In my mind, one of the biggest mysteries of the space age is the apparent disinterest held by the US government in returning to the moon in an official capacity.
American space programs have essentially been turned over to Elon Musk’s private company Space X as far as the public is concerned. Other small start-ups have joined in, most recently with Intuitive Machines’ Odysseus lunar lander becoming the first US spacecraft to touch down on the moon since 1972. The machine is now lying on its side, defunct until the lunar night passes and they might be able to “wake it up.”
Considering the crimes against humanity forgiven during Operation Paperclip to win the space race, it feels a bit embarrassing as an American that this is where we’re currently at. Surely the military-industrial complex cooked something up over the last half-century that could keep from tipping over and going to sleep a week into the mission.
It is an insult to the public’s intelligence to try to convince us that they haven’t, but that appears to have been the official story since the end of the Apollo era decades ago. Many reasons have been cited for America’s failure to return to the moon, the most common being budgetary restrictions or the lack of political will to do so.
If the politics surrounding the issue of space exploration is indeed the reason for our evident lack of interest, then why was the creation of a Space Force such a necessity?
If costs are so concerning, why are companies like Lockheed Martin still allowed to gouge taxpayers by hiking their prices 40% higher than needed to make a profit?
Why is NASA passing off these responsibilities to private startups with a fraction of the experience and infrastructure?
To me, as time goes on, this all feels increasingly like a smokescreen of some kind. There is no way our military would allow advantages to our adversaries when it comes to potential strategic assets like the moon.
As other countries and corporations continue to fail where NASA succeeded numerous times 50 years ago, that simple question remains.
Why haven’t we gone back?
Lunar Dominance
America’s apparent lack of interest in returning to the lunar surface has an obvious answer for the more conspiratorially-minded among us. Many believe we have gone back, but in a classified military capacity kept away from the public.
There has always been speculation about lunar bases both human and non-human, along with rumors of mining and other kinds of resource extraction. As Blink-182 guitarist Tom DeLonge famously told George Knapp in an interview on Coast to Coast, a high-level defense executive suggested at a party that “we’ve been mining on the moon for 30 years.”
As absurd a statement as that might seem, is it more ridiculous than believing the US government has had no interest in returning this entire time?
Adding to the possibility that such lunar mining operations may exist, comments from another aerospace CEO provide insight into what those resources may be.
In an interview with Jeffrey Mishlove, Robert Bigelow, founder of Bigelow Aerospace, expressed his frustrations with the lack of urgency to return to the moon. He also outlines the importance of being the first nation to claim territory on the lunar surface.
So from a psychological standpoint, that is huge. That’s something you can’t buy. You know, it’s not a material. It’s something immaterial. It’s something that goes to the belief system of a people. For better or worse, right or wrong, it’s the belief system of people that leaders usually try to control one way or another. Whether it’s political philosophy or religious philosophy, it doesn’t matter. The point is exactly the same. You’re trying to control the minds of people that dictates their behavior. That’s clear. I mean, every country feels they want to have a unified population, not a population that’s going to rebel against the establishment.
His assertion of the psychological advantage of establishing dominance on the moon is an interesting one. Even without the extraction of resources, the display of power that comes with such a declaration is priceless, especially for an autocratic nation such as China or Russia.
Bigelow then goes on to speak about Article 16 of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, while also pointing out that America did not sign the subsequent treaty in 1972.
Bigelow: People look at the ‘67 Space Treaty and say, oh, that can’t happen. Well, that’s because they haven’t read it. So there are about 170 signatories to the ‘67 Treaty. Thank goodness we didn’t sign the ‘72 Lunar Treaty. We didn’t sign that. But we did sign the ‘67.
The treaty provides the responsibility for every signatory, for every sovereign country to sign that treaty. Each sovereign country has the obligation and the responsibility to go ahead and produce and promote and profit from the lunar activities for the common good. It doesn’t mean you’re prevented from going in there and extracting something and then selling it for the common good.
So the point is that Article 16 allows you to back out in 12 months. You send a letter of withdrawal to the United Nations Committee and say you no longer want to be a member because you have other things in mind that you’re not going to talk about. And you’re going to be actually confiscating everything.
Okay, so now you have zero obligations. The handcuffs are gone from the 67 Treaty because you’ve already established your perimeters, your bases, and everything. Now you do whatever you want to do and survey the hell out of everything in an old-fashioned way. And those kinds of patents are defendable in any court. Practically any court in the world would defend those.
Mishlove: A patent.
Bigelow: A land patent.
