Thomas Eversberg - The Moon Hoax Page 2
after all?
In the year 2009, the news caught my attention that NASA had not been
able to find the original photographs of the first landing on the Moon for
three years. At first, I spontaneously classified this as fear mongering by some
uninformed circles, but then I was more than a little irritated when the story
turned out to be true. Even after intense search campaigns they were not able
to recover the 45 magnetic tapes. Every rational human being has to pose the
question: How in the world can something like this even happen?
Therefore, it is quite understandable if critical thinkers don’t trust this
entire story. Regardless of whether one is in politics or business—lies have
been and will remain to be a part of every society. We are lied to in order to
go to war or in order to get more money out of our pockets. The public outcry
after any of these lies is great, but then we are lied to again only a few years
later. Memories are fleeting after all! Even psychologists agree with the fact
that lies are an essential part of the human condition and only with them are
humans able to manage their everyday lives. To this extent, it makes complete
sense that skepticism and detailed analyses are so close to a scarcely imagin-
able event. As such, critical attention to detail and a verification of facts that are presented is highly desirable—these are, of course, my daily bread and
butter as a physicist. These habits are generally good to practice in your daily
life, even though you can’t be an expert in every field. With that and with my
40 years of work experience in space flight, I have become the first person to
talk to for all of my friends’ concerns regarding the Moon landing hoax. Step
by step, I discovered unexpected pitfalls and the true complexity of these
questions. The conversations with my friends resulted in an examination of
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the pros and cons of the Moon landings, whereas my approach in this book
was purely analytical and based on logic. Now one might think that logic is a
science in and of itself, and that I am not an expert in that. However, I would
like to emphasize that logic is not borrowed, nor was it invented by science,
but rather that every human being thinks and acts more or less logically every
day. That is the only reasonable way to construct your life. The common
phrase “That makes sense!” encapsulates this fairly well. Moreover, everyday
relationships between things and actions are connected through reason, and
therefore logic (the scientist calls this “causally” connected). We even learn
this as children. For example, if I hold my fingers into fire, I will burn myself—
that’s logical.
With this in mind, I started to more closely investigate the individual items
that serve as evidence to the assertion that humanity was fooled and that the
whole story was made up from beginning to end. At the time, I had no idea
that this would become such a large amount of work. It turns out that there
is a large discrepancy between making an ad-hoc claim and the effort to either
support or disprove this claim in a meaningful, but simple manner.
Furthermore, it is not sufficient to only investigate individual critical points, but you also need to look at the nature of evidence and its historical context.
This is especially important because we are dealing with a singular and signifi-
cant event in history. It is also interesting to know who was first to question
the authenticity of the Moon landings and whether or not we will ever go
back (or go for the first time ever) to the Moon in the future. Out of my per-
sonal interest in the future of space flight, I noted down some thoughts regard-
ing this topic—and the result is this book.
To access all the original texts and film materials I have reviewed for this
book, you can use the QR-codes and URLs within this book to find them
online.
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Russians, Rockets, and Election Campaigns
The first time I was allowed to watch TV in the middle of the night was in
1969, when I was an eight-year-old boy, to watch the very first Moon landing
happen live. At the time, I was completely unaware of the significance of the
special event that I was watching unfold. Today, you can hardly believe what
was going on in the media back then. Reports of new rocket launches and
space missions were still completely new phenomena and these events were
followed closely by the general public. They were all broadcast on live TV and
fascinated everyone else just as much as they did me. The “Conquest of Space”
had already been going on for ten years, and everyone was fairly certain that
the Olympics would be held on the Moon in the year 2000. We argued
amongst ourselves about how new records would have to be evaluated in
reduced gravity (imagine a 500-meter javelin toss), and becoming an astro-
naut was THE DREAM of all young boys. 1 Anyway, it was absolutely clear that new worlds were opening up—the film “2001—A Space Odyssey,”
reflects this attitude very well. For most of the adult population in Germany,
not just in our city, the event was so momentous that they woke up at 3
o’clock on a Monday morning (!) to see what was happening on our Moon.
Most of the windows in our neighborhood were lit up. This excitement enrap-
tured a considerable number of people all over the world, but those in North
America were particularly happy with NASA. They had planned the landing
time so that it occurred between noon and late afternoon on the 20th of July,
1 Until then, the only woman to fly in space was the Russian, Valentina Tereschkova, and that was only a public relations stunt.
