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Believe it or not, I actually once wrote a 44 page paper on this subject, and spent over 100 hours writing it. The answers I found were multiple and complex, opening my eyes to the pressures and complexes of the student population and the addictive draw of prestige and a high paycheck.Here’s a little taste.Initial ProspectusWhy do a third of Harvard graduates go into finance or consulting every year?It’s a phenomenon that I’ve noticed, both statistically and through lived experience, that a disproportionally high percentage of Harvard graduates enter into the same two industries, seemingly irrespective of their career interests as incoming freshman. The fact that the future elites of our society are concentrated in two lucrative industries—rather than evenly distributed across industries in the public and private sector, for example—holds important implications for America as a whole.Although this research question implicitly presupposes that a third of admitted freshman have not been coming into college with strong prior interests in working in these fields, I generally believe that this is a safe assumption to make. As an anecdotal proxy, the juxtaposition between the number of people I’ve encountered who say “When I grow up, I want to be a consultant or a banker” in elementary, middle, and high school—approximately zero—and the vast number of people I know now who are trying to break into these industries—approximately one in three—is genuinely surprising to me, and almost certainly statistically significant. In order to confirm my assumptions, I could either research pre-existing survey reports of freshman, or conduct randomized polling of the current freshman class on their future career interests.At this point, depending on my findings, I could proceed in one of two ways. If approximately one in three freshmen have expressed a strong pre-existing desire to work in these two industries, then the answer to the research question would be relatively straightforward, and there would be no major discrepancies to account for. (i.e. Why do a third of Harvard seniors go into finance or consulting after graduation? Because a third of Harvard freshman come into college wanting to go into finance or consulting after graduation.)However, if this is not the case—indeed, if significantly less than a third of students are coming into Harvard with prior interests in these fields—the next step is to find out why. What social capital factors might be at play at Harvard to influence the decisions of students who had no prior interest in finance or consulting? Additionally, what other factors external to Harvard—such as family background, socioeconomic status, cultural influences, et al—might play a significant role in informing their career decisions?My preliminary hypothesis is that many factors play a large role in influencing the decisions of students to go into finance and consulting, including on-campus recruiting, peer pressure, social proof, ease of access to prestigious firms through career fairs, and a well-advertised application process. Originally I came into this question with a hypothesis mainly centered around on-campus recruiting, which I intended to make the focus of my paper.However, after speaking to my professor, I will do my best to keep an open mind and to take an unbiased approach towards my research, rather than singling out any one factor early on. If there seems to be a preponderance of evidence around any one factor, I will certainly take that into account when writing up the final analysis, but only after I’ve thoroughly researched all possibilities. My goal here is not to condemn any one factor, per se, but to give as fair and accurate a picture of the social capital influences surrounding these career decisions as possible.For quantitative analysis, I will look at the following sources: the incoming freshman and graduating senior class surveys conducted every year by The Harvard Crimson, which asks questions ranging from self-reported levels of family income to academic and career interests; the concentration and secondary enrollment data provided by the Office of Career Services; reports from the individual academic departments (particularly economics and related mathematical fields, as consulting has no specific skillset requirements); statistics about on-campus recruiting provided by OCS; any self-reported career survey information for the Class of 2016, and any other relevant statistical information. If needed, I can also design and conduct surveys or polls of my own, and use proper statistical methods to ensure accuracy in sampling.The bulk of my paper, however, will rely on qualitative analysis (as informed by the available statistics). I intend to conduct interviews with sources from diverse backgrounds, from those who have strong interests elsewhere and are completely abstaining from finance and consulting recruiting, to those who have had strong interests in finance or consulting since before freshman year. Most of my interviews will be focused on the individuals who didn’t originally have a strong prior interest in finance or consulting but have now decided to go into these industries. I want to ask them about their reasons for switching over, while placing their answers in the greater context of their academic interests, socioeconomic backgrounds, and life goals.Additionally, I hope to research a variety of academic sources on this phenomenon—particularly by reading pre-existing books, papers, or even Crimson articles about recruiting for these fields. I believe there will be enough outside source material available about my specific research