The personality of the Apollo astronauts is often described by conspiracy rhetoric as introverted, evasive and inexplicably reserved. Deniers interpret this alleged isolation as the symptom of an unspeakable psychological stress, the guilt of men forced to hide from the public so as not to give away the secret of a colossal hoax. To support this thesis, they make the blunder of comparing the lunar explorers with today's astronauts, outgoing public figures, very active on social media and always ready to promote their own missions. This comparison makes no sense historically or sociologically. The difference between the two generations is enormous: contemporary astronauts come largely from academia and scientific research, and they are specialists also trained in communication and public relations. The Apollo men, on the contrary, belonged to an era dominated by the Cold War and by the vital need to test extremely dangerous experimental machines that their nation, to which they had sworn unconditional loyalty, desperately needed. NASA was not looking for communicators, but for test pilots, individuals forged by extremely harsh military training, used to making decisions in fractions of a second, often one step away from death. Recruited mainly from the Navy and the Air Force, they were high-ranking officers, such as captains and colonels used to rigor, secrecy and iron discipline. In that environment discretion was an obligation, duty to the mission and the nation was worth more than life itself and seeking the media spotlight was seen as a weakness, not as a virtue. This mentality, the famous "Right Stuff" (the right stuff), made most of these men naturally shy, pragmatic and detached from the media circus, a character trait that inevitably extended to their families as well and that has now been completely lost ...

The twelve Moonwalkers, to date the only people who have ever walked on the Moon. Top, from left: Neil Armstrong (CMD - A11), Buzz Aldrin (LMP - A11), Charles Pete Conrad (CMD - A12), Alan Bean (LMP - A12), Alan Shepard (CMD - A14), Edgar Mitchell (LMP - A14). Bottom, from left: David Scott (CMD - Apollo 15), James Irwin (LMP - A15), John Young (CMD - A16), Charlie Duke (LMP - A16), Eugene Cernan (CMD - A17) and Harrison Schmitt (LMP - Geologist - A17). Photo courtesy https://apollo11space.com

A further, grotesque demonstration of how conspiracy theorists manipulate this proverbial military composure, taking single moments out of their natural context, is the famous controversy over the expressions of the Apollo 11 astronauts right after their return. Deniers love to obsessively show a specific photograph of Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins inside the Mobile Quarantine Facility (the isolation unit aboard the aircraft carrier USS Hornet), as they look out through the glass window. The three look serious, motionless, with tense and inscrutable eyes. According to the conspiracy narrative, those faces are the unmistakable mask of guilt, the terrified, unspeakable expression of three men worn down by having just pulled off, before the eyes of the world, the greatest fraud in human history ...

But is it really so?

This interpretation is not only psychologically childish, but intellectually disgusting and dishonest! What deniers systematically fail to say and show on their websites or in their books is exactly what was happening at that very second: the astronauts, confined in a claustrophobic container after a translunar journey in which they had risked their lives countless times, were listening to the formal welcome speech of the President of the United States, Richard Nixon.

As career military officers and professionals of absolute rigor (or a civilian with a military background, in Armstrong's case), they were simply keeping an appropriate, respectful and military bearing before their Commander in Chief, who was speaking live to the whole world. The definitive proof of conspiracy bad faith lies in the frames and photographs taken literally a few moments later: as soon as the President finished his official address, switching to a more informal, conversational tone to put at ease these men who had just faced an immense challenge in deep space. At his jokes, the three astronauts burst out laughing, openly joking with Nixon and showing broad, genuine and relaxed smiles ...

Deliberately hiding these images, which easily reconstruct the context, in order to focus on a single moment of dutiful institutional seriousness is yet another demonstration that conspiracism never seeks the truth, but merely assembles scraps of reality to tailor a lie and feed sensationalism, useful only to create the disinformation needed to sell (sadly, in the truly lucrative sense of the word) their books and their DVDs to an uninformed public.

