Inquiry with Kelly Chase - [The UFO Rabbit Hole] Ep 15: The Moon Is Weird AF: The Apollo Missions & The Mysterious Origins Of The Moon

Episode Date: November 18, 2022

Welcome back to The UFO Rabbit Hole podcast. Today we turn our attention to our nearest neighbor, and the anchor for some of those most compelling and mysterious stories in the UFO lore—the Moon.Hanging serenely in the night sky, its face unchanging aside from the precise pendulum swing of the lunar cycle, the Moon is our constant companion. It’s the one heavenly body that we can easily observe with the naked eye, and as such it feels deeply familiar to us.But what if there is more to the Moon than we ever realized? It’s an unnerving thought to consider that the Moon as we know it might not be what we think it is at all. But that’s exactly what the deep UFO lore surrounding the Moon suggests.In this episode we’ll discuss theories for the origins of the Moon (including the theory that it might be an alien superstructure), the mysteries surrounding the Apollo missions and the moon landing, what some of the top astronauts from the early space program have said about the Moon, and we’ll even tell a story about Neil Armstrong that I, frankly, straight up didn’t believe the first time I heard it.NEW Class from Dr. James MaddenUnidentified Flying Hyperobject: UFOs, Philosophy, and the End of the WorldFour-week online class via ZoomWednesdays, March 27 – April 24 (skips April 10), 20247 – 9 pm ETLearn More About the ClassSign Up NowThe Full Ross Coulthart Interview On Theories Of Everything With Curt JaimungalGET THE EPISODE BRIEFBECOME A PATRONGET THE BOOKGet a SIGNED COPYGet it on AmazonFOLLOWWebsiteTwitterFacebookMUSICTheme: Cabinet of Curiosities by Shaun FrearsonMusic Break One: Insomniac’s Dream by SémøMoon Landing: No One Is Out Here by Yehezkel RazOutro: Moon by Space DovesSupport the showBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-ufo-rabbit-hole-podcast--5746035/support. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. This episode is brought to you by Netflix.

Most valuable promotions in Netflix are hosting a blockbuster triple headliner Saturday, May 16th. Rhonda Rousey returns to face fellow woman's MMA pioneer Gina Carrano in the main event. Plus Comane's Nate Diaz versus Mike Perry And the best have you wait in the world, Frances Ngano versus Felipe Lins. Watch Rhonda Rousey versus Gina Carrano, live only on Netflix. Saturday, May 16th at 9 p.m. Eastern Center Time, 6 p.m. Pacific time. Back to the UFO Rabbit Hole podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Chase. Today, we turn our attention to our nearest neighbor and the anchor for some of the most compelling and mysterious stories in the UFO lore, the moon.

hanging serenely in the night sky, its face unchanging, aside from the precise pendulum swing of the lunar cycle, the moon is our constant companion. It's the one heavenly body that we can easily observe with the naked eye, and as such, it feels deeply familiar to us. But what if there's more to the moon than we ever realized? It's an unnerving thought to consider that the moon as we know it might not be what we think it is at all. But that's exactly what the deep UFO lore is surrounding the moon. the moon suggests. So could it be true? In this episode, we'll examine everything that's just straight up weird about the moon and try to get to the bottom of the many mysteries that present themselves. But first, if we're going to talk about the mysteries and lore surrounding the moon landing,

it feels inevitable that we'll come across the question of whether or not we did, in fact, land on the moon. So let's just get that out of the way now. If you've spent any time at all on the weird side of the internet, you've probably crumb across this popular conspiracy theory before. If you're unfamiliar, the story goes something like this. When JFK made his famous 1962 speech, declaring that the United States would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, it was more than just an inspiring primetime soundbite. More than a decade into the Cold War, both the U.S. and the Soviet Union were pouring enormous resources into developing increasingly advanced weapons and other technology in about.

for global dominance. Putting a man on the moon wouldn't just be a major flex to own the commies. What JFK was asking the American people to put their collective will behind was nothing short of an attempt to push the very boundaries of human potential to ensure that the U.S. wouldn't just be the dominant power on Earth, but in space as well. However, when President Kennedy said that America would put a man on the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard, he may have underestimated just exactly how hard it was going to be. And as this particular story goes, NASA eventually figured out that they probably weren't going to meet the deadline to put a man on the moon. Or they figured out that they could probably put a man on the moon, but they weren't so sure if they could bring him back.

And there was a fear that the whole world watching an American hero die on the moon would be the end of the space program. Or they figured out how to put a man on the moon, but they didn't have a good way to make the broadcast happen. so they filmed it in a studio so they could have tighter control over the images that were released. Anyway, some version of one of those things happened, and the government ended up recruiting Stanley Kubrick to help them to fake the moon landing. His film 2001 A Space Odyssey was basically a practice run and a cover-up for this project, and The Shining was his coded confession and cry for help as the forced secrecy and the shame of lying to his fellow humans took their toll upon the fame director. Now, transparently, I don't believe that any of that is true, but trust that I've spent enough time going down that rabbit hole that I'm aware of basically every iteration of every

theory that's out there. The long and short of it is that, yes, we went to the moon. As entertaining as those conspiracy theories are, they have been pretty conclusively debunked many times over. I'll link to some resources in the episode brief that you can check out if you want to explore this more, but for our purposes, it doesn't feel productive to retread a road that's been tread so many times before. And besides, while the conspiracy theories around the fake moon landing have been debunked, there are countless mysteries that still remain unanswered. Because if there's one thing that you need to know about the moon, it's this. The moon is fucking weird. When you think about the most interesting moons in the solar system, our own satellite is probably not the first one

that comes to mind. After all, there is a mysterious ocean under the frozen surface of Jupiter's moon, Europa. Another of Jupiter's moons, Io, is one of the most volcanically active places in the solar system. Saturn's moon Titan has oceans of liquid methane, and on the surface of nearby Enceladus, massive water geysers shoot up into the air causing snow to fall. By comparison, our geologically quiet moon with no atmosphere and few defining features on its pockmarked surface seems pretty standard issue. But in reality, our moon is anything but. And I'll be honest, once you start to recognize all the ways in which our moon isn't just weird, but straight up doesn't make sense, it can be pretty unsettling. And I'd argue that

there's two reasons for that. The first is that whether you spend much time noticing it or not, the moon is a big part of our everyday lives. It's visible in the sky most nights, and even sometimes during the day. It's consistent and predictable, quietly serving as the backdrop of our lives. And that's what makes the mere suggestion that there could be more to the moon than meets the eyes so disturbing. How could we miss something like this? And what are the implications for humanity if our moon isn't what it appears to be? And the second reason that learning about the moon can be so unsettling is just the sheer preponderance of weirdness. If there were a few little mysteries or idiosyncrasies about the moon, this would just be a fun thought exercise that would be really easy to dismiss.

