"We landed on the moon!?! WE LANDED ON THE MOON!!!" -Jim Carey in
Dumb and Dumber. (Sorry, I couldn't resist not quoting that.)
Look. We did land on the moon. It was the greatest achievement of Mankind! It demonstrates how far we've come technologically, and is just the tip of the iceberg of mankind's potential!
There are a few issues I need to address. Some of these are also addressed in the link posted by Cynthetiq.
First of all, there was no visible flame from the Lunar Lander: Of Course Not! The flame we see in rockets leaving the ground is a result of the atmosphere around the exhaust. If you ever watch the complete takeoff of a rocket, you will see that as soon as the atmosphere is thin enough, the flame disappears.
Second, no blast craters on the moon: The Lunar Lander did not blast the moon's surface with enough propellant to leave a crater.
Third, to address mike10270's "Apollo VIII (I think - the one that orbited the Moon) was fake" statement: If you read the mission log reports, then you will know that the whole reason for that mission was to orbit the moon while testing everything. They tested every little peace they could of both the spacecraft and the Lunar Lander to make sure it all worked in space before actually sending it down to the moon. That way they wouldn't be sending their astronauts to die on the moon due to something not working.
Fourth, the radiation: I believe that Toag and Cynthetiq covered this well enough.
Fifth: The reason the Russians never landed on the moon: We beat them, so that part of the program lost the funding from the Russian Government. They switched gears from moon landing to space stations.
Fun Fact: Russia’s original timeline would have had them land on the moon two days before we landed. That timeline was modified after the rocket they were going to use to launch their capsule blew up on the launch pad during it’s first test.
