[GoldCashew]

For Moon landing hoax believers, why wouldn't Russia have faked a landing on the Moon before the USA did?

[Tom Bishop]

The US Moon Landing was only the biggest win because you were conditioned to see it that way in the western school system. Russia had claimed many firsts:

- First intercontinental ballistic missile and orbital launch vehicle
- First satellite
- First person in space
- First robotic space rover on the Moon
- First probes sent to Venus and Mars

Considering these firsts, suggesting that Russia should have focused on being the first to send people to the Moon to claim that just seems arbitrary. Apollo was highly criticized because there was nothing a person could do on the Moon that a robot couldn't do, and that NASA was unnecessarily endangering the lives of people for national prestige.

From The Atlantic: "Over the years, I’ve spoken with many people who think deeply about space travel, and when I ask some of them about the whys, they admit, a little sheepishly, that there might be no compelling reason to send people into space—robots, yes, but people, maybe not. They seem hesitant to even say it aloud, as if to do so were blasphemous."

There wasn't actually a scientific reason to send people to the Moon. Why should Russia give importance to something the US arbitrarily decided to do?

[GoldCashew]

The US Moon Landing is only the biggest win because you were conditioned to see it that way in the western school system. Russia had claimed many firsts:

- First intercontinental ballistic missile and orbital launch vehicle
- First satellite
- First person in space
- First robotic space rover on the Moon
- First probes sent to Venus and Mars

Considering these firsts, suggesting that Russia should have focused on being the first to send people to the Moon to claim that just seems arbitrary. Apollo was highly criticized because there was nothing a person could do on the Moon that a robot couldn't do, and that NASA was unnecessarily endangering the lives of people for national prestige.

From The Atlantic: "Over the years, I’ve spoken with many people who think deeply about space travel, and when I ask some of them about the whys, they admit, a little sheepishly, that there might be no compelling reason to send people into space—robots, yes, but people, maybe not. They seem hesitant to even say it aloud, as if to do so were blasphemous."

There wasn't actually a scientific reason to send people to the Moon. Why should Russia give importance to something the US arbitrarily decided to do?

If Russia's "firsts" were faked (as a space travel conspiracy believer would believe) seems like they were on a roll and would have also faked a Moon landing in their own studio. Landing on another space body for the first time in human existence seems like an opportunity Russia wouldn't have put on the low end of their priorities.

Russia were also risking human lives / endangering lives at the cost of space travel. In 1967 Russia commenced with a high risk space mission that ultimately killed Cosmonaut, Vladimir Komarov. Read the Wikipedia for this one, very grotesque.

[Tom Bishop]

There were multiple government organizations involved. Money has to be appropriated. Neither NASA or the Soviet Space Agency had authority to appropriate money to itself.

NASA to US Congress: Russia is beating us!! Please give us billions of $$ for Apollo manned lunar landing.

US Congress: OMG OKAY

Soviet Space Agency to Soviet Russia: NASA is sending men to the Moon, please give us billions of ₽₽ for a Soviet manned lunar landing to beat them at that too!

Soviet Russia: That would unnecessarily endanger human lives. We already beat them at the most important space achievements. We won. We are going to reduce funding that area and not focus on it, never really getting past the planning stages.

[GoldCashew]

There were multiple government organizations involved. Money has to be appropriated. Neither NASA or the Soviet Space Agency had authority to appropriate money to itself.

NASA to US Congress: Russia is beating us!! Please give us billions of $$ for Apollo manned lunar landing.

US Congress: OMG OKAY

Soviet Space Agency to Soviet Russia: NASA is sending men to the Moon, please give us billions of ₽₽ for a Soviet lunar landing to beat them at that too!

Soviet Russia: That would unnecessarily endanger human lives. We already beat then at the most important space achievements. We won.

But, going to space is a conspiracy / faked in a studio as space travel conspiracy theorists would contend. It wouldn't need to cost billions.

As mentioned, Russia unnecessarily endangered human lives with their space missions.... the story of Vladimir Komarov being one of the most unfortunate examples. There were about 5 additional Russian cosmonaut fatalities.

Landing on the Moon and planting a flag on said Moon would indeed tend to rank at the top, in terms of space achievements.

[Tom Bishop]

But, going to space is a conspiracy / faked in a studio as space travel conspiracy theorists would contend. It wouldn't need to cost billions.

The Russian government and populous thinks it does though. Pretty fishy if the RSA claimed to do it without getting the money appropriated, or if they did it after the Soviet government denied their funding request for it.

[GoldCashew]

But, going to space is a conspiracy / faked in a studio as space travel conspiracy theorists would contend. It wouldn't need to cost billions.

The Russian government and populous thinks it does though. Pretty fishy if the RSA claimed to do it without getting the money appropriated, or if they did it after the Soviet government denied their funding request for it.

