American Strategic Deception Bureau

　The first artificial satellite was Sputnik 1 of the Soviet Union;

　The first animal to go into space was the Soviet puppy Laika.

　The first lunar probe was the Soviet Union's Luna 2;

　The first human to go into space was Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Union;

　The first spacewalk was performed by Soviet cosmonaut Leonov in 1965.

　The first soft landing on the moon was the Luna 9 probe launched by the Soviet Union in 1966.

　Even the first human spacecraft docking was completed by the Soviet Union before the United States landed on the moon in 1969.

　Even after the Apollo moon landing, the first space station built by humans was still the Soviet Union's "Salyut".

　During the entire space race, apart from the Apollo moon landing and the space shuttle, the United States only had a slight advantage in Mars exploration.

　——Moreover, the Soviet Union later built its own space shuttle, the "Buran", in the 1980s. Unfortunately, it was born at the wrong time. The "Buran" was only able to be launched into orbit and fly unmanned once before it encountered the turbulent years of the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In the end, it could only be piled up in a warehouse to rust.

　The reason why the United States can confidently look down on the world and declare that it has won the space race is that the only reason it has the confidence comes from the Apollo moon landing:

　The Americans landed on the moon, but the Soviets couldn't. Doesn't this prove America's victory?

　I have to say that this reason is really heavy-weight and leaves people speechless. Even the Soviets accepted it.

　For a long time afterwards, most Chinese people only had a feeling of worship towards the Apollo moon landing.

　After all, when Apollo 11 landed on the moon, China's first artificial satellite, Dongfanghong-1, had not yet been successfully launched.

　With such a huge gap, the Chinese can only look up, envy and sigh in collective shock, and have absolutely no reason to doubt.

　Even when Americans themselves questioned the Apollo moon landing fakery, and when the voices came from across the ocean, the Chinese treated it like a pseudo-scientific joke abroad, just like the "flat Earth theory" and opposition to evolution, to prove that some Americans were not very smart.

　But after several years, especially after entering the 21st century

　As China's aerospace technology advances with each passing day, the new generation of Chinese people are slowly beginning to discover that some things about the moon and the universe are not at all as the United States says, and there are big discrepancies in many areas.

　For example, the lunar soil obtained by China using its probes has a very different composition from that of the lunar soil obtained by the United States, with an overlap of less than 25%.

　The lunar radiation belt discovered by China was not discovered during the United States' Apollo moon landing.

　Secondly, the navigation difficulty of taking off from the lunar surface and docking with a spacecraft in orbit far exceeds the technological limits of half a century ago.

　Even in the 21st century, China's space program relied on 5G and supercomputers, yet the return of Chang'e to the moon was incredibly difficult. Even with the assistance of ground control, India's Chandrayaan-3 still failed to align its orbit. It's hard to imagine how the Apollo astronauts could have completed such complex route calculations in just a few hours, relying on a primitive computer with only 4kb of memory, crafted by a textile worker using a needle.

　You know, the computing power of this hand-made calculator was still far behind the simple calculators sold to primary school students on the street!

　It was also difficult to ask the Houston Space Center for navigation assistance because the communication capabilities at the time might not be able to support such a large amount of data transmission.

　(According to the US description, the spacecraft's computer crashed during landing, and the astronauts had to manually operate it based on their intuition.)

　Finally, after the Apollo moon landing, the United States was unable to send humans to the moon again, and even launching a probe to the moon was fraught with danger.

　This is really speechless.

　So much so that some people have asked why the United States did not take the crucial next step - building a lunar base - after achieving the Apollo moon landing?

　Even if an unmanned base is built and radio signals are continuously sent from the moon, it is the most direct means of occupying territory and declaring ownership, which is far more symbolic than planting a national flag on the moon. This is similar to the reason why countries around the world are competing to build scientific research stations in Antarctica and the Arctic.

