Editing Moon landing conspiracy theories (section)

=== NASA funding and prestige ===
Conspiracy theorists claim that NASA faked the landings to avoid humiliation and to ensure that it continued to get funding. NASA raised "about US$30 billion" to go to the Moon, and [[Bill Kaysing|Kaysing]] claimed in his book that this could have been used to "pay off" many people.<ref>[[#Kaysing|Kaysing 2002]], p. 71</ref> Since most conspiracists believe that sending men to the Moon was impossible at the time,<ref>[[#Attivissimo|Attivissimo 2013]], p. 163</ref> they argue that landings had to be faked to fulfill Kennedy's 1961 goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."<ref name="Special Message">{{cite AV media |people=Kennedy, John F. |date=May 25, 1961 |title=Special Message to Congress on Urgent National Needs |medium=Motion picture (excerpt) |url=http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/xzw1gaeeTES6khED14P1Iw.aspx |access-date=August 1, 2013 |publisher=John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum |location=Boston, MA |id=Accession Number: TNC:200; Digital Identifier: TNC-200-2}}</ref> In fact, NASA accounted for the cost of Apollo to the US Congress in 1973, totaling US$25.4 billion.<ref>{{cite book |author=Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Science and Astronautics |title=1974 NASA Authorization Hearings |type=Hearing on H.R. 4567 |year=1973 |publisher=[[93rd United States Congress|93rd Congress]], first session |location=Washington, D.C. |oclc=23229007 |ref=93rd Congress}}</ref>

Mary Bennett and David Percy claimed in the 2001 book ''Dark Moon: Apollo and the Whistle-Blowers'', that, with all the known and unknown hazards,<ref>[[#Bennett & Percy|Bennett & Percy 2001]], p. 77</ref> NASA would not risk broadcasting an astronaut getting sick or dying on live television.<ref>[[#Bennett & Percy|Bennett & Percy 2001]], pp. 330–331</ref> The counter-argument generally given is that NASA in fact ''did'' incur a great deal of public humiliation and potential political opposition to the program by losing an entire crew in the [[Apollo 1]] fire during a ground test, leading to its upper management team being questioned by Senate and House of Representatives space oversight committees.<ref>{{Citation
  |last = Anderson
  |first = Clinton P.
  |author-link = Clinton Presba Anderson
  |title = Apollo 204 Accident: Report of the Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, United States Senate, with Additional Views
  |volume = Senate Report 956
  |place = Washington, D.C.
  |publisher = U.S. Government Printing Office
  |date=January 30, 1968
  |url = http://klabs.org/richcontent/Reports/Failure_Reports/as-204/senate_956/index.htm
  |ref = Anderson
  |url-status=dead
  |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20141220043317/http://klabs.org/richcontent/Reports/Failure_Reports/as-204/senate_956/index.htm
  |archive-date=December 20, 2014
  }}</ref> There was in fact no video broadcast during either the landing or takeoff because of technological limitations.<ref>{{cite book
  |last         = Steven-Boniecki
  |first        = Dwight
  |title        = Live TV From the Moon
  |year         = 2010
  |publisher    = Apogee Books
  |location     = Burlington, Ontario
  |isbn         = 978-1926592169
  |url          = http://www.livetvfromthemoon.com/
  |access-date  = September 14, 2014
  |archive-date = November 5, 2018
  |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20181105224828/http://www.livetvfromthemoon.com/
  |url-status   = dead
  }}</ref>