Destination mission to the moon. And for the channel and Discovery Communications and including the widely praised modern marvels. An assistant professor and a lecturer with Johnson Space center. And tonights stories of the space age which features 20 of his favorites from the golden age of Space Exploration. Join me in welcoming him. [applause] thank you very much, normally i kind of dance around a little bit while i perform these things. Because theyre taping tonight, and we have a weird microphone ill stay with the podium and go back to my professoring days at the university of laverne. Thank you for coming here, i know its rough getting here and i use today drive to ucla when i was 18 years old and 30 minutes and it was irritating and i knew that it was two and a half hours. I appreciate you going back to what you went through. The space age has a long story behind it and i wont bore you with the whole thing, but ive been writing about different parts of the space age and Space Science and history in general for 13 years. Before that i spent about a decade working in television, mostly documentaries, star trek for a while, but mostly on documentaries and i would constantly come across cool stories from the 40s, the 50s. The 60s, that i only heard little bits about. Sometimes its just cause they werent commonly written about, this is before the internet, and long file card drawers we use today pull out at the library. Other times something in a m magazine and other times classified. And i want to make a tv show about that. So i wrote up a show proposal called secrets of space, you need to have a reverb to do properly and that got close a couple of times, but didnt quite get it done. After working on that for a while. This would be more fun to do as a book, really, because theres just so much stuff to tell, and i like to talk a lot, as youll soon find out. So, i did the book and they were kind enough to pick it up, our third book together. And it came out a few months ago and its selling briskly, thank god. And because youre here it will sell on tonight. And i see a few faces, thank god, who remember the space age as i do. And sometimes i talk to those in their 20s and 30s, what is he talking about . When men landed on mars . We remember, most of us, that we had a Space Program in the 1960s and landed on the moon in 1969 coming up on 50 years a ago. And thats the Space Program we had. Most of this book isnt about that. There are a few chapters about the Space Program that we grew up with and remember, a little known incident like almost having an engine explosion on the lunar module on apollo 11 that i didnt know about until six years ago. Most of this, the programs were designed in the 1950s, 1960s primarily of the militaries of the world who had a slightly different vision of what we ought to do. Ill start with a piece to reorient us to the space age and a little bit of what might have been. There it is, a small atoll of coral island in the pacific, man is dedicated to one cause, the conquest of space. Our spaceship moves ponderously toward the firing site. Minus 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Out to xr1, your cutoff altitude 63. 9 miles. So that was a little clip from that other Space Program they were talking to us about in the 1950s. I thought the floating pencil was a nice touch, from a disney show in 1954, i think, called tomorrowland. Our ideas of space were different than they turned out to be. There are a lot of good reasons for that, principal among them, at this time, it was shortly after the end of world 2, we were sort of riding the technological and economic gain in the united states, but we had an enemy across the ocean and that was the u. S. S. R, soviet russia. And there was a lot of concern about this standoff wed had since the end of world war ii and we ceased being allies, quote, unquote. It was never that comfortable, but we tried. So there are a number of alternatives to what nasas plans were in 1958 and they were formed. Most were partly military in nature. The whole idea was in general terms, space was the high ground and we have to get it first before the russians do. Depending on which branch of the military they talk to, they had different plans. In the army ace case, this is the high ground, we always go for the high grounds and shoot down the bad guys and we should take space and federal government give us the money and well charge the hill. The air force says, no, no, we fly things and we know how to use joy sticks and Navigation Systems and wings and all of that, propulsion. We should be the ones to go. The navy came along with their proposal slightly weaker case, no, no, we do submarines, life support for months and high pressure, and pressure going the wrong way, you get the idea. We should go to space. All three of the branches of the military formulated various plans and the same thing going on in the soviet union. And we were up there until nas sass was formed in 1958 and didnt care which branch it was as long as he was with it. He was kind of militarily and morally agnostic, you might say. His favorite quote or my favorite quote of his comes from the early days as the v2 rockets in germany, the rocket performed perfectly and landed on the wrong country. And he was a great leader and was going to get to where he wanted no matter what. To finish setting up the era. World war ii were in name at least allies with the soviet union and weve had Nuclear Weapons since 1945 and used them two in anger. And they had a Hydrogen Bomb by 1953. The western was unhappy about that. The other bright point in the scary standoff you still have to deliver Nuclear Weapons by bomber. They dont have missiles yet. You have to put them in the payload pay of your propeller plane or later jet, and russia has to fly theirs here, slow, ponderous, slow, they can be shot down, there are interventions that could take place. What if you drop them from space on an unsuspecting nation below . That became the scary thing. This is the era when i grew up. I was born in 1956 and some of