Moon debate. The conspiracy debate today. Moon debate. Literally, as we’re recording this episode, Artemis 2 is landing. It already landed. It’s in Atlanta in like three minutes, you guys. It literally splashed down. Oh, it’s so amazing.

Did you watch the launch? Yeah, I did. It was very anticlimactic. But did you go outside and watch it? No, I just watched it on television. You could see it from here? My brother went to Safety Harbor Pier and he was watching it over there. I didn’t, because they delayed it so much and I thought it already had gone off and I missed it, and then it was delayed like two hours or whatever it was. It’s kind of like a little tiny baby star. Nah, it was pretty good. You could see it pretty good.

So if you guys have been following the show, you know that our first ever episode was the moon. Was the moon landing a hoax? Was it real? Now, keep in mind, if you go back and listen to the first one we ever did, I’m just going to tell you right now, the quality’s ass. We didn’t really know what we were doing. Different recording equipment. We also sucked. We had the battery-operated ones, and the batteries would die. We bought like 200 batteries off Amazon just to keep this thing powered. But it’s still one of our top ones.

It’s funny because I think it was like 50 episodes later I had to do a special recanting of my views back then. And then now, obviously with Artemis and all this, we thought it was only proper to do a proper moon debate. So before we get into that, go back and listen to our moon episodes, because what we do is we go over the history of it. We did two. It was a two-parter. We did a little update about a year and a half later because you wanted to correct some of the things. So go back and listen to those, because we go over the story of the Mercury program, the early Russian cosmonaut program, all that stuff.

So now what we’re going to do on this episode is we are taking up the 10 most commonly asked questions or debates. Like those “what about this” questions that there’s never any closure on. It just keeps going. I felt it was important because some of them are really interesting.

Before we get into that, I just wanted a quick little take. Do you guys believe Artemis went and rounded it? Yes. Have you, okay, I’m sorry, but what is this, 2026, bro? I can take a picture of the moon on my phone and it’s in pretty decent detail, on my 100x zoom. It’s a little grainy, but it’s not bad. Why have they not figured out video in space? Like, they can’t do video? They did tons of video. There’s tons of video. No, but this one I’m talking about, this one. Not talking about ’69.

I was watching a reel about this and it was quite interesting. They’re like, why don’t they have a long video just looking at the Earth and just proving that it’s spinning? And it’s like you can see weather patterns moving and stuff. Why don’t they just do that? And then it squashes everything. They’re so far away that the video is still not going to show that motion in the Earth. It takes them a week to get to the moon, brother. It’s not like you’re going down to Tampa.

You have a massive continent which you can see from space. We’ve had pictures of the Earth. You can see the continent. So if you have a long six-hour video, theoretically the continent would move, because you can see a continent from space. They weren’t streaming the whole thing. Why not? It would smash the debate. There would be no more debate. No one would talk anymore. Just stream the whole thing for days. Why not?

I would go to NASA, their Instagram account, and a lot of the video and photo clearly even showed that there’s a curvature. Not flat, you mean? I totally believe the Earth is a sphere. I’m just saying it would be like, why not? Because there’s obviously so much skepticism around the space program anyways. Why not do like a time lapse? I think the main thing is not to prove that the Earth is round, but to prove that they’re actually there. Because if you’ve seen some of the photos they put, it does just look odd. The photos look too weird. The truth is nowadays you can’t trust anything, with the AI and all this tech that you can make any image, any video.

Some of the cool photos that came back were of the back side of the moon that we’d never seen before. Those were cool. How can you take a picture of the back side of the moon? There’s no light. Well, at an angle. It’s not the direct back. It was like while they’re rounding it. They took a picture of just a black picture. It’s just the black side of the moon.

And then disclaimer, this intro is the conspiracy theorist intro. This is a conspiracy podcast. In July of 1969, the world gathered around flickering television screens as Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon. It was presented as humanity’s greatest achievement. A moment where science, courage, and ambition collided to push us as humanity beyond Earth itself. But for some, that moment wasn’t triumph. It was theater.

