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Post by apollo13 on May 29, 2007 11:28:07 GMT -4
My dad told me once that when the astronuts were landing on the moon on mission, maybe Apollo 11, people were already thinking about the hoax theories to try and get some money, is that true?
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Post by scooter on May 29, 2007 11:38:22 GMT -4
There may have been, but they didn't receive the attention they can get these days through the internet and such. Plus, conspiracy theories seem "fashionable" these days, regardless how foolish they are. It just gives them a false sense of insight and intelligence. If they actually apply some study and research into some of the mundane science that is involved in spaceflight, they would see the errors in the conspiracy theories quickly.
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Bob B.
Bob the Excel Guru?
Posts: 3,072
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Post by Bob B. on May 29, 2007 11:50:40 GMT -4
I’m sure there were people who didn’t believe it was real at the time, but I don’t know if they were already contemplating making money off the hoax theory. The first person that I know of who tried to profit from it was Bill Kaysing, who published his book in 1974.
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Post by apollo13 on May 29, 2007 12:05:09 GMT -4
About 5 years after the first moon launch was when the hoax people took action?!
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Post by gwiz on May 29, 2007 12:07:01 GMT -4
There were a few news stories at the time along the lines of "These primitive people in [insert third-world country of your choice] don't believe the Americans have reached the moon, because [local moon deity] would have stopped them". Those days were of course before the concept of political correctness was developed. I don't recall anyone putting the hoax theory forward as a serious possibilty at the time, or even after "Capricorn One" was released, and the fact that there were people who took a hoax seriously didn't impinge on my attention until the early 1990s. I first came across it in a magazine called "X Factor" which in other issues gave credulous coverage to things like ghosts and UFO aliens. Its original Apollo hoax coverage was undermined by a later issue which claimed that the Apollo record had been altered to cover up the discovery of aliens on the moon.
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Post by PeterB on May 29, 2007 12:19:35 GMT -4
About 5 years after the first moon launch was when the hoax people took action?! No, there were people in the USA and allied countries at the time who thought it was hoaxed. They weren't in it for the money at the time - they were just skeptical. However, from reading papers at the time, Letters to the Editor were overwhelmingly discussing whether Apollo was a waste of money. The proportion who thought at the time that it was faked was quite small (I'd say <1%).
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Post by apollo13 on May 29, 2007 12:23:33 GMT -4
Ok, thanks for that!
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Jason
Pluto
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Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on May 29, 2007 12:42:19 GMT -4
I wonder if the popularity of "The X-Files" in the nineties has anything to do with conspiracy theories being more in vogue today.
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Post by apollo13 on May 29, 2007 12:54:39 GMT -4
I doubt it......
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Post by gwiz on May 29, 2007 13:01:02 GMT -4
I wonder if the popularity of "The X-Files" in the nineties has anything to do with conspiracy theories being more in vogue today. I, on the contrary, wouldn't be at all surprised. It gave publicity to a lot of way-out ideas and also gave the whole concept of critical thinking a bad time.
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Post by JayUtah on May 29, 2007 13:22:05 GMT -4
I have seen statements from the astronauts saying there was disbelief even as the missions were being flown, but since that's second-hand anecdotal evidence we can't really characterize it as serious disbelief. Andrew Chaikin writes in A Man on the Moon that the 100+ year old former slave who watched the Apollo 11 launch didn't consider it proof of anything. I think we can dismiss the "provincial" skepticism.
There's some question about whether Diamonds Are Forever introduced the moon hoax. There's an ambiguous scene, but unfortunately Richard Maibaum (the screenwriter) has not returned my correspondence asking him to clarify the writers' intent.
The first reference to a "formal" conspiracy theory is Bill Kaysing's 1974 book, which has been revised 1.5 times. (A second edition was published. A third edition was being shopped around, but was never published; we can presume a manuscript existed somewhere.)
The Kaysing story allows us to fit several possible motives to it. Kaysing admits to having written it to shame the U.S. government over its handling of the Vietnam War and its veterans. But that doesn't equate necessarily to his believing or disbelieving what he wrote himself. The timing is indeed questionable, but it doesn't point to much. I have also floated the hypothesis that Kaysing found the post-Watergate climate much more amenable to a book accusing the government of gross malfeasance. People were more ready to believe something like that then.
Peter Hyams corroborates that with his own experience trying to make Capricorn One. In the early 1970s no one in Hollywood thought that a story accusing the government of massive coverup would be believable. When he tried again after Watergate, he had a better reception.
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Post by JayUtah on May 29, 2007 13:23:52 GMT -4
I'm not sure "The X-Files" created the fascination with large-scale conspiracies, but I'm willing to believe that the popularity of the show and the popularity of conspiracy theories stem from a common collective cultural belief.
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Post by scooter on May 29, 2007 13:24:35 GMT -4
There are so many movies and TV series out there that are "conspiracy based". Some secret governmant organization, micromanaged by some General, using bizzare technology and amazing C3I capabilities...after a while, viewers actually start believing that such activities and capabilities "must" be real, with some basis in reality. The real world, with it's frail humans and fallable technology just doesn't work that way...but that doesn't make for a thrilling story line.
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reynoldbot
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A paper-white mask of evil.
Posts: 790
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Post by reynoldbot on May 29, 2007 16:17:26 GMT -4
I think the popularization of things like the Roswell incident and Area 51 probably paved the way for the Apollo Hoax. I know that the story of Roswell didn't become popular until several years after the incident.
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Post by gillianren on May 29, 2007 16:27:37 GMT -4
I'm a big fan of the first half-dozen seasons of The X-Files. I never believed in byzantine conspiracy theories. I'd say pretty much none of my friends did, either. I think that, if anything, it tapped into a pre-existing mindset, letting people who'd already think that way have something to focus on. If The X-Files had never aired, there would still be CTs. I think the internet'd increase their numbers, too.
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