The Pour Over Today - TPO Explains | Why Did We Go to the Moon… Again?

Episode Date: April 11, 2026

Readers of The Pour Over pick a topic to have explained, and Jason or Kathleen have to get Joe to understand it in less than 30 minutes… This week, Jason is explaining NASA's Artemis program. Looking to support us? You can choose to pay ⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check out our sponsors! We actually use and enjoy every single one. Cru Wild Alaskan HelloFresh Christian Real Estate Network Quince Qualia Life QAVA CCCU Upside Mosh LMNT The Missing Messiah Compelled Podcast I Choose Love TPO Corrections Page

Today's episode is brought to you by our lead sponsor, Crew. Okay, obviously there's a controversy about did we actually land on the moon. So it feels like kind of the conspiracy. Like the JFK assassination and the moon landing are like your, you're like starter conspiracies, you know. What are your thoughts on moon tourism? You want to go to the moon? Yeah. So shout out to Spotify username G.J.

who commented on our last TPO Explains episode suggesting that we talk about the Artemis program. Yeah, Gege. Gege, our good old friend Gigi, thank you for the suggestion. So what do I think about it? It's pretty mind-blowing. Yeah. What's happening right now? All right.

Let's jump into it. What is the Artemis program, Joe? From what I understand, it is the name of the NASA initiative to, orbit the moon. So it's inclusive of going like beyond and on the far side that we can't see from where we're at in Earth. So that's like from what I understand like the groundbreaking, what's different with this trip to the moon is they're going to the far side and going around that orbit, which has never been done before.

Yeah. Everything you said is true. It is not, so the Artemis program has four missions, and this is Artemis 2. Oh. So the Artemis program as a whole is, so in I think Greek mythology, Artemis was the sister of Apollo, and so we had all the Apollo missions. Now we have all the Artemis missions of returning to the moon. And NASA says under Artemis, NASA will send astronauts on increasingly difficult missions. to explore more of the moon for scientific discovery, economic benefits,

and to build our foundation for the first crude missions to Mars. So there are a few stated goals in there. Establish a long-term, sustainable human presence on and around the moon, use the moon as a testing ground and stepping stone for going to Mars and conduct new science specifically around water ice, not just any ice, because space and the moon are cold, so lots of things freeze. So you have to specify water ice at the lunar South Pole. So that is, that's the Artemis program.

And then we have the four missions. So actually, let's start, let's start backwards at mission number four. Yeah. So the goal of mission number four is a crude moon landing on the moon south pole. So we're putting boots back on the moon or maybe for the first time. Oh, are we going to go there? Yeah, we'll go there briefly. Just to clarify, do you know why it's like a crude landing?

Like that word specifically, is there anything specific about crude? C-R-E-W, crew. Oh, a crew landing. Yes. So it is a crude aircraft, C-R-E-W-E-D. It is not a, we're not just sending a robot. Yes. We are sending humans.

Got it. You know, we talked about crude oil. That's right. Are we, what we're doing that again? So, crew, there's a crew of people. A crew of people will land on the moon. 2028 is the targets. All right.

So we're starting here on Earth, you and me, Joe. Nice. And we want to land. We want to end up on the moon. Well, we want to end up back on Earth. And that's actually an important part. That's like half the mission. So we start with what is called a space launch system, SLS.

So this is NASA's single-use rocket. And it's built with legacy partners like Boeing and Northrop Grumman. And so this is what you think of. It's the big rocket, right? Then you have the Orion capsule, which is also built by NASA in conjunction with Lockheed Martin. and that's on the top of the rocket and gets launched into space. The rocket falls down back into the sea is done, you know? Right.

And the crew is now in space in the Orion capsule. The name of the Orion capsule that the Artemis II crew took around the moon was called Integrity. So if you've heard integrity, that is their name, the crew guys. to name their Orion space capsule. Gotcha. So it gets the moon, if you want to, if the plan with landing on the moon is Orion then goes and gets into the lunar orbit and meets up with a human landing system, an HLS, okay? And this is new to the Artemis mission. This is where their NASA is partnering with commercial companies. So specifically SpaceX and Blue Origin. So you have Elon Musk's company and Jeff Bezos's company.

Right. So they've created these human landing systems. So SpaceX will, it has won the contract for the Artemis 4 landing. So when Artemis 4 in 2028 hopefully lands on the South Pole, they will take Orion to and then meet up with a SpaceX Starship. they have to then meet that in orbit, leave the Orion capsule and get into the Starship. And then Starship is like a moon taxi and goes down to the surface of the moon. They spend some time there. And then they get back in Starship and go back up, meet up with Orion again.