But what I'm about to present to you isn't just a collection of interesting factoids. It's an avalanche of contradictions and impossibilities, piling one on top of each other, pointing us to one startling and undeniable truth, which is this. The moon isn't just weird. Some would argue that it's impossible. It shouldn't exist. And though it hangs in our sky, inspiring artists and lighting our midnight paths, and patiently counting out the rhythm of our lives,

The reality is that we have no idea what the moon is, or where it came from. So let's dive into it. Here's everything that's weird about the moon. First of all, when you look up at the moon in the night sky, no matter the phase and no matter the time of year, you're always looking at the same side. Now, granted, this isn't so mysterious in and of itself. This is because the moon is tidily locked with the Earth, something that's fairly common among moons that are relatively large in size, with respect to the planet they orbit, like ours.

Still, when you think about the fact that the moon is orbiting the Earth, while the Earth orbits the sun, which itself is orbiting the center of the Milky Way, all of which is hurtling through space, it is kind of mind-blowing that we only ever see one side of the moon. For that to happen, the moon has to rotate on its axis at the exact rate that it orbits the Earth. So it's not necessarily mysterious, but it is cool. And despite, the fact that it can be explained within the realm of common natural phenomena, there's still something undeniably eerie about the fact that we never see the back of the moon. In fact, it wasn't until October 7, 1959, when the Soviet probe Luna 3 sent back the first 18

images at the far side of the moon that humans got their first glimpse of its mysteries. Hypothetically, up until that point in human history, anything could have been hiding back there, an alien base, evidence of a lost civilization, giant graffiti of extraterrestrial genitalia, and we never would have known. It's unsettling to think that the closest and most prominent object in the night sky could be keeping secrets like that. And yet, though it creates a considerable blind spot for us, ultimately, we should be grateful for the fact that our moon is tidily locked with the earth, because if it wasn't, life on Earth might not even exist. There's still so much that we don't know about how life arose on this planet. It's one of the great mysteries of science. However,

one of the most popular theories about how that might have happened directly involves the moon and its influence on the tides. If we assume that life on Earth arose through natural processes, then we can think of the young Earth like a giant chemistry set. If DNA and RNA are the building blocks of life, then a staggering number of chemical reactions would have needed to occur first to create the building blocks of those building blocks, or protonucleic acid molecules. But for DNA and RNA to evolve from this group of protonucleic acid structures, first they had to be able to replicate. And one way for that to happen would be to cyclically bring these structures together and then break them apart again. The lunar tides may have provided exactly that necessary mechanism to bring about life.

Kevin Zanel, a planetary scientist at the NASA Ames Research Center, said in an article on this topic in Scientific American, a lot of origin of life reactions involve getting rid of water. So you look for a means to concentrate your solutions. One way to do that is to throw water up on a hot rock and then have the waters recede and evaporate. So it's possible that without the moon, life on Earth may never have developed. However, even if the moon didn't play a role in the actual emergence of life on the planet, without the moon, that life almost certainly wouldn't have been a successful or diverse. The reality is that there are a number of factors that make the Earth, not just suited for life, but uniquely so.

And virtually all of those factors are the direct result of the influence of the moon. One of the most important of these factors is the tides. The moon isn't just large compared to the Earth at approximately one-sixth its size. It also orbits very closely. This combination means that the moon's gravitational impact on the Earth is particularly profound. As the moon orbits the planet, the atmosphere on the side closest to it bulges in distances measured in miles, the oceans bulge in distances measured in feet, and even the Earth's land mass rises in distances measured in fractions of an inch.

This constant movement of the oceans generates worldwide ocean currents that help to widely redistribute Earth's water nutrients and toxins. Without this stirring effect, ocean water could be stagnant and the oceans would be mostly, if not entirely dead.

The steady rhythm of the tides doesn't just help support life in the oceans. They also help to regulate the climate and temperature of the planet. The tides transport enormous amounts of heat from the temperate equator areas to the frigid poles, significantly mitigating extreme climate fluctuations. Without the lunar tides, climate oscillations would be far more extreme, and our relatively predictable climate patterns would cease to exist. The moon also helps to keep the

Earth's climate stable by stabilizing the spin of the Earth itself. The Earth's axis is tilted at 23.5 degrees, which it turns out is just about perfect for supporting life. on the planet. Even a shift of a few degrees could have catastrophic consequences for climate. Certain areas of the planet would spend significantly more time in direct sunlight, causing previously temperate regions to be as hot as Death Valley, while other places would be plunged into darkness for months at a time, making those areas as cold and hostile to life as the poles. And these extremes wouldn't just have an impact locally, but would throw all of the planet's weather patterns into chaos. It's hard to imagine life as we know it existing in those conditions.

And yet, without the stabilizing influence of the moon, these sorts of shifts in the tilt of the Earth would be inevitable. Beyond its impact on the Earth's temperature and climate, the Moon also protects the Earth from outside threats as well. The Moon's gravity pulls many of the comets, asteroids, and other interstellar objects out of the direct path of the Earth, which has undoubtedly saved us from countless, potentially devastating impacts. The moon essentially acts like the Earth's bouncer, helping to clear out much of the space debris that might threaten life on the planet. Its pockmarked surface tells the story of hundreds of major strikes that were narrowly avoided. And all of that is super interesting, but it's also probably not terribly surprising. As we discussed

back in episode three when we talked about the Fermi paradox. Without more data, it's impossible for us to know how weird our planet or our solar system might be in the context of the greater cosmos. There could be an Earth equivalent in one out of a hundred solar systems or in one out of a billion solar systems. We simply don't know. However, when we look at all of the things that had to go right on our planet for it to be as particularly well calibrated to life as it is, it seems reasonable to assume that we've got an unusually good setup here on Earth. After all, we're here. Life has existed consistently on this planet for the last 3.7 billion years,

long enough for an intelligent species to emerge and contemplate its place in the universe. So the fact that we are here to ask the questions means that we shouldn't be surprised to find that the Earth has been cosmically lucky in many ways. Otherwise, we likely wouldn't be. Maybe for a planet to be stable enough to develop and sustain complex life forms for billions of years, it has to have a moon like ours, one that's big enough and close enough and tidily locked so that it stabilizes and protects the planet, while also churning its oceans with the steady pulse of the tides, creating both the building blocks for life and the ideal place for it to thrive. But still, there are those who argue that the moon is too perfect.

