01.31
A primary reason for the race to the Moon was the Cold War. The Soviets, with their own competing Moon program and a formidable scientific community able to analyze NASA data, could be expected to have cried foul if the USA tried to fake a Moon landing, p. 173 especially as their program had failed. Successfully pointing out a hoax would have been a major propaganda coup.
Bart Sibrel responded, “the Soviets did not have the capability to track deep spacecraft until late in 1972, immediately after which, the last three Apollo missions were abruptly canceled.”
However, Soviet unmanned spacecraft had been landing on the Moon since 1959, and in 1962, “deep space tracking facilities were introduced at IP-15 in Ussuriisk and IP-16 in Evpatoria (Crimean Peninsula), while Saturn communication stations were added to IP-3, 4 and 14″, the latter having a 100 million km range.
However, Apollo 18 and 19 were canceled on September 2, 1970 due to budget cuts by the US Congress. Apollo 20 had already been canceled on January 4, 1970.