The Truth Behind Apollo 18 and the Missing Moon Rocks

For anyone who is into a bit of conspiracy theory, it’s not too hard to find some good source material in the modern world. Conspiracies exist in every single avenue of life these days, with people from all over the world holding various views and opinions on things that “must” have happened. Conspiracies have, obviously, blown up since the internet and especially since the advent of things like blogging and social media. It gives people the chance to present the truth or various facts to the public in a manner they never would have been able to in the past.

Logo from the documentary film

Additionally, though, it also gives people the chance to provide the rest of the world with a chance to hear the “real” story behind things we are told is fact. If you believe that everything we are told by the government and corporations is the truth, then it’s probably fair to see that is a little naïve. However, there are plenty of things that governments are only happy to disclose to us – but how often is what they actually tell us the truth? If they can lie to us about simple things over the years, what is realistically there to stop untruths being cast as truth?

This is what makes conspiracy theories so good – the best ones really are hard to disprove. One of the most famous examples of a conspiracy theory really rising through the ranks and remaining as one of the most prominent of modern times, though, is the story behind Apollo 18. If you have never seen the 2011 film about Apollo 18, ^[1] you might want to consider looking into watching it. Not only is it a great movie – the overall quality of the film is very high from the acting to the way that the plot unfolds – but it presents some extremely interesting theories and ideas about some of the Apollo 18 conspiracies. We want to take a look into the potential truth behind the “missing moon rocks” which is one of the most prominent parts of the Apollo 18 story.

The Film Itself

Before we go any further, though, it’s probably best that we try and explain the idea behind the film briefly for anyone who does not have the time/patience to sit through the movie. Presenting itself as some “new” footage from the famous moon landings of the 1970s, it also uses real NASA movie footage from the landing on the moon as well as studio-shot footage with added effects and CGI to help sell the story.

While in reality the canceled Apollo 18 mission never actually left the ground, it was expected that the success of other Apollo missions beforehand would trigger a seismic change in the way that the world worked. Moon bases would soon be commonplace, for example. However, funding was reduced time and time again as people refused to put their hard-earned cash into a fruitless venture beyond our own world. These cuts in budget were the reason for both Apollo 18 and 19 being officially cancelled.

The original plan for these space mission was to spend three days of time on the Moon, and to travel as far as possible in three separate moonwalks to cover as much ground as possible. By utilizing the improvements in technology gained from the earlier Apollo flights, it was hoped that humanity would be further strengthened by the knowledge gained from future moon flights. The hope was to find large craters that were full of ancient rocks from the deepest crevices of the moon. Unable to gain access to ancient rocks on Earth, it was hoped this would give science new knowledge and further power over the solar system.

Despite being cancelled, the film follows the idea that instead the spacecraft was launched as a Department of Defence top-secret mission that is actually disguised as a simple satellite launch. They are, in fact, going to the Moon to place trackers to help the United States combat back against the USSR and any impending attacks that may be incoming.

Further exploration leads to the astronauts taking some moon rock samples, and witnessing some rather disturbing scenes. They come across what appears to be alien foot tracks, as well as a trashed Soviet LK Lander and a dead astronaut. Querying Houston for more information back home, they are told to proceed with the mission.

After planting a flag and finding it to be missing the next day, the mission is considered to be a success back home at Houston. However, prior to leaving the Liberty, the ship used, suffers from violent shaking and requires significant repairs afterwards. On inspection, they find that the ship has been attacked by something else.

Astronauts on the surface of the moon

After a run in with a spider-like creature inside one of the astronauts, Walker, space suit they find themselves unable to contact back home or indeed any other astronauts back on the main ship. The ensuing fight with the spider-like creature appears to leave Walker extremely delusional, and eventually he attacks the ships system which causes it to de-pressurize when he believes he is hallucinating.

Even more incredibly, the moon rocks caught earlier are seen to be moving on the screens back within the Liberty – and are revealed to actually be aliens concealed within the rocks themselves. Forced to leave the ship due to the depressurizing, they make way to the Russian LK in their own moon buggy. Walker crashes the buggy, believing that he should not return to Earth due to his infection.

The other active astronaut on the planet, Anderson, awakes from the crash and works his way back to the site where they found the Soviet LK, with Walker nowhere to be found. He finds walker by the crater, and he is pulled into the crater by the aliens. After escaping from the aliens himself to the LK, he contacts USSR Mission Control who direct him through to the Americans. He is told that they cannot allow him to return to Earth, as they fear he may be infected also and that they knew the real reasons for sending the astronauts in the first place.

