Got your Area 51 facts straight? Your Kennedy conspiracy in order? Then why not adopt one of the more curious conspiracy theories: man never landed on the moon. Produced in 2001, this 47-minute documentary (which aired on the Fox network) has the “facts” to prove Apollo 11 went into space, but never to the moon. While the film starts a bit differently than most conspiracy videos (a Tower of Babel opening, a montage of rocket explosions scored to “Destination Moon”), the film soon goes fast and loose with the facts and quickly plays its “knockout” evidence. Writer-director-producer Bart Winfield Sibrel’s first arguments play on hindsight: Kennedy (mired in conspiracy) set a goal of landing a man on the moon before the end of the decade; Nixon (mired in trickery) was in office to pull it off. When Sibrel examines iffy scientific principals (how deadly are Van Allen radiation belts?) and curious facts (Neil Armstrong’s guarded private life–is he hiding something?), it puts just enough doubt in the viewer’s mind. The vast array of photographic evidence seems sketchy (shadow irregularities easily explained by exposure settings), confusing (newly discovered shots from inside Apollo 11′s capsule), and intriguing (shadow discrepancies). The production quality is not convincing, though, especially the odd way the film ends with a clip from the Zapruder film. The video cover is actually a shot from the Hollywood film Capricorn One, a much more fun way to tackle your space conspiracy theories. –Doug Thomas
A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon [VHS]
Pinned on October 7, 2013 at 7:50 am by Lawrence Martin
![A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon [VHS]](http://joys.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/b7676d305d_51DWST5MN6L.jpg "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Moon [VHS]")
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Deception at its worst This film is highly deceptive. After several minutes of emotional religious setup reeking of brimstone, it presents a few slipshod and comical attempts at discussing astrophysics and rocket science, neither of which its writer/director Bart Sibrel seems to know anything about. The film tries to argue that Apollo was suspiciously successful after the initial Mercury project failures. But that’s easy to do when you completely ignore — as Mr. Sibrel has — the Gemini project in which all those problems were faced and solved, including the supposedly impassable Van Allen belts. (Here’s a hint: Dr. Van Allen, for whom the belts are named, specifically repudiates this filmmaker’s radiation arguments.) The film argues that the Soviets had a 5-to-1 advantage in space, but that was true only in about 1960. After Gemini (circa 1968) it was 3-to-1 in America’s favor. That is just one of the film’s many misleading statements.Only toward the very end do you get to see any of the “smoking gun” footage from Apollo 11. Mr. Sibrel says the astronauts faked their distant en-route telecasts by shooting lots of video from Earth orbit using camera tricks. This raw footage was allegedly edited on the ground into only a few seconds or minutes of “polished” footage that the world saw. From an hour of “backstage” film the director says NASA mistakenly sent him, Mr. Sibrel shows only a snippet here and there, most of it without the audio that clearly explains what the astronauts were really doing — testing television equipment they hadn’t had time to learn to use. Instead the narrator repeats Mr. Sibrel’s accusations of fraud. In fact, there’s probably more time devoted to the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination (which is shown in eerie slow-motion with a dramatic gunshot sound effect at the grisly climax) than to the film’s supposedly exclusive evidence.The secret this film keeps most closely is that anyone can get Bart Sibrel’s raw footage. It’s not hidden away in some vault. You can buy it from Spacecraft Films uncut in a high-quality DVD format preserving all the conversations he elected to omit, as well as the shots that clearly contradict Mr. Sibrel’s theory. You can, for example, see that the video was shot through the square side window of the spacecraft, not through the supposedly round hatch window. (The hatch had a round inside bezel, but a trapezoidal outside bezel — a fact Mr. Sibrel could easily have researched but apparently chose not to.) You can see shots that include both the window frame and the distant Earth, clearly proving that the image of Earth was NOT an illusion created by the stagecraft trickery he suggests. Most enlightening, you can hear the astronauts discuss with Mission Control how they’re only testing the camera, not collecting footage for fakery.The only bit of evidence Mr. Sibrel can offer to support his interpretation is the title plate of the reel he was sent, saying that the footage is “not for general public distribution”. That doesn’t mean “Keep it a secret.” There are many examples of genuine declassified NASA material from that period, and the stern warnings about what will happen if you release it inappropriately are in clear contrast to the gentle suggestion from the NASA Public Affairs office regarding this footage.But so certain is the director that his raw footage is top secret backstage photography, he didn’t realize that many of his “backstage” shots actually come from the 30-minute live telecast that was seen by millions, which is also included on his reel and instantly recognized by people well enough versed in Apollo history. That is, his reel contains both test footage that wasn’t broadcast to the world at the time, and also a record of the live telecast for which those legitimate backstage sessions were practice. Sibrel doesn’t know the difference, and so he indiscriminately uses shots from both sources, claiming it’s all backstage stuff that was never seen. Many of the gaffes he says reveal the hoax in the “raw” footage were actually seen live by the entire civilized world, not trimmed away as outtakes by NASA editors.Like other films of this type, the director’s premise is established only by manipulation, misdirection, and selective quotation — carefully controlling what the viewer sees and hears so as to preclude coming to any other conclusion. Save yourself some money. For the same price as Mr. Sibrel’s film you can get all the Apollo 11 raw footage and judge for yourself without his “help”.
There is a sucker born every minute About a year ago, my son told me about a program he had seen on fox (deliberately not capitalized) about how NASA had faked the moon landings. Since both of us are engineers, we had a great laugh about that and couldn’t believe that with the great wealth of scientific and engineering data available, anyone could be swindled by such an obvious attempt to make money. Recently, my son bought this DVD, used at second hand store, and we watched it. As I watched this show, two thoughts kept running through my mind. First, was that the writers and producers of this show know nothing about, engineering and science or if they did, they were out to deliberately cheat people out of their money. Even now, after months of pondering these two ideas, I still can’t say which one is true, maybe both are. That being said, I’ll provide you with a few comments about things I noticed, based on my over 50 years as a machine design engineer including several years working on the Saturn V launch vehicle, designing fluids lines. One last thing, there is no opposing point of view from either NASA or the scientific/engineering community on this DVD, only one-sided, non-scientific spouting.
A Little Knowledge is a Ridiculous Thing Bart Sibrel’s “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon” claims to prove that man never walked on the moon. But the “proof” consists of far-fetched photographic interpretations (including footage of Apollo 11 “staging” its mission), unsupported claims, and rhetorical questions easily answered by common sense and a little research.