As I type this we're a bit over 12 hours from blastoff for a new season of Mythbusters, set for 9 tonight. We'll have to wait three more weeks, however, for what will be one of the myth-busting gang's most eagerly awaited episodes: puncturing the fairy tale that the moon landings were faked, as in filmed in a studio.

When I first heard that the famous and mighty Mythbusters were going to take on this particular piece of tired hokum on Aug. 27, I frankly thought it beneath them ... as in way, way beneath them. After all, believing that the moon landings were faked is akin to believing that the government has for 50 years successfully suppressed physical evidence of alien beings visiting Earth -- and regular readers know what I think about that fantastic voyage into the world of the impossible.

But I need to cut Adam and Jamie a little slack here. After all, they are producing a television program that does not exactly aspire to be a documentary (tonight, for example, they're taking on "exploding meat" and "don't drive angry") and there is no doubt this moon-landing silliness will prove tremendously entertaining.

And they're certainly pulling out all the props, as you can see in this YouTube clip above that shows the guys preparing their model lunar surface and a wicked cool lunar lander. (Bad Astronomy blogger Phil Plait, who knows the guys and has consulted with them on the moon landing hoax episode, wrote last night that he would give Jamie "a million bajillion dollars for your lander model."

Not sure I'd pay a million bajillion, but as you'll see in the video, it is truly a work of art. (At least one of my sons would pay a million bajillion.)

Of course, if the set and the lander are too convincing, maybe and the whole thing looks too real ... nah.