No, no serious lunar scientists doubts this, instead they continue to research, and use the lunar rocks to find out more about the Moon. I'd go further not just harder to fake than to do the real thing, but flat out impossible with 1960s and 1970s technology.
Indeed I'd go further still myself, we probably couldn't do a fake now that was good enough to fool scientists back then, and surely not good enough to fool scientists now. Especially since we still get new scientific results about the Moon from re-examining the samples returned using tools that didn't exist back then.
For a present day attempt at a fake we could do movie style attempts at simulating zero gravity and lunar gravity - but look at how hard that has been to achieve convincingly in modern movies? To an expert, I don't think any modern multi million dollar movie set in zero g or lunar g is totally convincing.
E.g. Neil DeGrasse Tyson's tweets about Gravity, all the things that they got wrong, including
Sandra Bullock's hair that should be floating free in zero g. Neil deGrasse Tyson lists 'scientific inaccuracies' in Gravity
If they can't get that right, today, with millions of dollars, what chance faking a lunar landing so convincingly even with present day technology, as to fool the experts?
I think that would require billions of dollars, even today, and still with a risk of it all being blown away by one oversight.
But to fake the rocks would be flat out impossible because they are accurate down to sub optical level. Look at them in electron microscopes, still identifiable as lunar rocks, with the micrometeorite damage etc. How would you simulate that? Fire tens of thousands of fake micrometeorites at your samples at kilometers per second? Add gas inclusions with fake levels of isotopes to fool the scientists that they came from the Moon?
Results of investigations of gases from inclusions in lunar glasses
And back then they didn't have any lunar meteorites, hadn't yet discovered them in Antarctica, and to this day don't have enough of them to simulate all the Apollo missions using lunar meteorites, and they would be recognizable as meteorites.
And you can see the astronauts in the videos pick up samples on the Moon, and then examine a sample back on Earth that is identical to that sample in shape and colour and that has the right properties for the location they picked it up from.
As for the lunar conspiracy theory "discrepancies" - they are so obviously not, that you just need to be someone who is keen on astronomy and who followed the original lunar landings, to see this. When the story first broke a decade or so ago, or whenever it was, I could just go through the alleged "discrepancies" and see the answer to them all, and I'm no expert, just a keen interest in space exploration and astronomy.
E.g. of course you don't see the stars in photographs that are saturated with light from the bright lunar surface, what do you expect?
Of course shadows aren't parallel on a non flat landscape, of course the flag would continue to move after it's been jolted by an astronaut, etc etc...
In short, the arguments they gave weren't remotely convicing to anyone who had lived through the Apollo landings and followed the astronomy news, from the get go.
We now also have photographs of the landing sites from satellites in orbit around the Moon, and you can see the astronauts tracks, showing where they walked on the Moon, which matches what was seen in the videos from the Moon.
Anyway can say a lot more, but related questions have been asked rather many times, here on quora, so I think rather than supply the same answers again, better to redirect you to the other questions:
Did Neil Armstrong really land on the moon?
Indeed I'd go further still myself, we probably couldn't do a fake now that was good enough to fool scientists back then, and surely not good enough to fool scientists now. Especially since we still get new scientific results about the Moon from re-examining the samples returned using tools that didn't exist back then.
For a present day attempt at a fake we could do movie style attempts at simulating zero gravity and lunar gravity - but look at how hard that has been to achieve convincingly in modern movies? To an expert, I don't think any modern multi million dollar movie set in zero g or lunar g is totally convincing.
E.g. Neil DeGrasse Tyson's tweets about Gravity, all the things that they got wrong, including
If they can't get that right, today, with millions of dollars, what chance faking a lunar landing so convincingly even with present day technology, as to fool the experts?
I think that would require billions of dollars, even today, and still with a risk of it all being blown away by one oversight.
But to fake the rocks would be flat out impossible because they are accurate down to sub optical level. Look at them in electron microscopes, still identifiable as lunar rocks, with the micrometeorite damage etc. How would you simulate that? Fire tens of thousands of fake micrometeorites at your samples at kilometers per second? Add gas inclusions with fake levels of isotopes to fool the scientists that they came from the Moon?
Results of investigations of gases from inclusions in lunar glasses
And back then they didn't have any lunar meteorites, hadn't yet discovered them in Antarctica, and to this day don't have enough of them to simulate all the Apollo missions using lunar meteorites, and they would be recognizable as meteorites.
And you can see the astronauts in the videos pick up samples on the Moon, and then examine a sample back on Earth that is identical to that sample in shape and colour and that has the right properties for the location they picked it up from.
As for the lunar conspiracy theory "discrepancies" - they are so obviously not, that you just need to be someone who is keen on astronomy and who followed the original lunar landings, to see this. When the story first broke a decade or so ago, or whenever it was, I could just go through the alleged "discrepancies" and see the answer to them all, and I'm no expert, just a keen interest in space exploration and astronomy.
E.g. of course you don't see the stars in photographs that are saturated with light from the bright lunar surface, what do you expect?
Of course shadows aren't parallel on a non flat landscape, of course the flag would continue to move after it's been jolted by an astronaut, etc etc...
In short, the arguments they gave weren't remotely convicing to anyone who had lived through the Apollo landings and followed the astronomy news, from the get go.
We now also have photographs of the landing sites from satellites in orbit around the Moon, and you can see the astronauts tracks, showing where they walked on the Moon, which matches what was seen in the videos from the Moon.
Anyway can say a lot more, but related questions have been asked rather many times, here on quora, so I think rather than supply the same answers again, better to redirect you to the other questions:
Did Neil Armstrong really land on the moon?
About the Author
Robert Walker
Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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