How do you hide an investigation of alien ruins on the moon during Apollo 11?

Question

Picture this: it is the 1960s and the NASA is getting ready to take its moonshot. But in addition to all the other reasons for the going to the moon, the U.S. government has conclusive evidence that alien ruins are hidden in lava tubes beneath the Sea of Tranquility and wants to investigate. They also want to keep it a secret.

Unfortunately, unlike the Soviets, the American space program is public. Communication between astronauts and mission control is in the clear and the historic first landing will be televised. All of their actions will be scrutinized by potentially billions of people. With that in mind, how do you accomplish the public mission in front of the cameras while at the same time conducting a potentially hazardous survey of alien ruins?

My first thought is that NASA could use a 'rest period' as a cover. During Apollo 11, the astronauts rested for seven hours after landing before leaving, which might just be enough time to get the ruins, do an initial survey, then get back with some alien goodies in tow. But then they'd have leave the moon and dock with the Apollo CM with little to no sleep, which isn't ideal.

And even then, the U.S. will want to go back to the site on future mission with more men and equipment, so how do you justify landing in the exact same place?

Edit: Thanks everyone for their feedback. I've decided to go with John Dallman's answer, which I think makes the most sense logistically.

Answer 1

Frame challenge: you can't do much investigation during Apollo 11, but you can set public expectations.

Apollo 11 landed in an experimental craft, with experimental equipment, and had significant chances of aborting the mission. It can't be relied on for investigation. It also had huge amounts of publicity, which makes it very hard to do anything secret on the mission.

However, it can survey the area, "to allow setting up a permanent base." If the government knew about the alien artifacts a year before Apollo 11, then the publicity about the Apollo programme can have been about the plan to set up such a base, rather than "brief visits for superficial sampling of widely scattered areas of the lunar surface."

There was a plan, which didn't get adopted in our history, for a lunar base which you can scavenge. That was intended to allow a stay of up to 200 days. The public and the news media won't stay interested in every detail of the astronauts' activities that long, and some investigation can be done without doing silly things to hide it.

Answer 2

Well, first consider that the Apollo program consisted of six landings.

The first one was heavily scrutinized, yes. Live TV, and everyone with a HAM radio could listen in to the chatter (and nations, like the Soviets, paid very close attention).

After the first one though? Well, it's not that it stopped being a public event, but it wasn't something that a large fraction of the public watched with bated breaths. The later missions were much longer, some longer than three days.

I suggest you keep the first mission very close to reality, after all, there was still plenty that needed to be proven technically.

Jumping directly from no human moon landings to doing a moon landing and investigating literal alien ruins is a big ask. Instead, make your first landing far away from any ruins so you don't need to rationalize why later flights are going to the same area and you can spend more time (>72 hours) up there.

Now, for some specifics:

Rationalizations why you need to land in the same place

• There is interesting science to do at this specific location. On the one flight, make a "mundane" discovery but find out that the astronauts are missing some critical tool to complete a science task. Maybe they could've really used a drill or something, and then, the rationale, is "we have found a very interesting site of samples, and we need to go back with [insert special tool here] to finish the job"

• Lunar Landing plume investigation. Say that the agency is very interested in building a lunar base, and they need to figure out how the spray of regolith thrown by a rocket engine may damage structures. Use this as rationale to land as close to a previous lander as possible, and then you can do all sorts of science on debris spray and rocket plume / regolith interaction.

• Multi-mission heavy equipment. One lunar mission brings the lunar roving vehicle, and the next brings a "deep drill" or whatever. Scientists argue that these can't be launched at the same time, but if you had both at the same location, you could just drive the rover over to the older landing site and pick up the heavy equipment there.

Keeping it secret

• Astronaut Autonomy. There is no rule that states astronauts must chat with mission control before taking every step. Train the astronauts to independently do a reasonable amount of exploration/science, and if you want to have mission control provide instruction, have them do regular breaks where they communicate digitally encode messages. For example, they'd go on a spacewalk, do things, come back, and then put together a ciphered message and send it back as "science data payload" or whatever. MC decodes it, and while the astronauts rest, they compose updated orders, encrypt them, and send them back up. This way you avoid speaking in the clear about secret stuff

• Use a more transparent secret to explain non-disclosure of activities. Have the Air Force or whoever ask NASA to do some testing for experimental space weapons systems for a future astronaut-on-cosmonaut conflict. Cut the live radio and TV coverage, and just say, "Sorry folks! National Security things are happening, we'll be back soon."

