Speaker 1: Welcome to tonight's classic episode Lick anybody else. The three
Speaker 1: of us constantly wonder how can we build a secret
Speaker 1: moon base? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yes, keeps me up nights. Well, yeah, and why not
Speaker 2: build a secret moon base?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: I mean if we can get there?
Speaker 3: Well, and if we were to build a secret moon base,
Speaker 3: what protections could it be put in place? So a
Speaker 3: portal to Hell doesn't open up? And it ended up
Speaker 3: like the event Horizon, not to be confused with Project Horizon.
Speaker 1: Which is the subject of our classic episode.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, if you're the Department of Navy,
Speaker 2: the Department of the Army, it's late nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 2: You're like, man, how are we gonna put a base
Speaker 2: up there? If we actually do this, they gotta.
Speaker 3: Get that moon on lock. You gotta lock that down.
Speaker 1: If only there were some sort of space force, dare
Speaker 1: I see?
Speaker 3: You know it's interesting.
Speaker 1: We originally recorded this in I want to say, July
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, and not to brush our shoulders too hard,
Speaker 1: but on December of twenty nineteen, the US created Space.
Speaker 3: Force Space Force. Let's dive right in.
Speaker 4: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 4: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 4: learn this stuff they don't want.
Speaker 2: You to know.
Speaker 4: A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: Hello, Welcome back to the show. I'm sitting entirely too
Speaker 2: low right now. My name is Matt.
Speaker 3: Pump up that chair, Matt. My name is Noah.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. We are joined, as always with
Speaker 1: our super producer, Paul Mission Controlled Decan, who just returned
Speaker 1: from mysterious adventures. Thanks for coming back, Paul. Most importantly,
Speaker 1: you are you. You are here, and that makes this
Speaker 1: stuff they don't want you to know. So how's everybody
Speaker 1: doing today? Before we get into this, I spoke with
Speaker 1: Michigan Control a little bit before we went back on
Speaker 1: the air. I asked him if he was okay. He
Speaker 1: gave me a thumbs up. Paul, we still on thumbs upstatus.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Just for the record, we re recorded this intro. So
Speaker 1: I don't know how many times we can ask Paul
Speaker 1: to give me a thumbs up.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's tired of it. How many times has
Speaker 2: this happened? Right, I mean infinite number of times, right,
Speaker 2: all the generations. Well, I was just going to tell you, guys,
Speaker 2: I for the first time put some glow in the
Speaker 2: dark planets up above the ceiling where my son sleeps,
Speaker 2: and I did that yesterday. And the one thing that's
Speaker 2: missing from that, it's got all the planets. Pluto's not included, remember,
Speaker 2: but it does not have the moon.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have the moon. There's a really cool moon
Speaker 1: globe you can get, and there's also a glow in
Speaker 1: the dark three dimensional moon sphere we could get for him.
Speaker 2: That one is really awesome, and I'm looking to get
Speaker 2: that one.
Speaker 1: Day a day that doesn't break the bank.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because these things were real, real cheap.
Speaker 3: I want to get one of those cool starry night
Speaker 3: projector things that you just put like on the floor
Speaker 3: and it just projects this cool galaxy onto the ceiling
Speaker 3: all around your room. And I'm thirty five, so I'm
Speaker 3: into stuff like that.
Speaker 2: That actually sounds amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love night projections. I have some stuff like
Speaker 1: that at the place where I currently live.
Speaker 2: Oh, they're using my other residents.
Speaker 1: Yes, a place where I live, which is a real place.
Speaker 1: How are things going where you live? What do you
Speaker 1: think about space exploration today? We're exploring a strange story
Speaker 1: about the moon, and we'd like to hear from you. So,
Speaker 1: if the spirit so moves you while you listen to today's show,
Speaker 1: feel free to pause it. We'll be here when you
Speaker 1: get back and give us a call with your thoughts directly,
Speaker 1: your visceral hot takes. You're off the cuff, stuff that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't say to anyone other than us, and your
Speaker 1: fellow listeners are.
Speaker 3: Like a machine facsimile of us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, your innermost thoughts.
Speaker 1: Spill them, yeah, along with your social Security number, a
Speaker 1: list of your fears, your blood type.
Speaker 2: But really we need your innermost thoughts to fuel our
Speaker 2: machine or infernal machine we've created here.
Speaker 3: Try to keep them limited to the three minute mark, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you know, if you want to or just
Speaker 2: leave a bunch of messages, that's fine.
Speaker 1: That's Matt's favorite thing when you hit our call in
Speaker 1: line and leave fifteen messages because he gets a notification.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we mentioned one person, I think on the last episode,
Speaker 2: but that person hasn't called back again yet. Maybe she
Speaker 2: knew we were talking about her, you know, fourth dimensionally Jennifer.
Speaker 1: Right, I maybe feel free to keep calling Jennifer. But
Speaker 1: if you want to take a page out of Jennifer's
Speaker 1: book and share some information, with your fellow listeners. You're
Speaker 1: probably wondering if you just pick up the phone and
Speaker 1: start talking, almost you have to hit a numerical code first.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's one eight three three std WYTK. That's just
Speaker 2: stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: Every time we say that number, it feels like there's
Speaker 1: going to be an AM radio talk show tag on
Speaker 1: where it's like in the money down the moon. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: the moon. We have been there, not the four of
Speaker 1: us personally, and odds are not most of us listening,
Speaker 1: but our species has. It's pretty easy to prove this
Speaker 1: is the case. However, it is completely absolutely understandable. I
Speaker 1: would argue that folks could be skeptical about this claim.
Speaker 1: After all, the timeline's really weird, so our entire species,
Speaker 1: of everybody, our entire species. One country landed people on
Speaker 1: the Moon, and they only did it six times, and
Speaker 1: they only did it between nineteen sixty nine to nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, at which point they just stopped.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for no reason other than it's really really expensive
Speaker 2: and there's not much going on up there officially.
Speaker 1: Right, it's pretty it's pretty dangerous, right, and it's a
Speaker 1: dangerous expedition. One of the most dangerous trips those people
Speaker 1: would have ever taken in their lives. Today's episode is
Speaker 1: about the idea that we did not stop going to
Speaker 1: the moon so.
Speaker 2: And that perhaps of the reason we went up there
Speaker 2: was not what was told of the public and.
