A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon
Directed by Bart Sibrel
Produced by Bart Sibrel
Written by Bart Sibrel
Narrated by Anne Tonelson
Edited by Bart Sibrel
Distributed by AFTH, LLC
Release date
 January 18, 2001
Running time
 47 minutes
Country United States
Language English

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon is a 2001 film written, produced and directed by Nashville-based filmmaker Bart Sibrel. Sibrel is a critic of the Apollo program and proponent of the conspiracy theory that the six Apollo Moon landing missions between 1969 and 1972 were elaborate hoaxes perpetrated by the United States government, including NASA.[1]

Sibrel presents assertions of an alleged hoax, including: supposed photographic anomalies; disasters such as the destruction of Apollo 1 in which crew members Roger B. Chaffee, Gus Grissom and Ed White died; technical difficulties experienced in the 1950s and 1960s; and the problems of traversing the Van Allen radiation belts. Sibrel proposes that the most condemning evidence is a piece of footage that was inadvertently sent to him by NASA when requesting photographs and video of the Apollo 11 mission. Sibrel believes that the footage shows Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins attempting to create the illusion that they were 130,000 miles (210,000 km) from Earth (or roughly halfway to the Moon) when, he claims, they were only in a low Earth orbit. Sibrel views this clip as "smoking gun" proof that the Moon landings were staged.

The film's name was taken from the title of the book A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon by Bob Ward, a 1969 book of humorous anecdotes by people involved in the space program. The film is narrated by British stage actress Anne Tonelson. Bart Sibrel himself makes no appearance in the film. However, he does appear prominently in the similarly toned 2001 Fox television network special, Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?[2]

Overview

The 47-minute film raises some possible insurmountable scientific and technical problems which may have made it improbable that humans could land on the Moon and return to Earth safely. It asserts that NASA's early inexperience in rocket technology, as well as certain photographic anomalies and inconsistencies in NASA's records could point to a possible hoax, and that the Space Race was actually a race to develop armaments with the huge budget allocated to the Apollo missions. The film's premise is that NASA perpetrated a fraud because of the perception that if the United States could land men on the Moon before the Soviet Union, it would be a major victory in the Cold War, since the Soviets had been the first to achieve a successful space launch (Sputnik 1 in 1957), the first manned space flight (Vostok 1 in 1961), and the first spacewalk (Voskhod 2 in 1965). In addition, such a victory in the Space Race would also bring the deceased John F Kennedy's early vision about the US reaching the Moon to realization within the late president's predetermined schedule ("before this decade is out"). The film also focuses on the Van Allen radiation belt, an area of intense and hazardous radiation circling the Earth, as well as on a special footage from the Apollo 11 mission received from NASA. According to the film's assertion, this special footage was received by accident, and shows that the Apollo 11 astronauts had staged their voyage to the moon.[3]

Criticisms

Jim McDade, writing in The Birmingham News, characterized A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon as "full of falsehoods, innuendo, strident accusations, half-truths, flawed logic and premature conclusions." According to McDade, the "only thing new and weird" in the film is that the claim that video views of Earth were actually filmed through a small hole to give the impression that Apollo 11 was not in low earth orbit. "Bart has misinterpreted things that are immediately obvious to anyone who has extensively read Apollo history and documentation or anyone who has ever been inside an Apollo Command Module or accurate mockup," says McDade.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Richardson, Valerie (July 20, 2009). "Skeptic spreads word of NASA 'folly'". The Washington Times. News World Communications. p. 2 of 3. Archived from the original on July 26, 2009. Retrieved May 28, 2013.
  2. ↑ John Moffett; Bruce M. Nash (2001). Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? (Documentary). Hollywood, CA: Nash Entertainment, Inc. OCLC 52473513.
  3. ↑ The Sleuth Journal - Did They Really Walk on the Moon on the Very First Attempt? http://www.thesleuthjournal.com/land-moon-1960s-technology
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