question to properly contextualize my understanding, because even if the high proportion of consultants and financiers coming out of Harvard turns out to be a relatively new phenomenon, career research into the lives of new Harvard graduates likely isn’t new. Ultimately, I hope to glean useful insight into the historical analysis of researchers who worked before me, and to contribute something new and significant to the conversation.1. The Phenomenon of Elite CareersIn the fall of 2016, an interesting phenomenon could be observed on the sidewalks of Cambridge, Massachusetts: droves of Harvard students were regularly seen dashing across campus in sharp suits and stiletto heels. Some could be seen hurrying along, occasionally checking their watches for the time; others, nervously patting down their perfectly-coiffed hair; still others, jovially chatting with a gaggle of well-dressed friends, right after their last lecture for the day. But all seemed to stride purposefully towards the recruiting events at the end of the sidewalk—perennially hosted in the gleaming halls of the newly-renovated SOCH, the luxe ballrooms of the red-carpeted Charles Hotel, or the sleek marbled rooms of the Sheraton Commander—and into the branded, PowerPoint-driven presentations of Wall Street and Corporate America, whose annual pilgrimage to Cambridge to recruit the next generation of investment bankers and management consultants was always well-received.To the outside observer, it seemed that the spacious conference rooms these firms booked for infosessions were always filled to overflowing with perfect résumés and raw potential; that the entire process was carried out with an orderly, white-collar sort of efficiency; and that the dominating presence of these billion-dollar corporations at a liberal arts school had long been normalized within the Harvard bubble. Come graduation in the spring, it’ll become a truth universally acknowledged, that every third capped and gowned senior will have found their true calling as a future consultant or financier.This phenomenon isn’t just idle observation. When The Harvard Crimson’s annual survey of seniors asked the Class of 2016 about their backgrounds, their future plans, and their experiences throughout college, 40% of the senior class survey reported that it would be going into finance or consulting, the highest it’s been since 2007 (when 47% were purportedly entering into these industries). 21% of the senior class survey said they would work in consulting after graduation, but only 1% in 10 years, whereas 18% of the senior class survey said they would work in finance after graduation, but only 6% in 10 years.In terms of data collection, while not all respondents answered every question, more than half the senior class had completed the survey, totaling 906 anonymous responses. And although the responses have not been adjusted for possible self-selection bias, the data still represent some of the most comprehensive and reputable information available about recent Harvard graduates, particularly on the topic of post-graduate employment. From a purely quantitative point of view, these figures have been roughly consistent with data from the past few years as well, demonstrating that each year a significant portion of the class will commit to working in one of two industries.Given the existence of this phenomenon, the focus of this paper will be on examining the motivations behind a plurality of students’ choices to enter finance and consulting. I intend to explore the social capital factors driving students’ decisions of where to start their careers, including but not limited to the culture of pre-professionalism on Harvard’s campus, the pervasiveness of recruiting, and the influence of parents and peer groups on early career decisions. Before delving headfirst into this research question, however, it would be beneficial to situate this phenomenon in history—the better to explain the origins of Harvard’s seemingly robust pipeline between Wall Street and Corporate America.If you’re interested in reading more, the full paper is here: From the Classroom to Corporate America: An Exploration of The Appeal of Finance and Consulting Jobs Among Harvard Students

Although it's usually a mistake to rely on stereotypes, this sort of thing does seem to occur often enough that there's a name for it. This is the proverbial absent-minded professor. A good example of the absent-minded professor in real life is Norbert Wiener, who famously failed elementary school arithmetic before going on to become the founder of the field of cybernetics. And there's more to than that. Wiener's eccentricities reached almost cartoonish proportions at times. According to the historian Howard Eves:He went to a conference and parked his car in the big lot. When the conference was over, he went to the lot but forgot where he parked his car. He even forgot was his car looked like. So he waited until all the other cars were driven away, then took the car that was left.When he and his family moved to a new house a few blocks away, his wife gave him written directions on how to reach it, since she knew he was absent-minded. But when he was leaving his office at the end of the day, he couldn't remember where he put her note, and he couldn't remember where the new house was. So he drove to his old neighborhood instead. He saw a young child and asked her, "Little girl, can you tell me where the Wieners moved?""Yes, Daddy," came the reply, "Mommy said you'd probably be here, so she sent me to show you the way home".One day he was sitting in the campus lounge, intensely studying a paper on the table. Several times he'd get up, pace a bit, then return to the paper. Everyone was impressed by the enormous mental effort reflected on his face. Once again he rose from his paper, took some rapid steps around the room, and collided with a student. The student said, "Good afternoon, Professor Wiener." Wiener stopped, stared, clapped a hand to his forehead, said "Wiener - that's the word," and ran back to the table to fill the word "wiener" in the crossword puzzle he was working on.He drove 150 miles to a math conference at Yale University. When the conference was over, he forgot he came by car, so he returned home by bus. The next morning, he went out to his garage to get his car, discovered it was missing, and complained to the police that while he was away, someone stole his car.