The "satellite crisis" that followed the historic 1957 launch spawned not only the Apollo, but also the less well-known US Air Force 1958-1961 program. In many respects, it seems no less attractive, and even its ultimate goal - the deployment of a secret underground air force base on the moon - looks like a triumph of democracy and philanthropy.
… But it didn’t grow together. Why? And could it be otherwise?
The Lunex project was only formally started in 1958 - in fact, then it only became clear that with the US lagging behind in the space race, something had to be done, so in the first year it was exclusively about developing goals for the lunar program. It now seems that the desire to be the first to fly to this or that celestial body was based only on considerations of prestige: the military of that era, on the contrary, it was absolutely clear that any space project could simultaneously be a powerful carrier of weapons of mass destruction. Remember at least the R-36orb, which had been in service in the USSR for fifteen years.
Above, left to right: BC-2720 LV, A-410 LV, and B-825 LV are media for Lunex. Bottom: Developed in 1959-1963 for the US Air Force, the Dyna Soar space bomber, an attempt to copy the German Silbervogel. (Illustrations by NASA, USAF.)
The US Air Force expected something like this, although they did not have any information on this matter, nor the ability to create their own means of this kind. It was suspicions of a military coloration of part of the Soviet space program that drove the final version of the Lunex, presented a few days after Kennedy's famous address about the space race in 1961.
The delivery of a three-seat 61-ton command-and-control module to the Moon was supposed to be carried out using some kind of launch vehicle with the "original" name Space Launch System. Neither the type of engines in the rocket, nor the fuel, nothing at all, except the number of stages, was specified by the program: all this was just to be developed (the same was waiting for NASA with its Apollo program, presented in the same year with approximately the same detail). However, no, there were some abstract wishes: it would be good to make the first stage solid-fuel, while the subsequent ones - working on liquid oxygen and hydrogen. It is worth noting here that the fuel used by the different stages of the "Saturn", which flew to the Moon, in 1961 was not finally chosen either.
To get to the moon, it was supposed to use the "right ascension" method. Simply put, the carrier delivered the module to the satellite. Then the engines in the tail section were used for lunar landing (alternatively, landing on the extended landing gear). Having completed all the required research, the ship left the moon and headed for Earth. The entry into the atmosphere of a command-and-control module, close to the Dyna Soar project, was carried out at an angle with subsequent damping of speed. The module had a flat bottom, upward-curved wings, and a shape that allowed controllable glide to land in the right place. There was no detail regarding the means of rescuing the crew: in 1961, events spurred on American space attempts with such force that there was simply no time to think and talk about "little things".
The key to the project is timing and cost. Of course, unrealistic. The moon landing was promised in six years - by 1967. And the cost of the program is only $ 7.5 billion. Don't laugh: Apollo in 1961 also promised a lunar landing in six years for $ 7 billion.
Of course, in the form in which these projects existed in 1961, they could not be implemented for either $ 7 or $ 27 billion. "Right ascension" was considered reasonable, since it did not require maneuvering in lunar orbit, which then, before the advent of methods the calculation of such maneuvers, feared like fire. But the descent to the moon and the ascent from it of a hefty module with astronauts and a return rocket required much more fuel and a much heavier rocket. For "right ascension" from the Earth, it was necessary to send a carrier that surpassed the Saturn-5 in thrust and price, and this is the most powerful rocket in human history.
It is quite obvious that, faced with real numbers, the US Air Force would abandon this direct option in favor of delivering a spacecraft to the Moon and landing on it without a module returning to Earth. This is exactly what happened in 1962 with Apollo, when NASA realized that even a super-heavy rocket (of the Nova project) was too weak for right ascension.
However, the project has several interesting features. To ensure entry into the atmosphere at a speed close to the second space velocity (11, 2 km / s), the reentry vehicle entered the atmosphere at a significant angle, "slowing down" without excessive overheating, in many respects still in the upper layers. And here's the most important thing: Lunex's planning did not stop at "send people to the moon before the Russians"; the ultimate goal of the program was to create there an underground ("subsurface") Air Force base with a staff of 21 people, periodically replaced. Alas, we are not yet very familiar with the documents of this particular part of the project: what exactly this platoon was going to do is not entirely clear.
