Documentary for the History Channel and Discovery Communications including the widely praised modern marvels, apollo 11. Has been a professor at a university and lecturer with Johnson Space center. He presents Amazing Stories of the space age which features 20 of his favorite films from the golden age of Space Exploration. Join me in welcoming rod pyle. [applause] thank you very much. Normally i kind of dance around a bit while im performing these things but because theyre taping tonight and we have kind of a weird microphone setup, i will sort of stay with the podium. I will go back to my professorring days at university of laverne. I know it is rough getting here on week night. I used to drive to ucla when i was 18 years old in 30 minutes to pasadena. Last time i did that drive it was 2 1 2 hours. I appreciate yall going through what you went through. Let me go back Amazing Stories of the space age has kind of a long story behind it. 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 in documentaries. I worked on star trek a while as an effects guy. Mostly on documentaries. I would constantly come across these cool stories from the 40s, the 50s, the 60s, that i only heard little bits about. Sometimes just because they werent very commonly written about. This is before the internet. Are. Part of those long file cards we pull out in the library. Something we pulled out in a magazine. Something classified and only little bits of you could you find but would i see these, say, i want to make a tv show about that. I wrote up the show proposal, called, secrets of space, you need a reverb to do properly. That got close a couple times. We didnt quite get it done. After working on that for a while, i thought this would be more fun to do as a book really because there is so much you stuff to tell and i like to talk a lot as you will soon find out. So i did it as a book proposal. Promethus was kind enough to pick it up. It was our third book together. It came out two months ago, selling briskly, thank bod. Because i know youre here i know it will continue selling tonight. I want to frame this, setting up the space age for us. I see a few faces out here, thank god, who remember the space age like i do. That is not always the case. Sometimes i do these talks, i realize talking to people in 20s or 30s, what is this guy talking about . When men landed on mars . We remember most of us that the United States had a Space Program that started in the early 1960s. We landed on the moon in 1969, coming up on 50 years ago. In between we had the mercury program, gemini program, apollo program, Space Shuttle, space station and the privateers. That is the Space Program we had. Most of this book isnt about that. There are a few chapters about the Space Program we grew up and remember. Littleknown incidents like almost having an engine, explosion online nor module on poll low 11 after it landed which i didnt know about until six years ago. The most of this were about Space Programs designed in the 1950s, 1960s, primarily by the militaries of the world who had a slightly different vision what they thought we ought to do. I will start a context allizing piece to reorient into the space age and what might have been. There it is. A small atoll of coral islands in the pacific where man is dedicated to just one cause, the conquest of space. Our spaceship moves ponderously toward the firing site. 10, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. [explosion] to xr1. Your cutoff altitude 63. 9 miles. So that was a little clip from the other Space Program they were talking to us about in the 1950s. I thought floating pencil was a nice touch. That was from a disney show in 1954 i think, called, tomorrowland. So our ideas about space were very different than they turned out to be. And there were a lot of good reasons for that. Principle among them, was the fact that at this time, just shortly after the end of world war ii, we were riding the top of this technological and soon economic age of the United States but we had an enemy across the ocean, and that was the ussr, the soviet russia, and there was a lot of concern about, about this standoff we had since the end of world war ii when 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 would become, starting in 1958 when they were formed. Mostly partly military in nature. The whole idea was general terms, space is the high ground, we have to get it first before the russians do. Depending which branch of the military you talked to they had different plans. In the armys case, this is the high ground. We go for the high ground. You have to go on top of the mountain to shoot down the bad guys. We should be ones to take space. Federal government give us the money, well charge the hill. The air force said, no, no we fly things. We know how to use joysticks and navigation and guidance systems wings, all that, propulsion. We should be the ones to go. The navy came along with their proposals, slightly weaker case, no, we do submarines, that involves lifesupport for months at a time, high pressure. We know pressure moving wrong way. You get the general idea. We should be ones go to space. Comes from the early day of v 2 rockets. The robert performed perfectly, it landed on wrong planet. He was a great engineer. Incredible leader. He was going to get where he wanted no matter what. Just to finish setting up this era. The end of world war ii were still name at least, allies with the soviet union. Weve had Nuclear Weapons since 1945. We used them in anger twice at japan. Ussr had Nuclear Weapons since 1940s. They have Hydrogen Bomb by 1953. Western governments are not happy about this. One bright point in the standoff you still have to deliver Nuclear Weapons by bomber. You dont have weapons yet. You have to load them in the payload bay of big lumbering