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Derek Arnold, who teaches the rhetoric of conspiracy theories at Villanova, says some people thought it didn't really happen.
NASA realized it couldn't be done, but too much money had been spent, they said. Or the United States had to beat the Soviets in the space race. Or it was all faked to distract the public from the war in Vietnam.
One of the best-known theories is that NASA hired filmmaker Stanley Kubrick to stage the lunar landing.
"They built a special TV studio, or movie set, and he filmed the first moon landing there," Arnold said, or so it goes. But it's easily disproven. "You can find things that show that he was occupied in other places during that time."
Arnold says the lure of conspiracy theories has deep roots.
"Folks have a tendency to feel that they are separated from the inside stories, and so they find a feel a little bit lack of power, lack of control, and lack of trust in the government, especially right after Watergate, when some of these conspiracies really jumped out," he explained.
However, since NASA had thousands of workers and contractors involved in the Apollo 11 mission, Arnold says it's highly unlikely that the landing was faked.