Well, I guess we’re all done here then. "Conspiracy Theorist Convinces Neil Armstrong Moon Landing Was Faked".
I’ll be closing down the Bad Astronomy site now and taking bids for the domain name. Let’s start at $25 billion, the estimated cost of the Apollo mission. That way I can start my own space program.
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The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking, movie reviews, and all that) can be found here.
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 | Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009. |
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September 1st, 2009 at 11:50 am
I knew Armstrong wouldn’t be able to keep his big mouth shut. Now we’re all busted.
I hope you deposited your payments overseas, Phil.
September 1st, 2009 at 11:52 am
Does this mean that the satellite that is feeding my TV isn’t really circling the earth either?
September 1st, 2009 at 11:53 am
>Does this mean that the satellite that is feeding my TV isn’t really circling the earth either?
Of course not! It’s just a balloon, you dummy!!!!
September 1st, 2009 at 11:54 am
That’s ridiculous, everyone knows Armstrong doesn’t give press conferences.
September 1st, 2009 at 11:55 am
Brilliant!
September 1st, 2009 at 12:03 pm
I knew it all along, but, I kept my mouth shut so I could laugh at all of you fools when the truth finally came out. Hahaha. There, take that!
September 1st, 2009 at 12:04 pm
I love The Onion. It’s my favorite news source and salvage fishery.
September 1st, 2009 at 12:12 pm
>Does this mean that the satellite that is feeding my TV isn’t really circling the earth either?
Of course not! It’s just a balloon, you dummy!!!!
Nah, ballons don’t mimic the analemma apparent motion of a satellite…unless they’re in front of the moon.
(Inside joke?)
September 1st, 2009 at 12:13 pm
You don’t need a satellite when the earth is flat thus allowing broadcasts to reach every part of the surface. I thought you people finally realized that all the hoaxes are true….
September 1st, 2009 at 12:16 pm
I can’t believe that “Omission Control” isn’t actually a real website – it’s exactly the kind of dumb pun that hoax believers love. Bart Sibrel is probably kicking himself that he didn’t think of it first.
September 1st, 2009 at 12:16 pm
There goes the NASA DisInfo Agent Gravy Train (NASADIAGT). Now I have to get a real job.
September 1st, 2009 at 12:29 pm
Damn it. Now the CIA will not pay me anymore to have my mouth shut. I will join 2 million of worldwide scientist, engineers and technicians that were paid to be silent. Oh, well. Screw the the chinese and russians that were getting the fatter checks. I was allways jelous of them.
September 1st, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Right, I was hoping to get on that website and see what else they had to offer. Too bad, i needed a good laugh.
September 1st, 2009 at 12:41 pm
The Onion does these things so very well.
September 1st, 2009 at 12:52 pm
Buzz Aldrin should give Neil lessons on how to punch out hoaxer nuts.
September 1st, 2009 at 1:07 pm
The Onion FTW!
September 1st, 2009 at 1:12 pm
Even worse, it’s confirmed in the horoscopes:
Sagittarius Nov 22 – Dec 21
A crazy person will try to convince you that the stars are vast, distant balls of gaseous matter. Ignore him.
Just leave quietly, Phil…
September 1st, 2009 at 1:14 pm
Well, in today’s dollars the Apollo program cost closer to $100 billion, about what it would cost (within a factor of a few) for a well designed manned mission to Mars. Anyone have the link to the terrific short story (can’t remember the author) about the moon hoax that David Brin pointed to a while back? I’m surprised denialists haven’t stolen it and published it as fact…..
September 1st, 2009 at 1:24 pm
It Just goes to show you – the Grey Lady is never wrong:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times/Robert_Goddard
Take that Robert Goddard!
September 1st, 2009 at 2:08 pm
The Onion is the greatest news source, ever.
Sadly, reputable (perhaps…) news channels are beginning to resemble the Onion more and more.
I’m looking at YOU, Fox News *stares, one eyebrow peaked, finger pointing towards television*
September 1st, 2009 at 2:09 pm
“Let’s start at $25 billion, the estimated cost of the Apollo mission. That way I can start my own space program.”