propeller lore jet or fighter bomber. They are slow, ponderous. They can be shot down. All kinds of interventions could take place. What if you drop Nuclear Weapons from space on unsuspecting nation below . That was a very scary thing. This is the era i grew up. I was born in 1956. And if you remember this, this was work place brochure how to survive a nuclear attack. Interestingly revived in the 1980s in the reagan years, by cap weinberger who reminded us all if we dig a whole four feet deep and get underneath a kitchen door and 18 inches of dirt on top of it you could survive Nuclear Blast for four hours. Who knew. It was not practical. This was kind of thinking going on when i was a kid. The turtle doing duck an cover. Only problem i had with, burt had a shell. All i have got a shirt. That is not the same. Burt with cord of stick of dynamite how to survive a nuclear attack. Some of you may remember duck drills. Quarter inch of formica protect us from 5,000degree nuclear powerball. The part they didnt sell, all classes rooms had floor to ceiling windows. Under half ive of for mica, looking at this sheet glass window, isnt that bomb going to, shut up. Get under the desk. That was a little frightening. That was the, the setting if you will of the kind of stories were talking about. The first, one of my favorites is the u. S. Armys plan to put a base on the moon. This is is project horizon. This was turned into the Eisenhower Administration into 1958. Very short study. Four to six is months. Von brown 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, i have read it a couple times, it doesnt show the attention to detail but the general idea was we needed to build a base on the moon before the russians got there because you could do science. You could hold that piece of real estate against invasion. Oh, by the way, well not talk about it too much, but you could put Nuclear Weapons there and aim them at earth. Take them 2 1 2, three days to get here. That was certainly consideration. Here is the moon base. This proposal is graphically challenged. Bear with me. That is not as good as illustrations get. That is not me, thank goodness. You could see here, the general idea was to dig these trenches,fy in the Cargo Containers and assemble a lunar base on the surface, using a number of large rockets. Largest they had at the time anyway. This is the u. S. Army. The first flight would be in 1965. They were going to send three men up in a rocket. When i say rocket, they didnt have the saturn v yet. This is 1958, 59. Were talking about von brauns smaller rockets. Fly into orbit. Leave fuel up there. Fly other one up, cross feed the fuel, take off for the moon. Land directly. No rhonda rendezvousing. Just like bugs bunny cartoons, go right up there. We had never seen the surface through anything better than a telescope. They would select the landing site, Assembly Site of the base. We would fly upwards 100 to 130 cargo runs with rockets, 130, not the 16 we flew in apollo, 130, launching out of a Little Island in the central pacific, they could launch from cape canaveral. This was the army. Cape canaveral belonged to air force. No, well ship everything down to christmas islands and launch from there. That is how these things work. Big plans, big ideas. They will do the cargo runs. Once they decide where to put this send modules up, nine people of course, 1950s, the army. They had 15 days to dig the trenches, put together, block and tackle, build moon tractor, move everything over, in the trenches shove them together, seal them up, build the wires, kitchens, bathrooms, build the office, Battle Center in there, get their weapons situated and ready to go. Then they would start flying crews in rotation. Needless to say a little ambitious. The crew by 1966 would have been between 12 and 20 soldiers and they were soldiers. If there is anything good about this besides just blind ambition, that it would have been an openended program. We might still be there. Which is something we didnt get from the apollo program. The best part im saving for last. Is the moon soldiers. You cant have an army moon base without soldiers, right . These are not just astronauts. These are moon soldiers. This is moon soldier in the entire get up for being on the surface. My favorite part, these are not ice skates. These are large foot bad, because we didnt know how much dust was on the moon. Were afraid he might step into a crater and disappear up to his antenna. That wouldnt be good. They had ways to deal with bodily functions, heat radiator. That is all they marked up on there. Im not sure why that is incomplete. That is the welldressed moon soldier is wearing in 1958, 59. Needless to say that is not how they did it. You have to have weapons up there and concerned about using sidearms and rifles for a couple reasons. One concern if you were shooting. 45 pistol what the army used then in a vacuum the metals might seize up or temperature and like metals rubbing against each other. They were concerned there was no air, smoke might collect in front of the gun. My favorite concern, using rifle at right angle, right caliber of bullet you might fire and miss the bad guy and goes around the room and hits you in the back of the helmet. That is very bad. They decided rather than have something silly like that, lets have Nuclear Bazooka instead. Surely that is good weapon to use against invading red soldiers coming over the crater this is the davie crock the m9 mortar. 