Apocryphal Viral Video Promulgates Falsehoods
Dim-witted members of the online community have taken to promulgating a video disingenuously cobbled together from three discrete interviews with Buzz Aldrin as an admission by the storied NASA astronaut and moonwalker that the Apollo 11 mission was faked.
Tweets sensationalizing the video set forth prevarications the likes of: Buzz Aldrin’ Admits the moon landing was FAKE!
The Apollo 11 moon landing took place on 20 July 1969. After a three-day trip from Earth, the mission attained lunar orbit and the lunar module, Eagle, separated from the command module, Columbia. Armstrong and Aldrin descended to the moon’s surface within the lunar module, emerging from such and passing some 2.5-hours exploring what Aldrin famously referred to as “magnificent desolation.” Command module pilot Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit, manning the spacecraft in which the trio would return to Earth.
The apocryphal video, however, presents Aldrin’s remarks truncated and removed from their original contexts. By dint of editorial legerdemain and outright falsification, the astronaut’s words are twisted into a series of suggestions that the Apollo 11 mission never occurred.
The video’s first clip was excerpted from a 2015 event in which Aldrin addressed the Oxford Union (see the 30:17 timestamp of youtu.be/HV_bD3xQG9Y). When asked by an audience member what “the scariest moment of the journey” was, Aldrin is artfully shown to respond: “Scariest? It didn’t happen. It could’ve been scary.”
The video subsequently depicts Aldrin recalling the lunar module’s floor and spying thereupon “ … something that didn’t look like it belonged there.” Aldrin was referring to a “broken circuit breaker” (see the 33:45 timestamp).
Aldrin goes on to explain that pushing the circuit breaker with a pen sent the necessary power to an engine that ultimately returned the lunar module to lunar orbit and rendezvous with the command module for the return trip to Earth (see the 35:48 timestamp). The circuit-breaker/pen incident is factual, and accounted for in the official Apollo 11 mission record.
The video’s second clip shows Aldrin making an appearance at a 2015 National Book Festival. Asked by a young festival attendee why nobody has “been to the moon in such a long time” (see the 7:10 timestamp) Aldrin is depicted to respond: “because we didn’t go there, and that’s the way it happened.”
The version of the video on social media omits Aldrin’s explanation that money is a controlling factor in space exploration, and stating ever more money is needed to fund new space equipment and resources. Rather, the video shows the astronaut alleging: “ … we need to know why something stopped in the past if we wanted to keep it going. … instead of keep doing the same thing” (see the 7:45 timestamp).
The video’s final clip shows Aldrin interviewed by Conan O’Brien in 2000. The pair discuss the animations used by television broadcasters during coverage of the lunar module’s landing and the manner in which TV broadcasts intercut subject animations with audio but not video. The absence of video is a simple matter of no one having been on the lunar surface to film the landing prior to the lunar module’s touch-down (see the 1:29 timestamp). The video, however, perverts the truth, extrapolating and deceitfully elaborating upon the notion of no one having been on the lunar surface.
In addition to soundly debunking claims the Apollo moon landings were faked, Reuters has previously explained the context of Aldrin’s remarks in the Conan O’Brien interview in detail.
In point of fact, the video currently being circulated online is an egregious slight against one of humankind’s defining moments. The spliced clips of Buzz Aldrin’s interviews evince nothing more than the facile ignorance of those who purposefully and maliciously created and fraudulently presented such as “fact”. At no point in his life has Buzz Aldrin stated or implied that the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked or did not happen.
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