Landing on the Moon and planting a flag on said Moon would indeed tend to rank at the top, in terms of space achievements.

Whose to say Russia couldn't fake appropriations if able to fake space travel.
 

[Tom Bishop]

The Soviets did claim that they were the first to put a flag on the moon.

https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/russian-flag-on-moon-first/



https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/soviet-probe-reaches-the-moon

In September 1959, the Soviets upped the ante considerably with the announcement that a rocket carrying the flag of the Soviet Union had crashed onto the moon’s surface. In Washington, a muted congratulation was sent to the Soviet scientists who managed the feat. At the same time, however, the United States warned the Soviet Union that sending the Russian flag to the moon gave the Soviets no territorial rights over the celestial body.

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/2125:_Luna_2

Luna 2, the first artificial object to touch another world, carried a sphere made of steel Soviet flag emblems. [A patterned sphere is shown blowing up to pieces.] It was designed to blow apart on impact, scattering tiny metal flags and ribbons across the surface of the moon.

https://thecosmical.com/which-countries-have-a-flag-planted-on-the-moon-2021-edition/

The “Flags” of the Soviet Union

In all sense of the matter, the Soviet flag was technically the first to reach the surface of the moon.

In the 20th Century, the Space Race between the two Cold War adversaries, the Soviet Union (USSR) and the United States (USA), spurred on the scientific advancement in the space domain. The race soon brought the nations to the moon, when in 1959, the Soviet Union took another step forward in its space program with the launch of the Luna-2 probe.

Luna-2 was the sixth attempt of the Soviet Union to impact the moon, which ultimately succeeded to become the first man-made object to reach the lunar surface. With a crash landing mission directive, the Lunar-2 detonated two sphere-shaped pennants prior to impact.



72 titanium alloy pentagonal elements covered the two pennants. The center of the spheres was an explosive designed to detonate on impact to scatter the tiny pentagons all across the moon. The centerpiece of the sphere contained the state emblem of the Soviet Union with the Cyrillic letters CCCP (“USSR”) and the launch date engraved below it.

[GoldCashew]

The Soviets did claim that they were the first to put a flag on the moon.

https://www.wearethemighty.com/mighty-history/russian-flag-on-moon-first/



https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/soviet-probe-reaches-the-moon

"In September 1959, the Soviets upped the ante considerably with the announcement that a rocket carrying the flag of the Soviet Union had crashed onto the moon’s surface. In Washington, a muted congratulation was sent to the Soviet scientists who managed the feat. At the same time, however, the United States warned the Soviet Union that sending the Russian flag to the moon gave the Soviets no territorial rights over the celestial body."

If Russia went so far as fake a rocket carrying the flag being shot to the Moon, why not follow-up on that achievement with a fake Moon landing with the USSR being the first to have their people walk on the Moon before the USA faked their Moon landing?

[stack]

There's definitely a distinct level of "achievement" gap between exploding a metal soccer ball on the moon versus having a human drive a flagpole into it.

[Tom Bishop]

Yeah, it was called the space race, not the 'send a man to plant a flag on moon' race. It was a race to space. The goal posts shifted to planting a flag on the moon with a man after the US lost the space race. Russia clearly and obviously won it with what it was claiming, and was under no obligation to win further arbitrary goal post shifting.

If you lose a foot race and then decide that the race is actually to your car in the parking lot, that just makes you a big loser.

[GoldCashew]

Yeah, it was called the space race, not the 'send a man to plant a flag on moon' race. It was a race to space. The goal posts shifted to planting a flag on the moon with a man after the US lost the space race. Russia clearly and obviously won it with what it was claiming, and was under no obligation to win further arbitrary goal post shifting.

If you lose a foot race and then decide that the race is actually to your car in the parking lot, that just makes you a big loser.

But, if all of these races were faked anyways, why not fake the one with the biggest cherry on top.... which is having your country's citizens be the first to step foot on a foreign satellite, the Moon?

Set a fake budget, set up some fake missions, and fake the first Moon landing by your country in your own studio.

I mean, what's better than the first person in space but the first person to set foot on Earth's Moon. If space travel is a conspiracy and fake anyways, why not fake being the first country to set foot on the Moon.

[Tom Bishop]

Even if you are faking your achievements, it still takes effort to fake. Someone cheating in a foot race with steroids wouldn't necessarily entertain someone deciding that the race was to his car in the stadium parking lot.

Again, it was called the space race and not the "first man to the Moon" race. Putting a man on the Moon was just something that the US did to feel better about losing the space race and wasn't really the original goal.

If you are having a competition with someone you need to stick to the original goals, not make them up as you go along. It was called the space race, clearly. The goal was to get into space. The race to space was to express military dominance in terms of orbital and ICBM weapon capability. It was to show the world that you have the capability of creating orbital weapons. A manned lunar mission has little to do with that. It was tacked on because the US didn't want to appear to be a complete loser on the world stage.