They argue that there are so many things about the moon that are improbable, that it would have been impossible for the moon to be the result of natural phenomena, which leaves really only one other option. Could the moon have been intentionally designed? Let's take a closer look at the evidence. One of the most striking observations to be made about the moon is how unusual the phenomenon of solar eclipses is. From the dawn of human history, we have been fascinated by, solar eclipses. About once every 18 months, somewhere on Earth, there is a total solar eclipse where, for a brief time, the moon moves directly into the path of the sun, covering it perfectly so that only the glow of the sun's corona can be seen around the edges. What few consider,

however, is how many things have to be perfectly aligned for that to be the case. First of all, Although the sun is 400 times bigger than the moon, they appear to be the same size in the sky on Earth. This is because the sun is almost exactly 400 times further away from the Earth than the moon. And while most moons orbit around the equator of their planets, our moon has a slightly tilted orbit that aligns to our orbit around the sun. If those things weren't true, solar eclipses as we know them wouldn't be possible. And I'll admit, when I think about how astroids, astronomically small the chances must be for the moon to be so perfectly aligned as to create solar eclipses, it kind of freaks me out. The odds are just so vanishingly small that that would

happen naturally, that it's hard not to find yourself looking at the moon differently. However, I will splash a little cold water on our collective faces by pointing out that the moon is actually moving away from the earth at the unfathomably slow pace of about an inch and a half a year. And although that movement is so slow as to be imperceptible on any human time scale. If you roll back the tape 4.5 billion years, we can deduce that it would have been 10 times closer to the Earth than it is now, meaning that it would have been much bigger in the sky than the sun in the truly ancient past. And if we play the tape forward 600 million years from now, the moon will be so far away that it will no longer be big enough to block out the light of the sun, and solar eclipses will cease to exist.

So one could argue that the perfect placement of the moon is only an illusion, considering that it hasn't always been and won't always be so perfect. However, considering that solar eclipses have been visible since before the time of the dinosaurs, and will continue to be so for several hundred million more years to come, I think it's still notable. And it's not just the eclipses that call the size and placement of the moon into question. It's anomalous for a few other reasons as well. First of all, it's way too big.

There are over 200 moons in our solar system, and although the Earth is only the fifth largest of the eight planets, it has the fifth largest moon. There are only four moons in the entire solar system that are larger than ours, Jupiter's moons, Ganymede, Callisto, and I.O. And Saturn's moon, Titan. So the issue isn't just the moon's size, but it's size relative to the Earth. The largest moon in the solar system, Ganymed, only about 50% larger than the moon, and yet the diameter of Jupiter is 11 times that of Earth. When we look at the rest of the solar system, it just doesn't make sense that one of the biggest moons would orbit one of the smallest planets. It suggests that maybe there was something

different about how the moon was formed and came to orbit the Earth. And the moon isn't just way bigger than we'd expect it to be. It's also much closer to the Earth. In fact, there are those who argue that because the moon is so big relative to the Earth, and and because it orbits the Earth so closely that it isn't even technically a moon at all. Could the moon secretly be another planet? It turns out that idea is not as crazy as it may sound. In January of 2005, ERIS was discovered, a rocky trans-Newtonian object with its own moon. Aris, as it turns out, was destined to be a planet killer,

and the planet that it killed, not through collision, but through definition, was Pluto. In August of the following year, the International Astronomy Union, or the IAU, announced that, based on the discovery of ERIS, they had voted to demote Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet. This decision was controversial and remained so to this day for a couple of reasons. The first is that it's not exactly clear that the IAU had the authority to make that decision. There is no clear authority that has the final say on the definition of a planet. And this decision was made by an organization made up exclusively of astronomers. Planetary scientists weren't consulted, many of whom object to the fact that the IAU

redefined what a planet is without taking into account any geophysical characteristics of the planet itself. The decision on Pluto was made based on the following definition of a planet. A planet is a body that orbits the sun, is massive enough for its own gravity to make it round, and which has cleared its neighborhood of smaller objects approaching its orbit. It's the last part that caused ERIS to deliver the death blow to Pluto's status as a planet. Because ERIS is larger than Pluto and orbits in its general area, the argument was made that Pluto had failed to clear its neighborhood. However, some still argue that no planetary body ever really entirely clears its neighborhood.

Asteroids and other large objects persist within the orbits of all of the planet. And so the controversy over Pluto rages on, and likely will continue to do so long into the future. And the reason for that is simple. All objects in space are constantly moving and are in a constant state of flux, even if that change is happening on the scale of millions of years. And though some objects in space are clearly an asteroid and some other objects are clearly a planet, there exists a vast spectrum of types of objects in between, and it can be extremely difficult to classify some of these objects into one category or another. And our moon is actually one of these objects that falls into that gray area. It all comes down to our definitions. So is the moon really a moon? Or could it actually be the second planet in a binary system with the Earth? Some would argue that it is,

and this assertion is based on more than just the superficial recognition of the moon's close orbit to the Earth or its relative size. It's based on the definition of a planet itself, and the surprise orbit that the moon takes around the sun. In his book, on time, space, and other things, Isaac Asimov writes, quote, we might look upon the moon then as neither a true satellite of the earth nor a captured one, but as a planet in its own right, moving about the sun in careful step with the earth. To be sure, from within the moon-earth system, the simplest way of picturing the situation is to have the moon revolve around the earth. But if you were to draw a picture of the orbits of the Earth and Moon about the Sun exactly to scale, you would see that the Moon's

orbit is everywhere concave toward the Sun. It's always falling toward the Sun. All the other satellites, without exception, fall away from the Sun through part of their orbits, caught as they are by the superior pull of their primary planet, but not the Moon. End quote. Another way to visualize this is that the Earth's gravity does very little to disrupt the orbit of the Moon around the Sun. And so can we even truly say that the Moon orbits the Earth? Or is its true orbit around the sun? And if the definition of a planet is a body that orbits the Sun, then wouldn't that make the moon a planet? For many, this argument comes down to one thing, the bury center of the Earth-moon system. A berry center is the center of mass around which two bodies orbit each other in space.

