1960s: Secret Plans for U.S. Moonbase
July 25th, 2014Via: CNN:
After a thorough justification of the scientific, political and military need for the base, the proposal — two documents and more than 400 typewritten pages — calculated out the details of what could be done on the outpost and what it would take to make it reality.
It offered graphs and mathematical formulas; considerations for low gravity and magnetic field, lack of water and air, and ballistic dynamics on the moon’s surface; and design drawings of spacecraft, lunar bulldozers, modular moon cabins and special space suits.
It contained photos of the moon with desirable spots for a colony mapped out on them.
Project Horizon would start out with 10 to 20 crew members on a mission to build a somewhat self-sustaining colony capable of producing its own oxygen and water.
Supply ships would bring the rest. Page after page was dedicated to the future capabilities of the Saturn rockets that would boost the supplies there.
With expansion would come lunar nuclear power plants.
Construction of the basic outpost would start in 1964 and be completed five years later.
The visions were a bit ahead of schedule. Humans did not land on the moon for the first time until July 1969. And in the end, it wasn’t the military, but NASA that sent them there.
Research Credit: grayson
