Citation Needed - The Moon

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It orbits Earth at an average distance of 384399 km (238,854 mi; about 30 times Earth's diameter). The Moon's orbital period (lunar month) and rotation period (lunar day) are synchronized by Earth's gravitational pull at 29.5 Earth days, making the same side of the Moon always face Earth. The Moon's pull on Earth is the main driver of Earth's tides.

Hello and welcome to Citation Needed, a podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia, and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm Heath, and I'll be directing this lunar expedition, the Stanley Cooper, the episode. Okay, come on. And I'm joined by our Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Alan Shepard, Cecil, Tom, Noah, and Eli. Oh, I love Buzz.

Yeah, to infinity and beyond! No, Alan Shepard was Tom's age when he walked on the moon. I'll take it. I will take it. And I stopped knowing who you were talking about after you said Heath Enright, so take that, you know? OK. Noted.

So Noah, what person place thing concept phenomenon or event we're gonna be talking about today I'm so excited the moon all right the moon so um there's no way to say this without feeling like I'm an idiot but format kind of demands it what is the moon? What a vapid question, Heath. But I guess for those unaware, like Heath, I guess, the moon is Earth's only natural satellite. And it's got a pretty strong claim to best moon in the solar system. First of all, it's called the moon and the other ones are just they have names and shit. So there's that. Secondly, it's fucking huge for a moon.

It's far bigger than say Pluto, which some ignoramuses still want to call a planet. Okay, hey, Noah, I said it before. I'll say it again. If I learn something once, I'm done with the learning. Okay. Do your math the stupid way then? My educated mother just served us nine like the number nine nothing. She just served us nothing you go get it yourself Now is what it is. That's what changed stop relying on your mom to bring you nine pizzas

Nobody said there would be pizzas where's the Not that's what I'm saying. I am it I love the idea that someone doesn't know that mnemonic for remembering the name of the planets and they're just like, oh, Heath had a stroke. And everyone else is just playing along. Another wellness check for Heath. Alright, call in. So let's, let me put this in the way. Okay, so the moon's ratio to Pluto is greater than Mercury's ratio to the moon and Mercury is a real planet. But it's not just that our moon is huge, it's also huge compared to the Earth. It is by far the largest moon in comparison to its host planet unless you count Pluto

as a planet, which you don't as just explained. Because the intelligent designer loves human beings and it's all perfect. I learned that from Ross Doothat. Yeah, me too. Yeah, he's got a new book about it. Yeah. God, he was on Ezra Klein's show and I had to listen to that piece of shit. You don't have to. I love Ezra so much. Yeah. But. Yeah.

Did he really get in on him? Do you go really hard on him? Not hard enough. Not hard enough at all. No, he ran his hand up and down him like a soft couch for an hour and a half Someone might ask well, how big is the moon? Thank you its diameter is about one quarter of the earth's that means that from one side to the other It would be about as far across this China and in terms of its total surface area It has about as much as as China and in terms of its total surface area it has about

as much as all the non-China parts of Asia but despite being about a quarter of the earth's diameter it's only about 1.2 percent of the earth's weight. Yeah we weren't sure about the weight until we went up there and then we put a bathroom scale on the ground upside down. upside down. All right, smarty pants, Noah, but have you considered that things on the moon weigh only a sixth of what they weigh on the earth? So it's kind of cheating. Right. You measure it out.

That's science. You think about it. Yeah. Oh, that's okay. The coolest thing. Right. Yeah. Right.