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
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T. Eversberg, The Moon Hoax? , Science and Fiction,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05460-1_2
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T. Eversberg
depending on where you lived in the United States. The first steps on the
Moon occurred during prime-time TV (the best time for advertising: The
Moon Landing— Brought to you by Kellogg’s! ) between 6:00 and 9:00 pm. For all the other inhabitants of the planet this meant a greater or lesser degree of
inconvenience to their daily schedule depending on their longitude. The total
viewership amounted to around 500 million people, at a time when there
were far fewer TVs in the world than there are today. Sadly, most of the citi-
zens of Earth were so poor that they didn’t have the time nor the luxury to
pursue something that didn’t even improve their lives. 2
When Neil Armstrong made his footprint in the lunar soil, it was the pin-
nacle of an extraordinary competition whose origins can be found in World
War II. Germany had triggered an enormous technological revolution thanks
to its war efforts. The generously funded German engineers developed new
propulsion systems for weapons that could be used to destroy the enemies,
and above all, their civilian populations. After the pulsed-jet engines that were used to propel the V1 unmanned flying bombs (propagandistically named
“Vergeltungswaffe 1 (V1)” or “Retaliatory Weapon 1”), rocket engines for
airplanes and missiles were developed and “successfully” use
d for the first time
in history. The engineers designated these engines “Aggregate” (A1–A4), or
“Assemblies” and the missiles “Vergeltungswaffe 2 (V2),” or “Retaliatory
Weapon 2.” With them, it was the first time that a warhead was dropped
through the stratosphere at supersonic speeds on another country. This “tech-
nological milestone” was so important to the team around project manager
Wernher von Braun, that men were enslaved and even killed to ensure the
success of those projects.3 After the Allied Forces freed Germany from the murderous Nazi regime, these technologies were claimed by the victors of the
war. Diplomatic relations between the East and the West chilled following
conclusion of World War II to the point that we now refer to this era of East-
West opposition as the “Cold War.”
A second decisive factor was the development of the atomic bomb and its
subsequent deployment on Japan. Completely surprised by its power (the
physicists around Robert Oppenheimer underestimated the explosive force of
the first tests in the desert near Los Alamos National Laboratory by a factor of
about 50) the military proceeded to develop rockets so that these tools of the
2 Even today, the rich people of the world will claim that nothing was the same after this event; however, a farmer in Bangladesh might not share this view.
3 The poor treatment of whole groups of people by the military would be repeated later in various atomic bomb tests of the nuclear powers. The attraction of new technologies is obviously a threat to one’s morals.
Success corrupts! This remains relevant for today’s technical developments.
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Devil could be safely launched at the enemy without the possibility of being
defended against. On both sides (in the USA and in the Soviet Union) the
militaries continued to develop the German V2 rocket, building upon the
experience of the German engineers. Suddenly, all of the unspeakable acts
that occurred throughout the development and production of the V2 rockets
were forgotten (it was decided that the participants were only politically naïve
Nazi-supporters) and those who worked on them were welcomed with open
arms into the East and the West alike. 4 When the Soviets triggered the
“Sputnik-Shock” with the successful launch of their first satellite, it overtly
suggested that the East had strategic superiority to the militaries of the West,
contrary to what people previously thought. Outlandish scenarios like “rock-
ets could be launched at any moment to anywhere from space,” were used as
threats to secure more funding for rocket development programs. This was an
exceedingly successful method for both sides.
The tense political and strategic mood at the time may be difficult to com-
prehend for younger generations born in a more or less peaceful Europe, but
this conflict is an important part of scientific history and aids in the under-
standing of space travel. The fact that two countries spent tens of billions of
dollars on what appeared to be a boondoggle from both a scientific and stra-
tegic point of view can only be understood when one takes the political envi-
ronment and the general paranoia of the time into account. 5
In order to get the Moon program off the ground, however, the military
strategy required one more component: Competition. The two opposing
social systems in the East (communism) and West (capitalism) became an
essential vehicle of politics, and the opportunity of pitting the two systems
against each other explains many political actions of the time (although
explaining these political actions does not necessarily make them more sensi-
ble). This still includes technological competence and with it, the strategic
strength of a government. The current day example of this is China. The abil-
ity to launch satellites into space became an important aspect of the competi-
tion between the two social systems. Especially true for the American
politicians, space travel became an important topic for their elections. The
successes in space of the Soviet Union were not only bad press for the USA,
but the first satellite in Space, Sputnik 1, and particularly the first space flight of a man by Yuri Gagarin, caused a reaction bordering on hysteria from the
4 According to SS documents, about 12,000 people were killed at the V-weapons plant in the Mittelbau-Dora plant.
5 Senator McCarthy’s anticommunist outbursts in the 1950s still resonates in today’s outbursts of religious fundamentalism.
