alt Hacker NewsStrictly speaking, their existence was verified by Sputnik 2 (though the Soviets only released data on it after the fact, corroborating data from Explorer 1), so if you have a highly _specific_ conspiracy theory, around NASA rather than space stuff in general, that _could_ still work, I suppose?
No, because the Soviets have to in on faking the moon landing. They were also landing a spacecraft at the same time as the landings. To fake the moon landing you'd also have to fake the entire cold war.