Most likely, the motives of the Lunex were close to another concept that belonged to the US Army and was introduced in 1959. Army Project Horizon envisioned a "lunar outpost necessary to develop and protect potential US interests on the moon." It is not difficult to guess what these interests are: "Development of technology for observing the Earth and space from the Moon … for the sake of its further exploration, as well as for space exploration and for military operations on the Moon, if the need arises …"
Well, reconnaissance from the moon, conducting military operations on a satellite, a secret base under the moon … Anyone who has watched Doctor Strangelove has no doubts: there were indeed generals in the US Air Force who would hardly have lagged behind the army commanders in terms of such plans. In the end, the US Air Force, not the army, offered to throw an atomic bomb at the lunar terminator so that it was better seen from Earth: to scare, so to speak, the Russian Papuans. You can even expect not that from such people: for them a military base 400,000 km from the enemy is normal. But what good would be in all this clowning for the common mankind?
Ironically, there could be a lot of sense from Lunex. Yes, the program did not have two main advantages that Apollo had: the excellent administrator James Webb did not work for it, and its carriers were not designed by the notorious SS Sturmbannfuehrer. And he, of course, proved to be the best rocket designer than any other of his contemporary in the United States.
However, all of von Braun's gift largely went to the "whistle", as his monstrous "Saturns" were ultimately not in demand by the American space industry. Created in the heat of the lunar race, without much regard for the cost of the issue, they were too expensive to be applied outside the context of a ruthless cosmic confrontation. The curtailment of flights to the Moon in the von Braun-Webb version was inevitable: each landing of a ship with people there cost more than the largest hydroelectric power station ever built by mankind. Or even so: the cost of 700 such flights would have exceeded the current US GDP, not to mention the fact that its size in the 60s and 70s was much smaller.
After winding down, the US space program, however, tried to partially return to the idea of Brown's rival in Nazi Germany - Eugen Senger: the ship should become reusable, NASA decided. It was this ideology that permeated the later shuttle - as well as the earlier Dyna Soar.
If Lunex had won in 1961, the development of the lunar ship could have taken longer than the Apollo project, which was comparatively simpler and was also built by von Braun's team rather than local personnel. Of course, this was politically unacceptable: the United States could not lose in the lunar race. But Lunex would be work for the future, and not for winning the lunar race: having received ships similar in appearance to shuttles, one could organically use them for further development.
Finally, the Lunex program offered lunar missions something that Apollo did not have. Target! Yes, exactly the same military base. You can laugh at the American aviators as much as you like, but such a base would objectively do much more for the development of man's space presence than all the flights to the Moon that have been implemented.
Unlike the one-seater Dyna Soar, the Lunex was supposed to be a three-seater, with astronauts landing one after another.
We all remember how Soviet comrades reacted to the appearance of the first information about the shuttles: "This is clearly a weapon, we immediately need the same!" And they did it, and even better (albeit at the cost of eliminating the more promising Spiral). Let's go back mentally to the late 60s - early 70s. US imperialism has a secret military base on the moon? The Soviet would have ended up there, most likely in the same decade. The solution of the problem of life support for people in such conditions would stimulate a very energetic development of a number of new technologies.
Needless to say, the world would have known about the presence of water in the lunar soil (as well as ice at the poles) much earlier, and the use of lunar materials for construction would obviously have to start already in the 1970s. Again, it is difficult to imagine the elimination of such a base by either side: both the Soviet and American military would immediately scream that without it (and if the enemy had a base) "our chances in an impending nuclear conflict are negligible." And it doesn't matter at all that it would not have a direct relationship to reality …
Let us recall one more fact: both the USSR and the United States at that time believed that the nuclear arsenals of the opposite side were much larger than their own. The intensity of hysteria was such that, with a high degree of probability, the bases would have existed until the end of the Cold War. Who knows, maybe during this time it would still be possible to work out reusable systems for delivering cargo to the Moon - inexpensive enough for at least an American (or international) base in space to still function.
And in this case, the farthest outpost of manned astronautics would now be not 400 kilometers from the Earth, but 400,000!
