Landing on the Moon

So did we land on the moon?

I think the answer is yes but there is a big but to this.

Imagine you have to succeed no matter what. after all its the middle of the Cold War Russia has become the first country to send a man into space. USA is starting to lose the space race. 

 NASA will do anything to make sure the USA becomes the first country to land on the moon.

What I believe is that NASA did land on the moon, with a studio set as back up. So as Neil Armstrong stepped on to the Lunar surface to utter the most famous words in history "One small step for man one giant leap for mankind", there was a stunt double (for want of a better word) was doing the same thing on a studio set maybe at the same time or several days before. 

 Why would NASA do this well its not unusual to rehearse any live event these days with stand ins to get camera angles correct and to work out security issues. So why wouldn't NASA do this way back then. I mean this has got to be the most important event on the entire planet, you are not going to muck this up are you. 

Now if NASA have a prerecorded studio version, they can use this to test transmission times to their various tracking stations around the world. 

Could you imagine if the video transmission failed on the lunar module, or due to unforeseen circumstances the astronauts where unable to land on the moon NASA would be humiliated.  You would need some kind of backup. 

 Plus at one point there was a 2 minute gap in transmission, was this NASA switching over to the prerecorded sequence, or switching from prerecorded to live.