(I'm an absent-minded professor type myself; I hope you'll believe me when I say that I get very flattering and satisfying scores on IQ tests, but unfortunately, back in reality there's an undeniable limit to how much I can pay attention to and keep in my head at one time, leaving me quite scatterbrained. Embarassingly, every one of these anecdotes sounds like something I could do on a bad day.)There are stories of similar characters from history. For instance, the Pre-Socratic philosopher Thales of Miletus was said to have accidentally walked off a cliff (or into a uncovered well). Likewise, Archimedes famously died during a Roman attack when, deep in thought over a mathematical problem, he failed to give proper respect to a Roman soldier. As Valerius Maximus wrote,I should say that Archimedes’ diligence also bore fruit if it had not both given him life and taken it away. At the capture of Syracuse Marcellus had been aware that his victory had been held up much and long by Archimedes’ machines. However, pleased with the man’s exceptional skill, he gave out that his life was to be spared, putting almost as much glory in saving Archimedes as in crushing Syracuse. But as Archimedes was drawing diagrams with mind and eyes fixed on the ground, a soldier who had broken into the house in quest of loot with sword drawn over his head asked him who he was. Too much absorbed in tracking down his objective, Archimedes could not give his name but said, protecting the dust with his hands, “I beg you, don’t disturb this,” and was slaughtered as neglectful of the victor’s command; with his blood he confused the lines of his art. So it fell out that he was first granted his life and then stripped of it by reason of the same pursuit.It's not exactly how the story's come down to us (Archimedes wasn't), but it's something.Beyond the occasional, exceptional individual like Herbert Wiener and the legendary Archimedes and Thales, it's not clear how common this sort of thing really is.On average, high IQ people are quite self-aware and observant, but it's a mistake to pay too much attention to the average without giving appropriate consideration to the typical range of variance. In that spirit, I have heard of something which suggests that, rather than merely being an unfounded trope of storytelling, absent-minded professor types could actually be quite common. This is Spearman's Law of Diminishing Returns (SLDR or SLoDR), according to which the correlation between the subtests on an IQ test rises as the average IQ score of the sample of people taking it falls. This is called Spearman's because it was first noticed by Charles Spearman, father of the G-factor, back in 1927, but the results have been replicated many times since then (for instance, by Detterman and Daniel in 1989, Legree et al. in 1996, Martin Evans in 1999).In essence, the higher someone's total (measured) intelligence is, the less well a single number serves to describe their mental abilities. This leaves plenty of room for highly intelligence people to be extremely lopsided in how their intelligence manifests.Of course, there's a limit to this. All the subtests count towards one's final IQ score, so an individual with a high IQ is not likely to have very many low subtest scores by mathematical necessity. But it's still highly likely that someone who is spectacularly good at a few things is still only average or slightly better than average in other areas, and in the right context, being merely average or slightly better than average can appear like being stupid; after all, people judge themselves by the standards of the the company they keep, and if you're operating at a very high level, you're surrounding yourself with a lot of very sharp people, to whom being average might appear deficient.This, then, is the answer to the recurring question of why, if so-and-so is so smart, he keeps making stupid mistakes. Being more intelligent than average doesn't make you perfect. Being more intelligence gives you the potential for success in many areas, and it makes it more likely that you'll be successful in any given area, but certain gaps and omissions are only to be expected. The range of variation is quite wide.One final note: This result, SLoDR, has only been reproduced about some of the time. My opinion of that is that there's something else causing the subtest scores of high IQ people to be correlated, other than the G factor, something which isn't always present. Assortative mating would do it. If highly intelligent people are attracted to each other and intelligence is genetic (which it does seem to be), after a little while that would smooth out the differences among the people who result from these unions.Well, that's my two cents anyway.

