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