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Speaker 1: You know, I was standing in my backyard last night

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just looking up. It was one of those nights where

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the air is so crisp, the moon looks like a

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like a high definition cut out pasted onto the sky.

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Speaker 2: Clear.

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Speaker 1: It felt so close, like you could just reach out

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and grab it. And it struck me the sheer proximity

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of it. It's right there. It's our celestial neighbor.

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Speaker 2: It's the nightlight of the world exactly.

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Speaker 1: And I think collectively we have this this arrogance about it.

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We think of it as this conquered dead gray rock.

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You know, we went there in the sixties, played some golf,

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planted a flag, and came home. Case closed.

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Speaker 2: That is the standard textbook narrative, isn't it The Moon?

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A known quantity, a done deal. But when you actually

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start pulling the files, not just the history books, but

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the raw mission logs that you classify, transcripts, the geophysical data,

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that dead rock narrative it falls apart pretty quickly.

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Speaker 1: And that is exactly why we're here. Welcome to thrilling threads.

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Because the more you pull on the loose ends of

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the official lunar record, well, the more the whole sweater.

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Speaker 2: Starts to unravel it really does.

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Speaker 1: We aren't just talking about craters and dust today. We're

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talking about physics that don't seem to make sense, sensory

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phenomena that shouldn't exist in a vacuum, and geopolitical maneuvers

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that sound like they were ripped from a Tom Clancy novel.

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Speaker 2: It's a classic situation where proximity creates a false sense

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of understanding. We assume because we can see it with

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the naked eye, we get it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we've got to figure it out.

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Speaker 2: But today we're looking at a stack of sources that

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includes declassified NASA transcripts, mission logs highlighted by the Science channels, investigations,

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and military archives that were buried for decades.

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Speaker 1: And the mission for this deep dive is really to

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map the unknown. We're going to explore a moon that

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rang like a bell for an hour after we hit it.

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Speaker 2: That's a big one.

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Speaker 1: We're digging into reports of astronauts hearing space music while

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completely cut off from Earth. We've got the actual blueprints

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for a secret US Army missile base on the lunar.

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Speaker 2: Surface, which is just wild to read, and.

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Speaker 1: Perhaps most chillingly, we're going to read the speech the

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President was prepared to give to the widows to be

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if Apollo eleven failed.

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Speaker 2: It's a heavy docket, and I want to set the

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lens right up front. We are approaching this with scientific curiosity.

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Some of these mysteries, like the ringing Moon, have fascinating

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geological explanations that are actually, I think cooler than the

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sci fi theories.

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Speaker 1: I agree.

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Speaker 2: Others, well, there remain open questions. We're going to explore

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the what ifs right alongside the hard data.

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Speaker 1: So let's pull that first thread. And this one is

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a favorite of mine because it challenges our fundamental understanding

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of what a planet or a moon should act like physically,

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the hollow World's theory.

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Speaker 2: This takes us back to November nineteen sixty nine, Apollo twelve. Right.

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Everyone remembers Apaoulo eleven for the landing, of course, but

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Apollo twelve was where the science really started getting aggressive.

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Pete Conrad and Alan Bean weren't just tourists. They were

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installing the ALSSE the Apollo Lennard's Surface Experiments package, and

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a crucial part of that package was a passive seismometer.

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Speaker 1: They wanted to know what was happening inside the moon.

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Is it molten? Is it tectonically active? But to test

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a seismometer, you need a quake, and you can't just

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wait around for a moonquake to happen.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, So they decided to create their own. After Conrad

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and Bean finished their surface walk, they blasted off in

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the lunar module ascent stage, rendezvous with a command module

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to get home, and then they jettisoned the ascent stage.

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Speaker 1: They just threw it away.

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Speaker 2: They turned their used vehicle into a kinetic impactor. They

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crashed it on purpose, deliberately, deliberately, They slammed a two

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and a half ton spacecraft into the lunar surface at

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nearly three eight hundred miles per hour, and they targeted

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a spot about forty five miles from where they left

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that little seismometer.

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Speaker 1: Wow, that's a massive transfer of energy. It carved out

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a crater, what thirty feet wide?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, But the surprise wasn't the crash itself. It was

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the readouts back at mission control.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so set the scene on Earth. If you do

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something like this.

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Speaker 2: If you do this on Earth, say you set up

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a large explosion or a heavy impact, the ground vibrates,

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of course, But because earth crust is full of water

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and the mantle is dense and semi fluid. Those vibrations

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are dampened very very quickly. The energy is absorbed, the

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signal dies out in minutes.

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Speaker 1: It's like hitting a pillow or a.

