The Day After Roswell (21 page)

The army conceived of the development of a moon base as an
endeavor similar to the building of the atomic bomb : a vast amount of
resources applied to one particular mission, complete secrecy about the
nature of the mission, and a crash program to complete the mission
before the end of the next decade. He said that the establishment of
the outpost should be a special project having authority and priority
similar to the Manhattan Project in World War II. Once established, the
lunar base would be operated under the control of a unified space
command, which was an extension of current military command and control
policy, and still is. Space, specifically an imaginary sphere of space
encompassing the earth and the moon, would be considered a military
theater governed by whatever military rules were in force at that time.
The control of all U.S. military forces by a unified command had
already been in effect by the late 1950s, so General
Trudeau’s plan for a unified military space command was no
exception to an ongoing practice. The only difference was that the
general didn’t want the unified command to exercise authority
solely over the moon base itself; he wanted it extended to control and
utilize exclusively military satellites, military space vehicles, space
surveillance systems, and the entire logistical network installed to
support these military assets.

To the general, being second to the Soviet Union in deploying
and supporting a permanent lunar outpost would have been disastrous not
only to our national prestige but to our very democratic system itself.
In Arthur Trudeau’s estimation, the Soviet Union was
currently planning to fortify a lunar base by the middle 1960s and
declare it Soviet territory. He believed that if the United States
tried to land on the moon, especially if we tried to establish a base
of operations there, the Soviets would have propagandized the event as
an act of war, an invasion of its territory, and would have tried to
characterize the United States as the aggressor and our presence as a
hostile act. If they defended the moon as one of their colonies, or if
they were the proxy force on behalf of the extraterrestrials with whom
they had forged a military treaty, the United States would be in a
weakened position. Thus, General Trudeau concluded and so advised his
chief of the Ordnance Missile Command, it was of the utmost urgency
that the U.S. Army devise a feasible plan to have a manned landing on
the lunar surface by spring 1965, with a fully operational lunar
outpost deployed on the moon by late 1966 at a cost over an eight and a
half year period of $6 billion.

The first two astronauts, the spear head of the scouting crew,
were scheduled to touch down on the lunar surface in April 1965, in an
area near the lunar equator where, according to the surveys, the army
believed the terrain would support multiple landing and lift off
facilities and the construction of a cylindrical, ranch house type of
structure with tubular walls built beneath the surface into a crevice
that would house an initial twelve personnel. The bulk of the
construction materials for the lunar outpost, about 300,000 pounds,
would already be on the site, having been transported there over the
previous three months. According to the army plan, an additional190,000
pounds of cargo would be sent to the moon from April1965 through
November 1966. And from December 1966 through December 1967, another
266,000 pounds of cargo and supplies would be scheduled to arrive at
the now operational moon base.

It is April 1965, and a lunar vehicle with a crew of two
astronauts has just touched down on the moon’s surface.
Although the vehicle has an immediate lift off capability to return the
astronauts to Earth, their scouting from orbit has determined that the
area is safe and that there are no threats from either the Soviets or
any extraterrestrials. The radio crackles with the team’s
first instructions.

“This is Horizon control, Moonbase. You are go for
the first twenty-four hours, ” Horizon control at the Cocoa
Beach, Florida, Cape Canaveral Space Command Center advises the
astronauts. They secure their lander, which, if they receive the go to
stay for additional periods, will ultimately become their cabin for the
next two months as the construction crews arrive from Earth to begin
the assembly of the lunar outpost.

However, even before the first manned cargo ships arrive, the
advance crew of two astronauts will confirm the condition of the cargo
that has already been delivered to the site, refine the environmental
studies that have been conducted by the unmanned surveillance probes,
and verify that the initial measurements and assumptions for the site
of the moon base are correct.

By July 1965, the first crew of nine men arrive to begin
laying the cylindrical tubes in the crevice beneath the surface and
install the two portable atomic reactors that will power the entire
outpost. A number of factors influenced the army’s decision
to sink the main structures beneath the lunar surface. The most
important of these were the uniform temperatures, the insulation of the
lunar surface material itself, protection from a potentially hazardous
shower of small meteors and meteorites, camouflage and security, and
protection from the kinds of radiation particles that are normally
prevented from reaching Earth by our atmosphere.

Army engineers designed the cylindrical housing units to look
and act like vacuum tank thermos bottles with a double wall with a
special insulation between. The thermos design would prevent heat loss
and so insulate the housing unit so that just the heal radiated by
the internal artificial lighting system would be more than adequate to
maintain a comfortable temperature inside. The crew’s
atmosphere was to be maintained by insulated tanks containing liquid
oxygen and nitrogen with the waste moisture and carbon dioxide absorbed
by solid chemicals and recycled through a dehumidifier. Eventually, as
the base became more permanent and new crews were rotated in and out, a
more efficient recycling system was to be installed.

The initial construction crew was assigned to live in a
temporary configuration of cylindrical quarters as their numbers were
increased by an additional six men and more supplies. Like the
permanent facility, the temporary construction cabin would be buried in
a crevice beneath the lunar surface, but it would be smaller than the
permanent cabin and have none of the laboratory facilities that were to
be built in the permanent structure. From the component parts already
shipped to the landing site, the construction crew was to assemble a
lunar surface rover, a digging and trenching vehicle - similar to a
backhoe - and a forklift type of vehicle that would also serve as a
type of crane. With just these three devices, the army believed, a crew
of fifteen workers could assemble a permanent outpost out of
prefabricated components. The Horizon plan for construction of
facilities in a weightless, airless environment ultimately became the
model for the construction of both the Russian Mir and American freedom
space stations.

