Reddit Poster Asks Why Apollo 11 Crew Looked Grim, and Where the Tapes Went

THE INTERNET — A Reddit user posting to r/HighStrangeness has put forward a theory that the Apollo 11 astronauts returned from the Moon carrying a secret, citing their conduct at a press conference as the first clue.

According to the post, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin appeared shaken and fixed their eyes on the table at their first public appearance after quarantine in 1969. The author reads this as fear, perhaps of a threat to their families, rather than the exultation one might expect from the achievement. The author also states that Armstrong withdrew from public interviews for four decades.

The post then lists further curiosities. It claims that instruments recorded the Moon ringing like a hollow bell for more than three hours, and that the United States and the Soviet Union both stopped going to the Moon in 1972 and did not return for 54 years. It adds that NASA admitted to erasing and reusing all 45 boxes of the original Apollo 11 recordings, supposedly to save a few hundred dollars on blank tape.

The author goes on to say that the moon-landing-hoax rumor was promoted deliberately, so that the public would not ask what was captured during a two-minute radio blackout. The post offers no evidence for this. It points readers to an unnamed article which, it says, describes what the astronauts encountered and why 147 corporations buried it to keep people working long hours and paying debts.

The post closes by asking readers what Armstrong and Aldrin might have seen. No answers were included in the material reviewed. Readers inclined toward plainer explanations may note that the post itself supplies none, and that a weary pair of men emerging from three weeks of quarantine might look solemn for reasons of their own.