You don’t need that much. Modern CGI has brought the price of the FX way down. What Kubrick and Harryhausen labored over for weeks at Area 53 (and still didn’t get right, like with the flapping flag) can now be done with an ordinary workstation.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Compared to Hermann Oberth and von Braun (NASA’s favorite nazi), Goddard really was a piker. If he hadn’t been American, I suspect few would remember him. By WWII even the Army Air Corps wasn’t much interested in him for rato work.
September 1st, 2009 at 2:26 pm
[...] by libraryimages.net (picture of Sedalia – 1869. Not much has changed, apparently.) Hahahaha Hohohoax: [Via Bad Astronomy] Well, I guess we’re all done here then. “Conspiracy Theorist [...]
September 1st, 2009 at 2:54 pm
Wait, so does that mean the moon I see through my telescope is a hoax too?
September 1st, 2009 at 3:28 pm
@#24: the moon you see through your telescope is painted on the lens.
September 1st, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Actually, there is an interesting relationship at play here that just occurred to me. . . none of the moon hoaxers were vaccinated. That must be it! The anti-vaxxers had it right all along. Those of us who were vaccinated (MMR and such) were simultaneously injected with a special Area 51 alloy extract mix made from the crashed ship debris from the Roswell Incident and that potion robbed us of the ability to see that our government was totally screwing with us for 40 years. It all makes sense now. Finally. So now what do we do?
September 1st, 2009 at 4:14 pm
So I wasted fifteen bucks on my new Galileoscope? The fiends!
September 1st, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Hilarious. The walking backward bit is a new one to me.
September 1st, 2009 at 5:36 pm
Mythbusters PROVED that flags can ripple in a vaccum, the reason Neil didnt beliveve he went to the moon, why Neil, Why?
September 1st, 2009 at 6:05 pm
Gee, I wish I had $25bill. It would be nice to have a REAL space mission, after NASA faked that mission to Mars and so on. And then they hid all the evidence of those Eugenics Wars we heard so much about when Bush – er, Khan – took over the world…
You know, the problem with all these conspiracy theories is one really big assumption: that our government is capable of creating such hoaxes. After all, President Moron and Dickie ran the White House for 8 years.
September 1st, 2009 at 6:51 pm
It appears also that, like Major-General Stanley in Pirates of Penzance, Phil knows the croaking chorus from the Frogs of Aristophanes. And can parody it.
September 1st, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Actually, your Bad Astronomy name is 100% correct. IT WAS BAD, misleading and all sorts of not nice things but the title is correct. Truth in advertising and Truth in blogging, I guess. So I wouldn’t worry too much about someone suing you for misleading them about the true nature of the universe at all.
September 1st, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Does this mean that Buzz Aldrin has to punch him too? :^0
September 2nd, 2009 at 12:28 am
I think it’s sad that Armstrong couldn’t have his delusion of walking on the moon a bit longer. It surely must have given him a great sense of accomplishment for being selected to partake in humanity’s greatest (albeit in reality, totally absurd) endeavor. He wasn’t hurting anyone and he now has to live with the fact that he is the biggest dupe to walk the surface of the Earth.
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:48 am
Yes, and after him came Bush, who screwed up in a different way. Let’s be objective in our insults, shall we? Both political cults have had their failures over the years.
September 2nd, 2009 at 6:00 am
Michael Jackson was the only man to moon walk?
September 2nd, 2009 at 6:52 am
I guess the pictures that Ralf Vandebergh got of the ISS is a fake also? Damn… now I have to be a born again, as science is such a lie.
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:10 am
It’s about time he realized the Sun is closer to us than the Moon. Sheesh…
September 2nd, 2009 at 10:51 am
OTP, but Japan’s new First Lady is an astronaut:
”
While my body was asleep, I think my soul rode on a triangular-shaped UFO and went to Venus,” Miyuki Hatoyama, the wife of premier-in-waiting Yukio Hatoyama, wrote in a book published last year.
“It was a very beautiful place and it was really green.”
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:15 am
The article can be modified at your will:
Paul Offit on Jenny McCarthy:
“”Yes, at the time I thought those thousands of scientists were working round the clock for the same incredible goal, but if anyone would know what was really going on, it would be Jenny McCarthy,” Offitt said of the 41-year-old part-time actress and playmate. “She knows a lot more about autism and vaccines than I ever could. She’s been researching the subject on the Internet for years.”
