96: Apollo 20: The Secret Mission to the Moon to Salvage an Ancient Alien Spacecraft
29:23 Share

Plug in a Hyundai EV and the extraordinary happens.

From the charge time and range in the Ioniq 5 and 6 to the adventurous spirit of the Kona Electric to the 601 horsepower Ioniq 5N, Hyundai EVs make the extraordinary electrifying. There's joy in every journey. EPA estimated 303 mile driving range for 2024 Ioniq 5 SE SEL Limited Rear Wheel Drive and 361 mile driving range for 2024 Ioniq 6 SE Long Range Rear Wheel Drive with fully charged battery. Actual range may vary. Visit HyundaiUSA.com or call 562-314-4603 for more details.

The Apollo spaceflight program lasted from 1961 to 1972. Apollo 11 was Neil Armstrong's famous first step. Apollo 17 was the last manned mission to the moon. In all, 20 Apollo flights were planned, but Apollo 18, 19 and 20 were canceled.

But in 2007, a retired astronaut blew the whistle and claimed Apollo 18, 19 and 20 did happen. But they were highly classified. He knows this because he was the commander of Apollo 20. He said the reason these missions were kept secret is because of what they found on the moon. Well, not just what they found, also who they found.

The primary goal of the Apollo space flight program was to land the first man on the moon. This was achieved on July 20th, 1969, when Neil Armstrong famously said, That's one small step for man, one...

That was Apollo 11. Apollo 12 also landed on the moon successfully. Apollo 13 had to abort after Tom Hanks famously said, Houston, we have a problem. But Apollo 14, 15, 16 and Apollo 17 all made it to the moon.

But here's where things get weird. The Apollo missions made all kinds of scientific discoveries that experts still study today. But despite the success of these missions, Apollo 18, 19 and 20 were canceled due to budget cuts and lack of public interest. But ever since then, there's been a story floating around that those flights actually happened.

but they did so as part of a top secret black budget program. Eventually, we would get confirmation of this. In 2007, a YouTube user with the handle RetiredAFB posted a video that set the internet on fire. It was a short clip that showed the interior of an Apollo spacecraft. First, we see an orange porthole looking out into space.

Skeptics were quick to jump on this film as a hoax, but if we compare it to actual known photographs of Apollo craft, it's a match. The next shot is of a control panel, and this too matches other Apollo missions. What stands out is the flag and the mission patch. These are hard to make out in the early videos, but we'll see them in detail later on. The flag is a combination of the American and Soviet flags.

The patch shows Apollo 20, the name of the mission. At the bottom of the patch are the names of the astronauts.

Snyder, Leonov, and Rutledge. Soon after releasing the video, retired AFB admitted he was William Rutledge of the United States Air Force and mission commander of Apollo 20, which flew in 1976. The middle of the patch shows two spacecraft with ropes or cables around a submarine. No. A sturgeon. No. A submarine? You said that already. Yeah, well, I couldn't come up with a third one. And comedy comes in threes. Oh, you think this is comedy? Oh, bite me.

Anyway, the submarine is actually the purpose of the mission. Apollo 15 went to the moon in 1971 and it had taken a lot of pictures. And what was of particular interest? Officially titled Apollo Image AS15P9630, it shows a swath of lunar landscape on the far side of the moon. But if we zoom into this area, we have a hill. Right. That's the image that's currently available to the public. But originally it was this.

But NASA also has this. That's the submarine! That is Apollo 20's mission. Identify and, if possible, breach the two-mile-long spaceship that crashed on the moon 1.5 billion years ago. No!

Over time, Commander Rutledge released more photos and videos online. He also released excerpts from his journal and gave more background on the mission to the moon. In 1971, the Soviet Academy of Sciences contacted American President Richard Nixon with a proposal. The Russians had images of the ship taken from the surface. They also had images of what looked like a city. But they didn't have the technology to visit the site. But the Americans did.

After the success of the Apollo-Soyuz, which was the first U.S.-USSR joint space mission, the Soviets proposed another mission. Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov, commander of the Soyuz, would accompany two American astronauts to the alien crash site. Oh, say that again. What? Alien crash site? Ah, it's like music. Sweet.

Sweet, sweet music. So Leonov and Rutledge were joined by Leona Snyder, who would serve as the pilot. Then on August 16th, 1976, in the dead of night, a Saturn V rocket took to the sky and embarked on the most important and most secret space mission in history.