Speaker 1: The world exactly exactly. So to get to get our
Speaker 1: heads around this first, we have to start with the facts.
Speaker 1: So here they are and side note, we would love
Speaker 1: to hear any We'd love to hear any counter arguments
Speaker 1: about this, because I am certain that some of us
Speaker 1: listening as soon as they heard me say, yeah, we went.
Speaker 2: To the Moon and it's pretty easy. You're right, right, Well,
Speaker 2: it's a show that we got there.
Speaker 1: Yes, we will have some examples or some arguments for
Speaker 1: why that is the case, and we want to hear
Speaker 1: your arguments against it. So boom, we're back in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties. This is the Moon, what we did, and
Speaker 1: how we did it. It's nineteen fifties. The United States
Speaker 1: is locked in a race with the Soviet Union for
Speaker 1: domination over everything, especially space.
Speaker 2: The new Frontier. And you know, this is all just
Speaker 2: more Cold War stuff. After we as in the Soviet
Speaker 2: Union in the United States were victorious during World War Two.
Speaker 2: We're trying to figure out who is the superpower. And
Speaker 2: then on January tewod nineteen fifty nine, there's this thing
Speaker 2: called the Soviet Luna I spacecraft and it made the
Speaker 2: first official flyby of the Moon at a distance of
Speaker 2: three thousand, seven hundred and twenty five miles. That's nine
Speaker 2: hundred and ninety four kilometers from the Moon's surface, so
Speaker 2: it's that far away from the Moon. But again, this
Speaker 2: is a huge achievement because is the first time we've
Speaker 2: ever gotten a piece of human machinery that far out
Speaker 2: to the Moon and then successfully essentially looked at it
Speaker 2: with a piece of technology that we created.
Speaker 3: On September twelfth, nineteen fifty nine, they landed the second
Speaker 3: lie To mission.
Speaker 1: And it's strange because you'll hear that described is they
Speaker 1: impacted the Moon. Yeah, which we have to remember for
Speaker 1: the time. It was a really big and amazing deal
Speaker 1: just to be able to hit that moving target.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that's amazing. The math involved is so far
Speaker 2: beyond my comprehension that it's crazy that they could even
Speaker 2: attempt to do it.
Speaker 1: And then on May twenty fifth, nineteen sixty one, severely
Speaker 1: freaked out by the success of the USSR, President John F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy issues a challenge and his speech to Congress when
Speaker 1: he says, I believe that this nation should commit itself
Speaker 1: to achieve the goal before this decade is out. I've
Speaker 1: landed a man on the moon and retalitied him safely
Speaker 1: to Earth.
Speaker 2: And see that was right after one of doctor feel
Speaker 2: Good's injections of what we now know was methamphetamines.
Speaker 3: Is that right, yes, Kennedy, Yes, Now we made him
Speaker 3: talk like that.
Speaker 2: It was all it was exactly what it was, less
Speaker 2: the accent and just more of the.
Speaker 3: Energy the paths.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was already there.
Speaker 3: He was already on the moon looking looking down.
Speaker 1: They were like, certain income inequality remains a problem. The
Speaker 1: nation is embroiled in racial disparity. Intention and he's like the.
Speaker 2: Moon, the moon, And also where's the doctor.
Speaker 1: Where's the dye called Marylyn? Uh? Yes, this leads to
Speaker 1: a series of things. We're going to walk through him
Speaker 1: pretty quickly. Before we had the Apollo program, we had
Speaker 1: something called the US Ranger Program. This ran from sixty
Speaker 1: one to sixty five. It sent nine missions.
Speaker 3: To the Moon.
Speaker 1: There were no people on them. This was all machinery.
Speaker 1: In sixty two, the Ranger four reached the lunar surface,
Speaker 1: but it impacted, it crashed, and it wasn't able to
Speaker 1: send any data back. So we just managed to make
Speaker 1: a very expensive bullet essentially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a small crater. But hey, congratulations, we had
Speaker 2: an impact. Right, That's how it would be written in
Speaker 2: some kind of board room where they're having Hey, look,
Speaker 2: we made an impact.
Speaker 1: We made an impact. We literally made an impact. Two
Speaker 1: years later, Ranger seven captures and sends back four thousand
Speaker 1: photos of the Moon before it hits the surface, and
Speaker 1: also goes to put The next big step was to
Speaker 1: land something without crashing.
Speaker 2: Yes, good idea. Again, much more difficult than you could
Speaker 2: ever imagine. However, here's the thing. The Soviets, again like
Speaker 2: they did before, beat us out. The Americans, of course,
Speaker 2: touching down the lunar nine. So they're at the ninth
Speaker 2: iteration of the Luna at this point on February third,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty six. But here's the thing though, the American side,
Speaker 2: again of this Cold War, we weren't very far behind
Speaker 2: the surveyor one mission. This is a new craft or
Speaker 2: new I guess part of the program. It made a
Speaker 2: controlled landing on the Moon about three months later. So
Speaker 2: here we are nineteen sixty six. Both the Soviets and
Speaker 2: the United States have landed things successfully there.
Speaker 1: And this all leads up to the big ticket item,
Speaker 1: the big tent, right, the big temple, the milestone of
Speaker 1: lunar exploration, which is landing a spacecraft with people on
Speaker 1: it on the lunar surface.
Speaker 2: And hopefully getting them back to Earth somehow.
Speaker 1: Well, let's gonna be hasty.
Speaker 3: Let's not be hasty, one step at a time.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like Gatige. You know, how far are
Speaker 1: you going to get if you spend all if you
Speaker 1: save all your energy for this swim back. This was
Speaker 1: way before Gattiko, but it's a good film. All these
Speaker 1: steps were leading to this, and it was a bloody path.
Speaker 1: It was not a situation where it's all angel farts
Speaker 1: and trumpets and harps and stuff. Tragedy struck during a
Speaker 1: test on January twenty seventh, nineteen sixty seven, a fire
Speaker 1: swept through the Apollo command module, killing three astronauts, and
Speaker 1: NASA name the test Apollo one to honor the crew.