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Speaker 2: Wet sponge exactly. The water just soaks it up. But

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when the Apollo twelve module hit the Moon, the seismometers

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didn't just register a thud ooh, they registered a continuous vibration.

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Murice Ewing, who was the co head of the seismic experiment,

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he famously said it was like striking a bell in

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a church, bell free, and.

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Speaker 1: We are talking about a few minutes of ringing. The

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sources say it reverberated for nearly an hour fifty five minutes,

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fifty five minutes of continuous oscillation from a single impact.

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Speaker 2: It just wouldn't stop. It baffled the geophysicists. How can

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a solid rock vibrate for an hour? It immediately fueled

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the hollow moon speculation. Of course it did, because in

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our experience, the only things that ring like that are

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hollow spheres, bell Gong's metal shells.

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Speaker 1: Right, the mind just leaps straight to the death star.

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Is it an artificial megastructure. Is it some Dyson sphere

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disguised as a moon?

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Speaker 2: And while that's a fun thought experiment, the reality, I

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think tells us something much more fundamental and maybe even

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cooler about lunar geology. Okay, it's not that the Moon

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is a metal shell. It's that the Moon is incredibly

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unfathomably dry.

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Speaker 1: So it's a moisture issue. That's the entire explanation.

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Speaker 2: Is it really is? On Earth? Water acts as a

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damping agent. It fills all the little pores and cracks

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in the rock. It dissipates the energy of a wave.

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The Moon has been desiccated for billions of years. The

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rock is rigid, it's fractured, and it is bone dry,

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so when a seismic wave moves through it, there is

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almost zero attenuation. The energy just ping pongs back and forth,

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scattering through the fractured crust with nothing to stop it.

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Speaker 1: So it's not a spaceship. It's just the universe's driest, hardest.

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Speaker 2: Sponge, a hi Q environment in physics terms, high quality factor,

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low energy loss. It's geologically unique in the Solar System.

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But this idea of hollow bodies in space, it doesn't

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stop at our moon. We have to talk about Mars. Yes, specifically,

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Phobos almost.

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Speaker 1: Is the weird cousin of the Solar System.

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Speaker 2: It's an anomaly in almost every metric. It's tiny, it's lunthy,

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and it orbits Mars at a terrifyingly low altitude only

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about what thirty seven hundred miles above the surface.

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Speaker 1: Which is nothing for context. Our moon is two hundred

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and thirty nine thousand miles away. Phobos is practically skimming

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the Martian atmosphere, right.

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Speaker 2: And because it's so low, it's fast. It whips around

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Mars three times a day. But the thing that really

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caught scientists attention wasn't just where it was, but where

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it was going.

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Speaker 1: This was back in the fifties, right, Yeah.

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Speaker 2: This was the mystery investigated by the Russian astrophysicist Josef

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Schlovsky in nineteen fifty eight. He was analyzing the orbital

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data and realized Phobos was accelerating, Its orbit was decaying.

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Speaker 1: It was spiraling inward inward.

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Speaker 2: Toward Mars faster than standard atmospheric drag calculations could explain.

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Speaker 1: It's doomed, right, I mean, eventually it's going.

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Speaker 2: To crash in about ten million years. Yes, a cosmic

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blink of an eye. But Schklovsky couldn't make the math work.

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The only way that drag forces could affect Phobos that

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severely is if Phobos had an incredibly low mass for

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its size, If it was light, impossibly light. He calculated

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that his density had to be so low that it

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couldn't be solid rock. So in nineteen fifty nine he

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published a paper suggesting that Phobos was a hollow, thin

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walled metal shell.

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Speaker 1: Wow, which brings us right back to Aliens immediately, a

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hollow metal shell in a decaying orbit around Mars. That

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just screams derelict space station.

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Speaker 2: And people took this seriously. You have to remember the

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context of the late fifties. We are just starting to

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understand space. The idea that an extinct Martian civilization launched

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a satellite station wasn't seen as you know, fringe lunacy.

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It was a valid hypothesis to explain the math.

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Speaker 1: And the sources mentioned that even the US intelligence community

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had a black budget interest in this, the logic being

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if there is even a one percent chance that Phobos

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is artificial, whoever gets there first inherits the technology of

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a superior civilization.

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Speaker 2: Whoever gets to Phobos first wins the lottery. That was

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a sentiment, A pretty big lottery, a very big one. However,

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modern planetary science has given us a much better look.

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We've done spectrocoity on Phobos.

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Speaker 1: Now spoiler alert, it's not duranium alloy.

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Speaker 2: It is not the stromber. JJ Kavlars and others have

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confirmed that the surface composition matches carbonaceous chondrites. Basically, it

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looks exactly like a C type asteroid.

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Speaker 1: But how do you explain the density If it's rock,

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why is it so light?

