Moon Struck

Hey, stick around at the end of this episode for some bonus content. We're going to take you behind the scenes and talk about the moon. Ever look up at the night sky and wonder what is the moon? Has the moon always been there? If not, how to get there? Some say the moon is just a big old dead rock. Others say it's not a rock at all. It's an artificial object placed in Earth orbit by extraterrestrials. Why? Alien base? Surveillance outpost?

Would it shock you to hear that even science is uncertain about the moon? What? It's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. The Luhya people of Kenya tell a story of two brothers. One of them is the sun, the other is the moon. In this story, the moon is the older of the two and brighter, so much brighter. The younger brother, the sun, resented his lesser status. He grew jealous of his brother moon and taunted him leading to a terrible fight between them. As they wrestled and grappled, the pair fell into the mud and the moon's spectacular brightness was dimmed. Eventually, even God got tired of their endless conflict and rivalry and split them up forever. The jealous sun was given one half the day to rule and the mud spattered moon, his light diminished, was left the other half, what we now call night. Or how about this one? In this Native American tale, the sun and the moon are parents of the stars. The sun is a powerful chieftain, and the moon his beloved bride. But the thing is, the sun wants to eat his children. That's why the stars must flee with each new dawn to hide from the ravenous father.

Then at the end of the day, when the sun goes to sleep, the moon creeps out and plays and plays with her children. Except it's not a perfect system. What with father son being so very hungry. That's why each month, Mother Moon turns her face away from us in sorrow, what we call a waning moon, to grieve her lost star children so greedily gobbled up by the sun. And then there's the story guys like Kyle spin. Kyle's just this random dude on social media and his legend is an ancient but here goes. The moon is an artificial body, basically an enormous hollow garage, where aliens dock their spaceships. And how does this alien craft storage situation work with a huge door hidden on the dark side of the moon? And in case you're raising one eyebrow and thinking, what is Kyle smoking? And how can I get some? I can't answer that. But whatever it is, he's got company more people than you'd ever think agree with Kyle. And the idea of the moon being hollow isn't even something new. HG Wells dreamed up just that in his 1901 book, the first men in the moon, red pill time, you'll see, you'll see the truth about the moon. You've been lied to. We've all been lied to. It's time to wake up people. It's time to wake up when it comes to the moon that humble, dusty little satellite that hangs in our night sky and is inspired everything from love songs to werewolves to snack cakes. We have myths, fables, legends and stories. But until fairly recently, we had no real idea what the moon is, or how it was formed or where it came from or why it's here. The moon has always been a mystery to humans.

And even after we walked upon its surface, and yes, I know that some of y'all think that is a trip we never really took. The moon still kept her secrets close. Like for example, she could have at least hinted that there was water right there on the lunar surface, but instead made NASA wait till 2020 for that discovery. And remind me to come back to this whole moon water thing, because it is super cool science.

Oh, wow. Pretty big down two and a half. Pretty big, two and a half down. Four forward. Four forward, drifting to the right a little. One and a half. Contact light. Okay, engine stop. Listen, uh, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed. Okay, so just what is the moon? Where did it come from? How long have we had it? Is there a chance it could blow up or fall out of the sky? Or if it really is a big hollow alien spaceship garage? Will the owners decide to take it back home? So many questions. First, few facts about the moon that needs explaining. The moon has much lower density than Earth. So we're figuring that it lacks our heavy duty iron core. Second, when we study moon rocks, they don't have much in the way of volatile substances like water, which might be the result of the sun just frying the lunar surface to a crisp. Because when it comes to atmosphere, the moon has even less than Applebee's.

That's saying something. Third, oxygen isotopes as abundant on the moon as on Earth, which suggests that the two planetary bodies were both formed at the same distance from the sun. Science offers four basic theories to explain the moon's presence in Earth's sky. Fission, condensation, also known as co formation, capture, and great impact. In the fission theory, that's F I s s i o n, not that thing you do with the rod and reel and bait. Though you could easily imagine a story where a calm sailor desperate to feed his starving shipmates climbs to the very top of the ship's rigging, cast their lines so far that the silvery round lure snagged on the very fabric of heaven and still hangs there today. And that's why the moon is so important to fishermen. It gazes down upon them, and it'll own decides what bounty they may pull from the seas. That is a story that I literally just made up. But like all the ancient tales, it's laced with truth. In this case, the moon does impact fishing, because the moon influences tides, and tides influence the behavior of fish. And fish in theory, F I s s i o n, goes like this. The moon used to be part of the earth a very long time ago, way, way back in the early days of our solar system. Back then the earth was spinning like an out of control tilter world so fast that a big hunk of our planet tore away and was flung into space at just the right velocity to lock it into orbit. It's a nice enough theory because it's simple. And it gives us the illusion of kinship with the moon. But it's been down on the grounds that even a wildly spinning earth, casting off molten material in all directions, can't make the moon.

