October 26, 2025 • 34 mins
In this episode, Billy Dees takes a rational look at one of the most persistent conspiracy theories — that the Apollo moon landings were a hoax.
While this podcast won’t convince the true believers, it offers a clear, fact-based perspective for those who are weary of misinformation and want to understand the evidence with common sense.
Billy explores how multiple nations — including the former Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Spain — independently tracked the Apollo missions in real time. He also highlights how modern space agencies from Japan, China, India, and Europe have since photographed and verified the Apollo landing sites.
Finally, the episode takes a fascinating look at what the astronauts actually left behind on the lunar surface — and some of the items might surprise you.
You can follow Billy Dees on X @BillyDees https://x.com/BillyDees
While this podcast won’t convince the true believers, it offers a clear, fact-based perspective for those who are weary of misinformation and want to understand the evidence with common sense.
Billy explores how multiple nations — including the former Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Spain — independently tracked the Apollo missions in real time. He also highlights how modern space agencies from Japan, China, India, and Europe have since photographed and verified the Apollo landing sites.
Finally, the episode takes a fascinating look at what the astronauts actually left behind on the lunar surface — and some of the items might surprise you.
You can follow Billy Dees on X @BillyDees https://x.com/BillyDees
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
You are listening to The Billy D's podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
All right, well, hello everyone, and welcome to the Billy
D's Podcast. As always, I am absolutely thrilled that you
are here. If you've never checked us out before, we
are primarily an interview and a commentary based podcast. This
episode will be a commentary. You can find The Billy
D's Podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This particular episode
(00:34):
is available only on the major podcasting platforms, and by
the way, you can subscribe on those with no paywalls,
so do check us out. We might play clips on
social media, you know, every once in a while. With
This episode in its entirety will be available exclusively on
all the major podcast platforms. There won't be video versions
(00:56):
on other things. This is this is the place to
check out the Abilities podcast. What we're going to talk
about today has to do with the the doubters, the
conspiracy theorists who question the moon landing. And you know,
it wasn't that long ago, maybe five or ten years ago.
(01:17):
If you were in an argument with someone, you might say,
you know what, arguing with you is like trying to
argue with someone who doesn't believe we went to the
moon or doesn't believe that the Earth is round. If
you don't know it by now, there's nothing I am
going to say that it is going to change your mind.
(01:38):
It was almost a snarky type of thing to say.
Now for some reason it has become cool. You know,
many relatively established and respected media figures have chimed in
on this. It is a big topic on social media,
and now even socially, I'm running into more and more
(01:59):
people who us skepticism that the moon landing actually happened. Now,
as I alluded to in my little snarky statement, if
you really and truly believe that the moon landing did
not happen, there's nothing I am going to say in
this podcast that is going to change your mind. But
(02:21):
what I am trying to do today is speak to
the many people who live in the real common sense
world who are constantly exposed to this silliness and if
you're tired of trying to come up with ways to
counter it, to talk against it, and I'm going to
try to give you some practical things that you may
(02:42):
want to consider. It's not necessarily heavy scientific stuff that
I'm going to talk about here, but it's just some
practical things that you may want to consider when you
get into a situation where this is being discussed.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
All right.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
In my opinion, a lot of of this speculation, a
lot of this wonderment around the moon lendings, really have
to do with what was legitimately back in the late
sixties and nineteen seventies. It was a very impressive feat.
It was something that obviously deserved a lot of respect
(03:22):
from the scientific and engineering community, but the media really
picked that ball up and ran with it. It made
its way into science fiction, which affected a generation of people,
and this idea that the moon landing was something so
(03:42):
incredibly it was so incredible in terms of its achievement
that there was almost something supernatural about it. It was
the pinnacle of human achievement, and we just ran with
that and it became something that kind of has the
same lore that the Pyramids do. Now, if you are
(04:06):
a regular listener of this podcast, you know that I
have said that the Pyramids are overrated. And before you
get in, did I hear that right? Did Billy really
say that the Pyramids are overrated? Yes, they are. They
are overrated. The idea that aliens had to be involved,
the idea that there is this ancient technology that we
(04:28):
lost and no longer exists that built the pyramid that is,
that is a bunch of bullshit that is stacked almost
as high as the as the pyramids themselves. All Right,
I could go a lot through that. Just for example,
there's a lot of pyramids around Egypt that weren't finished
because the dimensions were wrong. You got to keep in
(04:50):
mind that pyramid building went on for about a thousand
years from about twenty seven hundred to seventeen hundred BC.
And when you have a workforce that's in the thouds
for a period of time that's a thousand years, you're
bound to get something done. Okay, you're bound to get
something done. And the pyramids do not support really any
(05:16):
usable space inside them. There's hidden passageways and all these
other things, but for the most part, you can't go
into one of these pyramids and play the super Bowl.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
It's basically stones laying on top of stones. It's a
big stack of stones, neatly stacked stones. And I understand
they're huge. I understand they're impressive, but that's basically what
they are. And the rest of the stuff that they've
come up with is used to propel movies, propel documentaries,
(05:49):
propel books, propel tourism around the wonderment of these things.
For example, how did they get them level? Well, it's
really easy. They used the basement structure. They used water
to get the bases level. Another one I always hear
about is a three point one four pie? How does
it keep coming up? Yes, it is true that the
(06:13):
Egyptians probably did not know about pie as a mathematical constant,
but they used practical and circular methods that naturally produce
the radio. So if you're using a round measuring tool,
if you're using brown stone or circular layout process, it
is very plausible and would explain why pie shows up.