But the coolest thing about the moon size, of course, is that its size ratio to the sun matches its distance ratio to the sun. That is, it is as much smaller than the sun as it is closer to us than the sun, which means that they have the same apparent size from our vantage point on Earth. And that means that every so often, if you're in the exact right spot, and there's not a fucking cloud, the moon will line up between Earth and the sun and cause the coolest natural phenomenon I have ever seen, a solar eclipse. Like when Jesus got crucified, I learned that Mros did that. Now I'm not going to say anything more about eclipses here because I'm probably going to

do a whole episode on those if I ever get mad enough at Tom. Yeah, I was about to say, Noah, did you actually do a whole episode on those if I ever get mad enough at Tom. Yeah, I was about to say no Did you actually do a whole citation needed essay and attempt to make us care about eclipses? But then I remember that I've done that with multiple internet fights. No one's heard of All right, no when the coolest phenomenon in the entire natural world can be defeated by a mildly overcast day It is hard for me to be impressed. Yeah, it wasn't even overcast. It was just one fucking cloud. One cloud. So yeah, one goddamn cloud in the entire sky. Just a cartoon thing following around Noah. Yep. Yep.

This is an atheist. I learned that from Ross Doothat. All right. So the moon is also tidally locked to the earth, which means that we only ever see one face of it. The time it takes to orbit the earth, that is 27 days, is the same amount of time it takes for it to spin around. That is not a cosmic coincidence like the apparent sizes of the Sun and Moon. Any two bodies that orbit a common center, which is what the Earth and the Moon do, will impart energy to one another in such a way that they'll eventually become tidally locked. The smaller one will become tidally locked first. But given enough time, Earth would slow down to where only one side of it would face the Moon

and the other hemisphere would never see it. Though I'm pretty sure that the math works out that the Sun will blow up before that actually happens. Boo! Boo, really? Tidelock party was going to be lit. I am disappointed. Right. Of course, despite what Pink Floyd would have you believe, there is no dark side of the moon. All of the moon's sides get an equal amount of light, except the small amount that you have to subtract out for lunar eclipses. So technically, the thing that people call the dark side of the moon is actually a little bit brighter on average. And even, of course, sir, the sun's light falling on all the various

sides of the moon is what gives it its phases. I should point out too that the phases don't exactly line up with the orbital period because the earth is also orbiting the sun the whole time. So the moon always has to go a little bit further to catch up with how far the sun has gone in those 27 days. Well, if it wasn't back there waxing its crescent, it could catch up. Yeah, like I don't require a waxed crescent, but I appreciate the effort. Thank you, Tom. Now, I didn't think anybody was going to notice, but thank you. Does gibbous or crescent seem more sexual to you guys?

I noticed. Oh, gibbous by far. Gibbous feels more sexual? Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Now- But crescent's still still some sexual. Say some. Yeah, sure everything some sexual Solid point now Nobody really knows who first discovered the moon But you can imagine it was a real holy shit kind of moment, right?

Just a hundred billion trillion pound rock hanging right over top you like that But once we noticed it you got to to imagine that it was super handy as a timekeeper for early humans, you know, instead of being like, yeah, well there's that, but also like, No, but like so instead of going like hey, so our tribe will meet with your tribe to trade again in eighty eight point five days sure hope nobody loses count. You could just be like, all right, we'll meet you on the third new moon and everybody's within a day of nailing. Just everyone's dad being like, waning crescent is on time. New moon is late. Measure twice, cut once.

Also Noah, not for nothing, but I sure as hell hope the first person to notice the moon was also like, the first person. Yeah, right, right. Probably even before. Distressing otherwise. Yeah, I would imagine the Australia epithets seems noticed.

I also think like, if Tom was back back then he would have a moon that shocks himself awake every eight days. Okay, but here's the rub, right? Here's how the moon gets you. The number of days in a year doesn't match up with any permutation of the number of days in a lunar cycle. So if you divide the 365 days by the 29 and a half days of a month, you get 12 months with like 11 extra days hanging out, or I guess 11 and a quarter, or 11 and almost a quarter. And this ends up mattering because it means that if you're trying to count the moons to approximate the year, every three fucking years, your calendar slips by not quite a month, right? Not even an exact month. So it makes time

keeping tricky. Yeah, caring about eclipses, check. Segue way to his favorite calendar for nerds, check. Guys, if he starts talking about how the moon means Etruscans can fold a mirror, we can give him a copyright strike against himself. I'm just saying. I was trying so hard to get the Etruscans into the fucking calendar part, but no, I couldn't really do to get the Etruscans into the fucking calendar part, but no, I couldn't really do it. OK, sorry to belabor the point. Belabor, how did they know about night?