　If Apollo had only been a single moon landing, it might be understandable that there wasn't enough resources left to build a lunar base. But Apollo attempted seven moon landings, six of which were successful, leaving a spare Apollo spacecraft that could have been launched into Earth orbit and docked with a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft as a gesture of goodwill. Why not replace the final Apollo lunar module with a large signal transmitter, or an unmanned beacon?

　In short, the 21st-century internet is awash with debate about the authenticity of the Apollo moon landings. Even if someone offers authoritative opinions, they can't suppress them—after all, the United States and Japan have been exposed for countless fabrications and lies over the years, many of which were blatant lies. When exposed, they show no shame, no bottom line, and at best, a bow and apology, completely destroying their integrity.

　If you encounter a similar scammer in your daily life, how can you not be skeptical of their words? Furthermore, the overall decline of the US space program in the 21st century, with planned projects often boasting impressive PowerPoint presentations but lacking any real credibility, makes one suspect that the Apollo moon landings were also a fraud.

　Later, even if some authoritative figures in China's aerospace industry spoke out to support the Apollo moon landing, they still could not convince the public.

　Because everyone knows that the head is determined by the butt: if the Apollo moon landing is fake, then all research and papers using American lunar soil will be invalid. The awards, positions, and titles obtained as a result will also become a joke - guess who would be the most anxious about this? It must be the experts!

　In short, until Firi's time travel, whether the Apollo moon landing was a huge hoax was still a hot topic around the world.

　Hollywood has made countless movies and satirical TV series about the moon landing hoax.

　Because there was too much information on both sides, Ferry did not dare to confirm whether the Apollo moon landing in the time before he traveled through time was true or false.

　But now, he was certain that if the White House still demanded a successful moon landing within 1969.

　So, the Apollo moon landing project, uh, maybe, probably, or in other words, had to be faked...

　-

　If the old timeline before the time travel had continued, Armstrong would have taken the first step on the moon on July 21, 1969.

　Well, now it is the end of November 1968, and in eight months it will be the time when Apollo 11 successfully landed on the moon.

　But the current progress of the Apollo moon landing project can only be described as... well, it can't be said to be a collective slacking, at least there are still people working hard.

　At least, American astronauts, like the Japanese Kamikaze pilots, wrote their suicide notes.

　I don't know if it was because the escalation of the Vietnam War and the skyrocketing military spending squeezed out funding for space projects, but the Apollo moon landing project was doing well in the first few years. But starting in 1965 in this dimension, NASA's funding has been far less than it had been historically.

　By the end of 1968, the total funding for the Apollo moon landing project had barely reached $10 billion - and this was $10 billion at a time when the Bretton Woods system had collapsed prematurely and the US dollar had depreciated significantly, making its purchasing power much lower than the same period in history.

　Not only was the funding for the Apollo moon landing project cut, but there were also many problems with the personnel participating in the Apollo moon landing.

　——As an epic adventure unprecedented in human history,

　Across the United States, more than 2 companies, more than 200 universities, and more than 80 research institutions participated in the Apollo program, with a total number of participants reaching more than 40.

　At the beginning, most participants joined this great project to reach the moon out of patriotism, a sense of mission and honor. But soon, with the expansion of the Vietnam War and the sharp increase in the number of draftees, participating in the Apollo project became a shortcut for some people to evade military service.

　As long as you sign up and work in various units under NASA for a few years, you can not only gain experience, participate in a great project that will go down in history, and brag about it to your children and grandchildren for the rest of your life, but you can also avoid military service and don't have to go to the rainforests of Southeast Asia to be exposed to bullets and gunfire - isn't this a wonderful future?

　Well, if it were only science and engineering students flocking to NASA, then there wouldn't be much of a problem. But the problem is that some people with completely unrelated majors or even with ulterior motives have also used fake degrees and certificates to gain backdoor entry into various NASA units.

　This in turn triggered the phenomenon of "bad money driving out good money" - those who can deceive people get promoted and squeeze out the real experts.