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Speaker 2: That brings us to the rubble pile theory. We now

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believe Phobos isn't a solid rock, but it's also not

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a hollow shell. It's a space bean bag.

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Speaker 1: A space beanbag. I like that.

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Speaker 2: It's a loose aggregation of boulders, dust, and ice, all

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held together by very weak gravity. It's up to thirty

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percent porous. It has massive internal voids, so it.

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Speaker 1: Is hollow, just like a pile of Swiss cheese.

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Speaker 2: Is hollow, precisely massive empty spaces between the rocks and

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makes it incredibly light but entirely natural. Though I will

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say some futurists argue that even if it isn't a

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space station now, it's the perfect candidate to become one.

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It's basically a pre made shielded base waiting for us

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to hollow it out a bit more.

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Speaker 1: That's a great point, which is a nice segue, because

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we're moving from the physical structure of these bodies to

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the way we experience them. We've established the stage is weird.

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Now let's talk about the actors. Thread number two, sensory overload.

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Speaker 2: This is where things get subjective, which makes them harder

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to debunk. We're talking about TLP transient lunar.

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Speaker 1: Phenomena, which is the fancy scientific term for weird lights

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on the Moon.

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Speaker 2: Correct, and this isn't just amateur astronomers in their backyards.

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This goes right to the Apollo command modules. July nineteenth,

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nineteen sixty nine. Apollo eleven is an orbit just a

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day before the landing. Okay, and astronomers back in Bochum,

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Germany spot a strange localized glow in the Aristarkis crater, and.

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Speaker 1: Aristarkus is apparently a hot spot for the stuff.

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Speaker 2: It is. It's the the rightest formation on the Moon,

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very reflective, so mission control radios Armstrong and Collins and says,

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hey can take a look out the window. Germany is

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reporting a TLP.

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Speaker 1: And they saw it. They reported an area that was

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considerably more illuminated than the surroundings. They described it as

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having a pulsing fluorescent quality.

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Speaker 2: Now, the standard NASA explanation is solar glint. The sun

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hits a slab of reflective rock at just the right angle,

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and bam, you get a flare. Simple.

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Speaker 1: But the files reference a counter argument from a doctor

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Peter Schultz, a highly respected lunar scientist, and he points

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out a pretty big flaw in the glint theory for

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this specific event.

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Speaker 2: The sun wasn't there at the time Apollo eleven flew

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over Aristarchus. That crater was in shadow. It was lunar

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night in that region. You cannot have a solar glint

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without the sun.

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Speaker 1: So if it's not reflected light, it's emitted light. The

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Moon is literally glowing.

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Speaker 2: That's the implication. Schultz mentioned in an interview that researching

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this was considered a career killer back in the day.

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I can believe that if you wrote a paper on

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glowing lights on the Moon, you were labeled a fringe lunatic.

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But now we have better theories. We think it might

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be PL's electricity. Piece of what pi's electricity, it's the

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electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials like crystals

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or ceramics, in response to applied mechanical stress. Okay, the

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Moon has tidal stresses from Earth as the crust flexes,

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rocks grind together deep underground, creating high voltage differences that

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could discharge as lightning or glowing plasma coming up through cracks.

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Speaker 1: We're gas fenting. I've heard that one too.

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Speaker 2: That's the other leading theory. Rate and gas burping up

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from deep underground getting excited by the solar wind and glowing.

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Both explanations suggest the Moon is still geologically active, which

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is a huge shift from the dead rock theory.

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Speaker 1: But lights are one thing. You can explain lights with

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gas and friction. Sound. Sound is harder, especially when you

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are in a vacuum. Let's talk about the space music.

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Speaker 2: The Apollo ten incident May nineteen sixty nine. This was

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the dress rehearsal. Stafford Cernin and Young flew the lunar

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module down to just fifty thousand feet off the surface,

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but they.

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Speaker 1: Didn't land, and during the orbit. They passed behind the Moon, the.

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Speaker 2: Far side, and we really need to emphasize the isolation here.

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When you are behind the Moon, the lunar mass blocks

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all radio signals from Earth. You are in a total

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communications blackout. It is the quietest, most isolated place humans

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who've ever been. No static, no voices, just dead silence

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until it wasn't.

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Speaker 1: The transcripts, which were buried in the archives until two

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thousand and eight, show the astronauts reacting to a sound

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in their headsets.

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Speaker 2: They called it woo woo music.

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Speaker 1: Woo woo music.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, outer space type music. Eh. It wasn't a click

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or a beep. It was a tonal, whistling sound. It

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had lasted for almost the entire hour they were back there.

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Speaker 1: And you can hear the apprehension in their voices on

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the tapes. They're debating, you know, should we tell mission control?