And Orion takes them all the way back down to an ocean. I don't know which ocean. but they will splash down in Orion in the Orion capsule somewhere in the ocean. Wow. That is insane. Yes. So, okay, so we have Artemis 4, which is all of that. That's what we just said.

Artemis 3 is specifically testing the rendezvous and docking between NASA and Starship and the SpaceX. So SpaceX is going to launch Starship ahead of time, and it will be waiting for the Artemis 4 crew. Mentioned Blue Origin. Blue Origin also won this contract. Well, they originally lost it, and then they sued, and they were eventually awarded future missions. And so Artemis 3 is definitely going to test the docking with Starship and maybe also

with Blue Origins. I believe it's called Blue Moon. So that's their moon taxi. And so Artemis 3 is there is a crew, but it will be in Earth's orbit. And they're just saying like, hey, up in space, can we get these things to connect and go in between these vehicles and stuff like that. Artemis 2 is what we are experiencing now. It should, so this is coming out on Saturday. The crew should splash down safely on Friday.

and that was a test of basically Orion and saying, hey, you're going to spend 10 days in space. We'll also get to see the far side of the moon and all these things, but we're not actually going to land on the moon. And Artemis 1 was launched back in 2022. It was uncrewed and it was just a test flight around the moon with no people. You mentioned that we're headed towards Artemis 4 with the land. standing on the south pole of the moon.

What am I missing something? Is there something so special and specific about the south pole? So the south pole specifically gets angled to sunlight. And there are craters and some crater rims receive almost continuous sunlight. So that's really good for solar power. You can, you know, lay out solar panels and get endless energy from the sun. There's no atmosphere, no weather. You're just good.

You get good sun. But the real exciting thing is there is water ice, okay? Right. So not dry ice, which is frozen carbon dioxide or ammonia ice, but water ice, frozen H-2-O. And we know this because there was a, well, a crude CRU-D-E, in my mind, crude mission seems a little imprecise. In 2009, NASA deliberately crashed a rocket into the moon in one of these deep craters on the South Pole. And then they were analyzing the debris, all the dust that came up. And they're, you know, being NASA, somehow they're able to say like, hey, there is H2O in that debris cloud.

So they confirmed that there's that there's H2O. Whoa. And in the deep in the, so these craters, the rim of the crater, the. some of them have permanent sunlight. The bottom of the crater never gets any sunlight. It's like negative 300 degrees. So if there is any water, it is certainly frozen. Yeah.

And do you know why they want water? My first thought is people want to see if life will be sustainable on the moon? So that's my thought. And certainly, maybe there's light. If there's water, maybe there's life. and they do plan on, like, drinking it, you know. But water is rocket fuel. Did you know this?

What? It is what fuels rockets. Water? Yes. So, and this is literally like one of the huge benefits is if they can find water, then you have rocket fuel on the moon and you can get people who want to go to Mars to the moon and then take this water, turn it into rocket fuel, and get to Mars and you're starting that much closer to Mars.

Okay, I'm glad that I am not alone. Let me tell you how to make rocket fuel. Ooh, okay. Okay. So first, you're on the South Pole of Mars, and you mine you some ice, some water ice. South Pole of Mars or the moon? The moon, sorry.

Yeah. Yes. Hey, who knows, though. Maybe there's water ice on the South Pole of Mars. So the hope, they are confident that there is H2O on the moon. They don't know whether or not it is pure or, like, mixed with lunar soil and how useful or difficult it will be to get. And so that's part of what Artemis is doing. But let's assume that there's some really pretty clear ice, you know.

You then melt it into water and you use solar power from the sunlight crater rims to electrolyze it and separate it. separate out the hydrogen from the oxygen. You then make it really cold and liquefy the hydrogen and oxygen, and you now have rocket fuel, okay? So hydrogen and oxygen want to react to one another. Right. So if you have liquid hydrogen, liquid oxygen, and you don't do this at home because we're creating an explosion, but you release them and you ignite, then they combust and you have

the output is an explosion and if well contained, lots of thrust and pure water. So when you are watching, so the SLS, the space launch system that NASA's rocket uses and was used to launch Artemis 2 and all of them, when you see those big white plumes of smoke, that is pure water vapor. Wow. So they are using hydrogen and oxygen and a spark and perfectly controlled. Again, don't try this at home. And using that as propulsion. And so there's this really like beautiful poetry of it's like water in, water out, perfectly clean.

