Neil deGrasse Tyson has weighed in one of the most enduring cabal theory of the retiring century : were the Apollo Moon missions fudge ?

talk in a section for theLate Show with Stephen Colbert , the astrophysicist was clearly confident that the Moon landings did , in fact , happen . While there ’s plenty of evidence to back this up , deGrasse Tyson points out that it would also be implausibly difficult to fake such result . In fact , it ’s arguably easy to attract off the factual exploit than   the fraud .

" Of course we landed on the Moon , ” he said . “ moot what it would actually take to hoax a landing place on the Moon . ”

“ By the way , we went to the Moon nine clip , so we ’d have to hoax not going to the Moon nine times . Two of them , they go around the Moon , come back , and did n’t land , but we ’d have to fake that , ” he added .

“ Do you realise what that would take ? It would be so gruelling to fake a Moon landing place , it ’s easier to just go . The law of purgative enable it   — get over it . ”

Astudy back in 2016looked at this question and found that deluxe conspiracies involving many citizenry — in this display case , the US government activity , scientists , and maybe Hollywood — would not last long without being uncovered , but becausecollaboratorswould belike gossip about it . Dr David Robert Grimes , a science communicator and physicist at the University of Oxford , UK , looked at whether large - scaleconspiracieswere actually feasible by creating equation that worked out the chance of a secret patch being either deliberately unveil by a whistle blower or unknowingly revealed by a blabber - mouth .

He found that it would call for at least 411,000 people to plan a simulated Moon landing place . That ’s a set of citizenry to keep a very juicy closed book . By his calculations , this figure of masses would result in the secret being spilled in just three long time and eight month . Since Apollo 11,the first crewed mission to land on the Moon , pass off over 50 years ago , it ’s safe to say the secret would have been blown by now .

Dr Grimes also found thatto keep a surreptitious game operating undetected for more than 10 years , few than 1,000 people must be involve . For a plot to last a century , it should involve few than 125 collaborators . So , if you ’re looking to unleash a covert supervillain - esque artifice on the Earth , it ’s best to keep your set of minions as tight as possible .