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| Neil Armstrong on the moon |
Neil
Armstrong and the Moon Landing
On July 20, 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first man
to land on the moon, or did he? The year
of 1969, the world seemed to change forever because
of Armstrong’s ability to land on the moon
before any other country and set us ahead of the
game. Since the moon landing, conspiracy
theories have surfaced to some people finding their
sort of proof on the moon landing either
being a hoax, or being the real deal. We are going
to look into the possibility of the moon
landing being a real happening on July 20th.
Who
was Neil Armstrong? He was described as a blonde haired, blue eyed American
hero who succeeded the feat of being the first man
to step foot on the moon on July 20, 1969 (1).
Being an accomplished eagle scout, a Navy war
veteran, a pilot since he was sixteen years old,
and a Purdue University graduate, Neil Armstrong has
had a lot of successes in his life of eighty-
two years. Although he was very talented and loved
by America, he was very humbled and
closed off about his fulfillment's.
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| Young Neil Armstrong |
Neil Armstrong was
awesome, fascinating, charming, and fun-loving, as described by his
ex-wife, Janet, and his neighbors at the time in a
daily beast article (Koppel). As Koppel said in
her interview with his neighbors, “they didn’t think
he was overly quiet or weird, even in later
years when he was accused of being a recluse by the
media because he shunned public attention.
Instead, they thought he was charming and
fun-loving, lighting up the occasional cigar and
donning a chef’s hat to make pizza” (1). His ex-wife
Janet, commenting on him as Koppel
described it, is that “she was a bit in awe of him.
She believed in the important work he was
doing” (1). It shows that everyone kind of believed
in him, with exception of the media who
called him “impenetrable Neil” because he would not
accept any of their interviews or offers. Neil Armstrong was a very humble man
and he had a sense of not bragging about
himself. Just because he was the first man on the
moon, he still thought of himself as a normal,
average man with a few small accomplishments. While
some might think that he is humble, most
people consider his humbleness taken to a whole
other level. He would not accept any interviews
ever from any new source for years and years until
the twenty-fifth anniversary when he
accepted one interview. Throughout his career, he
stood out as different from all the other
astronauts because he, unlike them, went to teach at
a university after leaving NASA. As stated
in the Biography Online article, most former
astronauts would usually take up a politic position,
which both parties offered to Armstrong, which he
then refused them all saying he believed in
states power and not the United States acting as the
“world’s policeman” (Matthew). He was so
humble that he didn’t accept any form of praise or
pride in himself for doing something so
amazing.
Externally, the media
didn’t like Neil because he would not ever accept any interviews or
anything that they presented him with so they
thought he was shallow and rude to decline it all.
He was presented with some people hating on him
about not taking interviews, so they started
concluding that the moon landing could have been a
hoax and that is why he was not coming
forward about the experience to the world. Although
people believed this, it does not make it
true, he was just a very humble man that wanted to
live a normal life outside of the fame of it all.
His barber of twenty years cut and sold some of his
hair for three-thousand dollars without his
consent, so he had a bit of a legal battle with him.
He also stopped signing autographs because there were forgeries going around,
and he did not want to be caught up in it. He just got a lot
more attention than he wanted, and it caused him to
become more and more closed off.
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| Old Neil Armstrong |
In conclusion, Neil
Armstrong was an amazing, humbled man who had great abilities
being an astronaut. He showed his humbleness through
being as accomplished as he was, and
still not bragging about any of it. His humbleness
was a great factor as to why so many people
looked up to him. He was a great mentor for aspiring
astronauts, students, and little kids that
want to be like him one day and experience stepping
foot on the moon themselves. In 1996, the first man set foot on the moon, and
his name was Neil Armstrong. Although
everyone watched as the landing of the moon was
televised, there were always the ones who
questioned what happened that day. There are
conspiracy theories that the Moon landing was
either a hoax or not. In the theories of Neil
Armstrong landing on the moon in July 1969, there
are two possibilities whether the moon landing was a
hoax or that it was real will be addressed.