Because the gravitational forces between two objects will always be acting on each other, one object never truly orbits another. Rather, both objects orbit the center of mass between them. Because of gravity, the berry center will always be closer to the more massive object. And in the case of the Earth and the Moon, the Barry Center is actually inside of the Earth, about 1,000 miles below the surface. Many have argued that this means that technically the Moon is orbiting the Earth and is therefore a moon. However, if the berry center were outside of the Earth and was located somewhere between the two bodies, then the moon would be a planet. And as we discussed, the moon is actually moving slowly away from the Earth. So it's conceivable that at some point in the

future, the moon will technically be a planet, and yet nothing fundamental about the moon will have changed. See how complicated this can get? It gets even more complicated, because the reality is that scientists have had to admit for decades now, that we actually have no idea how the moon was formed. And with all of the strange peculiarities about the moon, we've been forced to admit that none of our hypotheses really fit the data. When we put together everything that we know about the moon, the moon simply doesn't make sense. And that opens up some very strange and very unsettling possibilities about what might really be going on with our nearest neighbor. Let's start by looking at the various hypotheses for where the moon might have come from. And to do that, we first need to establish

when the moon was formed. And as with basically everything else that has to do with our largest satellite, there are no easy answers. The Apollo missions brought back rocks and other samples from the lunar surface that we have studied and continue to study in order to learn more about the moon, including its makeup and its origins. And one of the most surprising things that we've learned is that the moon is much older than we initially thought. In fact, startlingly, lunar samples have been shown to be anywhere from 10 million to 100 million years older than the oldest rock samples that we found on Earth. So how could this be possible? Could the moon really be older than the Earth? There's one theory for how the moon was formed that would allow for this, and that's what is known

as the capture theory. The basic idea is that way back in the chaos of the early solar system, The path of the moon and the Earth intersected in exactly the right way at exactly the right angle so that the moon was captured by the gravity of the Earth and pulled into its orbit. This would explain how the moon could have been formed before the Earth and then later came to orbit it. However, based on everything that we've discussed about the moon so far, this is so unlikely as to be basically impossible. The moon is so large relative to the Earth and its orbit is so close and so nearly perfectly circular. that it's just simply not feasible for the Earth to have captured the moon in this way. So although this was once a popular theory, it's no longer considered to be viable.

And yet, when we think about the moon and how perfectly placed it is, bigger than it should be and closer than it should be, tidily locked so that we only see one side, rotating in perfect rhythm with the rotation of the Earth, creating the life-giving tides, and perhaps even life itself, while its perfect alignment creates the profound, cycle of the eclipses, it's hard not to wonder. If the moon wasn't captured by the gravity of the earth, could it have been placed into orbit around it by some other means? Could the moon have been placed in orbit around the earth intentionally? It's an intriguing question. Considering the considerable role that the moon plays in making the earth so hospitable to life and the

precision of its unusual placement in orbit, could it be that an intelligent species either created the moon, or more likely, co-opted an existing rocky body in space and placed it in orbit around the Earth in order to foster the development of life on the planet? And could they still be watching us now? It may sound like an absurd proposition, but to be fair, it fits the evidence better than many other more respectable theories around the moon's origins. And this theory is made all the more intriguing by the fact that there is evidence that the moon might, in fact, be hollow. That's right, people. We're talking about the hollow moon theory. My deep and abiding love for the hollow earth theory is well documented on this podcast.

And although you will drag the hollow earth theory out of my cold dead hands, I will grudgingly admit that the evidence for it actually being true is essentially non-existent. However, the same cannot be said for the hollow moon theory. As wild as it may sound, there actually is evidence that the moon might be hollow. or at the very least that it might have massive open caverns concealed within it. One of the goals of the Apollo missions was to learn more about the moon's internal structure. And to do that, they set up remote seismic stations on the moon's surface. And it was through these experiments that they discovered that the moon's composition is very different than we thought.

The first indication that something might be strange about the moon's composition came during Apollo 12. On November 14, 1969, Commander Charles Pete Conrad and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean landed on the lunar surface. Eight hours later, they were reunited with Dick Gordon and the command module and headed back to Earth. But as they departed, they intentionally crashed the lunar module into the moon. It impacted about 40 miles away from the Apollo 12 landing site with the force of one ton of TNT. The resulting shockwave built up and peaked in just eight minutes. Then it took an hour to fully dissipate, much like a gong that continues to vibrate long after it is struck.

Something similar happened on Apollo 13 when the crew conducted a similar controlled crash. It hit with the force of 11.5 tons of TNT. This translated to a seismic impact that peaked after seven minutes, but this time it continued to reverberate for nearly four hours. The vibrations from these two impacts lasted much longer than scientists expected, far longer than any equivalent seismic vibrations last on Earth. It was almost as if the moon was ringing like a bell. This strange result forced scientists to think differently about the moon and its composition,

and has led many to speculate that the moon might, in fact, be hollow. And this raises even more disturbing questions, because as famed astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan wrote in 1966, A natural satellite cannot be a hollow object. So if the moon is hollow, we suddenly have to grapple with the reality that the moon is likely an artificial structure created by an unknown intelligence. And to be honest, I'm not totally sure what to make of any of this. There are, of course, rebuttals to the hollow moon theory. In particular, it has been argued that the bell-like seismic reverberations of the moon relative to what we see on Earth is due to the fact that there is water on Earth

that permeates the surface of the earth like water in a sponge. As energy from an earthquake moves through our planet, that damp material absorbs the energy of the waves, ultimately deadening their effects. But the moon is dry, cool, and rigid, more like a solid rock than a sponge. So even if a moonquake is less intense, there's nothing to slow down the vibrations.

They just go back and forth through the moon until the solid stone eventually stops them. The ringing bell is the shockwaves reverberating through that stone. And hey, that could totally be the case. I mean, it sounds right. But it also raises the question of why scientists were initially so puzzled by these results in the first place. I mean, they already knew that there wasn't water on the moon, right? There's something about that argument that just doesn't sit right with me.