you probably remember this, this is a workplace brochure how to survive Nuclear Attacks, which was interestingly brought back up by casper weinberger, if we dig a hole four foot inches deep and under the door, and you could survive for a few hours. This is the kind of things. We had the duck and cover drills, the issue i had with this, when i was watching film strips, bert had a shell. All ive got is a shirt and its not going to be the same. So bert and his quarter stick of dynamite telling us how to survive a Nuclear Attack and of course, some of you may remember drop drills. Tried to convince us that a quarter inch of for for micha was going to protect us from a nuclear blast. Youre under half inch of formica looking at a huge sheet glass window thinking isnt that bomb just going to shut up, get under the desk. That was a little frightening. So, that was the thats the setting, if you will, of the kind of stories were talking about. So the first one of my favorites is the u. S. Army plan to put a base on the moon. This is called project horizon and this was turned into the eisenhauer administration in 1958. It was a very short study, i think four to six months and von braun was part of this. I dont think he was as intimately involved as he would have liked to have been because if you read this, and ive read it a couple of times, it doesnt show the attention to detail, but the general idea was, that we needed to build a base on the moon before the russians got there because you could do science, you could kind of hold that piece of real estate against invasion and by the way, were not going to talk about it too much. You could put Nuclear Weapons there, and aim them at earth. And it would take two or three days to get there. This proposal is graphicically challenged bear with me, thats as good as illustrations get. Thats not me, thanks goodnessment they were going to dig the trenches and fly in containers to the surface, using numbers of rockets. The largest one they had at the time. This is the u. S. Army, the first flight would be in 1965, they would send three men up in a rocket and when i say rocket, they didnt have the saturn 5 yet. This is 195859. Were talking about von brauns smaller rockets at the time and youd have to fly one up there, the fuel up there, and fuel, take off for the moon and none of the orbit stuff, like the bugs bunny cartoon, straight up to the moon, do your thing and come back. The first three guys were going to be up there reconnoitering the surface, wed never seen it except by telephone scope. They would assemble the base and then wed have cargo runs, with 130, not the 16 that we flew with apollo, but 130 launching out of a Little Island out of central pacific. They could launch from cape canaveral. This is the army and canaveral belonged to the air force. And they said, no, well watch and ship from there. Thats how things worked. Big plans to do cargo runs and once they decided where to put this and dumped the modules there, theyd send mine people up. Nine men of course, this is 1950s and the army and they had 15 days to dig these trenches, put together their block attack on the crane, build the moon tractor, seal them up, build the bathrooms, burnings, office, they had a Battle Center ready and flying rotations and needless to say it was ambitious. The crew would have been between 12 and 20 soldiers, and they were soldiers. If theres anything good about this, besides just blind ambition, its that it would have been an openended program. And we might still be there. Which is something we didnt get in the Apollo Program, but the best part im saving for last is the moon soldiers. Because you cant have an army moon base without soldiers, right . These arent just astronauts, these are soldiers, here is a moon soldier in the full combat getup for being on the lunar surface for entire times, i think my favorite part, these arent ice skates, these are large foot pads because we didnt know how much dust was on the moon and he might step in a crater up to his antenna. And there were areas to deal with bodily functions and im not sure why it was incomplete. Thats what the moon soldier was wearing. Thats not how we did it. If youve got to have soldiers on the moon, there would be weapons. They were concerned about side arms and rifles for a couple of reasons. One was in the vacuum of the moon they were concerned if you were shooting lets say. 45 pistol. In a vacuum the metals might seize up and rubbing against each other, because there was no air, the smoke might collect in front of the gun and my favorite concern was using a rifle at just the right angle at the right caliber of bullet, you might miss the bad guy and the bullets comes around the room and hit you in the back of the helmet. Rather than Something Like that, lets have a nuclear bah so bazooka. And had a warhead and this is kilotons and you get the big ideas. A big position. It wasnt accurate, but when youre talking nuclear explosions, accuracy doesnt matter. Two guys would set this up, hit the trigger duck behind the rocks and hope they didnt get swept up in the nuclear blast. Now if youre going to deploy these, they did send these to europe during 1960s and reduced them. Basically its a large backpack device. If youre going to have these you have to test them. Here is a test on a sunny day in nevada, bang, and of course, the thrilled physicists, watching with sunglasses, getting eradiated with like xrays. The other weapon they wanted to have on the noon was the lunar claymore which they repurchased for lunar use. Widely used in the u. S. Many at least through vietnam and youve got to love this. Anybody ever in the military . Okay. Its good to have instructions on things, front towards enemy is my favorite. So you dont get it backwards, which is important when you think about it. Its filled with plastic explosives, 700 soft metal balls in it. Its bad enough on earth to get hit by one of these things and you can see from try to put here, quite a blast radius, on the moon you dont have to kill anybody, youll puncture the surface and