[GoldCashew]

Even if you are faking your achievements, it still takes effort to fake. Someone cheating in a foot race with steroids wouldn't necessarily entertain someone deciding that the race was to his car in the stadium parking lot.

Again, it was called the space race and not the "first man to the Moon" race. Putting a man on the Moon was just something that the US did to feel better about losing the space race and wasn't really the original goal.

If you are having a competition with someone you need to stick to the original goals, not make them up as you go along. It was called the space race, clearly. The goal was to get into space. The race to space was to express military dominance in terms of orbital and ICBM weapon capability. It was to show the world that you have the capability of creating orbital weapons. A manned lunar mission has little to do with that. It was tacked on because the US didn't want to appear to be a complete loser.

But, there was indeed a race to the Moon, with the ultimate goal of being the first to land on the Moon in a manned spacecraft.

Note the various Luna, Ranger, and Surveyor missions as progress steps to trying to get to that ultimate goal.

Why would the Soviet Union go so far as to fake the various Luna missions to the Moon but not go one step further in faking the ultimate cherry on top landing in a manned spacecraft.

[AATW]

The US Moon Landing was only the biggest win because you were conditioned to see it that way in the western school system.

This is such obvious bullshit. Landing a man on the moon and returning them to earth safely is orders of magnitude more complicated and risky than anything the USSR achieved. There was no well defined end of the space race, it was just about willy waving and demonstrating technical superiority. The Russians were clearly doing that initially but putting a man on the moon was clearly a massive win for the US - that's why the Russians were trying to do it too. ( https://www.rferl.org/a/why-the-soviets-never-landed-on-the-moon/30043556.html )

Apollo was highly criticized because there was nothing a person could do on the Moon that a robot couldn't do

Well this is obvious nonsense too. Even now a robot can't do all the same things a human can, and we are more than 50 years on from Apollo.
To say that "there might be no compelling reason to send people into space" is to miss the point of exploration. What is the reason for going to the South Pole or to climb Everest? Humans have a spirit of exploration and even if it were true that we would learn as much from a robot exploration as a human one - which it is not - there is still something about seeing a human footprint on the moon that gives one goosebumps.

There wasn't actually a scientific reason to send people to the Moon. Why should Russia give importance to something the US arbitrarily decided to do?

As I've said, there were scientific reasons - in one of the later missions they actually sent a geologist to the moon. The moon rocks which were brought back have taught us a lot about the moon's origins. And secondly Russia were also trying to send a manned mission to the moon, their bigger rockets just didn't work well enough to do it.

I'm interested what your narrative here. Presumably you think that the early achievements by the USSR were faked? So the US started faking their own? I mean, it's all very silly given that people could hear the signals from Sputnik in the same way radio hams can now contact the ISS. The Australians were relaying signals for the US during the Apollo missions, were they "in on it" or being fooled too? And Jodrell Bank in the UK were tracking both the Apollo missions and a USSR craft which was also trying to land at the same time to steal the US's thunder. Were they in on it too?

The mental gymnastics you have to do in order to keep your beliefs going are ridiculous.

[Tom Bishop]

It's simple. If there is a competition both parties need to agree to it.

From the Wikipedia article on "Space Race" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race

"The competition began in earnest on August 2, 1955, when the Soviet Union responded to the American announcement four days earlier of intent to launch artificial satellites for the International Geophysical Year, by declaring they would also launch a satellite 'in the near future'."

Both parties agreed to this and publicly communicated their intentions. The Soviet Union won this.

In contradiction, the Soviets did not publicly claim at the time of Apollo that they were in a race to the Moon:

https://www.history.com/news/space-race-soviet-union-moon-landing-denial

The Soviet Response to the Moon Landing? Denial There Was a Moon Race at All

President John F. Kennedy kicked off the moon race in 1961 by announcing the U.S. would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade. From then on, NASA’s program to reach the moon before the Soviet Union was public information. In contrast, the Soviet Union didn’t publicize its own program, or even officially admit it had one.

https://reason.com/1979/08/01/the-moon-race-cover-up/

The Moon Race Cover-Up

Ten years ago Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Did the US really beat the Soviets, or was the moon race just a NASA hype?

On Christmas Eve 1968, three American astronauts circled the moon in the Apollo-8 spaceship. After another lunar scouting mission the following May, the Apollo-11 flight then carried out the first actual manned landing on another world. Five more landings (and one cliff-hanging near-disaster) were made in the next three years.

The Apollo-8 astronauts had celebrated their achievement with a poem modeled on "The Night before Christmas." An astronaut on earth read the parody to the men a quarter of a million miles away: "'Twas the night before Christmas, and way out in space, The Apollo Eight crew had just won the moon race.…"

But had there ever been a race?

