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By now you should be wondering if we're to take all these theories at anything like face value then you have to have a extremely low opinion of NASA's intelligence. Even supposing you didn't believe they had it in them to get to the moon, do you really believe they were that stupid? These are supposed to be the cream of America's scientific intelligencia, yet they blundered about making a total mess of this face-saving fakery? Oops, we forgot to put the stars in! Oh no, we've lit this scene with six different banks of spotlights by mistake! Who left the mike boon in this shot?! Who spent the last 500 million on dounuts!? Doh! What about the radiation! For pete sake guys, we didn't think any of this through at all!
A lot of what the conspiracy theorist believe is based on one central belief:
They like this idea. It's a favourite of hoax geeks. Percy is particularly keen on it. The hoax is undermined by a handful of put-upon NASA workers with more highly tuned morals than the rest of them. To let the world in on the secret these courageous few put little clues and flaws into the hoax in order that other smart people (that is; smarter than NASA management) might spot them and discover all. Rather like compiling a crossword, but far, far sexier. The whistle blowers couldn't just publicise the hoax, or they'd end up dead. Just about every half-baked conspiracy theory you'll come across has these heroes for truth involved somewhere. This way the hoax geeks get to feel kindred spirits with important, exciting and inspiring people standing up for truth and justice.
So you see, NASA isn't stupid. All these little errors were intentional clues. You just had to be smart enough, like what Percy is, to work them out.
This is actually the strongest part of the conspiracy theory. We can all think of very good reasons why NASA might want to fake things. JFK had predicted an American on the moon before the end of the decade and the Soviets were getting close to doing it. NASA were under a lot of pressure to produce the goods. So you could easily see why they might decide to fake things if they realized they weren't going to succeed.
But motive has never been proof of the crime. Just because NASA may have had a reason for doing it doesn't prove they did.
You also might want to think what exactly the Soviets were doing while all this hoaxing was going on. The Soviets were just as keen as the Americans to reach the moon first. If they had any doubts at all about the validity of the Apollo landings do you think they'd have kept them to themselves? Don't forget they had the best technology to track and listen to the Apollo missions. If they didn't appear to be coming from the moon they would have known.