Because if you step back and you really look at the context, the questions start to pile up about the moon landing of 1969. This wasn’t just a scientific mission. It happened in the heart of the Cold War, where the United States and the Soviet Union were locked in a battle not just for military dominance, but for global perception and reputation. The space race wasn’t about exploration. It was about winning. That’s all America knows how to do, baby. Even if we cheat, we’re winning. We’re going to win regardless.

And by the late 1960s, it is a fact the US was behind. They were 100% behind. The Russians were the first ones to get a dude in orbit. They beat us at everything. Even the animals. They crushed us on everything. I was watching Hidden Figures, which I love that movie. And he’s pissed. Taraji P. Henson is like, I work like a dog. So America needed a victory. It needed a win. So the question becomes, what if the pressure to win outweighed the ability to actually get there?

Perception is reality. Welcome to the US. This is US government 101. Just shut up. Just tell them we did it. Also, a business analogy is if you’ve ever had sales guys under you and you pressure them so hard that they do something weird. They juice the numbers. Because you’re too afraid to get fired, then you’re like, I got to come up with something. So the idea is that the pressure was so large that the people responsible then did funky stuff. Also the president gave them a deadline. By the end of the decade. And then he died.

So when you examine the footage, the photos, and the technology of the time, things begin to feel a little strange. A little sus. A flag that appears to ripple in place with no wind, a sky completely devoid of stars, shadows that don’t seem to align with a single light source, and all of it captured on cameras operating with less computing power than today’s calculator. It’s like a TI-83 is literally the computing system.

So then there’s the danger factor. There’s this invisible barrier surrounding Earth known as the Van Allen radiation belt. A region of charged particles intense enough to raise serious questions about whether humans could pass through it safely in 1969. We haven’t gone back to the moon, and there’s literally 500 videos of them being like, we can’t get out of low Earth orbit because of the Van Allen belt. And it’s NASA astronauts who are saying this. Yet somehow we’re told it happened. It happened cleanly, smoothly, and without actual incident. Not until Apollo 13 was there an actual incident. But the actual landing on the moon went off without much of a hit.

And one of the more intriguing parts of it is, this was the greatest achievement in human history. So why haven’t we gone back? They destroyed the tech, supposedly. It’s a very convenient excuse. And remember, because history isn’t just written by those who are right. It’s written by those who won. History is written by the victors, baby. Some believe the moon landing wasn’t a leap for mankind, but it was the greatest illusion ever broadcasted.

What we aim to do with this episode is put it to rest. We’re going to go over all of these 10 and even more items and go, okay, at the end of this, did we gather enough information to have a final say. Like we’re confident in what we can say happened on the moon. So we’re going to take up the 10 most asked questions about the moon landing.

The first one. If there’s no atmosphere on the moon, how do you explain the flag appearing to wave in footage? When they plant the flag, why is that not sketch? How can it move? There’s no air. There’s nothing. You’re in a void of nothing. Because when they’re planting it, they’re obviously trying to put it into the ground, right? There’s motion there. No, they weren’t shake-weighting it. Look at the video, dude. That’s what they’re doing. It’s like shake weight style.

When they’re planting it, obviously you got to put some motion and pressure into trying to put it into the ground. It’s not zero gravity, but near zero. It’s very little gravity. It’s not zero G. But it’s not even about gravity. If there’s no atmosphere, there’s no air resistance. But obviously there’s the gravitational pull of the moon itself, which is a fraction of the Earth’s. But you just said it, there’s no friction to stop the movement. So it’s moving. What’s going to stop the movement? Like if they shake it, obviously it’s going to move. What’s going to stop it?

I believe they only had a pole on the top to hold the flag fast, but I don’t think they had a pole on the bottom. No, they didn’t. So if you’re shake-weighting it, wouldn’t it just flop over? No, because you have the 90 on it. So you got the 90 on it. So two poles, one vertical, one horizontal. It’s very important because it’s a symbol of America, right? So it has to be displayed correct. You should have just put a neon sign. A Budweiser sign.

