Catching a Buzz on the moon

It happens every year around this time, July 20 being the anniversary of the moon landing in 1969...deniers get up off their sofas and onto their flimsy soapboxes to claim that man never set foot on the moon.

This nonsense started while the original moon landers were on their way back from the moon. I guess it they hadn't stopped off at a Stuckey's on the way for gas and a pecan log, it wouldn't have taken such effect among the unenlightened, who always fall for falsehoods.

Or, maybe it was when Fox News, always a paragon of undisputable truth, had a "special" in 2001 to explain the side of the non-believers, without a shred of evidence from the science community. Nice facts, Fox.

I was just one of the 530 million people watching the whole thing on TV with Walter Cronkite describing the action as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin took a lunar stroll. I remember coverage later as Armstrong and Aldrin, along with third crew member Michael Collins returned to Earth and "landed" in the Pacific Ocean.

Would it not be ok to say they "watered" in the Ocean?

And then, here come the "it's a fake" claims, long the refuge of people who don't or can't or won't accept science as fact. They said we staged a simulated landing because we were in a space race with the Soviet Union and we just had to get to that big green cheese before those dirty Commies.

Yes, it happened, despite what your uncle said.

Here's a fact: 400,000 people worked on the Apollo program. We can show you pay stubs and everything.

Now, do you really believe that you could get 400,000 Americans to keep their lips zipped and tell the same lie for all these years? 

"Yeah, well, the flag is flapping and there is no wind on the moon," cry the skeptics.

No, there isn't. They took a special flag that was unfurled like that and propped with a metal rod to stay in waving position. If that wasn't done, the flag would have hung as lifeless as the Orioles' chances of winning the pennant this year. 

"Can't see no stars! Must be fake!"

Of course there were stars that night, tonight, and for all of your many tomorrows. They didn't register on the film because the astronauts used daylight exposures, the lunar surface was brightly lit by the sun, and the astronauts' space suits were white and reflective. Stars are dimmer and did not register on the film, just like when these deniers went to their cousin's wedding and no one remembers seeing them. They were there, just not bright enough to be seen. 

"Stanley Kubrick filmed it."  Yes, for a movie. Deniers often confuse their lives for movies, and see themselves as celluloid heroes when in fact they are more likely paranoid zeroes.

And don't get the idea that Buzz Aldrin being 95 years of age now will stop him from punching you if you get in his face about all this foolishness.