That molten stuff would have either fallen back to Earth's surface or found an orbit around the sun. No way it can just casually enter an orbit around the earth. Plus, if that's all true, how the moon managed to get so much more solar baking time than the earth. Looks like fish in theory is the one that got away. Well, how about condensation? For that theory to make sense, we have to go so far back in time that our solar system has yet to be born. Now we're inside a nebula. Listen.

This is not so spooky. It's real. NASA took images of the helix nebula gathered up by the Hubble telescope and converted them into sound. Let's listen again. Goosebumps. It sounds like monsters screaming. And inside another vast cloud of interstellar dust and gas and hydrogen and whatnot. Something is forming something that turns out to be our Earth and our moon being formed into shape from the raw ingredients of the universe. Such a gorgeous idea. Except if the earth and moon were born together in the same vicinity of the same materials, then why are they so different? Why doesn't the moon have a substantial iron core? And again, how and why did the lunar surface get so much more solar baking? Alrighty, then maybe the answer is capture theory. It's simple as it sounds. The moon was formed somewhere else somewhere TBD. And then somehow it got a little too close to the earth. And the earth whipped out its big old gravity and shouted gotcha finders keepers. You're our moon now. Such a fun idea. Except we now know that while capture theory is a legitimate thing. It just can't work with something as large as the moon. Team Science is now down to great impact theory. Let's see how this one holds up. Back we go to the nebula.

Okay, it's still screaming. But the planets of our solar system are almost finished forming. And then it happens. A chunk of something about the size of Mars slams into Earth. Earth throws off tons and tons of material, just mammoth amounts of debris from this impact. And most of that material falls back to Earth or makes its way into solar orbit. But some of it some of it did end up in Earth orbit. And over time, those bits and pieces and chunks all coalesced into our moon. This is the theory that science has been chewing on since at least the 1980s. And as computer modeling becomes ever more sophisticated, this is the one that's made its way to the top of the pile as most likely to succeed. But you know what, there's still mysteries, still some very puzzling puzzles about our moon. Puzzles you think would be solved by the fact that we've been to the moon, that we bagged up samples, brought them home to study. It's those samples that have deepened the mystery instead of solving it. Because moon rocks and earth rocks are basically indistinguishable from each other. Did you know that? And they shouldn't be. Not if Earth was independently formed from whatever slammed into it. Not unless that careening object was basically near identical to Earth in terms of composition, and was formed at pretty much the same time, at pretty much the same distance from the sun, and also had the exact right isotope of tungsten, which could only result from the radioactive decay of the element hafnium, which was only prevalent during the first 60 million years of our solar system. The word you're looking for here is coincidence, and a coincidence of such magnitude, that even astronomers think it's improbable. Those lunar samples only created more questions. And none of the answers tell us what the moon is, or why the moon is or how the moon is. I keep base, why won't you listen? Okay, okay, I'm listening. The moon is hollow. It's an artificial body placed there by some hyper advanced extraterrestrial race, and they use it as a spaceship garage. Let's have a look at that theory. And we'll start in 1901 with H. G. Wells. The title of the book, remember, is the first men in the moon. The gist of it is a couple of guys, a businessman and a scientist journey to the moon in a sphere powered by something the scientist figures out that's immune to gravity. Once there on the moon, the pair is astounded to find not just a breathable atmosphere, but edible plants, animal life, and a race of highly advanced insect like extraterrestrials called selenites, who live inside the moon. Eventually, the two men are captured by the selenites. They managed to escape but in the battle, several selenites are killed. The businessman, Mr. Bedford makes a run for the sphere, but the poor scientist, Mr. Caber ends up being recaptured. Bedford takes off for Earth, leaving his friends stranded on the moon. But it's all cool, because the scientist not only managed to teach a couple of the selenites in English, he also cobbles together a wireless telegraph machine and sends all sort of messages back to Earth from inside the moon. This goes on for a while until the leader of the selenites realizes how warlike and aggressive humans are, shuts that wireless down.

