Bill Kaysing
Encyclopedia
William Charles Kaysing (July 31, 1922 – April 21, 2005) was a writer best known for claiming that the six Apollo moon
landings between July 1969 and December 1972 were hoax
es. He is regarded as the initiator of the moon hoax movement.
in 1940 as a midshipman
and eventually was sent to officers' training school which led to his attending University of Southern California
. In 1949 he received his Bachelor of Arts
in English
from the University of Redlands. He later worked for a time as a furniture maker, before working at Rocketdyne
(a division of North American Aviation
and later of Rockwell International
), (1956–1963), where Saturn V
rocket engine
s were built. Kaysing was the company's head of technical publications but was not trained as an engineer or scientist.
According to Kaysing he worked at Rocketdyne starting on February 13, 1956 as senior technical writer, then on September 24, 1956 as a service analyst, September 15, 1958 he worked as a service engineer, following on October 10, 1962 as a publications analyst, and on May 31, 1963 he resigned for personal reasons.
, Gemini
, Atlas
, and Apollo programs, arguing that one does not need an engineering or science degree to determine that a hoax was being perpetrated. Even before July 1969, he had "a hunch, an intuition, ... a true conviction" and decided that he didn't believe that anyone was going to the moon. Kaysing wrote a book entitled We Never Went to the Moon, which was self-published in 1974, listing Randy Reid as a coauthor. It was republished in 2002 by Health Research Books, with no coauthor listed. In his book, Kaysing introduced arguments which he said proved the moon landings were faked.
Claims in the book and subsequent sources include:
Kaysing also claimed that NASA staged both the Apollo 1
fire and the Challenger
accident, deliberately murder
ing the astronauts on board. He suggested that NASA might have learned that these astronauts were about to expose the conspiracy and needed to guarantee their silence. A vocal advocate of conspiracy theories, Kaysing believed there is a high level conspiracy involving the Central Intelligence Agency
, Federal Reserve, Internal Revenue Service
and other government agencies to brain wash
the American public, poison their food supply and control the media
. He also implied that the death of NASA safety inspector Thomas Ronald Baron in a traffic accident with a train a week after he testified before the United States Congress
, and the disappearance of his 500-page report, was not an accident. He was also a participant in the Fox Broadcasting Company
documentary Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?, which aired on February 15, 2001.
In 1997, Kaysing filed a lawsuit against astronaut Jim Lovell
for libel
when Lovell called Kaysing's claims "wacky" in the San José Metro News, July 25–31, 1996.
filed by San Francisco attorney John Hardy, representing James Lovell. The judgment was affirmed on appeal on First Amendment
grounds.
As a result of Kaysing's claims he believed there was a conspiracy against him. One such event was Price Stern Sloan
Publishers' decision not to publish his book, after paying a small advance in exchange for the manuscript. The editor's comments:
to write "NASA Mooned America" when Ralph decided he had done extensive research to prove the landings were faked too.
Bill's daughter "Wendy Kaysing" has stated that along with Bill's nephew "Mr. von Schmausen" she hopes to one day write a book about her father. This book is not to reiterate Bill Kaysing's hoax claims but rather talk about her father as a person. This will include quotations, reflections, incidents, philosophies and goals set by Kaysing in his lifetime. Though no specific plans for a release date were given, the authors have stated the working title for this book will be Life and Times with "Wild" Bill Kaysing, the Fastest Pen in the West.
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
landings between July 1969 and December 1972 were hoax
Hoax
A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.-Definition:The British...
es. He is regarded as the initiator of the moon hoax movement.
Education and employment history
Kaysing joined the NavyUnited States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
in 1940 as a midshipman
Midshipman
A midshipman is an officer cadet, or a commissioned officer of the lowest rank, in the Royal Navy, United States Navy, and many Commonwealth navies. Commonwealth countries which use the rank include Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Kenya...
and eventually was sent to officers' training school which led to his attending University of Southern California
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
. In 1949 he received his Bachelor of Arts
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in English
English studies
English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language , English linguistics English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S.,...
from the University of Redlands. He later worked for a time as a furniture maker, before working at Rocketdyne
Rocketdyne
Rocketdyne was a Rocket engine design and production company headquartered in Canoga Park, California, United States. The company was related to North American Aviation for most of its history. NAA merged with Rockwell International, which was then bought by Boeing in December, 1996...
(a division of North American Aviation
North American Aviation
North American Aviation was a major US aerospace manufacturer, responsible for a number of historic aircraft, including the T-6 Texan trainer, the P-51 Mustang fighter, the B-25 Mitchell bomber, the F-86 Sabre jet fighter, the X-15 rocket plane, and the XB-70, as well as Apollo Command and Service...
and later of Rockwell International
Rockwell International
Rockwell International was a major American manufacturing conglomerate in the latter half of the 20th century, involved in aircraft, the space industry, both defense-oriented and commercial electronics, automotive and truck components, printing presses, valves and meters, and industrial automation....
