Customer Reviews

We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle

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When I realised I'd dropped $15 for this I could have wept. I want to believe in conspiracy theories however books like this do not help the cause.

It's a thin tome to begin with; in addition, a number of the pages are taken up entirely with (often irrelevant) photographs, looking as it they've been taken on some ancient old busted camera and photocopied a dozen times.

This is an interesting topic however this book in no way does it justice. Purchase something else for your money.

The gist of Kaysing's pamphlet (as near I can make out - the writing style is not exactly fluid) is that NASA was under enormous pressure to produce a successful moon-shot before the Soviets. What Kaysing didn't know (no doubt due to his complete and utter lack of research) is that the Soviet moon program was dead and buried long before 1969 - and pretty much everyone at NASA and the CIA already knew that.

The Saturn V rocket was powered by a 1st stage module which consisted of 5 J-2 engines. (If you've ever been to KSC, you'll know how big these engines are. You could, quite literally, park a car inside a J-2 engine.) The Soviets, in their haste, made a crucial design error in their moon-rocket - the N1 (technically, the N1-L3). They built the first stage with 30 NK-33 engines (yup - that's *thirty* engines). They then discovered what the Americans already knew - controlling the thrust of multiple engines was difficult, but without even thrust from all engines, the rocket would be unstable, and would never fly. NASA had enough trouble working out a control system for 5 engines - the Soviets never had a chance of controlling thirty engines simultaneously. The technology to do so simply did not exist. The N1 program suffered a series of catastrophic failures during the mid to late 60's.

About a month before the Apollo 11 launch, seismic detectors all over Europe picked up a massive detonation originating in Russia. CIA spy planes later imaged the Baikonur launch complex, only to discover that the complex was almost completely destroyed.

Decades later, the Soviets admitted what the CIA already knew - the N1 had exploded on the launch pad, with massive loss of life. The Baikonur plant had to be abandoned - along with the N1 program.

NASA had all the time in the world to get the Apollo program safely off the ground - there was no longer any pressure to take shortcuts. The moon race was over long before Apollo 11 lifted off from KSC, and took its crew safely to the Moon.

Bill Kaysing is the grandmaster of the moon hoax game. For the uninitiated, Kaysing and a happy band of "investigative journalists" believe that NASA faked all of the moon missions for one reason or another.

Ironically, this book began as a satire of the moon hoax theory. Kaysing was contracted to write an outlandish tome that would make fun of the theory, showing how ridiculous it is. But, the story goes, as he researched his quarry, he became convinced that NASA had indeed defrauded everybody and that the astronauts never got farther from earth than an airplane.

I won't go into Kaysing's "proof" of all this, because there is none. His creativity, however, can be amusing. Kaysing writes that while we thought we were watching moon walkers bound along the moon's surface 250,000 miles from earth, they were actually getting down in Las Vegas girlie bars. His evidence? He has a full-page spread of an exotic dancer. Of course, we don't see any astronauts, but the dancer sure is nice to look at.

Then there are the personal schedules. Kaysing gives us what he believes were the astronauts' activities on earth during the moon flights. One of my favorites is the "Guilt Therapy" sessions, obviously for whomever was suffering pangs from defrauding us all. Did these schedules come on official NASA letterhead? Were they developed by government officials? No, they came straight from Kaysing's imagination--but what the heck.

Bill gets ugly with his original editor. He reprints a letter from the woman where she tells him that his manuscript just isn't written very well, and therefore she cannot publish it. I guess Bill never received a rejection letter before, because he concludes that this is proof she is in cahoots with NASA to suppress his efforts to expose the truth.

It's tempting to say that this is so bad that it's good, but I can't, because there are people who actually believe this moon hoax garbage, and revere Kaysing for starting the whole thing. What is most annoying is the attitude of these folks. Their ignorance of basic logic, critical thinking and scientific concepts is outweighed only by their arrogance: they do not put forth their ideas as mere theory, but as fact. And when challenged, they respond with "NASA made that up," or "that cannot be proven," "the photos were faked" or "how do you know--were you there?" All the while, forgetting that they have never furnished one bit of creditable evidence. All they do is make up claims, and then put them forth as fact. (Kaysing once said that he knew a geologist who said the moon rocks actually came from earth. His friend's name? Credentials? Proof? Funny--that's not in the interview.)