Well, yeah, right. So so but sorry to belabor the point, but belaboring the point is all I've got for you this week. But here's why that matters. Imagine you're some like hunter gatherer times people. And you've noticed that once a year, the salmon run in this particular river at this particular time of the year and if you make it at the right time you can absolutely feast on salmon you can try some out it can make a significant amount of your food resources for the entire year. Are we bears in this analogy? I feel like we're bears. Yeah you know we're basically bears but the

problem here is that like the area around that river doesn't have enough food to support people year round. So you need to know when to show up if you want your salmon. And if your calendar slips by a month, you might show up too early and your whole tribe starves to death waiting on the fucking fish. Or you miscorrect for that slippage and you show up a month too late and you starve to death because you missed the best eats of the year Yeah

or you get Ramadan happening during the Champions League round of 16 and PSG is playing Liverpool and you get superstars like Mohammed Saleh and Ousmane Dembele having a fast or get Deferred fasting exemptions from clerics or deal with weird blowback. It's insane. No, and that was untenable to have lunar calendars. Yeah, no, that was a problem that early humans had to deal with as well, Heath. Yeah, exactly. So and they still had like, you know, all these tropical diseases to worry about too. Like it was much harder. So now it's because of shit like this, though, it's because of our efforts to resolve the lunar and solar cycles that we get our earliest calendars. You get monumental architecture whose primary purpose

seems to be letting people know exactly when the solstice is, when the new year begins, when to start counting moons afresh. But you also get smaller shit like the Nebra Skydisk, which is a relic from 1600 to 1800 BCE that was found by some treasure hunters in Germany and then sold to a series of ever shadier motherfuckers until a museum curator narc'd on them. Anyway, it's the oldest identified depiction of the moon in relation to other astronomical features and it was almost certainly a way of letting ancient people know when they needed to add a month to their calendar.

Just a guy walking around with a little wallet size Stonehenge. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. The only one who can wear an ancient wristwatch is just Eddie Hall. Now of course, ancient peoples had no idea what the giant save a date in the sky actually was. It shows up in a bunch of different religious roles

in different cultures, but most often it's seen as the opposite or partner to the sun, right? It rules the night in the way that the sun rules the day. But even as far back as the 5th century BCE, criminally underrated ancient Greek philosopher Anaxagoras hypothesized that the sun and the moon were giant spherical rocks and the light of the moon was a reflection of the sun's light. Elsewhere, Chinese, Indian, and Babylonian astronomers of around the same time were keeping close enough track of the moon to predict solar and lunar eclipses with pretty spot-on accuracy. See? See? I told you the sun would be blotted out from the sky today. Wait, why are you making that bonfire? Oh, God, no, science isn't worth it. Science isn't worth it!

Right. Now, but unfortunately, instead of listening to Anaxagoras, pre-scientific Europe latched onto Aristotle, who said that the moon was the boundary between the spheres of the mutable elements, Earth, air, wind, and fire, and the imperishable stars of Aether. Not a fan. Not an Aristotle guy. No, me neither. I'm a Socrates guy. Yeah, he's good. So, but later Christian thinkers... I like Earth, Wind, and Fire though. It's fun. No, they're pretty sweet. They're pretty sweet. I'm a Socrates guy. Eh, yeah, he's good. So, but later Christian thinkers- I like Earth, Wind, and Fire though.

It's fun. Yeah, they're pretty sweet. It's all right. So, but later Christian thinkers would hold onto that basic cosmology, but then they would also turn the moon into like a way station for souls on their way to heaven, hell, or purgatory. What? Yeah, it feels weird that there would be a waiting room for purgatory, but what the hell

do I know? You're just sitting on the moon listening to Musac. It stops, you teleport, you're all excited, and the Musac starts again. Come on! Really? Again? Another waiting room. You look over and notice that the waiting room for purgatory isn't the moon at all.

