And Russia knew and told them to stop.

My Grandpa worked on top secret stuff at Boeing (a lot of it he didn't tell me before he died but my Grandma knows). This included cutting-edge guided missile technology, nuclear weapons, and apparently a moon landing set. He knew all about the space race and the requirements to get a man up there on the moon. He literally lived in that environment for 4 years.

The single thing preventing mankind from reaching the Moon in reality is the Van Allen belts. They contain extremely energized ionizing radiation, more damaging than the radiation output standing in Chernobyl's basement due to many factors.

Cosmic rays are no joke. When they are captured by a gravitational field, they become very very dangerous to things trying to exit. It's generally safe to send inanimate objects through, but you can't send a human through them, it will cook them from the inside out. You gotta go from the poles, where you will need far more energy to achieve orbit and leave the Earth's encompassing gravitational field.

The moon landings were fake. It's totally obvious. Everything is made up these days.