Why are they faking the moon landing in Diamonds Are Forever?

Question

There are quite a number of James Bond films that involve satellites and space travel in key ways—You Only Live Twice, Moonraker, and Goldeneye, for example (all showing space technology far in advance of what actually existed at the times they were released). However, the one Bond film that always confuses me in this regard is Diamonds Are Forever, which seems to present two different views of outer space technology that are totally at odds. On one hand, Blofeld has taken over Jimmy Dean's aerospace company and uses it to place a powerful laser satellite in orbit, which he is then able to use to attack sites on Earth. On the other hand, as Bond is escaping from the laboratory where the satellite is being built, he passes through a sound stage where they are actually faking a moon landing.

The film was released in 1971, at the acme of the Apollo program—a time when there was a lot of optimism about the future of space travel. It seems totally inconsistent to have the incredibly advanced satellite technology that drives the plot, while at the same time needing to stage fake visits to the moon. (The moon landings were, unlike Blofeld's space laser, something that really could be accomplished with 1960s–1970s tech, after all.) So I feel like I am missing some plot-related reason why they are faking the moon landing—something that should be eminently achievable with the technology shown in the film. Is there such a reason? Or did Saltzman, Broccoli, Hamilton, et al. just throw in the fake Apollo landing as a joke, without thinking whether it made sense in light of the rest of the plot?

Answer 1

Because it was knee-slappingly funny at the time. In 1971, there was already quite a lot of doubt being aired about the Moon landings, and it was included here as a throwaway gag. The fact that the supervillains were faking the Moon landing had little connection with the rest of the movie, but it kept the audience at the edge of their seats.

Stylistically, it was like the moment in Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) where Brian falls from a height toward certain death, only to be picked up in mid-air by aliens who resemble Kurt Vonnegut's Tralfamadorians, then is dropped on the land again after a brief space battle. All this action is gratuitous and disconnected from the plot, but it's knuckle-bitingly funny because of the cultural references to things that aren't even supposed to exist.

Answer 2

They aren’t faking a moon landing

Real Apollo astronauts trained on “mock-up” lunar surfaces that looked for all the world like film sets. Scroll down to:

April 22, 1969: Astronauts Buzz Aldrin (left) and Neil Armstrong participate in a simulation of deploying and using lunar tools, on the surface of the moon, while wearing their Extravehicular Mobility Units during a training exercise. In the background is a Lunar Module mock-up.

It’s perfectly sensible for an aerospace company to be training astronauts for moon walking.

Answer 3

Inexplicably, James Bond accidentally stumbles onto a movie set that consists of rocks, a lunar backdrop, and a vehicle that looks like NASA's Eagle.

Men in spacesuits move about slowly and clumsily, as if simulating low gravity. Bond's pursuers give chase, but 007 - stirred, but not shaken - climbs into the lunar lander and makes his escape.

The scene is never explained.

In non-fiction context, the scene has both been described as being satirical commentary on moon landing hoax conspiracy that James Bond inadvertently stumbled on NASA faking the moon landing, an in-universe event that could happen despite the general world of James Bond already having real space stations existing around the same time. The scene has also been described as being a training facility.

Ultimately, each viewer must decide the context of the unexplained scene for themselves.