This book was once the subject of an article in the Weekly World News--you know, the paper that features articles such as "Clinton catches Hillary in bed with space alien!" Kaysing applauded the News for their work on his behalf. Enough said.

Think about it for a minute. During the 1960's, our computers were almost as big as rooms - even in 1970, college students who majored in computer science had to access one main campus computer using a stack of punch cards in exact order!! Tell me that we had the technology to do all the work for the elaborate moon missions when it took NASA over 2 years to correct the O-ring malfunction that caused the explosion of a shuttle. Now if it takes that long to fix an O-ring, how could NASA have perfected the lunar landing module in 3 months. That's the time frame from the Fox program's great file footage of an uncontrollable lunar lander to the launch time of the 1st moon mission. Furthermore,if we had mastered the science of protecting humans from the extreme radiation of the Van Allen belt, why haven't we touted that achievement? And why did our nation not volunteer to give that technology to the USSR when Chernobyl melted down? Actually, the reason we can't fake it to the moon these days is that our communications/satellite tracking would expose the trickery. Finally, thousands of people worked on bits and pieces of the NASA moon project, but how many of those people actually saw the whole thing come together? Our nation was preoccupied with the bloody Vietnam War at the time and still in mourning for JFK. He promised to have a man on the moon by the end of the 60's, and (wouldn't you know) we did it. If you ask me, it is more believable to think that NASA faked the moon landings than it is to ignore all the reasonable & valid questions that cast doubt that we pulled off 6 flights to the moon and back.

This, simply speaking, is the most utterly ridiculous book ever written. I mourn the loss of the time I spent reading this.... thing. I will not even call this rambling snarl of images and text a book. That this man could shame the Apollo astronauts who went to the moon, the astronauts who gave their lives in the quest to get there, and the hundreds of thousands of Americans involved in sending us to the moon, is appalling.

To speak about the pseudo-scientific "evidence" that he presents is a waste of time. However, if this person's ideas have intrigued you, I will briefly refute three of the most popular ideas:

1) The flag is waving. We faked the Apollo program and shot it on a stage in Nevada.
The flag was stiffened with wire on the back to give it the apperance of waving, since there is no air on the Moon. Plans to do this can even be found in books written before we went to the Moon! Movies where the flag is actually waving only appear where the Apollo astronauts were struggling to stick the flag in the soil, and as a result, the thin wires vibrated.

2) There is no blast crater underneath the lunar module. We faked the Apollo program and shot it on a stage in Nevada.
There is no blast crater underneath the lunar module because, as can be found in countless books and websites, the lunar module's engine was shut down about five feet above the lunar surface. A long probe extended from the end of each footpad. When they touched the ground, the engine was shut down to prevent thrust from bouncing back from the surface and damaging the LM.

3) There are no stars in the pictures from the moon. We faked the Apollo program and shot it on a stage in Nevada.'
Have you ever tried to take a picture of a bright object and a dim one at the same time? The lunar cameras were designed to take pictures of the well-lit surface. The bright lunar surface and Earth washed out the stars. If you don't believe this, try to find stars on a moonlit night with snow cover or try to take a picture of a flashlight and a car headlight at the same time.

My favorite part of this book is when he says that while the astronauts were not on the Moon but in Las Vegas, they were visiting bars and the like. There is a full-page spread of an exotic dancer. No astronauts, just a dancer. Boy, I'm really convinced now!

Please, don't, don't, DON'T get this book. There are better things to do with your life, like planting hyacinths, re-inventing the law of gravity, or painting pictures of your relatives.

First, the presentation of the "book" (more like a pamphlet) doesn't do much for credibility. Looks like a publication from a lunatic fringe type group with limited funds. The "pictures" are a joke. He repeatedly asks "where are the STARS in this picture". With the poor quality, you can't even make out the astronauts fingers in some of the pictures.

