The moon landing was real
As libertarian, it really pains me when I see people who understand that government is an evil institution who fall for nutcase conspiracy theories.
Governments have committed serious crimes, including genocides, colossal cover-ups, vile experiments, they lie all the time.
That does not mean that everything they say is wrong.d
Learn to tell the difference!
Governments and other bad actors probably create nutty conspiracy theories as an intentional distraction, to keep their opponents busy with utter nonsense.
The "moon landing hoax" is one of them.
The physics of the missions are accurate
I watched the Apollo 11 landing as a child. Then I studied physics and IT at EPFL (the Swiss Institute of Technology, currently rated among the 20 best universities on the planet) and I can say without any hesitation that going to the moon was not all that hard, once the rocket technology was mastered.
The NASA calculations are perfectly accurate:
https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/mathandscience/exploration/Prob_LunarLanding_detail.html
Here is a great visual summary:
https://www.space.com/26572-how-it-worked-the-apollo-spacecraft-infographic.html
The physics of launching a lunar lander, in detail:
https://www.wired.com/story/the-physics-of-launching-a-lunar-lander-from-the-moons-surface/
Do the math yourself or ask someone you trust to help you with it.
The moon landings could not be faked
This is hard to understand for people who grew up with computer technology and CGI: faking the moon landing was impossible, in 1969. Materially impossible!
- there was no recording technology that would have allowed them to store hours of continuous video information, i.e. what they showed on TV
- recording special effects over more than a few seconds was totally out of reach; several minutes of special effects was unthinkable; Kubrik's "2001" used the most advanced special effects and they were all very short, for good reason
- the signals had to come from space; lots of amateurs and governments followed those transmissions
- this was at the height of the Cold War: if there had been anything suspicious about the moon landing, the USSR would have had a field day exposing it
- Saturn V rockets were seen taking off multiple times by more than 15'000 spectators for each launch, so those gigantic missiles obviously were real and capable of flight
- the entire flight sequence was filmed from multiple angles; the separation of each stage of the rocket was filmed with cameras installed in various locations around the rocket; the only way such images could be simulated would be via top notch modern CGI.
In the following video, S.G. Collins, a movie expert, explains the precise technical reasons why it was materially impossible to create a fake moon landing video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_loUDS4c3Cs
As he points out, governments are probably very happy that people are preoccupied with ridiculous conspiracy theories rather than paying attention to real, present-day issues.
The images were perfectly accurate
All the Apollo missions video images were transmitted in real time, not recorded by the astronauts. They could not store the videos. They did use various methods to record short sequences of the video transmission on earth.
They did return with thousands of high resolution, high quality photos shot with the best cameras on the best photographic film available, back then. NASA released more than 10'000 high resolution photos online and they still look absolutely stunning:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/projectapolloarchive/
As I was a huge fan of the moon landing, I received many gifts from my family that revolved around the Apollo missions, such as a model kit of the Apollo V rocket and huge photo albums with some of those high res photos.
Here's the thing: if those were modern computer-generated images and not photos taken with a real camera, they would require at least 1GB of RAM just to display or print the image.
Back in 1969, the only for a mainframe computer, was 8MB. There was no monitor that could have displayed such an image, there was no Photoshop software. In short, it was impossible to artificially create such images. They HAD to be real!
NVidia, the grapics card manufacturer, did a complete simulation of the moon landing site with full ray tracing and found that the Apollo mission images were exactly as they should have been - but in 1969, they could not have generated such perfectly ray-traced images.
They actually had to go to the moon to get them right - and as this simulation shows, even tiny details altered the images exactly as they should have, e.g. the reflection of sun light from Armstrong's suit when Aldrin came out of the lunar lander - when NVidia removes his reflection from the image, it no longer looks like the original:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syVP6zDZN7I
They released an update based on their newest GPUs that include ray tracing:
https://www.cnet.com/news/nvidia-silences-moon-landing-conspiracy-theorists-with-its-new-gpu/
You can download their entire code and see how they did it.
There is material evidence
NASA placed multiple mirror on the moon that allow us to bounce a laser to take precise distance measurements.
How would those mirrors have gotten on the moon if not with a rocket and being placed on the surface by astronauts?
In an unmanned mission? Just shooting a rocket to the moon and then safely land the mirrors on the surface? That would have been even harder than having astronauts place the mirrors on the surface. The required rocket technology would have been the same, but landing gear on the moon and placing it accurately would have required more technology than they had, back then.
Modern moon satellite photos reveal traces of the moon landings exactly where they should be:
and
https://www.space.com/12796-photos-apollo-moon-landing-sites-lro.html
Chinese moon robot photos match Apollo photos
Jan 3, 2019, China landed a robot on the far side of the moon.
Interestingly, the photos look just like those taken during the Apollo missions.
If China could have shamed the US by exposing some kind of "fraud", you can bet they would have done it.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2019/01/13/china-releases-more-images-from-far-side-of-the-moon/
Images and videos of "fake moon landings"
Of course NASA shot training videos of moon landing simulations! They had to find out exactly how they wanted the real thing to be filmed. They had to instruct the astronauts about what they would see etc.
NASA included some of those in their official collection of images:
It would be weird if they had not run such simulations, considering the complexity and cost of the program. Does anyone really think that they would not have created simulated landings and filmed everything to study and debate?
Conspiracy nutters now think that the photos and videos of training setups are "proof that it was a hoax". Although NASA officially released those photos to document the Apollo program. Where do you even begin?
The "but landline call" fallacy
This is a hilarious - some moon conspiracy theorists actually complain about "Nixon making a landline call to the astronauts on the moon".
Yes, these are users of modern MOBILE PHONES that communicate WIRELESSLY and that can call LANDLINES, but they don't understand that it was easy to switch a RADIO CALL to a landline in 1969?
In the 1960s, they actually had over 1 million mobile car phones and they were all able to call landlines:
https://weburbanist.com/2012/09/18/remember-millions-of-mobile-phones-in-the-1960s-you-should/
This just illustrates a baffling ignorance of scientific and technological principles.
A bit of humor
"That Mitchell and Webb Look - Moon Landing" is my favorite sketch:
"So we will still have to build the massive moon rocket - why don't we just pop up to the moon and film the fake moon landing there?"