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Are you going to tell them? I don't know, man.

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They weren't genuinely afraid that if they reported hearing weird music,

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NASA would think they had cracked.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely, these were test pilots the right stuff. Generation. Their

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careers depended on being rock solid psychologically. If you say

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the moon is singing to me, you get grounded, maybe

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for life. So they kept it mostly to themselves.

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Speaker 1: So what was it? We know sound can't travel in

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a vacuum. It had to be coming through the radio system, right.

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Speaker 2: We have a comparison from the Cassini mission to Saturn.

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Cassini picked up similar eerie sounds which were caused by

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charged particles interacting with Saturn's powerful magnetic field.

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Speaker 1: Okay, but the Moon doesn't have a magnetic field or

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an atmosphere.

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Speaker 2: Exactly, so the Saturn explanation doesn't fit. Nassa's official explanation

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for apolloten is technical VHF interference. You had the lunar

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module and the command module flying close to each other,

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both had radios on the theory is that the two

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systems created a feedback loop, a heterodyning effect that manifested

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as a whistle in their headsets.

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Speaker 1: It sounds plausible, it's just radiostatic.

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Speaker 2: It does sound plausible until you hear Warden, the pilot

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from Apollo fifteen, talk about it. He's very skeptical of

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the interference theory.

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Speaker 1: Why is that?

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Speaker 2: His point is, we were expert pilots, We lived in

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our radios, we knew what static sounded like. We knew

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what interference sounded like. This was different.

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Speaker 1: It's that astronaut intuition. They know their machines inside and out.

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If they say it was distinct, it makes you wonder.

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Speaker 2: It leaves the door open, just a crack. But let's

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move from what we hear to what we see, because

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our eyes can be just as deceptive as our ears.

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Thread number three Visual anomalies.

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Speaker 1: This is where we get into the evidence that usually

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shows up on conspiracy forums, the blory photos. But we're

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looking at them through the lens of mission logs. Let's

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talk about the UFO that was supposedly tracking Apollo seventeen.

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Speaker 2: This is a famous image analyzed by Jim Scotti at

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the University of Arizona. You look at the photo, stark

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lunar surface, pitch black sky, and there, hovering just above

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the horizon is a distinct rectangular object.

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Speaker 1: It looks like craft. It's geometric, it's hovering. The immediate

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reaction is we are being watched. They were waiting for us.

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Speaker 2: It triggers our pattern recognition. But Scotty did the detective

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work that most Internet sleuths don't do. He matched the

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photo's timestamp to the audio transcript of the mission at

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that exact second.

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Speaker 1: And this is why context is everything. What were Jeanes

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Sernin and Jack Schmidt doing at that moment?

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Speaker 2: There were goofing around. Jack Schmidt, the geologist asked Sernan,

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can I throw the hammer?

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Speaker 1: Said yeah, go for it, and Cernan, being a tourist

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at heart, snaps a picture of his buddy throwing the

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hammer across the lunar landscape.

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Speaker 2: That alien craft is a geology hammer, frozen in midair,

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tumbling end over end.

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Speaker 1: I love that it's so perfectly human. We're looking for

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high tech surveillance from another world, and the reality is

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two guys throwing their tools around on the Moon because

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they can.

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Speaker 2: It's a perfect example of peridolia, our brain's tendency to

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find meaning and patterns in random data. We see faces

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in clouds, and we see pyramids on the moon.

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Speaker 1: Speaking of pyramids, the Apollo seventeen pyramid.

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Speaker 2: Photo the classic, a grainy, dark photo that seems to

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show a perfect pyramidal structure in the distance. People went wild,

333
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Illuminati moon base, ancient Egyptian connection.

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Speaker 1: You name it, but again, you check the logs, you.

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Speaker 2: Check the logs and you enhanced the photos contrast, and

336
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it's not a pyramid on the horizon. It's the back

337
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of the seat of the lunar rover, just out of focus.

338
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In the foreground. It's a shadow on a chair, a

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shadow on a chair.

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Speaker 1: We want so badly for it to be a base.

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And I think that desire comes from a real place,

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because while the Aliens might not have had a base there,

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we certainly plan to build one. This leads us to

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thread four real conspiracies.

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Speaker 2: This is where the whole thing shifts from is it

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real to oh, it was definitely real, Project Horizon.

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Speaker 1: This isn't a theory. This is a one hundred and

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eighteen page declassified report from the US Army in nineteen

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fifty nine.

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Speaker 2: And the goal was audacious, a permanent, manned military outpost

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on a moon by nineteen sixty six. And let's be

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crystal clear, this was not for science. This was General

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Arthur Trudeau's vision of the ultimate high ground.