While the construction of the permanent subsurface structure
was under way, other members of the crew would lay out the multiantenna
communications system that would rely on geosynchronous Earth
satellites to relay transmissions back and forth from Earth ground
stations. Lunar based tracking and surveillance radar equipment would
also maintain a constant vigilance of the earth and be able to track
any orbital vehicles from the earth’s surface as well as
space vehicles entering the planet’s atmosphere from outer
space. Members of the crew would communicate with each other : and with
the outpost itself by radios mounted in the helmets of their space
suits.

By the time the army was proposing Project Horizon, army
engineers had already selected a number of launch sites. Instead of
Cape Canaveral, the army chose an equatorial location because the earth
spins fastest at the equator and this would provide added thrust to any
rocket with an especially heavy payload. The army chose a secret
location in Brazil where it wanted to start construction on an eight
launchpad facility that would house the entire project. The spacecraft
would be monitored and controlled from the facilities at Cocoa Beach,
where the army and navy were already launching their satellites.

We broke the program into six separate phases beginning with
the June 1959 initial feasibility, which was written in response to
General Trudeau’s first proposal and became Phase I of the
entire plan. Phase II, scheduled to be completed in early 1960, when I
was to take over the project, called for a detailed development and
funding plan in conjunction with preliminary experimentation on some of
the essential components. During this phase, I had planned to use our
regular Army R&D procedures to manage and review the testing
and make sure that we could do what we said we could do under the
initial feasibility study.

In Phase III, we scheduled the complete development of the
hardware and the system integration for the entire project. This
included the rockets, the space capsules, all of the lunar
transportation and construction vehicles, the launch facilities at the
proposed site in Brazil, and the lunar outpost components for both the
temporary and the permanent bases. Also included in this phase was the
development of all of the communications systems, including relay
stations, surveillance systems, and the personal protective and
communications gear that the astronauts would use. And finally, Phase
III called for the engineering of all the actual procedures needed for
Horizon to be successful such as the orbital rendezvous, orbital
fueling of lunar transportation vehicles, transfer of cargo in orbit,
and launching and testing of cargo rockets.

Under Phase IV, scheduled for 1965, the first lunar landing
was to take place. The establishment of the first two man lunar
observation outpost and the construction of the preliminary living and
working quarters for the first detachment of the crew were all slated
for completion. The plans stated that by the end of this phase,
“a manned lunar outpost will have been established.
”

Phases V and VI were the operational phases of the project and
were scheduled to be completed over a two year period beginning in
December 1966 and winding up in January 1968. Under these phases, the
lunar outpost would progress from the preliminary construction phases
to the construction of the permanent facilities. These facilities begin
the surveillance of Earth, establish our military presence by the
emplacement of fortified positions on the moon, and begin the first
scientific experiments and exploration. In Phase VI, based upon the
success of the permanent outpost and the exploration of the lunar
terrain, the army planned to expand the outpost with more landings and
additional facilities and report on the results of biological and
chemical testing and the first attempts to exploit the moon as a
commercial entity. The army also believed, because that was the way we
in R&D believed we could pay back the enormous development
overhead we incurred, that by commercially exploiting the moon, perhaps
through the same kind of federal land leasing deals the Department of
the Interior currently grants for oil and mineral exploration, we could
put the billions of dollars spent back into the federal coffers.

Project Horizon also outlined the development of an Earth
orbiting station as an ancillary project to support the lunar landing
missions. Under the “Orbital Station”
specifications, the Army Ordnance project developers suggested the
launching and assembly of an “austere, basic”
orbital platform that would provide astronaut crews on their way to the
moon with a rendezvous point for exchanging and increasing their
payloads, refueling, and relaunching their spacecraft. The orbiting
station would also be important in the early cargo shipment stages of
Project Horizon where army crews could handle the cargo loading in the
weightlessness of space faster and easier than they could on Earth.
Cargo could be shipped up separately, travel in earth orbit with the
station, and then be reassembled by crews who would live in their own
spaceship cabins instead of in the space station and then return to
Earth when the refueling and reassembly of payloads was complete.

If the preliminary basic space station were successful, the
army envisioned a more elaborate, sophisticated facility that would
have its own scientific and military mission and serve as a relay
station for crews on their way to or from the lunar outpost. This
station would have an enhanced military capability and enable the
United States to dominate the airspace over its enemies, blind its
enemies’ satellites, and shoot down its missiles. The army
also saw the enhanced orbiting space station as another component in an
elaborate defense against extraterrestrials, especially if the military
were able to develop high energy lasers and the particle beam weapon we
had seen aboard the Roswell spacecraft. The space station would,
according to the army plan, effectively provide the platform for
testing Earth to space weapons, and these, General Trudeau and I
agreed, would be primarily directed against the hostile
extraterrestrials who were the real threat to our planet.

In its plan for a separate administration and management
structure within the structure of the army, Project Horizon was
designed to be the largest research, development, and deployment
operation in the army’s history. Larger than the Manhattan
Project, Horizon could easily have become a completely separate unit
within the army itself. As such, Horizon was perceived as an immediate
threat to the other branches of the military as well as to the civilian
space agencies. The navy had its own pet plan for establishing undersea
bases that would harvest the commercial and scientific opportunities at
the bottom of the oceans while at the same time, and more importantly,
establishing an antisubmarine defense that would counter the threat
from Soviet nuclear submarines. We suspected that the navy plans, like
our own plans for a moon base, also gave the navy the capability of
carrying out surveillance tracking of unidentified undersea objects if,
in fact, that’s what the EBEs were sending to Earth.