En route back to the Liberty, after making contact with the Freedom spaceship to return to Earth regardless, Anderson is waylaid by a psychotic Walker. Walker is eventually attacked by more aliens during the conflict, and is killed. Anderson makes his way back to the Liberty and takes off to connect back with the Freedom, and return home with the collections intact.

The movie ends with the Freedom’s lander being shut off, after Grey is warned of the infection and to abort the mission or be cut off from support, and the ship eventually falls into Earth’s orbit in free fall. The small rocks saved from the Moon are seen to be afloat in the craft as it descends. Anderson is attacked by the creatures and infected, leaving him unable to control the vehicle. An abrupt end to the footage and an unknown result is given about the remaining astronauts, or indeed their fates. We are only told that they died in accidents that left their bodies unrecoverable, and that all moon rocks brought back from previous missions have went missing or have been stolen.

The Theory

So, now you know roughly how the film plays out, it should be a little easier to understand why the biggest conspiracy theories out there regarding the moon landing are not the actual landings themselves – or how real they are – but indeed what actually returned with the flight team. Is it possible that the events of this movie are in some way true It may not have happened as told in the movie, but with the verification that NASA has lost countless space rocks over the years, why is it so hard to believe that the reason for this is more than poor organization and leadership?

While the chances of some top-secret “need-to-know-basis” mission that took some astronauts to the dark side of the moon to monitor Aliens is so little that it’s best left to the big screen, it’s also just not possible. The size and scale of the space machinery used in the 1970s was so grand and large in size that it would be literally impossible to fire a 3,000 ton rocket into the sky without anybody ever noticing! Not only that, but the rocket would have been made in New Orleans – the same as any other Saturn 5 rockets for space flight – and shipped down to the Gulf of Mexico. This would be noticed by people, too.

Additionally, the fact that a Soviet LK Lander plays such a key role within the movie also helps to make it seem detached from the reality – the Russians cancelled all of their Moon landing missions post Apollo 11. While the movie itself may not be spot on about the way that these missions went down, there’s certainly something quite strange about otherworldly material getting up and leaving various high-security locations across the globe.

After all, with rocks being brought from Apollo 11-17 to hand out to every nation on the planet, it’s quite hard to know how at least 160 have gone unaccounted for since. While some out there are forgeries or fakes, the real moon rocks that are missing are really just that – gone, into thin air. How does that happen, exactly? While interest in the moon landings dwindled rapidly – as we moved onto other things to shout about – there was still an immense amount of public attention on the moon rocks when they were handed out to various dignitaries throughout the world.

Collection of Moon Rocks

This makes a very interesting part of the movie stand out even more – what was the point of collecting the rocks, then? Was there any kind of knowledge prior to arrival about the true nature of the rocks? Or was this just a by-product of the mission? While certain plot points are left untouched throughout the story, it’s enough to get your own brain thinking of the reasonable conclusions as to why the mission went ahead in the first place. We are told it’s to help watch out for the USSR, but it’s later disproved as the DoD pass on the message they already knew what was out there.

So why would they not look to bring some back with them? This is a fairly simple explanation, you might imagine, but sometimes with things as outrageous as this it’s good not to get overly complex! While the rocks were obviously causing a lot of problems when the astronauts are up in the sky, it’s known that rocks have disappeared in real-life in a similar fashion to the way they disappear in the movie.

Other Arguments That May Help

The film itself has spawned many excellent theories from fans to those who just generally want to know more about the world that goes on beyond our planet. While some people turn to other forms of fiction to try and find information, the majority of the information used to create the ideas in this film clearly comes from several different inspirations and sources.

The invisible rocks, for example, could be a simplistic and easy to install gag to make horror. But it’s also, to those interested enough, a topical idea for where these rocks have went. With theories in abundance for years that the US in particular have had several run-ins with alien aircraft, and have met and even operated on aliens in the past, is it really so hard to believe that they may have had an ulterior motive for delivering these rocks to every single nation on the planet?

Man on Moon?

If that doesn’t make you raise an eyebrow we aren’t quite sure what would! Given that so many rocks have since vanished from the thousands brought back, is it possible that this film has predated a small collection of aliens that are now roaming free? Sure, it’s probably unlikely, but it’s about as unlikely as a super powerful nation and its massive space corporation losing misplacing hundreds of extremely expensive and rare rocks from another planet!

While corporate negligence never creases to amaze or startle, neither does the government’s ability to surprise – nor frighten. The film may be categorized as entirely fiction, but it certainly creates some very unique parallels between what many people believe to have happened and what we are told happened to these rocks. Stolen by rogues and thieves is usually the answer provided, but what if there is more to it than that?