(06:35):
It is not mystical, it is just practical geometry. Another
one I always get as well, you know there's pyramids
all over the world. Somebody had to be guiding. Yes,
there are. But you know, a pyramid is very much
like a cube. It's very much like a sphere. It
is a geometric shape that pretty much invents itself. Now,
(06:58):
if you're using stones, you can't really construct a sphere
too well. If you're using stones, you could construct a cube,
but you got to keep in mind that as you
go up, the weight along the perimeter of that cube
is much greater. Over time, the edges probably would start
to crumble. With a pyramid, the higher you go, the
(07:21):
smaller the shape gets. So each layer is smaller than
the one below it and bigger than the one above it.
It lends itself to lasting a very long time, especially
when you consider it's it's not something you can go
and walk around in. You can't go in there and
(07:44):
hold an event. As a matter of fact, one of
the uh one of the structures that really does kind
of impress me is the Pantheon, the Pantheon dome and Rome,
which is not as old. It's probably was built around
a D one five and it is the best preserved
(08:04):
ancient Roman monument and it is still the largest unreinforced
concrete dome globally. Now that might be just a little
nervous walking in there, but you know what it's it's
it's a usable space. And I'll give the Romans one thing.
They sure knew how to work with cement, because most
(08:25):
people I know can't fix their front step in a
way that lasts a year. And somehow or other, the
concrete in Rome was just absolutely amazing. So when you
and here again, I could go on about this, you
get my point. There's a certain wonderment around the Pyramids
that goes beyond really what they were. They were incredible
(08:47):
marvels of the ancient world. I'm not saying that they're not,
but they're nothing that we have to delve into the
supernatural to understand. And as a matter of fact, a
lot of the people that really promote these ideas about
the supernatural and all this other kind of stuff around
the Pyramids are the very people. If you gave them
a book laying out exactly what we know and what
(09:08):
construction methods we know we're used, they would find that boring.
And I kind of believe that, you know that there's
something to be said for that. There's a certain thing
that we as people find entertaining when it comes to wonderment.
You know, this is why the legends of Bigfoot and
(09:32):
Luckness and all these other things still persist, because everybody
wants to be a part of something that would be
so amazing to be around if it actually occurred. And
of course, when it comes to the Pyramids, there's a
lot of really good solid evidence there that makes it
(09:53):
by itself without getting into all that stuff that makes
it fascinating, But it just doesn't grab the peace of aliens.
It doesn't grab the appeal of a lost civilization that
had all this science that we just don't understand all
right now, Again, my point here is that the pyramids,
(10:13):
for the ancient world were truly impressive, so impressive in fact,
that it's really easy to slide into this thing. Well,
there must be something supernatural about them. And in many
ways we're dealing with the same thing with the moon landing,
because if you go back to the nineteen sixties the
(10:34):
nineteen seventies, for that technology to have been developed as
quickly as it was, you know, we're talking microprocessors and
all these other kind of amazing things that have benefited
us to this day. It's so impressive and such a
wonderment of work engineering that it's really easy to slide
(10:56):
into this thing that, well, it's so impressed that it
must have been faked. And I want to be clear here,
just as I say the pyramids are overrated, that's not
to take away from the scientific point of view. The
archaeological evidence is all very impressive, but it's not so
(11:20):
impressive that we need to go two aliens helping us,
and the same thing applies to the moonshot. It is
extremely impressive, but it's not so unbelievable that we should
jump to theories of a hoax. Let's start in terms
(11:43):
of our practical analysis of how we can start to
break this down. How did we get this out of
control with the idea of going to the moon. Let's
start with the idea that prior to what started in
the nineteen fifties, in the nineteen sixties, the Space program,
the idea that we didn't know anything about outer space,
that we didn't know anything about how the planets worked,
(12:06):
that we didn't know anything about that stuff prior to
that is simply not true. As a matter of fact,
it was stated by NASA during that incredible time of
Apollo that we stood on the shoulders of giants to
get here. And this goes back centuries. I know a
lot of people don't like to hear about Albert Einstein
(12:28):
or Sir Isaac Newton because they feel it's boring, it's
too much science. They don't understand it. And when you
do that, you are denying yourself not only in education,
but you are denying yourself what I would call really
good entertainment. These people were fascinating individuals. Even if you
(12:50):
just delve into the history of these people, the people
that they were, especially for the time that they existed in,
and they were able to come up with these ideas,
it's a fascinating story. Isaac Newton, for example, I'm going
to say some things you probably didn't learn in the
seventh grade about Isaac Newton. He was deeply religious. He
(13:11):
was an obsessive theologian. He was very much interested in
the chronology of biblical events end of times prophecy, but
maybe not in the way that you've heard about in
common speak. He wasn't a doomsday person. He believed that
(13:32):
scripture encoded a divine plan for history and the future,
one that could be uncovered with careful mathematical and linguistic study.
He's been quoted as saying that the end of Times
date would be around the year twenty sixty. And what
he was really getting at was this wasn't necessarily a
(13:55):
doomsday prophecy, but rather he was saying not before twenty
sixty as a theological argument against over zealous prophets. And
we've had plenty of doomsday people out there, and he
was guarding against that.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Okay, His intent.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Was that Newton saw prophecy not as superstition, but as
a divine system of knowledge, just like gravity your motion.
He believed that God's universe was lawful and mathematically ordered,
whether in nature or in scripture. So in his mind,
predicting historical outcomes wasn't magic. It was uncovering divine order. Now,
(14:35):
even if you want to dismiss these things because they
don't align with your own beliefs, I mean, that would
be frustrating to me because that's not where I'm trying
to go with this. What I'm trying where I'm trying
to go with this is that these people are fascinating
individuals and if you're like me, they're part of how
history has unfolded, and it is so fascinating to hear
(15:00):
about them and what motivated them. It's just amazing. But
in the end, we don't remember Isaac Newton for what
he believed.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
We remember him for what he was able to prove.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
And I got to tell you, calculus still works, and
a lot of the formulas that he came up with
still work even with our best computers, things like escape velocity,
which is the speed and angle towards the horizon that
you have to attain to go into orbit. Now, he
(15:35):
wasn't able to assign a numeric value to that, but
he developed the theory behind it, which involves universal gravitation
and orbital motion. A lot of the things that we
drastically needed to know, like what a person would weigh
standing on the Moon. His law allows it to be
calculated once the Moon's mass and radius are known. By
(16:00):
the way, a person who weighs about one hundred and
eighty pounds on Earth would weigh about twenty nine point
eight pounds on the Moon, roughly one sixth their weight.
