A comment at the hardware store got me thinking about the moon landing

I was buying some paint yesterday and the man behind me in line said, 'They faked it all in a studio, you know. The shadows are all wrong.' He was talking about the Apollo 11 photos. On one side, people point to the flag moving and the lack of stars as proof it was staged. On the other, experts explain the flag had a rod to hold it out and the camera settings washed out the stars. I read that NASA has over 8,400 photos from the missions. What's a solid piece of evidence that convinces you it was real or fake? I'm curious where people stand on this old debate.

3 comments

3 Comments

cameron4261mo ago

Ugh, that's the worst kind of small talk. I always feel bad for the cashier stuck listening to that stuff. For me, the rocks they brought back sealed it, because labs all over the world have checked them. That's way too much to fake for decades.

the_blair1mo ago

But like, how many labs are we talking about? It's not like every country got their own moon rock to check. A few samples going around the same circles doesn't prove a huge global cover-up. People get way too intense about this stuff.

patriciacarr16h ago

My dad was a total skeptic about everything (still is, honestly) but he had this thing he'd do whenever the moon landing came up - he'd take a laser pointer out at night and shine it at the moon. He'd say "if they faked that, how come my laser dot shows up on it?" Not the most scientific argument, I know, but watching him get all proud of himself was pretty funny. Meanwhile my brother was the one who found out about the retroreflectors left on the moon by the Apollo missions, which is basically specially designed mirrors that bounce lasers right back. So you had my dad with his little red dot and my brother with the actual science behind it, and they'd argue about that for hours at Thanksgiving dinner.