Critical Evaluation and Analysis:
Conspiracy Theory – Did We Land on the Moon
a perspective of Corporate Strategy & Leadership in the International Context

Table of Contents

Introduction. 3

Arguments. 3

  Issue: 20% of Americans have doubts that we went to the Moon. 3

  Issue: Absence of Stars. 4

  Issue: Absence of blast crater 4

  Issue: Dust and footprints anachronous. 4

  Issue: Radiation Belts. 5

  Issue: The waving U.S. flag. 5

  Issue: No Engine Noise. 5

  Issue: Lighting and Shadow Discrepancies. 6

  Issue: Crosshairs on the photographs. 6

Argument Summary. 6

Strategic Perspective. 7

Communication Perspective. 8

Ethical Perspective. 9

Critical Evaluation and Analysis –

Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon (FOX TV)

Introduction

The television special - Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon was produced by Bruce Nash and aired on the Fox Network. On Thursday, February 15th 2001 (and replayed on March 19), this special was aired by Fox TV network and hosted by X-Files actor Mitch Pileggi. The programme seeks to question, on a purportedly scientific and technical basis, whether the Apollo Missions to the moon actually happened or whether they were an elaborate hoax orchestrated by NASA. Arguing for the conspiracy theory are the following individuals - Bill Kaysing (an engineer and analyst for Rocketdyne), Brian O'Leary (a NASA astronaut in the 1960's), Paul Lazarus (a producer), Ralph Rene (Author/Scientist), Bart Sibrel (Investigative Journalist), Jan Lundberg (a technician for Hasselblad), Donald Percey (member of the Royal Photographic Society) and Howard McCurdy (space historian at an American University). The counterarguments are offered by former NASA spokesman Julian Scheer and NASA LEM specialist Paul Field.

Arguments

The arguments expresses in the program are enumerated here and a non-biased perspective is attempted to throw light on the conspiracy theory. Scientific and logical light, that is.

Issue: 20% of Americans have doubts that we went to the Moon.

Yes, Americans. These are the same people who believed Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons. But then, that is not a scientific argument, it is merely an example of the kind of propaganda put forth by the conspiracy theorists. In actuality, a 1999 Gallup poll[1] showed it was more like 6%, a number which agrees with a poll taken in 1995 by Time/CNN.

Issue: Absence of Stars

The absence of stars in the photographs is easy to explain, and I have taken the trouble to illustrate it by taking and enclosing a photograph. One must keep in mind that this photograph is taken with a digital Canon camera (Powershot A 95) with technology almost 35 years after the Apollo photographs.

Issue: Absence of blast crater

Though this has been addressed in the documentary by NASA, a further elaboration may help. The engine nozzle was about 54 inches across[2], which means it had an area of 2300 square inches, thus the thrust generated a pressure of only about 1.5 pounds per square inch. Additionally, in a vacuum, the exhaust from a rocket spreads out and lowers the pressure which is why there's no blast crater. The special shows an artist’s[3] conception with a blast crater visible under the LEM, but the sketch is not a scientific illustration.

Issue: Dust and footprints anachronous

Lunar dust is powdered rock, much higher in density and with no air to support it. The only dust that gets blown around by the exhaust of the LEM would be the dust physically touched by the exhaust, or dust hit by other particles of flying dust. Ultimately, only the dust directly under or a bit around the rocket was blown out by the exhaust. The rest was left where it was. In fact, the dust around the landing site was probably a bit thicker than before, since the dust blown out would have piled up there, thus making for better footprints.

Issue: Radiation Belts

In the program, Kaysing say, “Any human being travelling through the Van Allen belt would have been rendered either extremely ill or actually killed by the radiation within a short time thereof”. The Van Allen Belts are zones where particles from the sun are trapped by the earth's magnetic field. Van Allen has himself described the belts and their hazards as varying greatly in extent and radiation depending on solar activity, but generally there is an inner, energetic belt mostly at low latitudes between about 2000 and 4000 kilometers and an outer, less energetic belt between about 13,000 and 20,000 kilometers above the earth[4]. The belts carry a radiation dose of about 20 roentgens (grays in modern units) per hour and the gap in between about one. These figures are for spacecraft shielded by about 4 mm of aluminum (one gram per square centimeter). The Apollo capsule at escape velocity (40,000 km/hour) would then travel 0.05 hours in the inner belt, 0.225 hours in the gap and 0.175 hours in the outer belt. That means a total of (20 x 0.05) + (.225 x 1) + (20 x 0.175) = 4.7 roentgens, or about 1% of the fatal radiation dose, which makes 2% when including the return trip.