Apollo 11 was a true elite group in which Neil Armstrong was a formal exception, being the only civilian pilot in the lunar program at the moment of his historic first step. However, his background did not make him any less rigorous: he was an aeronautical engineer and a formidable NASA test pilot, with hundreds of flights behind him in extreme and deadly experimental aircraft such as the X-15 rocket plane. The choice of having him be the first to step onto the Moon was also a masterpiece of political diplomacy: at a time of extremely high global tension, sending a civilian conveyed a message of peace to all mankind, softening the image of a purely military conquest. Armstrong was by nature a deeply reflective man of few and always concise words, which conspiracy theorists have tried in bad faith time and again to pass off as the remorse of a liar. On the contrary, his post-Apollo life was the epitome of dignity and integrity! After becoming the first man to set foot on another world, Neil Armstrong could have aspired to any prestigious position in politics, industry or the leadership of anything he wanted. Instead, he refused countless million-dollar commercial offers that could have turned him into a sideshow attraction, choosing instead to devote many years to teaching aerospace engineering to students at the University of Cincinnati, withdrawing from public life with his family to finally live his own life in peace, after being harassed for so many years by the clamor and stress of the Apollo program. For years, however, he continued to serve his country, taking part in commemorative events dedicated to Apollo 11, to the epic of the space race, in a great many scientific and technological seminars as a speaker, as well as on crucial government commissions of inquiry, such as the one on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, of which he was vice chairman. His legendary reserve and his refusal to commercialize his own image are perfectly summed up in a few anecdotes, as curious as they are revealing of his unusual personality: for years, in fact, he had stopped signing autographs, especially when he realized that they were being resold on the memorabilia market for astronomical sums, enriching a whole industry of people who very often profited from celebrities and had nothing whatsoever to do with the world of science and education. These were causes that had proved very dear to Armstrong. The most serious episode, however, in which he fell victim to yet another attempt to profit from his image, took place in 2005 at the hands of an unlikely culprit: his trusted barber. The barber, in fact, secretly collected Armstrong's cut hair and sold it to a collector for a full $3,000. When he learned of it, the former astronaut did not retreat into silence, but acted with absolute, cutting firmness, threatening a serious lawsuit unless the barber donated the entire proceeds to a charity of his choosing. The barber was forced to give in and the money was donated to research at the University of Cincinnati, showing that Armstrong was a man of unshakable ethical principles and certainly not the puppet terrified of the truth that lunar conspiracy theorists have always basely claimed ...

Another emblematic case, meanly exploited by conspiracy theorists, concerns Buzz Aldrin. After returning from the historic Apollo 11 mission, the second man to walk on the Moon slid into a deep, dark spiral of clinical depression and alcoholism. Deniers have pounced on this personal fragility like vultures, portraying it as irrefutable proof of the crushing guilt of having to lie to the whole world. This reading is not only historically false, but cruelly ignores the clinical and biographical reality of the astronaut. Aldrin had inherited a marked family predisposition to depression (his mother had tragically taken her own life about a year before the launch of Apollo 11, when her son was already in the spotlight) and, back on Earth, he suddenly found himself without a purpose. After devoting every ounce of physical and mental energy, with absolute military rigor, to reaching the most ambitious goal in human history, the return to everyday life turned out to be an unbearable void. Added to this was the crushing weight of a world tour and of constant global fame, suffocating and unwanted. It was not a liar's remorse that wore him down, but the dizzying melancholy of someone who has touched the absolute peak of human experience and realizes that nothing he does afterward will ever match it. Aldrin, showing rare courage, faced his demons in public, writing about them in his books, defeating them and becoming a clear-minded, tireless advocate of space exploration, especially to Mars. And that his spirit had never bowed to compromise he proved spectacularly in September 2002, at the age of 72. The infamous conspiracy documentary maker Bart Sibrel ambushed him outside a Beverly Hills hotel; Sibrel aggressively blocked his way, shoved a Bible in his face demanding that he swear he had been to the Moon, and then insulted him, shouting in his face that he was "a coward, a liar and a thief". Aldrin's reaction was not the frightened flight of an exposed fraud, but a formidable, surgical right hook that landed squarely on the provocateur's jaw. The Los Angeles authorities, after examining the footage of the psychological and physical aggression suffered by the elderly astronaut, declined to press charges against Aldrin. That punch was not just an act of self-defense, but the visceral, proud and unmistakable response of a pioneer who will not stand by while the mission for which he risked his life, and for which he saw his comrades die, is mocked.