And listen, I'm totally prepared to accept the evidence that the moon is not hollow. I just haven't really been able to find it. The rebuttals that I've found all seem to give those vague, condescending non-ansors that the experts give when answering a question that they don't feel is even worthy of being entertained. In this case, it's usually vaguely referencing a more advanced understanding of lunar seismic activity. To which I say, fantastic. What is that understanding? I'd love to hear more about that. But no one ever seems to take it further.

And that's frustrating. That said, I'm fairly certain that there is an explanation for why those lunar module crashes made the moon ring like a bell that doesn't involve an alien intelligence creating a giant spaceship out of a hollowed-out moon and using it to surveil the earth. It's just that I don't see any virtue in throwing out hypotheses based on the giggle factor rather than on the actual evidence. The reality is that we understand so little about the universe and our place within it. We look at the moon in the sky every night, but we still know so little about it that it remains, at best, a mysterious stranger. It would be incredibly arrogant of us to assume that reality is bound by our naive and narrow conception of what is ridiculous and what is not. But even if the moon is not a hollowed out alien superstructure, there are still some things about its composition that are very peculiar, and which have perplexed scientists for decades. and to understand why, we have to go back to how the moon was formed in the first place.

The leading theory to explain the formation of the moon is called the Giant Impact Theory. In this theory, a Mars-sized object collided with the Earth billions of years ago, and the moon formed from the debris disk that subsequently formed around the planet. This theory works to explain so many of the weird idiosyncrasies about the moon, including its large size and close orbit. it also worked in the models to explain the length of the Earth's day. So this theory has a lot to recommend it. However, it has one major flaw.

This theory predicts that the moon is made mostly from the Mars-sized planet, but that's just not what we see. In many ways, the Earth and the Moon are identical twins. The isotopic elements of a planet function sort of like its genetic code. The isotopes from the Earth and the Moon are the same. which means that they were made of the same materials. And of all of the things that don't make sense about the moon, this is the thing that doesn't make sense the most.

And it also happens to be the hardest to dismiss. We just don't see this with other planets. Every other planet and every other moon in the solar system all have their own distinct genetic code. No other planet is a genetic twin with any of its moons. So it's very weird. And for many scientists, this was clear. evidence that the giant impact theory was doomed. There was just no way to use the existing

models to make a moon with the same genetic code as the Earth without assuming that they somehow had the same genetic code to begin with, which is simply too astronomically unlikely to really be considered. The problem was that there weren't really any other better answers. The fact that the Earth and the Moon were genetic twins was seemingly impossible, and yet they are. And with that realization, it suddenly doesn't seem so crazy that some look at our moon with suspicion, because by all accounts, it shouldn't be there. And what are we to make of that? Well, it turns out that this mystery may have an answer after all. Just a few years ago, planetary scientist and MacArthur Genius, Sarah T. Stewart, and a team of her students decided to take on the task of

saving the giant impact theory. They started by going back to the beginning and questioning all of their previous assumptions. Something that had made the giant impact theory so popular in the first place was the way that it had been modeled was able to explain the size of the moon and the length of the Earth's day. However, Stewart's team began to question if maybe there was something else that could have explained these things. Questioning these fundamental assumptions about the model allowed them to tweak the model and try out different scenarios, including dramatically increasing the speed of the Earth's spin. In these scenarios with a fast spinning Earth, they found something astounding. Stuart and her team had discovered a new kind of astronomical object. It took the team

three years of analyzing the data to really understand what they were looking at. And part of the reason for that goes back to the very definition of a planet itself. As you'll recall, one of the main qualifications for being a planet is that a body must be massive enough for its own gravity to make it round. However, Stewart's team found that immediately after an impact of this nature, the young Earth would no longer have had a surface. With the entire planet vaporized, the planet would have been made entirely of gas. They got progressively more dense with depth. Essentially, the Earth would have been just like Jupiter. And as this hot, fast-spinning, gaseous body continued its spin, the equator would get wider and wider until it pushed beyond

a spheroidal shape and became a disk. This new object is no longer a planet, but it is made of planets. The models showed that in just a few hours, the materials of both the Earth and the Mars-sized object that it collided with would have been entirely mixed together, finally giving us an explanation for how the Moon and the Earth could share the same genetic code. They named this new astronomical object, a senescia. Okay, but wait, that's a nice story in all. but I'm sure some of you are wondering, how does this explain how the moon could be older than the Earth? Wouldn't this mean that they were technically formed, or rather reformed, at the same time? There's actually another possible explanation for that, and it all comes down to the geological activity of the moon.

Although we used to think that the moon had no geological activity, we now know that isn't the case. However, the amount of geological activity on the moon is extremely limited when compared to what we see on Earth. Due to volcanic activity in plate tectonics, the surface of the Earth is basically turned over over the course of hundreds of millions of years, whereas the changes on the moon on the same timeline are much more subtle. So this could be the explanation for why the rocks on the moon are older. There are just older rocks still around to be found. It's too early to say for certain if this new theory for the creation of the moon will stand the test of time, or whether new emerging data will again throw its origins into question.

However, it does seem to tick most of the boxes. So should we feel silly for considering that the moon might be an alien superstructure? I don't think so. In fact, I'd argue that our wonder and curiosity aren't mere childlike whimsy to be subverted and grown out of. They are our most profound tools for discovery. In a TED talk about her discovery, Dr. Stewart said the following about the process that allowed her and her team to finally crack the mystery of the moon's origins. what do you do when faced with the unknown? How do you even start? We questioned everything. What is a planet? When is a planet no longer a planet anymore? We played with these new ideas.

We had to get rid of our old ideas. And by playing, I could throw away all of the data, all of the rules of the real world, and free my mind to explore. And by making a mental space where I could try out outrageous ideas and then bring them back into the real world to test, them, I could learn. And by playing, we learned so much, unquote. So I don't think that we should ever allow ourselves to be shamed for being willing to throw out the rules and simply play with ideas. Speculation is not the same as belief. An entertaining an idea is not the same as internalizing it. And the willingness to color outside the lines, try on new ideas, and consider all possibilities no matter how ridiculous they may seem, isn't just a virtue, but is 100% necessary to the rigorous

application of the scientific method. A problem that we've encountered many times on this journey is that all too often, when confronted with a data point that breaks the current paradigm and hints at strange new possibilities that we're told simply can't be possible. It is the instinct of the mainstream to simply ignore that data point, and to treat with derision anyone who dares to question what the rogue data point might mean. The reality is that we went for decades without a workable model for the origins of the moon. The hollow moon theory might sound ridiculous to you, and that's absolutely fair. However, unlike other theories that were being presented by the mainstream at the time,

that theory at least had the virtue of being able to explain some of the moon's more perplexing anomalies, instead of simply brushing them under the rug. And who are we to say what is ridiculous and what isn't? The idea that giant dragon-like lizards once roamed the earth. That the universe isn't just expanding but accelerating, that the mere act of observing an event can change its outcome. All of these are scientific realities that would have once been considered to be preposterous.