What if we cancelled these previous missions because we knew what was out there, now? These are just some of the questions asked by people prior to the release of the film but especially afterwards. Is it possible that, having discovered the certainty of alien life on the moon and their own civilization, we decided just to leave these space missions to avoid pushing things too far? Again, it’s as plausible as many of the ridiculous reasoning’s that we hear from government and top officials from various companies and corporations the world over.

It’s certainly possible that life exists in our very own solar system. The chances of life being within our solar system are much higher than people may ever suggest, with various scientists and other reputable individuals having created convincing arguments that we are most certainly not alone in our own system, nevermind throughout the rest of the galaxy or the universe(s)!

It’s when you start looking at things at a very basic level; it becomes a little more plausible to you. For example – how many species are on this planet? Billions, literally billions. We’ve all seen just how many different types of spider that there is – the movie gives us a pretty terrifying rendition – so with so many billions of species on the one planet why is it unreasonable that another race with equal or greater intelligence than ourselves lives out there?

The talk of alien interaction and disclosure being not too far around the corner is growing by the day. Look online, to radio stations like Coast-to-Coast ^[2] – they provide many great stories far more exotic than the Apollo 18 story. Speaking with various experts over the years, we’ve heard some absolutely amazing theories from places like Coast-to-Coast and various blogs and videos over the years. Not all of them are true – or even remotely true – and we get that, but some of them just come with far too much evidence and fact to be simply dismissed.

You look around and you can find so many video clips of reputable individuals talking about things like contact with aliens, aliens visiting earth and even the missing moon stones over the years. This is a truly unique topic, and one with so many viewpoints, but a key factor for us is the fact that there are so many people in prestigious positions and who carry high-end degrees and pHDs, clearly intelligent people, who have witnessed or know of some form of alien interaction that has occurred. Even when you go back into more old-school theories to do with things like the Anunaki, you find many intelligent individuals bringing up these stories.

These are people who are far too well thought of and far too successful in life to be just making this up for attention, or to be mentally unstable. Therefore, is it really so hard to believe that within the many moon stones that returned over the flights that a few of them weren’t what we, or others, have been told they were?

For example, one Apollo based theory is that the mission was cancelled because we were informed in no uncertain terms to keep our own affairs in check and to leave the moon be. With so many stories of interaction between humans and aliens now commonplace and far more detailed and at times backed up by credible people it’s hardtop just dismiss any longer. One thing that always stands out is the incredible depth of change from the first space landings to the power of humanity and technology today.

How can more moon landings not occur now? We send space shuttles out every single day that chase meteors and land wherever they please. If budgets were the only thing that held Apollo back, then why has this not been corrected? Space budgets have increased and shrunk time and time again since the Apollo events, so it’s not a stretch of the imagination to believe that, since then, we could undertake more moon landings.

Have we been warned? Or were we visited in a way only a movie could imagine before these missions? There are so many theories it’s obviously impossible to know for sure but we know what we believe – there’s far more to the moon landings and the Apollo spacecraft than the general public are told. Things of a cosmic level of importance and that could be researched and refined time and time again just don’t just go missing, especially not when they have literally come from space!

Were the moon landings just a hoax? Were they set up? Is the “moon rock” even real? It’s these various questions that leave so many people exasperated with the situation. With so much misinformation, hearsay and opinion flying around it’s hard to build a definitive standpoint to learn from and improve your overall knowledge. What our parents were told probably is entirely different to what you were told – so how can anyone truly know the truth about what happened on the moon landings?

With more voices now speaking about the importance of disclosure and how it could help revert many of the problems and wrongs that we face today as a species, when do you think that we will see disclosure? Do you believe it would be a good thing? One thing is definitely for sure though…we’d finally know who stopped the Apollo spaceflights from actually happening to begin with!

Expert Opinion

Rumors surrounding Apollo 18 suggest that NASA’s supposedly shelved mission uncovered hostile extraterrestrial life lurking among “missing moon rocks.” Proponents highlight dubious records of misplaced samples, a Department of Defense subplot in the 2011 film, and puzzling government statements on how so many lunar specimens disappeared. Although the narrative captivates believers, the blend of official omissions and movie dramatics continues to stoke fervent debate.

On the flip side, detractors emphasize the immense logistics of secretly launching a Saturn V rocket, which would be nearly impossible to conceal. NASA’s stance maintains that most vanishing artifacts fell victim to theft or administrative oversight, rather than anything alien. While some conspiracy theories explore deeper motives for canceled lunar expeditions, the objective evidence falls short of confirming any hidden cosmic involvement.

Verdict: Inconclusive
Official explanations point to lost or stolen samples, yet persistent gaps in documentation fuel enduring speculation.

Marcus Lowth is an expert on this topic and has over 20 years experience studying and reporting in these fields. Marcus has written several books and appeared on TV shows as an expert investigator discussing these topics.