It's just Stanley Kubrick's sound studio. You're like, I was ripped off! Stupid! Now, back in the Catholic Church's heyday... isn't the moon at all. It's just Stanley Kubrick's sound studio. You're like, stupid. Now, back in the Catholic Church's heyday with the moon is shining. Hypothesizing anything other than what they told you to hypothesize could get a motherfucker burned at the stake, as Tom has already alluded to. So in Europe, people pretty much accepted the purgatory waiting room explanation. But that started to break down with the invention of the telescope and the early telescopic astronomy starting in the early 17th century.

Now the first record of telescopic astronomy of the moon comes from criminally underrated Renaissance English mathematician Thomas Herriot. Noah's essays are becoming ancient philosopher mixtapes. Everybody, when you say becoming. So, but along with Galileo who was looking at the moon Everybody. So when you say becoming. So but along with Galileo who was looking at the moon around the same time, Harriet noticed a curious lack of angels or, you know, waiting room benches and magazine racks.

They also noticed that the moon wasn't smooth, which for some fucking reason was super duper important for Aristotelian cosmology. Right? So all the planets in the sky were supposed to be perfectly smooth, damn it, and a crater-covered, pockmarked moon fucked the whole thing up. But despite all the stake burning, the Aristotelian ideas couldn't hold up to continued observations, so scientists started looking for alternative hypotheses. This is where the green cheese idea first gets popular.

It goes all the way back to the 1500s, if you can believe that, Chet. One of my favorite theories, though, was that the moon was ejected by the Earth, specifically the part of the Earth where the Pacific Ocean is now, which is why there's such a big empty space there. There used to be a continent there, and it's the moon now. But there were also less outlandish theories. A lot of scientists believed the moon was captured by the Earth's gravity in sort of a fortuitous encounter. Others that the Earth and moon were made from the same spinning disk in a sort of protoplanetary dumbbell.

But to answer the question with any kind of real certainty, it turns out we were going to have to actually go there. Yeah. And one day that'll happen. In the meantime, we're going to take a quick break. Some apropos of nothing. Where am I? Dave Smith, you come before Saint Peter to be judged for your sin. Here is your blanket. Sorry, am I what?

I'll explain if it comes up. Anyway, you are here to be judged for the sins that you... Hey, sorry, is this the moon? Yeah, oh my god, every freaking time. Yes, this is the moon. Now you are here to be- Why are we on the moon? Seriously?

The moon has been on record as the stopping place before heaven since like 1200 AD. Oh, I guess I never read that part. Yeah, a lot of people don't read that part. Well, that doesn't make it any less true. Now you are here to be judged for your- oh, fuck, cover, cover! What? What? Cover with with a blanket! Cover up! What are we? What are we doing? Shhh, Hasha! Okay we're good we're good sorry. Kid with a telescope in Kansas. Wait the reason people haven't seen the gates of heaven on the moon is because you hide

under blankets? Oh blanket that looks like the moon, yeah. Well, that's stupid. Well, tell me about it. I used to have to hide like once a year, maybe now it's 40 times a goddamn night. It's ridiculous. Sure. Anyway, you will now be sent to hell for the crimes you committed in life, where you will burn forever and ever Got it, right?

You okay, you're taking this really well. Sorry. I'm just I'm honestly distracted by you lightly bobbing. Yeah Yeah, I get that a lot So where's hell Orlando. Yeah, nope, that track. I mean, it's kinda like a salad. It is not like a salad. Hey guys, whatcha eating? Yeah, is that grass? Yep, good old fashioned grass. Okay, why are you eating grass? Great question, Eli.

Because Heath and I are optimizing our nutrition. Eating grass optimizes your nutrition? Okay, think about it. What do Heath and I eat? Steaks? Hot dogs? Well, yeah, yeah, you guys eat a lot of hot dogs. Exactly, and that stuff all comes from plants.