51pound warhead. Just under a kiloton. It moves 10 or 15 kilotons. It is a big explosion. Range of two or three miles. It wasnt accurate. When you talk Nuclear Explosions be, you dont have to be accurate. Two guys set this up, pull the trigger and get down behind the rocks and hope not set up in a Nuclear Blast. They sent these things to europe in the 1960s. Never used them. This is a large backpack device. If youre going to have these, you have to test them. Here is test on sunny day in nevada. Bang. Of course the physicists in dark sunglasses getting irradiated eight million equivalents of yearly xrays. We knew that it worked. That was good. The other weapon they wanted on the moon, was lunar claymore which they repurposed for lunar use. This was widely used in the u. S. Up through, at least through vietnam. And you got to love that, anybody ever in the military . Okay. It is good to have instructions on things. Front towards enemy is my favorite. Just so you dont get it backwards which is important when you think about it. Filled with plastic explosives. Has 700 soft metal balls in it. Bad enough to get hit on earth with one of these things. You see it has quite a blast radius. On the moon you dont have to kill everybody, just puncture their suit. That will tie up two or three other guys dragging them off the surface. This was ideal moon weapon if youre into that kind of thing. Tested in a vacuum with it. It worked very well. Unfortunately they didnt have anywhere to take it. But if that wasnt enough, a few years later after this project was shelved it was turned into the Eisenhower Administration in 59. My understanding it is not quite written down and took off his glass, gave him one of those, you got to be kidding me kind of look. He was fan of Space Program, despite the background in world war ii, he didnt want to see war extend into space. Wisely he said well not do that. Well have a civilian Space Program. That didnt stop our rock island arsenal. I get them mixed up. Put out this study in 1955. Never did find name of person who wrote it. Meanders of weapons oriented mind applied into the vacuum of at moon. I assume he is not applying his brain to the vacuum. This was study complete with welldressed lunar soldiers here and flying tank or something over there, about what kind of sidearms you might want to use on the moon because recoil could be problem as we discussed. This is very buck rogers examples. There were six of them. I took my favorite two. This fires either pellets or little darts down here. It is roughly the power of. 22 pistol or one of those or a powerful pellet gun. I dont know why the sensors but it is looking cool, so if youre designing weapons in 1962. This is micro gun powered by compressed air or spring. My personal favorite is the sausage gun which has 19 little holes and can be used interchangeably with rocket propelled pellets or rocket propelled bullets or stablized. There is pen clip to put it in the pocket of your flight suit if youre going over to talk piece terms with the russian commander, you can whip out the sausage gun and end negotiations very quickly. This was, as i said, these are two of six. The other ones got progressive weirder. The idea if you have a moon base you have to have your special moon weapons. Thankfully these were never done. Just to close on project horizon, these thingsals come with a price tag, right . If youre going to propose Something Like this. You have to have some generally, maybe kind of realistic idea what it will cost. We know project apollo because a matter of history, 11 flights, plus tests cost between 20 and 24 billion depending how you slice it in the money of that time. Project horizon will have 155 plus with development and base down in the carolina islands and fullyrunning Permanent Moon base and so forth for 6 billion. After all, how hard it can be . I think they underbid a little bit. It is government contract so those things tend to inflate a little bit. 150 billion was a challenge to anybodys budget. That was nonstarter. Apollo was much better decision. Number two, only doing two of my chapters tonight, 22 of them, is is the atomic rocket. Up until now including elon musk and jeff bezos and all the buccaneers doing the new space projects all rockets leave by chemical reactions. They are big, powerful, weigh a lot with kind of power and can only get so much up in orbit at one time, unless you ask elon musk thinking he will make them bigger and bigger which he may very well do but there is a limit. How could you bypass that . What is a good way to do that . Were talking 1950s. Nuclear power is all the rage. We were looking at it from everything from power plant to airplanes to military ships and submarines. Ford even designed ad car called the nucleon would have figures reactor in the trunk. Fission reactor. Only fuel once every 10 years. Would be a shame if something went wrong in the neighborhood. In 40s and 50s, sold us on rockets like this. Some are chemical powered, some are nuclear. Theyre very cool looking. What they have in common, big, cabin space for the crew and cargo and little tiny engines and not a lot of fuel left over for chemical fuel. Which is really how we want to do it if we want to fly to space a lot but nobodys figured that out yet. Somebody may recognize this. This is from destination moon, one of our favorite movies. This is what rockets were supposed to look like. They promised us this, right . A nice big bridge where everybody walks around and chat and do their thing and young maidens in the velcro minute sy skirts and nod to the captain. It was supposed to be like star trek. Dont forehe get about the gravity. We didnt get this spaceship. What we got apollo capsule. Imagine sitting there two weeks. They never did it that long. Gemini had two guys, much smaller. Two astronauts in the gemini capsule, shoulders touching, this much clearance between the hatch. You cant open it because of the vacuum out there, thank you. What we want bigger, more robust environment that can go places faster to carry more stuff. That is the point of having big rockets. We could have had this. That is Leslie Nielsen by the way, if we had