The scientist is never heard from again. The story ends with the businessman getting philosophical as he reflects on the fate of his friend. We shall never I know receive another message from the moon. For my own part, a vivid dream has come to my help. And I see almost as plainly as though I had seen it in actual fact, a blue-lit, shadowy, disheveled Kavor struggling in the grip of these insect selenites, struggling ever more desperately and hopelessly as they press upon him, shouting, expostulating, perhaps even at last fighting and being forced backwards step by step out of all speech or sign of his fellows, for evermore into the unknown, into the dark, into that silence that has no end.

Now, let's jump all the way to the 1960s and the Apollo missions. And you'll find the birth of the modern hollow moon theory, or conspiracy theory, I guess. Apollo one was destroyed and the entire crew killed during pre flight testing. Apollo 2345 and six were all unmanned. It was Apollo 11 that finally got us to the moon. And that now immortal moment when astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface.

NASA managed to land five more Apollo missions on the moon. It would have been six but Apollo 13 suffered a calamity when an oxygen tank in the service module exploded just two days into the mission. What happened next is one of the greatest examples of human ingenuity and courage ever. With their oxygen vented into space, the modules propulsion and life support systems were screwed. The three astronauts aboard were forced to turn the landing module into a makeshift space lifeboat. Since that module wasn't designed to keep three astronauts alive for four days. The survival of that crew depended on their ability to work with Mission Control in Houston on some wildly improvised solutions. With their survival uncertain, and millions upon millions of earthlings watching in hope and dread. The astronaut somehow pulled it off and splashed down in the South Pacific alive. It was such a phenomenal accomplishment. And Ron Howard made a badass movie about it called Apollo 13.

Houston, we have a problem. We have a main bus be undervolt. We've got a lot of thruster activity. Just went off one. There's another master alarm, Houston. I'm checking the clock. There's no refresh. We've got a computer restart. We've got a multiple caution and warning, Houston. We've got a reset restart. All right, I'm going to SDS. Oh, if you've never seen it, it's so worth watching. It's so good. So good. And now Houston, we have another problem. And it wasn't a lack of interest in the Apollo missions on the part of the public. The public was paying attention. So much so that when Apollo 12 headed to the moon to conduct a few experiments, the data they collected proved to be a feast for the conspiracy minded.

Astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean set up something called a NASA seismic experiment on the lunar surface. Then they beat boots back to the command module, took off and deliberately crashed the lunar module into the moon's surface. It was an impact equal to detonating a whole ton of dynamite. It triggered a moonquake. Here's where things got weird. The instruments on the moon's surface recorded vibrations very different from any measured on Earth. They were bigger and lasted longer. And this told NASA that the moon had to be significantly less dense than the Earth. Okay, fine. Sure.

Nobody's gonna riot in the streets over that, right? It was a professor of civil engineering and geological science at Notre Dame University, Clive R. Neal, who threw the first raw meat to the moon conspiracy crowd. When he described the experiments results like this, the moon was ringing like a bell. Then he doubled down on the metaphor by saying that the moonquake vibrations were like a tuning fork. They just kept going, going, going. And he wasn't wrong. An earthquake vibration here on Earth lasts for maybe 30 seconds to two minutes. But every NASA triggered moonquake had vibrations in the 10 minute to one hour range. Neal explained that water was the reason for the big difference in the way the vibrations behaved. The more water, the more those vibrations will be deadened. And Earth is mostly water, right? Now there is water on the moon, I promise we'll get to it. But of course, not anywhere near the amount on Earth. This is wild. That moon water is trapped in tiny glass beads strewn across the moon surface. There could be trillions of gallons of water on the moon. Trillions. Where'd it come from? The current thinking is from asteroids crashing into our moon. Now all of this was published in the journal Nature Geoscience in March 2023. We all missed it though. What with the brouhaha in Washington at that time over whether or not TikTok should be banned. And you'll notice that that controversy has died right down and disappeared. Hasn't it? Almost like it only existed to be on a political distraction or something. And you know, while we're on the subject of conspiracy theories, and all that TikTok, the moon, once that Notre Dame professor weighed in on NASA's moonquakes, well, as the saying goes, there's no one ringing that bell. The hollow moon theory was on. Now this water on the moon, let's talk about that. It's in those glass beads and scientists hope also in vast frozen expanses at the lunar poles. And I guess we're going to find out soon enough what with the US and India, China and Russia, all tripping over themselves to get to the moon. And if that strikes you funny, yeah, we had this big space race to the moon back in the day. And then all of a sudden, the moon, that dusty old thing. Boring. And now suddenly, we're feverishly racing to get to the moon again.