So what’s the conspiratorial view? From the skeptics’ perspective, it’s not just that the flag moves, it’s how it moves. So the motion appears fluid, sustained, resembling a wind-driven behavior rather than a simple vibration. So people argue there’s no atmosphere, so the movement should be minimal, it shouldn’t resemble the waving like in the wind. Also the presence of wrinkles and the flag shape raise questions. Instead of appearing tightly stretched by the rod or by the 90, it looks uneven. It just looks like it shouldn’t look that way. So this inconsistency suggests other potential environmental influence such as air. Such as a studio.

The thing that convinced me, I saw a video these guys put it in a vacuum. So take away all the air. They had a homie in there, I forgot exactly how they did it, but they simulated something putting it into the ground, pressure from the top down, with no air, in a vacuum. So then it did stay shaking a little bit. Was it waving or just like it was just like that? It was just like this. Like in between those two motions.

My other thing is, what if this was underwater? You know they all see that when the astronauts are testing, they test underwater. Water would also provide that same fluidity. They train a lot underwater. So that’s another big thing, that people believe that when they’re doing the air walks outside of a station, those are just green screened somehow and backdropped, and they’re actually underwater, because the movements are so slow, to simulate being in zero G. So that one, I’m like, okay, I can see both sides.

Here’s the explanation of it. So we all know there’s a rod put in the top. Without that rod it would have simply hung limp due to the lack of atmosphere. When astronauts twisted the pole into the lunar surface, they introduced motion into the system causing the flag to oscillate. Because there is no air resistance on the moon, that movement actually lasts longer than it would on Earth. On Earth, wind resistance quickly dampens motion. On the moon the flag continues to vibrate briefly after being touched, creating the illusion of waving.

So you’re saying the no atmosphere is like Cialis for the flag. Please contact a doctor if your flag is erect for longer than four hours. Once the motion stops, the flag remains completely still, consistent with a vacuum environment. That one is not, to me, the most glaring. That’s not the one that people cling on to the most. When you’re first looking at it, you’re like, wait, what the hell. But then, okay, that makes sense, because there is physical contact. Understood.

Number two. And this is the one I hear a lot. Why are there no stars visible in any photos taken during the Apollo 11 moon landing? This is the one that skeptics argue, that the moon, because there’s no atmosphere, should present a brighter, high contrast sky where the stars are more visible than they are from Earth. Imagine, let’s say you’re in a major city and you look up at the stars and you can still see them, but you’re dealing with light pollution, the atmosphere itself, all the different layers. But if you’re in the middle of the desert, you’re not near a city, they come in much crisper. So then you remove an atmosphere and one would believe it should be insane.

That’s with your eyes, not with a camera. I had this question. I was talking to my friend who’s a photographer. He was trying to break it down from the camera explanation. You can adjust how much light comes in, how fast the photo takes place. Oh, so you’re telling me the rocket scientists couldn’t figure out lens exposure? They can. They knew how to handle the cameras. They could have adjusted to let the light in the right amount of time. Like, have you ever seen a picture where the waterfall just looks kind of blurred?

Here’s the thing, my father-in-law literally takes pictures of galaxies on his telescope camera thing. Ask him how long. It’s super long exposure, but it’s a galaxy. And you can take a picture of a star? No idea. It’s just light. That’s all a camera is. It’s capturing how much light is coming in. You mean to tell me right now if there’s stars out and I take a quick little one, it’s not going to pick up the stars? If there were stars that I could see. Right now I can’t because of all the light pollution. No, I’m saying if it was a clear night and we could see stars and I just went outside with one click, boom, no long exposure, quick exposure, I would still see the stars. Maybe.

