The Moon Landing Hoax: Book Review

Dr. Steven Thomas puts forward a theory of the false moon landing in his book, The Moon Landing Hoax. He taglines it, “The eagle that never landed.” However, upon reading this book I am still not convinced of his claim.

This book is not very long to start with. It is a narrow 118 pages that also include the use of a glossary and some images that take up large parts of the pages. I would say a vast majority of this book is spent explaining what the moon landing was and the history behind it. Not enough space was filled with the proposal of a fake moon landing.

That being said, some interesting points are brought up.

In relation to this image, in particular, he says that everyone claims Neil Armstrong was the first man on the moon. If that were the case who took this picture?

“Text from pictures in the article show only two men walked on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission. Yet the astronaut reflected in the visor has no camera? Who took the shot?” (Thomas, 51)

A straight on shot such as this would definitely show a reflection of some sort of camera. Especially on the mirror-like appearance of his visor. Other points he brings up include tiny unexplained camera errors that should not have happened on a place such as the moon.

This image was troubling as well. The flag is well lit and standing straight up. Even though the moon has no atmosphere and no air. He believes the flag should almost be drooping but if you notice on the top, there is a metal rod stuck in there to maintain the raised structure of the flag. 

Steven Thomas took the time to analyze the images NASA brought back and noticed that in the background of all of them no stars are visible. But think about your own experiences. Have you ever successfully taken a picture of the stars on earth? If you did you probably had a very good camera with long exposure to be able to capture the faint life. Yes, this is in space and you would think the stars would be closer but the time of the technology means they likely did not have a camera that could pick up that faint of light.

The pressure of the Space program was another argument made in this book that made me think twice about what I knew of the Moon Landing. The United States were in a heated space race with Russia. John F. Kennedy initially proposed putting a man on the moon and backed it up with 40 billion dollars. In the next three years there were multiple failed attempts and when they finally were able to do it they came back with virtually a flawless mission.

“The astronauts took thousands of pictures, each one perfectly exposed and sharply focused. Not one was badly composed or even blurred.” (Thomas, 47)

Whether it happened or not, this book is not enough to convince one to change what they believe to be historically accurate. The author needed to further elaborate on some of his research and observations, see both sides a little better and give more concrete evidence to prove otherwise. History as we know it will not be changed by one book that includes some vague arguments and narrow elaboration.

Source:

Thomas, Steven. The Moon Landing Hoax: The Eagle That Never Landed. Swordworks Books,   2010.

-Paige Siewert