  I just spent the last hour and a half watching a video called urlLink Was it a Paper Moon ? on, you guessed it, theories on the so called Moon Conspiracy.
John called toward the end and, after clearly expressing his surprise that anyone would want to watch something so obviously errant, spent 20 minutes answering my questions before he told me to go to urlLink this website , which is dedicated to debunking bad astronomy. I guess I'm left with this conundrum after seeing both sides. The people who believe the moon landing was a hoax seem to be sincere. They truly, honestly feel they are doing the world a favor by exposing this government conspiracy. If the evidence to the contrary is so clear, why do they still believe? Either they're luney or devious, but they seem to be neither. I think college physics and engineering classes should use this video as the perfect opportunity to give their students hands-on experience alongside critical thinking skills.
Assign them arguments to test to see if the conspiracy claims are valid. So far, one good example of such an exercise would be the claim that the video makes that the fuel burned by the lem should exhaust red smoke, but no smoke is in the pictures. John said in the absence of the atmosphere we know here on Earth, the particulates that make smoke visible would dissipate so widely and so rapidly that they would not form a visible cloud of smoke. UPDATE: While on the Bad Astronomy web site, I also came upon urlLink this clever list of scientifically sound and/or entertaining movies. urlLink Phil Plait , the site's author/manager, is not a NASA civil servant, but does work on NASA-funded projects. 