So once you start to strip away the wonderment of
going into space and start breaking it down into simple components,
(16:23):
it's really not that quote unquote unbelievable that we were
able to go to the Moon. Okay, there was some
rocket technology that needed to be developed, certainly life support systems,
which here again that started years before the actual shot
to the Moon, before that planning started, and some other things,
(16:43):
you know, involving the guidance systems. When you start breaking
these things down, each individual thing isn't that incredible. I'm
not saying it's not impressive from an engineering standpoint or
from a knowledge standpoint, but it's not like it's this
supernatural thing that you have to bend your mind to believe.
(17:07):
It's really not. You know, that information is out there
if you want to go there, and this idea that
it was lost, that's another one. You know, the technology
sense in the last fifty years, with space travel, aerodynamics, fuel,
all these other things, computer technology, these things over the
(17:28):
last fifty years have progressed so much. You know, if
I told you, let's build a ship exactly like the Mayflower,
Let's build a wooden ship and find somebody who can
navigate the ocean using nothing but the stars and sales,
even after adjusting for a dollars, it would be incredibly
(17:50):
expensive and rekindling those skills would be almost impossible. That
doesn't necessarily mean that we don't know how it was done, okay,
And you know, even when it comes to things like
the Right Brother's airplane, there's a lot of people who
have speculated about was that design the best one, and
(18:10):
they've tried to rebuild them. Well, the fact of the
matter is you can't hide what you have learned over
the past hundred years. Knowing what we know about aerodynamics,
now we can make anything fly almost the oddist shapes.
And to pretend that we are going to build the
right Brother's airplane in exactly the way it was with
(18:31):
that knowledge that was available, it's simply impossible. There's materials,
there's knowledge now that was not available to them.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So it's very hard to go back and prove.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
That that airplane was or was not the definitive design
of the time, and the exact same thing is happening
with the technology of the Apollo program. It is just
simply not practical to revisit that technology and try to
use it again. That's the explanation I have for But anyway,
(19:00):
let's move on. There's two areas that I'm going to
present to you as from a practical, common sense standpoint,
why you can be very confident that the moon landing
did in fact happen. And the first one is going
to be the other countries that were able to monitor
that flight, and the second is going to be the
(19:23):
evidence that is left on the Moon. Okay, let's start
with being able to monitor that flight. Let's start with
the United States. And I know we can't count the
United States because they were a part of the conspiracy, right, Okay, fine, fine, fine, fine,
fine fine. But nonetheless, there were a lot of people
involved that would have had to be lying. NASA's Worldwide
(19:46):
Tracking Network is a group that had in Goldstone, California,
Honeysuckle Creek, and in Australia parks in Australia, Madrid, Spain, Guam,
Hawaii in other locations, the US had a full handle
(20:06):
on the telemetry, the voice and the video data. Now
what I just rattled off there involves a lot of people,
and the idea that they were all involved in a
conspiracy and I have kept their mouth shut over the
last fifty years is pretty far reaching. But let's not
stop there. Let's not stop there. Let's go to the
Soviet Union. At the time, the Soviets tract Apollo missions.
(20:28):
Using their deep space monitoring facilities such as in Crimea
and the Far East and spy ships stationed around the world.
They could confirm the spacecraft's trajectory and lunar orbit and
publicly congratulated NASA after confirming the success. Now, I got
(20:50):
to tell you, if you're familiar with the history of
that time. If the what was the USSR at the time,
if they had any inkling that the United States was
getting away with a hoax, they would have said something,
all right the United Kingdom. Britain's Jurdrill Bank Observatory independently
(21:13):
tracked Apollo eleven signals and the Soviet lunar missions. At
the same time. Astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell publicly verified that
the Apollo transmissions were genuinely coming from the Moon's vicinity.
Now it doesn't stop there. Australia, Honeysuckle Creek in Parks
(21:36):
radio telescopes were part of NASA's network, but were also
operated by Australians who directly received the live TV broadcast
of Neil Armstrong's first steps. Their equipment also confirmed the
authenticity of the signal source. But it doesn't stop their. Spain,
(21:58):
the Madrid Deep Space can Communication Complex, which was a
part of NASA's network, was operated by Spanish engineers and
confirmed the telemetry independently.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Now Here.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Again, I've often said this applies to anything. If you're
going to apply a conspiracy theory, one of the things
that you have to consider is how many people knew
about it? The idea that a lot of people knew
about this from a lot of different countries from all
(22:38):
over the world.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
They all had, of the.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Time, the most sophisticated scientific instruments, and nobody found an issue.
Nobody found a hiccup in what was being presented as
the moon landing. Now a lot of people being involved,
you know, there's the theory, and I totally agree with it.
(23:03):
The more people that have to be involved with a conspiracy,
the more unlikely it is to be true. Typically things
get pulled off if you're going to pull Any detective
will tell you if you're going to pull off a crime.
The number one rule doesn't have anything to do with DNA.
(23:23):
It doesn't have anything to do with how to avoid
surveillance cameras, It doesn't have anything to do with any
of that. What it has to do with is keeping
your mouth shut, all right, And there's too many people
involved in this around the world that would have had
to keep their mouth shut, and in particular with what
(23:46):
what happened with the USSR, there's nothing nothing motivating them
to say that this was legit other than the facts.