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Speaker 1: The logic was pure Cold War paranoia. If you control

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the Moon, you look down on the entire Earth.

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Speaker 2: Trudeau argued that if the Soviets took the Moon, they

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could rain nuclear missiles down on the US with impunity.

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We wouldn't see them coming until it was too late,

359
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so the US had to get their first and fortify it.

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Speaker 1: The scale of this plan was just insane. They wanted

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to launch hundreds of Saturn rockets per year to build it.

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They wanted to build a nuclear power plant on the

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lunar surface to power the base. They were designing spacesuits

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with weapons. This was a literal blueprint for war in space.

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Speaker 2: It's terrifying to read. They compared the urgency of it

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to the Manhattan Project. The only reason it didn't happen

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was the cost and President Eisenhower. He wanted space to

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be a civilian domain, which is what led to the

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creation of MASA. The military focus shifted to ICBMs on Earth,

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which were cheaper and more accurate.

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Speaker 1: But the intent was there, the will was there, and

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the Soviets were just as desperate. We always talk about

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the American success of Apollo eleven, but we rarely mentioned

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the Russian robot that was crashing the party at the

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exact same time.

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Speaker 2: Luna fifteen. This is a great historical footnote. While Armstrong

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and Aldren are preparing to walk on the surface, the

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Soviets have this unmanned probe Luna fifteen in orbit around

379
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the Moon.

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Speaker 1: It was a last ditch effort, like, we can't get

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a man there, but maybe we can grab a soil

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sample and get it back to Earth before the Americans return.

383
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Speaker 2: Exactly a scoop and run mission to steal the glory.

384
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But the guidance failed. Luna fifteen smashed into the mare Chrisium,

385
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the Sea of Crises at three hundred miles per hour

386
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while the Americans were safely on the ground out.

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Speaker 1: But years later the Soviets did succeed with Luna twenty four,

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And this brings us to the weirdest conspiracy theory of

389
00:18:41,920 --> 00:18:43,759
the bunch, the Nazi moon.

390
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Speaker 2: Base ah the Iron Sky scenario.

391
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Speaker 1: So Lena twenty four drills into the Sea of Crises

392
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and brings back a core sample. Soviet scientists analyze it

393
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and they're confused. The soil layers are all mixed up.

394
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It looks disturbed.

395
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Speaker 2: Geologically, soil settles over millions of years, you get layer

396
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A than layer B. This sample was churned up. It

397
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looked like someone had been digging.

398
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Speaker 1: There recently, and since the Americans hadn't been to that

399
00:19:05,279 --> 00:19:09,319
specific spot, the fringe theorists leaped to the one group

400
00:19:09,359 --> 00:19:11,440
they could think of, the Nazis.

401
00:19:12,079 --> 00:19:14,279
Speaker 2: It ties into the real history of Werner von Braun.

402
00:19:15,119 --> 00:19:16,920
The rockets that took us to the Moon were direct

403
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descendants of the V two rockets that hit London. The

404
00:19:20,319 --> 00:19:23,880
tech was German, so the theory goes, did a breakaway

405
00:19:23,960 --> 00:19:26,839
Nazi group escape with advanced tech and build a base

406
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in the Sea of Crises.

407
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Speaker 1: But NASA eventually solved the disturbed soil mystery without needing

408
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space fascists.

409
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Speaker 2: They did. In twenty eleven, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter or LRO,

410
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took high res photos of the Luna twenty four landing site,

411
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and it turns out Luna twenty four landed right on

412
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the rim of a relatively fresh impact crater.

413
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Speaker 1: So meteor hit threw up a bunch of dirt from

414
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deep underground and splashed it all over the surface.

415
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Speaker 2: Exactly the digging was done by a rock falling from

416
00:19:53,359 --> 00:19:56,640
the sky. The mixed layers were impact ejecta. Once again

417
00:19:56,759 --> 00:19:58,359
geology mimicking activity.

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Speaker 1: It's always geology. But wait, thread five is where geology

419
00:20:01,200 --> 00:20:04,640
fails us, because now we are talking about biology life

420
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on the Moon.

421
00:20:05,319 --> 00:20:09,200
Speaker 2: The Surveyor three incident. This is a genuine scientific puzzle

422
00:20:09,240 --> 00:20:11,599
that still causes arguments at conferences today.

423
00:20:11,839 --> 00:20:14,880
Speaker 1: So Apollo twelve, the same mission with the ringing moonlands

424
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near an old unmanned probe, Surveyor three, which had been

425
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sitting on the Moon for two and a half years.

426
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They cut off the camera assembly and bring it back

427
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to Earth to see how materials degrade in space.