No they did not fake it. Some of the other answer to this question are jokes. In this one I’ll do a proper debunk, go through many of the things people give as supposed reasons to think they faked it. Wikipedia has a good page on the conspiracy theories that has just about all the debunks:Moon landing conspiracy theories - WikipediaI’ll just do some of the main things people say. And if you wonder why there are so many things to debunk, it’s because many people with a lot of time on their hands but little understanding of physics and astronomy have pored over the videos and flagged almost anything they don’t understand as a reason for thinking it didn’t happen! Our intuitions based on the way things work on Earth can lead us astray when looking at videos from the Moon.I’ll start by debunking a video that got shared a lot recently. This is doing the rounds on social media again:Illuminati ExposedI’m also answering some points raised in recent “red top tabloid” stories on the topic.MY BACKGROUNDI’m a space geek who was a young teenager, 14 at the time of the Apollo 11 landing, and followed the whole thing keenly :). Not just the things that interested the general public, but also all the scientific discoveries they made on their geological expeditions on the Moon. You can watch them pick up a rock on the Moon and then read about the discoveries they made studying that very same rock back on Earth.INDEPENDENT OBSERVATIONSKeen amateur astronomers at the time not only watched the launch, return and fuel dumps, they followed the spacecraft all the way to the Moon - at its brightest they could be as bright as 10th magnitude in lunar orbit, varying to around 14th or 15th magnitude, well within the range of the larger amateur telescopes at the time. For some of the photos from a Sky and Telescope article, see: Bill Keel's Space Bits. One amateur using a small backyard radio telescope was able to record Apollo 11 conversations on the Moon:recordings here: Otter Creek - South Harrison Observatory Interview here: BaysingerRutherfordand see also Third-party evidence for Apollo Moon landings - Wikipedia and C Stuart Hardwick's answer to How can I convince my dad that Apollo 11 went to the moon?ANSWERING THE POINTSHere are a few of the points answered:Claim that all the materials would melt in the thermosphere- it is a hard vacuum at that height.What temperature you can survive depends on how dense the material is you are immersed in. Sauna champions can withstand well over 100 °C for several minutes in dry air: How hot can a sauna safely get? But you wouldn’t survive in boiling water even for seconds.What is the highest temperature a human being can survive?When it comes to the thermosphere you can survive indefinitely because it is so thin, hardly any heat will be transferred to you. You’ll get far more heat from direct sunlight than from the occasional high velocity atom hitting the spaceship.And incidentally the thermosphere starts at 90 km. That is well below LEO, and the ISS orbits permanently within the thermosphere.Why is there no blast crater? You wouldn't expect a blast crater, the rockets were throttlable and weren’t used at full throttle on landing. You can get an idea what they were like from these test flights of the simulator, they only through up the lunar dust at all because it was so very fine:Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy: Bad TVWhy does the flag wave? It is suspended on a horizontal pole and the astronauts knocked it as they put it up and it waved back and forth for a while. They needed the flag to hang like a normal flag in a vacuum, so designed a special pole to hold it upWhy don’t we see the stars in the photos? It is because of the contrast with the bright surface - if you look out of your door at night and dazzle yourself with a light as bright as a sunny landscape you won't see stars but if you shield your eyes from any bright lights, and wait a bit to adapt you’ll see them. The astronauts did see Venus from the surface and saw stars routinely when sighting from the surface. It’s the same with film, you use a narrow aperture and short exposure to avoid ovre exposure of the landscape which means not enough light gets to the film to record the stars.This is what it would have looked like if they had used an exposure setting sufficient to show the brighter stars:Screenshot from this video:See also:How did they get through the Van Allen belts? They spent only a short time in them and avoided the worst part.They chose a path past the densest part of the Van Allen belts and only spent 1,5 hours in them, the module also gave a fair bit of protection, and the total radiation dose from them was actually only a small fraction of the total.Apollo Rocketed Through the Van Allen BeltsThe lunar module had only paper thin shielding, but was only used to land on the Moon. The astronauts lived in the command module and that had much thicker shielding and they transferrred to the lunar module to land.Nothing to do with the van allen belt. But it would have given some protection from a solar storm as the ions from the sun are rather low energy compared to cosmic radiation. Lots of them but at a low energy.The main concern was for a solar storm - if one had happened during an EVA on the lunar surface they would have had a serious case of radiation sickness though they would have survived, rushed to hospital on return to Earth. The lunar module gave some protection from solar storms, though they’d have wanted to get back to the command module as soon as possible.What about the electronics?The reason we have to take such care over the van allen belts with modern electronics is because they are much more sensitive than the Apollo electronics.They used memory like this for their computer - each of those rings is a single bit - do you think ionizing radiation is going to do much to damage their onboard computer? This