What's up with that? It's another fun theory, a really fun theory. One that fits right into the whole hollow moon alien base model. Are you ready? Okay, so here's the deal. By 1972, the USA had clocked six successful moon landings and delivered 12 astronauts to the lunar surface. Impressive. And then it all just stopped. Why? MIT says it stopped because the original moonshot was a race against the Soviet Union. A daring game of Cold War chicken that was kind of a miracle of shortcuts and really expensive technology that was designed to burn up or be fired at. It was never built to be cost effective or efficient.

It was the ultimate high hard one aimed at humiliating our biggest geopolitical rival. And all the speed and corner cutting that went into getting Neil Armstrong on the moon showed up in full disastrous glory when the oxygen tanks on Apollo 13 went kaboom and nearly killed that crew. Other experts say, yeah, the moon landings were awesome. Sure. But it was really nothing more than an eye wateringly expensive PR stunt for the Kennedy administration. They were smarting and butthurt from the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion and needed a way to distract the public and the opposition from that mess. And what's a better distraction than packing some humans off to the freaking moon? Then there's the whole political component. The longest any American president can serve is eight years, two Getting people onto the moon can take 10 years or more from funding to building to actually launching the rocket. And a lot of Americans shake their fists and holler, who cares about the moon? We've got problems here, which is definitely true and all.

But surely we can expand the frontiers of human knowledge in space and still manage to ignore our creaky infrastructure, tragically broken healthcare system, right? No, got it. Politicians gonna politic and that means no one wants to fight the good fight over something that won't even happen on their watch. How's that for depressing and shortsighted. And then there's the great hope and crushing loss. That was the space shuttle program. The space shuttle wasn't designed to deliver people to the moon. It was all about ferrying humans to space and back in as cheap and safe a manner as possible. The very different from the one off vehicles that came before. And the shuttle kept the USA on the leading edge of space exploration in the eyes of the world. Until that terrible morning in 1986, when the shuttle Challenger exploded, and the entire crew was lost, including one civilian, a schoolteacher from New Hampshire in Kristin McAuliffe 15 seconds velocity 2900 feet per second altitude nine nautical miles downrange distance seven nautical miles.

Looks like a couple of the solid rocket boosters blew away from the side of the shuttle in an explosion. And then tragedy struck again in 2003, when the shuttle Columbia broke up and disintegrated as it made its return to Earth. The entire crew was lost. The grim remains of that horrible event hard to look at tonight. That is the helmet from one of the fallen astronauts found in a field in East Texas over the border in Louisiana. Another sad scene as the remains of what is believed to be one of the seven astronauts is taken away by hearse. As America mourns, the President orders all federal flags to be lowered to half staff. Meantime, memorial services are now being held here at home and across the country to remember the seven brave men and women who died today. The serious notion of returning to the moon on the far back burner.

That's the official story. Anyway, there's another story floating around about the end of the moon missions. This fun theory is that from the very first moon landing, the astronauts and NASA discovered that the moon was far, far from a barren, lifeless rock, that humanity was not the first to step foot on its surface. The moon was very much occupied by an entire fleet of extraterrestrials. They set up their base on the dark side of the moon, the side forever hidden from those of us gazing up from Earth. These aliens, their technology so advanced that to us it would surely seem like magic. Just we're not having any of our shenanigans.

What did we think we were doing bouncing around on their carefully constructed, entirely artificial docking and surveillance station? And what in every possible world did they make of astronaut Neil Armstrong bopping around and singing? Yippity hoppity yippity hoppity yippity hopping over hill and dale. Yippity hopping along.

