When the final Apollo mission blasted off the lunar surface in 1972, few would have guessed that it would be over five decades before we even got close to going back again. Retrospectively though it’s not the biggest of surprises, as the cracks were already showing:

The law of diminishing returns had rarely been so starkly demonstrated, with around 2.5% of the United States’ GDP being spent on the Apollo missions for up to a decade and public interest waning dramatically, subsequent missions had already been cancelled, and NASA had turned their attention towards the concept of reusable spacecrafts with the ill-fated Space Shuttle programme. As such, focussing on considerably less expensive, near-earth orbit crewed missions has been the order of the day for decades now.

That picture is now changing, though, with the explosion (sorry) of competitors such as Virgin Galactic, Space-X, and Jeff Bezos’ flying phallus putting the blue into Blue Origin. Their undeniable innovations (self-landing booster rockets anyone?) have raised the bar of expectation significantly, and the sky is way below the limit. Fortunately, the less credulous of the population don’t take any of Elon Musk’s bolder statements too seriously, and his proclamations about colonising Mars were met with healthy skepticism in general (despite his offer of pizza when you got there). It has however brought the moon back into focus, not just as a potential step towards more distant exploration, but as a goal in its own right.

This backshot provides the perfect stage for the Artemis missions. With the goal of returning humans to the moon by… well, probably best not mention an actual year as that goal has been pushed back more times than a Sunday league football referee. Thankfully though, at the time of writing some notable steps towards that long awaited small step have been taken, and Artemis 1 has successfully completed an uncrewed mission to orbit the moon and returned back to earth.

Media scrutiny has been meticulous, and at times merciless. Multiple postponements brought the viability of the technology into question, spiralling costs bringing criticism and regurgitating the ongoing debate about whether space travel is worth the cost at all, and even the second-best Brian in Skepticism (Mr Dunning of Skeptoid podcast fame) weighed in with a scathing Twitter thread. Despite all this, the excitement surrounding the recent orbits of the moon, and an imminent return to its surface, are tangible.

Perhaps though, the pound-for-pound loudest noise has been made by a much smaller group: those who don’t believe we ever went to the moon in the first place. Trawling through YouTube comment sections, Reddit Threads, and private Facebook groups throws up howls of derision, accusations of fakery, and the unmistakable sound of goalposts being lifted in readiness for the shift. Let’s take a look at some of the common threads…

The photography ban

Shortly after the launch it was revealed that NASA had issued a ban on photography of the launch area. This certainly sounds strange, and somewhat expectedly the conspiracy theorists cried foul. The disappointing truth is that there may indeed be merit to calling foul, but more because it would highlight a lack of transparency from NASA about suspected damage to the tower rather than anything more nefarious. Another plausible reason suggested is that without the rocket in place, there could be pieces of proprietary technology visible that NASA would not want made public, for obvious reasons.

Apollo site no-fly zone

Tom Cruise isn’t the only person who is insistent on a fly-by, and the Moon landing denialists seem to think that an Artemis mission imperative should be to buzz the tower – or in this case some bleached out flags, lunar lander remnants, and bags of excrement – and take some holiday snaps along the way. Unfortunately for them the Orion capsule had other goals in mind, and at the time of passing over the Apollo landing sites it was thousands of miles above the lunar surface with insufficient camera power to resolve such small objects.

It also goes without saying that even if it had gone closer and filmed the Apollo sites in high definition there would simply be claims of fakery or that the artefacts were placed there without humans travelling there (a common refrain in hoaxer circles). Various other photos and video footage from the mission were of course met with such allegations, along with some of the classics like “Where are the stars?”, and other such grumblings.

The attempted imposition of a law to preserve the Apollo sites of course prompted much hoaxer heckling, but for those not on the conspiratorial side, the preservation and protection of undeniable locations of historical significance is a no-brainer. Putting that aside though, it certainly would be cool to have close-up footage of those sites, but the risk of accidental damage is not worth taking. For evidence of such risks you need look no further than India’s Vikram lander’s faceplant (or if you prefer technical language, “hard landing”) in 2019.

Delays and duration

As already mentioned, there were several short notice postponements of the launch of Artemis 1, much to the amusement and speculation of the Moon hoaxer community.

In reality, there were valid safety reasons for those decisions. One of which was an actual hurricane. Even when the launch finally got underway there were rumblings about the duration of the mission:

Unsurprisingly there were valid reasons for this which are easily found. Unfortunately the truth rarely makes for a compelling Instagram post.