Ten, nine, ignition sequence start, six, five, four, three, two, one. At the end of the countdown, just after ground control calls zero, there's a moment that seems to go on for hours. At that moment, years flash before your eyes and play like a movie in reverse. Your thoughts turn to friends, to family, to home.

The capsule's shaking like crazy, and you're aware of the rocket engine swelling like a tidal wave, but there is absolute peace. The mind quiets. There is no fear. Fear would come soon enough.

Liftoff is called and the rocket begins to float. People think you shoot off the pad like a bullet, but in truth, you hover. Just for a second, not even a heartbeat, you float. But the next second, the next second begins a physical ordeal that will last eight and a half minutes.

The weight of a building pushes against your chest, making every inhale a battle of life and death. It's not uncommon for someone to pass out during these eight and a half minutes, though when that happens, we'd never tell.

After the crushing journey through the atmosphere, you go from 3G's to weightless in an instant. It's like a tether suddenly snaps, and then you float. It's not uncommon for someone to vomit at this point, but again, we'd never tell. I look down at the earth, and white clouds swirl over blue oceans. I look at the land 125 miles down, and get the sense that someone somewhere is looking up.

I take a moment to catch my breath and smile. Those eight and a half minutes roaring through the Earth's atmosphere, that was the easy part. Three days later, on August 19th, at about 1030 in the morning, the Apollo 20 crew entered lunar orbit. Then the crew was informed of a secondary objective for this mission. Track down and find out what happened to Apollo 19. Whoa, what? Well, the Russians had much better information about the alien crash site.

which is why the Americans agreed to a joint mission. The United States sent Apollo 19 to explore the wreckage a few months earlier, but the mission failed. Only the Apollo 19 crew and the most senior people at NASA knew about this mission. The launch and transit to the moon went fine, but ground control lost radio contact when Apollo 19 got to the far side of the moon.

hadn't been heard from since rutledge and his crew were instructed to check a specific storage compartment in the landing module this compartment typically held tools and containers for bringing back moon rocks and soil samples oh but not this time but not this time this time the storage compartment had guns good morning my name is carl wolf and i was a precision electronics photographic repairman with a top secret crypto clearance

In the United States Air Force, I was stationed at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. In 1965, in mid-1965, I was loaned to the Lunar Orbiter Project at NASA on Langley Field. They had problems with a piece of electronic equipment that was bottlenecking their production of photographs.

I went to the facility and when I walked into the facility, there were scientists from all over the world. I was stunned actually to see people at a NASA project from all over the world. It didn't make any sense to me initially. I was taken into the laboratory where the equipment was malfunctioning. A airman second class was in the dark room at that time. I was also an airman second class. I was interested how the whole process functioned.

how the data got from the lunar orbiter to the laboratory, asked the young man if he'd describe the process to me. He did. About 30 minutes into the process, he said to me, in a very distressed way, "By the way, we've discovered a base on the backside of the moon." And then he proceeded to put photographs down in front of me, and clearly in these photographs were structures, mushroom-shaped buildings, spherical buildings, and towers.

I worked there for three more days and I remember going home and naively thinking, I can't wait to hear about this on the evening news. And here it is, more than 30 years later, and I hope we hear about it tonight. And I will testify under oath before Congress that what I'm saying is the truth.

Rutledge and Leonov sat in silence as the Moon rover closed the distance between the landing site and the alien ship. Rutledge felt that the silence was inspired by part wonder and part fear. The hull of the ship first appeared over the Moon horizon, looking like another hill, but

But as they drove closer, the men's chins slowly raised higher and higher. When they were finally in the shadow of the craft, it was hard to tell how big it really was. Unsure of the ground underneath, they decided to park the rover about 800 feet from the craft and travel the rest of the way on foot. Rutledge and Leonov chatted amiably on the walk, but the closer they got to the ship, the quieter they got. It was...

was massive and awe-inspiring. The ship was over 300 feet high, the length of a football field, and as high as a 30-story building, and just as wide. The length of the ship seemed to go on forever. They knew the ship was two miles long, but that's just a number until you're right on top of it. The first thing we noticed was how old the ship was. Having been on the moon for over a billion years, it almost looked like part of the landscape.

The hull of the vessel was coated in moon dust, the powder that turned everything here grey. Another indication of the ship's age was that it was pockmarked with ancient meteor impacts. This alien ship has been here since before the Pyramid of Giza was built, before the Sumerian civilization emerged. But I started to become dizzy realizing the ship has been here since before the first dinosaurs walked the Earth.