Maybe the aliens took one look at our flimsy, foil covered spacecraft, at our astronauts so encumbered by gear that they looked more like Rock'em Sock'em robots than any kind of We need to put these goofy earth monkeys in their place. And so the theory goes, humanity was banned for 50 years from visiting the moon. A 50 year ban that began in 1972. And oh my gosh, I do believe we just completed our 50th year of lunar detention. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0. Plus five seconds.

Lift off normal. Here we have a majestic liftoff of LBM-3 M4 rocket. Oh, look at that. It's India's Chandrayaan mission. Blasted off on July 14, 2023. Word is they're heading for the moon's South Pole. And that was Russia's Luna 25 mission. That one slipped into seven completed lunar missions, including one historic day in 2019, when China set a lander down on the dark side of the moon. Something never before accomplished by any human or human made machine. And Team USA is back in the game too with Artemis, a joint program between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency. Next year in 2024, Artemis 2 will send a four member crew on a trip around the moon, if not actually to the moon. Then in 2025, Artemis is scheduled to return humans to the moon's surface. So yeah, the timing could all be a giant coincidence. There does seem to be a lot of that where the moon is concerned. Just one coincidence piled atop another, leading to no real explanation at all for Earth's most constant steadfast companion. The moon is just there. Okay, deal with it.

Trouble is, that's an unsatisfying answer. And humans crave answers. And when answers are scarce, myths and stories tiptoe right on in to fill the gap. Or, and like it or not, this is entirely possible. Every crazy sounding theory is actually closer to the truth. A truth that sounds way too Hollywood to be anywhere near real. That the moon is a hollow alien base. And we Earthlings lost our visiting privileges for 50 years. With reality getting weirder by the minute, why not?

You know, why not bring it on? And heads up, whatever our moon is, we need it. Earth needs its moon. Because if our moon suddenly disappeared, well, that's a story for another time. And it's a scary one. If a banjo and stars play different tunes, I'll see you on the dark side of the moon. And if the cloudbursts thunder in your ear, you shout and no one seems to hear.

And if the banjo and stars play different tunes, I'll see you on the dark side of the moon. See you on the dark side of the moon. Special thanks going out to Alyssa Schauffler for joining us on this episode. She's a singer, songwriter and artist in Minneapolis. Her YouTube channel is Alyssa Schauffler. That's A-L-I-S-S-A-C-H-E-F.

Give her a follow, White Old Chef. And if you listen to us on Apple Podcasts, hit the plus button in the top right corner. Now it helps an independent podcast like ours to get discovered. And we really appreciate it if you subscribe, rate and review True Weird Stuff. Hit our website TrueWeirdStuff.com for show notes and photos and videos when we have it and bonus content. Everything True Weird is waiting for you at TrueWeirdStuff.com.

And follow True Weird Stuff on Instagram and Twitter. True Weird Stuff is a Now! Media production. Our executive producer is Anthony Garcia. The show is written and hosted by me, Sheri Lynch, along with my deeply weird director, Max Sweeten. Our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser. Additional production by the mysterious Stephen Call.

Our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Furr. Original graphics by Kevin Nash. Original artworks by Olivia Axland. True Weird original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and Zane Nash. Copyright 2023 Now! Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs remembered. So Max and I have a great time doing every episode of True Weird Stuff.

And it's wild how many personal connections we have to some of this content. Max, tell everybody what your personal connection to this episode is. So I've got a few. My father, when my father worked for AT&T, he was a communication specialist with NASA. So my father and mother would go to the Goddard Space Dinners and meet all these astronauts like Neil Armstrong and all that.

So because he came home with this memorabilia that I no longer have, he would talk about this. So I became obsessed with all things moon. One school project that I had, I did a paper mache version of the moon's surface. That was one of the things that I did. And in another one, I took all the newspapers that I could get a hold of and had all these newspaper articles that are in like this scrapbook that I turned in.

And I still have that somewhere. I'd have to go find it in a box somewhere. But I was obsessed with all things moon. So what do you when you like look at the known facts, right? What do you what does that make you think? Because here's the truth. Here's the truth. We don't know what the moon is or why it's there. We really don't. That's not me saying that as wearing my Reynolds wrap hat.