Radiation

One of the most persistent claims of moon landing deniers is that humans simply can’t survive going through the Van Allen radiation belts. This is of course not true. James Van Allen first wrote about them a full decade before Apollo 11. Further exploration, experimentation and planning led to well documented plans to take the astronauts through the belt with minimal exposure. Van Allen himself even commented about the conspiracy theories. Back before the internet took hold, one of the primary voices of misinformation was Fox TV (plus ça change) and their ‘documentary’ which attempted to cast doubt on the moon landings. Van Allen’s response was suitably scathing:

The recent Fox TV show, which I saw, is an ingenious & entertaining assemblage of nonsense. The claim that radiation exposure during the Apollo missions would have been fatal to the astronauts is only one example of such nonsense.

James Van Allen

With the prospect of humans passing through the Van Allen belts once again there are divided opinions amongst the hoaxers on how to deal with this: Some are saying that the Artemis missions will also be faked, whereas some claim that we have now developed the technology to get through the belts and these missions are genuine. Interestingly, there is even speculation that once the Artemis missions successfully get humans to the moon and back that NASA will ‘come clean’ and admit the Apollo missions were faked.

It’s also worth noting the seemingly deliberate conflations and obfuscations from hoaxers when it comes to comments made by NASA and other experts about protecting humans against radiation from the Van Allen belts versus protecting them outside of Earth’s magnetosphere, particularly with the potential for solar events (fun fact, there were a series of powerful solar storms that took place between the Apollo 16 and 17 missions which may have proved lethal to any astronauts outside of Earth’s magnetic field).  

Further confusion still is the differentiation between protecting humans versus protecting the sensitive technology of the spacecraft. The fact that we’re not using technology from five decades ago in modern space missions is common sense (for most), but it brings a new set of challenges which have to be addressed. There’s no denying that the race to the moon in the 60s was cavalier at times, even if it was tempered somewhat by the tragic death of the three Apollo 1 astronauts, so more precautions are being taken in both respects.

Conspiracist in chief

Professional astronaut heckler Bart Sibrel has been the loudest voice in the moon hoaxer community for decades, but he has been strangely quiet about the planned return to the moon. Surprisingly, he’s not on Twitter or Facebook, and his website doesn’t appear to have been updated much recently. The site has no mention of the Artemis program at all. Interestingly though, he appears to have turned his attention somewhat to antivaccine misinformation with ‘news’ links out to RT articles and even an interview with Natural News founder Mike Adams.

Sibrel’s most recent flurry of lunar-trick self-publicity is centred around an alleged (and debunked) deathbed confession from someone involved in faking the moon landings. Sibrel was recently interviewed by climate change denying conspiracy theorist James Delingpole on his podcast (creatively named The Delingpod), and only briefly referred to the Artemis program twice in ninety minutes:

When asked if we can go to the moon now:

No, because if they did the Artemis rocket would have humans on board instead of mannequins

When making a comparison to the Apollo missions running on schedule:

For some reason that’s on time. Never been done before, and with one millionth the computing power of a cell phone, but when forty years later they say we’re going to have an unmanned probe orbit the moon they can’t do that in five years.

This is an impressive, or accidental piece of obfuscation. Apollo 11 did indeed get us to the moon before the end of the decade to hit John F Kennedy’s target, but to imply that there were no delays along the way is just plain wrong.

Side note: Yes, dear reader, I did listen to ninety minutes of Sibrel and Delingpole. Just for you – you’re welcome! I don’t recommend it, but if you want a quick cringe then at least have a listen to the intro tune at the start which is a low budget butchering of a rock classic. Amusing and infuriating in equal measures.

Plain and simple

Of course, the conflicting narratives from the moon landing hoax community are to be expected. They’re not quite sure exactly sure what their stance should be on Artemis as it’s much more difficult to effectively refute the here and now, especially considering the ubiquity of media and information online. There is however one group who remain much more united in the face of all this confusion – the flat earthers. At least with them we have some consistency. In case you’re wondering, according to them it’s ALL fake apparently. Interestingly, the admins of the Moon Landing Hoax group on Facebook regularly post about removing flat earthers because of their ‘inability to understand Science’. Pot, kettle, black perhaps, but at least we agree on something.