EzraS wrote:
It is probably not easy to find what all the Russia and China said 50 years ago.
Or to know who was investigating NASA back then or what they found.
But it has been doubted by many from the beginning and quite a lot of evidence has been presented to show it was a hoax, so it is not airtight. Not even an unmanned rover has visited any of the landing sites in all this time.
Russia spoke with one voice back then, as did China, because they were both monolithic totalitarian dictatorships. Neither country had large numbers of independent media outlets doing their own opinion-editorial things (the way that the US, then ,and now, has). So "keeping track" of "all what was said in China or Russia" isn't hard to do. There isn't much to keep track of. Both regimes would simply trot out their respective "party lines". Russia claimed that "we weren't really racing you guys", which is what we would have said had they beaten us to the moon. But Russia never claimed that our landing was a hoax.
But I think that you are right that lunatic fringers were questioning it from the get-go.
I remember watching the moon landing with my cousins when I was a teen. And remember the grown ups in the room(aunt, uncle, parents) all ribbing each other about how "the whole thing was filmed in a backlot of a Hollywood studio. Harhardiharhar". They were all joking of course. But I am sure that there were sanity impaired folks who were thinking the same thought at that moment, but not laughing.
Folks who believe that the moon landing was a hoax also tend to believe in the reality of "the Philadelphia Experiment": the U.S. Navy destroyer ship that was supposedly made to jump back and forth in time during while docked in Philadelphia during WWII.
So..we are both LESS advanced than the powers at be claim we are (we couldn't really go to the Moon), and are MORE advanced than they claim (we were able to make 2000 ton ship travel in time way back in 1942). they are concealing contradictory things from us! We can do more than they claim we can. But cant do as much stuff as they claim we can!! !! !