　Unfortunately, the newly established NASA lacked experience in managing such a massive system, leading to a sense of lax oversight. This resulted in severe overstaffing, inefficiency, shoddy work, falsification of data and materials, and widespread corruption.

　The various scandals that broke out during this period were simply unbearable to watch.

　The most outrageous incident involved a scientist who participated in the Apollo moon landing project and was a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Not only did he have a chaotic private life, embezzling public funds to visit prostitutes, but in order to support his mistresses with the state's money, he even disguised his favorite Mexican prostitute as a graduate student at a prestigious university. Using a fake identity and diploma, he recruited her into his lab so he could have sex every night during work hours!

　But the truth was revealed. This Mexican prostitute hadn't even finished high school, so she naturally knew nothing about the lab and couldn't do anything. It didn't take long for the others in the lab to notice her abnormality. However, this prostitute was also very resourceful. She immediately slept with every man in the lab, making everyone a regular client and turning herself into a perk for the entire lab—so no one would feel comfortable reporting her.

　For researchers who are busy with work, have a boring life, and are bound by many rules and regulations, and cannot leave the base at will to go to the bars in the city for fun, what's wrong with having a beautiful woman who can relieve their sexual desire at any time in the workplace?

　If there is any fool who dares to expose this matter and make everyone have no women to play with, then he will be collectively punished!

　Later, the prostitute even became one of the representatives of the experimental project team and attended a high-end international academic seminar organized by NASA. Because the meeting was held in Hawaii, the prostitute wanted to go and the person in charge was very happy to be licked by her...

　The reason why this matter was exposed was because of jealousy within the laboratory: a new Indian assistant was refused service by the prostitute because of his bad body odor, and the laboratory was in big trouble and urgently needed someone to take the blame. So he reported the scandal in anger.

　Obviously, according to the "house with a thousand cockroaches" theory (when you see a cockroach in the house, it means there are probably a thousand cockroaches in the house), compared with the endless hidden dangers that are still covered up, the little black material that has been exposed is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

　To understand the extent of the Apollo moon landing project's problems, Howard Hughes, the boss of Hughes Corporation and the "original Iron Man," randomly selected 150 scientists involved in the project last week and tested them according to Hughes' recruitment standards. Only 59 of them ultimately passed, 31 barely passed after two retakes, and the remaining 60 failed completely—their academic credentials were either fake or purchased, their majors were inappropriate, and they couldn't pass no matter how many retakes they took.

　"Actually, if we strictly follow my company's hiring standards, we can only hire 30 or 40 of these 150 people at most. I wouldn't hire the rest even if they came to Hughes to work for free! Some of these idiots can't even use a multimeter! I wonder what they learned!"

　Howard Hughes sighed and said, "To be honest, I don't know how much of the data in the current Apollo lunar landing project reports is true, and how many problems have been concealed. Because I randomly checked ten technical documents, and found doubts in every one of them. As for the various illegal operations, they are too numerous to count - I can't even find a company that has no violations!

　Some people engaged in fraud, some subcontracted products, some secretly substituted cheap materials, some traded old products for new ones, and some tampered with the blueprints...

　Yesterday, I conducted a surprise inspection of a metal fabrication plant producing rocket launcher components and discovered several workers smoking marijuana while working. Their accents were unusual, and upon checking their identities, they turned out to be illegal immigrants from Mexico and Cuba.

　If it were the time of McCarthyism 20 years ago, the owner of this factory would have been charged with treason!"

　"Well...does President Johnson want us to audit all companies related to the Apollo project?"

　Fili said with a bitter face, "Auditing the accounts is very difficult.

　It's a risky thing, and if you're not careful, you might end up in a plane crash and wipe out the whole team!"

　"We don't need to be involved in the audit. We are just assistants to the President and Vice President, responsible for some unimportant matters."

　Dr. Kissinger shuddered at the mention of such a dangerous word as "audit." He quickly waved his hand in denial, saying, "Others will be responsible for auditing and rectifying discipline within the aerospace sector. We only need to report the situation to Vice President Kennedy and then find a plausible explanation to Congress and the media, and try to smooth over this incident."