The USSR, which had opened the frantic "space race" with a rapid-fire series of surprise "space spectaculars" a dozen years earlier, never seemed unequivocally committed to the "man-to-the-moon" race against Apollo, despite repeated strident cries from NASA during budget hearings that "the Russians will beat us to the moon." Many Western observers were motivated to believe that Moscow had decided to drop out of this phase of the space sweepstakes: liberal observers opposed Apollo as a wasteful use of resources, which without the whipped-up "moon race" hysteria could never have been diverted from social programs; conservatives were convinced that Soviet engineers are congenitally incapable of creating sophisticated moon ships but were pouring rubles into near-earth space weapons that Apollo did nothing to counteract; most leading space scientists were opposed to the tremendous extra costs of manned versus automated space missions, especially those that promised unique contributions to their own specialties.

After the initial Apollo successes in 1969, Moscow spokesmen were quick to aver that "the Soviet Union has never intended to send men to the moon" (else surely it would have beaten Apollo). The true Soviet lunar program, these sources claimed, was based on the exclusive use of automatic robot probes that were cheaper, more flexible, and could be launched "without risk to human life." Less-polite remarks were made in native-language broadcasts from Radio Moscow to Latin America, Africa, and Asia; this line stressed the excessive costs of Apollo, resulting in "the fanatical squandering of wealth looted from the oppressed peoples of the developing world."

Some skeptics dismissed this as a "sour grapes" rationalization of Russia's defeat or as a face-saving excuse for losing a race Moscow had promised to win. But most observers accepted these Soviet declarations at face value.

Five years after the first Apollo moon landing, CBS ran a special TV report in which news correspondent Walter Cronkite intoned, "It turned out that the Russians were never in the race at all." A few weeks later, Parade magazine was asked about the "wasted money" of Apollo, since "we've learned that the Russians never even came close technologically to putting a man on the moon." Replied editor Walter Scott, "Whether putting Americans on the Moon was a waste of money is of course arguable. That our intelligence of the Soviet space technology was faulty is not."

Books on Apollo generally praised the program while echoing the theme advanced by the science editor of the Saturday Review as early as 1963, that "there never was a race to the moon, because the Russians wouldn't race." The authors of Journey to Tranquility (Doubleday, 1969) claimed to reveal the "startling fact" that "by 1963 it had become clear that the Russians had little immediate interest in the Moon and that the race for space did not, in fact, exist."

The above articles go on to describe that Russia was making some steps towards a future manned lunar mission, and developed a few things. But they were clearly not publicly claiming to be in a moon race at the time of Apollo. Russia said that they were not in a race to the moon. It is claimed by the western side that Russia was in a moon race and that Russia was lying when publicly stating that they were not in a moon race. 

In order to have a competition you need two parties who communicate their intention. Russia did not agree to any such race. Despite whatever research they developed towards a possible future moon landing, the claim that they were secretly in a race is clearly just coping. It was a space race, which the Soviets won. It turned into a "moon race" when the US needed to cope.

[GoldCashew]

If all of the Soviet's firsts were faked, and they endangered lives to carry out their faked missions, why would they have skipped a beat and declined faking a manned Moon landing?

- fake the first man in space. Check
- fake the first satellite launched and in orbit. Check
- fake the first probe to orbit the Moon. Check
- fake the first probe to land on the Moon. Check
- fake the first manned Moon landing. Ah, we'll just skip this one.

[Tom Bishop]

There is nothing to skip. Read above. They publicly said they were not in a race to send men to the Moon and that their lunar program was robotic; which was cheaper, more flexible, and without risk to human life.

Apollo is prided on being "risky" and "hazardous"... which is really nothing to be proud of. The US Congress funded such a risky scheme out of desperation. The Russians were not desperate, and was not keen on funding wild hazardous manned missions to the moon. Even if fake, you still need to get the public and people out of the loop on board and convince people of the plan to get funding.

[GoldCashew]

There is nothing to skip. Read above. They publicly said they were not in a race to send men to the Moon and that their lunar program was robotic; which was cheaper, more flexible, and without risk to human life.

Apollo is prided on being "risky" and "hazardous"... which is really nothing to be proud of. The US Congress funded such a risky scheme out of desperation. The Russians were not desperate, and was not keen on funding wild hazardous manned missions to the moon.

But, faking a Moon landing in a studio wouldn't actually require any wild hazardous manned mission to the Moon....because it could just be faked.... in a studio.

[Tom Bishop]

See my comment above:

Even if fake, you still need to get the public and people out of the loop on board and convince people of the plan to get funding.

The US Congress approved the risky scheme because they were desperate.

Russia was not desperate, and did not publicaly announce that this was their goal. Clearly a difference there.

Easy to see why a desperate US would try to beat the Russians at something after so many losses. Turns out that the Russians never consented to a manned moon race  and it was mostly hype.