is the read only memory - most of the memory was like that.It was a very primitive programmable calculator, slow, with a few kilobytes of memory. Most of what they did was pre-calculated back on Earth using huge room sized computers. They also has a small amount of read/write memory like this:File:Apollo 1024 bit core memory module.jpg “A 1024-bit core memory module from the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC). There are 1024 circular ceramic magnets, each one with three wires running through it. A memory bit is set or read by passing current through the wires and changing the polarity of a magnet. This module is approximately 3 inches square.”It had 2K of RAM and 6K of ROM. More details here:After all, our modern robotic spacecraft get to Mars, Pluto, Saturn, Jupiter etc. There isn’t any doubt about SLS doing this too.We know how to do it, but you have to make sure you design your spacecraft to protect against the ionizing radiation.To explain the astronaut statements, we can’t currently send a human to the Moon because we lost that capability after Apollo.HOW WAS BUZZ ALDRIN LIT UP WHEN IN THE SHADOWS?He was lit up by the lunar surface soil, the lander itself, and, it turned out, Neil Armstrong’s white spacesuit was a strong source of light too.INCONSISTENT SHADOWSClaim: “The shadows should be absolutely black and run parallel to each other.”“Shadows on the Moon are complicated because there are several light sources: the Sun, and the Earth, as well as the astronauts and the Lunar Module. Light from these sources is scattered by lunar dust in many different directions, including into shadows. Additionally, the Moon's surface is not flat and shadows falling into craters and hills appear longer, shorter and distorted from the simple expectations of the conspiracists. More significantly, perspective effects come into play, particularly on rough or angled ground. This leads to non-parallel shadows even on objects which are extremely close to each other, and can be observed easily on Earth wherever fences or trees are found. And finally, the camera in use w”as fitted with a wide angle lens, which naturally resulted in subtle versions of fisheye lens distortion.”Lots of other photography debunks here: Examination of Apollo Moon photographs - WikipediaAnd good example using a moon surface crude model hereApollo Moon Photos: a Hoax? - GoddardWHY DID WE LOSE THE CAPABILITY TO GET TO THE MOON?It is a matter of budget. Also safety. Remember they did have the Apollo 13. The astronauts survived, but it was a close thing.When they got to 17, they had to decide whether to continue or not. They decided to stop at that point. They had won the race with Russia, the general public had somewhat lost interest. Scientsts very much wanted them to continue, but science wasn’t their top priority.They were always anxious about anyone on the lunar surface, the most dangerous time in any mission. The three day missions were a compromise between the scientists who wanted the astronauts on the surface as long as possible to do as much science as possible - and the mission planners who would like to minimize the surface EVA’s as much as possible to get the astronauts back safely. If they’d had their way they’d have all just spent a few minutes on the surface to say they’d been there, hop in the module and go straight back to Earth. Just falling over in the luanr gravity could kill you if some crucial part of the spacesuit was damaged and they often fell over.(Some of those falls were deliberate - as they couldn’t bend at the waste they found that the easiest way to pick something up was to fall over and then grab a hold of it and stand up again - but some were stumbles and falls, falling over forwards was okay but sideways or backwards could have damaged their backpack)Then the US made some bad decisions. They decided to go for the Space Shuttle. If they had kept the Saturn V in production they could have done far more than they did with the Shuttle which was only really capable of going to LEO. They had great hopes for the Shuttle but they expected to run it once a week or more often. Instead they only managed a few missions per year and had two major accidents that brought it to a screeching hault each time.The US presidents have many other pre-occupations, and a return to the Moon, even though Bush wanted it was not a top priority.YES THE ASTRONAUTS WERE LUCKYAnd yes they were very lucky. There was one heavy fatality, the Apollo 1. All three crew died in a ground fire. The Russians had several fatalities. Apollo 13 nearly ended in disaster. Apollo 10 nearly did too, just quick thinking as they span head over tails above the lunar surface prevented them all from dying.The astronauts were all test pilots in the early flights. Neil Armstrong had survived numerous crashes, e.g. ejecting from the lunar module test just a fraction of a second before it exploded. He had a cool head and nerves like steel. They had many incidents during the flights that would have killed everyone if they hadn’t all been experienced test pilots. As it was, they put their chance of surviving the Apollo 11 landing as 1 in 2. That also had some issuees, e.g. Buzz Aldrin snapping off a lever and fixing it with a pencil just before they took off.It was very dangerous and they were lucky. Risky - but not reckless, they did a careful step by step approach that minimized the risk, on top of that they had experienced test pilots (withotu which they would have had several more fatalities) and on top of that they had a measure of luck. But you need to prepare for luck, it won’t happen if you are reckless, careless or send the wrong people.And - Russia had