1 in 10 Americans Don’t Believe the Moon Landing Really Happened

This week marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission; the one that landed mankind on the moon for the first time, in one giant leap. It is one of humanity’s all-time great achievements. So it’s disheartening beyond words to see the results of a recent 500-person poll, in which a full 10 percent of Americans surveyed don’t believe it actually happened. C’mon, people. Walter Cronkite didn’t lie.

The number of moon-landing-deniers is up from 6 percent in 1999, according to a Gallup poll conducted on the 30^th anniversary cited by SatelliteInternet, which conducted the current poll. It’s a sad trend. As you can see in the chart, the younger the person polled, the more likely they were to think the moon landing took place on a Hollywood sound stage. Older Americans—those more likely to have seen the moon landing happen live or at least to have parents who did—were more likely to believe.

And guess what? Many younger respondents were also more likely to say they believed the earth was flat, as well. No lie.

Why do deniers think the moon landing is a conspiracy between the government and NASA? Well, 41 percent say the flag waving in the moon-landing footage is a giveaway. 14 percent said you can’t leave a footprint in moon dust.

The conspiracies extend to 98 percent of the landing-deniers being convinced the government spies on us through tech (well, I’ll give them that); 51 percent also think the Mars Rover is faked. (This story from History.com debunks most of the wilder conspiracy theories.)

Where does this put us in comparison to other “intelligent” life out there? For whatever reason, the skeptics about our own ability to put people on the moon are far more likely to believe in space aliens having already arrived on Earth. (And to be honest, a significant number of moon-landing believers agree.)

Want to add to the moon-landing sadness pile? Lego and The Harris Poll did a survey of 3,000 children in three countries—the US, the UK, and China—to see how they feel about going into space. Things have changed a lot from the days when every US kid wanted to be an astronaut (or maybe a cowboy). Now, only 11 percent say they’d like to be an astronaut…but 29 percent say they’d love to be a Vlogger or YouTuber when they grow up. (Somehow, becoming a teacher is second on their list.., probably because they think they’ll get summers off.)

Say what you like about China—the kids there like space so much that 56 percent want to be yuhangyuans (space navigators). Maybe it helps that China didn’t really have a manned space program until 2003.

Read more about the Lego/Harris poll at Ars Technica.

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