Humbly, when I was young, I got to look through the telescope at Mt. Palomar Observatory. I saw Mars. It was red, sphere-ish, and much like the photos. I also saw Saturn, and its rings. And I delved deeply into the pancake planet psyop (PPP) and discovered it was conceived of at...drum roll please...NASA. The Pentagon implemented it.
When the web arrived and People could research and started asking questions about the "moon landing," NASA needed something to distract from looking for the real reason They lie and fake things (whatever that is) and came up with the PPP.
But I can think of two other possibilities that do not require Me to toss My observations, measurements, calculations, geometry, logic, and reason - as does the PPP - with the first being that They're hiding a secret space program where all the $$$ is going.
The second is that Michael Tasarion is correct. According to Tsarion, there were some "Bad Guys" (BG) being chased across Our galaxy by some "Good Guys" (GG). The BG arrived in Our solar system, set up a decoy on Tiamat (the planet between Mars and Jupiter), then came to Earth and hunkered down.
The GG arrived, saw the decoy, checked for native sapient life, found none, and blew the planet up (explaining the asteroid belt). They were suspicious, though, and checked the other planets, somehow determining that the BG were here. And They found plenty of sapient life native to the planet. So... They put a barrier up around the globe above low earth orbit that We can't get through. They moved the moon into place to be a "guard tower" (explaining the many stories around the globe of a time when there was no moon, and the claims "the gods" put it there). Also explaining "The Watchers."
We can't get through that barrier and live...and They don't want Us to know.
I also have done an article...
https://peakd.com/informationwar/@amaterasusolar/flat-earth-reasoning
That could be turned into a nice Sci-fi movie script :)
LOL!