The short answer is simple: No, the moon landings were not a hoax.

The long answer is a little more complex. We'll need to examine some of the leading claims that Hoax Believers put forward and explain why those claims are false or misleading.

1. The flags "blow in the wind" - This is simply not true and stems from a misunderstanding of how objects that are familiar to us here on Earth behave in an unfamiliar environment. The moon has only 1/6th the gravity of Earth and has no atmosphere. Because of these two properties items do not behave on the moon the same as they do on Earth, with regular gravity and an atmosphere.

1a. Lets take gravity first: with the light gravity of the moon, the fabric of the flag is not pulled nearly as hard towards the lunar surface as it would the surface of the Earth. This allows the flag to "wave" around on the moon (from even the slightest bump) much longer than it would the Earth.

1b. Secondly, the lack atmosphere makes a huge impact on the motion of the fabric. For comparison, think of a swimming pool. If you take a flag into a swimming pool and submerge it, then wave it around, it's not going to flap back and forth. It's going to move while you are moving your hand, but as soon as you stop moving the flag will hang limp. This is because the friction of the water stops the flag from waving. The same principle hold true between the Earth and the moon. The Earth, with its dense atmosphere, is the pool. Our air stops the flag from waving around with friction. On the moon, no such friction exists; the flag is free to wave around for much longer (after even the slightest bump) than it would on Earth.

1c. As a side note, one of the common claims of Hoax Believers is that the flag waves in the "breeze" created in the wake of a passing astronaut, thereby proving there was atmosphere, thereby proving it was a hoax. This is, again, false. Another property of life on the moon is that there is no magnetic field to mitigate the trillions of charged particles thrown by sun every second. Those particles create strike the lunar surface, and everything on the lunar surface, giving those items a small electric charge. On Earth we call this Static Electricity, and it is famous for making socks stick to clothing fresh out of the clothes drier or making balloons rubbed on hair stick to the wall. In the video of the flag mentioned above, the astronaut passes very near the still flag. As he passes, the static charge on the flag is drawn toward the astronaut as he passes, causing the flag to "wave in his wake".

2. There are no stars in the pictures - This is true, but not for the reasons put forth by Hoax Believers. To understand this, you need to know a little about how cameras work. When the shutter release on a camera is pressed, the shutter opens for a fraction of a second, allowing the light-sensitive material behind the shutter to be exposed. The amount of light that is allowed through is controlled both by how wide the shutter opens (aperture) and for how long it's open (shutter speed). The brighter the object being photographed the less light you want to let through to the film. Too much exposure will create an unrecognizable photograph; you will simply see a white blob. This is critical to understand because it is at the heart of the "missing" stars.

The surface of the moon, in direct sunlight (as it was during the Apollo missions), is very bright. So bright, in fact, that it can create shadows on the Earth in the middle of the night from 238,000 miles away. That fact alone means any camera used on the moon's surface must have the settings as such to no overexpose the film. But the astronauts weren't just taking pictures of the moon; they also took pictures of each other. The cameras used by the crew were set up to take pictures of the lunar surface, other astronauts in white spacesuits, in a bright white environment, in the middle of the lunar morning, in direct sunlight. The fact that no stars showed up in the images is to be expected. Had there been stars there would have been more evidence of a hoax.

You can test this theory yourself. Tonight, grab your camera and stand inside your house near the window with all the lights on (you can even open the window to make sure there is no obstruction between yourself and the stars). Now position something in front of the window yet still inside, in direct lamp light. Using your camera (it doesn't matter if you use the auto settings or change the settings yourself) take a bunch of pictures of the object in front of you (remember that object is your focus, you are trying to get pictures of your vase, not the sky!). Now look at the images and count the number of stars in your pictures. The sky behind the well lit object in your house is black without stars, and that was just using lamplight not direct sunlight.

Incidentally, there are pictures taken of stars by a crew on the moon. Apollo 16 brought a special UV camera to the lunar surface for the specific purpose of doing some astronomy. There are hundreds of pictures of stars, just not in the pictures of the bright lunar surface.

