I don't believe the moon landing was a hoax. Aside from all the evidence proving that man really did land on the moon is this one little common sense practicality aspect that is lost on the conspiracy theorists: It would actually have been easier to land men on the moon than to successfully fake landing them on the moon. Faking the moon landing with so many people involved and keeping it quiet would be a much more daunting feat than actually landing people on the moon.
The Mark: NASA could have faked the manned part of the mission. In other words, send a spacecraft to orbit the moon a few times and come back. It would be difficult for Russia to really know if these were manned or not, especially once in the vicinity of the moon. So Russia knows that a spacecraft was sent to the moon but wouldn't be in a position to disprove if there was actually someone there or if they had landed.
Why would NASA go through the trouble of sending a space craft all the way to the moon to orbit it to fake a moon landing? If they would go so far then why wouldn't they just put the men on the moon and be done with it? I mean, you make it sound like NASA had the obsessive psychotic goal of duping everyone just for the satisfaction of it, by not putting men on the moon while convincing everyone that they did - even at the cost of going through all the work and expense of sending actual spacecraft to the actual moon, which in itself proves that they were well within the capability of putting men on the moon in the first place! Is that reasonable? By way of illustration, it's like saying a man faked getting shot in his bullet proof vest by boring a hole in his vest, shooting a round in a barrel of water, retrieving the slug and positioning it into the hole he bored in his bullet proof vest - when it would have been a lot easier to just shoot the vest! Come on!!!