It's ridiculous to think the moon landing was faked. It's fair to assume it was to distract people from the Vietnam War and make us look better than the Russians, but the motive to succeed is hardly evidence that anybody faked anything. I could have motive to kill my boss, but if he dies in Chicago while I'm in Tucson no one in their right mind is going to assume I did it.
Yes, it took a hell of a lot of money. It as worth it. We advanced our nation technologically by an unbelievable amount, and outside of WW2 I can't think of any endeavor this country has taken that has pushed us further. The money went somewhere, and it wasn't towards simply paying people off. We have the technology to show for that investment.
And it was a huge risk, too. That statistic may very well be fair, though I doubt it, but there were much bigger risks involved with going to the moon than the actual landing part. The biggest risk is that if the sun just happened to decide it wanted to throw out one of its random flares the radiation would have killed the crew. Not just while they were on the moon, either, but also anytime after leaving the magnetosphere. For the entire trip, those astronaut's lives were in the hands (as it were) of the sun.
To say we faked it based of these factors is silly. Even to base it off of "lost" data is weak. Believe me, the government "loses" things all of the time. They "lost" information that told us the 9/11 attacks were imminent just a handful of years ago, and you expect them to be able to keep every piece of data from four decades just lying around where anybody can look at them? The government could have easily locked information like that up as top secret so the Russians couldn't steal it from us, for all anybody knows.
There is no evidence, never was any evidence, and surely never will be any evidence that the moon landing was faked. We didn't need to fake it, because we were and still are able to make the trip. It's just too damned expensive to be worth it anymore.
You do not have the right to never be offended.