Speaker 1: And then we get to the manned lunar landings. They
Speaker 1: all take place again between nineteen sixty nine and nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy two. They're all part of the Apollo program. They
Speaker 1: all come from the US. The most popular one, the
Speaker 1: one that changed history forever, was the July twentieth, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine moon landing, when Neil Armstrong and longtime friend
Speaker 1: of the show Buzz Doctor Rendezvous Aldrin land on the
Speaker 1: lunar surface. It's followed by five other crude missions. The
Speaker 1: astronauts who first touch on the Moon's surface have to
Speaker 1: go way out of the way. This is this is
Speaker 1: so dangerous. They have to travel three hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: three thousand kilometers roughly just to reach the Moon. They
Speaker 1: have to survive landing, have to survive being on the Moon.
Speaker 1: They have to make it.
Speaker 2: They have to like take off from the Moon.
Speaker 1: They have to take off from the Moon, which people
Speaker 1: forget you to get and then they have to make
Speaker 1: it back to Earth preferably alive.
Speaker 2: You miss a step. They got a rendezvous after taking
Speaker 2: off from the Moon with the other spacecraft that's going
Speaker 2: around the Moon. Right, docs successfully then make it back.
Speaker 1: That's a good point. So you can see just from
Speaker 1: all the all the dangers involved there why people would
Speaker 1: be skeptical, especially when again the argument is that there
Speaker 1: are so many problems on this planet that we can
Speaker 1: solve through mundane means. You know, why are we sending
Speaker 1: just six missions to the Moon and quitting? Why did
Speaker 1: we quit?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: So, there have been tons and tons of uncrude landings
Speaker 1: which persist in the modern day. And as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: this way less risky, way less expensive. And now we
Speaker 1: get to the question of how we know that we,
Speaker 1: being humanity, got there some way. There are a number
Speaker 1: of ways to prove human beings visited the Moon. First,
Speaker 1: we have pieces of it, with literal pieces of it.
Speaker 1: It's illegal for us to buy them, because we're apparently
Speaker 1: not cool enough. But thanks for writing back, NASA. But
Speaker 1: humanity has.
Speaker 2: Have you, guys ever seen that movie of Hollow eighteen?
Speaker 3: I have not is the same as Apollo thirteen, thanks.
Speaker 2: The almost almost the same thing. It's just like five
Speaker 2: missions later. Five more so so, Apollo seventeen is the
Speaker 2: last man mission to the Moon that occurred. This one
Speaker 2: is about the next one and what they find and
Speaker 2: uh less spoiler alert, there's some naughty moon rocks up there.
Speaker 2: That's all I'll.
Speaker 1: Say, naughty moon rose. I guess so endearor when you
Speaker 1: describe stuff is.
Speaker 3: Not moon rocks is like a weed thing.
Speaker 2: Oh it is.
Speaker 3: It's like some really concentrated like weed thing. Oh well,
Speaker 3: I heard in rap songs. I only know that's.
Speaker 2: Oh well, it's not that okay, But anyway, watch is it?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So, astronauts working for NASA brought back about eight
Speaker 1: hundred and forty two pounds of moon rocks rocks from
Speaker 1: the lunar surface for scientists to study. Although it would
Speaker 1: be great if it were eight hundred and forty two
Speaker 1: pounds of marijuana that they brought back. The thing about
Speaker 1: these rocks is the oldest The oldest ones are four
Speaker 1: point five billion years old, which makes them two hundred
Speaker 1: million years older than the oldest rocks on Earth. WHOA,
Speaker 1: So it's a pretty good argument. You could also say, well,
Speaker 1: maybe they just collected eight hundred and forty two pounds
Speaker 1: of meteorites that landed on Earth. But the moon rocks
Speaker 1: have characteristics that are unique to them. And then there's
Speaker 1: the other idea, which is that you can see stuff
Speaker 1: reflected on the Moon. You can see the retroflectors, you
Speaker 1: can see the flag still there, which is a little
Speaker 1: ghost on our part, But how inspiring anyhow. These are
Speaker 1: just some of the things that you can see on
Speaker 1: the Moon and so far in twenty nineteen. This is
Speaker 1: the official narrative, at least, the very broad strokes of
Speaker 1: our species collective quest to reach the Moon. But what
Speaker 1: if there's more to the story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what if instead of faking the moon landing the
Speaker 2: way so many of us at least have pondered, what
Speaker 2: if there's more to the mission than what the public
Speaker 2: had been led to believe. What if we had a
Speaker 2: whole other ulterior motive just by even imagining going up
Speaker 2: to the Moon. And what if we did something crazy.
Speaker 3: We'll explore that concept when we get back from a
Speaker 3: quick sponsor brank years where it gets crazy.
Speaker 1: We absolutely planned more stuff. By we at this point,
Speaker 1: we don't mean the human species. We mean the US government.
Speaker 1: We planned a ton of very strange things we did
Speaker 1: not tell anyone. We would like to reveal one of
Speaker 1: those plans on the air today, something called Project Horizon.
Speaker 1: All the way back in nineteen fifty eight or fifty nine,
Speaker 1: ten or so, ten or more years before the first
Speaker 1: lunar landing, Uncle Sam was already planning to build a
Speaker 1: permanent lunar base. They listed the requirements.
Speaker 3: Like this, So here's the quote. The lunar outpost is
Speaker 3: required to develop and protect potential United States interests on
Speaker 3: the Moon. To develop techniques in Moon based surveillance of
Speaker 3: the Earth and space and communications relay and operations on
Speaker 3: the surface of the Moon. To serve as a base
Speaker 3: for exploration of the Moon, for future exploration into space,
Speaker 3: and for military operations on the Moon if required. And
Speaker 3: to support scientific investigation on the Moon. Very very moon
Speaker 3: based document here.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, but again, we're talking about having a military,
Speaker 2: like a ready to go military outpost on the Moon
Speaker 2: in nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 3: Gees. I mean, that's like a pretty big leap. But
Speaker 3: I guess anytime we're conquering anything, we're doing it for
Speaker 3: military purposes, right, Like why bother sending humans to the
Speaker 3: Moon just so we can have the bragging rights if
Speaker 3: we're not going to actually use it to blow people
Speaker 3: up in some way, right.
Speaker 2: I guess so. And just to give you a little
Speaker 2: background on what we're reading from, this is an unclassified
Speaker 2: secret document that we found on History dot Army dot mill.