They would have love to humiliate the United States. It
would have been at the top of their list. But
let's move on to my second point, and that is
(24:10):
the surface of the Moon today. You know, I've actually
had some people tell me that robots were sent to
the Moon. We really didn't send people. If you consider
the technology of the time, Okay, it is more plausible
(24:30):
that we actually sent people to the Moon than robotics.
If you consider that the technology of the time, these
finely tuned robotics that would have had to account of
a control delay going to the Moon and all these
other things. That that technology existed in a plentiful amount
(24:52):
during the nineteen sixties, that's even more ridiculous, actually, in
my opinion. But that's not here near there. There's a
number of countries that have photographed areas of the Moon.
The Lunar Reconnaissance orbiter, which was the RORO. Now this
is the United States, launched two thousand and nine. Now,
(25:15):
of course, this is the United States. This is you know,
but this is a different generation of people. Now, Okay,
the RORO has taken extremely high resolution images. Okay, you
can clearly see the Apollo lunar modules, rover tracks, experiment packages,
and even astronaut footpaths. NASA has released these avengages publicly
(25:36):
for all six Apollo landing sites eleven, twelve, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
and seventeen. And again, I've had people say that these
footprints were placed by robots, which would have been truly
extraordinary in terms of the technology, the control devices, the robotics,
and everything else that was available during that time period.
(25:59):
The United States isn't the only the only country that
has found these things. Japan two thousand and seven mapped
the entire Moon with high precision. Its terrain camera and
laser altimeter helped identify topographic consistency at the Apollo fifteen site.
(26:22):
Its resolution wasn't strong enough to get down and actually
see hardware, but it verified surface landmarks and shadows, all
of which matched the Apollo photos. China, our good friend
China launched twenty ten captured images of Apollo fifteen and
seventeen sites. While not detailed enough to actually see equipment,
(26:46):
the images confirmed the correct surface features again at the
known landing coordinates. Chinese scientists publicly confirmed that the sites
were consistent with US mission data. In India, India two
thousand and eight provided imaging and spectral data of Apollo
sites using their terrain mapping camera and moon mineralogy mapper.
(27:11):
It helped identify surface composition changes near the Apollo sixteen
site consistent with lunar module exhaust and disturbance. The European
Space Agency now their confirmation is indirect but valid. Nonetheless,
it has not sent its own orbiter specifically targeting Apollo sites,
(27:32):
but cooperated with NASA's LROO mission. A scientist have independently
analyzed that data and confirmed the presence and positions of
Apollo artifacts. Now here is where I am going to
get really crazy, because what was left behind gets really
(27:53):
really interesting. First of all, from a scientific interesting standpoint.
We left behind reflectors which are used to this day
to monitor how the Moon is moving, okay, in a
very precision way, and we have determined that the Moon
(28:13):
is actually slowly, very slowly moving away from the Earth.
Now it's like I said, this is a slow progression.
But those reflectors were put there by someone or something. Right, Well,
here I'm going to get into some stuff that was
(28:34):
left behind that was not put there.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
By a robot.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Across all six Apollo landing missions again eleven, twelve, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
and seventeen astronauts left behind ninety six bags of human waste,
including urine, feces, vomit, and used wipes. Yeah, that's a
(29:00):
nice little gift to leave behind, is you know? I
got to tell you, I'm not very regular to begin with.
When I go on a trip, and I can't imagine,
being as far as possible, that any human being has
ever traveled away from the origins of life on Earth
in what amounts to a tin can. I can't imagine
(29:22):
sitting there taking a dump. I would come back from
that mission constipated as hell. Okay, but these guys left
ninety six bags of human waste. These were stored and
sealed in waste bags and containers and jettison to save
weight for the lift off from the Moon. The astronauts
(29:46):
also left food wrappers, sample containers, tools, boots, cameras, and
even a few urine collection devices. Now, some of you
may ask, and when I first found out about this,
I wondered the same thing myself. Why did they leave
that stuff behind? Was it really that hard to take
it with you like you would in a camper? Well,
(30:10):
actually it was every little piece of weight mattered for
the lunar ascent, which simply means getting the lunar module
back up into space. So they also wanted to make
room for other things. Since they only had so much
weight that they could deal with, they brought back rock samples,
(30:35):
for example, so they discarded low priority mass, including waste
and used equipment. So in effect, moon dirt came to
Earth and human waste stayed on the Moon. Now this
is actually of scientific interest because in recent years scientists
have expressed interest in revisiting the waste that was left behind,
(30:58):
And yes, this is serious, this is something that they're
genuinely interested in because the waste that's up there contains
microbes from Earth from nineteen sixty nine to nineteen seventy two,
and studying them after fifty years in the harsh lunar
environment could reveal how long life can survive in space
(31:21):
conditions such as exposure to radiation, the vacuum and temperature
extremes and so on. Now, no one has gone back
yet to study these samples, but they're still up there, frozen,
sterilized by radiation, and likely still recognizable. So just imagine
(31:43):
at some future point, and it may not be that
far off, because there's moonshots being actively planned right now,
Imagine being the new crew member on some future mission
to the Moon and guess what you're going.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
To be as signed to do.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Yeah, talk about a shit job, right Well, that should
be interesting.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
But anyway, these are all.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Things that you can consider the next time somebody brings
up the idea that the moon lending was faked. I'm
Billy des Hey, I'll tell you what. Do you have
an opinion about this? Well, i'll tell you what. You
can find me real easily on social media, and I
got to say, the old Twitter X is still my
(32:33):
sort of social media home and you can find me
there at Billy D's. And if you have an opinion
or an idea or maybe something I didn't consider as
to what should be obvious as to why the moon
lending really did happen, or even if you believe it
didn't happen. Hey, as long as you're respectful, you're welcome
(32:55):
to tweet me or post me or whatever they call
it now on X any time time you wish. All right,
don't forget, Please subscribe to the Billy D's podcast wherever
you are hearing this because it comes with no paywalls.
We do not charge listeners for The Billy D's Podcast.
