People know that the moon is likely an extremely harsh environment. It has no rotation like earths, it has a dark side and light side. It does NOT have surface water. Hence, the moon's surface environment is so harsh, given it has no obvious atmosphere, that it would make it very difficult to design spacecraft that could navigate its surface.
Given that, it would likely be impossible to recreate those situations on Earth for testing so that a man from earth could land safely on the moon's harsh surface and return safely from it.
Yet, scientists say they use math and the math they used got man to the moon and back. However, we have to consider, scientifically, that the math they used is the math that they know works for them here and now in this place... earth. Keep in mind, the scientist's math is agreed upon in the social imagination.... in theirs.
Could they scientifically suppose that earth's math is the same on the moon? Here is one of the biggest scientific divides between those scientists who say yes and those who say no. I am a sociologist, I am not a mathematician and given that I have to consider the agreement reality in all this supposition.
They can of course make the statement that there is a universal math that works everywhere in the universe. Or that good math guesses (theoretical equations on a blackboard) are good guesses and likely would work getting a man to the moon, landing on the moon and getting him back.
Did man actually land on the moon? That's anybody's guess if you ask me but I am only a sociologist. For sure, speaking as a sociologist, you can make the claim that man has been to the moon, walked on the moon and returned from the moon (rocks to prove it, right?) This as a claim can be understood as the phrase, that was a trip, felt I've like been to hell and back. No one alive has been to hell and back but somehow we all get that phrase.
Most people who are pro-moon landing, will say they have all the evidence they need. They also ask... how could a giant hoax be pulled off anyway? But, if we consider the agreement reality in all this, the bigger the agreement the better agreement and if the better agreement is brought about through a big lie... "then the bigger the lie, the easier it is to believe" ~ A.H.
I read an article online that a moon rock was given to the Dutch prime minister by Apollo 11 astronauts in 1969 which has turned out to be a fake. Curators at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, where the rock has attracted tens of thousands of visitors each year, discovered that the "lunar rock", valued at £308,000, was in fact petrified wood.
I can't say for sure if man landed on the moon. I was a very little kid when that supposedly happened and was told about by television, parents and later in grade school. And, plopping a rock on my desk back would really make me believe it. You see, real or not, I can still agree with its hoax as having a huge impact on America and the rest of the world. In fact, everyone can agree with that.
If you are interested in that topic, check out this article ~ https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jul/10/one-giant-lie-why-so-many-people-still-think-the-moon-landings-were-faked
What about flat-earthers? Well they are yet a different group but strangely similar. Here's how...
"This is not even a conspiracy theory. The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat. The Earth is flat… What I’ve been taught is that the Earth is round. But if you really think about it from a landscape of the way we travel, the way we move and the fact that—can you really think of us rotating around the Sun and all planets aligned, rotating in specific dates, being perpendicular with what’s going on with these planets [finger quotation marks on planets]? Because everything that they send—or that they want to say they’re sending—doesn’t come back… There is no concrete information except for the information that they’re giving us. They’re particularly putting you in the direction of what to believe and what not to believe. The truth is right there, you just got to go searching for it" ~ Kyrie Irving [https://lithub.com/why-flat-earthers-moon-landing-truthers-and-other-conspiracy-theorists-believe-their-own-nonsense/].
Largely, the similarity lies in the distrust of mainstream education, news and politicians and or all other authority that one imagines they have no control over. The outtake above in italics comes from the article you see in brackets... Literary Hub. The author is John. V. Petrocelli. The author says he is a social scientist like myself. I don't know if he has a PhD like I do but its enough he makes his claim.
Here is what Petrocelli has to say from the same article...
"As a social scientist, I take Kyrie’s claims very seriously. I don’t take them seriously because I think Kyrie is correct—I know his claims make as much sense as arguing that the Moon is made of cheese. I take them seriously because, as a researcher who studies bullshit, Kyrie’s claims fit a pattern of behavior I see deployed over and over again. A belief in a flat Earth would make sense if there was genuine evidence of a worldwide conspiracy to fake decades of space exploration, a denial of many branches of science, or discoveries of new forces and laws of nature. But it doesn’t really take any of this—all it takes is a mindset that completely disregards truth and genuine evidence. In other words, all it takes is bullshit".
It sounds good up until Petrocelli says he studies bullshit (unnecessary term) and says that Kryrie's claims fit a pattern of behavior... which is true as much as is any patterned belief system whether of a religious practice or of the scientific industrial community.
Ok, my problem is that Petrocelli, a so-called social scientist, obviously did not read Cooley, Mead, or Weber or Durkheim or Schutz. A true social scientist cannot just revert to hard evidence unless its been circulated in the agreement reality for a long long time; and, this honestly applies to both... whether we are talking about real moon landings or the actual shape of the earth.
As for the moon landings, its agreed that they are real. As for a flat earth, its been agreed that it is round for a long time but there was a time when it was agreed to be flat. Now, you might be wondering, it context of agreement reality... why on earth would any alternative 'reality' appear in the social imagination if there has been agreement reality with a good deal of longevity? Good question.
A good social scientist always has to consider the soft evidence in terms of how the agreement of 'hard' evidence came to be agreed upon and included in that consideration, one has to ask how the 'hard' evidence was formed was circulated and by whom. Then ask, who was left out of that picture and why and what if what was agreed on was actually an agenda of propaganda whereby by led masses come to believe (agree on) something that was not actually true.
Fake moon-landers and flat-earthers should be seen as people who feel left out and are attempting to understand the narrative that they feel has been forced upon them. They consider themselves to be thinking human beings as much as any doctor, lawyer, politician and or even scientist does. The true sociologist must give everyone in the social imagination due attention... not just those who have been produced by certain institutions, organizations and labs.
There is a limit of course as to what should be disregarded and what should not be disregarded. Especially when disregarding 'fake' or 'faked' news would have a serious negative impact on society at large who has for years believed and or agreed upon something... either a version of history, an event recent or past and or the sciences of the ages and current. You see, the sun is a star and I am pretty sure it always will be called that... but who knows. Recently, I heard the moon is a giant hollow spacecraft. Go figure...
*Always consider who is steering the narrative toward a certain agreement or agreed upon conclusion and what they have to gain...