“Literally years,” he added.
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:20 am
In other news:
“YouTube Footag Analysis Reveals: Wright Brothers didn’t invent the plane. It’s an elaborate hoax. We didn’t have the technology back then and we don’t have it now either. It’s just common sense. Airlines in danger!”
And even more disturbing:
“Forum discussion concludes: Humans couldn’t have invented the wheel. We didn’t have the technology back then. The wheel as we know it is an elaborate hoax produced on a soundstage porbably in New Mexico. Some of the wheels we use today are marked with a C which reveals them as being a mere studio prop, and not a functional wheel.”
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:34 am
‘Michael Jackson was the only man to moon walk?…’
And now he’s *dead*! And under suspicious circumstances…
(Plays Twilight Zone ‘dee dee dee dee’ theme…)
(/Coincidence? I think not.)
September 4th, 2009 at 11:09 am
41. Krystian Majewski Says:
“Forum discussion concludes: Humans couldn’t have invented the wheel. We didn’t have the technology back then. The wheel as we know it is an elaborate hoax produced on a soundstage porbably in New Mexico. Some of the wheels we use today are marked with a C which reveals them as being a mere studio prop, and not a functional wheel.”
Reminds me of an old BC cartoon (names have been changed because I don’t remember who was featured)
Character 1 is walking along and notices a hole that’s been dug in the ground
Character 2 approaches carrying a wheel, drops it in the hole, the covers it over
Character 1 looks curiously at Character 2, who states “we’re now [a thousand] years after the invention of the wheel”
J/P=?
September 4th, 2009 at 11:11 am
Oh noes… a ‘real’ paper thought the Onion article was real:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j6KS46abrFjwE7YYu7yASsgfWhKQ
J/P=?
September 4th, 2009 at 2:11 pm
Can you say ‘oops’?
One giant slip in Bangladesh news
Armstrong did not say the hoax had been “one giant lie” for mankind
Two Bangladeshi newspapers have apologised after publishing an article taken from a satirical US website which claimed the Moon landings were faked.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8237558.stm
September 5th, 2009 at 6:18 pm
[...] il 31 agosto e riportata da numerosi siti come NASAwatch.com, 20minutes.fr, FinanzaOnline.com e Bad Astronomy (il sito dello scettico e debunker maximo Phil Plait), che Neil Armstrong, noto a tutti come il [...]
September 22nd, 2009 at 4:42 pm
[...] not-so-gentle fun at people who think NASA faked the Moon landings. The new angle this time is the Onion article which caused such hijinks [...]
September 22nd, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Late again but…
@!astralProjectile
…“It was a very beautiful place and it was really green.”
She didn’t travel to Venus in a UFO. She just had valium from the wrong bottle!
(For those of you who don’t get that ref., rent or buy “Death at a funeral“.)
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:15 am
For $25bil, forget the showboat moon shot (or the radiation-fest mars trips) and start competing with JAXA;
http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/07/japans-space-agency-planning-space-based-solar-power-arrays/
Meanwhile, the chemistry of the moon rocks is approximately impossible to fake; http://meteorites.wustl.edu/lunar/howdoweknow.htm (see the last paragraph)
-Tom
September 23rd, 2009 at 10:05 am
Gotta set the record straight (re:#22 coolstar)
Robert Goddard was building and flying inertial-stabilized liquid fuel rockets while Von Braun was a research assistant. I am not dismissing Von Braun’s brilliant accomplishments and contributions, but he started where Goddard left off.
Oberth is rightly remembered as a visionary and futurist- particularly related to rockets and their uses – but he is not credited with any leaps in rocket technology.
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:02 pm
Yeah what #50 Bryan said. Goddard made big advances in the face of ridicule. He is really NOT much remembered today and that’s a shame. Neither is Tsiolkovsky. Probably because his name is too hard to spell. And the NY Times apologized to Goddard, you recall, on July 20, 1969. They admitted then that perhaps rocket flight in space WAS feasible after all. Gee.
September 23rd, 2009 at 3:59 pm
ROFL! Oh, lord that really kills. I’ve been looking for a page to explain how I feel about conspiracy theorists to a few friends who’ve been watching too many Discovery Channel “documentaries” about the moon landing. This is perfect!