SpaceX employee gives surprising response when asked if the Moon landing happened
One SpaceX employee has weighed into the Moon landing debate with a surprising response, as man's first steps in space have been highly debated by conspiracy theory lovers.
One small step saw Neil Armstrong walk on the Moon for the very first time in July 1969, and it's one of America's greatest and most well known achievements.
NASA has since managed to get people onto the Moon an additional five times with the last being over 50 years ago with Apollo 17, yet some remain unconvinced that it actually happened, especially when it comes to the original Apollo 11 mission.
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Currently it remains a struggle to actually bring astronauts to the Moon's surface again, with regulation and monetary barriers apparently preventing action from taking place, but strives being made in the private sector could finally see humans return once more in the near future.
You'd think that those currently involved in the space industry would be the biggest defenders that the Moon landing actually happened, but one current SpaceX engineer has revealed that he in fact questioned whether the event took place.
Speaking to The Paramotor Podcast, materials engineer Truman Word revealed when asked if the thought of it being faked had ever crossed his mind:
"Oh yeah absolutely, I think you have to stay open minded on the possibilities. I think being close minded and not being open to you know other perspectives and opinions is more or less bad. I think you should be open minded."
In a sense that is perhaps the most rational approach for an enthusiast to take, because Word was not completely closed off to the idea of either possibility, but his position within the space industry has allowed him to find the 'truth'.
In terms of what led him to finally concretely believe in the Moon landing, Word had this to say:
"I think one of the ones I come back to a lot is that people died for that," he outlines, adding that "it's headed more in that direction" when it comes to basing his beliefs on an emotional rationale.
"The patriotism thing is big too, you know, because I want to believe we did," he continues, "I just personally do, you know that's just like my stance [...] If it were to come out that we didn't somehow, I'd be pretty floored, it'd change my perspective. But it'd also add a little bit of fire, to [be] like 'all right well then we're gonna do it then'."
When it comes to what made him question the Moon landing, he illustrates that "the level of difficulty to accomplish something like that, the level of technology we had at the time, there was that incentive.
"Because it was a space race between us and the USSR, and so making that claim that we did it even if we didn't would be beneficial in that context, so I could see it from there."
Regardless of these initial challenges though, Word remains firmly in the camp that the Moon landing did indeed happen, but it's fascinating to know that even space experts can find themselves questioning history.