True scientific rigor requires the intellectual courage to always recognize that the horizons of your understanding do not constitute the limits of what is. Imagination and speculation are necessary ingredients for scientific breakthroughs. And cynicism, though fashionable, will always be the enemy of progress. And now, it's finally time to talk about the moon landing. It's easy to speculate about the moon from down here on Earth, but between 1969 and 1972, 12 human beings actually walked on its surface.

What did they find on that bear? in world? And what might they be hiding? And as always, when treading new ground on our journey down the UFO rabbit hole, I like to stop to take a second to recall what Tom DeLong has said about the topic at hand. If you're wondering why we care about what the guy from Blink 182 thinks, I strongly recommend that you go back and listen to episode six and seven in the Mr. DeLong goes to Washington series. As most of you will recall, DeLong had some very interesting thoughts on the moon landing. assertion has been that all of the conspiracy theories about the moon landing being faked have

actually been the result of a massive misinformation campaign on the part of the United States government. According to DeLong, the conspiracy theory that the moon landing was faked was created by the government to keep people from asking the question that they didn't want them to ask, which is, what did the Apollo astronauts find on the moon? And, of course, the fact that Tom DeLong believes it doesn't necessarily mean that it's true. However, we have to grapple with the fact that, one, we have solid proof that DeLong was being briefed by high-ranking members of the military and intelligence communities who would be the most likely to have information about UFOs. And two, these same individuals came forward publicly alongside DeLong and have never publicly disavowed him or directly disputed his claims. So we have to assume that, at the very least, some of what he is saying has some truth to it.

So could Tom be right about the moon landing? It turns out that there is a story in the UFO lore that supports this theory. The story goes something like this. When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, they were not alone. As they stepped onto the barren lunar surface, they saw giant craft near a crater in the distance. Not wanting to alarm the public, Armstrong switched over to a medical channel to communicate the message back to NASA. However, back on Earth, some radio hams with their own VHF receiving facilities that bypass NASA's broadcasting outlets allegedly picked up the following exchange.

Apollo 11. They're here. They're watching us. NASA. What's there? Mission Control calling Apollo 11. Apollo 11. These babies are huge, sir. Enormous. Oh my God. You wouldn't believe it. I'm telling you. There are are other spacecraft out here lined up on the far side of the crater edge. They're on the moon watching us. So could this actually be true? Could the Apollo 11 astronauts really have made contact with a non-human intelligence that was watching them on the moon? If so, it would make sense that the government would want to cover that up. An occupied moon is one of the most objectively terrifying ideas that one can conjure up. The implications for humanity would almost certainly not be great. And might this explain why after landing there six times between

1969 and 1972, and despite the near universal assumption that the Apollo missions would lead to the eventual colonization and development of the moon, that we haven't returned to the moon in 50 years? Perhaps. But it's impossible to know for sure. What's frustrating about this story is that it's entirely based upon hearsay. Both private citizens and alleged former members of NASA's communication team have come forward at various times to confirm that this exchange really happened. But without a recording or some other way to verify that this actually happened, it's impossible to make a call on this one way or the other. It's a cool story, but we need more evidence to consider it to be anything more than just a story. I will say, though, that this story is a hard one to walk

away from entirely. Although there is no smoking gun to prove that the Apollo astronauts encountered a non-human intelligence while on the moon, this is one of those cases where there is so much smoke that it can sometimes feel impossible that there isn't some sort of a fire. And that smoke comes in the form of the words and actions of the astronauts themselves. To me, one of the most haunting and compelling images in all of the UFO lore is that of the press conference that occurred with the Apollo 11 astronauts after they returned to Earth. While in many of their pre-launch media appearances, the Apollo team of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins seemed jovial and excited about their mission, the post-flight press conference struck a

decidedly different tone. Rather than seeming proud and enthusiastic about their history-making trip to the moon, the three men seem subdued and somber. They seem weirdly disconnected and uncomfortable, even angry and resentful at times. The words coming out of their mouths are the right ones, but something about the whole press conference just feels off. Many people have pointed to this press conference over the years as proof that the Apollo 11 team encountered something on the moon that terrified them, something that they were told to keep quiet about. And I have to say, when I watch the video, it's very easy to see where they get that impression. I am no expert on human psychology or body language, and I don't claim to be. But in my admittedly, highly subjective

opinion. When I watched that press conference, it's hard to not feel like what you're looking at in the behavior of the Apollo astronauts is the aftermath of significant trauma. In short, they look like they've been through some shit. And to be fair, they had. Even if we were to take the possibility of an encounter with a non-human intelligence off the table, what the Apollo astronauts went through is something that the vast majority of humans that have ever lived could scarcely even imagine. Leaving the earth and entering the endless black vacuum of space. The profundity of that experience is as hard to overstate as it is for us to truly conceptualize. We spend every second of our lives here on Earth. It is our context in the stage upon which all of human history as we know it has unfolded.

And for even the most well-traveled, the Earth is so large that any one person can only ever hope to see a tiny fraction of it. So what would it mean to be able to see the Earth from a distance? to look out the window and to see the fragility of the planet that is home to everyone that you've ever known, to everyone that has ever lived, to see the delicate whisper of the atmosphere that envelops this green and blue world, and how little separates this gleaming jewel from the infinite blackness of space. I'd argue that it's impossible for any of us to truly grasp what that experience would be like without having lived it. And because this experience is so foreign to us, I don't know that we can necessarily make assumptions about the mental state of the astronauts after their return,

no matter how tempting it may be to do so. It could be that the strange demeanor of the Apollo 11 astronauts at the post-flight press conference was due to the stress of going through such an overwhelming experience. And there's another point that I think is important to make about the press conference, which is that it didn't happen immediately following the astronauts return to Earth on July 24, 1969. but 19 days later on August 12th. Most of the time when I hear people reference this press conference, it seems like they're making the assumption that it happened within a day or so after splashdown, when in fact