I will literally disprove this right now. When I was 15, I went to Nisswa, Minnesota, and it was one of the few times you could actually see the moon and then Mars. And I took a picture on a disposable camera. We didn’t need to charge it. I took a picture of the moon and Mars reflecting off the lake with a disposable camera and I could see it. So you can’t tell me that with my disposable Kodak camera. What year was that? I was 15. This is 21 years ago.

It’s not so much the camera, it’s the settings of the camera. So the disposable camera, that’s what you’re saying? That’s what’s happening, dude. Oh, my bad. I didn’t realize my disposable camera was set up for stargazing setting. You try to take a picture of someone where there’s a bright-ass sun behind them and then they come out dark. It’s the same thing. If the sun is hitting a certain way on the surface and there’s so much brightness, they’re just doing a quick capture. And you’re not going to capture what’s beyond them because of the light.

The astronauts also all say they did not see stars. In the interviews, when they’re interviewing Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, all of them, and they’re asking, well, did you see stars? That’s the same reason you don’t see stars during the day. There’s too much light. Our eyes are not telescopes. No, but you should be able to see them, you’re literally right next to them. You’re in space. That’s where the stars are. They literally are in space. But even your eyes have their capacity. And they adjust. It’s like night vision. It’s got to adjust to how much light is going on.

One thing to consider maybe is we recently did the Phoenix lights. And the video of the Phoenix lights, you can’t see the stars. Well, because it could have been a cloudy day. But we could see the other lights. This is the worst argument ever. I can’t see the stars right now, oh, they’re not real. He picks another conspiracy to make his point. I’m just saying, it depends exactly on what he’s saying, which is the settings of the camera. That’s why you don’t see them during the day, because there’s too much light. Why don’t you see them during the day? Explain that. The stars are still there. That’s the only valid point that’s been made, that yes, you can’t see stars.

So you want the explanation of it? The absence of stars in Apollo photographs is explained by camera exposure settings. The lunar surface is extremely bright due to direct unfiltered sunlight. Astronauts used fast shutter speeds and small apertures to properly expose the bright foreground. Under those settings, faint objects like stars simply didn’t register on the film. The moon is literally white and it’s like a giant mirror. I get it.

And it’s not unique to space photography. If you take a photo on Earth during the day, the stars are invisible. The same principle applies on the moon. The cameras were calibrated to capture the astronauts that were in the foreground, not dim celestial objects in the background. The only thing I would say is that that actually does make a lot of sense. Why didn’t they think of this? I don’t think they were giving a damn about the stars. We’re on the moon, you’re not worried about what’s happening behind it. But obviously we just don’t trust anything.

That actually makes a lot of sense. Same thing, the way they walk on there. The space walk? So sketch. Before I came here, I asked my wife, because my wife is on your side. She’s not a non-believer, but this is weird. And I was like, what’s your number one reason? And she was like, the moon walk seems outrageously silly. Like it just doesn’t jive. The bouncing, they looked like they were on a cord or a pulley. A suspension. My main one’s the Van Allen belt for sure.

Despite not liking it, that does make a lot of sense. Because when you’re taking all these shots of these celestial bodies, it’s ultra long exposure. It’s like six hours of exposure to the light, and then you layer the pictures and you get this unbelievably clear view of these nebulas. You have to expose it to light for a long time. When you think about it, that light has traveled 50 light years to get here. I feel like that one we could experiment ourselves and figure out. We could go down the beach, get a couple of good cameras and a phone on a tripod.

You know that Apple’s going to be using Samsung cameras now? Smart move by them. I can’t even rub that in your faces, because I take four pictures a month and they’re terrible. I would say the pro camera of the new iPhone is about three phones back of that. Did I show you the new feature on the new Samsung? All of the stability. You can literally set it and go like this and it stays steady. How are they doing this when we couldn’t get back to the moon? It’s alien technology. We couldn’t even land on it. We were just going to go around.

