astronauts using the Far Ultraviolet Camera. It shows the Earth with the correct background of stars, which are named. Kaysing asserted that during his much earlier tenure at Rocketdyne he was privy to documents pertaining to the
Mercury,
Gemini,
Atlas, and Apollo programs, and argued that one did not need an engineering or science degree to determine that a hoax was being perpetrated. According to his account of this intellectual development, the Rocketdyne scientists with whom he worked expressed to him that there was enough technology at the time to perhaps send a crewed rocket to the Moon, but not enough technology developed to return safely to Earth. They also spoke of the very real problem of traveling through atmospheric radiation without harm to the astronauts as a problem that yet needed to be solved. Even before July 1969, he had "a hunch, an intuition, ... a true conviction" and decided that he did not believe that anyone was going to the Moon. Kaysing thus wrote a book titled ''We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle'', which was
self-published in 1976, and republished by Health Research Books in 2002. In his book, Kaysing introduced arguments which he said proved the Moon landings were faked. Claims in the book including that: •
NASA lacked the technical expertise to put a man on the Moon. • the absence of stars in lunar surface photographs was indicative of a hoax. • there were unexplained optical anomalies in the photographs taken on the Moon. • there was an absence of blast craters beneath the
Lunar Modules, and that the rocket engines of the Lunar Modules should have generated an enormous dust cloud near their landing sites during the final seconds of descent. • the death of
Thomas Baron, a quality control and safety inspector for North American Aviation, was mysterious and indicative of a hoax. He also claimed that Dutch newspapers questioned the "authenticity" of the Moon landings.
Media participations Kaysing appeared on the
Oprah show. He was also a participant in the
Fox documentary,
Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?, which aired on February 15, 2001. Kaysing had an appearance on the documentary, "Moon Landing - The World's Greatest Hoax?", which was uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2021.
Lovell defamation lawsuit On August 29, 1996, Kaysing filed a
defamation lawsuit in
Santa Cruz County Superior Court against astronaut
Jim Lovell for calling his claims "wacky" in an article by
Rafer Guzmán for
Metro Silicon Valley. Lovell is quoted: The guy is wacky. His position makes me feel angry. We spent a lot of time getting ready to go to the Moon. We spent a lot of money, we took great risks, and it's something everybody in this country should be proud of. The case was dismissed in 1997.
Original theory from We Never Went to the Moon (1976) Kaysing describes preparation for the launch as normal, but since
Rocketdyne F-1 engines in the first stage of the
Saturn V rocket were "totally unreliable," a cluster of "five booster engines of the more dependable B-1 type as used in the C-1 cluster for the Atlas missile" were secretly installed, one inside each of the Saturn V's five F-1s.
Revised theory from Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? (2001) Kaysing states: The astronauts were launched with the Saturn V. Then, in order to account for their disappearance, they simply orbited the Earth for eight days and in the interim they showed these fake pictures of the astronauts on the Moon. But on the eighth day the command console separated from the vehicle and descended to Earth as, of course, was shown in the films. ==Legacy==