Everything about this mission stretched the limits of the human mind. It was too big to comprehend, too old to comprehend.

Here I was, walking on the surface of the moon, having traveled here in a rocket, the pinnacle of human technological achievement. And yet, in the shadow of this ancient relic that somehow made its way here from a distant star a thousand millennia ago, I felt like little more than a caveman. Compared to this technology, our species was still rubbing sticks together to make fire. At that moment, I felt very, very small.

They had no trouble entering the ship. It looked like the area was cleared by heavy equipment, though there were no machines in sight. The exterior of the ship was covered with impacts, strange shapes and markings, but the interior walls were perfectly smooth. Before going further, Rutledge and Leonov took a quick minute to confirm they still had radio contact to Leona in orbit and to ground control on Earth. They did.

Over many centuries, lunar soil filled the floor of the ship. They weren't stepping on metal. About 60 feet in, patterns in the lunar dust indicated that some type of fluid had flowed there at one time, maybe a hydraulic leak, they couldn't be sure. Over the radio, they were instructed to grab samples, but all they can get was a little dirt from the ground. NASA wanted pieces of the ship's wall or equipment for analysis, but their hammers and chisels couldn't even scratch it, much less chip off a piece. But the walls did have a strange property.

A gravitational field could be felt coming from the walls. And now that they focused on it, gravity on the ground felt slightly stronger on the inside of the ship. Rutledge speculated that this would make interstellar travel much easier. We take gravity for granted on Earth.

but is very much a key to our survival. When the human body is without gravity, it experiences physiological stress almost instantly. Without gravity, bone and muscle mass quickly wither, so daily vigorous exercise is needed. When the human heart doesn't have to contend with gravity, blood pressure goes out of balance. Sustaining injuries without gravity is dangerous because blood doesn't flow, it pools. In space, any type of internal injury is almost certainly fatal. Our

Our balance depends on gravity. The fluid in our ears that tells us which way is up suddenly has no concept of up. Digestion is more difficult without gravity helping food move through the body. The problems are endless.

Engineers on Earth had many proposals on how to solve the gravity problem. Space stations could one day be built like wagon wheels like in the movie 2001, but there was no structure like that here. Gravity was coming from the ship itself, somehow. Rutledge and Leonov followed a path that led them to an upper floor. Down a wide hall and into a large chamber, they finally saw something that, even though they expected it, still surprised them. Signs of life.

In the darkness, the walls seemed to move. In the larger part of the ship, the walls were perfectly smooth, but here, moonlight was being scattered in all directions by a rough surface. When Rutledge and Leonov got closer, they saw what appeared to be plants and vegetation. Dried purple vines 100 feet tall lined the walls.

Even though there was no sound in space, Rutledge's mind couldn't help but fill the silence with the rustling of a breeze through trees on a calm day. Beneath the plants were trays that were collecting a thick yellow liquid.

Upon closer inspection, it was gold and phosphorescent. Finally, something could be recovered from the alien ship. The men took about two liters of what they called golden tears. Golden tears, huh? That sounds ominous. For a minute, Rutledge had forgotten that they were broadcasting. From lunar orbit, Leona broke in. Will, we've got Houston on the line. Batch him to her, Leona. Will, Alexei, these things are diff. Video shows us that the planets have moved during your visit.

Roger, Control. I think I've seen the move, too. The room continues for a long way. I think I see light up ahead. We could probably reach it in an hour. We want you to protect the samples. Return to the LEM and get those canisters stowed. Roger that, Control. Returning to LEM. Rutledge and Leonov retraced their steps out of the ship and headed back to the Lunar Rover. About halfway through their walk, Leonov grabbed Rutledge by the arm and pointed to the ground about 50 feet from the path. Will, Will, do you see this?

Two lines side by side. How do you say? The same distance apart. Parallel? Yes. Do you see? I do. What is that? When they got close enough, they realized what the lines were. Tracks in the dust. Recent tracks made by a lunar rover, but not their lunar rover. Rover team to orbiter. You there, Leona? I'm here, Will. What's up? You better get Houston back on the horn. Why? What is it?