The idea that the remaining "Moonwalkers" vanished from circulation, hiding behind the desks of shadowy multinationals to escape questions, is another easily refuted falsehood. Although some struggled to readjust to everyday life, the vast majority of them went on to lead public, active and often closely science-outreach-related lives. Many regularly took part in gala events, international conferences and documentary shoots. A classic example is David Scott, commander of Apollo 15, who worked for a long time as a technical consultant for Hollywood, collaborating closely with actor and producer Tom Hanks on the famous film "Apollo 13" and on the monumental television miniseries "From the Earth to the Moon" ("From the Earth to the Moon"). The legendary John Young too, a veteran of Apollo 16 and commander of the first Space Shuttle flight, never left the scene, working without a break for over forty years as a senior manager and critical conscience for NASA flight safety. Alan Bean, the fourth man to walk on the Moon with Apollo 12, turned his experience into an incredible artistic career: he became a world-renowned painter, devoting his life to painting the space epic he had taken part in. In his canvases, Bean even mixed in tiny amounts of real lunar dust, recovered from his original mission patches and from the tools used during the mission on the lunar surface. And how could we not mention Russell Schweickart of Apollo 9, Dave Scott of Apollo 15, Charlie Duke ofApollo 16 and geologist Harrison Schmitt of Apollo 17, Fred Haise of Apollo 13 who still travel the world today giving packed lectures about their extraterrestrial experience. The same was done by the legendary Eugene Cernan of Apollo 10 and 17, Jim Lovell of Apollo 8 and 13, Frank Borman of Apollo 8, Dick Gordon of Apollo 12, Ken Mattingly of Apollo 16, James McDivitt of Apollo 9, Edgar Mitchell of Apollo 14, before passing away, sadly in recent times, from serious and inevitable age-related illnesses.

Alan Bean, after Apollo 12, became an internationally renowned painter. His paintings illustrate the epic of the Apollo program. Photo courtesy https://www.smithsonianmag.com	Alan Bean's paintings, some containing lunar dust collected from personal items taken to the Moon during the Apollo 12 mission, are on display in many museums. Photo courtesy https://www.rainews.it	After Apollo 16, Charlie Duke became a great popularizer of the space epic. He very often takes part in conferences dedicated to him, where he tells, with an enthusiasm shared by the audience, about the extraordinary days he spent on the Moon during the Apollo 16 mission ... Photo courtesy https://thebatt.com
Charlie Duke is a very friendly and pleasant person. At every conference he spends many hours with the public that packs the halls to hear him. In this photo he shakes hands with Carolyn S. Shoemaker, astronomer and wife of the famous astrogeologist Gene Shoemaker. Photo courtesy https://www.usgs.gov	... and even in his eighties he was still very active. In this photo we see him flying aboard Zero Gravity's vomit comet. Photo courtesy Shanna Lockwood.	Charlie Duke at the 50th anniversary commemoration of Apollo 16, posing in front of the Command Module "Casper", the spacecraft that carried him to the Moon in April 1972.
Astronaut Jim Lovell, who flew on the Apollo 8 and Apollo 13 missions, was also very active in space science outreach. Here we see him with students visiting the Science Museum in London. Photo courtesy https://blog.sciencemuseum.org.uk	... and, as always, with MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) students. Photo courtesy https://news.mit.edu/	Apollo 12 astronaut Richard Gordon jokes with pupils of the "Richard Gordon" school in Kingston (Washington), named after him, during its dedication. Photo courtesy https://www.deseret.com
Another Apollo-era astronaut very active in science outreach on the risks of an asteroid impact on Earth is astronaut Rusty Schweickart. Photo courtesy https://asteroidday.org	Harrison Schmitt, the only geologist to have walked on the Moon, during the Apollo 17 mission, is still very active in planetary science outreach. Photo courtesy NASA.	Harrison Schmitt at a planetary science conference sponsored by NASA. Photo courtesy https://speaking.com/
Astronaut David Scott, commander of Apollo 15, is another top-tier speaker on aerospace science. Here we see him with students at Jacksonville University. Photo courtesy jaxdailyrecord.com	Astronauts Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan, the first and the last man to walk on the Moon. During their lifetimes they were very often invited as guests of honor at space science conventions. Photo courtesy https://www.houstonchronicle.com	Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the Moon during the Apollo 17 mission, was a great science popularizer. He took part in many space science conventions to talk about the future of space exploration.

As confirmation that these extraordinary men never barricaded themselves in silence, just browse the news of recent decades, watch film productions in IMAX format such as "Magnificent Desolation", to which many lunar explorers lent their voices, their advice and their firsthand accounts, or simply do a quick online search to discover their foundations and their cultural activities. For anyone who wants to explore in depth the psychology, the triumphs and the torments of these human beings after their epic homecoming, reading the book "Moondust" (published in Italy by Cairo Editore as "Polvere di Luna") by journalist Andrew Smith is an essential journey. Smith tracked down and personally interviewed all the "Moonwalkers" who were still alive at the time, without running into any barrier of secrecy, CIA or shadowy security services preventing him. He collected the confidences of real men, deeply marked by a literally cosmic experience, but an unquestionably authentic one! Their lives and their incredible testimonies, far from being the script of a petty government fraud, were the complex, deeply human and fascinating continuation of the greatest journey ever undertaken by mankind.