That's not crazy like that corner of the Internet. That's astronomy. That's science. We don't freaking know what the moon is or why. What does that make you think? Well, I mean, I can tell you that I drove a car 275,000 miles and that's to the moon and a little bit back to the earth. I know that much, but it is a car.

It is one of those things that we take for granted. But when you look at it, you go, what is that thing up there? You know, and then it's amazing to think that over 50 years ago, 54 years ago, we landed on it. We had men land there and then we brought them home. And yes, I do believe that we did land men on the moon. I'm not one of these people that think that we didn't.

No, I think we landed on the moon. I think we landed on the moon. I mean, talk about wing in a prayer. Like when you really dig back into the technology of the time, there's a lot. I mean, there's a lot we could get so far into the weeds. Like, for example, you look at the Wright brothers and then you look at the Apollo missions.

You're like, jeepers, that was an awfully big leap really, really fast. Is it possible we had a little bit of help or reverse engineering alien technology? I don't know. Right. But the thing that I find really fascinating because we can guess, you know, and the great fun of true weird stuff is that we get to take like true stuff, true science, true history, and then look at all the speculation around it.

But the truth is science doesn't know what the moon is. Science can't really explain other than whopping piles of coincidence how the hell the moon is composed of what it is and all of the similarities at the level of the isotopes of tungsten and stuff. I love all the geeky stuff and I can really geek out on it. But what it all comes down to is don't know.

Your papier-mâché moon and your project on the two astronauts who did the moonquake experiments, you knew as much in middle school as we know now. Isn't that weird? Yeah. But I've heard all of those theories that you did in the podcast about where the moon came from. And it's, you know, it's still a mystery. We don't know.

So let me ask you, if you were snatched up right now from your windowless cave where you create the true weird magic by a couple of the men in black and taken to a windowless underground bunker, probably somewhere near Cheyenne, Wyoming, and told your life depends on you telling us what you think is going on with the moon, what would your answer be?

One of the things that always amazes me about our planets is how they're perfectly round. I mean, I guess there's some physics reason for that. But I was always under the impression that the moon came from the Earth originally. That's what I was as a kid. That's what we were taught at that time. Of course, then you talk about what had happened since then and how they're able to take all this computer technology to be able to form things out.

I still believe that it came from the Earth. Despite everything that you're saying, I still believe it came from the Earth. You know, if it wasn't for all of the technology that we have that lets us look into the very molecular structure of the moon and of Earth. I mean, I was always a fan of great impact theory, too.

But I don't know, dude. It's weird. The moon is weird. I'm not saying it's a hollow alien base, but I'm saying it's not because I don't know. I follow Buzz Aldrin on Twitter or X or whatever it's called now. But I follow him because I'm so fascinated with anything he has to say about any of this. And he always says, look, we were there. I was there.

This conspiracy would have had to have so many people keeping this a secret that it's not possible that it could have been anything but what it was. And that is we landed on the moon. We're going to do an episode at some point about what happens if the moon goes away because it's like the scariest story ever told. And maybe we'll touch on some of those moon landing conspiracies.

I just like my God, folks, if you look at the technology that we had available to us in the 60s, we didn't have the technology to fake the freaking moon landing. We really didn't. Like from Hollywood was not that advanced. Now, Max and I used to work with a guy, a journalist, a journalist that it was best that the moon landing was fake.

Like I could not even bump into him in the break room because he knew what a science geek I was. And he was constantly wanting to argue with me about the moon. Now, this man, this journalist who brings you the news of the day, who thinks the moon landing was fake, also used to ride around during the warmer months in a convertible with no shirt on.

And you want to talk about bringing the Barney Rubble sexy to America's byway. Oh, thank you for reminding me of that. So. So anyway, thank you for listening to this episode of True Weird Stuff and thank you for being a true weird stuff listener. Anyway, full stop. We don't usually just sort of blather on. But the moon thing. Yeah, it's real personal. It's personal for Max.

And if it turns out to be a hollow alien base. Hey, we were half right. The world needs idiots. Idiots get things done. They don't waste time overthinking things. Do you honestly think any other country could have put a man on the moon? Of course not. That is a stupid thing to do. Only America could pull that off because only America would send his friend up a few years later with a set of golf clubs so they could whack a few balls around.

It makes complete sense if you don't really think about it.