Ship of Fools - Chapter 4

The Map and the Territory

[Start at the beginning of the novel: Prologue.]

[Go to the Table of Contents.]

Welcome back to Ship of Fools and thanks for reading!

In the previous flashback chapter, Liz met Ben Himmelstein and heard the beginnings of his moon-landing hoax theory. Now she gets to hear the rest, as it goes from implausible to ludicrous.

---

LIZ examined the three SAG cards laid out before her, each bearing the name of one of the most famous astronauts in history, the antiquity of the Formica table on which they rested somehow underscoring their age. They seemed authentic, but she was no expert. “Those could easily have been faked.”

Himmelstein held her gaze, ready for this challenge. “True, and I imagine you’ll want to put them through a full forensic analysis. But to my eye they don’t look like forgeries.” He reached into his chest pocket and pulled out a similar card. “Here, I can assure you this one is the real deal, since she gave it to me herself, shortly before she died.”

This one had belonged to Marilyn Monroe. In all other respects, it seemed identical to the three lying on the table in front of her.

“But they weren’t actors, they were Navy and Air Force officers in the 1950s, combat pilots and test pilots, years before they joined NASA. Those facts are incontrovertible.”

“True, but it’s what happened in between that’s important. Collins and Armstrong were at Edwards Air Force Base, not too far from Hollywood. You’ll never hear this in their official bios, but they’d become disaffected as test pilots, tired of risking their lives over and over, tired of the secrecy. So they went down to Hollywood and did some screen tests, almost as a lark. They both got small parts in movies no one’s ever heard of, but it was enough to earn their SAG cards. By ’61, when the official records have them still at Edwards, they were actually rooming together in LA and hustling for bigger parts. Then when NASA began to doubt von Braun and decided it would have to fake the landing, who better to turn to for the roles of the astronauts?”

“And what about Aldrin?”

“He’d been working on his PhD at MIT, as you probably know. Collins knew him through the West Point grapevine, and had heard about his work on docking spacecraft in orbit, which would be vital in making the footage look realistic. When Collins called him, he was bored out of his mind in academia and ready to jump at any chance for excitement, even if it was just acting.”

“So that sort of fits with the official version.”

“That’s right. And by ’62, when Armstrong joined the astronaut program, his and Collins’ paperwork had been retconned to show no gap in their service.”

Liz thought of all the objections to this unlikely scenario. What about Apollo 8 and 10? Were those faked too? And how many of the hundreds of thousands who worked on the mission were privy to the secret? Not that many, was the usual answer from the deniers. But all of that was familiar territory.

“So what makes this version of the hoax different from all the others? So far, it’s about as convincing as those photos of the crew gambling in Las Vegas.”

“Enter the film-maker they brought in to direct the project.”

Liz waited a beat for him to continue. “And you’re not going to tell me his name?”

“Not yet. Just humor an old man in this little test of your movie knowledge.” His eyes twinkled and she could easily imagine him persuading one movie star or another to hand over their keepsakes. “The key thing to know about him is that he was a stickler for realism.”

“So?”

“So he kept pushing for more and more realistic sets, beginning in 1964 when he was brought into the project. First it was for a pressurized capsule. He wanted to build a vacuum chamber around it, and have the actors wear actual spacesuits and go through real airlocks. Just the possibility that they would experience an accidental depressurization would give the production that last inexpressible soupçon of reality.”

“So he didn’t really trust his actors.”

“Why would he? They were pilots, after all — not used to displaying much emotion. He knew he’d have to put them in real situations to get any performance out of them. He went on to have a love-hate relationship with most of the actors he worked with.”

“Did he convince NASA?”

“They were still arguing about that when he decided it would be easier to launch them into space. The plan up to then was to smuggle the actors out of the capsule right before liftoff, then scuttle the whole thing over the emptiness of the Atlantic Ocean. But the director insisted the footage would be so much more believable, it would be worth it. The vibrations in the capsule as the engines ignited, the G-forces showing in their faces. And they’d actually put astronauts in space before, so why not do it again?”

