Well, in that case then, here goes...
Both NASA and the Soviet Union discovered an additional, far more dangerous Van Allen belt say, 60,000 miles away from earth, in the mid-60's. Since it's so far out, satellites, sounding rockets etc. never reach it, and don't have to worry about it, so it can be kept secret. The Apollo program under Eisenhower was unaware of its existence, the same was true at the time of Kennedy's speech. The Apollo hardware was, of course, perfectly capable of going to the moon, if it weren't for said secret radiation belt, they would have. Grumman etc. wouldn't have been in on it, because they
did build hardware capable of doing the job. When the belt was discovered, Johnson was so enamored in the idea of man leaving earth he decided to have it hoaxed.
So, since there was no way to fool all the tracking of the spacecraft, once the hardware was delivered, NASA (through the CIA and Air Force) secretly rigged it for autonomous operation. (Which
is possible; the Soviet Lunar plans called for that to be a requirement, although based on a beacon for the lander soft-landed on the moon by a rover. And after all, everybody knows soviet electronics are junk, and American ones are far superior...
) The Saturn V was launched without any crew aboard, and was sent to the moon exactly as if it were manned. It autonomously entered orbit, landed, took off, etc. The footage of docking, decent, ascent etc was filmed on location by said spacecraft! The footage of the astronauts in the spacecraft was actually filmed in zero gravity. A classified rocket designed to be launched from the ocean, (of which there actually were a series of successful ones; the Sea Dragon was a much larger proposal), perhaps about the size/performance of the Soviet R-7, was launched from the extreme North Pacific, with a spacecraft somewhat larger then a CSM and an interior mockup of the CSM inside, designed for filming footage on the way to the moon, was launched on a suborbital, nearly orbital trajectory south across the vast pacific, over Antarctica, and into the Atlantic (where it was recovered); I suppose it''s possible that it's most of an orbit was entirely on the day side of earth. The Soviets wrote it off as missile tests. The footage supposedly from the CSM on the way to/from the moon was actually filmed ahead of time on these flights!
The theory runs into problems here. The supposedly returning CSM was actually launched on a brief suborbital flight across the pacific by said rocket above, with the astronauts aboard. The problem is what happens to the one launched toward the moon. Plus we wind up with the wrong number of CM's. Perhaps the real one was used for this, and a replica was sent toward the moon, and it didn't have a heat shield and burned up on reentry and impacted the Pacific.
So NASA films the Apollo 8 hoax under Johnson. The transmissions from the spacecraft were actually re-transmitted from transmission just prior transmitted to the spacecraft - after all, there's no way to monitor transmissions
outbound. Nixon takes office, learns of the hoax, and is furious, but decided to go ahead and hoax just to Apollo 11. Meanwhile the Soviets call him up, and blackmail the US for keeping quit, (after all, the US can prove the existence of the Soviet program
they were going to fake), by getting the US to withdraw from Vietnam and then allowed the north to win in a few years, (and occasionally more since then).
NASA wanted to stop while they were ahead (The Apollo 11 EVA was filmed in a massive vacuum chamber built for that purpose, ahead of time, and were in black and white and poor quality in an attempt to hide it), but Congress/somebody insisted they go on. So for 12' they supposedly "burn out the TV camera" so they don't have to fake the footage. With continued instantce to continue, NASA decides to fake a "failure" of 13 (with a spacecraft rigged, and that in reality was working exactly as designed the entire time - no real failure), in the hope it would get the Apollo program cancelled, and without supposedly having a dead crew on an endless orbit. But they still insisted they go on, so, using the break provided by the investigation provided, they prepared to fake 14-17 in a set of vacuum chambers. Knowing it wouldn't be broadcast live since the public had lost interest, they faked it over a period of several years, with much of the "continuous" shots containing a hidden cut. (They had maybe 3 vacuum chambers, and would modify the terrain in each, rotating through them in turn.)
With the Soviet Union fell, the new Russia decided to continue to blackmail the US - after all, why didn't the US do something in Ukraine?
The only other countries to know are the ones that have sent spacecraft well past earth orbit (which are secretly hardened against the radiation there) are European and either approve of the hoax, or were blackmailed into keeping quiet by the threat being kicked out of NATO, while the only other country was Japan, which was blackmailed by the threat of the US pulling its military out of Japan.
THE ABOVE IS ENTIRELY FICTION. NONE OF IT IS TRUE.
