"Basically Admitted That Humans Have Never Been to the Moon" — Artemis 2 Mission Revives Moon Conspiracy

There are a lot of arguments that the moon landing was staged by the United States government. The prevailing theory is that the landing was orchestrated by legendary film director Stanley Kubrick. And if you go deep enough down the rabbit hole, you may be convinced that the astronauts tasked with the mission never actually set foot on the rocky mass just outside of Earth's orbit.

Now, a video of the Artemis II crew has only given some folks further ammunition to believe the July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 moon landing mission was a hoax.

NASA astronaut and U.S. Navy Captain Commander Gregory Reid Wiseman said in an address about the mission: "This is the first time we're going to send humans to the moon and, at the same time, have humans in low Earth orbit."

The first portion of that statement is all people needed to hear to have them convinced that this was, as one X user puts it, a "Freudian slip." In the same social media post, they wrote that this messaging pretty much confirms that Wiseman was admitting human beings have never been to the moon.

There were others who saw the statement as an inadvertent admission: "Gregory Reid Wiseman, NASA astronaut and Captain in the U.S. Navy basically admitted that humans have never been to the moon."

Appended to this message was a snippet of an interview between an 8-year-old girl and Buzz Aldrin.

The child asks Buzz in the clip why humanity hasn't gone back to the moon since right before the 1970s. And Aldrin's response didn't seem to inspire confidence that the moon landing actually happened, with many believing that his reply was a demonstration in double speak and linguistic subterfuge.

There have been a slew of folks, including media outlets like the Daily Mail, who highlighted how many moon-landing-deniers willfully ignored the latter portion of Wiseman's comments. According to the U.K.-based outlet, Wiseman's remarks were part of a larger conversation the astronaut and naval captain had regarding the specific Artemis II crew.

"We have been to the moon in Apollo," Wiseman said around 20 minutes prior to making the statement that was disseminated across social media.

He also was quoted as saying: "So when we go to the training and talk about us looking at the moon and all the things we can bring in, in the back of my mind and in the back of yours, we have been there. We orbited the moon, we have seen these things before, and what does Artemis II bring that is new to us, then, based as we fly around the moon," he said.

In the same discussion, he purportedly talks about the other Apollo missions. And his "first time we're going to send humans to the moon" comment referred to the entirety of the mission with this particular crew.

The group includes Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen, who are looking to travel 250,000 miles away from Earth, breaking Apollo 13's record from 1970.

Many people believe the original Apollo 11 moon landing mission was staged as a means of fomenting a sense of national pride against Russia in the space race. Folks have pointed to the exasperated and almost disappointed expressions of astronauts after the landing as proof it wasn't legitimate.

Others noted that the low-light Zeiss lenses developed for NASA were used by Kubrick on his film Barry Lyndon, leading folks to believe the venerated director agreed to help stage the landing for access to the remarkable tech that allowed him to film the movie entirely with natural light.

And then some have scrutinized moon landing footage and pointed out visual anomalies that they say prove the landing wasn't genuine.