Apollo 11 hoax: one in four people do not believe in moon landing

Money quote

A quarter of Britons believe the Apollo 11 mission moon landings in 1969 were a hoax....

The survey was conducted for E&T magazine, published by the Institution of Engineering and Technology.

Editor in chief Dickon Ross said:"The Apollo moon landing is mankind's most outstanding engineering event so it's deeply worrying that such a large number of people should think the first moon walk never happened and that the public's belief in the legitimacy of science and technology seems to be declining over time."

Conspiracy theorists have pointed to a number of flaws in the pictures and footage from the Apollo missions as proof that the moon landings were staged. For instance, the US flag planted by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin was said to be waving in a breeze, which should not have been possible on the airless moon.

Nasa's response was that the flag waved a little when deployed due to residual momentum from contact with the astronauts, not because of windy weather. Alleged light and shadow anomalies were the result of the highly reflective surface of the Moon and the wide-angle cameras used by the astronauts, said the space agency.

Another question mark over the lack of dust kicked up by the lunar module was explained by the fact that the craft's rocket exhaust fired out sideways rather than straight down.

Leading space scientist Professor John Zarnecki, from the Open University, said:"I think it would have been a far greater achievement to have mocked the whole thing up AND to have kept it quiet for four decades."If one in four Britons today don't believe the moon landings ever happened, then I'm afraid that says a lot about one in four Britons. And what it says isn't very complimentary."