3. The crew would have been killed by radiation - This is untrue and stems, again, from a misunderstanding. The Apollo crew did indeed take a dose of radiation; it just wasn't enough to kill them in the short period of time they spent inside the radiation belt. Here are the facts:

3a. The trajectory of the spacecraft was not a straight line between the earth and the moon. It was arced. They did this in order to avoid the densest area of radiation in the van Allen belts.

3b. At the speed the capsule was travelling, the crew spent far less time inside the belts than the amount of time needed to give them a lethal dose.

3c. There are different types of radiation, wave and particle. Wave radiation requires the most shielding, sometimes very thick shielding depending on the wavelength (for example, UV radiation is wave radiation, but can be blocked by a thin sheet of plastic like sunglasses, whereas gamma radiation requires several inches of lead). Particle radiation, in comparison, is much easier to shield against. Alpha particles can't even penetrate the top layer of dead skin cells on the human body. Proton and Beta particles can both be shielded against using a centimeter or so High Density Polyethylene (HDPE). Plastic.

3d. The Van Allen belts consist primarily of Proton Particle radiation, which as noted in point 3c above, can be effectively shielded against using HDPE plastic.

3e. The Command Module was built using materials that could shield particle radiation

3f. Summary: The mission was planned to go through the weakest, least dense section of radiation, in the shortest amount of time, with shielding built into the module. NASA spent a lot of time and money mitigating the problems presented by the radiation belts. The money was well spent.

4. The crew was sometimes lit from the front even when the sun was behind themproving it was shot in a studio - The shadow-side of objects often were lit, but not for the reasons put forth by Hoax Believers. As discussed in bullet point 1, the moon, and the suit the astronauts wore, was very bright. In professional photography shoots, the photographer's assistant uses a reflective fabric screen to cast light on the model's face when s/he is not directly lit. On the moon, this same effect is provided, inadvertently, by both the moon's surface and in some cases by the astronaut taking the picture. The sun's light, coming from behind the astronaut or item being photographed, reflects off of the surface between the photographer and the object, casting light on the shadowed side of the item of focus.

5. All the pictures were perfectly framed, proving the shots were not from cameras mounted to the chest of the spacesuit - This is only partially true; many pictures were perfectly framed. However, anybody claiming all the pictures were perfect has not looked through the Apollo photo catalog. There are also pictures one would expect from chest-mounted cameras, such as pictures taken at odd angles, or pictures of the crew members boot, or pictures that are simply unrecognizable. Secondly, the pictures that are perfect weren't created by accident. The crew spent many hours training to use a chest-mounted camera. They learned how to position their bodies in order to perfectly capture what they trying to capture. The training was successful.

6. Astronauts' replies to questions asked over the radio were immediate. - This is not true and one of the easiest claims to debunk; all anybody needs to do is listen to the audio themselves on the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal. Due to the distance of the moon radio waves take ~1.5 seconds to reach the lunar crew, and then another ~1.5 seconds to return. The actual time is slightly less than 3 seconds. The audio of these missions were recorded back on Earth in Houston, which means the recordings are made from the Mission Controllers point of view. Here is an example from the Apollo 11 transcript which shows the delay affecting Buzz Aldrin:

102:26:55 Aldrin: And, Houston, we got a 500 alarm (code) early in the program. Went to Descent 1, proceeded on it, and we're back at Auto again. Over.

102:27:06 Duke: Roger. We saw that, Buzz. Thank you much. Out.

102:27:09 Aldrin: Rog. I say again...(Listens) Okay. That wasn't an alarm; that was a code. Okay.

Charlie Duke (CapCom for the first Lunar landing) obviously started speaking before Buzz Aldrin started to repeat himself, but because of the time delay Buzz didn't hear him until the signal reached the moon wherein Buzz heard the answer, paused, and affirmed he had heard. The actual mission transcripts and audio are full of this type of overspeak and delay. Don't listen to cherry-picked audio by Hoax Believers; don't even take my word for it. Go the Apollo Lunar Surface Journal and listen/read for yourself.