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American public. That was something politicians could capitalize on, and cer-
tainly wanted to. Although in hindsight it is unwittingly suggested otherwise,
Kennedy had a popularity problem during his tenure: the invasion of Cuba at
the Bay of Pigs failed miserably just a month earlier. Following the “Sputnik-
Shock” and the first flight of a human in space with Yuri Gagarin (Figs. 2.1
and 2.2), and while American engineers were dealing with technical problems and failures, President Kennedy was convinced by his consultants and proponents of space travel to use space exploration as a public relations vehicle
(Fig. 2.3).
He was so clever that he took this advice and, in his famous speech before
the Senate, he inspired and convinced the taxpayers that they would land an
American on the Moon before the end of the decade. It was a first-class, pub-
lic relations stroke of genius. 6 On both the American side and the Soviet side, efforts were made in this direction not only to demonstrate their respective
technological superiority, but also their moral superiority. Thus began the so-
called “Space Race,” which was analogous to a sporting event. This was fantas-
tic propaganda for both sides and nearly led the Soviets to a Moon landing
with their new N1 Moon rocket. The contest was fueled by the first orbital flight of Yuri Gagarin in April of 1961, and then the second orbital flight of a
human by German Titov in August of the same year. It was only in February
of 1962 that the Americans were finally able to complete their first manned,
orbital flight by sending the astronaut John Glenn around the world. The first
Americans in space, Alan Shephard and Virgil “Gus” Grissom, flew on bal-
listic parabolic trajectories (i.e. not entirely around the Earth) in May and July of 1961, respectively.
QR Code: President Kennedy’s speech to the US Congress—tinyurl.com/y9oojq3z
With the deadline for the first flight to the Moon only nine years away, the
entire space program plan that the Americans had needed to be completely
revamped. Previously, NASA officials had assumed that the mission concepts
6 A copy of the corresponding manuscript section can be found at http://history.nasa.gov/Apollomon/
apollo5.pdf. The entire speech can be found at http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/
JFK-Speeches/Special-Message-to-the-Congress-on-Urgent-National Needs-May-25-1961.aspx. There corresponding audio file can also be found there.
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Fig. 2.1 News of the first manned spaceflight by Yuri Gagarin. Photo: NASA
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Fig. 2.2 Control panel of the Vostok-1 Spacecraft, which took Yuri Gagarin to or
bit.
Photo: NASA
could be developed elegantly and in a calm manner. Nobody even talked
about the Moon. As early as 1955, construction began on the X15 rocket
plane that would be used to learn about glider technology for later space-
flights. The three X15 planes that were built could fly at speeds six times the speed of sound and up to an altitude of 62 miles. By 1968, nearly 200 flights
were completed in these planes. 7 The Air Force also worked on a glider concept with the intent of developing it into a long-range bomber. This project,
Dyna- Soar, began in 1957. But then Kennedy announced his plan to send
people to the Moon as quickly as possible. Within that amount of time, an
elegant and cost-effective vehicle would be impossible to develop; the only
choice was to take the expensive route and use disposable missiles to send
people to the Moon. X15 flights continued until the program’s funding eventually ran out in 1968. The Dyna-Soar program fared worse: its development was abandoned in favor of funding the Moon program (Figs. 2.4, 2.5, 2.6,
2.7, and 2.8).
7 Neil Armstrong completed seven flights with the X15.
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Fig. 2.3 President Kennedy announces to the US Congress the goal of bringing a person to the Moon before the end of the decade, May 25, 2961. Photo: NASA/US Congress I am bringing up this topic so that the Moon landings can be viewed in the
proper historical context between the X15 and the Space Shuttle. With his decision to go to the Moon, the American president didn’t only halt the logical developmental path in favor of a rapid, brute force approach, but he also
significantly impacted space flight even ten years after the Moon landings,
when the costs of the American space program came under scrutiny and the
design of the Space Shuttle had to be scaled back. I’ll come back to this subject in Chapter 16.
Many people see the Moon landing of 1969 as a singular event, like an
expedition to the summit of Mount Everest. They forget, however, that after
Kennedy’s speech, NASA built an organization that would jump-start an
entire industry, employing up to 400,000 people in its most active years, with