Review of Ancient Aliens S11E11 "Space Station Moon"

Given the difficult circumstances I’ve faced today, as evidenced by another blog threat, you will forgive me if I don’t care very much about Ancient Aliens offering a pack of recycled fake claims about the moon that I have covered many times in the past. Also: My “e” key doesn’t work right, which really slows down my typing. English uses a lot of “e’s”!

Segment 1
The first segment reviews the history of NASA’s lunar exploration and wonders why America stopped going to the moon. Jonathan Young connects lunar exploration to science fiction, and I guess it’s a good thing that the show doesn’t buy into the moon landing hoax conspiracy theories, though they acknowledge the existence of the conspiracies. Mike Bara suggests that the astronauts in the Apollo missions used their medical radio channels to report aliens, and we hear that the astronauts looked disturbed after their exhausting return trip from the moon. Alan Butler suggests that aliens warned humans to stay off the moon. If the material sounds familiar, it’s because much of this episode’s claims are recycled from “The NASA Connection” and “NASA’s Secret Agenda” and other episodes. More directly, it’s Ancient Aliens’ version of Syfy’s Aliens on the Moon from 2014, which made all the same claims.
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Segment 2
The second segment asks where the moon came from and suggests that there is a mystery about the satellite’s origins. John Brandenburg claims that scientific theories of how the moon formed are “phantasmagorically” false, and he argues that the size and location of the moon prove that the object is artificial and purposely positioned to appear equal to the sun from the earth. But contrary to the beliefs of the ancient astronaut theorists, the moon has not always been in this orbit, and it used to be closer to the earth and will someday be farther away. (The moon moves 1.6 cm away from the earth each year.) We happen to be living in the time when the moon is in just the right place to appear equal to the sun. If the moon were artificial, the aliens would have had to plan for it to move into position millions of years after it was “built.”
 
Myths about the creation of the moon are used to suggest that the moon is fake, but the show ignores similar myths claiming that the sun was also created after the earth. Hesiod (Theogony 371-374), for example, claimed that the Sun and Moon were born as twins after the earth, the mother of all.
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Segment 3
The third segment discusses lunar geology, and Mike Bara makes a bunch of ignorant claims, backed up by Giorgio Tsoukalos and Alan Butler (who believes time-traveling Freemasons built the moon), that the craters on the moon are impossibly shallow, indicating a metallic space station within. The science is rather complex, but larger impacts tend to have shallower craters, resulting in the illusion of uniformity. Butler claims that the moon is hollow, and the show refers back to Carl Sagan’s 1966 Intelligent Life in the Universe, in which the Soviet coauthor wrongly claimed that one of the moons of Mars is hollow and speculated on anomalies related to our own moon. 

Segment 4
The fourth segment deals with Soviet claims about the hollow moon from the Soviet propaganda magazine Sputnik. I explained why their science was wrong back in 2012, and I won’t repeat myself here. Instead you can read my explanation here. It’s worth noting that the claim was made at a time when the Soviet government officially endorsed ancient astronautics, contrary to Tsoukalos’s claim that the Soviet writers risked their careers to write the article. The Soviets wanted the West to read ancient astronaut material because they hoped to use it to sow discord with religious conservatives. David Wilcock, who in 2014 appeared in Russian propaganda programing, endorses the old Soviet propaganda and the Western fringe books that were inspired by it. The rest of the talking heads also claim that Soviet propaganda is “reasonable” and therefore the moon is a space station.

Segment 5
The fifth segment speculates that shadows and photographic noise in lunar photographs are remnants of “Egyptian-style obelisks” and other architecture. They see what they want to see, or rather what conspiracy theorists from decades past wanted to see. Flashing lights are also discussed, but NASA long ago explained that these were small meteors hitting the lunar surface. The show alleges that NASA hides evidence of aliens to prevent “social unrest.”
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Segment 6
The sixth segment deals with the dark side of the moon, and we hear that the aliens and/or secret societies or the military have bases there to avoid detection. Apparently they aren’t solar powered! David Childress claims that our reality will be shattered by realizing that the moon is, as William Henry says, “an extraterrestrial spacecraft.” But if the military have space stations on the moon, then “we” didn’t “stop going back.” It’s all so confusing, and no one even tries to resolve the contradictions. All possibilities are simultaneously valid, except for the mainstream scientific consensus. That’s the only crazy idea.