), (1956–1963), where Saturn V
Saturn V
The Saturn V was an American human-rated expendable rocket used by NASA's Apollo and Skylab programs from 1967 until 1973. A multistage liquid-fueled launch vehicle, NASA launched 13 Saturn Vs from the Kennedy Space Center, Florida with no loss of crew or payload...
rocket engine
Rocket engine
A rocket engine, or simply "rocket", is a jet engineRocket Propulsion Elements; 7th edition- chapter 1 that uses only propellant mass for forming its high speed propulsive jet. Rocket engines are reaction engines and obtain thrust in accordance with Newton's third law...
s were built. Kaysing was the company's head of technical publications but was not trained as an engineer or scientist.
According to Kaysing he worked at Rocketdyne starting on February 13, 1956 as senior technical writer, then on September 24, 1956 as a service analyst, September 15, 1958 he worked as a service engineer, following on October 10, 1962 as a publications analyst, and on May 31, 1963 he resigned for personal reasons.
Charges that the Moon landing was a hoax
Kaysing asserted that during his tenure at Rocketdyne he was privy to documents pertaining to the MercuryProject Mercury
In January 1960 NASA awarded Western Electric Company a contract for the Mercury tracking network. The value of the contract was over $33 million. Also in January, McDonnell delivered the first production-type Mercury spacecraft, less than a year after award of the formal contract. On February 12,...
, Gemini
Project Gemini
Project Gemini was the second human spaceflight program of NASA, the civilian space agency of the United States government. Project Gemini was conducted between projects Mercury and Apollo, with ten manned flights occurring in 1965 and 1966....
, Atlas
Atlas (missile)
The SM-65 Atlas was the first intercontinental ballistic missile developed and deployed by the United States. It was built for the U.S. Air Force by Convair Division of General Dynamics at the Kearny Mesa assembly plant north of San Diego, California...
, and Apollo programs, arguing that one does not need an engineering or science degree to determine that a hoax was being perpetrated. Even before July 1969, he had "a hunch, an intuition, ... a true conviction" and decided that he didn't believe that anyone was going to the moon. Kaysing wrote a book entitled We Never Went to the Moon, which was self-published in 1974, listing Randy Reid as a coauthor. It was republished in 2002 by Health Research Books, with no coauthor listed. In his book, Kaysing introduced arguments which he said proved the moon landings were faked.
Claims in the book and subsequent sources include:
- NASANASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
lacked the technical expertise to put a man on the moon. - The absence of stars in lunar surface photographs.
- The film used by astronauts on the moon should have melted due to the supposed high levels of radiation.
- Unexplained optical anomalies in the photographs taken on the moon.
- The absence of blast craters beneath the lunar modules. Their rocket engines should have blasted away tons of moon dust in the final seconds of descent.
- The mysterious death of Thomas Ronald Baron, an inspector who had written a critical report on the Apollo program, was not an accident. His report also disappeared after this death.
- The Dutch papers had questions regarding the "authenticity" of the moon landings.
Kaysing also claimed that NASA staged both the Apollo 1
Apollo 1
Apollo 1 was scheduled to be the first manned mission of the Apollo manned lunar landing program, with a target launch date of February 21, 1967. A cabin fire during a launch pad test on January 27 at Launch Pad 34 at Cape Canaveral killed all three crew members: Command Pilot Virgil "Gus"...
fire and the Challenger
STS-51-L
STS-51-L was the twenty-fifth flight of the American Space Shuttle program, which marked the first time an ordinary civilian, schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, had flown aboard the Space Shuttle. The mission used Space Shuttle Challenger, which lifted off from the Launch Complex 39-B on 28 January...
accident, deliberately murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
ing the astronauts on board. He suggested that NASA might have learned that these astronauts were about to expose the conspiracy and needed to guarantee their silence. A vocal advocate of conspiracy theories, Kaysing believed there is a high level conspiracy involving the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
, Federal Reserve, Internal Revenue Service
Internal Revenue Service
The Internal Revenue Service is the revenue service of the United States federal government. The agency is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury, and is under the immediate direction of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue...
and other government agencies to brain wash
Mind control
Mind control refers to a process in which a group or individual "systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator, often to the detriment of the person being manipulated"...
the American public, poison their food supply and control the media
Mass media
Mass media refers collectively to all media technologies which are intended to reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit their information electronically and comprise of television, film and radio, movies, CDs, DVDs and some other gadgets like cameras or video consoles...
. He also implied that the death of NASA safety inspector Thomas Ronald Baron in a traffic accident with a train a week after he testified before the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
, and the disappearance of his 500-page report, was not an accident. He was also a participant in the Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
documentary Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?, which aired on February 15, 2001.
