This is going to be a cute and perhaps overtly snarky look at some of the conspiracy theories surrounding the Apollo missions, but rather than delving into science, we’re just going to utiltise a commonly known human trait known as logic.

Logic is marvellous. It’s what stops most of us from drinking photocopier toner even without the aid of a little warning label, and understanding that while it’s technically possible Hitler was a stand-up nice guy… he probably wasn’t. Logic, however, is a distant friend of the conspiracy theorist. They know it exists, but heck, what’s the point of mentioning it if it ruins their point? It’s the kind of friend from school you send a Christmas card to out of habit, but you wouldn’t recognise them if you passed them in the street.

The “point” I will be applying logic tonight is an oldie but a goodie: the “why can’t I see the stars?” idea.

The theory goes that NASA forgot to put the stars on the “lunar sky” or (most likely and favourite of Bart Sibrel), NASA weren’t sure they were able to correctly produce the constellations and the entire mission would be outed as a hoax just because a few stars were out of place. Good job that didn’t happen!

Conspiracy theorist, irony. Irony, meet conspiracy theorist.

Anyway, here comes the logic.

• NASA spent billions of dollars on going to the moon. This entire theory is based around the idea that NASA could not effectively reproduce the stars in the lunar sky, so they left them out altogether.
• … Really? I mean, this was NASA. While I’m not American and am devoid of the patriotric pride associated with it, NASA had a lot of smart people working for them. Especially astronomers. What about the guys who built the navigational platforms which were based on constellations? Surely they must have had a clue about constellations visible from the lunar surface? And they were already on the payroll – convenient, huh?
• So, all NASA needed to do was head on down to the office of the astronomers they already employed and set them to work on reproducing the constellations effectively. Would that not have been easier than just leaving the darn stars out altogether?

We’ll extend…

• The reason conspiracy theorists mention the stars is because it’s something easily noticeable by a non-scientist. We can all look at the photographs and, because we see stars from earth, we think it’s odd that there’s none to be seen in the photographs from the lunar surface. To understand why there aren’t stars in the photographs, we all need to understand some basics of 1960s photography – and a lot of people can’t be bothered with that.
• So essentially, anyone can see that there aren’t stars, but for someone to identify the constellations as being incorrect, they’d need to be an astronomer.
• Why would NASA have chosen to omit the stars (identifiable by everyone) rather than possibly mess up the constellations (identifiable by a tiny proportion of the population)?

Unless… NASA never considered these things because the landing was real, the photographs are authentic and the explanation for the lack of stars is simple?

Oh, And…

May I please draw your attention to this photograph of the shuttle Endeavour docked with the International Space Station a few weeks ago:

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See any stars?

We’ll leave it there for now.

Image courtesy of Mark Polansky’s Twitter.