Next question. How do you explain shadows in moon landing photos going in different directions if the sun is the only light source? Then why are the shadows going in all different directions? That kind of goes in line with the last one. Even I am, on this one, kind of like, okay. Because the lunar surface is not flat. And it’s also hyper reflective. It’s inconsistent, uneven terrain. And it’s all just white guys in white suits. It’s literally like a rave.

But it is a little bit weird when you look at it. Let’s say the two guys are standing and then there’s some rocks, and what they’re talking about is the angles. If a shadow’s going this way, it means the light source is coming this way. But if you only have one light source, why do you have the different angles? It should all be the same. I had the same conversation with the photographer guy. He was saying, first of all, one reason could be, if you have a wide angle, you ever put it on your camera and it distorts what you’re looking at. Not how your eyes view.

And then the other thing is just the fact that, okay, the light is coming from one angle, but if you have different heights of whatever is creating the shadow, it goes off to one side or another, and it looks a little bit off. But we’re not talking about 90 degree angles. We’re talking about maybe 5, 10 degrees off. Also you have light bounces. And the surface isn’t flat. There’s craters, formations. That to me wasn’t a giant outpoint.

The explanation of it is, the shadows in some photos don’t just look slightly off. They appear to originate from entirely different angles. To them this suggests multiple light sources, similar to what you would find in a film studio. That’s the conspiratorial view. But we’re not that far off. You’re talking about 5, 10 degrees. They weren’t dramatically off. It wasn’t a 90 degree shadow angle. Don’t get me wrong, I still think they didn’t do it back then. But in terms of looking at it objectively, it’s not that terrible.

I’ve never been to the moon, and one can only imagine that the sun has to be the far dominant light source. So even if there is a reflection, a bounce, the sun should be drowning that out, because it is this beacon of light that is so much more powerful. It’s as if, let’s say I’m standing in front of a studio light and then you shine my flashlight on my phone at me. I see it, but it’s not creating a new shadow for me. So that’s my argument against it. You have a light source that is so much more powerful than another light source, they should drown out any reflections or light bouncing. That’s my two cents on it.

Next one. And this might be a big one. How did the astronauts safely pass through the Van Allen radiation belts without fatal radiation exposure? I’m out on this one, because I don’t know anything about that. I’m going to let the resident scientist physicist. So I’ll give you the conspirator viewpoint. The Van Allen belt is, in essence, the greatest danger that there is for us leaving Earth. Once you exit low Earth orbit, the Van Allen belt is the greatest problem. And it’s a far greater danger than NASA may even admit.

Do you have any idea how far up it is? I don’t know the exact distance. But I mean, it’s probably a couple hundred thousand kilometers. But in the grand scheme of space, it’s like nothing. I was just wondering if it’s our first exit. The magnitudes when you get into space just get so wonky, because the distances become virtually infinite.

So NASA claimed that in the 1960s the technology lacked the shielding necessary to protect astronauts from high energy radiation, especially during solar activity. So in essence, the thing is that supposedly 1960s technology had this ability to shield yourself from this insane radiation. But conspirators believe that we lacked the shielding necessary to protect astronauts from this high energy radiation, especially during solar activity. The sun is like a giant nuclear reaction. There’s random bursts of energy.

So the question is, if NASA were really capable of staging a landing, how could it also control and understand the radiation readings at certain given times, and you can’t really predict solar events that are happening. It seems like the most dangerous part of everything. I just want to put it in perspective, to the point where, if you’re exposed to the Van Allen belt, you’re dying within like a year. That’s how much radiation. It’s not like, oh, you got to be on meds. It’s not like getting a dental x-ray. It’s like you’re dead. You cannot survive. It’s as if you went to bed with a uranium pillow. An enriched uranium pillow that’s shooting particles into your body and literally ripping your atoms apart.