Nothing more plants than grass, so we're just cutting out the middle man. Or the middle meat, if you will. No cooking, no cleanup, no problem. Guys, if you want to optimize your nutrition the easy way, why don't you just try Factor? What's Factor? I forgot. It's not fair. I had grass in my mouth.

Factor has chef-made gourmet meals that make eating well easy. They're dietician-approved and ready to heat and eat in just two minutes so you can feel right and feel great no matter what life throws at you. Even the occasional pill bug? Even the occasional pill bug. From the 40 options across 8 dietary preferences on the menu each week, it's easy to pick meals

tailored to your goals. Alright guys, I'm sold. Where do I sign up? Eat smart with Factor. Get started at factormeals.com slash factorpodcast and use the code factorpodcast to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's code factor podcast at factor meals dot com slash factor podcast to get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box.

All right. Well, so long grass. Hey, we're Cecil anyway. Oh, he's inside. Sue feeding his grass. Right. Yeah. Should we stop him or, uh, It's been like 11 hours. Yeah, we'll

let him finish. Nice medium rare. and we're back we left off catholic priest was losing an argument because he couldn't side of from gray area guy goes to heaven or hell so he invented purgatory to try to win argument uh... also the and moon or whatever what's next yeah

so i i shouldn't admit up front that the current dominant theory on how the moon was formed hasn't been proven, right? Like it's a dominant theory and the consensus leads heavy its way, but I think it's fair to say that science is still at a point where we're accepting applications for the answer to this question. And even within the dominant theory, there's still plenty of room for disagreement. But this theory is called the giant impact hypothesis because even when the theory postulates a Mars-sized object smacking into the proto-Earth and completely obliterating it, astronomers can't be bothered to give it a more

grandiose title than the Giant Impact Hypothesis. Yeah, I'm actually more of a get-them-emotionally-invested-first hypothesis guy myself. Yes, there you go., okay, so the idea here is that around four and a half billion years ago, the solar system was a far more crowded place than it is today. Computer modeling suggests that there would have been a lot more planets early on, possibly more than twice as many, but gravitational influences from their neighbors would have slung a bunch of them, probably most of them, out of their orbits and off to wander the interstellar void for eternity as rogue planets. But not all of those various slingings would just take the doomed planet out of the solar system. Some

would be hurled into the Sun and at least one would careen itself right the fuck into another planet. And that's what the giant impact hypothesis hypothesizes. Yeah, it's like how it's impossible to get out of an airplane seat without putting your dick or your butt in someone else's face. Okay, Eli, you sit on the aisle. It's very possible. You just refuse to do it. It's called paying the toll. The pre-moon object was about the size. Who's paying in that scenario? Society. Yeah.

Eli's a negative externality. So, the pre-moon object was about the size of Mars and scientists call it Theia because Theia was the moon's mom in Greek philosophy, I guess. And there's apparently still some disagreement as to how they struck the proto-earth, whether it was a glancing blow or a rear ending or a head-on smack or even a glancing blow that came around tens of thousands of years later and smacked it more thoroughly. But suffice to say, they hit Earth and when two planets hit each other,

it does not go well, at least not at first. All right, so after this big collision, the Earth is damn near destroyed and they is destroyed. But a lot of the matter from the two bodies stay in mutual orbit afterwards. And from here, the Earth is damn near destroyed and Thaea is destroyed. But a lot of the matter from the two bodies stay in mutual orbit afterwards. And from here, the actual formation of the Earth-Moon system goes very quickly. And I'm not talking about very quickly in astronomical terms. I'm talking about genuinely pretty quick. Like there are some models that would have the Moon forming within hours of the collision. Now from what I understand, that's

pretty unlikely, but it was almost certainly formed within a few decades of the impact. The moon's doing that thing you do when you fall down as an adult where you have to like spring up to your feet and tell everyone you're fine you're like doing great! Probably just gonna be a bus stop to heaven. Now so in the meantime while they're waiting for the stable system to develop there was hell on earth and on the moon both worlds would have been covered in magma oceans the moon would have been a hell of a lot closer than it is now. Like hold a basketball in your hand at arm's length. That's how big the moon would have been in the sky, at least at first. But so, okay, but the moon would have moved away pretty quickly at first

