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."The concepts of politics and war may seem to defile the beautiful picture of brilliantthinkers acting out private dreams.But it is these that gave the journey to Tranquility a troubled,uncertain and sometimes sordid passage." 1"Some politicians built careers on it; others lined their pockets from it.Wholecorporations survived on the strength of it, as tiny groups of men decided where its billions ofdollars would be distributed." 2"The builders of Apollo were not technicians at work in a laboratory insulated from theworld.They were soldiers in an age when technology has become warfare by other means." 3NASA MOONED AMERICA! / Rene Nasa's History & Politics / Chap.4 p.25And its authors Young, Silcock, and Dunn wrote these words."Long before the satellite got off the ground, it became the object of political andmilitary wrangles of the most virulent kind.When it finally reached its destination, it was nolonger a triumph of science.It had been transformed from a box of technical tricks into theobsessive tool of cold-war politicians.There could have been no apter beginning to the realhistory of America's great space adventure." 4Immediately after Sputnik we were playing a losing game.We could orbit a tiny, tinnedtoy and they would answer with a big, heavy, mean machine.They had Cummins diesels andwe had Volkswagens.Our Mercury Program popped Alan Shepard up in ballistic flight forall of 15 minutes.We hailed this, even though we could not achieve a true orbit.Theircosmonauts were breathing air at normal atmospheric pressure (14.7 psi), but ours wereforced to use 100 percent oxygen at 5 psi.A shell strong enough to hold normal pressure inspace was much heavier than our rockets could then lift.The hysteria caused by Sputnik destroyed the logical developmental course we shouldhave followed in attempting to reach the Moon.In his book, Angle of Attack, Mike Gray,writes how we should have flown "the X-15 to the edge of space; then build an 'X-16' thatwould fly into orbit; then an 'X-17' - a space shuttle - that would carry cargo; use the shuttleto build an orbiting space station; and then, say about 1985, depart from there on anexpedition to the moon." 5In due time our second astronaut, Virgil Grissom, spent 16 minutes in ballistic flight.Buttwo weeks after that the Russians upped the ante by putting a cosmonaut in orbit for over 25hours.Six months later John Glenn finally boosted into orbit, into fame, and eventually intopolitics, by staying up for almost five hours.Three months after that Scott Carpenterduplicated, almost to the minute, Glenn's ride.Two months later, on August 11 and August 12, 1962, the Russians really played hardballby sending up two cosmonauts in two separate birds.They also had the nerve to add a lot ofinsult to our injury by staying up for 94 hours and 71 hours respectively.Plus another first- they made a rendezvous with each other!Things were quiet for a while, and then on May 15, 1963 we orbited for over 34 hours.Amonth later the Russians played "one-upmenship" and within two days sent up another twobirds.The first one stayed up 119 hours, and the second carried the first woman into space,Valentina V.Tereshkova, who orbited for 71 hours.Then rub-a-dub-dub the Soviets sent up three men in a big, big tub.Six months later wegot two men up in our own washtub with the first shot of the Gemini Program.But wefinally had the bit in our teeth.We were going to win that space race no matter who it killedor how much the cost.The decision to go to the Moon was not made by President Kennedy but by NASA itself.A man named George M.Low pressured an internal NASA committee into accepting thatgoal.6 It was the tail wagging the dog that day when NASA set its own agenda to start theApollo Program.Nothing has changed since!NASA MOONED AMERICA! / Rene Nasa's History & Politics / Chap.4 p.26Had rocket expert Wernher von Braun been allowed to fire off his rocket in the fall of1956 we would have orbitted the first satellite.However, it was politically incorrect to useformer Nazi expertise.Politically, our great leaders desperately wanted the Navy to be firstwith an all American-made Vanguard rocket.In the early '60s the only technicians who actually knew how to build rockets werethose harvested up by the army from the German V2 Program.They were all working inHunts-ville, Alabama on our missile program and miraculously, the military, anorganization rarely known to give up the spoils of war, released them to NASA.Just as its predecessor, the Nazi V2 missile project in Norway, had been taken over bythe Nazi SS, ours was also held in thrall by the CIA.How this machination was accom-plished and maintained is not known, but as the tiger is known by its stripes, you can betthat whenever big bucks are involved the CIA will be there.And NASA bucks are still big!The estimate given to Kennedy to put a man on the Moon was less than 20 billiondollars.The final cost, if tallied by the total expenditures of NASA from 1962 to 1973 wasover 39 billion.7 This is about 200 billion 1990 dollars.Norman Mailer said of the Apollo Project that he couldn't decide whether it was "thenoblest expression of the twentieth century or the quintessential statement of our funda-mental insanity." 8Some contemporary critics called NASA's Moon project a "Roman Circus".However, Ifeel that term is a little too strong."Space Opera" has a better ring to it.First there was theterrifying quasi-cremation of three astronauts on Pad 34.Then in each of the mannedmissions that followed serious problems developed, but each time, in the nick of time,American astronauts and/or unsung NASA geniuses saved the day!After the Apollo 11 landing, the American public began to ignore the subsequent land-ings.Congress was getting a little shaky because of the CIA's secret Laos war and theVietnam police action, racial rioting, hippie rebellions, and student demonstrations
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