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Frame from Moon Landings Faked? Filmmaker Says Not! Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Moon Landings Faked? Filmmaker Says Not!

3 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this explainer2 months2017–2020 score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

HN points to it as a concise, technically grounded rebuttal to moon-hoax claims.

A filmmaker explains why the Apollo moon landing footage could not have been faked in a studio, based on the video and film technology of the late 1960s. He walks through the limits of cameras, frame rates and effects of the era.

“This video goes through why the video technology at the time simply wasn't even good enough to enable faking the moon landing.” (HN, 2020)

2 recommendations · 1 citations · Explainers

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@eutropia Aug 2017 Recommends
on HN thread Why people believe in conspiracy theories – and how to change their minds
My favorite response to moon landing conspiracy theories is the counter point that we didn't have the technology to fake the live footage. It was actually easier to go to the Moon than it was to fake it, given the video technology at that time. There's a great YouTube video about this. [this video]
Explains the video tech of the era could not have faked the moon landing footage.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@danpalmer Jun 2020 Cites it
on HN thread Teacher Tells Off Neil Armstrong for Faking the Moon Landing
Read more
An interesting angle I learnt recently that I hadn’t considered on why the landings weren’t faked: they didn’t have the camera technology to do it. Apparently camera tech at the time for slow motion (for the movement in low gravity) made the ~hour long takes essentially impossible. I hadn’t realised that the recordings were single takes, but to slow down to quarter speed, maintaining ~30fps broadcast quality, would require 120fps cameras that didn’t exist, and more continuous tape recording than was possible by several orders of magnitude. We really were in the very early days of video/TV technology, and it wasn’t until these technologies improved and we collectively forgot how they were that the theories really started to get going. [this video]
Camera tech of the time could not have faked hour-long slow-motion takes.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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