tie up two or three guys dragging them off the surface. And if youre into moon weapons. They did a test in a vacuum with it, it worked well, unfortunately they didnt have anywhere to take it, but as if that wasnt enough. A few years later, after this project had been sheffield and turn in to the Eisenhower Administration in 59 and my understanding, although its not written down quite as such was he looked at it and took off his glasses and gave them one of the youve got to be kidding looks. He was a fan of the civilian Space Program. He didnt want to see because of his background or probably because of his background in world war ii, he didnt want to see war expanded to space. He didnt say that, he said were going to have a civilian Space Program. That didnt stop rock island armory arsenal. Mixed up. I never did find the name of the person who wrotes it, reand dering of a weapon oriented mind applying to the moon. And i assume hes applying this problem to the vacuum, and not his brain to the vacuum. These are well dressed lunar soldiers here and a tank over there, what kind of side arms you might want to use on the moon. Recoil could be problem as we discussed. Here is a buck rogers example. There were six, i took my favorite two. This fires either pellets or darts down here, and its roughly the power of a. 22 pistol for anybody who had one of those and i dont know why there are heat fins on here, it looks cool and if youre proposing moon weapons, why not make it look cool. So this is the spin stabilized hch gun. My favorite is the sausage gun, 19 little holes here and it can be used inchangebly with rocket propelled pellets or rocket p propelled bullets that spin. Spin as they go and put it in a clip and if youre going to talk peace terms with the russian commander, you can whip that out and negotiations end quickly. So this was, as i said, these are two of section. The others go the progressively weirder, but the idea was if youre going to have a moon base, youve got to have a special moon weapon. Thankfully these were never done. To close on project horizon, these things always have to come with a price tag, right . If youre going to propose Something Like that, you have to have some generally, maybe kind of realistic idea what its going to costment we know project apollo because its a matter of history. 11 flights plus tests between 20 and 24 billion dollars no matter how you slice it in the money of that time. Project horizon it would have 155 plus with a base in the Caroline Islands and an a fully running moon base for 6 billion, after all how hard can it be. I think they underbid a little bit, but this is a government contract so those things tend to inflate. 150 flights would have been a challenge on anybodys budget. That was probably a nonstarter and we didnt have war in space, we had the Apollo Program which in my book was a much better decision. Scenario number two, im only two of my chapters tonight. Theres 22 of them was atomic rockets. Now, up till now, and including elon musk and jeff bezos and the buccaneers doing the new space projects, all rockets that leave the earth by chemical reaction. Theyre big, powerful, great, they have limits, they weigh a lot for the power they have and only get so much in orbit at one time, unless you ask elon musk who thinks hell make them bigger and bigger which he may do, but this is a limit. How could you bypass that . Again in the 1950s, Nuclear Power is the rage. We were looking at it for everything from power plants to airplanes, to military ships and submarines, four designed a car called the nucleon, it had an fission in the trunk. Only fueled every ten years. And would have been bad if something was wrong. They have big, cabin space for the crew, passengers and cargo and tiny engines and not a lot of room left for nuclear fuel for chemical fuel. Which is what we want to do, if we go to the moon. Some of you may recognize this, this is from destination moon. This is what rockets were supposed to look i can like, and they promised us this, a nice big bridge where everybody could come over and there would be maiden wearing short skirts and dont get hung up on gravity. We didnt get that space shift. We got this, the apollo cap tulle. Imagine sitting in there for two weeks. They never did it, but they did in gemini, much smaller. Two astronauts sitting in gemini two weeks shoulders touching and this much clearance between the helmet and the hatch and cant hope it because of the vacuum out there, no thank you. What we want is a bigger, more robust environment that can get places faster and carry more stuff. Thats the point of having big rockets. We would have had this, thats leslie nielsen, by the way, if we had done this, which is project horizon excuse me project orion. This is also late 1950s, general atomics, a company out of san diego was looking at old studies done a few years before pan sa pan and said, hey, you know, we have a lot of Nuclear Bombs sitting around the country and use those for propulsion. En he said surely you mean a Nuclear Reactor . No, bombs, each time they go up, they give a little bit of a push. By gosh they do. So they designed a number of versions of spacecraft. This is the one of the largest ones, they come from small, medium, large, interextra st intrastellar. And then then has the proportions of the statue of liberty. 170 feet tall and weighs 22 Million Pounds at launch. Saturn 5 is the size of a destroyer, 7 p. 5 million excuse me 6. 5 million, this ways more, but 4,000 times the thus of the saturn 5. It could carry 70 to 100 people as far as you want to go until you run out of atomic bombs. Basically its a oneshot expedition to anywhere. It was still studied as recently as a couple of years ago and as of yet, no engineers have found a reason that did couldnt work. It would be challenging but all the numbers and everything seems to add up to say that it would be possible. So, the crew quarters is here. These are all atomic bombs. These are shock absorbers because you dont want an atomic bomb going off down here and that bang be