8. Shadows diverge on the moon proving there were two light sources - This is not true, well the two light sources part anyway. There are many examples of this around the web and it was also shown to be a natural phenomenon by the Mythbusters. Essentially when the ground is uneven and objects are casting shadows are on different sections of the uneven ground the shadows do not lie in parallel lines. Again, you can test this yourself. Find a parking lot or a park (in daylight where the sun is the only light source) with a sloped ground that changes between lamp posts. Note the shadows on the ground. They will not be parallel.

9. The flag shines bright on both sides as if in a spotlight - Nylon is a thin material. When the sun is behind the flag in photographs the light is able to go through the nylon and make the flag visible. This has the appearance of a glowing flag, or a flag that is lit from both sides when in fact it is either lit from the front or the sunlight is passing through the nylon material backlighting the flag.

10. In the 60's and 70's we didn't have the technology to go to the moon - First we must remember that NASA was on the cutting edge of technology in the 1950s and 1960s. They had an enormous budget and attracted the top scientists in the country. At the height of the Apollo project there were half a million scientists and engineers working on different aspects of the missions.

In a larger sense, it's easy to lose touch with technology. That is, it's easy to look back to the past and wonder how we ever got along without the miracles we enjoy today. We sit at our gigahertz computers and forget that there was a time when an eight megahertz computer was pretty cool.

Just because we rely today on one particular technology or another in order to do some hard thing, doesn't mean it was impossible to do that thing before our modern technology was invented. For example, nearly all modern clocks use a real-time clock integrated circuit. It does all the timekeeping. In the 1970s we had analog clocks that used synchronous electric motors to precisely drive mechanical gears. Would it be correct to say that accurate timekeeping was impossible before that integrated chip? Of course not. Similarly, old mechanical action clocks used pendulums and springs to keep surprisingly accurate time.

What's the lesson? Just because we choose to use some particular technology today to solve a problem doesn't mean that problem was unsolvable before we had today's technology. Apollo engineers didn't have high-speed portable computers to make self-contained guidance systems, so they just built guidance systems differently. The computer was only one part of the guidance system. When John Glenn orbited the earth in his Mercury capsule, there were no computers with him. Yet his capsule was fully automated.

The moral of the story is that people can be very ingenious working with limited tools.

11. NASA has said we can't go to the moon today because the technology does not exist - This is partially true, but not for the reasons Hoax Believers claim. At this point it's been over 40 years since the first moon landing and nearly 40 years since the last Apollo mission flew. The scientists and engineers that designed and built the Apollo spacecraft have long since retired or died and the plans and documentation that were created to build the Apollo have been destroyed or lost (keep in mind that the spacecraft were built by aircraft companies; once the missions were over there was no need to keep the blueprints, for them it was back to business as usual). The specialized tools and the materials infrastructure that was built specifically for Apollo were all dismantled at the end of the program. As such, were NASA asked to build another Apollo capsule tomorrow they could not do it. This does not mean that NASA engineers could not build a new spacecraft. They can, and likely will, but things will be different.

During the Apollo days the entire nation was behind the program. NASA had a huge budget and some of the best and brightest scientists and engineers. This is not true today. NASA's budget is less than 1% of the Department of Defense budget and, with space travel no longer being the height of technology, the best and brightest often go elsewhere. All this will make it difficult to return to the moon, but it in no way proves we didn't go the first 6 times.

12. A in a photograph taken on the moon has the letter "C" on it just like prop masters do in Hollywood-In 2001 Steve Troy of Lunaranomalies.com undertook a lengthy investigation. After obtaining transparencies from different sources connected with NASA, he failed to see the mark either on the masters used prior to 1997 or on the new masters. Yet the photos on official NASA web sites clearly show it. Following up with the Lunar and Planetary Institute (LPI) in Houston, they discovered that one of the prints in their collection was the source of the mark. At some point that print had been scanned and has since been widely distributed on the Internet. Troy and LPI officials studied the print under a microscope and discovered that it was indeed far more likely to be a hair or other fiber on the photographic paper onto which AS16-107-17446 had been printed. A secondary mark that appears to be a shadow is clearly visible under the top portion of the mark.

