim that the coronavirus is some kind of hoax or that there's some kind of conspiracy about vaccines.<p>Have you ever tried to get thousands of people to cooperate on anything, let alone perpetuate a massive lie, when they have nothing to gain personally from doing so?
I read it somewhere that the best way to respond to conspiracy theorist is to make a more outlandish claim:<p>- Moon landing was fake.<p>- You believe in the Moon?!
What gets me most about these fools is they completely ignore how much such a huge fake job would cost. It would be so expensive that you could cut the budget in half and just...go to the moon.
The saddest and most worrysome aspect of the exchange is actually the sender of the letter being a teacher.<p>"As a teacher of young children, I have a duty to tell them history..."
The best argument I ever heard was that it would be more expensive to fake the moon landing than to actually go.<p>Thousands of people saw the Apollo rockets take off. They would have had to do that part anyway, and that was the most expensive part of the mission.
Armstrong's reference to the moon reflectors brought back memories of this classic Big Bang clip:<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e5CtbbZL-k&feature=youtu.be" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-e5CtbbZL-k&feature=youtu.be</a><p>In this context I can easily imagine that Zack is the teacher.
The worst part about this is that it's a teacher who's believing the fake Moon landing conspiracy theory. I had a teacher in primary school who, one day, filled our heads with nonsense by Erich von daniken. When you're young and a teacher does that it tends to stick in your head.
Didn't they come back with lunar soil samples? Armstrong reply was brilliant, but I would have also added: "here's some samples we took by ourselves, feel free to meet us at xyz lab and analyze them".<p>And btw, who the heck allows a negationist like that one to teach children?
Most men would have soiled myself if they were put into a position of having to reboot the rocket and make it back to Earth. And then seeing how one of the astronauts kept his cool when one of the components for redeparture failed. Just incredible!
While we laugh at skeptics, often they serve a valuable purpose. Skeptics have often revolutionized our understanding of the universe. Like Galileo.<p>We should be careful of unquestioningly believing "established" facts.
I admire Armstrong for taking the time to write such a thoughtful letter. With the exception of people who are close to me, I usually calculate that it's not worth my time to engage and try to refute a conspiracy theory.
As he finished up a video call with his parents who were stuck in Europe, he knew he was right. The wold was so naive.<p>He dictated the last few words on his latest iPhone to save time before telling Siri to send the email - magically connecting himself to the fraudulent spaceman, bits of data flying over air in an instant.<p>"We are still thousands of years away from having the technology to fly to the moon", he chuckled. He turned his lights off, sank back into his bed. Content.
this is my favorite site that debunks all the moon landing conspiracy theories. <a href="http://www.clavius.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.clavius.org/</a>
Well, here lies the difference between US and EU.<p>In US, you try to reason with lunatics who believe the earth is flat and other nonsense.<p>In EU, we treat lunatics like lunatics.
I think the sad part is there are people who still fall prey today to this and many other conspiracies, anti-vaxx just to name one.<p>But this is a core tenant of freedom of speech and information, so not matter how objectively wrong, I'll defend the teacher's right to say it.<p>There will always be those who fall into fringe ideas regardless of how disprovable they are because they choose to believe the moon is made of cheese. The tool of critical thinking not being applied well can easily end up here.
If Elon can't get us to the Moon by 2030, I'm putting my tinfoil hat on.<p>Does this sound like a group of guys who just accomplished the most impressive feat of human innovation?<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeAGGpRYmKY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeAGGpRYmKY</a>
Saw a video of him responding to another skeptic by beating the shit out of him [0]. Honestly when people are that deluded a good knock on the head might be a more persuasive argument...<p>[0] <a href="https://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2019/07/19/lunar-landing-denier-we-never-went-moon/1702676001/" rel="nofollow">https://www.floridatoday.com/story/tech/science/space/2019/0...</a><p>[Edit] Mixed up Neil with Buzz... oops. -_-