Mishlove: I see.
Bigelow: A land patent.
Mishlove: A land patent being a claim.
Bigelow: Well, like the Spanish land grants in the United States. They went back to the 1800s or 1700s, earlier. And depending on how they were documented and so forth, they could be very effective. So Article 16 is the way out to then just proliferate everywhere and stick your flags every place if you want to do that.
You can still get away with a tremendous confiscation of territory just by establishing bases and numerous bases. There’s no limit to the size. There’s no limit to the number.
Mishlove: But you would need to somehow stake it out.
Bigelow: Yes. You would want to have parameters to establish that this is my turf and my territory. Do not enter.
This is a very specific course of events laid out by Bigelow. He is firmly stating that any country that signed the treaty would be able to opt-out after a year, presumably starting in 1968. However, the implications of his hypothetical scenario regarding China are worth elaborating on.
Bigelow is suggesting that a country could be complying with the treaty at the same time they are covertly building up a military infrastructure. The sizes of potential bases have no limit. Construction could be completed without providing any details to other countries involved in the treaty. The perimeters would then be established, and that country could then withdraw from the treaty with a full military presence in place while still having fully complied up to that point.
In short, the loopholes in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty could serve as cover for a clandestine military build-up on the moon while giving the appearance of adhering to these international agreements. In such a situation, the decision not to return for decades — at least in a publicly acknowledged manner — could be explained in full.
Interestingly, the narrative Bigelow paints in this interview has been explored recently by Hollywood in an eerily similar manner. The Apple TV show For All Mankind depicts an alternative historical reality, where the Soviets successfully put a man on the moon before the US and the space race never ended.
Throughout the series, and particularly the first season, the tension between the objectives of civilian research and military superiority is front and center as the Soviet and American rivalry heats up. Clandestine machinations occur on both sides, and the diplomatic challenges that result indicate a complex and novel dynamic that transcends our current geopolitical landscape.
It would make sense to keep these conflicts out of the public eye considering the way things play out in the show, at least initially. As would be expected in any television drama, catastrophe is headed off by the courageous acts of a few.
Unfortunately, real life doesn’t usually reflect such fortunate outcomes in these cases. As the Cold War has long demonstrated, a situation where space-capable nations engage in covert activities from the very beginning would be much more realistic.
Once a country felt it had established superiority through the construction of bases and other means, withdrawing from the 1967 Outer Space Treaty would usher in a completely new era of geopolitical uncertainty.
An era that may require the establishment of, say, a national Space Force.
Always the Third Option
Many books have been written on more speculative hypotheses about the resistance to returning to the moon. The most prevalent involve ancient alien bases and other intelligences tampering with our equipment. The general idea is that these entities are sending a message to humanity, informing us that we are not welcome.
One interesting hypothesis that Tom DeLonge has put forward when it comes to government secrecy is the intentional proliferation of a false alternative story to divert attention from the actual coverup.
He provides the example of Roswell, saying that both extraterrestrial technology and military balloon testing may both be fabricated by the government. He suggests there is usually a third option, and in the case of Roswell, it may have been secret Nazi technology originating from Argentina.
He also applies that same logic to conspiracy theories about the moon landing.
Anytime something big happens, whether it’s Roswell, whether it’s the World Trade Center, or it’s going to the moon…the brains in the real government — not the elected officials, I’m talking about the guy who stayed there for forty, fifty years, the lifers — they know that fifteen percent of the population is going to question any big thing that happens.
There’s always going to be a conspiracy theorist. So what they do is they plan on giving you the conspiracy to chew on. They don’t want you making up your own. So they know that you’re going to ask questions and they’re going to feed it to you
So when you look at Roswell, you kind of go, “Okay, what’s the main story, and what’s the backup story here?”
The main story is that it’s a weather balloon, and then the conspiracy is that it’s an alien craft. Then they want you to chew on that, because they don’t want you asking the third question, which is, “Hey, is this Russian or was this German?”
I think that’s the same thing with the moon. The big story is that we went there, the backup stories is we never went there, but the third hidden story that they don’t want you asking is, “What was there?”
Tom goes on to tell the story mentioned earlier describing a defense executive’s comments to him regarding lunar mining operations. He then relays an incident that happened during an attempted collaboration between his band and NASA.
Before we built Strange Times, we were doing some stuff with NASA. NASA wanted to work with Angels and Airwaves and we’re flying in and out. When we’re out there pitching them on something, they went out to the hallway and my buddy that worked for me just pulled two people aside and said, “Okay, so what’s the deal with UFOs?”