(33:17):
We appreciate every single one of you. Thank you so
much for listening today. I'm Billy D's and we will
talk again very very soon. I'm Billy D's and host
of the self titled podcast, The Billy D's Podcast. We
(33:39):
are primarily an interview and a commentary based podcast featuring
authors and creators talking about their craft, advocates for community issues,
and myself in an array of co host discussing current events.
There's no partisan renting and raving going on here, just
great content. You can find The Billy D's Podcast on
your favorite platform and on Twitter at Billy Dee's. Thank you,
(34:02):
and I hope you listen in
You are listening to The Billy D's podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
All right, well, hello everyone, and welcome to the Billy
D's Podcast. As always, I am absolutely thrilled that you
are here. If you've never checked us out before, we
are primarily an interview and a commentary based podcast. This
episode will be a commentary. You can find The Billy
D's Podcast on your favorite podcasting platform. This particular episode
(00:34):
is available only on the major podcasting platforms, and by
the way, you can subscribe on those with no paywalls,
so do check us out. We might play clips on
social media, you know, every once in a while. With
This episode in its entirety will be available exclusively on
all the major podcast platforms. There won't be video versions
(00:56):
on other things. This is this is the place to
check out the Abilities podcast. What we're going to talk
about today has to do with the the doubters, the
conspiracy theorists who question the moon landing. And you know,
it wasn't that long ago, maybe five or ten years ago.
(01:17):
If you were in an argument with someone, you might say,
you know what, arguing with you is like trying to
argue with someone who doesn't believe we went to the
moon or doesn't believe that the Earth is round. If
you don't know it by now, there's nothing I am
going to say that it is going to change your mind.
(01:38):
It was almost a snarky type of thing to say.
Now for some reason it has become cool. You know,
many relatively established and respected media figures have chimed in
on this. It is a big topic on social media,
and now even socially, I'm running into more and more
(01:59):
people who us skepticism that the moon landing actually happened. Now,
as I alluded to in my little snarky statement, if
you really and truly believe that the moon landing did
not happen, there's nothing I am going to say in
this podcast that is going to change your mind. But
(02:21):
what I am trying to do today is speak to
the many people who live in the real common sense
world who are constantly exposed to this silliness and if
you're tired of trying to come up with ways to
counter it, to talk against it, and I'm going to
try to give you some practical things that you may
(02:42):
want to consider. It's not necessarily heavy scientific stuff that
I'm going to talk about here, but it's just some
practical things that you may want to consider when you
get into a situation where this is being discussed.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
All right.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
In my opinion, a lot of of this speculation, a
lot of this wonderment around the moon lendings, really have
to do with what was legitimately back in the late
sixties and nineteen seventies. It was a very impressive feat.
It was something that obviously deserved a lot of respect
(03:22):
from the scientific and engineering community, but the media really
picked that ball up and ran with it. It made
its way into science fiction, which affected a generation of people,
and this idea that the moon landing was something so
(03:42):
incredibly it was so incredible in terms of its achievement
that there was almost something supernatural about it. It was
the pinnacle of human achievement, and we just ran with
that and it became something that kind of has the
same lore that the Pyramids do. Now, if you are
(04:06):
a regular listener of this podcast, you know that I
have said that the Pyramids are overrated. And before you
get in, did I hear that right? Did Billy really
say that the Pyramids are overrated? Yes, they are. They
are overrated. The idea that aliens had to be involved,
the idea that there is this ancient technology that we
(04:28):
lost and no longer exists that built the pyramid that is,
that is a bunch of bullshit that is stacked almost
as high as the as the pyramids themselves. All Right,
I could go a lot through that. Just for example,
there's a lot of pyramids around Egypt that weren't finished
because the dimensions were wrong. You got to keep in
(04:50):
mind that pyramid building went on for about a thousand
years from about twenty seven hundred to seventeen hundred BC.
And when you have a workforce that's in the thouds
for a period of time that's a thousand years, you're
bound to get something done. Okay, you're bound to get
something done. And the pyramids do not support really any
(05:16):
usable space inside them. There's hidden passageways and all these
other things, but for the most part, you can't go
into one of these pyramids and play the super Bowl.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
It's basically stones laying on top of stones. It's a
big stack of stones, neatly stacked stones. And I understand
they're huge. I understand they're impressive, but that's basically what
they are. And the rest of the stuff that they've
come up with is used to propel movies, propel documentaries,
(05:49):
propel books, propel tourism around the wonderment of these things.
For example, how did they get them level? Well, it's
really easy. They used the basement structure. They used water
to get the bases level. Another one I always hear
about is a three point one four pie? How does
it keep coming up? Yes, it is true that the
(06:13):
Egyptians probably did not know about pie as a mathematical constant,
but they used practical and circular methods that naturally produce
the radio. So if you're using a round measuring tool,
if you're using brown stone or circular layout process, it
is very plausible and would explain why pie shows up.
(06:35):
It is not mystical, it is just practical geometry. Another
one I always get as well, you know there's pyramids
all over the world. Somebody had to be guiding. Yes,
there are. But you know, a pyramid is very much
like a cube. It's very much like a sphere. It
is a geometric shape that pretty much invents itself. Now,
(06:58):
if you're using stones, you can't really construct a sphere
too well. If you're using stones, you could construct a cube,
but you got to keep in mind that as you
go up, the weight along the perimeter of that cube
is much greater. Over time, the edges probably would start
to crumble. With a pyramid, the higher you go, the
(07:21):
smaller the shape gets. So each layer is smaller than
the one below it and bigger than the one above it.
