Some of us achieve great things in our lives. We go to great lengths to reach a goal. Along the way, we worked hard, toiled, sacrificed. But eventually, we accomplished that thing that was so very important to us. It could be anything, really. Earning a degree in college. Raising a healthy, well-balanced child. Learning a song on the piano. Knitting a sweater that actually fits someone.
Our goals, our interests, are varied. But all of them are equally important. We came, we saw, we conquered.
Yet, let’s say you did that “thing.” Let’s say it was earning your Bachelor of Science. And some time down the road, some guy comes along and hears you earned this degree. And he looks you straight in the face and calls you a liar. He claims you made the whole thing up.
If this sounds astounding, I agree.
But such is the case so many times in life. Especially when it comes to science.
Such was the case on September 9, 2002.
We all remember astronaut Buzz Aldrin. He was the second human to set foot on the moon. He worked hard to make it through the NASA Aeronautics Program. He spent countless hours training to become an astronaut. And that walk on the moon finally occurred on July 20, 1969, during NASA’s Apollo 11 mission.
Fast forward forty years or so. There Buzz is, minding his own business. He is walking outside a Beverly Hills hotel when a conspiracy theorist starts harassing him and accusing Aldrin of lying about the Apollo 11 moon landing. This guy gets in Aldrin’s face and tells him it was all a hoax.
Buzz Aldrin, who was 72 years old at the time, looked the guy straight in the eye. Then Buzz hauled off and punched him.
The exchange went like this:
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“You’re the one who said you walked on the moon when you didn’t,” Bart Sibrel told Aldrin as he walked by his filming crew outside the Luxe Hotel. “Calling a kettle black …”
“Will you get away from me?” an irate Aldrin warned the man in the incident caught on video.
Sibrel responded, “You’re a coward and a liar and a …”
Aldrin, then 72, socked Sibrel in the jaw, right when he finished the sentence with “thief.”
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Apparently, this Sibrel guy had badgered Apollo astronauts more than once. He even shoved a Bible in Aldrin’s face and asked him to swear on it that the moon landing was real and that Aldrin actually walked on the lunar landscape. On that night in 2002, Aldrin was lured to the hotel under the pretext of an interview for a children’s television show. And that is when Sibrel accosted him.
Sibrel tried to press assault charges against Aldrin, but the court threw out the case and called Sibrel the instigator. Good for the that judge, I say.
The 1969 moon landing has been the subject of conspiracy theories for a half-century. People (and I know some) continue to claim that NASA faked the event for a sinister agenda of deception.
Roger Launius, NASA’s chief historian, told The Washington Post that about 9 percent of Americans subscribe to the moon-hoax theory.
That’s almost 1 in 10 people. That is scary to me.
I’m not sure what it is about people who can’t trust what has been proven to be true.
I wonder how they are in relationships? They probably never trust the people around them.
But on a scientific level, a lot of smart people are proving incredible things. Their efforts have advanced us in our civilization. Maybe the hoaxters don’t like people who are smarter than them? I don’t know.
I don’t condone violence. But I’m kind of glad Buzz Aldrin popped that guy one.
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“The easiest person to fool is yourself.” – Richard Feynman
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“A hoax is a fraud perpetrated in broad daylight, even when everyone is looking.” – Mitchell Zuckoff
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“I don’t want to believe. I want to know.” – Carl Sagan
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Way to go Buzz. You rock. Your moon rocks.