　"Oh, misleading the public and engaging in crisis PR? I understand that. There are many experts in Hollywood who are good at this."

　Ferry nodded knowingly. "We'll address the problems with the Apollo moon landing program the same way Secretary of Defense McNamara explained to the public why he drafted 100,000 idiots into the military. If that doesn't work, there's also the British civil service's 'four-step' strategy."

　But before I start to fool people, I have to clarify one question: can the Apollo moon landing be successful?

　He looked at Dr. Kissinger seriously and asked, "Should we continue to deceive people by saying, 'After some setbacks, we finally succeeded in landing on the moon'? Or should we convince the public that 'the country has done its best, but manpower is limited, and the moon is too far away'?"

　If this most basic premise is not clarified, subsequent arrangements will be impossible!"

　After hearing this, Dr. Kissinger and Howard exchanged complicated glances. Finally, Howard spoke up: "Ahem, it's hard to say about things that are too far in the future. At least within five years, our chances of successfully landing on the moon should be very slim..."

　Howard Hughes stated that according to his research, the Saturn V rocket had sufficient thrust and decent performance to power the Apollo moon landings. As long as there were no problems during launch, it should have been able to send the spacecraft into lunar orbit.

　As for whether the rocket's flight direction will deviate and directly send the spacecraft into deep space; or whether the third-stage rocket will fail to ignite in the air and fail to reach the predetermined altitude; or even whether there will be a huge explosion on the TV screen and turn into a fireball with a "boom"...it all depends on luck.

　"Anyway, we now have a super cannon capable of reaching the moon. While there's no guarantee of accuracy or explosion, at least the range is sufficient."

　Howard spread his hands, "But the problem is, the Apollo spacecraft is not a cannonball, and the moon landing project is not a one-way ticket.

　Not only do we have to send a manned spacecraft to the moon, we also have to get the astronauts back from the moon alive - and that's too difficult..."

　Author's Note: PS: There's a terrifying fact: humanity's pursuit of space has been a subject of countless science fiction works over the past few decades. But aside from the Apollo moon landing, whose authenticity remains questionable, no astronaut or spacecraft has ever reached a point more than 1000 kilometers from Earth's surface.

　The space station's orbital altitude is only 400 to 500 kilometers. If the Earth is compared to an apple, this altitude is really just the peel.

　Anyway, from the information I found, none of the orbital altitudes of manned spacecraft exceeds 500 kilometers.

　Chapter 416: Can humans really escape from the earth?

　According to Howard Hughes, the American high-tech tycoon and the "prototype of Iron Man", launching a spacecraft from the Earth to the Moon and entering orbit around the Moon is roughly equivalent to "shooting a can with a sniper rifle at a distance of 3000 meters."

　——It is very difficult and the risk of failure is very high, but if you prepare carefully and calculate carefully, there is still a certain chance of success.

　As early as 1958, the United States launched four "Pioneer" probes to the moon, but all of them failed and did not even enter the lunar orbit.

　In the 9s, the United States launched nine "Ranger" probes to the moon. It was not until Ranger 7 that it hit the moon and sent back photos of the lunar surface. The subsequent Rangers 8 and 9 probes also successfully impacted the moon.

　But this is just a matter of "crashing" the probe into the lunar surface like a billiard ball. The only man-made object to have achieved a "soft landing" on the moon is the Soviet Union's Luna 9 probe. The United States, on the other hand, does not have such technology for its lunar probes.

　In other words, the United States now only has the technology for a hard landing.

　If the lunar module of the Apollo spacecraft had also "crashed" into it like this, who knows whether the astronauts would have been "killed to the ground"!

　Well, from the literal meaning of manned lunar landing, as long as people can be dropped onto the moon, regardless of whether they will fall to the ground and die, it can be considered a success, right?

　But the question is, should this be considered a landing capsule, or a space-based kamikaze suicide plane?

