You’ve seen the movie. Or maybe you just heard the song at a wedding and wondered why Frank Sinatra sounds so smooth singing about space travel years before Neil Armstrong ever stepped onto a lunar module. When people ask is fly me to the moon true, they're usually digging into two very different rabbit holes. One is the 2024 Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum flick that plays with the idea of a faked moon landing. The other is the actual history of how a 1954 cabaret tune became the unofficial anthem of the Apollo missions.
It’s a weird mix of Hollywood fiction and Cold War reality.
Honestly, the truth is way more interesting than the "fake moon landing" conspiracies. We’re talking about a song that literally went to the moon on a cassette tape. But we’re also talking about a movie that leans into one of the most persistent urban legends in American history: that NASA hired a director to film a backup version of the moon landing just in case the real thing went south.
Let's get into what's actually real here.
The Movie vs. Reality: Did NASA Really Have a "Plan B"?
The film Fly Me to the Moon centers on a marketing genius played by Johansson who is hired to fix NASA's public image. The big "is it true" kicker? The plot point where they film a fake moon landing as a "safety version" in a secret studio.
NASA didn't do that.
There is zero historical evidence that a secret film crew was sitting in a warehouse in 1969 filming Channing Tatum—or anyone else—jumping around on fake craters. While the movie is a "what if" rom-com, it plays on the Project Artemis-era curiosity about why we went, how we got there, and if we ever really left.
Historians like Roger Launius, former Chief Historian of NASA, have spent decades debunking the "staged" theory. The sheer volume of people involved—about 400,000 contractors, engineers, and scientists—makes a secret filming operation mathematically impossible to keep quiet. People talk. Especially in the sixties.
What is true, however, is that NASA was obsessed with public relations. They knew the world was watching. They did hire consultants. They did worry about the live feed failing. But their solution wasn't a fake set; it was over-engineering the communications equipment.
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The Song That Actually Made It to Space
If you’re asking is fly me to the moon true in the context of the music, the answer is a resounding yes.
Bart Howard wrote the song in 1954. Back then, it was called "In Other Words." It was a slow, waltzy cabaret number. It didn't have that "swing" we associate with it now. It wasn't even about space exploration, really. It was just a guy using a metaphor for being in love.
Then came 1964.
Quincy Jones arranged the version we all know for Frank Sinatra. It was snappy. It was cool. And it happened to drop right as the Space Race was hitting its peak.
NASA astronauts actually loved it.
During the Apollo 10 mission—the "dress rehearsal" for the landing—the crew actually played the song on a portable Sony TC-50 tape recorder. Then, during Apollo 11, Buzz Aldrin played it again as he stepped onto the lunar surface. So, the song itself is a "true" lunar traveler. It’s arguably the first piece of music ever played on another celestial body.
Think about that for a second. While the world was holding its breath, Buzz was listening to Sinatra.
Separating the "Moon Hoax" Myth from Fact
We have to talk about the conspiracy stuff because that's where the search for "is it true" usually leads. The movie uses the "hoax" as a narrative engine, but in the real world, the "Moon Hoax" theory didn't even start until the mid-70s.
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Bill Kaysing, a former technical writer at Rocketdyne (the company that built the Saturn V engines), self-published a pamphlet called We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle. That’s where the fire started.
He claimed the tech wasn't ready. He said the stars weren't visible in the photos.
Scientists have explained these things a thousand times:
- The stars aren't visible because the lunar surface is incredibly bright and the camera exposure was set for the sunlit moon, not the faint stars.
- The "waving" flag was actually vibrating because the astronauts were twisting the pole into the ground, and there's no air resistance to stop the motion.
- The shadows look "multiple" because the lunar surface is uneven and reflects light like a million tiny mirrors (retroreflection).
The movie Fly Me to the Moon treats these tropes as a fun playground, but it doesn't claim they are factual. It’s historical fiction. Sorta like Inglourious Basterds but with more velvet and less gunfire.
Why the Marketing Angle in the Film Feels Real
The most "true" part of the movie isn't the fake moon landing—it's the desperation of NASA's marketing.
In the late 60s, the public was actually getting bored. Sounds crazy, right? But the Vietnam War was draining the budget. Civil rights protests were rightfully the focus of the national conversation. People were asking why we were spending billions on "space rocks" when cities were burning.
NASA really did embark on a massive PR campaign. They partnered with brands. They made sure astronauts were treated like movie stars. They needed the funding to stay alive.
The character of Kelly Jones in the movie is a fictionalized version of that very real PR push. NASA knew they weren't just selling science; they were selling a dream. If they didn't win the "vibes" war, the Soviets would win the Cold War.
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The Technical Reality of the 1969 Footage
One thing the movie gets right is the aesthetic. The cameras. The grain. The lighting.
The actual footage we saw on TV in 1969 was grainy because it was a "slow-scan" television signal. It had to be converted for broadcast, which killed the quality. This low quality is exactly what fueled the "is it true" skeptics. They thought, "Surely if we can go to the moon, we can get a clear picture?"
But we did have clear pictures. The astronauts took Hasselblad cameras with 70mm film. When those rolls were brought back to Earth and developed, the images were—and still are—stunning. They are far too detailed to have been faked with the lighting technology available in 1969.
To fake those photos back then, you would have needed thousands of tiny LED lights to simulate the way light behaves on the moon. LEDs didn't exist like that yet. You would have needed lasers. Lasers were in their infancy.
Basically, it was technically easier to actually go to the moon than it was to fake the footage convincingly enough to fool the world's scientists.
Taking Action: How to Verify the Truth Yourself
If you're still skeptical or just curious, you don't have to take a movie's word for it. You can actually look at the evidence.
First, check out the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) photos. In the last decade, NASA’s LRO has flown low enough over the original landing sites to photograph the descent stages of the Lunar Modules, the lunar rover tracks, and even the astronauts' footpaths. They are still there. There is no wind on the moon to blow them away.
Second, look into the Lunar Laser Ranging experiment. The Apollo 11, 14, and 15 crews left behind retroreflector arrays—basically high-tech mirrors. To this day, observatories in New Mexico and France bounce lasers off those mirrors to measure the distance between Earth and the Moon down to the millimeter. You can't bounce a laser off a "fake" moon.
Lastly, dive into the music history. If you want the "true" version of the song, find the 1954 Kaye Ballard recording. It’s hauntingly different from Sinatra’s.
Your Next Steps
- Watch the 2024 film with the understanding that it is a "counter-factual" comedy. Enjoy the 60s fashion, but don't cite it in a history paper.
- Browse the NASA Apollo Archive on Flickr. They have uploaded thousands of high-resolution raw scans from the Hasselblad cameras. The detail is mind-blowing.
- Read "A Man on the Moon" by Andrew Chaikin. It is widely considered the definitive account of the Apollo missions, based on direct interviews with the astronauts.
- Listen to the Apollo 11 "Onboard Voice Transcription." You can hear the actual tension, the technical jargon, and the moments of awe that no scriptwriter could perfectly replicate.
The real story of the moon landing—and the song that followed it there—is a story of human ingenuity and a very lucky bit of timing in pop culture history. It doesn't need a secret studio to be incredible. It just happened.