it happened nearly three weeks later. It doesn't make their behavior any less strange, but it does significantly increase the possibility that their demeanor was in response to something other than their experience in space. So while the Apollo 11 press conference is certainly compelling, it hardly qualifies as proof of anything. However, this press conference hardly represents the only time that the words and actions of former astronauts have seemed to hint that there might have been something more going on during the Apollo missions than was ever admitted to the public. We've spoken

before about Ross Colthard, the award-winning investigative journalist and author of the phenomenal book in plain sight. Coldheart's sterling reputation as a hard-nosed journalist who is unafraid to tackle even the most daunting stories has helped to bring a new level of credibility to the UFO topic through his investigations. Listen to what he had to say on an episode of theories of everything with Kurt Jiamengal when asked about the moon landing. What was found on the moon, Ross? I was watching this documentary by Red Panda Koala, and I'll link that in the description. It's a great documentary on Tom DeLong, and he was saying that what happened with the US that went to the moon

the afterward US was involved in disinformation saying that we didn't go to the moon so that people can squabble over who over whether or not the moon landing was real and then not ask the question well what did they find on the moon

and apparently there was something interesting so I'm curious what was found on the moon I don't know but what I can tell you is that Edgar Mitchell told my friend the spaceman who was one of Edgar's closest personal friends, that he believed that every Apollo mission was followed up,

observed while there, and followed back. And Edgar even told his friend that when he was on the moon, in the course of coming in, flying the lunar module into a landing position on, I think it was the Sea of Morris. I can't remember again, a precise name, but he claimed to my friends that he saw an object which, funnily enough, when you actually look at the film, the NASA film of the lunar module landing, if you look where he says he saw the object, you can see something that's

anomalous. But he says that when they landed and he got out of the lunar module and was doing his walk, he looked back across to see if he could see that object and he should have been able to see it, but he couldn't see it anymore. So Edgar Mitchell's not the only one. He's not the only astronaut, and people really should take a much closer look at this. He's not the only person who said that he's seen stuff. A lot of astronauts have reported seeing anomalous phenomena, but frankly, if there is stuff on the moon, I just don't know. I'm not privy to any secret information. Nobody's given me a briefing about it, but certainly astronauts have reported seeing anomalous phenomena there for years. And I don't think NASA has given a full accounting of all of the

anomalous objects that have been seen from the space station or indeed from the Gemini or Apollo capsules. Crazy, right? And though I have no real way to confirm Coldheart's claims about what Apollo 14 astronaut and sixth man to walk on the moon, Edgar Mitchell said to his friend, there are plenty of publicly documented instances of Mitchell making similar claims. On April 19, 1996, in an interview with Dateline NBC, Mitchell said that he had met with officials from three different countries who claimed to have had personal encounters with extraterrestrials. He offered his opinion the evidence for such alien contact was very strong and had been classified by governments who were covering up visitations and the existence of aliens' beings'

bodies in places such as Roswell, New Mexico. In 2004, Mitchell told the St. Petersburg Times that a cabal of insiders in the U.S. government were studying recovered alien bodies and that this group had stopped briefing U.S. presidents after John F. Kennedy. He said, we all know that UFOs are real. Now the question is where they come from. On July 23, 2008, Edgar Mitchell was interviewed on Kerrang Radio. In this interview, Mitchell claimed the Roswell crash was real and that aliens have contacted humans several times, but that governments have hidden the truth for 60 years. years, stating, I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been

visited on this planet, and the UFO phenomenon is real. In 2015, Mitchell said in an interview with the Daily Mirror that extraterrestrials had been attempting to keep us from going to war with Russia and help create peace on Earth. He also said that White Sands was a testing ground for atomic weapons, and that's what the extraterrestrials were interested in. They wanted to know about our military capabilities. And Edgar Mitchell isn't the only astronaut who's made claims about the existence of UFOs. In September 1999, Gordon Cooper, the pilot of the last and longest Mercury space flight, appeared on the radio show Coast to Coast. In that interview, Cooper actually denied a longstanding report that had been repeated over the years by various well-respected eophologists, including

Jay Allen Heineck and Jacques Foulet, that he saw a greenish object with a red-tailed, moved past his Mercury 9 spacecraft in 1963. No, somebody made a lot of money selling lies on that one, Cooper told host Art Bell. It was totally untrue, sorry to say. However, the retired Air Force colonel, who once lectured the United Nations on the reality of UFOs, made it clear that he held an unshakable belief in extraterrestrial intelligence, thanks largely to a personal experience. He told Bell about an encounter which took place over Germany in the early 1950s, in which

which he saw multiple flying saucers flying in formation. At the time, he had assumed that they must be some kind of secret Soviet technology. But looking back, he said that he suspected that it was some kind of an extraterrestrial vehicle. He also claimed that he saw a UFO land at Edwards Air Force Base in California in 1957. Cooper said that he filmed the event with a camera crew at the base. afterward, he handed it over to a high-ranking officer from Washington, and he never saw or heard about it ever again. In 2014, Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin in the sci-fi documentary Aliens on the Moon was shown saying, quote, I saw this illumination that was moving with respect to the stars. We were smart enough not to say, Houston, there's a light out there that's following us. So technically, it becomes an unidentified flying object.

Now, to be fair, Aldrin did later clarify that he felt that his statement was taken out of context. It's pretty clear that he's not necessarily saying that he saw a UFO, but rather that he saw something which was unidentified. That is an important distinction. And frankly, given the freewheeling and sensationalist approach of the film, it seems pretty unlikely that he was aware ahead of time of the claims that were being made. So at best, there's a big asterisk next to this one. But at the same time, it could also be argued that Aldrin was just covering his tracks after saying more than he should have. And I personally think that just the fact that he made it clear that the Apollo astronauts would have known better than to say anything to NASA about it if they did,

in fact, see a UFO, is an interesting enough claim to make this worth noting. And there are former astronauts who have made even more astonishing claims. In September of this year, former Apollo astronaut Al Warden shocked the hosts of a British TV show, Good Morning Britain, when he responded to a question about aliens by saying, quote, we are the aliens who come from somewhere else. If you don't believe me, go get books on ancient Sumerians. And to me, that's the most interesting part of this whole story. Not so much what the astronauts might have seen on the moon,

