"The apartheid regime banned TV so we would have seen the newspaper posters tied up to all the lampposts on the road and the SABC radio (South African Broadcasting Corporation) – in those days the apartheid regime banned all radios except the SABC – would have broadcast extracts."
Gottschalk also explains how the news that the US had beaten the Soviet Union to the lunar surface was met in a country where Cold War rivalry was central to politics and foreign affairs.
We also hear from Alice Gorman, senior lecturer in archaeology and space studies, at Flinders University in Australia. She studies the heritage of what’s been left by humans on the moon’s surface and what it means for people back on Earth. She laments what was lost when astronauts stopped going to the moon in 1972.
"We lost a tradition. We lost the continuity of technologies and cultures that enable people to survive on other planets. So now we’re kind of reinventing those again."
Gorman explains why she thinks the Apollo 11 sites could become heritage sites for future generations of visitors to the moon.
Still, one of the enduring legacies of the moon landings has been the conspiracy theories it generated, which claim that the Apollo missions were all a hoax orchestrated by the US government. Peter Knight, a professor of American studies and an expert in conspiracy theories at the University of Manchester in the UK, explains the cultural moment in which these sprang up in the mid 1970s.
"The immediate context that we need to think about is the Vietnam War and a sense of disillusionment with the official version of events and, in effect, the lies that Americans felt their government had been telling them."
Knight also tells us how, in many parts of the world, a large number of people still believe that the moon landings were a hoax – ranging from between 5-10% of Americans and 12% of Britons, to 20% of Italians and 57% of Russians.
But what can be done about it? We hear from Viren Swami, a professor of social psychology at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK and Centre for Psychological Medicine at Pedana University in Malaysia, who has carried out psychological experiments testing belief in moon landing conspiracy theories. He explains some of his findings:
"When you already believe in a conspiracy or a conspiratorial world view – when you see patterns in data that make you believe that there are conspiracies in the world – you’re more likely to adopt different conspiracy theories. Even if they are sometimes contradictory, or even if they don’t make sense."
Swami also explains how promoting analytical thinking can help reduce belief in conspiracy theories.
To the moon and beyond is a global collaboration between different editions of The Conversation around the world, hosted by Miriam Frankel and Martin Archer. You can listen via The Conversation, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts by hitting the “Listen and Subscribe” button at the top of this page.
To the moon and beyond is produced by Gemma Ware and Annabel Bligh. Reporting by Nontobeko Mtshali, Sarah Keenihan and Johnathan Gang. Sound editing by Siva Thangarajah. Thank you to City, University of London’s Department of Journalism for letting us use their studios.
Music via Free Music Archive:
Even when we fall and Western Shores by Philipp Weigl
Tapoco and Bedroll by Blue Dot Sessions
Hallon by Christian Bjoerklund
As time passes marimba, Zapslat
Archive footage:
Apollo 11, 13 and 17 audio from NASA
Miriam Frankel, Co-host, To the moon and beyond Podcast, The Conversation and Martin Archer, Space Plasma Physicist, Queen Mary University of London
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.