excellent spying capabilities. It knew about the atom bomb project before there was a single buliding on the ground.They, like Jodrell bank, would have been able to follow the astronauts all the way to the Moon through the radio signals.BRINGING BACK THE ROCKSYes perhaps you could bring back as much rock with a rover but it would need a lot of work with the technology they had back then. The Russians brought some rocks back but not much.And the lunar meteorites were not discovered until after the Apollo missions.And each rock was labelled so you can tell where it was picked up and when, and match it with the video of the astronaut retreiving it. And they lead to new and surprising discoveries about the Moon. And these rocks are used to this day, re-examined to test theories and ideas.WHAT ABOUT THE FAKE LUNAR ROCK IN THE NETHERLANDSYes that particular rock is fake. Or rather, it seems it was a misunderstanding. The person who received the rock was nearly deaf and blind at the time, and the cardboard plaque doesn’t describe it as a moon rock, and he probably got a mistaken impression. And the museum checked his story just by ringing up NASA and asking if it was a moon rock, to which they replied over the phone that it probably was (bear in mind they had been given genuine moon rocks as well at the time) and that was all the checking they did.“The Amsterdam case appears to be not fraud but the result of poor vetting by the Rijksmuseum.“Spokeswoman Xandra van Gelder said the museum checked with NASA after receiving the rock in 1992 from the estate of the late Prime Minister Willem Drees. NASA told the museum, without seeing it, that it was "possible" it was a moon rock.“But it weighed a whopping 89 grams (3.1 ounces). In addition, its gold-colored cardboard plaque does not describe it as a moon rock.“The U.S. ambassador gave Drees the rock during an Oct. 9, 1969 visit by the Apollo 11 astronauts to the Netherlands. Drees's grandson, also named Willem, told the AP his grandfather had been out of office for more than a decade and was nearly deaf and blind in 1969, though his mind was still sharp.“"My guess is that he did not hear well what was said," said the grandson. "He may have formed his own idea about what it was."“The family never thought to question the story before donating the rock, to which it had not attached great importance or monetary value.”Apollo moon rocks lost in space? No, lost on EarthSee alsoNetherlands lunar sample displays - WikipediaWHY DON’T THEIR BOOTS MATCH THE FOOTPRINTS ON THE MOON?Simple, because they used overshoes on the lunar surface. The ones with the flat soles are the shoes they wore inside the lunar module. You can see the overshoes bottom right in this photo.Boot, Left, Lunar Overshoe, Cernan, Apollo 17, FlownSee Why doesn’t the first step on the moon match Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit boots?WHY DIDN’T NEIL ARMSTRONG SWEAR ON THE BIBLE THAT HE WENT TO THE MOON?Note that it is clut / clipped. You don’t see the build up or the rest of his reaction.But you’d be daft to do that, it would then become headlne news “Neil Armstrong swore on the Bible that he went to the Moon” - can you imagine how that would play out? He’d never hear the end of it.Basically it is a question you’d only ask of someone you disrespect, think should be in a criminal court and think is a liar. And someone who responds to it in any way except dismissively or a joke is in effect confirming that you had a legitimate right to ask that question, i.e. that they had done something wrong. It’s like the question “When did you stop beating your wife”. There is no good answer except to dismiss the quesetion.He went around pestering the astronauts. Eventually Buzz Aldrin punched him in the face.And - the bit about how they looked when they got back from the Moon in press conferences - you are used to movies in which actors act out their emotions on the big screen. But these were test pilots. They trained to be able to keep cool in emergencies that would have most of us screaming. In seconds they can make just the right decision to save their lives and the lives of the other astronauts.Here is ejecting just in timePeople who are great test pilots are not necessarily also great at public communications.Nowadays in astronaut selection, they select the astronauts for their communication skills as well as for their technical capabilities, because NASA has eome to realize how important it is to be able to present yourself well on camera in the modern world, and to respond to questions in a fun and engaging way. But back at the time of Apollo they didn’t do that.They just sent their best test pilots, the ones in best physical condition, fastest reactions and so on. Some were good at relating to the public, others not so much. Neil Armstrong was a more private person who tended to shun publicity. Buzz Aldrin by character could handle it better.He got one astronaut to swear on the Bible CernanAnd the conspiracy theorists use that video as yet more proof that humans didn’t go to the Moon saying he lied under perjury.There was no goood response there.It’s not a court of law. It is ridiculous for a private citizen to go around asking other people to swear on the Bible about anything.WITH SO MUCH APPARENT “EVIDENCE” ISN’T SOME OF IT RIGHT AT LEAST?No. All this shows is that there are some people with not much physics background, most probably failed physics at high school, and many hours of time on their hands.If you spend hours going through the footage, looking out for things that seem strange, then you may spot numerous odd things. Then they don’t check any of it with scientists, or if they do, ignore what they