Nate was saying he's like, there's no way. He's like, there's no way that doesn't smell. You know, I got to I want to smell. It's going to smell. But yeah, don't get close enough to smell the rocket being launched. That's incredible. I had no idea. So that's part of the pull to the South Pole is saying, hey, we think that if there is water ice, it's going to be here, or we know there is, we don't know how pure it is, and then we can use this as rocket fuel and create like a, it's a huge step towards creating an actual, actually useful lunar base if you can set up some permanent settlement there and be, you know, electrolyzing water and then turning it into rocket fuel.

Yeah, that's a perfect pit stop. on the way to maybe Mars in the future. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yep, pretty wild. Yeah. Hey, it's Zan from the Pourover. I love cooking, but in this busy season of life,

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With 50-plus chef-crafted meals every week, there's always something new to try. And if life gets busy, you can skip a week or pause any time. Go to hellofresh.com slash TPO 10 FM now to get 10 free meals plus a free Nutra Bullet Ultra Plus 2-1 compact kitchen system. a $189.99.99 value on your third box. Free meals applied as a discount on the first box, new subscribers only varies by plan. Disclaimer must order the third box by May 31, 2026. Jason, I'm going to go where not many have wanted us to go, just like people going to the moon. You mentioned and alluded to, you know, if people really had landed on the moon before.

So, okay, obviously there's a controversy about did we actually land on the moon. So it feels like kind of the conspiracy. Like the JFK assassination and the moon landing are like your, you're like starter conspiracies, you know. So are you comfortable with me going there since we're on the topic of the moon? Yeah. And I will start by saying I personally definitely think we landed on the moon. I am generally a like trusting guy. probably I probably trust institutions and humanity more than I should.

But so I researched why do people think the moon landing is fake and like what are the most credible reasons. So I'll go through the big reasons that people say that it was fake and then the counter argument to it. And I'll give my, also my, what is most compelling to me and least compelling to me about it. Great. Let's do it. See where Joe lands.

All right. So reason number one, the flag was waving. Have you heard this? I have. Yep. Yeah. So the conspiracy, and I'm just going to call them conspiracies, the common sections open, people, is that the flag was waving. Right.

And there's no wind on the moon. So this had to be shot in a studio. And the counter to that is that the flag was designed with a horizontal rod along the top, to keep it extended because they knew that there was no weather on the moon and that this would, it would just hang limp without this rod. And then what you're seeing is when the astronauts touch it, it oscillates and that lasts much longer than it would on Earth because there's no atmosphere, no air to slow it down. Yeah. Yeah. So it would just keep moving in perpetuity.

Yeah. Not forever. And I don't totally know why forever. Why not forever? Yeah. Maybe there's some atmosphere. Like resistance to it. There are no stars in the photos.

So we have all these photos from space. And again, why can't you see the stars? The counter to this is it's daytime on the moon. And so in the same way, like the camera and the 1960s camera is very much noticing the sun's brightness. and it is just dampening the brightness of the stars. So the same reason we can't see the stars during the day on Earth because the sun is closer and that's what is noticed. Yep.

The Van Allen radiation belts would have killed the astronauts. I had not heard this one. I'm not familiar with that one either. So there are intense bands of radiation surrounding the Earth, and apparently this is no good for humans to go into. And the, I don't know much about this one, but the claim is, hey, if you, if you go too far away from Earth, you're just going to die because of all the radiation. And the counter is NASA knew about this. There's like, there are more intense and less intense areas.

And so they went towards the thinness areas of radiation and intentionally moved through those quicker. And that the astronauts were really only exposed to like the equivalent. of a few chest x-rays and not enough to kill them. Gotcha. And then this, this one, the technology didn't exist because we can't even do it now. So how could we have possibly done this? In the 1960s. In the 1960s.

And then not been able to do it in 2000, you know? I will say this is to me the most credible of the arguments. All right. And part of it is because we don't have the original Saturn 5 blueprints, and documents outlining the manufacturing process for a lot of this stuff has been lost. And even NASA admits that and just kind of says like, yeah, it's embarrassing. We probably should have like done a better job of preserving these historical things. but just the premise that like my watch has more technology or like my phone certainly has more technology than the Apollo spacecraft did and I think that should you know be like it is if you're

saying you're a skeptic you're like no way no way you know and if you believe it happened you go man it is incredible what humans are capable of and way to go people So the counter to that is we did not lose the capability of doing it. We lost the political will. And briefly going through the Apollo mission. So Apollo 1, and I didn't know much about the Apollo missions. Okay. So Apollo 1 was huge tragedy.

