The thing is fake moon landing people are also flat earthers and shit. To them, the money isn’t the important part, it’s the hiding of some sort of special knowledge. When you say it would cost more that implies that there’s an option that costs less which is possible in the first place.

To them, there’s always another layer of justification they can add. Russia would have said something? Well, you see, the Russia/USA beef is manufactured by a secret cabal of, I dunno, Freemasons. It would have been leaked? Don’t worry, everyone involved was replaced by obidient clones.

With a good editor, some conspiracy theorists could be decent writers if they weren’t using their creativity to be insane.

Adam Ruins Everything had a similar claim.

One of my favorite quotes is "The only way three people can keep a secret is if two of them are dead", from some random western movie, but yes people love to blab.

Actually the best argument would be that the Soviets didn’t raise holy hell about it being fake.

Apollo 11 was able to be tracked by radio the entire trip to the moon. The radio transmissions and The television broadcast was unencrypted over plain radio. I’m sure the Soviets were able to verify the entire mission in real time. If there was even a hint that the moon landing was fake, the Soviets would have been throwing it in the US’s face the instant it happened.

Now imagine how CGI was when they flew to the moon in 1969!

Consider my mind thoroughly boggled

This is one of my fave images of all time

A kiwi bird using a parachute??? Holy fuck, how did they do it?!?

I’m not sure how he was in 1969(?) but by the time he made Full Metal Jacket in the 1980s(?) he was so afraid of flying, he had palm trees brought in to England rather than shoot on location in Vietnam. Which is why all the palm trees in that movie look dead as hell. So I’m guessing he would not have gone to the moon, but would have had moon craters brought to him. Which means someone would have had to go to the moon to get them. Therefore, we went to the moon. Checkmate atheists.

2001: A Space Odyssey has very good effects

After the big rocket the costs were mostly catering

We measure the distance of the moon every month by laser, targeting a mirror array on the moon.

I watched a documentary, Behind the Curve, about flat earthers who drove to the NASA space center to explain how everything was fake. On the drive, you can clearly see them using GPS for directions in their car. They don't believe their bullshit, every flat earth influencer story has a point where they were losers and unemployed and they saw easy money in grifting simps.

The real cover-up about the flag is so much more fun. The astronauts were sworn to secrecy for decades.

Then decades later, some scientists were taking high resolution photos of the moon that weren't quite good enough to see the flags themselves but did show the shadows of them. But they couldn't see a shadow for the Apollo 11 flag, and then NASA had to come clean.

When they took off from the Moon, Buzz Aldrin saw the thrust of the spacecraft blow the flag over. When he told NASA about it in the debriefing they told him "you can never tell anyone this."

Best argument I've heard is that the Soviets never denied it happened. Same with the nazis and the Holocaust.