Bart Sibrel's eccentric documentary "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon"

Western Australia

 
It was the middle of the night, but Una Ronald (pseudonym) wanted to make sure that she stayed wide awake to witness the live broadcast of what could very well be the greatest accomplishment in the history of mankind. Yes, the United States had landed on the moon, and it was only a matter of minutes until astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong were about to exit the Eagle landing craft and become the first men to walk on the on its surface.

She watched in wonder with the rest of the world as Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon and uttered his famous phrase, “That’s one small step for man….

However, as Armstrong and Aldrin traversed the lunar surface and the world watched, Una saw something that shocked her. One of the astronauts appeared to kick a Coke bottle and send it sailing out of the right hand side of the frame. She woke up the next day eager to review this phenomenon when the video was replayed, but to her dismay it had been edited out. Una mailed a letter to the local newspaper, but her letter was never published. She soon found out after talking to others that she had not been the only one to witness this. However, whenever she or the others made any attempts to get on television or get their letters published in newspapers, they were always turned down.

 

Was this a prop that was labelled with a "C"?

Master Control, Australian Broadcasting Commission

Bill, an engineer in the Master Control Room of the Australian Broadcasting Commission, had been anticipating this day for the last several weeks. He knew that in a few hours he was about to witness an event unlike anything anyone had ever seen, and that he would be working to ensure that millions of Australians were able to watch it along with him. Even more important than this was the fact that the Australian observatory at Honeysuckle Creek as well as the Parkes Radio Observatory would be picking up the transmissions sent from the moon more clearly than anywhere else in the world. The plan was that the world would be watching one of these very transmissions live, and that one of his tasks at the Australian Broadcasting Commission would be to ensure that the feed was distributed to countries around the world without any problems.

However, a strange thing happened only a few hours before the scheduled moon walk. He received orders from his boss that the feed to be broadcast would be that coming from Goldstone Observatory in the United States. Bill asked his boss why Goldstone was going to be used, as no observatory in the Northern Hemisphere could come close to receiving the video feeds as well as Parks and Honeysuckle Creek. His boss instructed him not to ask questions and to just follow his orders. Bill switched the feed as his boss instructed, but didn’t like the fact that Australians had to watch an inferior broadcast of the lunar landing. He made a secret phone call to the affiliate in his home town in Western Australia. He instructed their engineering department that he would be sending them the raw feed from Honeysuckle Creek and that he wanted them to broadcast it to their viewers instead of the poorer-quality American feed. When the Australian Broadcasting Commission was notified by the U.S. federal government to resume broadcasting to the world from Parkes, the Western Australia affiliate continued to use the Honeysuckle feed, which was beamed over the air to one Una Ronald's television set.

 Did this "scene" require two takes for NASA to get the dialogue they wanted?

Meanwhile, in near-Earth orbit...

 

“So what do you think? Are we betraying mankind or are we still patriots for helping them win this so-called 'space race'?”

 

“I wish I could answer that. All I know is that we’ve gotta do what is expected of us. I'm sure you feel the same way as the rest of us about the safety of your wife and children.”

 

“Sorry to interrupt you two, but we have a shot of the Earth that we need to get completed and more rehearsal to be done for our press conference in a few days. If we aren’t believable, then you realize this whole thing falls through.”

 

“I still don’t see why it matters, Buzz. If the average Joe knows anything about the Van Allen Radiation Belts, then this thing’s gonna fall through anyway. Hell, for our sake I hope nobody understands basic photography.”

Converging shadows: one of the main arguments as to why the NASA moon photos are fake

The moon hoax theory has basically existed in popular culture since the original moon missions. A British playwright named Desmond Lowden wrote a play called The News-Benders (1967), in which all technological advances after World War II were shown to be simulated. This was adapted to television in 1968, and the TV version showed a Moon landing being faked with models. The movie Capricorn One, which came out in 1978, portrays NASA attempting to fake a landing on Mars. Finally, two of the first (and most popular) books dealing with the subject were We Never Went to the Moon and NASA Mooned America. Today, references in pop culture of a faked moon landing are abundant. One of the many arguments that conspiracy theorists make is that the Van Allen Radiation Belts, which are hundreds of miles out from the Earth, emit far more radiation than any man can endure, and that because of this travel to the moon is impossible without tons of lead shielding, which of course none of the Apollo astronauts had. Other conspiracy theorists point to the fact that there are inconsistent shadows in pictures taken from the lunar surface. With the only source of light being the sun, they argue, all shadows should be cast in the same direction and all shaded areas should be pitch black. Several photographs contradict this, but quick research shows that almost every theory as to why the moon landings were faked can easily be refuted by simple facts.