　What’s even worse is that the Apollo moon landing was not a one-way ticket. After landing on the moon, the astronauts had to return, which was insanely difficult.

　It will be a journey for the ascent module to search for the command module that can rival the flying skills of Transformers, Robotech, Starship Troopers, and Trisolarans!

　According to the Apollo lunar landing plan, after reaching lunar orbit, the spacecraft would release a landing module carrying two astronauts to land on the lunar surface. At the same time, the command module, carrying the final astronaut, would continue to orbit the moon.

　When the landing mission is completed, the landing capsule will explode and separate into two parts.

　The ascent module remained on the moon, and the separated ascent module took off from the moon. A few hours later, it reunited with the command module in lunar orbit and achieved a perfect docking - because the ascent module's fuel was only enough to last for a few hours.

　So here's the question: Do you know how big the moon is? It's only slightly smaller than Asia!

　And how fast does the command module have to travel to orbit such a large moon every few hours?

　Now, a lone ascent module takes off from the lunar surface, and it has to race against time to dock perfectly with the command module before the fuel runs out!

　Although launching a spacecraft from the ground to dock with a space station in Earth orbit does not seem to be too difficult.

　However, if a spacecraft is launched from Earth to a space station, there must be a ground-based command and monitoring system to provide assistance. It can accurately observe the position of the spacecraft only a few hundred kilometers above the surface, providing navigation data like GPS, and carefully guiding the spacecraft to dock.

　But there is nothing on the moon. And the earth is 380,000 kilometers away, so the astronauts have to rely on themselves.

　What's more troublesome is that when launching a rocket from the earth, at least the ground of the launch site must be flat and solid enough.

　However, when the Apollo spacecraft's ascent module separated from the lunar module, there was no way to guarantee that the lunar surface below was flat or solid enough - as long as the take-off angle was off by even one degree, it would be tilted to an unknown direction when it flew up. How could it be guaranteed that it was in the same orbital plane as the command module?

　As for calculating the data ahead of time on Earth? That's also a fantasy! With the observation technology of the 1960s, the best they could do was roughly determine whether the spacecraft would land on a plateau, plain, or basin. It was impossible to precisely control the landing site!

　The Apollo astronauts, from tens of thousands of meters in the air, maneuvered the lander to a soft landing, ensuring it didn't capsize. It was impossible for them to strictly adhere to the planned route and land at a predetermined coordinate. If there were a large rock, pit, or crack beneath the spacecraft, they would have had to make do with temporary avoidance, and it was difficult to predict the exact deviation. Therefore, the actual landing location of the lander was completely uncontrollable!

　Then, in the 1960s, humans at that time had neither the precise three-dimensional coordinates of the lunar surface for immediate reference nor the deep space exploration technology that could guide the Apollo spacecraft to travel 380,000 kilometers away from the Earth.

　As a result, even the precise landing location of the Apollo lunar module was unpredictable. So, what data did the ground control center use to calculate the orbit of the ascent module in advance? And what parameters did the command module follow to ensure it aligned with the landing module's landing point?

　When all these data cannot be accurately measured and no one knows their exact location, how can the ascent module find the command module?

　To put it in another way, manual takeoff of the ascent module is like throwing a throwing knife blindfolded; manual entry into orbit is like embroidery in the dark, and manual docking is like catching a bullet with bare hands!

　Of course, you can rely on constantly changing orbits, slowly adjusting it in circles around the moon's orbit. As long as the time is long enough, you will always be able to match it.

　But the problem is that the Apollo spacecraft is not an unmanned aircraft. The astronauts need to eat, drink, defecate and urinate, and the time they can stay in the lunar orbit is limited!

　Half a century later, the Chang'e-6 lunar probe, after its ascender carrying lunar soil ignited and took off from the lunar surface, took two days to change its orbit and adjust before successfully docking with the orbiter/returner in the lunar orbit, and then embarked on the long journey back to Earth.