>>515063192 (OP)
>Why did we do it
ANSWER: The Soviet Union was appearing to be advancing technologically faster than The West, and thus the fear of Communism's spread was quite high. So the USA was trying to 'catch up' in the space race..and JFK thought it would be necessary for the USA to do what the Societs obviously were researching, but had not yet accomplished...putting a man on The Moon. JFK made the promise that the US would ot only do it, but that the USA was going to show the world that reckless leaps (the soviet way of orbiting a man was to find one, lose him, and then just find another one until you got it right) was not the way to go, but through careful scientific achievment of goals.
It did not take long for US researchers to realize that safely landing and returning a man from The Moon was impossible, and so JFK attemped to save face by proposing, at the UN, a joint venture between the US & USSR...and the Soviets giggled "no thanks..we look forward to watching the US show us how it's done" BECAUSE THEY KNEW THE US HAD JUST FIGURED OUT WHAT THE SOVIETS ALREADY FIGURED OUT...IT CAN'T BE DONE DUE TO PHYSICS.
Thus...the only way for America to save face, was to turn to Hollywood and fake it. Not only did it work (the public bought it), but it worked far better than they expected...and POOF!...the endless revenue stream and geopolitical manipulation campaign was born. Now countries are failing left and right trying to emulate NASA "successes", and they are simply going to do it again with kickass CGI this time. Like CGI so fucking good, it's damn impossible to discern reality from cgi fakery.....and the masses will be fooled once again.
It's well funded bullshit. But physics doesn't give a shit about how well funded a lie is.