This is one of the ones that are plausibly, how did they figure it out? How did they solve it? I can’t see them being able to do this in the 60s. They had like a tin foil blanket. The lunar module was, I kid you not, like a micron thick piece of gold. I could pee a hole through that. And they had to go through it twice. And not to mention, you go to space and there’s stuff flying around. Little rocks and random debris flying around at a million miles an hour. I can’t see them solving that problem in the 60s. A goddamn supercomputer was like the Sears Tower, full of these old tubes. How did they figure that out, but they couldn’t get more than 20 miles per gallon in a car? It doesn’t make sense.

While I feel like they could get to space and orbit the Earth for sure. I think they definitely had the tech to do that. So do you think that maybe they never made it, and this trip they attempted to prove out, oh my god, we could do it, and so they didn’t even land there? That’s what I’m saying. Dude, that’s the point. If you really think about how impossible it seems. Okay, get through this belt of radiation that literally kills all life. And then get through it twice. Not to mention get there, and then all you have is this little pod, and once you land you shoot this Tic Tac pod that’s way smaller, and it floats up and connects to another thing, and you have enough air jets to push you back to Earth. In the 60s, bro, are you kidding me? They couldn’t even get more than 20 miles per gallon in a car, let alone get through a giant belt of radiation in space.

Well, here’s the explanation. We did it. The Van Allen radiation belts are regions of charged particles trapped by Earth’s magnetic field. But they are not uniformly intense. NASA carefully plotted the trajectory of Apollo missions to pass through thin sections of the belt, minimizing exposure. Meanwhile, NASA astronauts today, okay, maybe not today, but a year ago, were like, we can’t get out of low Earth orbit because we can’t get through. So they could plot the trajectories, but now they can’t, with this advanced AI, they can’t plot the trajectory through the thin layers of the belt.

The spacecraft also traveled quickly, limiting the duration that they spent within the regions. Speed beats radiation. To your point, you were saying, it’s like going to sleep with a pillow. But if you just touched the pillow, it’s not the same thing as going the speed of light, Jorge. I’m just saying they passed through it. They didn’t live there. That’s why I defer to Sean, because I don’t know about radiation.

Radiation doses recorded during the missions were relatively low, well within safe limits for short-term exposure. The command module’s aluminum structure provided extra shielding. That’s right, because that’s what they always use, aluminum to protect you. Aluminum foil protects you from everything, everyone knows this. Tin foil hats. Those blankets, man.

In total, this is what they said. In total, astronauts received radiation comparable to two or three CT scans. That is such a lie. They made it through, like two or three CT scans, and literally 50 plus years later NASA can’t go back to the moon because they can’t figure out how to get through the Van Allen belt. But somehow back in the day with literally a TI-83 calculator, perfect shot. I used to shoot those with the womp rats down on Tatooine. We used to hit those bull’s-eyes on Tatooine all the time. I didn’t know Luke Skywalker was from Minnesota.

So you just outrun the particles. Here’s the idea. The idea of, if we’re going to go to Mars, there’s only certain times that Mars is close enough to us to get there. When you’re also using gravity as a slingshot, as a propellant. So I’m assuming that’s the same concept, that there’s only certain windows. You get through the thin belt. So with all this advanced technology they never thought about it until now. Now they’re like, oh wait, what if we just timed it right to where the thin pocket is. But don’t you see how ridiculous that sounds? I’m with Sean on that one. Sean wins this one.

It’s like we have to go at a certain time to hit the thinnest part of the belt. How would they even know that in the 60s? You can measure radiation. How? I don’t know how they measured the density of the radiation at a certain time. They had smart black women doing calculations on paper. They did the Hidden Figures we just talked about. They had to do that by hand. And you mean to tell me they could tell when the thin pocket of the radiation and the circumference of the quadrant of the pie. Get out of here. Such bull. To me this is the one. This disproves it all. It’s so full of it.

I know, but we also spent a lot of time in the pyramids. And the fact that we can’t fathom them accomplishing, overcoming odds, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Even if I don’t know the explanation. They spent a decade every night working round the clock with the smartest people on the planet. But Eric, there’s a big difference in your argument, and the difference is 5,000 years. They did something 5,000 years ago that we can’t. They went to the moon 60 years ago. It’s not like it was a different lifetime. We lost the records. NASA still existed, bro. How did you, the biggest fumble ever. We figured out how to transmute paper into gold, but we destroyed it.

