In May 1961, US President John F Kennedy called for a NASA program to send a man to the Moon before the end of the decade. It was hailed at the time as a bold step into the unknown. But two years prior to Kennedy's speech, the US Army had already undertaken a classified feasibility study that was much more ambitious in scope than a mere Moon landing. Dubbed “Project HORIZON”, the Army’s plan called for a permanently-manned lunar outpost, with a dozen residents, that would be powered by nuclear reactors, armed with nuclear weapons, and capable of carrying out a wide variety of military tasks.
"Hidden History" is a diary series that explores forgotten and little-known areas of history.
Project HORIZON Moon base photo from US Defense Department
In 1945, the world leader in rocket technology was Nazi Germany. Designed and built by Wernher von Braun, the V-2 ballistic missile became the first human-made object to leave the Earth’s atmosphere and enter outer space. The Allies had no effective defense against it, and the V-2's, with their one-ton warhead, continued to rain down destruction upon London until advancing American and British troops captured the launch sites in northern France.
Immediately upon the defeat of the Axis in 1945, a new Cold War began between the United States and the Soviet Union. Now it was realized that the combination of the atomic bomb with a long-range missile would produce the ultimate doomsday weapon, and both sides scrambled to capture as many of the German scientists and their research secrets as they could. Under “Project PAPERCLIP", the US recruited Von Braun and many of his staff and brought them to the United States. The Russians got a similar haul.
In 1950, shortly after the Soviet Union had tested its own atomic weapon, the Korean War broke out and the Cold War began in earnest. Working at the Redstone Arsenal in Alabama, Von Braun and his team produced nuclear-armed missiles of increasing range: first the Redstone, then the Jupiter. And in the USSR, a team led by Sergei Korolev kept up.
By 1957, both sides were approaching the ultimate goal—an intercontinental missile that would be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead halfway around the world and striking their opponent. And now the nuclear arms race would lead to a new contest, one that was not as lethal but was fought with every bit as much zeal—the space race. Any rocket that was capable of delivering an intercontinental nuclear weapon was also capable of reaching orbital velocity. And so when the UN announced a cooperative global effort for 1957 to study the Earth environment, both the US and the USSR grandly announced that they would launch an artificial satellite into orbit as part of their contribution.
When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in October 1957, the effect on the United States, which viewed the USSR as a nation of uneducated and primitive turnip farmers, was profoundly shattering. Not only had the US, which had always viewed itself as the most potent technological power in the world, seen the Russians now claim that mantle for themselves, but the apparent supremacy of Soviet science and technology had dangerous military and political implications for the Cold War, where both the capitalists and the communists were struggling to woo non-aligned nations to their side by demonstrating the superiority of their economic and technical systems. The Americans were now willing to do almost anything, at almost any cost, to win back the fallen crown of prestige and world leadership that it was afraid it had lost.
It was in this atmosphere of desperation and fear that, in March 1959, the US Army’s Chief of Research and Development, Lt Gen Arthur G. Trudeau, proposed an enormously ambitious idea: the US should begin a program (dubbed “HORIZON”) to establish a permanent military base on the Moon. At this time, no human had even entered outer space yet—that would not happen until Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s orbital flight in April 1961 (beating the United States once again). But Project HORIZON went far beyond the then-unattainable goal of simply putting a human into space. True, the open non-secret portion of the program would be one of space exploration for the betterment of mankind, and the development of new and better technology. But below the surface, in the secret classified portion, was a military effort to seize and keep superiority in the Cold War. By permanently occupying the Moon, and more importantly by getting there before the Soviets did, the US could lay claim to ownership, and use that celestial body for a whole variety of military purposes. The Army could, for instance, use antennae dishes on the Moon to bounce radio communications from one point on the Earth’s surface to another. It could use cameras and telescopes to look back at Earth, opening up even the most secretive areas of the USSR to surveillance and spying. And it could base nuclear weapons on the Moon, capable of destroying the Soviet Union even if every American city had already been hit. For the military, controlling the Moon was one of the vital keys to winning the Cold War.