Speaker 2: It's entitled Project Horizon, Volume one, Summary and Supporting Considerations,
Speaker 2: and we have a little more about the background of
Speaker 2: this project.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Now, I know a lot of us are
Speaker 1: titillated by the the titling there. Yeah, if you are,
Speaker 1: if you're still awake after hearing that title. This was
Speaker 1: the brainchild of a Lieutenant General Arthur G. Trudeau, who
Speaker 1: was the US Army's chief of Research and Development. The
Speaker 1: project had two components. First, the publicly acknowledged idea, which
Speaker 1: is very very star trek, very post scarcity economy.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what it is, to boldly.
Speaker 1: Go where no one has gone before, to explore space
Speaker 1: for the betterment of mankind, to develop new and better technology.
Speaker 2: Again for the betterment of mankind, right right right.
Speaker 1: To explore strange new places right but below the surface.
Speaker 1: The true purpose of Project Horizon and many similar projects
Speaker 1: in the you know, the secret thing, what people said
Speaker 1: when all the doors were closed and the monitors were
Speaker 1: turned off, was to create a situation where they could
Speaker 1: have military superiority in the Cold War, military superiority in
Speaker 1: space through through nuclear weaponry. They weren't going to just
Speaker 1: put people on the Moon. They wanted to put nukes,
Speaker 1: there by permanently occupying the Moon, and more importantly, by
Speaker 1: getting there before Soviet forces did. The US could say
Speaker 1: we own this now, and the Moon and all that
Speaker 1: it holds or any use that it has is now ours,
Speaker 1: and this could be useful on a multitude of fronts. First,
Speaker 1: you have in many ways, you have the potential for
Speaker 1: an obscene level of air superiority. Oh yeah, you can
Speaker 1: also restrict space from You can restrict anyone from accessing space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's huge. You've got a moon base on that
Speaker 2: thing that's just looming over the planet at all times.
Speaker 2: Your you can observe anything that the Moon can see.
Speaker 2: You can then see, right, which is a little difficult
Speaker 2: to plan for. Well, I guess not really.
Speaker 3: You could.
Speaker 2: You could do all of your all of your research somehow,
Speaker 2: I don't know, underground or outside of the Moon's view somehow.
Speaker 1: Right, Radiation shielding would have to be a big part
Speaker 1: you could. You could also, for example, make a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of money because you would have a monopoly on
Speaker 1: lunar travel. There you go, and millionaires existed back in
Speaker 1: the in the fifties as well as the sixties, so
Speaker 1: it's quite conceivable that they would pay any price to
Speaker 1: get to the Moon if they were allowed to. The
Speaker 1: army could also have massive, massive surveillance capabilities. There would
Speaker 1: be no such thing as a secret area of the
Speaker 1: USSR unless it was very deep, but even then you
Speaker 1: could see it being constructed.
Speaker 3: I mean, it just feels like there wouldn't be as
Speaker 3: much of a race kind of situation if there wasn't
Speaker 3: some military angle at play, right right, it seems like
Speaker 3: any time that the US is like, oh, we better
Speaker 3: catch up with the Russians because they don't want the
Speaker 3: Russians to have the upper hand, it's less of a
Speaker 3: reputation thing, and to me it seems like more of
Speaker 3: like a strategic thing.
Speaker 2: Well yeah, I mean, think about this last bit that
Speaker 2: we were talking about the nukes. If you had nukes
Speaker 2: on the lunar surface so they could be launched, let's say,
Speaker 2: with a dead man's hand kind of situation, where if Washington,
Speaker 2: DC gets attacked, if New York gets attacked, if all
Speaker 2: of it gets wiped off the face of the Earth
Speaker 2: through Soviet missiles, then there are still lunar nukes coming
Speaker 2: at you, right, no matter what you do to the
Speaker 2: United States mainland or any of its other outposts. There
Speaker 2: still will be nukes on the way. They might take
Speaker 2: a while, but they're headed your direction.
Speaker 1: That's it. I mean, that's a very very good point,
Speaker 1: because even if every single part of the US security
Speaker 1: structures disabled, they're going to have a tough time hitting
Speaker 1: the moon. Right, you can also vastly improve radio communications,
Speaker 1: at least for the time. So it's clear that we
Speaker 1: can see this. It's clear that it has advantages, and
Speaker 1: I enjoy what you pointed out, and no one which
Speaker 1: is I would say, not just any endeavor like this,
Speaker 1: but all all wars and expansions are about controlling resource
Speaker 1: and access, you know, So it's not out of the
Speaker 1: goodness of their hearts that they planned this. The Pentagon said, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's think about this, let's figure it out. So
Speaker 1: they turned Project Horizon over to one of the only
Speaker 1: people they felt qualified to study its feasibility. A person
Speaker 1: will be familiar to many of our longtime listeners today,
Speaker 1: that is Werner von Braun.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the Pentagon turned Projectorizon over to Werner von Braun,
Speaker 3: and at this point he was the head of the
Speaker 3: US Army Ballistic Missile Agency, abbma personal favorite. It's almost abba. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's neither here nor there. But von Braun was able
Speaker 3: to assign the study to one of his German colleagues,
Speaker 3: who also had been brought to the United States as
Speaker 3: part of Operation paper Clip, which we've discussed on the show.
Speaker 3: I think it's one of your personal favorites, Math, I'm
Speaker 3: not mistaken.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hopefully it's a show favorite because it's just
Speaker 2: one of those weird things in history that occurred that
Speaker 2: we don't like to think about.
Speaker 3: Really happened. Quick little summary.
Speaker 1: Germany's put One of Germany's most important and least known
Speaker 1: at the time popular exports post World War Two was
Speaker 1: former Nazi scientists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, minds, great minds that put together the technology that
Speaker 2: was used to overcome most of the rest of the
Speaker 2: world's military might.
Speaker 1: The US got them, in Russia got them too. They
Speaker 1: were also the Cold War had already begun, so Operation
Speaker 1: paper Clip was the secret program to spirit these scientists
Speaker 1: away without the US public learning about it.
Speaker 2: And verner Ron Brown was one of those men.
Speaker 3: And one of his men, His top man for the
Speaker 3: job was a man by the name of hines Ham
Speaker 3: and coel and Over the next ninety days. This gentleman
Speaker 3: divided up to projects in the pieces and assign each
Speaker 3: part to a military department that was most suited, most
Speaker 3: well suited to study it. The ABMA would evaluate the
Speaker 3: type of rockets and space vehicles that would be required,
Speaker 3: and then the Signal Corps would study the radio and
Speaker 3: communications needs, and the core of engineers would propose the
Speaker 3: best methods for constructing, maintaining, and expanding a habitable outpost
Speaker 3: on said moon.
