Michio Kaku Schools a Moon Landing-Conspiracy Believer on His Science Fantastic Podcast

in Astronomy, Physics | September 11th, 2012 10 Comments

For every major world event, there’s a con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry to go along with it. Skep­tics, kooks and cranks did­n’t wait for the dust to set­tle before they start­ed spec­u­lat­ing on the real dark forces behind the 9/11 attacks. And the same hap­pened decades ear­li­er when Neil Arm­strong took his first steps on the moon. No soon­er had Arm­strong said “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” than con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists start­ed claim­ing that the moon land­ing was real­ly an elab­o­rate pro­duc­tion staged by Stan­ley Kubrick and oth­er Hol­ly­wood film­mak­ers. That strange line of think­ing was explored in William Karel’s 2002 mock­u­men­tary, Dark Side of the Moon. But despite the deri­sion, the moon con­spir­a­cies go on today. Take this exchange for exam­ple. It comes from a May 2011 episode of the Sci­ence Fan­tas­tic pod­cast host­ed by well-known physi­cist Michio Kaku. Amus­ing­ly, the clip walks you through the main claims of the moon land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry and the rea­son­able rejoin­ders to them.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Michio Kaku Explains the Physics Behind Absolute­ly Every­thing

Michio Kaku: We’re Born Sci­en­tists But Switch to Invest­ment Bank­ing

What Is Déjà Vu? Michio Kaku Won­ders If It’s Trig­gered by Par­al­lel Uni­vers­es

 


by | Permalink | Comments (10) |

Sup­port Open Cul­ture

We’re hop­ing to rely on our loy­al read­ers rather than errat­ic ads. To sup­port Open Cul­ture’s edu­ca­tion­al mis­sion, please con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion. We accept Pay­Pal, Ven­mo (@openculture), Patre­on and Cryp­to! Please find all options here. We thank you!


Comments (10)
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
  • dar says:
    September 12, 2012 at 6:46 pm

    yeah, them thar kooks ‘n cranks:
    ‘Join 23-year archi­tect Richard Gage, AIA, in this fea­ture length doc­u­men­tary with cut­ting-edge 9/11 evi­dence from more than 50 top experts in their fields — high-rise archi­tects, struc­tur­al engi­neers, physi­cists, chem­i­cal engi­neers, fire­fight­ers, met­al­lur­gists, explo­sives experts, con­trolled demo­li­tion tech­ni­cians, and more.’
    theintelhub.com/2012/09/11/video-911-explosive-evidence-experts-speak-out/
    cheers

    Reply
  • Neil Baker says:
    September 29, 2012 at 10:23 pm

    I am the caller in this pod­cast and it bewil­ders me how so many ignore that Kaku com­plete­ly evad­ed the issue that I was pre­sent­ing. In their over fifty years of alleged use, no space­suit or its nev­er-seen ice sub­li­ma­tor cool­ing sys­tem has ever been pub­licly demon­strat­ed in a radia­tive­ly-heat­ed walk-in high vac­u­um cham­ber dupli­cat­ing the pres­sure and tem­per­a­ture con­di­tions of orbit or the moon. Absurd­ly, no space­suit ice sub­li­ma­tor has ever been men­tioned in any aca­d­e­m­ic-lev­el heat trans­fer or ther­mo­dy­nam­ics book despite rep­re­sent­ing one of the most mar­velous heat trans­fer devices ever con­ceived or con­coct­ed.
    Our space pro­gram should­n’t be a faith based thing.
    NASA should be account­able.
    Dare to demand a pub­lic space­suit demo.
    We can PROVE or dis­prove the hoax.

    Reply
  • Andrew Johnson says:
    March 5, 2014 at 3:43 am

    To deter­mine whether it was hoaxed or not and/or to what extent, you have to exam­ine all the evi­dence. One of the key areas which peo­ple like Kaku rarely dis­cuss is *what the astro­nauts them­selves have said* Go and lis­ten to them. Watch Bart Sibrel­l’s films “Astro­nauts Gone Wild” and “A Fun­ny thing Hap­pened on the Way to the Moon”. Or, you could look at more of the evi­dence in a pre­sen­ta­tion I put togeth­er http://www.checktheevidence.co.uk/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=324&Itemid=63

    Reply
  • Marcelo says:
    December 4, 2015 at 10:41 pm

    @Laura

    you are doing the same thing as Kaku in the clip. he takes the dis­cus­sion to some­thing total­ly dif­fer­ent from what the caller raised, and just cre­ates a straw­man argu­ment. he comes across as a total fake. why would you be pissed at some­body from your city that has put for­ward his opin­ion and asked for clar­i­fi­ca­tion? it is bizarre. why would space­suit tech­nol­o­gy from 50yrs ago be “clas­si­fied”? that’s absurd.