The first conspiracy theory that will be discussed
is the rare belief in the minds of the
people that the moon landing was a fake. In the
Times news article "doubters say the US
government, desperate to beat the Russians in the
space race, faked the lunar landings, with
Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin acting out their mission
on a secret film set, located either high in
the Hollywood hills or deep within Area 51"
(Sinclair). In a picture, it depicts the American flag
being blown in the nonexistent air, and since there
is no air or gravity on the moon there was no
reasons why the flag should've been blowing in the
picture. However, NASA covered up this
theory by saying that it was wrinkled throughout the
journey and that's why it appeared to be
blowing in the wind also being held up by a
horizontal flag and it naturally blows as being set up
because of momentum and inertia (Rundle). It is
expected to blow some sort of way because it is
perpendicular and a flag cannot just stick up
straight and stay that way, especially when it is
wrinkled and furled also because when the astronaut
lets go of the pole it shakes, thus, the flag to
move from the aftermath of it (Wilkinson). The
second possibility of proof that this theory could
be proven real is that when the astronauts would
step foot on the moon there would be footprints,
but the lunar module didn't have any prints on the
ground when landed the astronauts explained
the dust like a wet sand so most people would think
that if a human’s foot could create the print
that something that weighs way more than that would
also have a print (1). This theory has been
pointed out by NASA to be wrong by the fact that the
lunar module had touched down on solid
rock and was only on a light layer of the dust and
the astronauts’ feet had been plainly set foot on
the layers of dust (Holt). In these cases, with the
ideas of this theory being proven wrong, it
would be safe to say that this theory is in fact,
debunked.
The second theory of
the moon landing would be the fact that it was real. This is less of a
theory and more of something that has been accepted
and witnessed by society since that famed
day in 1969. With the above idea of the previous
theory being discussed as wrong, the theorists
are now more at peace with their thinking yet also
still questioning the integrity of NASA and
whether they are telling the truth or not. In a
survey that had been taken by twenty people, 100%
of them said that the first moon landing was real,
and they thought it was crazy that someone
would doubt the first encounter with man on the
moon. This theory is the more believable of the
two, because it has evidence to back it up and most
of America saying and thinking that the first
moon landing was real. However, the only forms of
proof that NASA has is their explanations
and who’s to say they are telling the truth? This
ties in with the theorist whom believe the
government is made up of lies, and since NASA is
part of that, they might think that this is just
another cover-up on the governments side.
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| Left to Right: Neil Armstrong, Micheal Collins, Buzz Aldrin Apollo 11 crew |
Why is it so believable
that Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon in July of 1969? It’s a
case of people either believing their eyes from what
they saw televised that day on the moon, or
if they are going to believe the person who comes up
with a bunch of theories about everything
and tells them that what they saw on their
television was all a lie. When asked the question, “Am
I going to believe you, or what I saw with my eyes?”
there is an obvious answer to the
sarcastically asked question of always believing in
their own eyes over what they believe to be
gossip. In this case, it is yet to be determined
whether the moon landing was real or not, but it is
strongly agreed that it really happened.
On
the twentieth of July in 1969 Neil Armstrong was the first man to set foot on
the
moon, or did he? The following two theories have
surfaced:
1. The first moon landing was a hoax.
2. The first moon landing was real
Still not completely resolved, most of America has
accepted the fact that it was real and has only
left the few theorists to contemplate it all being
one big lie to the world.
Works
Cited
Matthew, By. "Neil Armstrong
Biography •." Biography Online. N.p., 3 Feb. 2015. Web.
26 Oct. 2016.
Koppel, Lily. "Moon Men: The
Private Lives of Neil Armstrong and Pals in
“Togethersville”." The Daily
Beast. Newsweek/Daily Beast, 1 Sept. 2012. Web. 26 Oct. 2016.
Holt, Richard. "Apollo 11 Moon
Landing: Conspiracy Theories Debunked." The Telegraph.
Telegraph Media Group, 15 July
2009. Web. 27 Nov. 2016.
Dunbar, Brian. "Biography of
Neil Armstrong." NASA. NASA, 18 Dec. 2012. Web. 27 Nov.
2016.
Rundle, Michael. "11 Proofs
That The Apollo Moon Landings Were NOT Fake." The
Huffington Post. N.p., 18 July
2014. Web. 27 Nov. 2016.
Sinclair, Donald. "Debunking
the Myth That the Moon Landing Was a Hoax." International
Business Times UK. N.p., 21 July
2014. Web. 27 Nov. 2016.
WilkinsonBec. "Moon Landing
Hoax." EnkiVillage. N.p., 24 July 2015. Web. 27 Nov. 2016.
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