Conspiracists are divided on whether the earlier Apollo, Mercury, Gemini and Atlas missions were also fakes, whether Laika or Yuri Gagarin ever made it into space, and what role Kubrick played. The line between conspiracy and entertainment is far more blurry. Still, while irritating for those involved — Buzz Aldrin punched moon conspiracist Bart Sibrel in — in one sense the conspiracy idea is harmless, at least compared with misinformation about vaccinations or mass murders. Nor does it seem to be one to which Donald Trump, the ultimate product of news-as-entertainment, subscribes.
The dynamics of the modern internet have clearly not helped: look up Apollo videos on YouTube and before long moon-hoax documentaries start lining up in the autoplay queue. But there is little evidence that Russian disinformation agents have spread moon conspiracies as they have anti-vaxxing propaganda, for example.
Although, if you think about it, it would make perfect sense for them to do so: a neat way of restoring Russian prestige while establishing continuity between the cold war and the information wars. We hoped the guys would make it. We wanted this to happen. We knew those who were on board and they knew us, too. Who is left to counteract things that are untrue? Mythologies develop and become the dominant theme. Perhaps the hardest thing to believe in is the idea that humans might have accomplished something transcendent — something that even brought out the best in Nixon.
We have less faith in ourselves these days. Most moon conspiracists treat the whole thing as a joke, a rabbit hole to go down from time to time. Still, you could see the persistence of the moon conspiracy as a compliment to the Apollo scientists. They think that Apollo really mattered. Not yet anyway. The most renowned moon landings are undoubtedly the six Apollo lunar touchdowns, carrying humans to another world for the first time and still, the only time.
However, robotic exploration of the lunar surface in the latter half of the s played a crucial role for those crewed landings and the boot prints that followed.
Today, robotics has advanced to the point that landers and rovers operated from Earth provide a capable and cost-effective way to explore the moon. From research conducted by the Apollo missions, other successful moon landings, dozens of orbiters and powerful telescopes here at Earth, we know more about our one natural satellite than at any point in history. But there is still much to learn. The Apollo 15 astronauts worked for a total of 18 hours and 37 minutes on the surface compared to just over two hours logged by the crew of Apollo By Apollo 17, the biggest news was the inclusion of the first bona fide scientist in space.
NASA had built hardware and had plans for increasingly ambitious missions all the way up to Apollo 20, and there was talk of manned flyby missions to Mars and even Venus. But the political winds shifted as quickly as public interest faded. Pyle says that higher-ups in NASA flight control were in fact relieved when the order came to shut down Apollo.
They understood perhaps better than anyone how lucky they were that no Apollo crew was lost on the way to or from the moon. Tragically, the Apollo 1 crew died in a pre-launch fire. Legendary Mission Control pioneer Christopher Kraft was one of them.
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