Reflections on the fight against space conspiracy

Classes popularizing astronautics have one funny consequence - in the comments will regularly appear people who consider you a paid propagandist of Roskosmos, NASA, aliens or immediately Satan, who specifically hide the true truth that there were no Americans on the moon, Gagarin didn’t fly into space, satellites no one has yet launched, and the Earth is not that flat, or that, in general, is the inner surface of the ball, massaraksh! Discussions with them are sometimes amusing, but, more often, tedious, and have never in my memory been of any appreciable benefit. I bring to your attention reflections on what kind of space conspiracy theorists are and how to deal with them.

Bestiary

This is a great and vast sea: tamo gadi, there’s no number of them
Ps. 103: 25

Seventeen years ago, when I was still a schoolboy, I was at a conference at MIPT. There was a living Rauschenbach and an astronaut, if my memory serves me, Serebrov. A large hall full of teenagers who brought their research projects to Dolgoprudny could only give birth to two questions to the astronaut - “have you seen a UFO?” And “have there been Americans on the moon?” After almost two decades, the situation did not change much. The first question I sometimes hear from those who find out that I have a telescope. Having warmly recalled Serebrov, I answer him with a comic answer, adapted to my experience. The second question is sometimes asked even at lectures not related to the Moon, and I have a standard answer - “the more I learn about the American lunar program and the history of astronautics in general, the more I am sure that these landings were in reality”.
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Any science begins with a classification, so it is worth distinguishing three types of interlocutors.

The uninformed . The man begins the conversation with the question "Have the Americans been on the moon / did Gagarin fly / something else." The best option, because a person asks a question, means he wants to hear the answer, and a dialogue is possible with him in principle. Fortunately, these, I feel, the vast majority. They have no preconceptions, so a short answer listing additional sources works great.

Heard something . After your answer, the interlocutor clarifies - “what about the flag / photo / stars?”, Demonstrating familiarity with at least some of the constructions of conspiracy therapists. It feels like quite a rare case, I didn’t come across, and only the journalist from last year’s interview with Gennady Padalki comes to mind. If the interlocutor is adequate, then there may be a good dialogue in which there are chances to refute the conspiracy ideas.

Hopeless . Actually, convinced conspiracy therapists. As a rule, they do not ask general questions “were / were not”, but either engage in insults and spam their resources, or try to ask them a “corona” question, which they supposedly should bring me to clean water or convince me. Repeatedly appeared in the comments, the experience dialogue does not make any sense. I am a humanist, and this is not very pleasant to say, but it seems that somehow it will not work to enlighten such people. Why?

First, human communication has performance limitations and resources. The interlocutor may sincerely ignore or maliciously ignore your arguments, make absurd and impracticable demands, the conversation either revolves around the same, or diverges in many directions at once, and supports it requires more and more efforts that are no longer desires.

Secondly, conspiracy constructs quite often combine selective literacy with selective vision. Translating into simple language - “we look here, we don’t look here, it’s necessary to count with formulas, and here everything is obvious”. A real example - I had the occasion to read the conspiracy idea that there was no “Rosetta” that had come into orbit around comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. How is it aggrieved? The man took the speed of the "Rosetta" relative to the Sun and the parameters of the orbit around the comet, after which he stated that it is technically impossible, flying at a speed of tens of kilometers per second, to have time to go into orbit around the comet. At the same time, in principle, without realizing that Rosette and the comet had very small speeds relative to each other. Yeah, Van Damme couldn’t do his splits on the trucks either - how could he be able to run tens of kilometers per hour on the splits behind the trucks? The next story - in 2015, I wrote a publication about the history of the space toilet , in which I told you what an interesting and difficult way the space dumping system underwent. In 2016, I saw quotes from this publication on a conspiracy resource in an article that tried to state that there were no space toilets (and, therefore, flights) in the United States before the shuttles, that is, quite the opposite.

And thirdly, and, probably, in the most important ones, I have not yet seen a conspiracy theorist who, for example, had a lunar conspiracy, existed by itself. On the contrary, conspiracies are included in a more general outlook and, rather, are the result of it. Those who dislike the United States will support the lunar conspiracy, and the anti-Soviet will refute the flight of Gagarin. Even the concept that there is no cosmonautics, and mankind did not launch a single satellite, relied on the global picture of the world - scientists are Gnostic, Gnostics are Satanists, Satan is the father of lies and cannot create anything in reality. Therefore, Satanist scientists can only do the illusions of satellites and astronautics. Syllogism is quite correct, except that the initial positions are nonsense. And in principle, it would be more correct to refute not a cosmic conspiracy, but this is a more global outlook, but, I'm afraid, it is completely unrealistic.

Strategy

There is only one good — knowledge and only evil — ignorance.
Socrates

When the case is presented, in my popular science lectures I ask the audience how many manned landings to the moon were? Or please name the names of those who flew after Gagarin. Even among people who are interested in astronautics so much as to attend the lecture, the correct answers are almost absent. Compatible with the classification above. Ignorant need to talk about what was generally American manned lunar program. Something heard may be useful destruction of conspiracy myths, but I am sure they themselves are far from the fact that they will answer the question about the number of landings. And Hopeless , sadly, can not help. It turns out that the task of the story that there were such events in history as the flight of Gagarin or the American lunar program is more important than the struggle with myths. Especially since conspiracy theologians regularly invent new ones, and the equivalent of a very thick book will be required to refute all.

What cultural artifacts not only tell a true story, but also make it bright and exciting?

Video

Six series of "Moon Machines". There are on YouTube , but in English. Because of despair, you can turn on automatic subtitles and automatic translation, in this combination, sometimes you can even understand something. UPD: there is in Russian . Very high quality story and interviews of real engineers, who often remain behind the scenes. Some illiterate arguments of conspiracy scholars look especially funny when, in the chronicles, diagrams and stories, you clearly saw how this particular unit worked.

An excellent game series “From the Earth to the Moon”, unfortunately, was made by HBO, and finding it on the network is not much easier than Game of Thrones. At least there are only small pieces on YouTube. I like most about the series about the lunar module and the Apollo 15, in my opinion, they are approaching, by the pathos of knowledge, to the Strugatsky fiction. But people are different, someone might like other series more, so you should at least try to see everything.

Documentary series “When We Left Earth”. Appeared on YouTube not too long ago, also in English. Tells the story of the American space program.

Separately, I want to mention very interesting videos of the Apollo Flight Journal on YouTube. The author took the shots of the shooting, which was conducted onboard a 16-mm camera, turned into the correct position (the camera was at an angle), put radio recordings on the recording and provided explanations.

Books

An excellent reference and just an interesting reading is the World Manned Cosmonautics, ed. cosmonaut Yuri Baturin. Despite the overview nature, covering the entire cosmonautics from 1961 to 2005, the Soviet and American manned lunar programs are described in detail and very interestingly.

A direct participant in the events, flight director Gene Kranz wrote a memoir “Faliure is not an Option”, a look at the American space program from the first launches to the Apollo 17 flight from the chair of a man who made the final decision on whether to allow Armstrong and Aldrin to land on the moon , and almost at the hands of pulling back emergency "Apollo 13".

They also praise Yaroslav Golovanov’s book The Truth About the APOLLO Program: Battle for the Moon, but I did not read it, I recommend it with somewhat less certainty.

The user Geektimes Shubinpavel ends the last days of collecting money for the book “The Moon. History, people, technology. There were a lot of unmanned and manned lunar programs. You shouldn't think that the American astronauts flew for the first time on the ship with number 11 to a random place.

If you are impressed by other books or movies, write in the comments.