They kind of look at each other, and they started to say, “Well we don’t know too much about that, but I will tell you this. After we ended the last Apollo mission, the FBI came into NASA and took and destroyed all the technology and all the paperwork, and everything on how to get to the moon.”
Literally. Took it all. So it’s not that we don’t have the technology to get back there, we just don’t have the billions of dollars of work. We’d have to start from scratch again. So the question that’s raised is why did they come in and take that? What was the purpose of hiding that, or making it so difficult [that we had] to start all over again?
I wonder if it’s because they took it to a different part of the US government that was going to continue the research, or I wonder if they just want to make sure no one else goes while they’re going. Who knows what the question is, but I think that the idea of jet propulsion rockets and what we’ve been using in since the 60s to get there in a low-earth orbit, it makes no sense to me.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume Tom’s story is true.
Although the reasoning could relate to something that had been discovered, the actions by the FBI could also be interpreted as part of a larger clandestine operation to establish superiority on the moon as outlined in the scenario by Robert Bigelow. This operation may have been initiated immediately after the Apollo missions, and perhaps even explain why the final missions were cancelled.
But now, let’s examine some public comments from individuals within the government that may have been overlooked.
Out of the SCIF
A fascinating, if cryptic, exchange on the Senate floor in April 2019 may shed some light on our current conversation. During a hearing to receive testimony in establishing the Space Force, Senator Richard Blumenthal expressed frustration that the American people were not permitted to know the reality of what our military is confronting in the space domain.
In a line of questioning with then-acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan and Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, Senator Blumenthal hinted at space-based threats and his concerns over civilian Space Force employees not having protections under Title V.
The exchange is worth quoting in full to provide sufficient context.
Senator Blumenthal: Thank you all for being here today, and thank you for your service. I’ve been in and out as I’ve attended other committee hearings, and I sort of feel like the most important facts for us and the American people to understand are the facts that haven’t been said today. The reason why they haven’t been said is that they are largely classified, and the reason that’s important is that the American people have no idea, really no idea about the immensity of the threat in space.
I’ve made this comment in a classified setting, that I wish the American people could be present in this room — not this room, but the SCIF — because our adversaries know what they are doing, we know what they are doing, they know we know what they are doing, but the American people have no idea. So this discussion and debate will have very little interest in the American public.
It’s carried on in a level of — forgive me — bureaucratic language that most Americans would have trouble seeing an immediacy in their daily lives. But if they were privy to what we hear, and you know it much better than we do because you live it, I think they’d be pretty alarmed.
This is not by way of criticism of you, because you’re living with the strictures of what is classified and not, but I think we have a real obligation to explain to the American people why space is a domain that matters. Why the threats there are real and urgent. Why they are growing in importance.
So I think we all agree here that’s that space is an important domain. Undersea warfare is an important domain, but we don’t have a separate demand for it. Cyber is an important domain, as my colleague and friend the late John McCain used to say.
So I found very persuasive, Secretary Wilson, what you said in July of 2017. I know it’s been quoted to you before this morning, the reasons for your opposition to that separate domain, or the separate command for the space domain, but I would like to ask it in terms of the personnel issues that I think are of immediate concern to a lot of folks.
This proposal would exempt space for civilian personnel from Title V rules and protections. It would create a new excepted service that is separate from the federal government, competitive service, or a senior executive service. it would create an alarming precedent, I think, that potentially could erode the merit-based civil service within the Pentagon and eliminate the rights of Space Force employees to participate in collective bargaining, for example.
There is currently no civilian workforce that is statutorily exempt from collective bargaining rights. Can you tell me, Secretary Shanahan, why that is a part of your proposal?
Secretary Shanahan: The Title V that you were referencing was based on the discussion we were having earlier around integration with the NRL. That’s the model that they employ there, and as we think about the talent management practices that we’ll need in the future, we wanted a provision for that. Much like in your reference to the undersea domain, our approach to systems engineering is the same as the Navy’s undertaken.
So there are a lot of examples that we’re trying to draw from that have been successful. That was that was the nature of that insertion.
Senator Blumenthal: Would there be protection for whistleblowers in the same way there is throughout the rest of the government?
Secretary Shanahan: The baseline that we’re coming off of is the existing personnel system. This was to incorporate the ability to integrate with the NRO, so I’d have to go back and confirm that for you.
Senator Blumenthal: If you would, that will be appreciated because, based on this proposal, the Secretary of Defense could terminate any Space Force employee “in the interests of the United States” and as drafted it says “notwithstanding any other law,” which leads me to think that they would be exempted from a lot of other protections of law and could simply be dismissed whenever you determine it’s in the interest of the United States.