Issue: The waving U.S. flag

The flag had a rod to stand out from the staff. When the pole is moved the free corner lags behind because of inertia. The flag actually flops unnaturally quickly because there is no air resistance to impede it. Additionally, the flag hangs from a horizontal rod extended from the vertical one. In Apollo 11, the rod did not extend completely, so the flag didn't get stretched fully and thus seems to have a ripple in it.

Issue: No Engine Noise

Engine noise is not heard on transcripts of Space Shuttle launches or as we have witnessed ourselves, do you hear engine noise when an airline pilot speaks over the loudspeaker. The blast noise goes mostly out and back and the proximity of the microphone to the speaker's mouth overrides the effects of the engine noise.

Issue: Lighting and Shadow Discrepancies

There are two explanations to the discrepancies cited. Shadows are claimed to be in different directions. The comparison however, is between well-defined shadows in the foreground and very oblique shadows in the background. Shadows lie on parallel lines pointing away from the sun and because of perspective, will appear to radiate away from the point on the horizon directly under the sun. The program erroneously lines up the base of the object with its shadow, whereas one should draw a line from a point on the edge of the shadow through the object that casts that part of the shadow, and not to the base. Moreover, the sun is not the only source of light on the moon, as claimed in the program. The moon itself also is. The lunar dust tends to reflect light back in the direction from where it came. In fact, the lunar surface is so bright that it easily lights up the shadows of vertical surfaces (an effect called heiligenschein).

Issue: Crosshairs on the photographs

This is because of the photographic effect that thin dark lines disappear when photographed against very bright backgrounds. One can see this in the lunar photographs as well. Examples are cited here for reference.  On the left, the crosshair in front of the flag fades to near invisibility in front of the white stripes, and on the right, the crosshair in front of the LEM disappears against the bright reflection from the leg.

Argument Summary

There are thus a number of scientific and logical explanations for the phenomenon cited in the ‘documentary’. Most scientific study of note agrees without question on the authenticity of the Apollo landings. One can visit and read about the hoax and the counter arguments on a number of internet websites. A film called Dark Side of the Moon purports that the moon landings were shown to the world through the lens of Stanley Kubrick and were staged on the same soundstage as 2001: A Space Odyssey. From a managerial point of view however, it is interesting to put this conspiracy and the results in a strategic perspective, which is what the remainder of this analysis attempts to do.

Strategic Perspective

The cost of the entire Apollo program was USD $25.4 billion which accounting for inflation to give a current standard amounts to $135 billion. This figure includes Mercury, Gemini, Ranger, Surveyor, Lunar Orbitar, Apollo programs. Apollo spacecraft and Saturn rocket cost alone, was about $ 83-billion 2005 Dollars (Apollo spacecraft cost $ 28-billion (CS/M $ 17-billion; LM $ 11-billion), Saturn I, IB, V costs about $ 46-billion 2005 dollars).[5] As such, it of a volume larger than most organisations in the world, and like corporations, runs the risk of scandal. In the days since the likes of Enron and Pinnafarina, we have witnessed the impact and extent of these scandals in the corporate world. Like a business organisation, the stakeholders would stand to gain if such a hoax was indeed carried out. Several motives for the U.S. government to fake the moon landings have been suggested and could include the following –

·         As the program mentions, the Cold War was on. The U.S. government considered it vital that the U.S. win the space race with the USSR. The USSR had also succeeded in the Sputnik missions, and Yuri Gagarin and other Russian cosmonauts had celebrated success which did not go down well with the US. Specially as in the minds of the public, the winner of the space race was the winner of the nuclear race.

·         The benefit from a popular distraction to take attention away from the Vietnam War. Lunar activities abruptly stopped with planned missions cancelled around the same time that the US ceased its involvement in the Vietnam War.

·         NASA raised approximately 30 billion dollars to go to the moon, a significant amount which serves as a motivation for complicity. The space industry has often been characterized as a political economy, much like the military industrial complex, creating fertile ground for its own survival.

However, each of these arguments can also be made in favour of the political and strategic importance attached to the Apollo Missions and NASA in getting these missions right. After Kennedy’s speech, it was all the more imperative to act on the promises, much as the President’s agenda resembles that of the Chairman’s or Directors’ Statement in an Annual Report concerning the agenda and focus of the company.

Communication Perspective

A theory which has been propagated in the movie Dark Side of the Moon[6], it is claimed that Stanley Kubrick and other Hollywood producers were recruited to help the U.S. win the high stakes race to the moon.  In order to finance the space program through public funds, the U.S. government needed huge popular support and couldn't afford any expensive public relations failures.  Fearing that no live pictures could be transmitted from the first moon landing, President Nixon, according to the theory, enlisted the creative efforts of Kubrick who made 2001: a Space Odyssey in 1968.  