Cabin fire during a ground test killed all three astronauts here on Earth. And my understanding is everyone agrees that that happened. Then by Apollo 8, we, and that was in 1967, 1968, Apollo 8 orbited the moon 10 times. It's the first time humans saw the far side of the moon, and they took the famous Earthrise photo of, you know, the Earth. Yeah. Apollo 11 is the big one.

This is where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. they spent two and a half hours down there, took a photo with the flag. Apollo 12 was the second landing. That was the same year, 1969. Apollo 13 was the famous near disaster. Houston, we have a problem. Oxygen tank exploded en route to the moon. The landing was aborted, but Tom Hanks saved the day.

Apollo 14, 1971, Alan Shepard, hits two golf balls on the moon. Okay? Yeah. Apollo 17 was 1972, and this was the last time humans were on the moon. Apollo 18 through 20 were canceled. So the, like the stated mission of the Apollo program, all these missions, was beat the Soviets. Right. We just got to get to the moon and prove we're better than communism. Yeah. And so Apollo 11 did that. After Apollo 11, the Soviets kind of conceded and they're like, hey, we're going to, you know, focus. on things on Earth. And Apollo 13, because of the issues garnered tons of media attention, the rest of them, what it said is like NASA did not expect how severely public interest would drop off. It was just kind of like, hey, we did it, and that was so cool. And there's this huge unifying moment, and now we don't care. And that's what Congress felt as well. And so, So they cut funding because here's a crazy fact.

Yeah. The Apollo at its peak, the Apollo program was 4% of the national budget. Whoa. You're spending 4% of the government's budget on sending people to the moon. And once the public kind of didn't care, Congress was like, this is a ton of money. Why are we spending it? And so the argument for saying, hey, we didn't lose this technology. We lost the political will to pay for it.

And then decades went by and, you know, the blueprints were lost and stuff like that. But also pointing to Artemis as proof that it wasn't lost. We could have rebuilt it and we now are rebuilding it. Yep. Great. Great. Walking us through those points on both sides. So I want to ask about the cost.

Because you mentioned, you know, obviously NASA, they're back, baby. They're doing this Artemis program. But then you also mentioned like commercial side, SpaceX, Blue Origin. I'm sure there's a lot of costs associated with continuing to send people and ships, rockets to the moon. So do you have any info on that? Yes. So in the Artemis program, I should know this, it started 15 years ago. I want to say like it was like 2010, 2011 is when.

it was first like, hey, we're going to go back to the moon. It has obviously been a decade and a half since then. And there have been lots of cost overruns and delays. So the SLS that the rocket, that alone has cost $23 billion. And then it costs $4 billion every time we launch. Wow. And because these babies are disposable. They're just they're just, very expensive disposable, you know. Expensive water right there that we're burning through. Yes. So SpaceX, by contrast, they are not super public.

We may get, we likely will get much more visibility in because they're... IPO? Yeah, planning on going public. And if they're a public company, they'll have to be much more transparent. But it's estimated that it costs around 100 to 200 million for them to launch a starship rocket. And so if you take the expensive end of that, it is 20 times more expensive per launch for NASA to launch this thing than for SpaceX. And SpaceX has publicly stated that they are heading towards and think they can get it down to $10 million a launch, which would be a 400th of what NASA is doing this with Artemis. Now, take it with a grain of salt.

They aren't doing it for that price now. but Elon Musk has been very vocally critical of the cost overruns with Artemis saying NASA should have bid out much more of this instead of keeping it in house because it took it was delayed by a decade and is massively expensive and none of it is reusable and he's like, guys, we we're doing this better. Yeah. In total, so in 2021, and it's probably, the number is likely gone up, but in 2021, the estimated total cost of the four Artemis missions was going to be $93 billion. And yeah, so pretty penny. Yeah. And that's you and me, baby, taxpayers.

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Simply text Pour to 71326 or visit give.cru.org slash pour. Again, that's texting P-O-U-R to 71326 or give.cru.org slash P-O-U-R. message and data rates may apply available to U.S. addresses only. All right. Do you have fun facts? I feel like a lot of this has been fun.