428
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Speaker 2: They expected to find cracked wires, faded paint, that kind

429
00:20:28,640 --> 00:20:31,359
of thing. Instead, when they swabbed the inside of the

430
00:20:31,440 --> 00:20:34,519
camera housing in a clean room, they found a colony

431
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of Streptococcus midas.

432
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Speaker 1: Common throat bacteria living inside the camera.

433
00:20:38,960 --> 00:20:43,039
Speaker 2: Living is the keyword. It was dormant, basically freeze dried.

434
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But when they put it in a nutrient dish and

435
00:20:45,839 --> 00:20:48,160
a lab, it woke up and started reproducing.

436
00:20:48,240 --> 00:20:50,599
Speaker 1: This is mind blowing. This bacteria sat on the Moon

437
00:20:50,640 --> 00:20:53,640
for thirty months. It was exposed to the vacuum of space,

438
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massive radiation belts, and temperature swings from boiling hot to

439
00:20:57,519 --> 00:20:59,480
absolute zero, and it survived.

440
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Speaker 2: It. It implies that life is incredibly resilient. It sparked

441
00:21:03,640 --> 00:21:06,680
the panspermia debate, the idea that life can hop between

442
00:21:06,720 --> 00:21:10,200
planets on meteors. If a germ can survive the Moon,

443
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could it survive a ride from Mars to Earth.

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Speaker 1: But there's a catch, right the sneeze theory.

445
00:21:16,000 --> 00:21:19,400
Speaker 2: The skeptics argue that the bacteria didn't survive the Moon

446
00:21:19,480 --> 00:21:22,759
trip at all. They argue that a technician sneezed on

447
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the camera after it got back to the lab, contaminating the.

448
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Speaker 1: Sample, which seems plausible.

449
00:21:27,279 --> 00:21:30,079
Speaker 2: It does, but the source mentions a pretty significant flaw

450
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in the sneeze theory. Yeah, if you sneeze, you expel

451
00:21:32,920 --> 00:21:36,160
thousands of different types of bacteria. The surveyor sample was

452
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a monoculture. It was only strep mitis huh. That suggests

453
00:21:39,720 --> 00:21:42,599
it wasn't a fresh, wet sneeze. It suggests a small

454
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colony that was trapped there before launch, dried out on

455
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the journey, survived, and was then reawakened.

456
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Speaker 1: It makes the universe feel a lot more infectious in

457
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a good way.

458
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Speaker 2: It suggests that the ingredients for life aren't as fragile

459
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as we thought.

460
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Speaker 1: And speaking of ingredients, we have to talk about water

461
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because for decades the dogma was the moon is bone dry,

462
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end of story. Until the orange soil Apollo seventeen. Again,

463
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the geologist Harrison Schmidt is walking near Shorty Crater and

464
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he just yells, it's orange.

465
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Speaker 2: He was ecstatic. You can hear it in the recordings.

466
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That is really orange. At first they thought it was

467
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rust iron oxide, but rust implies water and oxygen, which

468
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shouldn't be there.

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Speaker 1: So NASA analyzed it in the seventies and said, nope,

470
00:22:24,680 --> 00:22:30,359
just volcanic glass, zinc and titanium. No water. Case closed again, But.

471
00:22:30,359 --> 00:22:33,880
Speaker 2: In twenty eleven we had much better instruments. Scientists analyzed

472
00:22:33,920 --> 00:22:37,519
those tiny glass beads again and this time they found water,

473
00:22:37,920 --> 00:22:41,519
not liquid water, but water molecules locked inside the crystal

474
00:22:41,519 --> 00:22:42,839
structure of the glass itself.

475
00:22:43,279 --> 00:22:44,880
Speaker 1: This is a radical discovery.

476
00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:47,880
Speaker 2: It completely contradicts the big splash theory, the idea that

477
00:22:47,920 --> 00:22:51,160
the Moon formed from a massive collision that vaporized everything.

478
00:22:51,519 --> 00:22:54,519
If that happened, all volatiles like water should have boiled

479
00:22:54,519 --> 00:22:58,160
off into space. Finding water inside volcanic glass suggests the

480
00:22:58,160 --> 00:23:01,000
Moon has a primordial reservoir water deep.

481
00:23:00,799 --> 00:23:04,079
Speaker 1: Inside, and practically speaking, this changes the future of space

482
00:23:04,119 --> 00:23:05,640
exploration completely.

483
00:23:06,240 --> 00:23:08,559
Speaker 2: If there is water trapped in the geology, we can

484
00:23:08,599 --> 00:23:12,119
mine it. Water gives you drinking water, split the hydrogen

485
00:23:12,119 --> 00:23:14,880
and oxygen, and you have air to breathe. Liquefy the

486
00:23:14,920 --> 00:23:17,319
hydrogen and oxygen, and you have rocket fuel.

