The
moon hoax claims must be familiar to many. I just saw an episode of
The Planets (ep. 4), and it shows NASA re-creating a rather large portion of the moon. The blew up a part of a desert to simulate the craters of the moon. This would familiarize the astronauts to the environment. If some passer by would see this, it might create some confusion. My guess is it did, and the rumours were originally based on such sightings.
Btw the movie
For All Mankind is fantastic. It's about the first moon landings. The movie itself is of bad quality and cut from very old material... but it does have one argument not many movies can claim... the movie ends with the words "
...filmed on location". (Still makes me shiver.)