IOn the eve of the 55th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 mission on July 20, Hollywood is hoping a new film about NASA staging a fake version of the Moon landing will take off at the box office.
In Make me fly to the moon, due in theaters on July 12, a Nixon White House aide (Woody Harrelson) sends New York publicist Kelly Jones (Scarlett Johansson) to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to oversee a fake version of the first moonwalk on a sound stage, in case the real version doesn’t work out. The idea is that the US – then in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union – cannot afford to fail. The White House wants the American people to see victory, and so it is moving full steam ahead in its race to be the first country to send a man to the Moon, more than a decade since the communist nation placed the first artificial satellite on earth. orbit in 1957. .
People leaving the theater afterwards Make me fly to the moon You may have two questions: Was there really a public relations expert hired to “sell” the Moon to the American people? And did the US government really stage a fake moonwalk in case the real Apollo 11 mission didn’t go according to plan? Here’s the true story that inspired the film.
The real PR for the moon landing
To be clear, the government did not hire a public relations specialist to oversee the filming of a fake Moon landing in case it failed to carry out the mission.
“There was no special effort to ‘sell’ the Apollo program — especially none aimed at raising funds for the agency, directly or indirectly,” said Bill Barry, NASA’s chief historian from 2010 to 2020, who consulted on the script, to TIME.
Of approximately 400,000 people who worked on the lunar mission, about three-quarters of those people worked for private contractors, who provided services they were allowed to commercialize, according to Richard Jurek, co-author of Commercializing the Moon: The Sale of the Apollo Lunar Program.
“They were the ones who created the NASA press kits and ran advertising campaigns,” Jurek told TIME. “They had to get permission from NASA to do it, but they were doing it themselves. [advertising] campaigns.”
It is true that astronauts wore Omega watches because the devices withstood all kinds of tests in different weather conditions. In the film, Jones approaches companies like Omega to set up marketing campaigns, but that’s not how it would have happened. The film also implies that money from sponsorship deals was helping pay for the Apollo 11 mission, but that didn’t happen either, according to Jurek.
It is stipulated on NASA’s website that “as a government agency, NASA will not promote, endorse or appear to promote or endorse a product, service or commercial activity. “So sponsorships were definitely not part of the Apollo 11 public relations campaign, notes Barry. Some astronauts did endorse products, but only after they were no longer on NASA’s payroll.
“Among the NASA employees I talked to about the script, this got the most laughs,” says Barry. “When dealing with the public in any way, my legal people regularly reminded me that giving the appearance of endorsement of a commercial product would get me into big trouble.”
The real head of NASA’s public relations division in the run-up to the Apollo 11 moon landing was a journalist named Julian Scheer. He oversaw a team of former journalists who helped the media cover the space program and profile employees and astronauts. Scheer was the one who insisted that the first steps on the Moon be broadcast live on television. In contrast to the Soviets, who did not allow journalists to know the inner workings of the space program, NASA allowed its employees and astronauts to speak freely.
In preparation for the Moon landing, NASA’s public relations gurus were very concerned about what NASA would say to the world if the astronauts died during the mission, so numerous statements were prepared that were never used. After the Apollo 11 astronauts returned safely to the Moon, NASA’s PR focused on convincing the public that the space program was still necessary to return to the Moon and explore other planets. As Jurek says: “Most people see NASA as something that exists just to get astronauts to the Moon. So once we did that, it was like, ‘Okay, now what?’”
The Origins of the Moon Landing Hoax Theory
When it comes to the idea of filming a staged moonwalk, the answer is a little clearer. For most, at least.
“There is no evidence that NASA faked a moonwalk,” says Barry.
It is true that there was a space race between the US and the Soviet Union. American leaders feared that if the Soviets reached the Moon first, communist government would be seen as the superior form of government compared to U.S. democracy. However, there is nothing to suggest that the US was so desperate in its mission that it would consider faking a moon landing for the American public.
However, conspiracy theories persist today, with some doubting that the successful Apollo 11 mission involving astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin ever occurred. There are people who mistakenly believe that NASA performed the first moonwalk. Barry points out that if the US faked the moon landing, the Soviet government would have discovered everything by now. In fact, Soviet scientists did not question the legitimacy of the feat. The US was also working with countries around the world to communicate with the Apollo spacecraft.
That said, despite all the physical rock samples brought back from the Moon and analyzed by a consortium of highly respected scientists, a small minority of Americans still think there was no way NASA had the budget or the time to satisfy President John F. Kennedy’s promise to put a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. A 2021 University of New Hampshire survey found that 10% of Americans believe NASA did not land on the moon.
“There was only one week in the 1960s when everyone was in favor of spending more money on the space program – more than 50% of Americans. That was the week we landed on the Moon,” says Barry.
According to Peter Knight, author of Conspiracy Culture: From the Kennedy Assassination to the “X-Files””The conspiracy theory that the moon landing was a hoax can be traced back to a self-published book in 1976 We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Fraud by Bill Kaysing, a former US Navy officer. The basic premise is that NASA couldn’t meet the deadline set by JFK, so they sent astronauts into Earth’s orbit and performed a moonwalk in a movie studio. To some, Kaysing’s military credentials made it seem like he had some kind of insider knowledge.
The book also fit into the culture of the time. The 1970s marked the beginning of years of declining trust in the US government – between the failed Vietnam War and the Watergate scandals. Conspiracy theories about JFK’s sudden assassination in 1963 had been circulating for years.
“For a lot of people, there was a feeling that the government was lying,” Knight tells TIME. “That’s the context in which Kaysing’s book emerges.”
The 1978 fiction film Capricorn One, about NASA staging a fake landing on Mars, only fanned the flames. And then Kaysing’s ideas gained popularity in the 1980s among “flat-Earthers,” conspiracy theorists who falsely believe the Earth is flat. Over the years, his false theory spread across radio shows, zines, books, and gun shows in the era before social media.
Moon landing rumor conspiracy theories may be more widespread among Russian citizens than among U.S. citizens. A 2020 Russian Center for Public Opinion Research survey found that half of Russians believed the 1969 moon landing never occurred. Offering an explanation for why the moon landing hoax conspiracy theory endures among some Americans, Knight says, “A lot of people have felt that if we can’t cure our problems at home, what are we doing trying to get involved in some kind of idea? fantasy? of space exploration? So I think conspiracy theories address some of those concerns.”
When asked whether a film featuring a staged Moon landing could make people wonder if the entire Moon landing was a hoax, Barry says he believes anyone who watches the film will immediately see that the film is not a documentary, but a clear parody. of conspiracy theorists and a romantic comedy. And for the skeptics, there is plenty of evidence online that “we landed on the Moon, not just once, but six times”.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