It’s so impractical. You have to do it at the right time. Go now. Feel the rhythm. It’s so stupid. That’s the one. For me, that’s the one I can’t get past. I’m not saying we couldn’t do it now. I’m going to say we couldn’t do it in the 60s. Now, sure. I think it’s totally possible that they have solved the problem. But in the 60s, no way. In the 60s they still had TVs that weighed 900 pounds. They had rotary dial phones. They had vacuum tubes. Get out of here.

How was 1960s technology advanced enough to land humans on the moon and bring them back safely? It kind of leads to what you were going to explain. They didn’t. Problem solved. A big thing about that is, if they did, this also ties into why didn’t we ever go back? Well, we already know that one. What’s the point? We brought back 900 pounds of rocks. Nothing’s there. What’s the point of going? Why do people want to go to Mars now? There’s no oil on Mars.

The Mars thing has more to do with Elon Musk colonization. Like, let’s find another inhabitable planet to colonize. Which I think is, we are like a millennium away from being able to do that. To colonize it. Not go there. Go there for sure. Easy. We got drones there. Colonizing impossible. Not impossible, but impossible for right now. It’s going to be a minimum of 3, 400 years. You don’t think our lifetime? Oh god, no. No way. 0% chance.

I feel a bet coming on. I will literally bet you everything I own. So what’s the bet? Here’s the bet, that I will literally shoot myself in the hand. Wait, that two of us are alive. What if we all don’t live to 100? I don’t think it’s going to take that long. Are we talking about colonize, or, I said colonize. Humans being able to live on Mars. No, a single one. A single human being able to survive on Mars. One human? Legit one. All right, I’ll take the bet.

But how am I going to get paid if you’re dead? Can you put it in your will? I want it in your will. Show me your will. It needs to be in your will. He wants to bet like 10 bucks. I want to bet a gentleman’s bet. What do I win? A formal public apology on camera. Eric’s like, I don’t even know where I am. My name is Eric. Welcome back to the Conspiracy Podcast. Okay, deal. Done. But here are the terms. One person has to be living there and two of us still have to be alive. So what happens if you both die before that? So I just win? I don’t get my apology then. That’s super depressing, by the way. We’re going to leave you with AI Eric.

I’m going to have my speech. Eric was wrong again. Let the record show. I’d like to do a moment of silence for his wrongness. I play the clip. Mac, play the clip. Play the clip now. That would be so sad. We’ll write that down. I want it in your will.

Okay, I get that they didn’t have great technology in the 60s. But again, we go back to, if you listen to our earlier episodes about what mankind can accomplish if they put their mind to it. And there’s thousands of intelligent people working diligently towards a common purpose and a common goal. They will overcome obstacles and they will achieve things.

Okay, here’s another question. Why didn’t anybody else go back to the moon? Like the Russians who were also in this space race. Apparently India’s been to the moon. And that’s when I was like, something is off. Something does not make sense here. It’s a great point, and I looked it up beforehand. So there was the space race. The Russians just gave up? They never made it to the moon. Are you sure? Yeah, I looked it up.

Only four nations or government space agencies have achieved a soft landing on the moon. No humans, I meant. They just landed a ship there? It was the Soviet Union, United States, China, and India. Japan also successfully landed its SLIM probe in 2024. So Soviet Union was first to impact and first to achieve soft landing. United States was first to land humans. China’s first soft landing in 2013, and they were the first to land on the far side of the moon. India landed Chandrayaan 3 near the South Pole. So we’re the only people that have humans. Crazy. Supposedly.

