Apollo 18 in fiction and fact

Ian A. Duncan

A lunar module on display at the Cradle of Aviation Museum on Long Island, N.Y., could have been used for an Apollo 18 mission if it hadn't been canceled. (Learn more from the museum website and Flyian.net.)

By Alan Boyle

The secret moon mission depicted in the movie "Apollo 18" is a totally bogus Hollywood invention — but if NASA ever wanted to redo the Apollo program, the Cradle of Aviation Museum has just the thing: the lunar lander that would have flown during Apollo 18.

"We like to say that it's fully loaded to go to the moon if they want to use it," quipped Andrew Parton, executive director of the Long Island museum.

The lunar module, designated LM-13, is just a small part of the hardware that was left behind when the Apollo moon program was canceled earlier than originally scheduled due to budgetary constraints. The last manned moon mission, Apollo 17, went to the Taurus-Littrow valley in December 1972. TheHollywood version of Apollo 18 was supposedly flown to investigate a spooky, "Blair Witchy" mystery on the moon — but the actual Apollo 18, 19 and 20 moonshots were aimed at widening lunar exploration and  scoping out sites for future moon bases. (This report goes into what would have happened if the Apollo program were extended.)

After the first moon landing in 1969, NASA and the White House began pulling back on their Apollo ambitions, having concluded that the space race was won. By the end of 1970, Apollo 18 was scrapped — and so was millions of dollars worth of Apollo hardware, including the Cradle of Aviation Museum's lunar lander.

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