It lends itself to lasting a very long time, especially
when you consider it's it's not something you can go
and walk around in. You can't go in there and
(07:44):
hold an event. As a matter of fact, one of
the uh one of the structures that really does kind
of impress me is the Pantheon, the Pantheon dome and Rome,
which is not as old. It's probably was built around
a D one five and it is the best preserved
(08:04):
ancient Roman monument and it is still the largest unreinforced
concrete dome globally. Now that might be just a little
nervous walking in there, but you know what it's it's
it's a usable space. And I'll give the Romans one thing.
They sure knew how to work with cement, because most
(08:25):
people I know can't fix their front step in a
way that lasts a year. And somehow or other, the
concrete in Rome was just absolutely amazing. So when you
and here again, I could go on about this, you
get my point. There's a certain wonderment around the Pyramids
that goes beyond really what they were. They were incredible
(08:47):
marvels of the ancient world. I'm not saying that they're not,
but they're nothing that we have to delve into the
supernatural to understand. And as a matter of fact, a
lot of the people that really promote these ideas about
the supernatural and all this other kind of stuff around
the Pyramids are the very people. If you gave them
a book laying out exactly what we know and what
(09:08):
construction methods we know we're used, they would find that boring.
And I kind of believe that, you know that there's
something to be said for that. There's a certain thing
that we as people find entertaining when it comes to wonderment.
You know, this is why the legends of Bigfoot and
(09:32):
Luckness and all these other things still persist, because everybody
wants to be a part of something that would be
so amazing to be around if it actually occurred. And
of course, when it comes to the Pyramids, there's a
lot of really good solid evidence there that makes it
(09:53):
by itself without getting into all that stuff that makes
it fascinating, But it just doesn't grab the peace of aliens.
It doesn't grab the appeal of a lost civilization that
had all this science that we just don't understand all
right now, Again, my point here is that the pyramids,
(10:13):
for the ancient world were truly impressive, so impressive in fact,
that it's really easy to slide into this thing. Well,
there must be something supernatural about them. And in many
ways we're dealing with the same thing with the moon landing,
because if you go back to the nineteen sixties the
(10:34):
nineteen seventies, for that technology to have been developed as
quickly as it was, you know, we're talking microprocessors and
all these other kind of amazing things that have benefited
us to this day. It's so impressive and such a
wonderment of work engineering that it's really easy to slide
(10:56):
into this thing that, well, it's so impressed that it
must have been faked. And I want to be clear here,
just as I say the pyramids are overrated, that's not
to take away from the scientific point of view. The
archaeological evidence is all very impressive, but it's not so
(11:20):
impressive that we need to go two aliens helping us,
and the same thing applies to the moonshot. It is
extremely impressive, but it's not so unbelievable that we should
jump to theories of a hoax. Let's start in terms
(11:43):
of our practical analysis of how we can start to
break this down. How did we get this out of
control with the idea of going to the moon. Let's
start with the idea that prior to what started in
the nineteen fifties, in the nineteen sixties, the Space program,
the idea that we didn't know anything about outer space,
that we didn't know anything about how the planets worked,
(12:06):
that we didn't know anything about that stuff prior to
that is simply not true. As a matter of fact,
it was stated by NASA during that incredible time of
Apollo that we stood on the shoulders of giants to
get here. And this goes back centuries. I know a
lot of people don't like to hear about Albert Einstein
(12:28):
or Sir Isaac Newton because they feel it's boring, it's
too much science. They don't understand it. And when you
do that, you are denying yourself not only in education,
but you are denying yourself what I would call really
good entertainment. These people were fascinating individuals. Even if you
(12:50):
just delve into the history of these people, the people
that they were, especially for the time that they existed in,
and they were able to come up with these ideas,
it's a fascinating story. Isaac Newton, for example, I'm going
to say some things you probably didn't learn in the
seventh grade about Isaac Newton. He was deeply religious. He
(13:11):
was an obsessive theologian. He was very much interested in
the chronology of biblical events end of times prophecy, but
maybe not in the way that you've heard about in
common speak. He wasn't a doomsday person. He believed that
(13:32):
scripture encoded a divine plan for history and the future,
one that could be uncovered with careful mathematical and linguistic study.
He's been quoted as saying that the end of Times
date would be around the year twenty sixty. And what
he was really getting at was this wasn't necessarily a
(13:55):
doomsday prophecy, but rather he was saying not before twenty
sixty as a theological argument against over zealous prophets. And
we've had plenty of doomsday people out there, and he
was guarding against that.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
Okay, His intent.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Was that Newton saw prophecy not as superstition, but as
a divine system of knowledge, just like gravity your motion.
He believed that God's universe was lawful and mathematically ordered,
whether in nature or in scripture. So in his mind,
predicting historical outcomes wasn't magic. It was uncovering divine order. Now,
(14:35):
even if you want to dismiss these things because they
don't align with your own beliefs, I mean, that would
be frustrating to me because that's not where I'm trying
to go with this. What I'm trying where I'm trying
to go with this is that these people are fascinating
individuals and if you're like me, they're part of how
history has unfolded, and it is so fascinating to hear
(15:00):
about them and what motivated them. It's just amazing. But
in the end, we don't remember Isaac Newton for what
he believed.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
We remember him for what he was able to prove.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
And I got to tell you, calculus still works, and
a lot of the formulas that he came up with
still work even with our best computers, things like escape velocity,
which is the speed and angle towards the horizon that
you have to attain to go into orbit. Now, he
(15:35):
wasn't able to assign a numeric value to that, but
he developed the theory behind it, which involves universal gravitation
and orbital motion. A lot of the things that we
drastically needed to know, like what a person would weigh
standing on the Moon. His law allows it to be
calculated once the Moon's mass and radius are known. By
(16:00):
the way, a person who weighs about one hundred and
eighty pounds on Earth would weigh about twenty nine point
eight pounds on the Moon, roughly one sixth their weight.
