What better way to launder billions of dollars of taxpayer money? This money could be used for illegal programs like, for example, PRISM, the NSA's spying program. Everyone called people "conspiracy theorists" when they said "the government is watching and tracking you", but now you don't hear a peep from those naysayers because Edward Snowden revealed the evidence of a massive, historically unprecedented secret NSA spying program that monitored all cell phones, emails, and digital communication for not just American citizens but also around the world.

Where does the money come from to fund these super-secret illegal programs? Certainly they can't use the regular channels - it has to be completely secret. Therefore, a fake Mars landing could be a great way to launder this money. After all, CGI has gotten so realistic that humans can no longer tell the difference from a digitally rendered scene and reality.

Let's face it, NASA hasn't done much since the moon landing - and that is even dubious. Moreover, with Elon Musk beating NASA at their own game with Space X, NASA has some big shoes to fill. Their competition is stronger than ever before, and now they've been practically out of operation for a few years, which is a lifetime in technology.

What better way to one-up Elon Musk and Space X to make NASA seem relevant, than to fake a Mars landing before Musk does it? Of course, NASA has already said they've sent rovers to Mars before; but still, another big show will be a great way to make it seem like government-funded space programs are more relevant than private space programs.

Forget the obvious fact that conspiracies exist and that people who logically believe them are called crazy until the day an Edward Snowden reveals the truth to the world. No one will apologize for destroying people who either believed a conspiracy before it was proved, or who proved it but were dismissed or even criminalized.

As a result, another grand conspiracy which is so obvious, yet that is made out to be like those who deny it are nuts, will really do a number on anyone who dares to question the narrative. If the moon landing was really a hoax, NASA did such a good job at declaring the narrative to be factual despite the incredible evidence that it really could have a hoax, that a fake Mars landing would be a great new conspiracy to push the agenda of "believe whatever you see on TV". After all, this is a safe fake narrative to push. Who's really going to question it when everyone failed to alter the narrative that the moon landing was real?

When Obama de-funded NASA, many people who spent the best years of their lives with their noses in textbooks lost their jobs, their livelihoods, and everything they worked for - not to mention their life's work. Thanks to Trump bringing back the space program last year, there are a lot of people who will walk in blissful ignorance (Matrix pun) at getting their lives and careers back. There's no way they will accept that their whole lives and careers were spent on an elaborate hoax.

These are the perfect victims for a diabolical scheme to fake a Mars landing. I'm not saying it was fake, but it's a pretty good reason for many people working on the project to turn a blind eye to inconsistencies like that occasional screen flicker, or that formula that just doesn't add up to what they are looking at on the big screen.

Where is the first place to look to uncover a fraud? Follow the money. NASA is a money machine. It is a marvelous way to spend billions of taxpayer dollars for six-figure NASA jobs. Hey, more jobs isn't a bad thing, necessarily. Of course, if those jobs do nothing for society, then it is a problem for the economy in the long run. It's like convincing a family to upgrade their 1080p TV to a 4K TV even though from a normal viewing distance the human eye cannot see any difference whatsoever.

Everyone loves to give money for the latest and greatest. Whether or not we really went to the moon is irrelevant; the moon is old news. People want to go farther. Venus' climate is ridiculous, and it would be utterly uninhabitable for humans; so Mars is the next choice. After all, with all these science fiction movies showing humans inhabiting Mars and distant planets and galaxies, it has gotten many people seriously thinking about it.

Nevermind that the entire population of 7 billion people could fit inside the state of Rhode Island (the smallest state in the U.S.), or very comfortably inside the state of Virginia. People want to go to the stars! After all, it is human nature to expand, and explore strange new worlds. And with the myth of global warming, it's an easy point to sell to deluded politicians. Forget the fact that even if the Earth warmed 20 degrees it would be a trillion times more inhabitable than Mars.

Earth has an atmosphere. Mars does not. If we ever advance to the level of being able to terraform Mars (alter a planet to be inhabitable) to have an atmosphere and actually be inhabitable outside of space pods, it would take a quintillionth of that level of science to solve every possible weather crisis on Earth. Needless to say, millennia before our level of environmental science to achieve terraforming could allow us to live on Mars, Earth would already be basically a Garden of Eden, an ecological paradise.