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Product Name: Children and Senators

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Although very few Americans subscribe to such grandiose theories, millions of people doubt the authenticity of the lunar missions, much to NASA's exasperation. Over the years, the agency's public services department went through reams of paper answering incredulous schoolchildren, teachers, librarians - and even US lawmakers like former Sen. Alan Cranston (D-California) and Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-South Carolina), who had written to NASA relaying the doubts of some of their constituents. As many as 100 million Americans, says Kaysing, are inclined to disbelieve the whole lunar adventure. Like many of his statements, that one should be taken with a grain of salt: his proof is based on his observation that "almost half the people who phoned in to radio and TV shows" he has been on supported him. That's hardly irrefutable proof. But when Knight Newspapers (one of the two groups that later merged to form Knight-Ridder Inc.) polled 1,721 US residents one year after the first moon landing, it found that more than 30 percent of respondents were suspicious of NASA's trips to the moon. A July 20, 1970, Newsweek article reporting the results of the poll cited "an elderly Philadelphia woman who thought the moon landing had been staged in an Arizona desert" and a Macon, Georgia, housewife who questioned how a TV set that couldn't pull in New York stations could possibly "receive signals from the moon." The greatest skepticism, according to Newsweek, surfaced in a ghetto in Washington, DC, where more than half of those interviewed doubted the authenticity of Neil Armstrong's stroll. "It's all a deliberate effort to mask problems at home," explained one inner-city preacher. "The people are unhappy - and this takes their minds off their problems." Poll or no poll, even James Oberg, a nemesis of Kaysing, conservatively estimates that the disbelievers may number between 10 and 25 million Americans. Oberg works for NASA contractor Rockwell International as a space-flight operations engineer with the space shuttle program. He writes as a second profession, covering all aspects of space activity, with a special interest in space folklore. Myths have a way of blossoming in the fertile soil of scientific discovery, Oberg notes. "Every age of exploration is the same in that respect - from the time of the Phoenicians...to Marco Polo, and including mermaids and unipeds and all these mythological creatures that lurk at the edge of our exploration. To me, it's extremely humanizing to have this typically human reaction - this denial, this myth making - to our lunar adventure. I'm not at all surprised that these stories or interpretations exist. Actually, I'm surprised they aren't more widespread." Nonetheless, hoax believers can be found in many parts of society, here and abroad. According to Oberg, Cuban children are officially taught that Yankee space technology failed miserably and that NASA was reduced to pitifully faking every single lunar landing. Some New Agers also contest the possibility of moon landings, as do Hare Krishnas. Non-mainstream Christians at the Flat Earth Society - a Lancaster, California-based anti-science group of about 3,500 members - contest the entire field of astronomy (not to mention moon landings). They liken the towering launch pads to the Tower of Babel. The eccentricity of such convictions certainly intrigues Oberg. "I respect these people's dedication to their view of the world. One reason they fascinate me is that they're a constant reminder to me that we can't rest on common knowledge, we can't be complacent with our traditional interpretations of things - even though these interpretations are almost always right. But I also find their pathology of reasoning, or non-reasoning, compelling. We define health by the boundaries of pathology, and I try and define rational thought by looking at cases that go over the edge." That's damning praise indeed. So it's no surprise that Bill Kaysing doesn't much care for James Oberg, whom he dismisses as "a NASA agent."