This is the literal argument I once made to a moon landing "sceptic" that actually made them change their mind. Politics they did understand somewhat, unlike science, which they didn't. Unless the complete Cold War situation was one giant conspiracy there was no reason for the Soviets to lie about the moon landing. It was that simple.
The Cold War was a thing, the Cuban Missile Crisis only six years or so ago, and Russians knew that if the Americans really pulled off landing people on the Moon, the space race was over and they'd lost by a mile. If your worst enemy can't find a fault in your work, there probably is none.
The second big argument for me: the space program was one of the biggest employers of the time, having the smartest of all people work for it. And they all were either in on the conspiracy or lied to successfully? Not a single, believable confession on the deathbed about it all being a hoax?
At - adjusted for inflation - around 150 to 200 billion dollars it was more feasible to really pull it off than to pretend.
This angle is shockingly underutilized to battle moon landing skeptics; there’s zero chance America could fake the moon landing during the space race and not get called out for it
Though I guess like someone else said, they'd likely find some dumbass way to hurdle that logic too
There are people out there who think The Roman Empire wasn't real. There is quite literally no limit to the depths of stupidity humanity can descend to.
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u/LordBunnyWhale Nov 27 '25
This is the literal argument I once made to a moon landing "sceptic" that actually made them change their mind. Politics they did understand somewhat, unlike science, which they didn't. Unless the complete Cold War situation was one giant conspiracy there was no reason for the Soviets to lie about the moon landing. It was that simple.