It didn't happen, did it?

NASA Photo

Search for "Apollo hoax" on Amazon, and you can find at least twenty books claiming that the moon landings never happened. Some were published as recently as 2024 and appear to be selling well. It's disturbing to discover how many people still embrace these idiotic conspiracy theories.

The big news on September 9, 2002, was that astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon, had punched out a moon-landing denier. It was the culmination of a long-running campaign by moon-landing conspiracy theorist Bart Sibrel against Apollo astronauts, especially Buzz Aldrin. Sibrel had spent years promoting the claim that the Apollo Moon landings were faked.

It happened this way. Aldrin had been invited to what he believed was an interview about a children's television program. Instead, when he arrived outside the hotel in Beverly Hills, he found a film crew waiting for him. Sibrel followed Aldrin around and harassed him, repeatedly accusing him of lying. Witnesses stated that Sibrel shoved or poked a Bible toward Aldrin while demanding answers. Aldrin, then 72 years old, repeatedly told Sibrel to leave him alone. Sibrel finally called Aldrin "a coward, a liar, and a thief." On the last word of the insult, Aldrin punched him in the jaw. The camera crew captured the entire exchange, which Sibrel later attempted to use as evidence in pursuit of assault charges. However, authorities concluded that he had largely provoked the confrontation and declined to prosecute. Good for Buzz Aldrin!

A year after the Apollo 11 moon landing, I met a fellow range rat who had witnessed the entire mission from the NASA tracking station in Madrid. Madrid was one of the primary sites supporting the Apollo program, and he was understandably proud of his role in the first lunar landing. A month after the mission, he returned home for a vacation and was greeted as a hero by everyone except his father, who seemed strangely reserved. On the third day home, his father took him aside and said, "Son, now tell me the truth. They really didn't put a man on the moon, did they?"

That question left him hurt and deeply disappointed. He did his best to convince his father that the moon landing was real, but his father refused to believe him. As I sat across from him listening to this, I could sense some of the hurt he was experiencing---rejection, bewilderment, frustration, and sadness at the broken relationship with his dad. I wonder how many other space workers out there have had to deal with a moon-landing denial.