Speaker 2: And see their compartmentalizing here. They're very intelligent and how
Speaker 2: they're doing this. None of the components know necessarily exactly
Speaker 2: what the others are doing. There's Bob Lazaar, of all
Speaker 2: people that we've discussed on this show before, a guy
Speaker 2: who purportedly worked at Area fifty one or near Area
Speaker 2: fifty one. I think it's site for something like that
Speaker 2: that's near Area fifty one. He recently went on the
Speaker 2: Joe Rogan Show and he was discussing particularly this the
Speaker 2: compartmentalization of studying something like this. How you'll get basically
Speaker 2: a title kind of what we what we see when
Speaker 2: we look in the DARPA website. You get a title
Speaker 2: of a project and a one paragraph that tells you
Speaker 2: what that thing is, so you'll know that. Okay, someone
Speaker 2: over here in this project is studying the propulsion system.
Speaker 2: Somebody over here is studying aerodynamics, you know, part of this.
Speaker 2: If you're gonna, let's say, create a flying saucer. In
Speaker 2: this case Cole Cole he's he's doing this exact thing
Speaker 2: with building a moon base.
Speaker 1: Right right, And he was an aeronautical engineer who made
Speaker 1: the first forays into the design of the rocket that
Speaker 1: we now know as the Saturn one. Wow, you cannot
Speaker 1: buy your own Saturn one again. Thanks for writing back, NASA.
Speaker 1: I was just curious. But you can buy a top
Speaker 1: notch lego model based on it.
Speaker 2: And the company Saturn did make some fine vehicles for
Speaker 2: a while there.
Speaker 1: Funny you mentioned that, Yeah, I wreck two of them.
Speaker 1: It's true. They will keep you alive. But back to horizon.
Speaker 1: So the final report, which was titled Project Rise in
Speaker 1: US Army Study for the Establishment of a Lunar Military Post,
Speaker 1: was given to the Pentagon in June of nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: nine in two volumes. The first was a summary that
Speaker 1: said presented the main conclusions of what we want to
Speaker 1: do the high level thing right. The one the execs
Speaker 1: would read. And the second gives a longer and more
Speaker 1: detailed analysis, and we'll tell you what was in this
Speaker 1: report after a word from our sponsors. Okay, so first
Speaker 1: things first, this is written during the Cold War. This
Speaker 1: is top secret. If you told most of the world
Speaker 1: how we're going to take over the Moon, We're going
Speaker 1: to put nuclear weapons on it, you know, USA, USA,
Speaker 1: the world would not react well. So they emphasize the secrecy,
Speaker 1: but also they emphasize the grave nature of the problem.
Speaker 1: This is very This is phrased as a inevitable, indeed,
Speaker 1: the only path to salvation for the United States or
Speaker 1: to continued stability. And they say the political implications of
Speaker 1: our failure to be first in space are a matter
Speaker 1: of public record. This failure has reflected adversely on United
Speaker 1: States scientific and political leadership. To some extent, we have
Speaker 1: recovered the loss. However, once having been second best in
Speaker 1: the eyes of the world's population, we are not now
Speaker 1: in a position to afford being second on any other
Speaker 1: major step in space. The results of failure to first
Speaker 1: place man on an extra terrestrial base will raise grave
Speaker 1: political questions and at the same time lower US prestige
Speaker 1: and influence.
Speaker 2: There you go. I imagine a general perhaps pacing back
Speaker 2: and forth again in a giant room filled with officials
Speaker 2: and scientists and other military personnel, just giving that speech.
Speaker 1: I get a very doctor strange love vibe out of
Speaker 1: this because this sort of answers the question that I
Speaker 1: posed originally, which is, why would you focus on the
Speaker 1: Moon when there are so many things we could fix
Speaker 1: here on Earth? And they've they've changed the nature of
Speaker 1: the argument to say that if we want to fix
Speaker 1: anything on Earth, we have to forge the respect you
Speaker 1: know we have. Yeah, thank you, thank you for the
Speaker 1: respect we have to we have to get to the Moon.
Speaker 2: We've been number two on several of these other big things,
Speaker 2: the first satellite, the first successful you know, lunar orbiting.
Speaker 1: First person in space to return.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean they're like, guys, we need that base.
Speaker 1: Now, and who knows how many other cosmonauts were just
Speaker 1: the first people in space who didn't make it back, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then the report turns the question whether a crude
Speaker 1: moon base with actual people on it is something that
Speaker 1: we can afford and something that we could actually do.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if money is no object, can we think our
Speaker 1: way around this? If money is an object. The conversation
Speaker 1: always turns to it eventually. Then how much money is
Speaker 1: too much? How much is just enough?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, the first when you're thinking about something as
Speaker 2: high level and conceptual as this, the first thing you
Speaker 2: do is, well, if we were going to use everything
Speaker 2: that's available to us right now, all the technology, how
Speaker 2: much would it cost? Right, that's the that's one of
Speaker 2: the major things. How much would it cost using this stuff?
Speaker 2: And would that make sense for us? It made the assumption,
Speaker 2: like when it was first starting out this Project Horizon,
Speaker 2: that they would be able to use existing technology to
Speaker 2: do everything, at least in the beginning.
Speaker 1: Yes, in the beginning, that's where everything seems so great,
Speaker 1: you know, in the beginning.
Speaker 2: But here's the thing. They're already working on some technology
Speaker 2: that wasn't currently available. It was basically the R and
Speaker 2: D side of what we imagine propulsion will be. Like
Speaker 2: the dude Cole col Coel whatever, whoever's heman, he was
Speaker 2: working on a liquid hydrogen rocket, a liquid hydrogen fueled
Speaker 2: rocket that could potentially get us there. And again they're
Speaker 2: going back to this idea that we have to make
Speaker 2: the entire thing modular, starting out really small, so the
Speaker 2: first time we land there on the moon and we're
Speaker 2: going to start an outpost, we put a tiny little
Speaker 2: thing down there that's not going to be fully functional. Essentially,
Speaker 2: it's just going to be a little outpost that we're
Speaker 2: going to continue to build each time we go back.