Tell them, tell them we found Apollo 19. After a few hours of sleep, the Apollo 20 crew debated with ground control over whether to explore the Apollo 19 module. Rutledge, Snyder, and Leonov wanted to check for survivors, or at least find out what happened. Ground control was against it. They argued that whatever happened to Apollo 19 could easily happen to Apollo 20. I don't think it's a good idea to follow the same path.

that Apollo 19 to failure. We don't know if this is an equipment issue or if there's something dangerous at the landing site. Understood, Control, but their families deserve to know what happened. Well, their families don't know they're here. As far as they know, their loved ones died in a training accident. Control, could Apollo 19 have any material to help us complete our mission? Negative. Apollo 19 has no additional resources.

The black silhouette of Apollo 19's lunar module loomed on the horizon. It was still connected to its first stage booster, a sign that the astronauts hadn't left.

Rutledge had a glimmer of hope that the crew of Apollo 19 could be alive somewhere in the alien ship. But the truth is, he expected to find three corpses. The Apollo 19 LM was probably now a high-tech tomb, with final messages for families taped to the control panel, which is what he would have done. They parked the rover, and Rutledge felt a wave of adrenaline wash over him. The hatch to the module was slightly open. This means it wasn't pressurized. If

If the astronauts were here, they weren't alive. Rutledge and Leonov walked cautiously around the module and inspected it for damage. It looked like it had landed hard. The nozzle skirt was partially buried and folded. Then Rutledge kicked something in the lunar dust.

He bent down and brushed the gray soil away. It was a white glove with red fingertips. Apollo 20's colors were white and black. The glove belonged to someone from Apollo 19. Rutledge was trying not to panic. He looked around for Leonov, but he didn't see him. Leonov was already up the ladder and opening the hatch. Alexei, wait. Will? What is it? Is something in there? There is something, yes, but... What, a body? It is a body, but... Will? Will?

Rutledge and Leonov stood in silence for at least two minutes taking in what they saw, unsure of how to proceed. Inside the Apollo 19 lunar module, buckled tightly to a folding metal table, was an alien body. It appeared to be a humanoid female.

She was naked, but her body was covered in a waxy substance. Rutledge thought it could be a highly advanced type of pressure suit. The alien female was about five and a half feet tall. She had two arms and two legs like a human, but she had six fingers on each hand. On her forehead was a tattoo or design that resembled markings that they saw inside the ship. Her face was decorated with a device that consisted of stalks fixed to her eyelids, cheeks and mouth.

Whoa, hold on. Remove the helmets? Are they crazy? This.

This is a terrible idea. What if she implants an alien egg in them or something? Yeah, I don't think that... Oh, what if the alien gets some of the astronaut's DNA and then it comes to Earth and makes an astronaut clone, which replaces the real astronaut, but the astronaut's a hero, so the clone becomes a senator. And then after a few years, the alien

Alien clone becomes president of the United States. Then what? Then what, huh? Then we got an alien clone in the White House?

Actually, how much worse can it get? Once the cabin was pressurized, Rutledge and Leonov gingerly removed their helmets. Rutledge expected the air to smell like decay, but there was a distinct aroma of almonds. I don't know why, but that makes it even scarier. I agree. Leona was a biochemist before becoming an astronaut, so she would be helpful. But she was an orbit on the other side of the moon, so Rutledge and Leonov had to do the best they could until she came back into range. Rutledge felt for a pulse, but he couldn't detect one. He put a stethoscope on her chest.

He couldn't hear a heartbeat, but he heard what he thought sounded like a whooshing sound, some kind of liquid moving through her body. They determined the alien was neither alive nor dead. She was in some kind of suspended animation. They removed the stalks from her face, and Rutledge thought she had a slight smile. From then on, they called her Mona Lisa. Rutledge gently examined the alien while Leonov filmed and took photographs. RUTLEDGE

Finally, Leona Snyder was back in range. She radioed down, but this time on a private channel. "Uh, Snyder to Rover. Will? You okay?" "Uh, we're okay, Leona. We... we found something unexpected in the Apollo 19 LAM. No crew, but uh..." "We know. You've seen this back online. We can see everything." "You want to patch me through?" "Not yet. Will, um..." "What is it?" "Ground control knows."

They know? They know what? About all what you found in Apollo 19's LM. They already know! How is that possible? Will, they know. But we also found a bloody glove, and I'm pretty sure it belongs to Jim Reynolds. We need to go- Will, they know about that too! They know all of it! I don't understand how they would- Will, Control wants you to bring the alien woman back to your module. What? They, uh... Viona? What? What is it?

They want us to bring her home. The Apollo 20 urban legend has become one of my favorites. And the more I learn about it, the more I like it. When YouTube user Retired AFB, aka Commander William Rutledge, posted his Apollo 20 videos, the internet exploded. The videos look so good.