Secretary Shanahan: Let me go back and confirm, that’s not our interpretation.
Senator Blumenthal: My time is expired, but…I have a lot more — and I’m going to submit them for the record — a lot more questions than answers here. As others have remarked, each of you has raised objections or reservations or questions in the past — the very recent past — about this idea, which I’m not sure have been fully addressed here. Thank you.
It seems fitting that the Air Force would want the authority to dismiss any Space Force employee without providing them the protections they deserve. The fact that Shanahan specified “systems engineering” regarding these provisions signals that technology is the concern when it comes to firing these individuals.
Although on the surface this exchange may feel unimportant, Senator Blumenthal provides more insight than one may initially realize. The space-based threats that the general public is privy to are frightening enough — electromagnetic pulses that lead to power grid outages being the most concerning.
But considering these types of things are public knowledge, Blumenthal’s references to SCIF meetings and the classified nature of the most pertinent information suggest a more complex and unacknowledged area of conflict.
Lock Your Doors
Many have argued on social media that Senator Blumenthal’s comments at this specific Space Force hearing are likely intended to address more general threats from our terrestrial adversaries and have nothing to do with the UFO phenomenon, let alone bases on the moon. But as proven a few years later, Senator Blumenthal’s insistence that the American people should be aware of these developments in the space domain no longer stood as an isolated incident.
As most individuals with even the slightest interest in UFOs likely remember, there was a briefing provided to the full Senate during the chaos of the February 2023 Chinese balloon and subsequent UAP shootdowns. As of today, over a year later, none of the objects brought down during that time have been identified as far as the public knows.
After this Senate briefing, quite a few Senators made some eyebrow-raising comments about what they had learned. Even more intriguing was the fact that Sean Kirkpatrick, the recently appointed director of the Pentagon’s new UFO office AARO, prepared and presented at least part of the briefing.
The most notable comment came from Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, who told reporters in a post-briefing gaggle that “It’s clear to me this is not a recent phenomenon” and “this has been going on since at least 2017.”
Infamously, he left them with a harrowing statement: “Lock your doors tonight.”
Senator Blumenthal also gave an interview after the briefing, and the statements he made were of equal if not more importance. He largely echoed his sentiment from the 2019 Space Force hearing, insinuating that there is something of immense implications that the government is holding back from the public.
Reporter: Do you have a better understanding of what the objects are?
Senator Blumenthal: I have a better understanding, but the American people need and deserve to know more. There was a lot of information presented to us this morning that could be told to the American people without any harm to sources or methods, or our national security. The American people need to know more so they will have more confidence in our national security.
As I’ve said after so many of thee briefings, our adversaries often know what we know, we know they know. The American people are the ones who don’t know, and they deserve to know more. So I think there’s a need for greater transparency and more facts for the American people.
Reporter: With these objects, are you concerned about the safety of America?
Senator Blumenthal: I am not in any way afraid that we are under a threat of attack or physical harm to our homeland. That’s my personal feeling, but the American people need to be reassured with more facts.
In my opinion, these comments from both Kennedy and Blumenthal reflect a concern about something much more alarming than a Chinese spy balloon. Blumenthal repeated his statement about the knowledge of our adversaries’ capabilities, potentially tying what he learned during this UAP briefing into the same space-based threat scenario he referred to in his questioning of Shanahan and Wilson.
Underneath the Surface
When it comes to space-based threats, this would likely include the establishment of infrastructure on the moon. If we indeed have a presence there along with other adversarial nations, it could explain why we have not gone back in an official government capacity since the Apollo missions.
To the more conspiratorially minded, this may also potentially explain the difficulty and “anomalies” experienced in recent attempts by private companies to land there. One may even wonder if the recent trend in private lunar missions may be a way to avoid official conflict between nations, or even “blue on blue” friendly fire scenarios.
Whatever the case may be, the expansion of commercial space flight is no doubt heightening the exposure risk for any classified programs that up to this point have enjoyed complete secrecy due to the nature of space itself. Even recent studies of the moon from Earth have discovered new anomalies on and under the surface.
A recent paper has uncovered anomalous rocks that only collect specific types of lunar dust, potentially due to unique magnetic properties.
“We recognized a boulder with distinctive dark areas on just one image. This rock was very different from all the others, as it scatters less light back towards the sun than other rocks. We suspect that this is due to the particular dust structure, such as the density and grain size of the dust,” lead author Ottaviano Rüsch, from the University of Münster, said in a statement.