say, write it all up on web sites or do a TV program about it, and leave it to everyone else to debunk them.GEOLOGIST'S FIELD TRIP ON THE MOONI'm talking mainly about Apollo 17 here as the one with the most interesting rocks returned, because returned by a geologist. But if you are doubtful about Apollo 11 you will surely be even more skeptical about Apollo 17.You can watch the video of his expedition and share his excitement as a geologist as he made new discoveries on the Moon every hour.Remember - every time he picks up a rock sample there - as a researcher you can go and ask to see that very sample and analyse it and test it to check or confirm theories about the lunar surface.And that the rocks you can go and see - they look exactly as expected from the videos -same shape, same composition, if they pick up orange soil, they return orange soil, if they pick up a strangely shaped rock, they return a rock of exactly that shape...Especially when you also read about Harrison Schmidt's field trip, here A Field Trip to the Moon - and more detailed accounts elsewhere, the discoveries they made.How could they fake rocks to give the right results in experiments that would be done decades later using instruments not yet invented at the time, and to give reasonable results when used to test scientific theories about the Moon that nobody had thought of back then?And all the time also be appropriate rocks for the locations they were found in the videos taken way back then of the astronauts actually picking them up?EXAMPLE OF AN INTERESTING LUNAR ROCK STUDIED WITH TWENTY FIRST CENTURY INSTRUMENTSFor instance this oneTroctolite 76535Studied for instance in this 2009 paper examining isotope ratios and giving new results about the moon Early Lunar MagnetismDo you think they anticipated that some time in 2009 someone would examine this rock and want to find out the isotope ratios of Argon and manipulated them to make them appropriate for a hyopthesis not even thought of at the time? And designed the film to make everything fit together seamlessly to fit those ideas?MICROMETEORITE DAMAGEAnd then - to somehow simulated micro-meteorite damage and spherules in all the lunar samples so that even when looked at with electron microscopes they still look like lunar rocks?Spherule with micrometeorite damage in lunar rocks.We don't get micrometeorites on Earth, because they burn up in the atmosphere, while the lunar rocks are damaged in this way. This is an immediate give away that the rocks come from somewhere in space, where they have been exposed to micrometeorites for billions of years.Even today we wouldn't have the technology to simulate this damage on all the samples, so they would stand up to electron microscope scrutiny.The rocks are similar to Earth rocks, true - that was a surprise, how similar they are, and lead to the theory that the Moon was formed by an impact with the Earth.But not identical. One obvious difference is that they all had micro-meteorite impacts which Earth rocks don't have. At a level you can explore with the electron microscope - no way that could be simulated in 1960s. I don't think we could do it convincingly today - might spend millions of dollars trying to simulate a gram of lunar rock so that a randomly selected sample would look right in an electron microscope, and fail.COMPOSITION OF THE ROCKSAlso they were very very dry, lacking in volatiles and not hydrated like their Earth counterparts. And many are as old as 4.5 billion years old, older than any Earth rocks. See Moon rockAnd the rocks match the rocks that the astronauts can be seen picking up on the Moon in the videos, same shape, exactly the right material etc. to match the place they pick it up in the lunar surface.Or if you think unmanned rovers on the Moon brought the rocks back - how do they exactly match the rocks the astronauts pick up in the videos?Also, not just returned by US astronauts.The Russian Luna program returned a total of 0.326 kg in all their missions to the Moon, which confirms what's been found in the Apollo rocks.The rocks don't match any other rocks from Earth, or outer space.We now have Lunar meteorites which we can recognize because they match the composition of the lunar rocks.Here is a comment by an expert on lunar meteorites:"Any geoscientist (and there have been thousands from all over the world) who has studied lunar samples knows that anyone who thinks the Apollo lunar samples were created on Earth as part of government conspiracy doesn't know much about rocks. The Apollo samples are just too good. They tell a self-consistent story with a complexly interwoven plot that's better than any story any conspirator could have conceived. I've studied lunar rocks and soils for 40+ years and I couldn't make even a poor imitation of a lunar breccia, lunar soil, or a mare basalt in the lab. And with all due respect to my clever colleagues in government labs, no one in "the Government" could do it either, even now that we know what lunar rocks are like. Lunar samples show evidence of formation in an extremely dry environment with essentially no free oxygen and little gravity. Some have impact craters on the surface and many display evidence for a suite of unanticipated and complicated effects associated with large and small meteorite impacts. Lunar rocks and soil contain gases (hydrogen, helium, nitrogen, neon, argon, krypton, and xenon) derived from the solar wind with isotope ratios different than Earth forms of the same gases. They contain crystal damage from cosmic rays. Lunar igneous rocks have crystallization ages, determined by techniques involving radioisotopes, that are older than any known Earth rocks. (Anyone who figures