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Official community answer regarding the reality of the Apollo moon landings here:

How do we know the Apollo Moon landings are real?

Overall voting, on both our questions here in Meta on how to handle our steady trickle of questions regarding supposed evidence we never went to the Moon, seem to show that as a community we'd prefer to handle such questions by having one question and answer that properly addresses the whole thing, and then we could close all related questions as duplicates. Other opinions have been offered, but that seems to be the majority stance.

Those questions are the recent Does the community spend too much time on debunking conspiracy theories?, and the older Do we want to touch the “moon hoax”?

However, posting such a thing in a way that is acceptable to our community is a delicate business. Arguments that the matter is too broad for our format are legitimate. I come down on the side of the fence that the issue is important enough that it should stand as a question anyhow, for the sake of doing the best service possible both to our own community and the sadly large community of moon hoax believers, misguided though they may be. I guess that stance also covers all the other arguments about the unsavory nature of wading into this.

In recognition of the controversial and delicate nature of this, I'm going to post an initial draft of such a question, and make it a community wiki so we can work on it until we are satisfied. Then we can post it on SX.SE. Called2voyage suggested that approach, and I agree. He suggests doing the same thing with the answer to the question, and then when we have both question and answer, they can be posted together quickly.

Because frankly, the reason why this hasn't happened already is because we all know that conspiracy theory questions get downvoted out of existence around here usually within minutes. Feelings about it run high. Posting such a question for the sake of trying to handle it properly will almost certainly attract downvotes as the wider community who don't usually come to Meta weigh in on the matter. The comment thread is going to get long, and so on and so forth.

Quite possibly the only way to do this successfully is to make sure there is an answer to the question that will satisfy our members before they downvote it on general principle.

Ok, here goes...

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Resources for Answering:

Addressing the Possibility of Space Travel

Addressing Flat Earthers

Addressing Propulsion in a Vacuum

Addressing the Reality of Launching Things to Space

Addressing the Reality of Humans in Space

Addressing the Reality of the Moon Landing

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  • $\begingroup$ I don't know how many points we actually want to address in this answer, or even link to, but just in case I figured we'd gather some resources here. $\endgroup$
    – called2voyage Mod
    Commented Jun 22, 2018 at 19:47
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    $\begingroup$ I like that 3rd-party evidence one. ACT believers aren't going to care what we say anyway but that sort of thing should help with people who are honestly confused. Anything from NASA or the US government is immediately dismissed as part of the conspiracy. When I wrote my meta question I was thinking in terms of something like that, didn't know it had already been summarized. $\endgroup$
    – Organic Marble
    Commented Jun 24, 2018 at 13:59
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Answer to a slightly different question:

This stack exchange is predicated on the notion that the heliocentric globe model of the solar system is correct, and in general the reports of space agencies, combined with the reports of professional and amateur observers can be believed.

Without making any judgement about any other models, discussion of them is off topic here, we would suggest https://physics.stackexchange.com, https://worldbuilding.stackechange.com

Without making any judgment on the likelyhood of world powers misleading the populace, discussions about hoaxes and conspiracies are off topic here, we would suggest https://skeptics.stackexchange.com

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    $\begingroup$ I'd like to add that discussion of novel propulsion methods is off topic, but unfortunately it isn't $\endgroup$
    – user20636
    Commented Jun 27, 2018 at 10:04
  • $\begingroup$ I like this answer very much, because it actually addresses the real question. I would prefix it with something as 'We believe moon landings are real, because there is evidence for it. This includes (but is not limited to): =short list (3 items) of major evidence= But you most likely know about this, and the real question is why do we believe that evidence. Unfortunately, this question is off topic here, because this stack exchange is predicated...." $\endgroup$
    – Adam Trhon
    Commented Jun 29, 2018 at 6:40
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How do we know the Apollo Moon landings are real?

Since about 1976, conspiracy theories denying the Moon landing and claiming it was all faked have garnered a lot of attention and a large number of believers. As a website devoted to answering questions about space exploration, we receive questions about this idea regularly. We can expect that to continue, given the scale of the argument.

In order to spare the energy of this community by addressing this issue once and for all, can we summarize the numerous reasons why we know the six Apollo missions did indeed land on the Moon and return 18 astronauts to Earth?

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