for a couple of reasons. The main one is the tides. Now, we haven't really talked about the tides to this point because there's only so much that Tom can roll his eyes before we do permanent damage to them. But the earth and the moon, they tug on each other as they orbit. Caliente. Fuck yeah it is. But that tug results in sort of a rolling gravity sink that orbits both worlds. And of course, being the larger of the two partners, the Earth exerts as much stronger tidal force on the moon than the moon exerts on the Earth. So so like so where the moon can raise and lower our oceans by a few feet

or dozens of feet, I guess, at their at their most extreme, the Earth is squeezing and tearing at the rock itself and stressing the shit out of the moon. And the closer that you are, the more extreme these tidal forces are so early on the tides were literally repelling the moon oh you just know the earth and the moon or that couple that want to take everyone to their swing dance class it's like we get it they are you guys don't fuck anymore we don't need to involve big band jazz in this. Jesus Christ.

So okay, so during this early period, both the Earth and the Moon are getting bombarded with debris from the still forming solar system. Earth is more geologically active, so it's better at cleaning up afterwards, but the Moon wears those scars a little bit more openly. Now that is not to say that the Moon isn't geologically active. The Earth's tidal forces are still enough to move rocks around on our celestial sidekick, but up until about like 1.2 billion years ago, it was still geologically active enough to have volcanoes and shit.

Well, I would be more geologically active if I didn't have to spend all my time cleaning up all this debris you left everywhere. Okay, also, can we say something is still active if it hasn't done shit in a billion years? Like there's gotta be a cutoff, right? No, but it is actually still active today. So the earth tides cause moonquakes pretty regularly, which may be the coolest sentence I've ever fucking written. Now, of course, when you look up at the moon now, you see these big dark patches. In the West, we tend to call them a face in the Moon.

In the East, they more often call it a rabbit. Both are really quite a stretch, but the dark patches that make up the face and or a rabbit are what we call lunar maria. That is basaltic plains that were formed when lava flowed into impact basins. Incidentally, they're called maria because the early mappers of the moon thought that they were looking at seas. So all of the major features of the moon that you could see back in the 16 and 17 hundreds are named as though they were water features, a bunch of bays and seas and shit like that. Okay, I see a really bad sonogram. Like it's not looking good. Like

everything's disconnected. Everybody says they see faces or rabbits, whatever. I always have to lie and agree because the one time I was honest and said sonogram, my girlfriend didn't like it. Okay, for the last time, Keith, I am sending you photos and he is almost five. I still don't see it. No, so the moon isn't retreating as fast now as it was in the early days, but it is still slipping away from us a little bit at a time. The moon's orbit is elliptical, so its distance from the Earth varies by like 25,000 miles from Perigee to Apogee.

But every year, the average distance retreats by about an inch and a half, which means that in a couple million years, eclipses will kind of suck. And so the moon is just doing that thing where it tries to leave the conversation. It's slowly backing away. The earth won't stop talking. Right, right. Yeah. No, it's retreating at the distance at the speed of a fucking Midwestern goodbye. Now, of course, much of what we know about the moon.

Yeah. Of course, a bunch of what we know about the moon comes from the fact that we were able to actually go there and pick up samples. I don't want to go into a bunch of detail about the Apollo missions right now because A, we're too far into the episode B, there's at least one future citation needed episode about the Apollo program and C, Tom knows where the people I love sleep. But suffice to say, the fact that human beings were able to reach the moon, walk around, drive on it, hit golf

balls on it, pick up some rocks, and make it home alive remains one of the coolest things our species has ever done. And it's so incredible that even today, 56 years after we first managed it, a lot of people can't believe we ever did it. But we did. And believing otherwise is stupid because it's provable. Counterpoint. Sorry, podcast listener.