    Reply
  • NikFromNYC says:
    December 27, 2015 at 3:18 pm

    Alas, crack­pots have infest­ed this thread, but I want peo­ple to strong­ly note that those who Al Gore’s mas­sive team of cli­mate alarmist call Moon land­ing deniers or flat earth­ers include those who actu­al­ly went to the damn Moon!

    http://a2.img.mobypicture.com/8e1234d649766adfef528feb438395b9_large.jpg

    Reply
  • MikeR says:
    January 17, 2016 at 1:10 pm

    So, if I dis­cov­er evi­dence which con­tra­dicts the offi­cial sto­ry that yourr uncrit­i­cal mind accepts unques­tin­ing­ly, I must there­fore be a con­spir­acist, Dan?
    No mat­ter how bla­tant might be the decep­tion in the orig­i­nal BigSto­ry?
    Does­n’t leave me much enthu­si­asm to debate with you, lad.
    I’ll leave you to your delu­sions, thanks for the wind-up.

    Reply
  • MikeR says:
    January 17, 2016 at 1:23 pm

    For the ben­e­fit of open-mind­ed read­ers and lat­er­al-think­ing blog­sters:
    The video makes me won­der if the great Michio Kaku has seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered the orful pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Lunatic Land­ing coukd pos­si­bly have been a hoax.
    The movie we watched in 1969 MUST have been the “back-up” video, shot on ter­res­tri­al loca­tion in Neva­da and else­where by NASA. The back-up movie woud have been intend­ed to be screened in the dread­ful case where the mis­sion failed FOR ANY REASON WHATSOEVER.… to be screened in hon­or of NASA’s 1961 promise to JFK.
    If what we saw was the REAAL THING … then where IS the back-up video?
    It must exist: don’t try and tell us NASA failed to shoot a “just in case” stu­dio ver­sion.…

    Reply
  • J Carroll says:
    June 1, 2016 at 3:36 am

    Sor­ry for thread necro, but, yeah- glad I am not the only one who iden­ti­fied this right away as a faulty anal­o­gy and a snide smear to mil­lions of peo­ple around the world.

    What is wrong with this coun­try that we’ve been pro­pa­gan­dized to react uncrit­i­cal­ly “truth” is bad; left is right; and right- wrong? Even Orwell would be shocked…

    Reply
  • Tex Mex! says:
    October 2, 2018 at 12:10 pm

    1) Kaku has noth­ing to do with any space pro­gram includ­ing Apol­lo. He is not an author­i­ty on the sub­ject. Here on a live radio show, he does a poor job of respond­ing prov­ing… what? He’s a lousy radio host.

    2) The caller asks his “ques­tions” in a very strange way, open­ing with an admis­sion that his men­tal health is an issue. And then essen­tial­ly mak­ing state­ments that it’s all fake because of rea­sons. Those rea­sons are easy to prove wrong. “you can’t find any infor­ma­tion on them”. There is tons. 250+ doc­u­ments on NASA’s web­site alone. Etc etc.

    3) The space­suit cool­ing sys­tem works by let­ting water freeze then sub­li­mate in a vac­u­um. A very nor­mal nat­ur­al phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­non. You may not be famil­iar with it, but freeze dried food is made this way. It works, 100s of videos on youtube of peo­ple freez­ing water in a vac­u­um cham­ber.

    The caller and Kaku did a lousy job here. There is noth­ing pos­i­tive for either side of the argu­ment.

    Reply
  • Eric Edwards says:
    September 10, 2024 at 3:40 pm

    We left a retro-reflec­tor on the moon. Inde­pen­dent projects could shine a laser on it and record the light com­ing back. Prin­ci­pal­ly to mea­sure the dis­tance but this also proves man-made objects are on the moon.

    Unfor­tu­nate­ly my “google” research shows it is too involved for high school or under­grad col­lege. How­ev­er it has be done by Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton and Apache Point Obser­va­to­ry.

    The plan:
    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/01/020116072630.htm

    Some results:
    https://web.archive.org/web/20100429022000/http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/04/scienceshot-decades-old-soviet‑r.html

    By the way, if the US faked it, Rus­sia would have been report­ing it like crazy.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Quantcast