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255 points

Still the biggest proof that it was real, the Soviets would’ve called out on the bluff

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42 points

I typically use this line but I don’t know that the Soviets had the technology to track the flight completely at the time or to verify the landing.

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16 points

Pretty sure they had the radio technology to intercept the radio communications and validate that they actually went far enough to reach the moon.

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115 points
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The Russians kicked our* asses all through the Space Race. I’m sure they could at least intercept comms and look through their telescopes.

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6 points

While it’s definitely true they could’ve intercepted comms, I don’t know that they did do that. And telescopes would only get them to confirming things up to orbit probably.

I still think it’s likely they knew it was real, I’ve just never been able to confirm that they did for myself and so the argument I’m using it much weaker without that piece of evidence. Not to mention that Russia has had state actors promoting the conspiracy theory in recent years which makes things confusing

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It was the nicest thing the USSR ever did for us. Borrowing from a blog piece I did, Eisenhower freaked out over the successful launch and orbit of Sputnik 1. Ike passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 [… and secured] a grant extended to Fairchild Semiconductor to further its development on the transistor… in the fecund economy of California.

Hence the US is now the big tech capitol of the world (though depending more and more on patents rather than innovation since the 2010s, so maybe not for long.)

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35 points

If I remember correctly, it was pretty easy to intercept the communications. The Americans also dropped a few mirrors on the moon and the Soviets used them to fire lasers at the moon.

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19 points

Not only intercept, but they could easily check if the signal was coming from the Moon.

What they couldn’t do was get a photo of the ship.

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14 points

They absolutely had the tech to point a big antenna at the moon and listen in on communications and watch the video broadcasts.

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42 points

It is impossible to fake something has thousands of people that are “in on it” and even today thousands of scientists (and maybe everybody with a slightly better telescope/laser? Unsure) would somehow need to be part of it because you can just use a telescope to see the stuff that was left behind and the laser reflectors are being used today. There’s absolutely no chance it’s not real.

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0 points

That’s quite a dangerous way to judge if something is true or not. Basically saying that if most people go along with it then it’s true. That it not always the case…

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0 points

Haha! But jokes aside, that’s not a proof that people have been on the moon. There could be many reasons why the Soviets did not call it out.

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17 points

Name one.

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12 points

Why is it when someone says “many reasons” it usually means “I can’t think of a specific reason, but I’m sure there are bunches of them”.

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