MOVIE OF THE MONTH: APRIL 2011

APOLLO 18

Director       : Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego

Producer      : Timur Bekmambetov
Screenplay   : Brian Miller
Distributor   : Dimension Films
Release date: April 2011

Apollo 18 tells a story about the space mission in the 1970's that was canceled by NASA. Only in this movie, the mission actually happened and the astronauts encountered some aliens. Apollo 18 was originally planned in July 1969 to land in the moon's Schroter's Valley, a riverlike channel-way. The original February 1972 landing date was extended when NASA cancelled the Apollo 20 mission in January 1970. Support crew: Allen, Henize, Parker.

Apollo 18 was originally planned in July 1969 to land in the moon's Schroter's Valley, a riverlike channel-way. The original February 1972 landing date was extended when NASA cancelled the Apollo 20 mission in January 1970. Later in the planning process the most likely landing site was the crater Gassendi. Finally NASA cancelled Apollo 18 and 19 on 2 September 1970 because of congressional cuts in FY 1971 NASA appropriations.

There was also a feeling after the Apollo 13 emergency that NASA risked having its entire manned space program cancelled if a crew was lost on another Apollo mission. Total savings of cancelling the two missions (since the hardware was already built and the NASA staff had to stay in place for the Skylab program) was only $42.1 million. Before the cancellation, Schmitt was pressing for a more ambitious landing in Tycho or the lunar farside.

Apollo 18 is found-footage-style film about a post Apollo-17 mission to the Moon that takes on a premise of why NASA discontinued the Apollo moon missions. The plot involves a government cover-up of the Apollo 18  mission after Monsters on the Moon discovered the crew and began to kill them off one by one. Much of the back-story remains unknown, however the one trailer shows a Soviet LK Lander on the lunar surface, suggesting a plot connection with the canceled Soviet Moonshot. 

WEBSITE OF THE MOVIE: http://apollo18movie.net/

YOUTUBE LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F6DU6gx7-w

Courtesy: http://www.astronautix.com/flights/apollo18.htm, http://wikipedia.org