>>11899261>If we "knew" before going to the moon, why not just expose the fake shit?It could have been a mutual bluff and neither side knew how truthful the other was being. We all know the rockets were real, so there had to be a lot of genuine R&D being done, but it would be a classic Cold War move to make half a space program and fake the hardest parts to trick the other side into spending way too much on theirs while not letting them win.
Although IMO in that scenario you might as well go all the way and actually do the landing for real (Saturn Vs aren't exactly cheap, even with significantly smaller payloads), there's still "realistic" situations where they wouldn't be able to accurately call each other out.