So the Pentagon turned Project HORIZON over to the one person who was best qualified to study its feasibility—Wernher Von Braun, who was now head of the US Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA). Von Braun in turn assigned the study to one of his German colleagues who had also been brought to the US as part of PAPERCLIP—Heinz-Hermann Koelle. Over the next 90 days, Koelle divided up the project into pieces and assigned each part to the particular military department that was best suited to study it: the ABMA would evaluate the type of rockets and space vehicles that would be required, the Signals Corp would study the radio and communications needs, and the Corps of Engineers would propose the best methods for constructing, maintaining, and expanding a habitable outpost on the Moon.
The final report, titled, Project HORIZON: A U.S. Army Study for the Establishment of a Lunar Military Post, was submitted to the Pentagon in June 1959, in two volumes. The first volume served as a summary which presented the report’s main conclusions, and the second volume gave a longer and more detailed analysis.
The report begins by emphasizing what the Pentagon saw as the immediate and overwhelming need to beat the Soviets to the Moon: “The political implications of our failure to be first in space are a matter of public record. This failure has reflected adversely on United States scientific and political leadership. To some extent we have recovered the loss. However, once having been second best in the eyes of the world's population, we are not now in a position to afford being second on any other major step in space .… The results of failure to first place man on an extra-terrestrial base will raise grave political questions and at the same time lower US prestige and influence. The Soviet Union has announced openly its intention that some of its citizens will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution (1967) on the moon. The US intelligence community agrees that the Soviet Union may accomplish a manned lunar landing at any time after 1965 …. Political, scientific, and security considerations indicate that it is imperative for the United States to establish a lunar outpost at the earliest practicable date …. From the viewpoint of national security, the primary implications of the feasibility of establishing a lunar outpost is the importance of being first.”
The report then turns to the question of whether a manned Moon base was technically feasible and economically viable.
As its starting points, Project HORIZON made the assumption that all of the work should be done using technology that was either already available or was already in development. (Koelle himself was already working on the large liquid-hydrogen fueled rocket that would become the Saturn.) Also, the project would be modular, starting out small, like a polar outpost, and expanding over time. This was done both to keep the cost down and to allow the work to be carried out as rapidly as possible.
If work on the program were begun by the end of 1959, the study concluded, the initial steps could take place in 1964—this would be a series of unmanned Saturn launches that would deliver supplies and materials to the site of the planned outpost. The emptied fuel tanks and upper stages of these rockets would themselves be incorporated into the construction of the base: they would be sealed, pressurized, and buried in the lunar soil as a protection against cosmic radiation and micrometeorites. A year later, after sufficient materials, vehicles, and supplies had been delivered, the first manned landing would take place, with two military astronauts arriving to test the equipment and begin construction. Subsequent launches would deliver up to 14 more astronauts. The basic outpost, requiring about 150 Saturn rocket launches, would be fully inhabitable by the end of 1966. Once the Moon base was complete, it would need another 64 launches per year to keep it supplied and to rotate crew members back and forth. The outpost could also be expanded as needed.
To defend the base from possible Soviet attack, it would be surrounded by Claymore mines that were specially modified to poke holes in pressure suits. The inhabitants would also have access to small sub-kiloton nuclear weapons (similar to those already being used in the “Davy Crockett” anti-tank weapon) to defend against possible Soviet vehicles on the Moon.
The total cost for the basic structure, the study concluded, would be about $6 billion in contemporary dollars—roughly $700 million per year. The study noted that this was not much more than the US was already spending on its nuclear missile programs.
And so, the report decided, “it appears that the establishment of an outpost on the moon is a capability which can be accomplished.”
In the end, however, just as international politics had led to the birth of Project HORIZON, international politics also led to its demise. Neither the American President Eisenhower nor the Soviet Premier Khrushchev wanted to spend an enormous amount of money for a new arms race in outer space, and so treaties and agreements were reached that banned any nuclear weapons in space and prevented any nation from claiming a celestial body as its national territory. Responsibility for space exploration was turned over to NASA, a civilian agency which did not deal with classified military projects. The idea of a manned Moon landing stagnated until Yuri Gagarin’s flight in 1961, when President Kennedy, once again stung by the loss of American prestige, made his speech and put the Apollo program into motion.
NOTE: As some of you already know, all of my diaries here are draft chapters for a number of books I am working on. So I welcome any corrections you may have, whether it's typos or places that are unclear or factual errors. I think of y'all as my pre-publication editors and proofreaders. ;)