14. The thrust from the LM descent engine would have dug a crater under the LM proving the landing was faked - This is not true, and quite simple. The LM Descent engine had a throttle control similar to your car. You wouldn't pull your car into your garage with the gas pedal pressed to the floor and the Apollo astronauts didn't land with their engine on full throttle. In order to keep the LM on a slow descent the amount of thrust coming from the engine had to be nearly equal to the weight of the spacecraft being tugged on by the moon's gravity. At the time of the actual touchdown, the LM "weighed" ~2600 pounds. In order the keep from crashing the LM engine only had to produce ~2600 lbs of thrust. Hardly enough to cause a crater (keep in mind that, on Earth, helicopters and Harrier jets produce tens of thousands of pounds of thrust, enough to lift multiple tons of machinery off the ground. None of them seem to create craters even in the loosely packed sand of the desert).

15. Finally, some things to keep in mind: the U.S.S.R. was our enemy during the Apollo era. We were embroiled in the Cold War, we were each heavily invested in the Space Race to the tune of billions of dollars, and we each had the world watching us intently to see who would "win". The U.S.S.R. watched our moon-shot with intense interest. For them, failure on our part would prove they were the best/strongest/most advanced nation. They were desperate for our failure. Had the US faked going to the moon it would have been incredibly easy to spot by a nation whose scientists and engineers were every bit as good as their US equivalents. They tracked the command module to and from the Earth, they listened to the broadcasts of the crew walking on the surface, they have examined the samples returned by those astronauts. At every step, the U.S.S.R., the country most invested in the US's failure, has congratulated us for a job well done. To think we could have somehow bought their silence with so much at stake is, quite simply, laughable.

There are many, many more theories put forward than those presented here. Each of them has an answer, each of them can be, and is, proven to be false. When trying to determine whether or not something is true, it is important to look at who is saying it. People that are trying to prove NASA did go to the moon are often authors trying to sell books. It is important for them to entice you, to make you want more information; because the more you want to know the more books they sell. They don't want to just one book, though, they want to keep writing. They need you to get sucked in so they can continue to dish out their "discoveries" over the years, selling more and more books. They have no interest in the truth.

NASA doesn't try to convince you they went to the moon. They're not interested in trying to prove something because they don't have to. The people making the extraordinary claim are burdened with proving it. NASA has provided all the documentation, all the pictures, all the plans, everything you could want, to research this yourself. The people writing books don't want you to do the research; they want you to believe they had already done it. It's fine to be skeptical of NASA. Question everything they tell you. Just make sure you question the Hoax proponents as thoroughly.

There have been six manned moon landings -

• Apollo 11 landed 20 July 1969
• Apollo 12 landed 19 November 1969
• Apollo 14 landed 5 February 1971
• Apollo 15 landed 30 July 1971
• Apollo 16 landed 20 April 1972
• Apollo 17 landed 11 December 1972

There have been numerous unmanned moon landings, 13 soft landings are listed as well as 26 crash landings. Crash landings listed include retired satellites and orbiters, impactors, as well as failed soft landings.

USSR probes

1. Luna 2 crashed 13 September 1959
2. Luna 5 crashed 12 May 1965
3. Luna 7 crashed 7 October 1965
4. Luna 8 crashed 6 December 1965
5. Luna 9 landed 3 February 1966
6. Luna 13 landed 24 December 1966
7. Luna 15 crashed 21 July 1969
8. Luna 16 landed 20 September 1970
9. Luna 17 landed 17 November 1970
10. Luna 18 crashed 11 September 1971
11. Luna 20 landed 21 February 1972
12. Luna 21 landed 15 January 1973
13. Luna 23 landed 6 November 1974
14. Luna 24 landed 18 August 1976