out how to fake that is worthy of a Nobel Prize.) It was easier and cheaper to go to the Moon and bring back some rocks then it would have been to create all these fascinating features on Earth."See How Do We Know That It's a Rock from the Moon?TRACKING BY INDEPENDENT OBSERVERSThe Apollo 11 mission, as for the other missions, was tracked by professional astronomers and keen amateurs (reported in Sky at Night magazine) on its way to the Moon.See Telescopic Tracking of the Apollo Lunar MissionsAlso the Jodrell bank telescope tracked it along with all the other space missions on its way to the Moon, with such precision, that using doppler shift of the signal they could see in their recordings where Neil Armstrong took over with manual control during descent to the lunar surface.Referred to here: Jodrell Bank stories - I'll try to find a better link to it.They also simultaneously tracked the Luna 15 attempt by Russia to return a sample from the Moon which crashed somewhere in the sea of tranquility.You can listen to the recording of them as they tracked Lunar 15, with the sound of the Apollo astronauts in the background in the broadcasts they picked up from the Moon here: Jodrell Bank Centre for AstrophysicsFor more about this, see Third-party evidence for Apollo Moon landings (Wikipedia)SIMULATING WALKING ON THE MOONAnd do you think they really managed to simulate Apollo astronauts walking on the Moon to look real, to this day?When the most sophisticated movie about the Moon done before the landing was 2001, the year before - where this is their best footage they managed, after five years of work on the film, for the lunar sequence:I can tell you the film was pretty amazing to watch at the time. We didn't know any better. It came out in 1968, the year before Apollo 11 landed on the Moon.But look at it today - and is obvious those astronauts are just walking slowly, doesn't even resemble the lunar walking on the Moon.Even today, our movies of astronauts on the Moon surface are not convincing for those who watched the Apollo landings. For instance on the "Apollo 18" movie - looks nothing like the real thing, just walking slowly basically.I think myself, the only way to do it reasonably convincingly, even today - apart from microgravity flights and film everything in planes 20 seconds at a time - is something like thisFrom the NASA Archive: The Lunar Walking Problem | Science | WIREDWhich NASA did have in the 1960s - but - I've never seen anyone suggest they used this - and - how could you anyway - attach wires to absolutely everything that moves (including flag etc).In a Mythbusters episode they looked at the idea that the moon walking could be done by slow motion video, and showed that it didn't look exactly like the lunar footage + other tests of moon conspiracy ideas. Episode 104: NASA Moon LandingHere is another take on the whole thing by a movie director:Writer/director S G Collins of Postwar Media debunks every theory that the Apollo Moon landings could have been faked in a studio. The filmmaker takes a look at the video technology of the late 1960's, showing alleged fraud was simply not possible.And you can now see photographs of the tracks they made on the Moon, taken from orbit.It's not only harder to fake than to do it. It's literally impossible to fake, not without ability to look into the future and have technology not yet invented and know about future scientific theories and instruments not yet invented.ANOTHER POINT AGAINST FAKING IT - THE APOLLO 1 TRAGEDYIf you believe the whole thing is faked, what about the massive rockets that crowds turned out to watch launch from Florida? And what about the Apollo 1 fire. Three astronauts died in that, unable to get out as fire filled the cabin in the pure oxygen atmosphere.MITCHELL AND WEBB SKETCHSee also The Great Moon Hoax - and the other answers on this page are great :).PROFESSIONAL CALM OF THE ASTRONAUTSActually I wonder if part of it was because most of the astronauts were so professional about it and calm. They don't really seem like people doing things for the first time ever perhaps. Maybe it looks as if they can't be in any danger because they are so very calm?But remember these are people who are professionally trained to be calm in the middle of a crisis in a jet fighter which is about to crash. It takes years of training to be as steady and calm as that - you and I could never do it without that training (unless you are in a similar profession).We've seen so many movies of things like this and the actors in the movies are so much more excited by things and scared by them (even though it is acted) than the lunar astronauts seemed to be, and convey that excitement and fear to the audience well. Perhaps, paradoxically, if we'd sent actors to the Moon they would have been more convincing to the skeptics :).On that first landing on the Moon especially - though they had done everything they could to make it safe - there was certainly a real risk that they would crash (even through momentary pilot error) and a significant risk that once landed, they would not be able to leave the Moon again but would die there or crash on take off. And they all knew that. The US had even prepared a speech for the president to say in the event that the Apollo 11 astronauts landed, and could not take off from the Moon again.Here it isWhat if the moon landings had failed? The poignant and moving speech that President Nixon would have delivered if Apollo 11 astronauts had not come homeBut you'd never guess that they knew that from the way they talked.Here is Neil Armstrong narrating the video of their landing, done in parallel with Google MoonFor more debunks: debunking the moon hoax