• Feign technical issues. Astronauts have safely landed, done a quick walkabout, and "oh no!" a couple hours into the EVA, have them publicly declare a "suit issue" or whatever and then send the astronauts "back inside" while mission control "figures out a solution". Meanwhile, the astronauts are doing the secret xenoarcheology.

Answer 3

Firstly they obviously need a secondary, and heavily encrypted, communications feed. Then they either need to use a rest period as you suggested or have a redundant, read repeated, experiment planned wherein they can use looped footage from the first attempt and say, "Oh wow we really didn't expect the results to be completely identical but there you go." The second plan obviously has more risk, you need the first experiment to go well in order to reuse the footage.

There is a third option which I'm strongly in favour of; you'll alarm the public as to the safety of the astronauts but that very concern may be useful if things go badly wrong:

You fake a total failure of the primary communications feed from the lunar surface. This gives you as long as you need to undertake the exploration, you can cancel the experimental program due to the crew working to get comms back. It also lets you say nothing about why Neil and Buzz never came back if things go catastrophically wrong, "We just don't know what happened after we lost contact with the lander". It has the added advantage of being in line with the equipment failures that did occur, and you can proclaim the technical brilliance of the ground team in "re-establishing" contact with no outside help whatsoever.

Answer 4

Perform a fake Apollo-11 mission in a studio while exploring the base with a different team.

You have practically two missions going. One for the people (really being a Fake-Apollo on the ground/in a studio) and one to explore the alien base for real (that what we know as the "Apollo-11" mission). The people will "see" the rocket taking off and all, but the astronauts are swapped for a different crew shortly before start.

Planning the Conspiracy

To pull that off, you need to produce all the radio traffic and imagery of the landing in a studio. You need a great mind envisioning everything, direct and produce it prior to the mission (Previous Apollo flight recordings can help a great deal here). Then install the tape in the real Apollo-11 and let it playback at some point. This will produce all the radio talking (and video footage - if it was real time on the moon... idk atm) needed to convince the planet, that the mission went "smoothly" and that all the signals were really coming from space and were not an earth bound transmission only.

The Apollo astronauts (those who are publicly known) are then swapped by the Away-Team that will be the ones sitting in the real Saturn V to the moon. This crew is maybe more specialized in using weapons in space etc. and has suitable equipment. The guys are more like marines than astronauts etc.

This means, the designated Apollo astronauts need to stay on the planet. They are either real astronauts part of the conspiracy (could be hard for them to chew on, they were "The Right Stuff" gung ho guys... watch free on archive.org) or they were hand-picked "dummies"/actors from the beginning to play the roles of astronauts really went on a trip to the moon (Some hypnosis stuff might help here to imprint memories of the "never-happened"-mission).

Ground Control then has a secret radio channel (encrypted) which will provide the contact to the Away-Team going to explore that base.

After the Away-Team returns, the original astronauts/dummies are swapped back in again, before going public (could be done during the helicopter flight after salvaging the capsule; even if actually none or few of the Away-Team survived and returned).

Increasing team size

Beneficial would be to have some men extra in that crew. They could ride along in the command module, while others sit in the lander module (the lander needs to be adapted to support people sitting vertically during lift-off).

At least one pilot needs to stay in the command module for the mission.

Returning to earth

In the worst case nobody of the fake crew survives. The pilot then has to remotely ignite the start of the ascend station (upper part of the lander), dock it and return to earth (starting a new tape for the journey back), so the planet can witness the re-entry and all.

The ascend module needs to be ignited to be plausible that it was being used. Also to get the collected rocks etc. back into the command vehicle. Also some things need to be prepared for real by the Away-Team, putting up a flag, leaving lots of footprints, collect some rocks, put up some instruments etc., but this can be done quickly by one man let alone a larger team).