“Normally, lunar dust is very porous and reflects a lot of light back in the direction of illumination. However, when the dust is compacted, the overall brightness usually increases. This is not the case with the observed dust-covered rocks,” added co-author Marcel Hess from TU Dortmund University.
The crucial finding is that a very small number of boulders on the Moon have a layer of dust that reflects light weirdly, but what makes these rocks special is unclear. Due to the electrostatic properties of the dust, magnetism is being touted as a possible explanation: The dust might be lifted by interactions with the solar wind and end up on the boulders.
Another team, using data from both Chinese and Lunar orbiters, discovered the existence of what appears to be a giant formation of granite under the far side of the moon.
“What this means is that it is hot, not necessarily at the surface, as you would see in infrared, but under the surface. The only way to explain this is from extra heat coming from somewhere below the feature within the deeper lunar crust. So Compton-Belkovich, thought to be a volcano, is also hiding a large heat source below it.”
Since this hypothesized volcano “was absolutely glowing at microwave wavelengths,” the scientists hypothesize that “radioactive elements in a granite matrix are likely the source of the heat beneath it.”
For this to be the case, however, other inconsistencies with mainstream theories about the moon’s formation would require even further anomalies to explain them.
That granite matrix is much larger than they would have expected, too – around 50 kilometers (31 miles) across.
This, the researchers say, is evidence for an evolved magma plumbing system much larger than expected for the Moon.
A system this large needs one of three things: a large mantle plume feeding in magma from within the Moon; an anomalously wet pocket inside the Moon in that location; or a patch of elements that could provide enough radiogenic material to produce enough heat for consistent re-melting.
All three imply large-scale compositional inconsistencies within the Moon that need to be explained.
“If you don’t have water it takes extreme situations to make granite. So, here’s this system with no water, and no plate tectonics – but you have granite,” Siegler says.
“Was there water on the Moon – at least in this one spot? Or was it just especially hot?”
That’s a lot of very specific anomalous criteria to fit the theory of volcanism. However, the emission of microwave radiation from underneath the lunar surface on the far side of the moon does provoke some imaginative proposals.
Considering our submarines and aircraft carriers are powered by nuclear fission reactors, including the Nimitz which was front and center in the infamous Tic Tac UFO encounter two decades ago.
Nuclear fission still produces radioactive waste and would likely not be ideal for powering underground lunar bases. The process of nuclear fusion, which does not produce waste and is not a threat to the environment here on Earth, would likely be the best candidate.
Relevant to our discussion here, it is worth noting that one of the prominent techniques under consideration to contain nuclear fusion power is through microwaves by using a process called Lower Hybrid Current Drive (LHCD).
Interestingly, this technique is being developed at MIT and has actually been in use since the Apollo era.
For nuclear fusion to work in confined places, engineers have to control two things, plasma’s high temperature, and high density.
Tokamak Energy Ltd promises to start producing fusion power on an industrial scale by 2025. The company has recently achieved a major temperature milestone of 15 million degrees inside its ST40 reactor, and the next goal is 100 million degrees.
Current tokamak reactors allow for such temperatures that generate plasma, but only in very short pulses, as they can’t maintain the reaction for long.
MIT’s PSFC engineers have now made another significant improvement to the tokamak technology through an old-new technique that “generates plasma current by launching microwaves into the tokamak, pushing the electrons in one direction — a prerequisite for steady-state operation.”
To test their microwave-based technique, called the Lower Hybrid Current Drive (LHCD), researchers used MIT’s prototype tokamak device, Alcator C-Mod, which was shut down in 2016 after being in operation since 1993.
The LHCD technique isn’t new as it’s been worked on by MIT scientists since the 70s.
There are many reasons to be curious about our journeys to the lunar surface over the years, or lack thereof. Comments from Senators and other individuals in the know suggest there is some kind of operation happening in the space domain that should be disclosed to the American people.
Hollywood has explored the idea of moon bases, detailing the potential clandestine nature of military space operations as well as the complex geopolitical dynamics that may result. If nothing else, all of this has demonstrated that there is a strategic advantage to establishing a presence on Earth’s “natural” satellite.
Perhaps shortly we will see a revocation of one or more countries’ involvement in the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, as Mr. Bigelow suggests. If and when that happens, all bets are off when it comes to geopolitical power shifts.
Inevitably, whatever is happening on or inside the moon — whether natural, human, or non-human in origin — will no longer be a secret world governments can keep.