Speaker 2: We're not just going to get there and plant a
Speaker 2: base on the moon.
Speaker 1: And we're also not going to throw anything away. If
Speaker 1: we can help it, it'll all eventually become a piece
Speaker 1: of this.
Speaker 2: Outpost, right exactly.
Speaker 1: So the idea here is that they could start getting
Speaker 1: their collective ducks in a row in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 1: and they even thought about how this would be designed.
Speaker 1: The basic building block for the outpost would be these
Speaker 1: metal cylindrical tanks three meters or ten feet in diameter
Speaker 1: and twenty feet or six point one meters long, and
Speaker 1: two nuclear reactors would also be built there. They're building
Speaker 1: nuclear well, they're transporting nuclear reactors.
Speaker 2: They have to there. It's weird they're not building it
Speaker 2: as it feels like legos to me, like nuclear reactor
Speaker 2: parts that you kind of put in.
Speaker 1: A place right Ikia style assembly. But did you ever
Speaker 1: play that, Let's think about it this way, did you
Speaker 1: ever play that game where you had to have a
Speaker 1: relay with an egg and a spoon. Yeah, now, I
Speaker 1: had never deal with it.
Speaker 3: That's a brutal variation.
Speaker 1: Ah, would you imagine running either one will work mouth
Speaker 1: or the spoon. Imagine holding the spoon in your mouth,
Speaker 1: is what I meant. Oh okay, yeah, yeah, well either way,
Speaker 1: imagine imagine that egg is a nuclear bomb, and imagine
Speaker 1: the run is running from Earth to the Moon. That's insane,
Speaker 1: that's what That's what they were proposing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then there again, it's so crazy to me.
Speaker 2: It's not even getting to the moon. It's the last
Speaker 2: jump from the orbit of the Moon to the surface
Speaker 2: of the Moon with with a nuke or a nuclear
Speaker 2: at least nuclear material material that is radioactive in that way.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So the idea was, Okay, we'll figure out the details.
Speaker 1: We'll take these nuclear reactors. They'll provide shielding and power
Speaker 1: for the operation of the initial quarters and the equipment
Speaker 1: we used to make the permanent facility. We'll use every
Speaker 1: empty cargo propelling container to store more supplies, life essentials,
Speaker 1: and of course weapons.
Speaker 2: Don't tell anyone, gotta have those space guns.
Speaker 1: Gotta have your space guns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, honestly, what they didn't have lasers. You know,
Speaker 2: they were really developing guns they could fire in space,
Speaker 2: as we learned in another episode. Yes, there was a
Speaker 2: pistol right on board with the Apollo program.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a pistol with the Apollo program with
Speaker 1: the lander, yes, right, just in case. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think cosmonauts had something like that too, if they landed
Speaker 1: in territory where they might be attacked by wildlife.
Speaker 2: Oh so it was really about coming back to Earth.
Speaker 1: It was about coming back. It was about coming back.
Speaker 1: But they knew they would have to have some of weapon,
Speaker 1: if not a projectile weapon, they would have to invent something.
Speaker 2: That's a big wink there by the way, just for me,
Speaker 2: that was in case there were aliens. I'm just saying, yes.
Speaker 1: Yes, they had two types of surface vehicles. One was lifting, digging, scraping,
Speaker 1: because naturally you would end up mining, right for long
Speaker 1: term viability, in other words, for extended distance trips, a
Speaker 1: little lunar road trip, you know, hauling reconnaissance, rescue, maybe
Speaker 1: a great sound system, who knows.
Speaker 2: Just playing music across the whole of the Moon.
Speaker 1: And they had this mapped out in phases as you said,
Speaker 1: at the conclusion of the construction phase, the original camp
Speaker 1: quarters would be converted into a laboratory and the basic
Speaker 1: outpost just to get the basic stuff that we've already
Speaker 1: talked about, would need about one hundred and fifty launches,
Speaker 1: specifically Saturn rockets.
Speaker 2: One hundred and fifty launches.
Speaker 1: Didn't quite get there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's so many. And you know, we were talking
Speaker 2: with Marshall on our Mars.
Speaker 1: Episode Marshall Brain Yes.
Speaker 2: About how many trips it would essentially take to get
Speaker 2: all the equipment and personnel out there, and it was
Speaker 2: a lot. But the simple proposition of saying we need
Speaker 2: to launch rockets, they cost x amount of dollars one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty times in order to establish this moon base.
Speaker 2: Hm wow.
Speaker 1: And then also another sixty four launches every year to
Speaker 1: keep it supplied and to rotate crew members back and forth.
Speaker 1: So the idea was that in a perfect world, that
Speaker 1: people wouldn't be spending their entire lives keeping nuclear weapons
Speaker 1: at the ready on the moon.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yikes.
Speaker 1: See that's the tenuous script. Though we managed as a
Speaker 1: species to officially do this kind of trip all only
Speaker 1: six times, yes, ever with a tiny crew and in
Speaker 1: the post World War two economic boom of the US
Speaker 1: getting people to the moon. Now, like, what happens if
Speaker 1: you're on the moon and nuclear war breaks out in
Speaker 1: the US or you know, in the world entire right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: what do you do? I guess you start counting how
Speaker 1: many days or months worth of food you have left?
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, Well, in this case, you're talking about ten
Speaker 2: to twenty personnel that they wanted to have in this
Speaker 2: base at any time, and that's a minimum. They wanted
Speaker 2: a minimum of ten to twenty personnel to run this thing.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: They also started game planning how to survive on the
Speaker 1: ground attacks from Soviet forces. Yeah. They wanted to surround
Speaker 1: this thing with claymore minds that would poke holes and
Speaker 1: pressure suits.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds scary.
Speaker 1: They also wanted to have the give the inhabitants small
Speaker 1: sub kiloton nuclear weapons similar to things that were used
Speaker 1: in anti tank weapons called Davy crocketts, that were already existed.
Speaker 1: They were already in play, and the idea was that
Speaker 1: they could use these to blow up Soviet moon tanks.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they add anti personnel tactics to defend, also
Speaker 2: anti vehicle tactics and you know, they're really again like
Speaker 2: it's this, it's this conceptual thinking of war on the Moon.
