military conquest of the Moon

[Doug Millison]

Thanks, Dave Monroe, for the heads-up on that article, "Shootin' for 
the Moon" (at
http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/2000/so00/so00richelson.html).

Love this reference to a U.S. Air Force general with a curiously 
Pynchonesque name and a dream not altogether unlike 
Blicero/Weissmann's (and check out the appearance of another 
perennial favorite V. 'n B).

It would be interesting to know if Pynchon read any of the reports 
and articles referred to in this article.  Blicero packing his young 
lover into the rocket sounds a bit like Von Braun shipping those 
colonists off to the Moon:

[snip]
One of those who most fervently believed in the military potential of 
the moon was
the air force's Brig. Gen. Homer A. Boushey. In a late January 1958 address to
Washington's Aero Club, Boushey, then the service's deputy director 
for research
and development (and subsequently its director of advanced 
technology), specified
two possible military uses of the moon--as a missile base and as the home of an
observatory to spy on developments within the Soviet Union.

Boushey asserted that missiles fired from the moon--or possibly 
catapulted (as in
Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress)--could be observed 
and guided from
start to impact (an act not possible on Earth due to its rotation). 
The launch sites
might even be located on the far side of the moon, invisible to the 
most sophisticated
of Soviet telescopes.

In addition, the launch sites would present an insoluble problem for Soviet
strategists. An attack on the United States could be observed from 
the moon, and
"sure and massive retaliation" would follow 48 hours later. If the 
Soviets attempted
to remove the lunar-based retaliatory force first, they would have to 
fire missiles
toward the moon two and a half days before they attacked the United States.
Appropriately, parts of Boushey's speech were published in the February 7, 1958
issue of U.S. News & World Report, whose cover read, "Why Soviets 
Plan 'First Blow':
What Missiles Mean in Red Strategy."

Boushey not only told his audience of the strategic advantages of a 
lunar missile
base, but "with man and his intelligence once established upon the moon the
possibilities of construction and creation of an artificial 
environment are virtually
unlimited." Energy, rocket fuel, and oxygen could all be extracted 
from the moon, he
said.

In another forum, Boushey noted a very logical implication of any 
U.S. decision to
turn the moon into a military base--that the moon would have to be 
U.S. property. He
observed that the United States should not fail to be first on the 
moon. "We cannot
afford to come out second in a territorial race of this magnitude. . 
. . This outpost,
under our control, would be the best possible guarantee that all of 
space will indeed
be preserved for the peaceful purposes of man."

[snip]

A number of aerospace firms were involved in these lunar studies. In 
the first quarter
of 1959, the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division, Wright Air 
Development Center,
Strategic Air Command, NASA, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory were 
briefed on the
lunar base concept by Boeing, Republic Aviation, Douglas Aircraft, 
General Electric,
and several other firms. (Earlier, the Martin Cooperation had 
completed a classified
study, Military Requirements for a Moon Base.) The companies suggested that the
whole program might cost $20 billion. But the authors of the study 
questioned the
cost and value of an observatory, considering that it would be able 
to productively
view the Earth for only a small portion of the day.

Their pessimism was not reflected in one of the ultimate products of the study
efforts, an April 1960 Ballistic Missile Division report that had two 
different titles,
depending on audience. The first title, Military Lunar Base Program, 
was classified;
the second, S.R. 183 Lunar Observatory Study, was not.

[snip]

The air force was not the only military service that had been 
studying the possibility
of a lunar outpost in 1959. In June of that year the Army Ordnance Missile
Command submitted its four-volume Project Horizon report on the 
feasibility of a
manned lunar base to Army Chief of Staff Maxwell Taylor. The study, 
produced by a
group headed by Werner von Braun, argued that a lunar outpost was "required to
develop and protect potential United States interests on the moon, to develop
moon-based surveillance of the Earth and space, in communications relay, and in
operations on the surface of the moon." The lunar base would also 
serve as a base
for exploration of the moon, for further exploration of space, and 
for scientific
investigations on the moon.

The study also argued that the establishment of an outpost was of 
such importance
that it "should be a special project having an authority and priority 
similar to the
Manhattan Project." It warned that the Soviet Union had openly announced that
some of its citizens would celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the 
October 1917
revolution on the moon. If the Soviets were to be the first to 
establish a moon base, it "would be disastrous to our nation's 
prestige and in turn to our democratic
philosophy."
-- 

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