NASA / US probes

1. Ranger 4 crashed 26 April 1962
2. Ranger 6 crashed 2 February 1964
3. Ranger 7 crashed 31 July 1964
4. Ranger 8 crashed 20 February 1965
5. Ranger 9 crashed 24 March 1965
6. Surveyor 1 landed 2 June 1966
7. Surveyor 2 crashed 23 September 1966
8. Surveyor 3 landed 20 April 1967
9. Surveyor 4 crashed (or possibly exploded just above surface) 17 July 1967
10. Surveyor 5 landed 11 September 1967
11. Surveyor 6 landed 10 November 1967
12. Surveyor 7 landed 10 January 1968
13. Lunar Orbiter 1 crashed 29 October 1966
14. Lunar Orbiter 2 crashed 11 October 1967
15. Lunar Orbiter 3 crashed 9 October 1967
16. Lunar Orbiter 4 crashed 31 October 1967
17. Lunar Orbiter 5 crashed 31 January 1968
18. Lunar Prospector crashed 31 July 1999
19. LCROSS crashed 9 October 2009

Other Space Agency Probes

1. Hiten (Japan) crashed 10 April 1993
2. SMART 1 (ESA) crashed 3 September 2006
3. MIP (India) crashed 14 November 2008
4. Okina (Japan) crashed 12 February 2009
5. Chang'e 1 (China) crashed 1 March 2009
6. Kaguya (Japan) crashed 10 June 2009

The Apollo 11 astronauts were launched July 16th 1969 at 08:32:00 am EST from Kennedy Space Centre. They reached the Moon when they performed a Lunar Orbit Insertion (LOI) manoeuvre July 19th 12:21:50 pm EST. It took them 3 days, 3 hours, 49 minutes to fly to the Moon. The astronauts took almost 3 days to return to earth.

The Apollo 13 astronauts were launched April 11th 1970 at 2:13:00 pm EST from the Kennedy Space Centre. They flew around the Moon and landed in the Pacific Ocean April 17th 1:07:41 pm EST. It took them 5 days, 22 hours, 54 minutes to fly to the Moon and back to the Earth.

The NASA Pluto probe New Horizons flew from the surface of the Earth to the Moon's orbital path in eight hours and thirty-five minutes in January 2006. The ESA SMART-1 lunar probe used an ion engine to fly to the Moon. It was launched September 27th 2003 and was slowly spiralling away from the Earth to the Moon. November 11th 2004 it was captured by the Moon's gravity - after one year, one month and two weeks. These two missions did not return to earth.

During the Apollo program, the United States sent 9manned missions to the Moon. These nine missions included 24men. Of these 24 men, 12 actually walked on the surface of moon. The other 12 astronauts have been to lunar orbit and back, but did not land on the surface. This included Apollo 8, Apollo 10, and the ill-fated Apollo 13, as well as the 6 Command Module pilots for the six landing missions.

The 9 missions to the moon:

1. Apollo 8 - orbited
2. Apollo 10 - orbited
3. Apollo 11 - landed 20 July, 1969
4. Apollo 12 - landed 19 November, 1969
5. Apollo 13 - orbited
6. Apollo 14 - landed 5 February, 1971
7. Apollo 15 - landed 30 July, 1971
8. Apollo 16 - landed 20 April, 1972
9. Apollo 17 - landed 11 December, 1972

The men who walked on the Moon :

1. Apollo 11 - Neil Armstrong - Apollo 11 - landed 20 July, 1969 ("One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind")
2. Buzz Aldrin - Apollo 11 - landed 20 July, 1969
3. Pete Conrad - Apollo 12 - landed 19 November, 1969
4. Alan Bean - Apollo 12 - landed 19 November, 1969
5. Alan Shepard - Apollo 14 - landed 5 February, 1971
6. Edgar Mitchell - Apollo 14 - landed 5 February, 1971
7. David Scott - Apollo 15 - landed 30 July, 1971
8. James Irwin - Apollo 15 - landed 30 July, 1971
9. John W. Young - Apollo 16 - landed 20 April, 1972
10. Charles Duke - Apollo 16 - landed 20 April, 1972
11. Eugene Cernan - Apollo 17 - landed 11 December, 1972
12. Harrison Schmitt - Apollo 17 - landed 11 December, 1972

