Moon landings: Fact or fiction?

[MRTL_mrclean17]

Image from Wikipedia


Supposedly, the 1st moon landing was done by Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin.

Some background information:

The space program in America was started to counter the U.S.S.R.'s program which launched not only the 1st object into space (Sputnik the satelite), but the 1st manned mission into space. We had to beat them somewhere, so why not the moon? Unfortunately, Russia beat us to the moon, with the unmanned Luna missions. Luna 16, 20, and 24 all returned with moon rock samples.

This is all considered fact and so far, undisputed.

Here is where the contraversy starts:

The U.S. was convinced (and in my opinion, rightly so) that we were being embarrassed by the Soviet's advances in their space program, which was obviously doing way better than ours. So we had to save face by beating them somewhere. And thus the Apollo program was created. The mission of the Apollo program was to put a man on the moon, and safely return him to Earth.
With several unsuccessful missions to the moon, Apollo 11, containing the now famous Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin landed on the moon.
Five other missions landed as well:

• Apollo 11 - July 16, 1969. First manned landing on the Moon, July 20.
• Apollo 12 - November 14, 1969. First precise manned landing on the Moon, within walking distance of Surveyor 3.
• Apollo 14 - January 31, 1971. Alan Shepard, the only one of the original Mercury Seven astronauts to walk (and golf) on the Moon.
• Apollo 15 - July 26, 1971. First mission with the Lunar Rover vehicle.
• Apollo 16 - April 16, 1972. First landing in the lunar highlands.
• Apollo 17 - December 7, 1972. Final Apollo lunar mission, first night launch, only mission with a professional geologist.*

In total 24 American astronauts have travelled to the Moon, with 12 walking on its surface and 3 making the trip twice. Apollo 8, Apollo 10 and Apollo 13 were lunar-orbit-only missions with no moon landings. Apollo 7 and Apollo 9 never left Earth orbit.*



There are many people who are convinced we haven't landed on the moon. I would be interested to hear your opinions. I personally think that we did, in fact, land on the moon, based on the information provided.
And I apologize if this thread has been done before, I have done a keyword search of this forum and found absolutely nothing.


*Excerpt from wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_landing