Apollo Moon Landings Post-Conference Activity Worksheet

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NASA Glenn Digital Learning Network Videoconference: Apollo Revisited
Post-Conference Activity

Conclusions

Cite a reliable source (scientist, historian, astronaut, etc.) on each side of the hoax issue. Who are they and why should you believe them?
Look over your notes from the questions and from the grid completed during the pre-conference activity. State whether you think that the people who support the Moon Conspiracy Theory have provided the scientific evidence for their ideas.
Give your opinion: Do you think NASA landed men on the Moon? Why or why not? Send an email to NASA and copy your friends with your opinion.
Should we return to the Moon? __________ Why or why not?
When it happens, how can astronauts or robots convince the world that they have been to Mars?

Extensions

This is not the first instance of controversy about the Moon. Investigate other Moon Hoaxes of yesteryears.

1. The Flying Dutchman

In 1835, Edgar Allen Poe published an article in the Southern Literary Messenger about a Dutchman who traveled to the Moon. In the story, Hans Pfaall, an unemployed bellows mender, secretly built a giant balloon. His goal was: "to force a passage, if I could, to the Moon." He gambled that he would gradually get accustomed to the very high altitudes. It is reported that Pfaall took off for the Moon on April 1, and because of the thinning atmosphere, soon suffered spasms and began bleeding from the ears, nose, and eyes. He made it though--after 19 days in space. The Flying Dutchman landed in a crowd of ugly little Moon people, who "stood like a parcel of idiots, grinning in a ludicrous manner, and eyeing me and my balloon askant, with their arms set akimbo."

Despite the awkward welcome, the world's first astronaut lived among the unsightly critters for five years, then wrote a letter to the Mayor of Rotterdam in which he described some of his experiences and negotiated his return. A lunar messenger whom
Pfaall had entrusted with the missive did reach Rotterdam (by balloon, of course) but couldn't be persuaded to land. After dropping off the letter, he disappeared into the heavens without waiting for a reply--no doubt, Poe muses, "frightened to death by the savage appearance of the residents of Rotterdam." (Poe's story is recounted in Media Hoaxes, a book written by Fred Fedler and published in 1989 by Iowa State University.)*

2. Life on the Moon

In August 1835, the New York Sun published a series of articles by Sir John Herschel, the famous British astronomer, about the "discovery" of life on the Moon. The series was "reprinted" from the Edinburgh Journal of Science, later found to be nonexistent, and the author was discovered to be Richard Locke, not Sir John Herschel. More information.

3. Alternative Three

On June 20, 1977, Anglia TV in England caused a stir when it broadcast a documentary called Alternative Three, which suggested that the space program was a decoy for a secret project to establish bases on the Moon and Mars so that
some people could escape the coming ecological nightmare on earth. According to the documentary, the power elite in the USSR, the US, and Great Britain had been working together on a secret project called Alternative Three:

Insiders who were deemed a security risk were callously murdered.
Scientists had been abducted to do experiments in the space colonies.
Even ordinary folks had been snatched and forced into slave labor on the Moon and on the red planet.

By linking facts with half-truths, and by staging interviews with so-called "astronomers" and "astronauts," the makers suggested that both NASA's space program and the Cold War were decoys.

The show’s credits explained that it was a hoax, but some people believed it anyway. The fact that it was all a hoax was made clear by the closing credits that listed the actors in the show and that contained a copyright notice dated April 1. Nonetheless, Anglia was flooded with calls, and newspaper headlines reported "shock" and "panic." To this day, some people believe that all of it, or some of it, is true.*

4. War of the Worlds

There have been other instances of media-driven hoaxes. One of the most famous was the radio broadcast of H.G. Wells' novel War of the Worlds. The broadcast was narrated by Orsen Wells in the 1930s; it created a panic because many people thought a Martian invasion was actually occurring. Online version. Orsen Wells' Original 1938 Broadcast.

*Source: "The Wrong Stuff," published in Wired.com by Rogier van Bakel, September 1994.

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Web site related: Curator
Content related: Joe Kolecki (Joseph.C.Kolecki@grc.nasa.gov)