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Bart Winfield Sibrel is a Nashville, Tennessee-based amateur filmmaker who claims that the six Apollo moon landings between 1969 and 1972 were hoaxes. He has filmed two documentaries on the subject: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon and Astronauts Gone Wild.

Dealings with Apollo astronauts

Most astronauts have refused to grant him interviews due to his questionable tactics used in attempts to obtain footage of them confessing to being conspirators in a hoax. The most infamous incident involved Apollo 11 crew member Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon. According to Aldrin, he was lured to a Beverly Hills hotel under the pretext of an interview on space for a Japanese children's television show. When he arrived, Aldrin claims Sibrel was there demanding that he swear on a Bible that he had walked on the moon.

When Aldrin refused, Sibrel called him a coward, a liar, and a thief. Aldrin punched Sibrel in the jaw and the incident was captured on video. Sibrel later attempted to use the tape to convince police and prosecutors that he was the victim of an assault. However, it was decided that Aldrin had been provoked, and did not actually injure Sibrel, and so no charges were filed. Many talk show hosts aired the clip, making Sibrel the butt of jokes.

Claims

Main article: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon

In the 2001 documentary, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon, Sibrel made several claims that he believed show that the Apollo Moon Landings were faked.

In his film, Sibrel displayed unedited NASA footage that allegedly revealed several serious flaws in NASA's account of Apollo 11's journey to the moon. Sibrel claims to have spent considerable time and effort in going through all of the NASA-sourced Apollo footage that he could get his hands on - having ordered it himself directly from NASA. In addition to the common films which have been made more readily available to the public, a mislabeled reel from the Johnson's Space Center was also among the footage. There were over 20 takes from the Apollo 11 mission, including the lunar orbit, descent, docking, and ascent - but one sticks out to believers in a moon landing hoax as the most damning. It is the unedited footage of Aldrin inside the CSM, filming what is purported to be a distant Earth in deep space "about 130,000 miles out" through the 'Number 1 Window". However, later on when the camera pulls back through 'deep space', a supposed floodlight which was not turned on before the zoom in to the Earth, now appears on the upper left side of the frame during the zoom out. This footage is cited by Sibrel as evidence that the astronauts were deceitfully simulating deep space by claiming to have the camera fully up against and "blocking the window" - when in fact the camera was never anywhere near the window. Sibrel claims the Earth depicted in the footage cannot be the real globe of the Earth viewable in the CSM's small window, especially at the sharp angle, because the Earth remains constantly in full view during the zoom out - in the picture no matter how badly the camera moves or shakes. Those defending Project Apollo state the "secret" NASA footage Sibrel uses is actually widely available and merely shows the Astronauts practicing for an upcoming live telecast.

The film covers other issues, such as the lighting on the moon and the need for protection from radiation within and beyond the Van Allen Belts.

Sibrel believes that the technology of the United States during the era was behind that of the Soviets. He points to a supposed "five-to-one superiority" in man-hours in space held by the Soviets over the US as well as highlighting several Soviet space firsts. The "five-to-one" figure has been strongly challenged, with the Clavius website, a website dedicated to the debunking of the Apollo Moon Landing hoax accusations stating that the Americans had a clear lead in man hours in space by the time Apollo 11 was launched. The relevance of some of the Soviet 'firsts' in relation to a landing of the moon has also been called into question.

He has also stated the life-threatening events that occurred during the Apollo 13 mission were actually manufactured by the government to force people to pay attention to the space program.

Sibrel also participated in the controversial Fox Television Network special, Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? In it, Sibrel stated that, "I'd bet my life that we never went to the moon." The British stage actress Anne Tonelson narrates the documentary of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon, while Sibrel appears in perhaps his most controversial film: Astronauts Gone Wild - An Investigation into the Authenticity of the Moon Landings.

Criticism

Sibrel's claims of a lunar landing hoax have been widely dismissed by the scientific and space science communities.

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 47-minute 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.

Aldrin's attorney, Robert O'Brien, says that Sibrel has a history of stalking other former astronauts, including Neil Armstrong, Alan Bean, and Al Worden. Buzz Aldrin's wife Lois summed up her feelings about Bart Sibrel: "He said things I can't repeat. He was not a nice man, and it really upset Buzz a lot."

Moon Hoax documentary films

• What Happened on the Moon?, David Percy/Aulis.com, 2000; Run time: 222 minutes.
• A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon, January 18, 2001; Run time: 47 minutes
• Astronauts Gone Wild, June 14, 2004; Run time: 53 minutes
• Apollo 11 Monkey Business, December 9, 2004; Run time: 108 minutes
• Apollo 11 Post-Flight Press Conference, December 9, 2004; Run time: 83 minutes

See also

• Apollo Moon Landing hoax accusations
• Apollo Moon landing hoax accusers

External links

• Bart Sibrel's website
• Badastronomy.com's coverage of the Fox special
• Bart Sibrel's Top Fifteen at Clavius.org, a hoax debunking site
• Video of Buzz Aldrin punching Bart Sibrel
• A critique of Sibrel
• Webpage critical of Sibrel's video
• Lunar Legacy - A documentary challenging Sibrel's hoax theories