Second, after "reading" through half of this rambling, uncoordinated series of disconnected questions, musings, and innuendos, it's pretty clear the author should not be taken seriously. I can't prove wether we went to the moon or not, just as Bill Kaysing can't prove we didn't. And if we didn't why haven't the Russians denounced the feat, and why haven't all those US citizens involved finally come forward (now that the USSR is kaput and there's no reason to maintain that superior position in space). Indeed, we are now partnering with the Russians on the ISS.

Finally, the author builds no case for his hoax premise. There is no attempt to build a cause and effect type analysis, which would lead to questions and/or conclusions that would (if not conclusively answered or proven) suport his hypothesis. In other words, this is far from a scientific treatise.

Save your money and don't get swindled by Bill Kaysing and his ramblings like I did.

Wow this is a bad book. Terrible writing and organization, not to mention he is completely wrong. Buy the book 'Bad Astronomy' instead if you want to learn about the moon landing and hoax theories.

How could someone in their right mind think that the Apollo moon landings were staged in a top-secret sound studio in Nevada? Jim Lovell, an astronaut who traveled to the moon in 1968 and 1970, was right on the money when he called this godforsaken author a "kook." And I also back him on his assertion that mankind's reach for the moon was expensive and took the energies and resources of thousands of people, and it's something that everyone should be proud of. Nothing has come close to convince me the six lunar landings were a hoax, and this book's pathetic theory hasn't changed my tune, either. "There were no stars in the photographs, so it couldn't have been taken on the moon," he says. Apparantly he doesn't understand that the sun blocks out the light of the stars in lunar pictures. And he also claims that the astronauts who have walked there are quiet when he talks to them, so they have something to hide. Or maybe they know an insane, offensive person when they see one. He also insists that the technology required to reach the moon wasn't there in the late sixties and early seventies, nor does it exist today. There, we can conclude that he doesn't know about the U.S. Mercury and Gemini programs. The astronauts of those missions stayed in space for up to two weeks , docked and rendezvoused with other spacecraft, and performed spacewalks, paving the way for lunar flights and proving most of the objectives needed to require them. And unmanned Surveyor spacecraft had landed on the moon concurrent with Gemini, something he probably doesn't know about either. Somehow, I don't think NASA would fake a lunar landing with the knowledge that it could successfully perform a real one from past manned and unmanned flights.

The naivete of the arguments presented in this book is truly astounding. Even if one is inclined to believe the more convoluted of the "proofs" (which have long since been debunked by people who - unlike Kaysing - ARE experts in their fields), many others are easily refuted by a 9-year-old with a passing interest in space flight. For example, the "flapping flag" proof still gives me a belly laugh. Kaysing apparently doesn't understand that the flag was wired to appear as though it waved in the absense of a lunar atmosphere! Of course, the moon rocks and soil have been studied around the world and are universally accepted as authentic. Interestingly, several astronauts (Gordon Cooper, Scott Carpenter, et al.) have an axe to grind with NASA and yet have never suggested the moon landings were faked (they fear being shot by CIA agents, no doubt). Most of all the Soviets would have been the first to call America's bluff. But no, they kept quiet too. SO, this is an INTERNATIONAL conspiracy involving not only the 100,000+ people involved in Apollo from NASA down to the worker on the assembly lines at Grumman and North American (Apollo contractors) AND the international geological community AND the Soviet Union. Kinda leaves one breathless.

I was ready to give this treatise a fair shake at proving that we did not go to the moon. I found it confusing and not very well presented as science, but as an attempt to convince not prove. Mr. Kaysing did not hit the nail on the head. The most credible part may have been that the ground underneath the space vehicle was undisturbed, not showing evidence that it had landed, but was placed there. His notion was that the vehicle would have made more of an impression in the soil at the landing site. He thinks the whole thing was simulated in the desert of Nevada and that the astronauts went to Las Vegas for recreation during the project.