“Gemini was real then?”

“According to my source, yes. And all of the Apollo missions that didn’t leave Earth orbit.”

“And the Apollo 1 disaster?”

“It wasn’t a plot to murder Grissom, and he wasn’t about to spill the beans, because he wasn’t in on the hoax. He was just a regular astronaut doing his job. No, it was an accident, caused by the rush to develop a believable program after spending so much time trying to fake it. And that accident almost brought the whole affair to a stop. People dying for a hoax just to one-up the Soviet Union, it was going too far, even at the height of the Cold War.”

“How did the director convince them to keep moving forward?”

“He didn’t retreat, he began pushing for the whole nine yards… or 239,000 miles, I should say.”

Liz blinked at him.

“You see where this is going.”

“I do, and it makes zero sense.”

“Perhaps, but this director was known for his iron will and his ability to bend people to it. He told NASA he had to film the landing on location. No sound stage or remote desert would provide the same verisimilitude.”

“So to fake going to the moon, they actually went to the moon.”

“Sounds crazy, I know.”

“But that means it wasn’t fake, it was real.”

“From a certain perspective, yes. But is a performance of an event the same as the event itself? Did Armstrong think he was actually the first man to walk on the moon, or was he just playing that man?”

“You’re saying that the astronauts’ — or actors’ — view of what they were doing changes the reality of what occurred? My head is spinning.”

“Just like the map and the territory, the representation of a thing is not the thing itself.”

“But… but…”

“I know! Let it settle in for a while.”

“How do you know what was going through Armstrong’s and Aldrin’s minds?”

“There’s a recording.” He pulled a small reel-to-reel tape from the envelope. “I’ll play it for you.”

“Where did it come from?”

“Any director has to communicate with his actors. NASA set up a second radio channel so the director could communicate with Armstrong and Aldrin.” He finished spooling the tape through the ancient machine, then turned back to Liz. “You’re familiar with the odd pause in Armstrong’s famous statement?”

“Of course. He’d rehearsed it, but then, in his excitement, it came out wrong. He meant to say, ‘One small step for a man’.”

“He flubbed his line. And that pause is clearly a sound edit. Here’s how it actually went.”

He hit the play button. Armstrong’s staticky voice came through the speakers, at first as familiar as always. “One small step for man…no, a man, goddamnit. Let me do it again.”

Then came another voice, and not the familiar voice of the flight director in Houston. It had a German accent, giving Liz an idea of who he might be. “No, damnit, keep rolling. Stay in character. Pick up at ‘One giant leap,’ or I’ll come out there and puncture your spacesuit.”

There was some indistinct mumbling from Armstrong’s end, then the famous line continued. Himmelstein turned the player off.

Liz shook her head. “No…wait…where was this director?”

“More important, where was the cameraman? Always the most vital question in analyzing a film shot.”

“The camera was mounted on the leg of the lander, a point none of the deniers seem to get.”

“Yes, it had to look that way, or those deniers would know it was a hoax. But no, the cameraman was holding the camera in that spot.”

“But that means…”

“Yes, and this is how we know Armstrong was only performing the role of first man on the moon. He was actually the second. Or really the third, if you count the director himself.”

“But where was he?”

“Inside the second lander. Or more accurately, the first lander, since they got there two hours before Aldrin and Armstrong.”

“This is getting better and better.”

“What, did you think the director and the cameraman were stowed away aboard Apollo 11? Maybe there were secret compartments for them inside the capsule and lander?”

“So you’re saying there was a second rocket?”

“Yes, it was known as Apollo 11b. It took off from Kwajalein Atoll in the South Pacific.”

“A second command and service module? A second lander?”

“Yes, an entire shadow Apollo program. Its staff had dual NASA and CIA security clearances at the highest levels.”

This hoax had just gone from the absurd to the realm of unicorns and fairy dust. The number of people such a venture would require was — astronomical. And they’d all have to keep their mouths shut, security clearances or no.

“I know, hard to believe, isn’t it?” Himmelstein was looking at her with some sympathy.

“Any more proof?”