487
00:23:17,559 --> 00:23:20,640
Speaker 1: It turns the Moon from a tourist destination into a

488
00:23:20,680 --> 00:23:23,440
gas station, a base of operations.

489
00:23:23,599 --> 00:23:26,559
Speaker 2: It makes colonization feasible. You don't have to bring everything

490
00:23:26,559 --> 00:23:28,839
with you. You can live off the land.

491
00:23:29,000 --> 00:23:31,720
Speaker 1: Which brings us to our final thread. We talk about

492
00:23:31,720 --> 00:23:35,880
colonization and bases and mining, but we often forget the

493
00:23:35,880 --> 00:23:39,119
sheer terror of the human element, the cost of just

494
00:23:39,200 --> 00:23:39,759
going there.

495
00:23:40,039 --> 00:23:43,079
Speaker 2: We look back at Apollo as this great triumph, a

496
00:23:43,119 --> 00:23:46,799
smooth ride, but at the time it was a terrifying gamble.

497
00:23:46,920 --> 00:23:49,759
Speaker 1: I think the most sobering document in the entire archive

498
00:23:50,039 --> 00:23:52,440
is the in Event of Moon Disaster speech.

499
00:23:52,640 --> 00:23:55,480
Speaker 2: This was written by William Safire for President Nixon. It

500
00:23:55,599 --> 00:23:57,599
was prepared specifically for Apollo eleven.

501
00:23:57,759 --> 00:24:00,480
Speaker 1: It's the speech Nixon would have read if the Eagle

502
00:24:00,559 --> 00:24:03,440
lander failed to launch off the surface, if that single

503
00:24:03,440 --> 00:24:06,960
ascent engine didn't light, Armstrong and Aldron were stranded, there

504
00:24:07,039 --> 00:24:09,480
was no backup, no rescue mission possible.

505
00:24:09,759 --> 00:24:14,160
Speaker 2: The speech is hauntingly beautiful. It says Fate has ordained

506
00:24:14,400 --> 00:24:16,480
that the men who went to the Moon to explore

507
00:24:16,599 --> 00:24:20,000
in peace, will stay on the Moon to rest in peace.

508
00:24:20,000 --> 00:24:23,119
Speaker 1: And it outlines the protocol. Nixon would first call the

509
00:24:23,160 --> 00:24:25,880
widows to be then he would read the speech to

510
00:24:25,920 --> 00:24:29,119
the nation, and then he would cut the video feed.

511
00:24:29,279 --> 00:24:32,680
Speaker 2: Think about that. NASA would turn off the cameras. The

512
00:24:32,759 --> 00:24:35,519
astronauts would be left alone on the Moon. They would

513
00:24:35,599 --> 00:24:38,240
either have to wait to suffocate when their oxygen ran out,

514
00:24:38,319 --> 00:24:40,799
or yeah, well the implication they would have to end

515
00:24:40,799 --> 00:24:41,359
it themselves.

516
00:24:41,480 --> 00:24:44,880
Speaker 1: It just highlights how close they came. We assume success now,

517
00:24:45,079 --> 00:24:48,440
but Neil Armstrong himself gave the landing only a fifty

518
00:24:48,440 --> 00:24:50,279
to fifty chance of success, and.

519
00:24:50,240 --> 00:24:53,000
Speaker 2: The landing itself was a disaster waiting to happen. The

520
00:24:53,079 --> 00:24:56,240
navigation computer was overloading with alarms and has taken them

521
00:24:56,240 --> 00:24:59,079
straight into a boulder field. If they had landed where

522
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:01,519
the autopilot wanted, they would have tipped over and died.

523
00:25:01,960 --> 00:25:06,200
Speaker 1: So Armstrong takes manual control. He's flying this flimsy metal

524
00:25:06,319 --> 00:25:10,240
spider like a helicopter, skimming across the surface looking.

525
00:25:10,000 --> 00:25:13,119
Speaker 2: For a flat spot, and he's burning fuel fast.

526
00:25:13,400 --> 00:25:15,559
Speaker 1: The sixty seconds warning mission.

527
00:25:15,279 --> 00:25:19,480
Speaker 2: Control calls out sixty seconds it's not sixty seconds to landing.

528
00:25:19,720 --> 00:25:22,640
That's sixty seconds until the tank is dry. If he

529
00:25:22,680 --> 00:25:24,880
didn't put it down right then they would have had

530
00:25:24,920 --> 00:25:28,680
to abort, which involves blowing explosive bolts and separating the

531
00:25:28,680 --> 00:25:31,640
stage's mid air, a maneuver that had never been tested

532
00:25:31,680 --> 00:25:34,200
in that gravity. They had seconds left when they finally

533
00:25:34,240 --> 00:25:34,680
touched down.