Astronauts who orbited but did not land :

1. Frank Borman - Apollo 8

2. James Lovell - Apollo 8

3. William Anders - Apollo 8

4. Thomas Stafford - Apollo 10

(John Young and Gene Cernan also orbited with Apollo 10, but each walked on the Moon on a later mission, as above)

5. Michael Collins - Apollo 11

6. Richard Gordon - Apollo 12

7. Jack Swigert - Apollo 13

8. Fred Haise - Apollo 13

(James Lovell orbited for a second time with Apollo 13, becoming the only man to go to the Moon twice and not walk on the surface)

9. Stuart Roosa - Apollo 14

10. Alfred Worden - Apollo 15

11. Ken Mattingly - Apollo 16

12. Ronald Evans - Apollo 17

(see the related link)

Manned:

Six manned spacecraft have successfully landed on the moon. All six spacecraft were part of the Apollo space programme.

The first moon landing (Apollo 11) was on July 20 1969. Apollo 11's crew was Neil Armstrong (Commander), Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin (Lunar Module pilot), and Michael Collins (Command Module pilot).

The second moon landing (Apollo 12) was on November 19 1969. Apollo 12's crew was Charles Conrad, Jr. (Commander), Richard Gordon, Jr. (Command Module pilot), and Alan LaVerne Bean (Lunar Module pilot).

The third moon landing (Apollo 14) was on 5 February 1971. Alan Shepard, America's first man into space, commanded Apollo 14. His crew consisted of Stuart Roosa (Command Module pilot) and Edgar Mitchell (Lunar Module Pilot).

The fourth moon landing (Apollo 15) was on July 30 1971, and the astronauts explored the surface riding in the first lunar rover. Apollo 15's crew was David Scott (Commander), James Irwin (Lunar Module pilot), and Alfred Worden (Command Module Pilot).

The fifth moon landing (Apollo 16) was on April 20, 1972. Apollo 16's crew was John Young (Commander), Charles Duke, Jr. (Lunar Module pilot), and Thomas Mattingly (Command Module pilot).

The sixth and final moon landing (Apollo 17) was on 11 December, 1972. Apollo 17's crew was Eugene Cernan (Commander), Ronald Evans (Command Module Pilot), and Dr Harrison Schmitt (Lunar Module Pilot)

Unmanned:

The first spacecraft to impact the moon's surface was the U.S.S.R.'s Luna 2. The spacecraft impacted the moon on September 14, 1959 and was destroyed on impact.

The first US spacecraft to reach the moon's surface was the Ranger 4. This spacecraft impacted the moon's surface (and like Luna 2 was destroyed in the process) on April 26, 1962.

The first spacecraft to achieve a lunar soft landing and to transmit photographic data to Earth was the Soviet spacecraft Luna 9. This spacecraft landed on the moon in the Ocean of Storms on February 3, 1966.

The second spacecraft to achieve lunar soft landing was the American spacecraft Surveyor 1. This spacecraft landed on the moon on June 2, 1966.

The first unmanned spacecraft to land on the moon and return to earth was the Soviet spacecraft Luna 16. This spacecraft landed on the moon on September 20, 1970.

The first spacecraft to land on the moon and deploy a lunar roving vehicle was the Soviet spacecraft Lunar 17. Lunar 17 landed on the moon in November 1970 (~November 15) and deployed the lunar vehicle Lunokhod 1. Lunokhod 1 remained operational for 11 lunar days and travelled approximately 10.5 km on the moon's surface.

The first spacecraft to land on the moon and be retrieved by a subsequent mission was the American spacecraft Surveyor 3. Surveyor 3 landed on the moon on April 20, 1967, and parts of it were retrieved by Apollo 12 in November 1969.