Yeah, I do have some fun facts. One, do you know how far away the moon is? Oh, my goodness. Probably from elementary, but I totally forgot. Do you want me to... I want you to guess. I mean, I would have been so embarrassingly wrong. There was no shame. Yeah. I'll just say like 200,000. miles. Dude, like, 239,000 miles. You're like pretty spot on. That was amazing. That is, so it's super far. You have some concept of 200,000 miles is a lot. It is way farther than you think, though, because every time you envision Earth and the Moon, you are envisioning textbooks that need to put them close enough together to fit on the page. And so if Earth were a basketball, then the moon would be a tennis ball. Okay.

So in terms of like the moon, the moon's bigger than I thought. And that tennis ball, so if it were a basketball, that tennis ball would be 24 feet away. Using that analogy, the, it with those sizes, textbooks typically show it like one to two feet away. And it's 24. So in between the Earth and Moon, you can fit every other planet in the solar system. Wow. So you can just line up, you know, Saturn, Neptune, Mercury, all of them with room to spare in between. And so it's – and the International Space Station is like – I should have looked it up, but it's like, you know, 12 miles or something.

I mean, it is – in this – in that analogy of the basketball and tennis ball, it is like – it is just part of the basketball. ball. I mean, you're technically in space, but so you are, you are basically no closer to the moon than you have been just here on Earth. Right. Wow. So the moon is way farther away than you think. Space food, this was fun. Space food has come a long way. What the Apollo astronauts allegedly ate, if they, if they did leave, was all pretty rough stuff. And but the Artemis astronauts, there are 189 unique menu items, including 10 different beverages, including coffee and smoothies. The most common are tortillas, nuts, barbecue beef brisket.

No way. Seems pretty good. C cauliflower, mac and cheese, butternut squash, cookies, and chocolate. Dude, that's like fine dining. I know. The only thing, it is all shelf stable, there's no refrigeration or anything. So I'm sure they'll be glad to be back on Earth for the food, but it's not horrible. Last thing.

And this was just interesting to me. So we're talking about they're seeing the far side of the moon. In my mind, things in space spin, you know? Right. And so it's like why the far side of the moon, like just wait and you'll see the far side of the moon? It'll come around eventually. You know? And no.

It is, so it is what's called tidily locked to Earth. So it rotates at the same rate that it orbits around Earth. So we are always seeing exactly the same part of the moon. When you look up, you see the same moon that Jesus looked up or the same part of the moon that anyone has seen. So seeing the far side of the moon, there are 28 humans now that have seen it with their own eyes. and it's like, I mean, there are pictures of it, but there are only 28 humans who have ever seen the far side of the moon. That is fascinating.

Yeah. Jason, you did it. You took us to the moon. You landed us back safely on Earth. Bring it back to Christian perspective. Yeah, I want to read a Psalm. Psalm 33, verses 6, 8, and 9. The heavens were made by the Word of the Lord and all the stars.

by the breath of his mouth. Let the whole earth fear the Lord. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him, for he spoke and it came into being. He commanded and it came into existence. One of the things when I was looking at what astronauts said, and even Katie Perry said this. So if you consider her an astronaut, is there's just this overwhelming sense of smallness and fragility and like, what is this war about? You know, there's no, from space when you're seeing the earth rise, you can't tell that two countries are in conflict. You can't tell where the mountains are.

It's just small. And just marveling at that's our, that's literally our whole world. And then thinking about how massive spaces. and giving God the appropriate credit and awe for having created just a genuinely unfathomable amount of universe and space. And then bringing it back down to saying like, and the detail and care that he has, like, as you zoom out, it gets way bigger. And as you zoom in, it's, it's so complicated and beautifully constructed. and the same God that created, you know, the galaxies that we don't know about knows and cares about us.

And just, man, journal about that for a little bit. Sit there and pray and ponder that. So cool. And thinking about just the impact that that should have on how we view today and eternity and one another. It's really, I will spend more time doing it and love this. psalm for you know just capturing that essence so well amen yeah wow what a great way to end it well thanks everyone for tuning in to another episode of tpo explains as a reminder you can watch this

episode on youtube and spotify make sure to like comment and subscribe we'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback thanks for tuning in until next time bye Check, give his life to Jesus? That took him a little longer. Astronaut Charlie Duke was the voice in mission control when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. He helped navigate the Apollo 13 crisis, and during Apollo 16, he became a moonwalker himself,

spending three full days on the lunar surface. Today, he's one of only four living moonwalkers. But after reaching the heavens, life back on Earth felt empty. His marriage was crumbling, his kids were hurting, success hadn't fixed what mattered most. Then came a life-changing encounter with Jesus. Here Charlie's powerful story on the Compelled podcast. In the episode, My Journey to the Moon, listen wherever you get podcasts or at compelledpodcast.com.