“Only these photos.” He pulled out several Polaroid shots and an 8x10. The snaps showed a rocket much like the Saturn V, with palm trees in the background.

“That could just be a different angle on Cape Canaveral.”

“Yes, but those palms don’t grow in Florida, and are endemic to the South Pacific.” She was no palm expert, but she could easily check that and have the Polaroids dated and analyzed.

The 8x10 was a satellite photo showing an island with two apparently abandoned construction sites. “The control center and the launch pad, or what was left of them as of 1998.”

“It’s not much. There’s nothing else?”

“There is one other possible piece of evidence, if NASA hasn’t already destroyed it — the uncut version of the footage. The cameraman actually tried to smuggle the film off the capsule inside his splashdown suit but the recovery team caught him with it. If you could get your hands on that, there’s your proof.”

“So who was your informant?”

“The cameraman himself, Max Slobotnik. He was an astronaut and also the pilot of the first lander. So he did everything Armstrong did, but did it first. Obviously NASA was ready to throw him out after he tried to steal the film, but he threatened to go public with the whole thing. He felt incredible resentment over never getting credit as the first man on the moon. Only a considerable amount of hush money and eventually a cushy desk job with NASA, combined with threats against his family, kept him quiet for so long.”

They sat in silence for a moment, Liz pondering the strange story and all the countless objections to it. “It’s still too far out. And what’s the motive? Why would NASA, and all the other players who would have to be involved, try to fake the landing in the first place?”

Himmelstein only smiled. “Explaining that would require a greater belief in this scenario than I actually possess. But the simplest motive would be competition with the Soviet Union, which you’re too young to remember. At the time, it was intense. And it’s not as if the government wasn’t engaged in actual conspiracies at around that time — MKUltra, for instance, and they tried to keep Operation Paperclip a secret as well.”

Old territory for Liz, of course. “They couldn’t even keep the lid on Paperclip for two years. It’s been sixty for the moon landing, and still not a shred of credible evidence it was a hoax.”

“The current scenario notwithstanding?” Himmelstein said, though without a trace of rancor. “But now I want to know if you can tell me who the director was.”

“The German accent, the insistence on verisimilitude…it has to be Herzog, doesn’t it?”

Himmelstein clapped his hands together. “Very good, my girl. After this adventure, getting that river boat over a mountain in the Amazon must have been a cakewalk. But it’s ironic, isn’t it, the Werner most responsible for the outcome of the Apollo program was the film director, not the rocket engineer.”

“But such expense and effort, all for some grainy footage.”

“Oh, NASA was none too happy with what they got back. Many in the loop wondered why they hadn’t just gone with Kubrick. They’d have gotten much more realistic, high-quality shots at a fraction of the cost. They weren’t the first or last producers Werner disappointed.”

“And what about the subsequent Apollo missions?”

“All real, no hoaxes there. NASA figured they’d gone to all the expense, and people had died over it. Why not continue for real? It was the stone soup of space programs. They owe everything to Werner, but it does explain the aimlessness of the moon missions. What to do after you put a man on the moon? Play moon golf. Ride around on a moon buggy. They really had no clue what to do once they got there, because they never intended to go there in the first place.”

That was the most reasonable thing Liz had heard all day.

“So, you have your work cut out for you. Do you think you’ll take it on?”

“How can I not? But I’ll start with getting those materials analyzed. If they seem legit, I’ll go from there.”

Himmelstein smiled. “It will be good to get it out of my hands. Would you like another lemonade?”

“Do you have anything stronger?”

---

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this chapter, please give it a like, a share, a restack, or a comment. And if you really enjoyed it, you can buy me a coffee or upgrade to a paid subscription.

What do you think of this particular version of the moon-landing hoax theory? Obviously it’s impossible, but does it seem FAR less plausible than the standard versions, or only a bit less? (Of course I believe Americans actually went to the moon, but some of my closest friends don’t agree.)

Next up: Chapter 5, “Astroanamorphoscope,” in which Clive Cuddleshanks, whom we met in Chapter 3, pitches his invention to Liz.