Speaker 2: That's really what they're imagining. They're using it for, you know,
Speaker 2: or at least they're imagining it as a as a
Speaker 2: weapon in itself, this moon base, but as well as
Speaker 2: treating it like a military outpost. It's so odd to me,
Speaker 2: but I guess it makes complete sense.
Speaker 1: And of course speculation runs rife with this. They're planning
Speaker 1: anti personnel weaponry and they say it's for the Soviet army,
Speaker 1: but the Soviet Army, as far as they know, doesn't
Speaker 1: have the teche technology to do this. So going back
Speaker 1: to your question, Matt, who are they really planning to
Speaker 1: defend themselves against. It's a great unknown.
Speaker 2: And so those moon rocks.
Speaker 1: I have sound gardens. The entire time I was working
Speaker 1: on I said, sound gardens, spoon Man sucking mahapo is
Speaker 1: moon man, and I think it would be a worthwhile parody.
Speaker 2: Is it? Spoonman with your hands?
Speaker 1: Spoon man moon man? Huh? Yep?
Speaker 2: Yet yep?
Speaker 1: And we're suit no, no, I'll write the lyrics. It's
Speaker 1: fair use is as a parody if we write the
Speaker 1: whole thing, which I'm fine doing uh the so let's
Speaker 1: talk Turkey. Let's talk space Turkey, nuclear space Turkey. How
Speaker 1: much did this? How much would this cost?
Speaker 3: Actually, so, the total cost for the basic structure of
Speaker 3: the study concluded would run in the neighborhood of six
Speaker 3: billion dollars. That's in modern dollars, roughly seven hundred mili
Speaker 3: per year. The study also made a note that this
Speaker 3: was not much more than the US was already spending
Speaker 3: on its nuclear missiles program.
Speaker 2: So it's a win win, And I'm calling bs on
Speaker 2: those calculated numbers from nineteen fifty eight. I think it's
Speaker 2: easily three or four times that.
Speaker 1: Easily easily. I mean you get private companies involved. It's
Speaker 1: this tale as old as time. You know, this is
Speaker 1: the land of three hundred dollars hammers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how wait, what was the estimate? I know, I
Speaker 2: figured you might know this, at least the ballpark estimate
Speaker 2: of building the wall like that, that whole thing. I
Speaker 2: think it was in the like tens of billions of dollars,
Speaker 2: right like forty It was something crazy twitch wall the
Speaker 2: border wall. During the twenty sixteen election, there were a
Speaker 2: bunch of estimates that occurred back around there around that time.
Speaker 2: And if you're just imagining building essentially concrete and rebar
Speaker 2: structure or you know, whatever material it's built out of
Speaker 2: on Earth on Earth, now you're going to build a
Speaker 2: structure on the Moon, even with today's rocket technology.
Speaker 1: Wow, So here's the question, did they really build it?
Speaker 1: They be in the US? Is that the stuff they
Speaker 1: don't want you to know? In the end, it looks
Speaker 1: like the same international politics that inspired Project Arise and
Speaker 1: also led to its early death. Neither President Eisenhower nor
Speaker 1: Soviet Premier Khrushchev wanted to spend tons and tons of
Speaker 1: money for a new arms race and outer space where
Speaker 1: there was already so busy waging multiple proxy wars on Earth.
Speaker 1: So they started negotiating treaties and agreements, reaching the consensus
Speaker 1: that stands today, at least officially, which is there shall
Speaker 1: be no nuclear weapons in space. No nation can claim
Speaker 1: a celestial body as its national territory. We will see
Speaker 1: how long that holds. We'll see how long that is
Speaker 1: the case. As far as we know now, there is
Speaker 1: no permanent base, no permanent crude base on the lunar surface. Again,
Speaker 1: as far as we know, horizon never progressed past the
Speaker 1: feasibility stage, Eisenhower rejected it, and the primary responsibility for
Speaker 1: America Space program was transferred to NASA, which is of
Speaker 1: course a civilian agency. While there may not be any
Speaker 1: current proof of a permanent nuclear base today, recently leaked
Speaker 1: documents reveal that, no matter what was said at the time,
Speaker 1: the US government Uncle Sam never ever stopped thinking about
Speaker 1: building a Moon base. Secretly, when the microphones are off
Speaker 1: and things are closed at the Pentagon and people are
Speaker 1: just hanging out secretly, the US still very much wants
Speaker 1: to build a base on the Moon, and furthermore, is
Speaker 1: planning to do so. They're worried now that new players
Speaker 1: have entered the.
Speaker 2: Game, and that's what brings us to a little thing
Speaker 2: called Project Artemis, right, yes, or just Artemis. Let's just
Speaker 2: go Artemis.
Speaker 1: So the Greek god Apollo, for whom NASA's Apollo program
Speaker 1: was named Apollo had a twin sister named Artemis, and
Speaker 1: NASA's pitch on this is that this will be the
Speaker 1: banner under which humans return to the Moon. The Artemis
Speaker 1: program was unveiled by NASA in mid May, and the
Speaker 1: ideas that will put astronauts on the lunar surface in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. Preparations have already begun, but the problem
Speaker 1: is we don't know how certain how we don't know
Speaker 1: how certain it is that this will actually come to pass.
Speaker 1: So NASA is setting the maiden flight of its space
Speaker 1: launch system for next year twenty twenty. As we record this.
Speaker 1: It's a giant booster, it's taller in a thirty story building.
Speaker 1: It'll blast a crew capsule called Oryan on an uncrewede
Speaker 1: mission to the Moon and back. They're doing a dry run,
Speaker 1: and then in twenty twenty two they will have a
Speaker 1: test with up to four astronauts, and then after that
Speaker 1: they'll construct a small space station orbiting around the Moon,
Speaker 1: and then they'll dock a lunar lander in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: assuming the world hasn't burned down by then, And then
Speaker 1: that same year, in twenty twenty four, the four astronauts
Speaker 1: fly in the rancapsule to the station, get on board
Speaker 1: the lander, descend to the lunar surface.
Speaker 2: And then for the next three three to four years
Speaker 2: they continue to do that, and then they're really building
Speaker 2: a base. And one of the biggest problems the issues
Speaker 2: as tends to happen with space exploration, and I would
Speaker 2: say with NASA budgets in general, is this thing that
Speaker 2: we call sticker shock. It's you know, we have all
Speaker 2: these aspirations to do these incredible things, but the moment
Speaker 2: that we realize exactly how much it's going to cost, everybody,
Speaker 2: and especially Congress because you've got elected officials, you know,
Speaker 2: in the House of Representatives, the Senate, they see that
Speaker 2: kind of thing and they think, well, how are we
Speaker 2: going to convince the American people that this is worth it?