but the way that their involvement with the space program has impacted their personal belief systems. Because here's the thing. Maybe the astronauts encountered UFOs in space and on the moon, or maybe they didn't. I'd argue that it seems like they saw something up there, but even if we entirely seed that point, we're still left with a considerable mystery on our hands. And here's what I mean by that. I think it's fair to assume, at the very least, that the astronauts of the early space program would have had some level of access to privileged information regarding our government's interaction with UFOs. The Apollo missions began in 1961,

which was 14 years after the Kenneth Arnold citing in the subsequent Roswell incident, which served as the kickoff for our modern conception of the UFO phenomenon, and brought it clearly into the public awareness. And you'll recall that in the following weeks, the National Security Act was signed into law. This monumental piece of legislation called for a restructuring of the Department of Defense, including the creation of the National Security Council, the creation of the Air Force as its own entity separate from the Army and the creation of the CIA. And just a few weeks after that, in September of 1947, General Nathan Twinning penned a now-famous letter

about the flying disks that were being reported around the country, writing that the craft were something real and not visionary or fictitious. So we know that the government believed UFOs to be real at that time. And there's extensive evidence that extreme measures were being taken behind that. the scenes to respond to this unprecedented new threat. So knowing that, it seems reasonable to assume that at that point that they would have started to send people into space, that those people were probably briefed on what they could possibly run into up there. The last thing NASA wants during any mission is a surprise, because surprises in space are how people wind up dead. So the idea that the astronauts wouldn't have been made aware of the reality of the UFO phenomenon

seems incredibly unlikely. And to be clear, astronauts are exactly the kind of people that you would entrust with this information. They have extensive military backgrounds. They have terminal degrees in scientific fields. They've undergone extensive background checks and psychological evaluations to determine that they are of sound mind. Astronauts are the very best and brightest of our very best and brightest. In short, these are not people who are given to flights of fancy or irrational beliefs. So whether or not they actually saw anything up there, what I find most interesting are the beliefs that astronauts have about things like the reality of extraterrestrial intelligences, the meaning of the UFO phenomenon, and its interaction with humanity throughout history.

These are people with privileged information and with the military and education background necessary to make some pretty informed guesses about what they think it all might mean. And with many of the former astronauts, what they believe, is as fascinating as it is bizarre. Take, for instance, Edgar Mitchell. Mitchell reported that on his return to Earth after the 1971 Apollo 14 moon landing, that he had an experience comparable to Saviculpa Samadhi. In the Buddhist tradition, Saviculpa Samadhi is a state in which the mind is still active and the yogi is still attached to the bodily and worldly distractions, but he or she gets a glimpse of bliss and the underlying oneness that connects us all. That profound

experience led him to create the Institute of Noetic Sciences in 1973, an organization that is still active today. The word noetic comes from the Greek word nois, which means mind or ways of knowing. Writing in the Huffington Post, the Institute's director of research pointed to philosopher William James's 1902 definition of the word as, quote, states of insight into the depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all in articulate though they remain. And as a rule, they carry with them a curious sense of authority, unquote. As for what it actually does, the Institute conducts research on topics such as spontaneous remission, meditation, consciousness, alternative healing practices,

consciousness-based health care, spirituality, human potential, psychic abilities, psychokinesis, and the survival of consciousness after bodily death. I mean, it's interesting, right? And even more interesting when you think about how his belief in those extraordinary things might have been informed and influenced by his belief in UFOs and non-human intelligence. And then there's this story that is so strange that at first I couldn't believe it was real. And once I confirmed that it was, I couldn't. belief that I'd never heard it before, and it involves the single most famous name in the

history of the space program, Neil Armstrong. After returning from the moon and doing the obligatory press afterward, Neil Armstrong mostly shunned the spotlight. He was a private man and could even be shy at times. However, in August of 1976, Armstrong emerged from his life of relative anonymity to join an expedition deep into the jungles of Ecuador. But what was he looking for? Just a few years prior, in 1973, Swiss writer and ancient alien theorist Eric von Danikin released his book, The Gold of the Gods.

In that book, he recounted the tale of an Argentinian explorer who claimed to have explored a cave in Ecuador called Cueva de los Taos in 1969. There he claimed to have discovered an enormous ancient treasure, including mounds of gold, unusual sculptures, and most notably, a mysterious library with giant books made of solid metal. The books were said to be inscribed with some unknown language.

Legends surrounding this metal library suggests that this library contain knowledge from an advanced non-human intelligent species that gave ancient wisdom to humans and helped to plant the seeds of civilization. And the books were said to contain information about advanced extraterrestrial technology that could change life as we know it on this planet if it were to be discovered. As a result of the claims, published in Van Daniken's book, an expedition to the cave was organized by a Scottish gentleman by the name of Stan Hall in 1976. One of the largest and most expensive cave explorations ever undertaken. The expedition involved over a hundred people, including experts in a variety

of fields, British and Ecuadorian military personnel, eight experienced British cavers and a film crew to capture it all. In short, it doesn't sound at all like the kind of scene that the notoriously private Armstrong would have been into. And yet, he was there, front and center, helping to lead a team into the jungle in search of a lost alien treasure. I mean, what? Granted, the expedition was ultimately unsuccessful, but still, the fact that Neil Armstrong willingly and publicly attached his name to this, braved the cameras and the press, and went to the jungle in search of lost knowledge from an alien intelligence is just frankly wild. I don't even really know what to do with that. But at the very least, we can say that Neil Armstrong, the first man on the moon and someone

whom I would argue was certainly read into whatever realities lie behind the U.S. government's secrecy regarding the UFO phenomenon, clearly didn't think that the existence of a secret store of alien treasure in a cave in Ecuador was a crazy idea. And not only did he not think it was crazy. He thought that it was enough within the realm of possibility that he was willing to publicly attach his name to the expedition and join them with their camera crews in the jungle. And you have to imagine that NASA couldn't have been too thrilled about that. But he went anyway. It's impossible not to wonder what it was that Neil Armstrong knew and what he may have experienced that would lead him on such an unlikely adventure. And that's where we'll pick up next time. Because as

As we'll see, we've only just begun to scratch the surface of the strangeness and mystery around the early space program. The reality is that the strange beliefs and interests of the likes of Edgar Mitchell and Neil Armstrong are not the exception and the story of our journey to space, but the rule. A cult and esoteric practices permeated the culture of the early rocket programs in the U.S., Germany, and the Soviet Union, providing both the motivation, and many would argue, means by which humanity took its first intrepid steps into the stars. Until next time.