Let's (not) go to the moon?
kelloggs2066 mentioned strange cults and odd beliefs and the Moon Landing Hoax Conspiracy came up. While the items pointed to by those pushing the hoax can be explained, that may not be the best way of countering the nonsense. While responses to the accusation are needed, lest it be said that "you haven't accounted for x" there is another way to counter it. That's to see what it would take to actually pull off a Moon Landing Hoax Conspiracy.
This method of debunking is not original, and chances are someone else explained it better, too.
First, we'll need a space program. Can't go to the moon without going into space. And those satellites are visible in the night sky, and they weren't there before the late 1950s. So you need to get to Earth orbit, at least, or it won't look like you even got into space.
Okkay, now the space program has to look like it's going to the moon. Big rockets have to be built. People won't believe it if you don't have a launch to show them. And a lander must be built - or else how will you say you landed on the moon? All this stuff has to be convincing or the people who design and build the machinery (and they aren't dumb - they are rocket scientists, or at least rocket engineers, after all) won't be convinced - and good luck trying to guarantee everyone's silence if you don't.
Some astronauts must be trained, or you'll look foolish. So now you have a space program, with astronauts, training for them, rockets that are big enough to be believed, and all this has to be paid for. It won't be cheap.
The astronauts have to be convincing - and they have to be seen getting into the spaceship. And they can't be seen getting back out before launch. This could be faked, but there is the matter of communications. You won't be the only one listening to the radio. There'll be a few radio hobbyists and hams listening, but the big concern is other governments who will be listening. This can be scripted and a tape recorder or such used, but it has to work. If it glitches, it's a giveaway that things are being faked.
The rocket and ship has to leave Earth orbit. Hey, it's big and people can see the thing. Amateur astronomers and those other governments will have telescopes aimed your ship. It has to go to the moon - those governments have folks who can compute trajectories. Simply going dark isn't option - those governments have radar, too. And will be listening to the radio and tracking by where the antenna is pointed and listening to the increasing delay in responses since radio waves aren't instant.
Now the ship has reached the moon - at least lunar orbit. Communication has to take place, still. A landing has to at least sound, and ideally look, like it came from the moon. Transmitting from orbit isn't enough - Doppler shifts will give you away. At the very least, a transmitter (and either a tape player or receiver) must be landed on the moon. You might was well add a camera for all the effort.
When the landing is finished, you need to act as if the lander launched and then docked with the main ship (if it isn't a lander in its own right - but that takes more weight and fuel and expense). Then the ship has to come back and again (still) the radio transmissions will be tracked - and not just by you.
The ship has to land (or splash down) and be recovered. And you need to show astronauts emerging from the craft. It'll be mighty suspicious if they don't show up.
Even if you do manage to fake all this, you've spent an enormous sum on sending something to the moon and back, and are counting on many, many people to be silent about any fakery. The astronauts have to be quiet about spending time on Earth instead of travelling in space. The folks who sneaked them out of the ship before launch and into it after landing have to be quiet. The actors faking it on a recording or a delay have to stay quiet. Lower gravity has to be faked on the set. An airless world has to be faked on the set. The people running the studio and switching the radio and TV feeds around so they look right have to be quiet.
All in all, it's easier to land a couple people on the moon for real. You don't need to buy silence (with money or threats). You get real samples of the moon (fakes can't be too much like anything on Earth or you have to silence some geologists, too).
That's bad enough. Now, what if you're not a secretive closed society country but instead a country that thrives on a rather unencumbered flow of information. A country where the launch, the landing, and everything in between is constantly reported as live as it can be? And of those other countries, at least one would simply delight in exposing a fraud and would use any aspect of secrecy or even appearance of fraud to paint a damning picture.
With all that effort and publicity, you might as well do it for real.