Jet airplanes are pretty fantastic, and very complex. The idea that I have a billion tiny microscopic switches inside my phone flicking on and off a billion times a second is pretty fantastic.
Yes, and those things need to be widely available to people for acceptance and confidence that they exist. If you made such claims several hundred years ago you would be laughed at. Claiming "I know this person who had this magic tech" would not really cut it.
That's what you are doing now, claiming that an exclusive group has a special technology. Doesn't cut it.
That's not at all what I'm claiming.
Saying that people hundreds of years ago wouldn't believe you if you described a cell phone doesn't mean cell phones don't exist, that's a false argument. People wouldn't believe most of what we have to day, but we still have and use it.
That exclusive group is pretty big now, comprising of many countries and anyone with enough money to pay for a trip, or to buy his own rocket with a camera and launch it.
And it's not special technology. It's simply bigger and more expensive things that we already have and use. We have jets that fly people around the world every day, I have launched model rockets, the idea that we can make bigger rockets isn't exactly mind-bending.
Nothing NASA does requires magic, it's just bigger and more expensive versions of things I know exist.
And only some people need things to "be widely available to people for acceptance and confidence that they exist". The vast majority of the world doesn't feel that way. They believe the space program, they believe in the Large Hadron Collider Exists, though few have ever seen it. I've never been to the White House, but I'm sure it's real. I've never SEEN a microprocessor fabrication facility but I know my phone chips were made there and not in a witches cauldron.
Most people don't need to directly touch or see something to understand it's real. Who has seen a doctor perform open heart surgery in person? Very few, but does anyone think all those surgeries are fake and Doctors are liars?
What I'm claiming, is people have been to space and seen the Earth, taken pictures, videos, and come back to talk about it... and I have to believe either...
1. We used technology that I understand and seems quite reasonable based on everything else we can do.
Or...
2. Thousands, or millions of people are involved in a vast web of lies and deceit and all astronauts are actors and liars and it's a perfect conspiracy and massive amounts of data and observations are totally made up and nobody noticed.
Number one is the obvious choice for me.