[Golden Eagle]

My father was an engineer on the Apollo design team.

Thanks for sharing, and I think this is one of the strongest arguments for it actually happening - that it’s too big of a project to keep it secret. But not sure how many would have needed to be involved in knowing if the astronauts just stayed in orbit the whole time, either.

[Campion]

The problem with the "astronauts stayed in orbit" theory is that the flight was tracked and monitored by third parties, both nations (esp. the USSR) and private individuals. All of them knew where to point their antennas to get the signal, and most of them would have immediately known (and publicized) if the astronauts weren't really at the moon.

You have to come up with some elaborate nonsense about the radio signals being bounced off the moon to cover that, but then there's this annoying speed-of-light problem (roundtrip to the moon takes 5 seconds!) to contend with.