The real reason why Nasa etc has never gone back to the moon is because even with 21st century technology a manned moon landing is still impossible from a scientific and technical perspective. What happened was that Armstrong et al were sent into a low earth orbit where they remained for the duration of the so called journey to the moon and the moon landing itself. What was broadcast were filmed training simulations, a full performance dress rehearsal if you will. Nasa controlled the television feed and the networks complained of the dark, grainy and very ghostly images they were being fed. Even by late '60s television technology the broadcast images were very poor.
Check out the Van Allen radiation belts. Even in low earth orbit astronauts and even those on the space shuttle have complained about flashes in their eyes even when their eyes where shut. These flashes are caused by lowish level radiation. The radiation in the Van Allan belts - which the Apollo missions all had to fly through is so high that even a very short exposure proves fatal. The only way that those Apollo rockets could have travelled through the Van Allan belts would have been if the rockets had of had lead shields 6 feet of more thick throughout the entire length and breadth of the rocket. Had they been able to build a rocket to this specification it would never have got off the ground, being far too heavy and requiring a huge amount of power to provide the necessary gravitational escape velocity.
Also think of the political and economic situation that existed in 1960s America. Race riots, Civil rights, KKK, Vietnam, assassination of Kennedy, and his brother along with Martin Luther King. The horrors of Vietnam, and the beatings of blacks in the South were being broadcast daily throughout the world. America was nearing turmoil at home and her reputation abroad was being severely damaged. However, the idea that the archest of America's arch enemies the Soviet Union were streets ahead in the space was utterly intolerable to the Washington elite and the Military-Industrial complex. America had to do something, but what?
To be honest I think that Nasa did set out genuinely to find away to in JFK's words 'send a man to the moon and returned him safely again to earth before this decade is out.' However, they soon discovered that the brightest scientists and engineers in the country had not the slightest idea how to go about doing this. This realisation was the start of what eventually became the great moon landing fraud.
Critics have repeatedly said, ' okay let's forget about the radiation for a moment. Why were there no stars visible in the footage of the entire moon landing? After all there is no atmosphere on the moon the stars ought to have been beautifully clear, yet not only was there not a single star to be seen the astronauts themselves are on record saying that they never saw a single star while on the moon. Speaking of that moon atmosphere, why is the American flag seen several times fluttering and waving on a number of occasions, when there are NO winds to blow it?'
What about the complete absence of a blast crater at the landing site? What about the fact that during take-off from the moon the astronauts voices are clearly heard from the cockpit when they were only a couple of feet away from a rocket engine during blast off? There are many other anomalies.
As this explanation could run to hundred of pages, let me sum it up. Washington and the business and political elite shocked and humiliated by the success of their ideological arch enemy the Soviet Union,and haunted by the horrors of Vietnam and the savage treatment of blacks in the South being broadcast around the world on a daily basis decided something had to be done, something on an epic scale to distract the domestic population from the seemingly endless catalogue of iniquities going on in American or being perpetrated in its name. So intially they decided to dramatically say to the Soviet Union; ' we see your manned space flight and we'll raise you a space laboratory.' That's right America's initial reaction to Gagarin and Titov's space flights was to build a space laboratory. However, Werner Von Braun and the generals and plutocrats thought that this a rather weak response. The Pentagon saw the possibilities inherent in militarising space and the business elite smelled massive profits from the space programme. The generals hoped that a landing on the moon would be the start of a series of military moon bases from which America could threaten the Soviet Union! However, when it was realised that landing on the moon was as practicable in the 1960s as it had been in the 1860s, they switched tactics and employed the 'if you can't make it then fake it attitude. Although this was an extraordinary deception it still accomplished what the rulers wanted. The public at home and abroad would be entranced and distracted by the Hollywood style glitz and glamour of the moon project, the plutocrats still got their obese contracts, and the Pentagon obtained massive funding for other projects, as the $7 billion awarded by Congress to the programme had to be spent and accounted for.
To end just imagine if Washington had admitted that it couldn't beat the Soviets in the space race? The propaganda coup handed to the Russians would have been immense! This would have been tantamount to Johnston and/or Nixon saying from the Oval Office that Soviet communism was superior to American 'can do' capitalism!! I think America would have been finished as a nation had this happened. What probably would have happened was that America would have fractured into countries along the South American model, and her power and prestige upon the world's stage would have been badly tarnished if not destroyed.
The 1960s moon show united the American people like nothing before or since, and ensured America's economic cultural and political dominance over the world for the last 40+ years.