So once you start to strip away the wonderment of
going into space and start breaking it down into simple components,
(16:23):
it's really not that quote unquote unbelievable that we were
able to go to the Moon. Okay, there was some
rocket technology that needed to be developed, certainly life support systems,
which here again that started years before the actual shot
to the Moon, before that planning started, and some other things,
(16:43):
you know, involving the guidance systems. When you start breaking
these things down, each individual thing isn't that incredible. I'm
not saying it's not impressive from an engineering standpoint or
from a knowledge standpoint, but it's not like it's this
supernatural thing that you have to bend your mind to believe.
(17:07):
It's really not. You know, that information is out there
if you want to go there, and this idea that
it was lost, that's another one. You know, the technology
sense in the last fifty years, with space travel, aerodynamics, fuel,
all these other things, computer technology, these things over the
(17:28):
last fifty years have progressed so much. You know, if
I told you, let's build a ship exactly like the Mayflower,
Let's build a wooden ship and find somebody who can
navigate the ocean using nothing but the stars and sales,
even after adjusting for a dollars, it would be incredibly
(17:50):
expensive and rekindling those skills would be almost impossible. That
doesn't necessarily mean that we don't know how it was done, okay,
And you know, even when it comes to things like
the Right Brother's airplane, there's a lot of people who
have speculated about was that design the best one, and
(18:10):
they've tried to rebuild them. Well, the fact of the
matter is you can't hide what you have learned over
the past hundred years. Knowing what we know about aerodynamics,
now we can make anything fly almost the oddist shapes.
And to pretend that we are going to build the
right Brother's airplane in exactly the way it was with
(18:31):
that knowledge that was available, it's simply impossible. There's materials,
there's knowledge now that was not available to them.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
So it's very hard to go back and prove.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
That that airplane was or was not the definitive design
of the time, and the exact same thing is happening
with the technology of the Apollo program. It is just
simply not practical to revisit that technology and try to
use it again. That's the explanation I have for But anyway,
(19:00):
let's move on. There's two areas that I'm going to
present to you as from a practical, common sense standpoint,
why you can be very confident that the moon landing
did in fact happen. And the first one is going
to be the other countries that were able to monitor
that flight, and the second is going to be the
(19:23):
evidence that is left on the Moon. Okay, let's start
with being able to monitor that flight. Let's start with
the United States. And I know we can't count the
United States because they were a part of the conspiracy, right, Okay, fine, fine, fine, fine,
fine fine. But nonetheless, there were a lot of people
involved that would have had to be lying. NASA's Worldwide
(19:46):
Tracking Network is a group that had in Goldstone, California,
Honeysuckle Creek, and in Australia parks in Australia, Madrid, Spain, Guam,
Hawaii in other locations, the US had a full handle
(20:06):
on the telemetry, the voice and the video data. Now
what I just rattled off there involves a lot of people,
and the idea that they were all involved in a
conspiracy and I have kept their mouth shut over the
last fifty years is pretty far reaching. But let's not
stop there. Let's not stop there. Let's go to the
Soviet Union. At the time, the Soviets tract Apollo missions.
(20:28):
Using their deep space monitoring facilities such as in Crimea
and the Far East and spy ships stationed around the world.
They could confirm the spacecraft's trajectory and lunar orbit and
publicly congratulated NASA after confirming the success. Now, I got
(20:50):
to tell you, if you're familiar with the history of
that time. If the what was the USSR at the time,
if they had any inkling that the United States was
getting away with a hoax, they would have said something,
all right the United Kingdom. Britain's Jurdrill Bank Observatory independently
(21:13):
tracked Apollo eleven signals and the Soviet lunar missions. At
the same time. Astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell publicly verified that
the Apollo transmissions were genuinely coming from the Moon's vicinity.
Now it doesn't stop there. Australia, Honeysuckle Creek in Parks
(21:36):
radio telescopes were part of NASA's network, but were also
operated by Australians who directly received the live TV broadcast
of Neil Armstrong's first steps. Their equipment also confirmed the
authenticity of the signal source. But it doesn't stop their. Spain,
(21:58):
the Madrid Deep Space can Communication Complex, which was a
part of NASA's network, was operated by Spanish engineers and
confirmed the telemetry independently.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Now Here.
Speaker 2 (22:14):
Again, I've often said this applies to anything. If you're
going to apply a conspiracy theory, one of the things
that you have to consider is how many people knew
about it? The idea that a lot of people knew
about this from a lot of different countries from all
(22:38):
over the world.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
They all had, of the.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Time, the most sophisticated scientific instruments, and nobody found an issue.
Nobody found a hiccup in what was being presented as
the moon landing. Now a lot of people being involved,
you know, there's the theory, and I totally agree with it.
(23:03):
The more people that have to be involved with a conspiracy,
the more unlikely it is to be true. Typically things
get pulled off if you're going to pull Any detective
will tell you if you're going to pull off a crime.
The number one rule doesn't have anything to do with DNA.
(23:23):
It doesn't have anything to do with how to avoid
surveillance cameras, It doesn't have anything to do with any
of that. What it has to do with is keeping
your mouth shut, all right, And there's too many people
involved in this around the world that would have had
to keep their mouth shut, and in particular with what
(23:46):
what happened with the USSR, there's nothing nothing motivating them
to say that this was legit other than the facts.
They would have love to humiliate the United States. It
would have been at the top of their list. But
let's move on to my second point, and that is
(24:10):
the surface of the Moon today. You know, I've actually
had some people tell me that robots were sent to
the Moon. We really didn't send people. If you consider
the technology of the time, Okay, it is more plausible
(24:30):
that we actually sent people to the Moon than robotics.
If you consider that the technology of the time, these
finely tuned robotics that would have had to account of
a control delay going to the Moon and all these
other things. That that technology existed in a plentiful amount
(24:52):
during the nineteen sixties, that's even more ridiculous, actually, in
my opinion. But that's not here near there. There's a
number of countries that have photographed areas of the Moon.
