Buzz Aldrin’s Interview with Conan O’Brien

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In a talk show, Conan O’Brien (the host) incorrectly said that he watched Buzz Aldrin (the guest) landed on the Moon. Buzz corrected him that what Conan saw was just an animation.

Flat-Earthers wrongly use Buzz’s statement as “evidence” that the landing was fake. In reality, Buzz informed Conan that news broadcasts of the landing used animations to give audiences a visual representation of the landing. They did not go to the moon in advance to set up cameras to report the landing.

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Images in Newspaper Coverages of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing

Apollo 11 landed on the Moon on July 20th, 1969 & returned to Earth on July 24th. Newspapers reported the landing on tomorrow’s edition, July 21st, 1969, with photos.

Flat-Earthers use the fact that the newspapers already had photos as “evidence” of deception. They claim the images should only be available after July 24th. The explanation is simple. The journalists took the pictures off the live television broadcast of the landing.

In today’s situation, it is analogous to taking a screen capture off a YouTube video, a simple task that even flat-Earthers themselves can accomplish.

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Operation Avalanche

Operation Avalanche is a conspiracy thriller film released in 2016. It is of a deconstructive parody genre that assumes as if the Apollo moon landings did not occur and gives a fictional backstory on how secret agents managed to “fake” the moon landings.

Flat-Earthers took footage from the movie, then modified them to make them more convincing, and presented the result as if it is a recently discovered video on how the moon landings were “faked.” The video then spread in flat-Earth communities as a hoax.

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Five Photos of Neil Armstrong on the Moon

Neil Armstrong was the lead photographer on the Apollo 11 mission, and he could not be in the photos he was taking. Out of 1266 photos from the Apollo 11 mission, only five good photos of Neil were taken while Apollo 11 operated on the surface of the Moon.

Some memes humorously compare the total of five photos of Neil on the Moon to the number of selfies some ladies take in the bathroom. Flat-Earthers took them too seriously, and these became a hoax claiming that Apollo 11 brought back only five photos.

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The Missing Apollo 11 Telemetry Tapes

NASA lost the telemetry tapes containing the recording of the raw video data transmitted by the Apollo 11 mission. However, all the data was also safely recorded elsewhere.

Flat-Earthers make a big deal out of this incident to discredit the Apollo mission. In reality:

  1. The only lost data was the raw video before the conversion to NTSC for TV broadcasting.
  2. Only the raw data was lost, but there are other recordings of the same footage.
  3. Apollo missions other than Apollo 11 were not affected.
  4. There is no lost video that has never been seen.
  5. NASA discovered high-quality recordings of the same video.

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Communication Delays in Apollo Missions

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Radio waves travel at the speed of light; it takes 1¼ seconds to cover Earth-Moon distance. It is the reason in the Apollo missions after Houston says something, the response from the astronauts on the Moon will arrive only after 2½ seconds.

Some presentations of the Apollo missions are edited to cut out the gaps created by the delay, and flat-Earthers use them to dismiss the Apollo missions as fake. However, in the actual audio recordings and the transcripts, the delays are there.

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Apollo Astronauts and the Demand to Swear on the Bible

In the early 2000s, an unscrupulous Moon landing denialist lured Apollo astronauts into an audience with him under false pretenses. Then he insulted them as liars and pressed them to swear on the Bible that they went to the Moon.

Flat-Earthers use this incident as “evidence” that we never went to the Moon. In reality, the offender did not meet the astronauts with the best of intentions. This incident tells us more about the offender than it does about the astronauts.

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Apollo 11 Post-Flight Press Conference

Flat-Earthers claim that the Apollo 11 astronauts were gloomy and uneasy at their press conference. They allege this was due to their guilt of faking the Moon landing. In reality, the press conference was full of jokes and laughter.

Unscrupulous conspiracy theorists cherry-picked a single photo from the press conference video in which the astronauts were serious. They abuse the picture to ignite our emotions and lead us to believe the hoax they created that the Moon landings did not occur.

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“Who Recorded This?”

Showing a photo or video from the Apollo Moon landings, then rhetorically asking “Who took or recorded this image?” is a common behavior exhibited by many flat-Earthers, as if there is no plausible answer, and only a conspiracy theory can possibly answer it.

In reality, there are simple answers to those questions. And it is very easy for anyone to find the answers.

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Buzz Aldrin’s Interview & the Quote-Mining by Flat Earthers

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In September 2015, Buzz Aldrin gave an interview at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. Flat-Earthers misrepresented and quoted it out of context as if Buzz was admitting that the Apollo Moon landings never happened.

The original interview was 17 minutes long, and there were other occasions Buzz clearly said the Moon landings happened, without any possibility of misinterpretation.

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The Mockumentary ‘Dark Side of the Moon’

The film ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ is a mockumentary. It is fictional but presented as if it is a real documentary. The film features guests like Donald Rumsfield, Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Vernon Walters, Buzz Aldrin, and Stanley Kubrick’s wife. In the film, they all pretend that the Moon landings were faked, and created in a studio by Stanley Kubrick.

There are many doctored versions of the film circulated on the Internet. Usually, the ‘giveaways’ are cut to make the film more believable. Then, the film is presented as ‘evidence’ that the Moon landings did not happen. Unfortunately, many believe these edited versions of the film and don’t realize the events in the movie are entirely fictional.

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