Essay On Moon Landing

When Neil Armstrong first touched down on the moon in 1969, millions of people watched him take the first step and create history (Villard). Yet even as we’ve moved on from the moon landings and consider them as a pivotal point for mankind, “Forty years after U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon, many conspiracy theorists still insist the Apollo 11 moon landing was an elaborate hoax”(Than). The idea that our voyage to the moon was deliberately staged seems to resurface year after year. While the conspiracy theorists claim the moon landing was a hoax, creating a fake moon landing would have been more expensive and difficult than actually reaching the moon. The race to the moon began on October 5, 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into orbit around the earth: “When the Soviet Union launched the satellite Sputnik, on October 4, 1957, the United States experienced a technological identity crisis”(Olson). The United States retaliated by trying to beat the

“Fundamental to the conspiracy theory is our supposed inability to go to the Moon. The thought of humans traveling to the Moon was so fantastic even early science-fiction writers didn't predict it happening for centuries to come”(Villard). The rockets that made the moon landing possible were based upon the principles that were founded by Isaac Newton centuries ago, meaning that the underlying science was already there. The Saturn V rockets were more than capable of taking a man to the moon, and it was seen by thousands of eyewitnesses and media who saw the rocket blast off from the Kennedy space center in Florida (Villard). Those who claim that NASA could not reach the moon in the 1960’s discredit the hardworking engineers and scientists who paved the way for a lunar