Eli's microphone fritzed out. So we missed all that. Talked for like 12 minutes. Well, y'all pipe in. I just want to point out that even on the moon, golf is still boring. Yeah. That's I would play on them. I would play lunar golf though.

Now, of course, one of the reasons people refuse to believe that we actually reached the moon is that we haven't done it in a really long time. Now, hopefully that's gonna change soon. NASA's Artemis mission is still unscheduled to land people back on the moon by the year 2027, but that's dependent on Donald Trump's successful stewardship of the government and its finances for a further two years.

So. I feel like we're probably more likely to be using Thunderstix to get to the bullet farm by then. With all the retaliatory terrorists from the moon at that point. USA 2027 is just Elon Musk controlling his fiefdom and impregnating a harem. Do not my my friends, become addicted to government funding. It will take hold of you and you will resent its absence. Right. I think that's America 2025. Yeah. I don't. So

America isn't the only nation dreaming of returning humans to the moon. China is planning on doing it by 2030 and they're way less a bunch of fuck-ups than we are. Yeah, they still have access to magnets, for example. There you go. Right. Yeah. And fireworks and everything. Now, Japan might do it by 2028. India, Russia, and the European Space Agency all have ten US plans to send people up there. So an optimist can still dream of a future with lunar tourism that they won't be able to afford. But here's the thing about lunar tourism. Okay. The only thing that you need to know about it to know that it's worth whatever sacrifices we have to make to make it happen. If you could build a dome of like three or four stories, right?

So like a large mall sized dome, and then you could pressurize it to one earth atmosphere and you put little bird wings on your arms. You could flap those motherfuckers and fly around. And if that does not sell you on the idea of lunar tourism, what the fuck are we even doing here? I like pickleball. I like pickleball. Moon pickleball would be awesome.

Oh God. Look, if I had to flap my own arms like a p Moon pickleball would be awesome. Oh God. Look, if I have to flap my own arms like a pavo, I'm not going to buy it. Jesus Christ. No, of course the trip to the moon wouldn't be as comfortable as most multimillion dollar vacations. The trip would take three days, assuming we don't figure out some radically new means of propulsion that doesn't kill people between now and then.

And that's assuming that you don't have to ascend a space elevator first which you probably would and that would easily take you five days now along the way you got to imagine space would be a little cramped the upshot though is that there's no weight on your ass because you're weightless when guy turns on speakerphone and that space elevator gets fucking beat up by a when the smelly guy gets on yourphone and that space elevator gets fucking beat up by a When the smelly guy gets on your car you gotta wait five days to switch to a different one. Yeah So okay, so once you get to the moon

You'd have to go from the ship to the moon base, right? Which would be like your first experience on the moon's one sixth gravity, which would probably be fun and shit But since you'd be coming from zero gravity it might not be as liberating as you hope those also because you'd have to be in a big fucking suit yeah you'd be like mad at that point because it like right yeah for you right right that's what I think so so once you like once they're able to corral all the hoppin tourists inside the next step would probably be a very serious shower to wash all the hopping tourists inside, the next step would probably be a very serious shower to wash all the lunar regolith off of you. So unlike Earth's dust, moon dust never has moisture wearing down its hard edges.

So instead of the nice round friendly dust that you get here on Earth, on the moon you get little tiny fucking barbs of dust that just cling to everything and wreak havoc on human lungs. So it's basically a coal mine tour with a taller ceiling. Pretty much, yeah. Like you just tourists bouncing around inside the dome, like dust covered human super balls. Right. So that's the upshot of it. Right. So there's a down and an up.

So now on your trip, in addition to flying around the mall with arm powered cloth wings, you'd probably go on a tour of the lunar surface, where you might get to see the Eagle Lander that shuttled Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin down to the moon back in 1969. And while you were there... Asked to net me back on Earth on the... No. ...set of Stanley Cooper. No.