Speaker 3: Well, even run into that with a podcast sometimes, you.
Speaker 2: Know, certainly with everything because it is you really have
Speaker 2: to take it into consideration. In this case, I guess
Speaker 2: the biggest pro con thing that you put up there
Speaker 2: is if it does cost this much, we have to
Speaker 2: be at least achieving something that is worthwhile for us,
Speaker 2: both as investors and as a species. And sometimes it's
Speaker 2: tough to see that.
Speaker 1: Right. And then there's that argument about private versus public
Speaker 1: ability or infrastructure.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: We know that there are a lot of private companies
Speaker 1: who have taken up the flag of state supported space
Speaker 1: exploration agencies and they're making they're making some serious progress,
Speaker 1: but do they have enough hef to to get to
Speaker 1: the moon. Yeah, you know, that's a tough one, it
Speaker 1: really is.
Speaker 2: And let's just get back to that price that we
Speaker 2: talked about with Project Horizon, that initial estimate from nineteen
Speaker 2: fifty eight saying that it would cost in what is
Speaker 2: nowadays now dollars, the entire program was going to cost
Speaker 2: around six billion dollars roughly seven hundred million a year.
Speaker 2: No way throughout the life of the project, there's no way,
Speaker 2: but that was the estimate, right, Yeah. So we're looking
Speaker 2: at an ARS Technica article where they're they're citing sources
Speaker 2: that have told them that the internal projected cost is
Speaker 2: six to eight billion dollars per year rather than per
Speaker 2: the life. Because we're talking about a project that spans
Speaker 2: from today twenty nineteen until twenty twenty eight, that's a
Speaker 2: lot of money. And that's on top of the already
Speaker 2: existing budget that NASA works with, which is twenty billion
Speaker 2: dollars a year, right right, which again they have problems
Speaker 2: getting funding for that a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: So let's be clear about that. According to the internal estimates,
Speaker 1: the cost of the Artemis project is not six to
Speaker 1: eight billion a year, it's twenty six to twenty eight
Speaker 1: billion a year.
Speaker 2: Which is which is because of the NASA budget which is.
Speaker 3: Twenty got it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's it's sticker shock for sure. The question
Speaker 1: is if it's worth it. If there is a possibility
Speaker 1: of building a sustainable lunar colony of any sort, then
Speaker 1: there is. There's literally no price you can put on it.
Speaker 1: There is no way to equate in numbers. No more
Speaker 1: capitalistic people hate this idea that some things can't be bought,
Speaker 1: but there is no way to equate with numbers the
Speaker 1: value of having a second franchise of humanity just in case,
Speaker 1: just in case, or in many cases, but arguably just
Speaker 1: before the old house burns down, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that. I'm not saying that Earth
Speaker 1: is doomed, but I am saying it is good to
Speaker 1: have some insurance.
Speaker 2: We're not doing a real great job at making sure
Speaker 2: we try and keep everything running swell.
Speaker 1: Sure here, that's true. We're also we're also pretty in
Speaker 1: the dark still about how people would how a human
Speaker 1: population would reproduce and grow in a lunar environment. The
Speaker 1: gravity is so much lower, you're exposed to a ton
Speaker 1: of radiation. We don't know. We've never seen a child
Speaker 1: created and born on the Moon. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of unknowns, and twenty six to twenty eight billion dollars
Speaker 1: is a high price to pay for. For ex I mean,
Speaker 1: what if we what if we do all this? What
Speaker 1: if our species does all this and it turns out that,
Speaker 1: for one unforeseen reason or another, it is completely impossible
Speaker 1: for people to live.
Speaker 3: On the moon.
Speaker 2: Can we just just to that point ben of how
Speaker 2: long people would need to be on the Moon to
Speaker 2: really understand having a child there, you know, having generations
Speaker 2: who live on the Moon for at least an extended
Speaker 2: period of time. Let's just talk about the length that
Speaker 2: the crew of Apollo seventeen, the final Apollo mission, actually
Speaker 2: stayed on the Moon at one time. How long was
Speaker 2: it seventy four hours, fifty nine minutes, thirty eight seconds.
Speaker 2: That is the longest amount of time anyone has spent
Speaker 2: on the Moon.
Speaker 1: So we're basing it, That's what we're basing it on
Speaker 1: a crazy weekend on the Moon. It's like when someone
Speaker 1: goes to Las Vegas for a weekend and they say,
Speaker 1: I love it here, I want to live here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, albeit that's with suits and technol from the
Speaker 2: late sixties and early seventies. But still I don't know.
Speaker 2: Is the human body how well is it going to
Speaker 2: do for months at a time if you've got a
Speaker 2: you know, a stint on the moon.
Speaker 1: The human body is custom made for a very specific environment.
Speaker 1: That's a problem. And when you first said that was
Speaker 1: with the suits and technologies at the time, I thought
Speaker 1: we were still talking about Vegas.
Speaker 3: Gotcha, we've been through this before, I think. But you
Speaker 3: too would both be game for a moon stint, right, Yes, I.
Speaker 2: It's the calculus is a little different now that I
Speaker 2: have wife and son. But I think if he was
Speaker 2: a game, my wife was game, we would do a
Speaker 2: family lunar mission, a moon stint.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you have the first moon Boy.
Speaker 2: That's right, moon Boy writer, you're gonna do this.
Speaker 1: Moon Boy is also an obscure Marvel Comics character, so.
Speaker 2: Oh TM writer, Sorry, we can't use that to get
Speaker 2: a different one.
Speaker 3: He can be a little moon rock.
Speaker 1: That's not bad.
Speaker 2: Done, all right?
Speaker 3: Cool. I don't know that i'd do it just for fun.
Speaker 3: If we were living in sort of a scorch Darth
Speaker 3: Poke post apocalyptic situation, I think I would give it
Speaker 3: a go. But I don't think I would just do it.
Speaker 1: You know, for kicks, and that's our classic episode for
Speaker 1: this evening. We can't wait to hear your thoughts.
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