More than the elements of this theory itself, what it brings out is the high precedence placed on the efficient managing of the Apollo missions and Man’s landing on the moon as a public relations success. The communication and media management of this exercise were crucial, also because of the preceding motives cited. Whether a hoax or not, the media management of the Apollo Missions was carried out with exemplary efficiency, and the words of Neil Armstrong “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” echoed in houses across the globe and filled hearts worldwide with awe and inspiration. It is one of the reasons almost every kid has wanted to “grow up and be an astronaut”.

The communication perspective is also interesting in the light of the accusation of fake photographs. The importance of the event as a public relations stunt could also thus mean that while the Apollo Missions were real, some of the photographs my have been faked, or at the least, edited. Of course, photographs are often edited for press releases and in as much do not constitute a crime.

There are other communication aspects significant in the light of the hoax itself, from which we can derive managerial and strategic learning. For instance, in early November 2002, NASA announced that it was cancelling publication of a manuscript by Jim Oberg that was originally intended to refute the claims that the Moon landings were a hoax. NASA said that this decision was based on the possibility of an outcry raised by people who felt such a book would "legitimize" the very belief it would have debunked.[7] NASA had hired aerospace writer Jim Oberg for the job on a fee of $15,000, which is significant in that they saw it worthwhile to contradict the conspiracy theorists.

From a managerial point of view, this exhibits the need to communicate to the stakeholders on issues which threaten to put the organisation in a negative light, even if there be no truth in these allegations. This is interesting in light of the works on organisational identity dynamics and the effects of such external communication with respect to organisational identity and culture (Hatch and Schultz, 2002).[8] The rebuttal of such information, when at risk of credibility in the eyes of significant stakeholders, needs thus to be conducted with prejudice by the organisation.

However, NASA cancelled the book intended to challenge the conspiracy theorist and declined to comment specifically on the reasons for dropping the publication, but it is understood the decision resulted from the bad publicity that followed the announcement of the project, thus also highlighting the need to distance oneself from associated negative repercussions in organisational communication. Some commentators had said that in making the Oberg book an official NASA publication, the agency was actually giving certain credibility to the hoax theory.

Ethical Perspective

From a managerial point of view, the possibility of the Apollo Missions, or of their faking notwithstanding, what is arguably the most important issue is whether given such an opportunity, an organisation should consider such a possibility. Of course, the textbook answer is no, and always errs on the side of caution where ethic is concerned. However, when given the outlook that the risk of the organisation is at stake (or in this case, a political economy, based in its strength on public image, and the associations of winning the Cold War), the issue takes on a significantly different mould from the theory. Which is why, in spite of all that management ethics education has to offer, we find organisational leaders going against the grain so often.

An interesting analogy can be drawn with the Harvard case study “The Parable of the Sadhu”. When Bowen ‘Buzz” McCoy, then an Investment Banker at Morgan Stanley, recounts his experience traversing an 18,000 foot Himalayan peak, he reiterates the question that must plague every businessmen in the course of his career – the choice between the agreed supreme objective and individual morals or values. In this case, the agreed supreme objective would be to win the space race (by putting a man on the moon, or at least to giving the appearance of it, as conspiracy theorists would argue). The amount that ones moral or ethical values govern ones decisions are a factor of the social and cultural context they are made in. The morals and values themselves are learnt from the same contexts and acquired by our interpretation of the world around and of what is important. In modern society and businesses, ethics have taken on a role that is more akin to a hygiene factor than one governing business decisions.

When the conspiracy theories go on to claim that NASA may have gone as far as to sabotage missions and astronauts’ lives in order to keep their secret, the sceptics must also sit up and take note. From an ethical point of view, what must take precedence? In such decisions, a remark by Ed Locke, ethical humanist, comes to mind, where he vociferously put forth that “there are values greater than the organisational objective, like life”. In politics, however, these decisions often come under a grey area, as the choices of the heads of nations are often not between the organisational and human, but between saving the lives of the few or the many, and sometimes the choice of which lives to say. Here, the lines blur into the subjective and ethics cannot always offer a neat solution.

Our take-out however, as one learns when studying the issues of Corporate Governance from a strategic perspective, is that ethical behaviour is desirable for the long term interests of the organisation and its stakeholders. To cite an example from industry, the reason J&J’s James Burke saw the decision to pull Extra-Strength Tylenol as a no-choice decision was because he was supported by a corporate culture that prided itself in its first priority being to the doctors, nurses and patients, and the mothers and all other who use their products. As a manager, one can learn from this that an organisation should be give the time and conscious effort directed to develop an ethos and corporate value that not only made easier but necessitated the taking of such a decision.

As future managers, we at our institute, or in the organisations we join tomorrow, are fortunate enough to have the luxury of forming such a culture. As with the institute, it is not enough to put our values in a neat brochure, or espouse them from behind a wooden podium, but to bring them into practice, and we must strive to do that.

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