The Lunar Reconnaissance orbiter, which was the RORO. Now this
is the United States, launched two thousand and nine. Now,
(25:15):
of course, this is the United States. This is you know,
but this is a different generation of people. Now, Okay,
the RORO has taken extremely high resolution images. Okay, you
can clearly see the Apollo lunar modules, rover tracks, experiment packages,
and even astronaut footpaths. NASA has released these avengages publicly
(25:36):
for all six Apollo landing sites eleven, twelve, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
and seventeen. And again, I've had people say that these
footprints were placed by robots, which would have been truly
extraordinary in terms of the technology, the control devices, the robotics,
and everything else that was available during that time period.
(25:59):
The United States isn't the only the only country that
has found these things. Japan two thousand and seven mapped
the entire Moon with high precision. Its terrain camera and
laser altimeter helped identify topographic consistency at the Apollo fifteen site.
(26:22):
Its resolution wasn't strong enough to get down and actually
see hardware, but it verified surface landmarks and shadows, all
of which matched the Apollo photos. China, our good friend
China launched twenty ten captured images of Apollo fifteen and
seventeen sites. While not detailed enough to actually see equipment,
(26:46):
the images confirmed the correct surface features again at the
known landing coordinates. Chinese scientists publicly confirmed that the sites
were consistent with US mission data. In India, India two
thousand and eight provided imaging and spectral data of Apollo
sites using their terrain mapping camera and moon mineralogy mapper.
(27:11):
It helped identify surface composition changes near the Apollo sixteen
site consistent with lunar module exhaust and disturbance. The European
Space Agency now their confirmation is indirect but valid. Nonetheless,
it has not sent its own orbiter specifically targeting Apollo sites,
(27:32):
but cooperated with NASA's LROO mission. A scientist have independently
analyzed that data and confirmed the presence and positions of
Apollo artifacts. Now here is where I am going to
get really crazy, because what was left behind gets really
(27:53):
really interesting. First of all, from a scientific interesting standpoint.
We left behind reflectors which are used to this day
to monitor how the Moon is moving, okay, in a
very precision way, and we have determined that the Moon
(28:13):
is actually slowly, very slowly moving away from the Earth.
Now it's like I said, this is a slow progression.
But those reflectors were put there by someone or something. Right, Well,
here I'm going to get into some stuff that was
(28:34):
left behind that was not put there.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
By a robot.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Across all six Apollo landing missions again eleven, twelve, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen,
and seventeen astronauts left behind ninety six bags of human waste,
including urine, feces, vomit, and used wipes. Yeah, that's a
(29:00):
nice little gift to leave behind, is you know? I
got to tell you, I'm not very regular to begin with.
When I go on a trip, and I can't imagine,
being as far as possible, that any human being has
ever traveled away from the origins of life on Earth
in what amounts to a tin can. I can't imagine
(29:22):
sitting there taking a dump. I would come back from
that mission constipated as hell. Okay, but these guys left
ninety six bags of human waste. These were stored and
sealed in waste bags and containers and jettison to save
weight for the lift off from the Moon. The astronauts
(29:46):
also left food wrappers, sample containers, tools, boots, cameras, and
even a few urine collection devices. Now, some of you
may ask, and when I first found out about this,
I wondered the same thing myself. Why did they leave
that stuff behind? Was it really that hard to take
it with you like you would in a camper? Well,
(30:10):
actually it was every little piece of weight mattered for
the lunar ascent, which simply means getting the lunar module
back up into space. So they also wanted to make
room for other things. Since they only had so much
weight that they could deal with, they brought back rock samples,
(30:35):
for example, so they discarded low priority mass, including waste
and used equipment. So in effect, moon dirt came to
Earth and human waste stayed on the Moon. Now this
is actually of scientific interest because in recent years scientists
have expressed interest in revisiting the waste that was left behind,
(30:58):
And yes, this is serious, this is something that they're
genuinely interested in because the waste that's up there contains
microbes from Earth from nineteen sixty nine to nineteen seventy two,
and studying them after fifty years in the harsh lunar
environment could reveal how long life can survive in space
(31:21):
conditions such as exposure to radiation, the vacuum and temperature
extremes and so on. Now, no one has gone back
yet to study these samples, but they're still up there, frozen,
sterilized by radiation, and likely still recognizable. So just imagine
(31:43):
at some future point, and it may not be that
far off, because there's moonshots being actively planned right now,
Imagine being the new crew member on some future mission
to the Moon and guess what you're going.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
To be as signed to do.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
Yeah, talk about a shit job, right Well, that should
be interesting.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
But anyway, these are all.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Things that you can consider the next time somebody brings
up the idea that the moon lending was faked. I'm
Billy des Hey, I'll tell you what. Do you have
an opinion about this? Well, i'll tell you what. You
can find me real easily on social media, and I
got to say, the old Twitter X is still my
(32:33):
sort of social media home and you can find me
there at Billy D's. And if you have an opinion
or an idea or maybe something I didn't consider as
to what should be obvious as to why the moon
lending really did happen, or even if you believe it
didn't happen. Hey, as long as you're respectful, you're welcome
(32:55):
to tweet me or post me or whatever they call
it now on X any time time you wish. All right,
don't forget, Please subscribe to the Billy D's podcast wherever
you are hearing this because it comes with no paywalls.
We do not charge listeners for The Billy D's Podcast.
(33:17):
We appreciate every single one of you. Thank you so
much for listening today. I'm Billy D's and we will
talk again very very soon. I'm Billy D's and host
of the self titled podcast, The Billy D's Podcast. We
(33:39):
are primarily an interview and a commentary based podcast featuring
authors and creators talking about their craft, advocates for community issues,
and myself in an array of co host discussing current events.
There's no partisan renting and raving going on here, just
great content. You can find The Billy D's Podcast on
your favorite platform and on Twitter at Billy Dee's. Thank you,
(34:02):
and I hope you listen in
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