No other country can do it but us. How much more can you demoralize a group than spending decades and then they just said, we’re not going? That’s also a data point. So only Americans can do it, and then we destroy it. That’s actually another point on the whole conspiratorial side of things. It’s like, oh, we made it, and then they’re like, just burn it. Only us. Don’t look into it. Don’t look at the tech. We don’t need you finding and exposing us. That’s why I feel like they destroyed it, because they’re like, don’t expose us.

It’s not like we didn’t figure out the rocket science to be able to lift off. We can get off the Earth. Besides the radiation thing, which I can’t speak to, at least we had the tech to get up. I believe we went to space for sure. They had the rocket science necessary to be able to lift off and get into space and have enough to get to the moon. We have satellites. It’s like GPS. If you believe that satellites aren’t real, don’t use Google navigation, you piece of crap.

But an analogy is just a bad boat. What does that mean? We can explore Earth on the ocean with a bad boat, or early on with bad sailing. This is some old Norse proverb. You can explore with a bad boat. There’s an old Chinese proverb. Confucius say. So the technology could be really bad and we just winged it. Okay, Eric, the ocean is slightly different than space. It’s pretty extreme. But there’s also oxygen to breathe and gravity to keep you not floating off the ship. There’s not a radiation belt in the middle of the Atlantic that’s going to murder you and your friends.

It does go back to the original argument of, man just figured it out. This is the only argument that pisses me off. The ingenuity of man. It’s such a blasé, it’s not actually saying anything. It’s just like, more man. Enough man and we can do it. Don’t get me wrong, I believe you can do anything you put your mind to. But look at all the things that we’ve created as mankind. I think they can do it now. I think the ingenuity of man has finally come to fruition where they can actually do it. But to Eric’s point, if we’re talking about 5,000 years ago, that’s different than 60 years ago. That’s a different ingenuity of man.

So we’ve been employees of a worker union. One of Eric’s arguments was, they literally had bread. I’m like, yeah, slaves have to eat food too. What we got to get is a great T-shirt, the Egyptian slave building, a bricklayers union. We need that merch.

So on the tech, this is the explanation. While 1960s computers were far less powerful than today, they were highly specialized and purpose-built. The Apollo guidance computer was designed specifically for navigation and control, performing its tasks with remarkable reliability. It didn’t need to be powerful by today’s standards. It needed to be exact and precise and dependable. Isn’t that what powerful means? No. We’re saying you don’t need the computing power that’s inside of an iPhone. You can have a big-ass computer as long as it gets the math problem right.

I just can’t, it literally said a calculator today is more powerful. How precise can it possibly be? It’s just math. It’s just figuring out the trajectory through the thin layer of radiation, and then landing. It’s just simple math. Literally traveling like 6 billion miles to a rock with no atmosphere. The success of Apollo wasn’t just about computing power. It was the result of engineering, physics, and redundancy across a thousand different systems. The Saturn V rocket, guidance systems, and mission planning were all tested for a decade. The idea that technology wasn’t advanced enough often comes from comparing general purpose modern computing devices to those of the past.

Now when we say the technology, that’s also pretty broad. So the technology to get up off the Earth and into atmosphere, that’s one thing. Another thing is everything that recorded what was going on while we were there, the cameras, the technology for the suits, like Sean was talking about, the technology to go through this Van Allen belt. That’s what we’re talking about. Not just rockets. I can see you guys running the calculations based on Earth and its rotation. I can get behind that.

Also, in previous episodes, maybe on the second one, we kind of spoke about this. On the first one we were talking about, how the hell can they communicate from the moon? But that’s also part of the technology we’re trying to encompass here, and we did talk about it. We clarified it. They had like three or four, I believe, huge satellites across massive distances, so that as the Earth is rotating, it captures the radio signals from the satellite. Sean can’t stop rolling his eyes.

So technology, very precise, could have done it. I don’t know. That’s just me. You know how they did it? Man. Mankind. Mankind when they put their mind to it.

All right, so here’s what we’re going to do. That’s going to be part one of the moon debate. We have five more solid questions that are the top asked questions about this, and we’re going to go over those in the next episode.