534
00:25:34,920 --> 00:25:37,680
Speaker 1: It takes a special kind of bravery or maybe madness,

535
00:25:37,720 --> 00:25:39,920
to look at the math, see a fifty percent chance

536
00:25:39,960 --> 00:25:41,599
of death and say let's go anyway.

537
00:25:41,680 --> 00:25:44,000
Speaker 2: The bravery required to go when the math says you

538
00:25:44,079 --> 00:25:47,599
might die. That sums up the entire Apollo program. It

539
00:25:47,640 --> 00:25:49,799
wasn't safe, it was calculated desperation.

540
00:25:49,960 --> 00:25:52,079
Speaker 1: So let's unpack all of this. We've gone from a

541
00:25:52,119 --> 00:25:55,319
moon that rings like a bell to phantom music, from

542
00:25:55,400 --> 00:25:58,480
visual tricks of the light to biological anomalies, and finally

543
00:25:58,559 --> 00:26:01,039
to the stark reality of the moon.

544
00:26:01,079 --> 00:26:05,519
Speaker 2: Isn't just a dead stage. It's dynamic, it's mysterious, and

545
00:26:05,559 --> 00:26:06,279
it's dangerous.

546
00:26:06,519 --> 00:26:08,880
Speaker 1: And what I love is that the transition from is

547
00:26:08,920 --> 00:26:12,839
it aliens to its geology or physics doesn't make it

548
00:26:12,920 --> 00:26:13,559
less cool.

549
00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:16,839
Speaker 2: I'd argue it makes it cooler. The fact that the

550
00:26:16,839 --> 00:26:20,680
moon rings because it's a high q dry rigid sponge

551
00:26:21,279 --> 00:26:24,759
is fascinating science. The fact that water is hidden in

552
00:26:24,839 --> 00:26:28,279
volcanic glass is more exciting than finding a rusty old

553
00:26:28,279 --> 00:26:30,519
alien base because we can actually use that water.

554
00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:35,119
Speaker 1: Because it's real. Reality is often stranger and more useful

555
00:26:35,400 --> 00:26:37,799
than the fiction we invent for ourselves.

556
00:26:37,359 --> 00:26:40,880
Speaker 2: And looking forward, that reality is our future. NASA is

557
00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:44,680
launching lunar flashlight missions to map the ice deposits. We

558
00:26:44,720 --> 00:26:47,400
are talking about the Artemis program, putting boots back on

559
00:26:47,440 --> 00:26:49,599
the ground, potentially for good this time.

560
00:26:49,799 --> 00:26:51,640
Speaker 1: The orange soil discovery is the key. We aren't just

561
00:26:51,720 --> 00:26:53,039
visiting anymore. We're moving in.

562
00:26:53,319 --> 00:26:55,400
Speaker 2: But it brings us back to the risks, back to

563
00:26:55,440 --> 00:26:58,519
the human element. The closer we've talked about, the near disasters,

564
00:26:58,759 --> 00:27:01,079
the sounds that make you question your sanity, the sheer

565
00:27:01,119 --> 00:27:04,200
isolation of being on the far side, completely cut off

566
00:27:04,240 --> 00:27:05,400
from all of humanity.

567
00:27:05,519 --> 00:27:06,839
Speaker 1: It's not for the faint of heart.

568
00:27:07,160 --> 00:27:11,359
Speaker 2: So here's my question for you listening right now, after

569
00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:14,079
hearing about all the risks, the weird noises, the woo

570
00:27:14,119 --> 00:27:16,920
woo music, and the speeches written for your potential funeral,

571
00:27:17,559 --> 00:27:20,759
if you were offered a seat on the next flight

572
00:27:20,920 --> 00:27:23,799
to a lunar base, knowing you might hear things in

573
00:27:23,839 --> 00:27:26,480
your headset that shouldn't be there, would you go?

574
00:27:27,039 --> 00:27:30,759
Speaker 1: That is the ultimate question, isn't it curiosity versus survival?

575
00:27:30,880 --> 00:27:32,000
Speaker 2: I think I know my answer.

576
00:27:32,119 --> 00:27:34,000
Speaker 1: Oh, I think I'd be on that rocket before they

577
00:27:34,079 --> 00:27:36,920
finish the question. So, for everyone listening, let us know

578
00:27:36,960 --> 00:27:39,119
what you think. Would you take the ticket? Leave a

579
00:27:39,160 --> 00:27:42,640
comment and tell us keep looking up. Thanks for unraveling

580
00:27:42,680 --> 00:27:44,319
these thrilling threads with us