But is it real? Absolutely. No. Damn it. There are a few articles out there that debunk the videos practically frame by frame, but there's no reason to go through the trouble. Someone openly admitted to creating them. The videos were created by French artist Thierry Speth as part of a science fiction film project he was working on.

He used a combination of practical effects and 3D to create the videos. The two videos that got the most attention were the ones of the control panel and of the alien woman because they look really good. But he has a lot of other videos connected to this project and they don't look as amazing.

Now, even though Speth freely admitted to creating the legend, somehow it took nine years for anyone to bother talking to him about it. Credit goes to Chad Baxter for finally interviewing Speth in 2016, and I'll link to that interview below. The story you heard today is basically a mashup of a few versions of the Apollo 20 urban legend floating around the internet.

Mixed in with the novel Speth wrote that tells the entire story. I'll link to Speth's novel below, but before you spend money on it, be warned. Despite writing the book in English, Speth doesn't speak it very well. So as far as stories go, it's clunky. But still, it's entertaining. In Speth's version of the story, the alien woman wakes up during the procedure and knocks Rutledge unconscious. And those golden tears they collected? The yellow goo? Yeah. In the story...

It has medicinal properties. Leonov has cancer with only a few months to live. He drinks the goo and it cures him. By the way, Alexei Leonov is one of the most famous cosmonauts in history, so Speth changed his name in the novel. Also, Rutledge and Snyder, they end up having an affair in space. Then they get married and they also drink the yellow goo, which makes them age more slowly. Yeah, but what about the bloody glove? Right. Remember the plants inside the ship? Yeah. Well...

They ate the Apollo 19 crew. The glove was all that was left.

Wow. Yeah, there's a lot going on in that novel. As I said, it's clunky. Despite Speth admitting to creating this, you'll find interviews with the quote-unquote real William Rutledge, and those interviews have expanded the lore. But you know I don't trust the French. How do we know he isn't just taking credit? Well, a lot of people thought that, and that's why it's so weird that nobody bothered to talk to him. But about halfway through the interview with Chad Baxter, Speth holds up a mask of the alien woman. And it's the same alien for sure? Yeah.

100%. Go back and freeze frame. It's absolutely the same alien. If you want to see exactly how Speth made the video look so good, I'll link to an article called Apollo 20 Deconstructed. So how is a story like this believed by so many people for so many years?

I think the answer is easy. It's the American government's fault. It's always the government's fault. You don't even know what I'm going to say. It doesn't matter. It's still the government's fault. There really were three more Apollo missions planned, and they really were canceled due to lack of funding and lack of public interest. That is one of the biggest tragedies in human history.

Apollo 17 was extremely successful. Space exploration should have been a top priority for the United States and the Soviet Union. Instead, they made their top priority war in Vietnam.

In today's money, that war would cost a trillion dollars. In 2022, NASA's budget was $22 billion. That's a budget reduction of 90% since the 1970s. Yet the United States Department of Defense budget was $722 billion. Not including black budget. Right, so let's call it a trillion. That's really why the Apollo program ended. America beat Russia to the moon. That was the mission, not

Not exploration, not research, not science, not the betterment of all mankind. It was petty competition. That's why I'm rooting for the Chinese to keep launching missions to the moon. I hope they find more Helium-3 and other valuable resources, because that's the only way my country gets back to focusing on space. If you can't count on American ingenuity, at least you can count on good old American greed. And the United States better not wait too long, because if China has only a fraction of the success of the Apollo program,

It won't be long before we're all speaking Mandarin. Thanks so much for hanging out with me today. My name is AJ. That's Hecklefish. This has been the Y-Files. If you had fun or learned anything, do us a favor. Like, subscribe, comment, share. I

I know it's annoying to hear me ask that, but it really helps the channel. And like most topics we cover on this channel, today's topic was recommended by you. If there's a story you'd like to see or learn more about, go to the Y-Files dot com slash tips. A special thanks to our patrons who make this channel possible. If it wasn't for our Patreon members, there would be no Y-Files.

And if you'd like to support the channel, consider becoming a member on Patreon. You can support the channel for as little as $3 a month or grab something from the Wi-Fi store. Did you raise the prices on the hecklefish coffee mugs yet? Not yet. I forgot. What? This isn't a charity. I'm trying to run a business over here. That's going to do it. Until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciated. You're running a business? I mean, really?

so