A Shot at the Moon

A military moon base from which a handful of earthlings dominate their native planet--or perhaps watch with despair its radioactive devastation by nuclear war--is a familiar staple of science fiction. But the moon base will not be fiction for long, says Air Force Lieut. General Donald L. (for Leander) Putt. Last week in Washington he told the House Armed Services Committee how the U.S. Air Force plans to become the U.S. Space Force and eventually occupy the moon.

First step, said Putt, one of the Air Force's topflight aviator-engineers (Carnegie Tech, Caltech), will be to use existing ballistic missiles to boost Sputnik-type satellites into orbits. The Thor can be fitted with upper stages that will launch a satellite weighing more than one ton, said Putt, and the Atlas (none has flown full range yet) can launch a two-ton satellite, or better.

Nuclear Batteries. Passing rapidly over these projects, Engineer Putt expressed enthusiasm for the military satellite that is being developed by Lockheed Aircraft Corp. under the various names of Pied Piper, ARS and Weapon System117L. By next July 1, he said, $50 million will have been spent on the Pied Piper, and $100 million more will be spent in fiscal 1959. The chief failing of present-day satellites is that their batteries run down too quickly to permit them to perform useful military duties such as worldwide reconnaissance. But the Air Force is working on four improved sources of power for satellites. One of them uses sunlight, another nuclear energy.

The real objective, of course, is manned space flight, and Putt sketched three Air Force projects headed in that direction. The first is the rocket plane X-15 (TIME, March 3), which Putt thinks can be beefed up enough to carry an orbiting human and return him to earth alive. The second is DYNA-SOAR (from "dynamic soaring"), a vehicle that will use what Putt calls "boost-glide flight." It will be boosted up like a rocket, but will have wings and controls. The pilot can permit it to orbit freely around the earth for a while, or he can bring it down into the atmosphere at will.

The third Air Force project is a true manned orbiter, launched from the ground as the final stage of a great rocket weighing several hundred thousand pounds. Putt does not tell much about it except that it will be "suitable for manned re-entry and recovery."

Lunar Outpost. It would not be difficult, according to General Putt, for a modified Thor to carry a radio transmitter to the moon and to mark the surface with a visible spot. "If this project were started in the next few weeks," he said, "first launch to the moon would be made this year."

Putt admits that not all experts share his belief that a military base on the moon would be useful. Since the moon's gravitation is only one-sixth as strong as the earth's, it should be easier to shoot at the earth from the moon than in the other direction. The moon's lack of atmosphere might make it possible to catapult earth-bound missiles out of deep shafts. Both the moon base and its weapon launchers could be on the far side of the moon, forever invisible from the earth, but all of the turning earth could be examined from the moon with telescopes.

Warming to his subject, General Putt explained how a lunar outpost might extract oxygen and water from the moon's minerals. "Energy would abound," he told the Congressmen, "from both solar sources and radioactive minerals."

But a base on the moon may not be the highest Air Force ambition: "We should not regard control of the moon as the ultimate means of ensuring peace among the earth nations. It is only a first step toward stations on planets far more distant . . . from which control over the moon might then be exercised. Nevertheless, the moon appears to be of such significance that we should not let another nation establish a military capability there ahead of us."

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