In 1997, Kaysing filed a lawsuit against astronaut Jim Lovell
Jim Lovell
James "Jim" Arthur Lovell, Jr., is a former NASA astronaut and a retired captain in the United States Navy, most famous as the commander of the Apollo 13 mission, which suffered a critical failure en route to the Moon but was brought back safely to Earth by the efforts of the crew and mission...
for libel
Slander and libel
Defamation—also called calumny, vilification, traducement, slander , and libel —is the communication of a statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an individual, business, product, group, government, or nation a negative image...
when Lovell called Kaysing's claims "wacky" in the San José Metro News, July 25–31, 1996.
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 everyone in this country should be proud of. — James LovellThe case was dismissed in 1999 following the granting of a Motion for Summary Judgment
Summary judgment
In law, a summary judgment is a determination made by a court without a full trial. Such a judgment may be issued as to the merits of an entire case, or of specific issues in that case....
filed by San Francisco attorney John Hardy, representing James Lovell. The judgment was affirmed on appeal on First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
grounds.
As a result of Kaysing's claims he believed there was a conspiracy against him. One such event was Price Stern Sloan
Price Stern Sloan
Price Stern Sloan or PSS! is a publisher that was founded in Los Angeles in the early 1960s to publish the Mad Libs that Roger Price and Leonard Stern had concocted during their stint as writers for Steve Allen's Tonight Show and also the Droodles...
Publishers' decision not to publish his book, after paying a small advance in exchange for the manuscript. The editor's comments:
I'm afraid we disavow it. You need to read it objectively and critically and perhaps ORGANIZE IT. As it is it wanders all over the landscape. Several interesting paragraphs but they don't hold together, link together. You've also wandered from third to first person. It needs a lot of work. You don't really have a manuscript here - seemed more like random notes about what you WOULD write about if you got around to it. What I mean, it reads like notes to the AUTHOR.Kaysing has wondered why the publisher didn't want to have anything more to do with the book.
Legacy
Kaysing has inspired numerous people who do not believe the Moon Landings were real. He was the one that encouraged Ralph ReneRalph Rene
Ralph René was an American conspiracy theorist, small press publisher and inventor. René was a vocal proponent of the Apollo moon landing hoax theory. René's death was confirmed via a video on AOL. René's last self-published book, on the September 11 attacks, is called World Trade Center Lies and...
to write "NASA Mooned America" when Ralph decided he had done extensive research to prove the landings were faked too.
Bill's daughter "Wendy Kaysing" has stated that along with Bill's nephew "Mr. von Schmausen" she hopes to one day write a book about her father. This book is not to reiterate Bill Kaysing's hoax claims but rather talk about her father as a person. This will include quotations, reflections, incidents, philosophies and goals set by Kaysing in his lifetime. Though no specific plans for a release date were given, the authors have stated the working title for this book will be Life and Times with "Wild" Bill Kaysing, the Fastest Pen in the West.
Selected books by Kaysing
Kaysing is the author of many books, including:- We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle. (Cornville, Az. : Desert Publications, 1981.) ISBN 0879473886
- Eat Well for 99 Cents a Meal. (Port Townsend, Wash. : Loompanics Unlimited, 1996) ISBN 1559501375
- The Senior Citizen's Survival Manual
- The 99 Cent a Meal Cookbook
- Great Hot Springs of the West
- Bill Kaysing's Freedom Encyclopedia
- Privacy: How to Get it, How to Enjoy It
- The Ex-urbanite's Complete & Illustrated Easy-does-it First-time Farmer's Guide
- Great Hideouts of the West: An Idea Book for Living Free
- Fell's Beginner's Guide to Motorcycling
- Eat Well on a Dollar a Day. (San Francisco : Chronicle Books, 1975) ISBN 0877010668
- Bill Kaysing's Encyclopedia: How to Get it, How to Enjoy It
- The Robin Hood Handbook
See also
- Astronauts Gone WildAstronauts Gone WildAstronauts Gone Wild is a 2004 film made by Bart Sibrel, an amateur filmmaker from Nashville, Tennessee, United States who charges that the six Apollo moon landings in the 1960s and 1970s were elaborate hoaxes...
- Moon landing conspiracy theories
- Ralph ReneRalph ReneRalph René was an American conspiracy theorist, small press publisher and inventor. René was a vocal proponent of the Apollo moon landing hoax theory. René's death was confirmed via a video on AOL. René's last self-published book, on the September 11 attacks, is called World Trade Center Lies and...
- Bart SibrelBart SibrelBart Winfield Sibrel is a Nashville, Tennessee-based filmmaker who advances the conspiracy theory that the six Apollo Moon landings between 1969 and 1972 were hoaxes. He has filmed two documentaries on the subject: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon and Astronauts Gone Wild.-Dealings...
Further reading
- Bennett, Mary; Percy, David, "Dark Moon: Apollo and the Whistle-Blowers", 2001. ISBN 978-0932813909 Cf. especially p.124.