Skeptical stuntmen The Mythbusters will be taking on one of the grand-daddies of all myths in need of busting, the Apollo Moon Landing hoax theory, in a show set to air on Wednesday, August 27.
The Mythbusters take on one of their biggest, most controversial myths ever: Could the July 1969 moon landing have been an elaborate hoax? First, Adam and Jamie focus on photos, testing the theory that two of NASA’s most famous images were shot in a studio. Then, they investigate the myth that to get the classic “low lunar gravity look” the government shot the footage in a studio and then simply slowed it down. And Grant, Tory and Kari take on the claims that the footage of footprints and flags flapping in zero gravity had to be faked.
Now, I know it’s hardly going to make a difference to the debate – The Mythbusters are self-professed skeptics, and so they’ll have their take on it, and the hoax believers won’t be drinking their skeptical Kool-Aid. But there are so many elements of basic stupidity* to the Moon Hoax, it just needs a good walloping by someone…so it may as well be The Mythbusters. Note that I’m not saying people shouldn’t question things like this – and there are some superficially valid reasons why people would do so – just that we should be a bit sane about it all.
* Feeding my frustration is watching Richard Hoagland’s book ‘Dark Mission’ sit comfortably within the Top 1000 on Amazon for the past 6 months, sitting at #1 most days on the list of ‘UFO’ related books. WTF?