Rabbis against the Moon Landing

This post came out of a photo at that’s too much woo for this Jew

MEMRI is, depending on who you ask, "publishes and distributes free English-language translations of Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashto, and Turkish media reports" or "aims to portray the Arab and Muslim world in a negative light through the production and dissemination of incomplete or inaccurate translations and by selectively translating views of extremists while deemphasizing or ignoring mainstream opinions" (both quotes from Wikipedia) 

But that's not what this post is about.  I decided to look for rabbis who deny the moon landing . So I did some searching. I came across a blog from 2012 (referring to an earlier one from 2009) that said "the Satmar Rebbe believed the moon landing must have been faked". So I looked for sources, and there, in the comments, was someone who asked for sources. Oops, that was me.

The blogger replied with two links. One is to a site hashkafah.com which was active at the time but has since gone offline, I wish there were archives somewhere, I may have been involved in the discussion, there, too.   Another is to imamother.com, where an anonymous poster wrote in 2007 "'Science' tells us that men have walked on the moon. The Torah tells us that above the earth is the Yesod of Aish and that anything that passes through it would burn up." and someone responded (at the bottom of page four) "Is the one about not having landed on the moon from the Satmar Rebbe? As far as I know, he's the only one to have said that."

Yesod means element and aish means fire, she's referring to the classical Four Elements and probably to Hilchot Yesodei Hatorah 3:10 or some later source based on it, which puts the "sphere of fire" below "the sphere of the Moon"  Also the thread at Imamother goes on for quite a while. mostly about other aspects of science, not the moon landing.  Also it was later discovered that two of the posters, TammyTammy and Sue DaNym were the same person, arguing with herself.  Because reasons?

But I haven't found a source for that claim or its attribution to the Satmarer or anyone else.

Josh, the blogger at Parshablog, referred to a different blog, about a different rabbi (Yaakov Kamenetzky) watching the Moon landing, and a commenter there wrote "Perhaps R’ Yaakov Kamenetzky Zt”l should have prayed to Hashem for extra guidance and sided with RaMbaM? Then he might have sensed that the "Chazon" - television broadcast, images, etc.,- was more than likely "faked" - part of Alma de Shikra" (the world of lies) and linked to a Moon landing conspiracy site that isn't working anymore (or at least not this second)

And there's this, from the Not the Godol Hador Archive (the blogger was later revealed to be Gideon Slifkin, brother of Nathan Slifkin, which is relevant because the blog entry begins by mentioning Nathan) "Reliable sources in Israel tell me that one of the kannaim, part of the group behind the Slifkin ban and intent on delegitimizing the Kamenetzky family (which is what the drive behind the Slifkin ban was actually all about), has been showing people a Foxtel documentary proving that astronauts never landed on the moon and it was all faked by NASA!"

I also once found and downloaded a copy of a "kuntres" (pamplet) about the Moon landing in Hebrew, but that was several computers ago.  I probably still have a copy on a backup, but don't know where.