But while you were there, you might also get to look at the footprints that they left because there's no wind on the moon to erode those footprints. I mean, if you went early, you'd get to go until some guy named Mike smushed him to protest a pipeline or something. I don't know. Yeah, right. But anytime that you spend on the lunar surface would be disorienting as fuck, right? So not only would you have to deal with the fact that the horizon is so close to you that

you feel like you can fall off the planet if you got moving too fast, but you also have to deal with the lack of atmosphere, which means that things don't disappear into the distance when they get further away from you, like they do on Earth, right? So something that looks small and close by might be enormous and way the fuck away. Even worse, your brain requires a certain amount of gravity to definitively say, yep, that way is up. And it's more gravity than the moon has to offer. So it's really hard to tell what's a comfortable grade and what's a steep drop. That's what Fed Chair Paul said last week.

Isn't it though? Yeah. But I digress. When this comes out, he might not be fed. But I digress because the more I describe the moon, the less I'm making it sound like an awesome tourist destination So in conclusion, let me just say that ours is easily a top three moon in the entire solar system Possibly even number one maybe probably they not number one, but it's top three and I'd give it an official rating But it seems rude to rate the moon with a certain number of stars

Right if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence what would it be? Our asses should be flattered by the comparison. And are you ready for the quiz? I am dying for it. All right, Noah. I'm over the moon. Nice. Noah, when you do the first Christian mass in space, they're gonna have to change one phrase. What is it? A, give us this day your daily bread. I'm such a nerd that I have to point out that it wouldn't be the first Christian mass in space

actually happened already by the time I did the first. I know, I know. I'm Paul O'Byrne. You're so fucking good. I'm sorry. know. Jesus. Boo. That's my answer. A. It's A. Give us this day.

Boo on the Christian mass too. It's A and Boo. Alright, Noah. After the moon landing, we left 96 bags of piss and shit on the moon. Why? A. Prank war. B. Seriously, that weight was there on the way up. They could have taken it back. C. They didn't. D. We literally leave our shit everywhere we go. All right. D, was either 96 bags of shit and piss or that weight of moon rock. E,

that was like, obviously you leave some shit there. You leave a bit. We're lucky that they didn't like set it on fire so that like the next astronauts didn't stomp it out, you know? If that's how they figure out how much they had, they should have brought Eli. They could have just towed the moon back home. Right? Tom gets it.

Just ding dong ditch on a lunar land. Yeah. Dive back in, fly away. All right, Noah. We learned a lot about the moon today and the moon certainly has been the subject of a lot of songs. Which of the following is a more scientifically accurate song title? A. Moon River bed that was probably lava. B. It's all one side because it's the sphere of the moon by Pink Floyd. Or C, the motay of dust. It's apparently very sharp up here.

Moat? Because moat? What? Like, what's happening with this joke? I miss these sometimes. That's a mo-ray? That's a motay? Oh, no, that it's happening. That's Joe. I miss these sometimes. All right. That's a moat. Oh, no, that's not anything. No, no, no. I was trying to get a chance. That was the one and I can't you can't you only one person. But that was B. That was the good one.

Thank you. D. If the moon does hit your eye like a big pizza pie, you should take some Thorazine and lay down for a little while. Sure. Correct. I was supposed to be incorrect. You are incorrect. You're incorrect. I think we all lose. I agree. And when we all lose. However, the winner is Eli, Heath, Stump, Noah or something. I want Tom to do an essay next week. Sure. All right. Well,il, Noah, Tom, and Eli, I'm Heath. Thank you for hanging out with us.

We'll be back next week and Tom will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can listen to Cognitive Dissonance, the No Rogan Experience, The Earl Dads, God of the Movies, The Skating Atheist, Skeptocrat, and D&D Minus. And if you'd like to join the ranks of our beloved patrons, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, listen to past episodes, connect us on social media or take show notes, check out citation pod.com. And after we're done flaying you, you will be rolled in salt for your screams too! Uh, excuse me, are there any secret Mickeys in here?

No! This is a staff area only! And now are you sure-or? Yes! Cause I really wanna see them. Does that happen a lot? It's so much.