taipeisafc
Striker
Well space travel is a little different to the flat earth debate.
Do you believe Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space, There is a second theory that he wasn't and it was Major General Vladimir Sergeyevich Ilyushin 2 days earlier and that the USA was quite happy to help cover up the fact the USSR was lying. The reason for this was a bad landing that nearly killed him, I think IIRC he ended up in china as the modular failed and went off course.
With regards the moon landings I have some mixed views based on "lost tech theory" the so called Nasa lost the ability to go back and the fact we have the Van Allen radiation belt, I feel some astronauts did land on the moon but maybe not the ones paraded about back on earth, its not much to conceive that the original astronauts died from radiation poisoning and were replaced for the cameras, could explain a lot of the conspiracy theories with regards the first landings and some of the film footage that's brought up with regards Armstrong and co in the questions afterwards. Either way there is some compelling stuff to make you think twice at times.
At the time studies were still ongoing in the Marshall Islands with regards human effects of Radiation ( another cover up ), so maybe a miscalculation of the Van Allen belt caused sickness /death in the first crew and the USA did a mini cover up, after all beating the USSR was the most important thing?
Its interesting thoughts and could explain why we didn't go back after the Apollo program, if it was deemed to dangerous and why we stay in low obit, I think this is much more likely than not going at all or aliens stopping us from going back.
Fun subject though and interesting stuff.
I hadn't heard about the Ilyushin thing before but a quick google and wikipedia suggest it is somewhat unfounded :-
Alleged first person in space[
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Two days before Gagarin's launch on 12 April 1961, Dennis Ogden wrote in the Western Communist newspaper the
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that the Soviet Union's announcement that Ilyushin had been involved in a serious
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was really a cover story for a 7 April 1961 spaceflight gone wrong. A similar story was told by French broadcaster Eduard Bobrovsky, but his version had the launch occurring in March, resulting in Ilyushin slipping into a . tracking stations, however, had no record of any such launch. Later that year, transmitted the rumor by claiming that Gagarin had never flown, and was merely a stand-in for the sickened Ilyushin. The 1999 film The Cosmonaut Cover-Up takes the position that Ilyushin was the first man in space and discusses the alleged cover-up in detail. They claim, "According to recently declassified documents, Ilyushin was placed in a capsule named Rossiya, and the secret flight took place in the early hours of the morning, on Friday April 7th 1961". After a guidance malfunction, the cosmonaut is reported to have made an unguided crash landing in China, too critically injured to announce the mission a complete success. The 2009 film Fallen Idol: The Yuri Gagarin Conspiracy also takes the same position and further discusses US efforts to continue the allegation, even citing national security not to release information under the . The data sought was from the tracking station at that supposedly covered and recorded Iluyshin's failed mission.According to Mark Wade, editor of the space history web site , "The entire early history of the Soviet manned space program has been declassified and we have piles of memoirs of cosmonauts, engineers, etc., who participated. We know who was in the original cosmonaut team, who never flew, was dismissed, or was killed in ground tests. Ilyushin is not one of them."
As regards the moon landings, none of the evidence to refute the moon landings occurring stands up to me - particularly as they have now got surface photos of the stuff left on the moon through more recent missions. I think they have never bothered going back to the moon as there isn't anything an astronaut can do that an automated lander can and as we have already been there isn't any kudos or political capital in going there - I suspect China may try to land people there pretty soon to validate their space program and as a show of their "prowess".
Also remember that the bloke I was replying to doesn't believe in space at all and every single space mission is a fake.......