Did "We" Go to the Moon?
Despite massive international proof, many Americans are still tempted by the conspiracy theory, notably represented by the 1977 film Capricorn One, that manned space missions were staged simulacra rather than real events. How, scientifically-oriented people ask, can such attitudes persist and grow? There are several reasons for this that are worth noting, mostly having to do with a sense that many Americans did not have much skin in the game.
1) "We" did not go to the moon. The humans who did were an exclusive group of white, male, military, "well-rooted" Americans. The "right stuff" was too restricted. Although NASA has made considerable efforts to represent a wider population base since the moon landings, female, non-white, and foreign-associated Americans remain a minority that cash-strapped NASA has done little to publicize, as Hollywood movies have recently stepped up to emphasize the ground-based contributions of minority women in the space race. This exclusivity promises to become more exaggerated again as NASA is replaced by the military Space Corps that has just been founded. Meanwhile women, African-Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos and others have grounds to feel "left behind" in the race to the stars.
2) The devaluation of corporate-controlled American mass media has caused an erosion of confidence in traditional sources of public information. It's no secret that the owners of TV and newspapers -- an increasingly restricted group -- exercise censorship of all kinds over daily events, while flooding the airwaves and print pages with Happy Talk delivered by smiling faces and would-be pundits who often have little idea what they are talking about, or else too much prejudice from a set of political and financial agendas. This bombardment of mush saps the public trust in a system funneled mainly through the AP wire service and forces citizens to open up to a wider range of true or false information spread on the Internet.
3) The secretiveness of our space program encourages doubt and disbelief. The fact that our govenment maintains unapproachable bases, unadmitted types of aircraft, black ops missions in space, dubious financial transparency, and so many other veils to truth makes many in the public wary of accepting even those bits of information that are factually supported. Of course, some secrecy within the heart of the military will always be present. However, the sheer volume of undercover activity and the flimsiness of the cover stories, going all the way back to Roswell, makes it difficult for the public to fix the boundaries of what is real, plausible, or possible. Obfuscation of programs like the X-37B can only add to simultaneous skepticism and gullibility to unlikely fantasies.
There may be additional factors, but we feel these are among the most prominent. In short, it lies within the government's range of options to address this area or to provide even cloudier information in the realm of space. If it chooses the latter, it is inevitable that the American public will become more dis-invested in space programs and less willing to give them wide support.
