As one of those who actually watched the whole shebang on TV at the time you won't get me to believe it was faked.. the technology at the time was so crappy that there _wasn't_ any way you could fake the scenes and everything around it. It wouldn't look more real than any 50's sci-fi B movie. (I think the most sophisticated effects at the time were all in the 1968 "2001, a Space Odyssey" film, which still wouldn't convince anyone).

Besides, there would have had to be tens of thousands of people in on it.

@callanish: You're correct. The astronauts left a few small mirrors there, they are to this day used for measuring the earth-moon distance _exactly_ (down to a centimeter or better), you can actually measure that the moon is slowly moving away from earth.