You can buy the Away-Team much time by for example adding extra rest phases or elongated sleeping-phases for the "exhausted pilots" (on tape). Meanwhile the Away-Team has slept during approach to the moon and starts its operation already.

If the Away-Team does survive the exploration, they can ride to earth Apollo-13 style in the lander and command module (although, this is future knowledge at that point... in our real Apollo-11, the ascend stage was jettisoned in lunar orbit before leaving towards earth). Re-entry with 5-6 astronauts will be a little crammed in the return capsule ("spam in a can"). Let's hope they planned for that.

Maybe other adjustments have to be considered too, like more oxygen for the crew etc.

Multiple Missions

I think after the initial Apollo-11 fake mission, the reality is so much altered that all future events are plot relevant and not world-building anymore. We do not know if the base was populated maybe and which artifacts could be salvaged there. In the alternate timeline they also can unveil the base to the public and justify returning there with the "truth" eventually. That is up to you.

Answer 5

1. Assume that Apollo 10 was actually a brief landing.
   The purported mission gets stretched so that Snoopy is separated longer, radio and telemetry for the purported mission are pre-recorded in a studio and the real mission is under local control while the tapes play. (That flap over obscenity on an open mic was deliberate, to catch attention.) They key purposes of Apollo 10 are to (a) test the system without entering the tunnels and (b) to bring back samples and research results for a purported Apollo 11.
2. Use that to camouflage missing Apollo 11 results.
   Again radio and telemetry for the purported mission are produced in a studio, scripted to match the actual scientific take of Apollo 10. ("One more rock." "Don't you think we have enough?") This is broadcast from tape by the Apollo 11 vehicles while the real mission is under local control.

Answer 6

By having a second mission to the moon at the same time that isn't made public. There is a growing number of satellite launches during that time period and the second mission is disguised as a standard satellite launch.

The main Apollo 11 mission is set up to do exactly as we remember from history while the second disguised mission is setup to work in the shadows while this is happening. This would allow the public announcement of successful mission to the moon while being able to hide any of the alien technology/artifacts that are discovered by the second mission.

Based on technology at the time hiding the existence of the second mission shouldn't be a problem as long as they can properly encrypt the signals to keep people from understanding what is going on.

Answer 7

Put the ruins on the dark side of the moon

The moon is tidally locked to the Earth. The same side of the moon is always facing the Earth and amateur astronomers cannot see the dark side. But lunar orbiters can.

The real reason the Soviets and the United States were racing to get to the moon was to grab that sweet alien tech they saw on the dark side of the moon.

Answer 8

Make it a matter of national security e.g. weapons testing

There is really no way to hide a second Saturn V launch or fake the landing and experiments while you are actually looting alien artifacts.

The good thing is that nobody’s telescopes are good enough to see what your astronauts are doing on the Moon’s surface. So just say you are doing weapons testing or some other matter of national security, switch to encrypted radio communications (or no radio at all), turn off the TV cameras and do your thing. This way you can also bring equipment and return stuff and just label it as “national security” on the manifest.

A bit like what the US Air Force is doing with their Boeing X-37. Can’t hide the launch or landing but they can (somewhat) hide what it’s doing in orbit and what its capabilities are.

Answer 9

Squeeze another astronaut into the ship

The Apollo missions were ostensibly 3-man missions, with one astronaut remaining in the lunar orbiter while the other two did the public-facing stuff on the surface.

If you could somehow get a 4th guy in there (3rd in the lander) to do black-ops stuff, he could be off doing his own thing while the other two are doing all the publicity.

He could ride in the cargo hold - maybe get a smaller person so they can fit in better. Perhaps even a woman, as they are smaller and more flexible on average. (A bit harder to explain with 60's politics and culture, but would be an interesting story - first woman on the moon but she has to keep it a secret for national security.) Someone trained as a magician's assistant or contortionist could fit into a very small space. It wouldn't be comfortable, but that's not the point.

Just make sure the cameras are always pointed the other direction when your extra person leaves and enters the craft.