NASA Lies?: The Apollo 18 Conspiracy

Mystery has surrounded the Apollo program since its inception. Most notable are the deaths of Astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee who died as a result of fire during a training session for the first Apollo mission. Many believe that Grissom, the mission commander, had threatened to blow the whistle on NASA’s true devious intentions and that the fire was deliberately set to silence him forever. Today, many continue to debate the validity of the first moon walk. Officially, Apollo 17 was the last lunar mission conducted by the United States. NASA claimed to have ended the program thereafter, citing budget concerns. However, both Apollo 18 and 19 had already been organized, built, and paid for while Apollo 20 was being prepared.

Conspiracy theorists, informed by former military and government officials, have asserted for several years that lunar bases are currently operational on the Moon. Some postulations have been comparably mundane, stating that the Moon actually has a thin atmosphere and potential to sustain life; while others are as outrageous as indicating that the Moon is in fact a hollow satellite that was towed into orbit and houses a subterranean civilization. But what of the Apollo missions that supposedly never took place?

It is well known that governments are particularly adept at keeping secrets. Much of what was learned by the United States during the Cold War was not available public knowledge until the mid-1990s. Sadly, most naive citizens choose to believe that in a democratic republic, this kind of secrecy is impossible. Theorists propose that a compendium of evidence in the form of confidential government documents, acquired via Freedom of Information Act requests, has definitively affirmed that the U.S. government has repeatedly lied, omitted the truth, and misrepresented material facts concerning the Apollo program. Some have cited the infamous Apollo 17 mission patch sketch, drawn by the crewmembers, as evidence that the astronauts themselves were conveying a certain clandestine element to the program via a hidden message. Of course, it was later revised by NASA officials because it depicted Stonehenge and could have “caused controversy.” In fact, it has been proposed that three additional Apollo missions were conducted subsequent to Apollo 17. Did previous Apollo missions discover something that needed to be kept out of the public eye?

Oddly enough, the official landing site for the Apollo 18 mission, that never happened, prompted interest. The crew was set to land on the Gassendi Crater, which has been rumored to contain abnormalities and even, some say, shows signs of artificial structures at its center. The allegations repeat with the proposed landing site for Apollo 19 at the 800 million year-old Copernicus Crater, which is one of the most infamous lunar features in the minds of many conspiracy theorists. Indeed some have taken to calling the supposedly non-existent inhabitants of the Moon who left behind evidence of a mining operation, the Copernican race. For what it’s worth, these lunar craters appear quite dissimilar to the Meteor Crater impact site in Arizona, USA; which doesn't prove much. Perhaps most obvious to those with active imaginations and enjoy Worcester tests are the pits believed to lead into habitable tunnels within the Moon which can be accessed in the region of the Marius Hills; the projected landing site for Apollo 20. Given the photographic evidence, theorists suppose that these secret Apollo missions were organized to investigate potential lunar civilizations. Of course, these theories are only sound if one chooses to accept that NASA has since doctored the original photos, which can hardly be found today except in books published immediately following their issuance.