I'd like to know who the "they" are you refer to.
I've seen plenty of reasons why we haven't been back to the moon, and none of then included "we know all there is to know."
Seems to me the biggest reason we haven't been back is politics. The initial push to land on the moon was politically motivated. Manned space travel is incredibly expensive, and the funds have to be approved by Congress. Without the proper political climate, one wouldn't expect the funding to be approved without a big payoff. Right now, Bush wants a manned base established as a jumping off point for a manned Mars mission.
We may not know all there is to know about the moon, but we do know that it has no breathable atmosphere, no sizable bodies of water on it, and its not likely to yield any useful minerals that aren't readily available here on earth (unless its core happens to be a huge diamond, or filled with oil) so there really isn't any pertinent reason to throw billions of dollars into it...especially considering we're already funneling billions of dollars of deficit spending into the Iraq situation.
What is your view on the rovers we sent to Mars?
The problem with the conspiracy theory is the whole scope of it. How unlikely is it that in the past 38 years, assuming that it was all a hoax, that no one involved in it has come forward? What exactly could stop a single leak of information? We've had technology secrets stolen by the Chinese, Civil War documents stolen from archives to be sold on eBay, yet not a single person comes forward to break the silence on a conspiracy which would do nothing but jeopardize the legacy of a dead president and embarass NASA? I don't think so. There are entirely too many factors involved, and the simple answer is almost always preferable to the complex one. Occam's Razor, and all that.
I'm under the impression that only a very small number of people at the top even know that it's a conspiracy or cover-up of some kind, or have any real evidence of it.. Even the technicians and computer analyst for the moon landings, could have been watching hoaxed read-outs..
To me, Occam's Razor in this case, points to hoax.. If the simplest answer is the most likely, than the simple answer is that it's easier to hoax going to the moon, and even covering it up, than it is to actually go to the moon... Especially in the early 70's, but it's obviously not a very easy task to accomplish TODAY either, since nobody is going back for at least 15 more years..
Please consider this small example of the deception that can take place..http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/moonhoax.htmlThousands of readers, many of them very well educated, believed in and speculated over this hoax for years....
I respect your opinions Shadow, I'm not trying to argue with you.. But, what do you think of things like the JFK assassination for instance? Would you agree that there is some kind of cover up with that event? And if so, would you agree that in it's own way, it's connected with Kennedy declaring "We'll put a man on the moon (by the end of the 60's) not because we have to, but because we can."?
That doesn't begin to explain the big rocket full of astronauts that shot up into space within view of the windows of that command center, all the people at Cape Canaveral who saw it go up, and the time it took to reach the moon, touch down, and return, only to splashdown in the ocean and be recovered by the U.S. Navy. There is no doubt that a team of astronauts went up that day. Why did it take them so long to come down? Were they just up there orbiting the whole time? What about all the other Apollo missions and moon landings? Are they all hoaxes too? If so, why do so many of them, when only one could have sufficed?
Three people can keep a secret, if two of them are dead, as the saying goes. What's stopping anyone that could have been involved in a moon landing hoax from coming forward with convincing evidence and making a mint on a book deal and TV interviews? The cold war is over, what's the government going to do, have them killed for admitting it?
Interesting, but one must also remember that our scientific knowledge at that time was much more limited, as was our capacity to garner accurate data. We had to make do with what we could learn from telescopic observation of the sky.
So in answer to your question, no, I don't think there is any kind of coverup, nor do I think that such a coverup would be because of a hoaxed moonlanding. The only thing that strikes me as strange in the JFK assassination is that his brain allegedly went missing from his body during the transport between Texas and Washington D.C., and I've never seen any actual evidence that supports that claim as being true; all I have is hearsay.
Now that the space race is over, what is the gain of keeping up the hoaxes? Look at America, we let a sexual deviant (Clinton) and a drug abusing recovering alcholic (Bush) run the country, what would be the shame of admitting we faked the landing? Hell we may even get kudos for pulling it off! I'm just missing the advantages of maintaining and making new space hoaxes.What do they gain?ZRY