In the early days of the space race, the Soviets scooped us by being the first to send a spacecraft to the far side of the moon where it took a grainy picture and radioed it back to earth. It was our first look at the moon's far side and it caused a sensation. The picture was indeed awful by modern NASA standards, but it showed major features like maria, and even a few of the major craters.

A few days later, the Tampa Tribune ran a full page "expose" of the Soviet mission, conclusively proving it was a fraud, a complete fake. It was written by a local minister. By using the Soviet image, and a few pencil sketches, he showed that the moon picture was actually an out-of-focus photograph of a hard-hat deep sea diver. The Russians had doctored it to make it look like a photograph taken from orbit.

I remember this so distinctly because it occurred to me at the time that there was no way the Russians could get away with this. It was only a matter of time before one of our own space probes went there and took its own pictures, exposing the fraud, and showing the Soviets as total liars and cheats. What was the point? What could they expect to gain? It made no sense.