The Moon and the rocket that took us there! (eng)

This article is not related to any conspiracy theory. It is my personal view on the events related to space exploration and how I interpret them.

On the 28th of April 2011, our species will celebrate 10 years since the first space tourist blasted off. Dennis Tito paid around $20 mil for a short trip to low earth orbit (LEO) and over the last decade, 6 more followed. As per this article http://www.space.com/11502-space-tourism-moon-mission-space-adventures.html, the company that offered these space flights is now offering a flight around the moon for around $150 mil. The way they want to do it is use two rockets. One that will carry the crew and one that will act as a booster. The two will dock in LEO and distribute the mass of the capsule and of the fuel needed between two launch vehicles this way.

Anyone that knows a few things about space exploration knows about the Saturn V. The most powerful machine ever built. It was capable of lifting the whole mass needed for a moon landing from the ground. The Soviets tried to build a similar rocket (details here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_(rocket) ) but it failed each time and they abandoned their moon plans.

The logical question that comes up is: Why did they not think of using several vehicles of proven, tested, smaller rocket in order to achieve the same results, the same way a private company wants to do it today. This is where the interesting part starts and "a bit" of politics pop up. Why insist on building a huge rocket (as the US did) when the same results can be achieved with two or more smaller ones, with distributed risks and perhaps even lower costs. The real answer is in Thermonuclear weapons!

With missiles that were able to hit any target, anywhere on the globe and the introduction of Thermonuclear weapons in the 1950s, the stage was set for interesting things to happen. While a nuclear weapon is very powerful, there are some defenses such as bunkers. In october 1961, the USSR tested its Tsar Bomba, a 50 megaton bomb capable of completely destroying an entire region, not only a city. To put this into perspective, brick buildings were still standing at Hiroshima, mere kilometers away from ground 0. At the Tsar test site, everything was vaporized 55 kilometers from ground zero and all wooden and some brick houses were destroyed hundreds of kilometers from ground zero. In other words, this 27 ton device with a power of 50 megatons of TNT was a region buster, not a city buster.

But back to rockets. The Titan I rocket, the largest the US had in 1961 was able to lift a maximum of 3000 kilograms. Not merely enough for a region busting bomb. While the bomb was only tested in October of 1961, it's pretty clear that the CIA had some intel on its existence or development. The US had the capability to develop one of it's own and they also needed the means to deliver it. So in May 1961, JFK held his historical speech about sending a man to the moon. The stage was set. The nation was happy to give their tax dollars for showing how good US engineering really is. In reality, SAC (Strategic Air Command) would get civil research money to have a rocket developed. Not any rocket, but one that would be able to a region busting bomb to the USSR.

It's interesting that the Cuban missile crisis comes in October 1961. The USSR feeling threatened by this new arms race is rushing to place missiles close enough to the US to respond. A coincidence? Not likely. The US had missiles in Turkey for some time and the USSR did not bother. Only months after the US is announcing a bold new exploration plan (and development of a heavy lift vehicle), the USSR scrambles to deploy missiles next to the US "as a response to the missiles in Turkey". Negotiations took place, US missiles in Turkey were removed, USSR missiles in Cuba were taken back home and the game was to be decided by other means. About $45 BILLION dollars later and 6 moon landings, the Saturn V proved to be the weapon that everyone (that was not speaking Rusky) hoped it would.

Now something strange happened. Something that put a seal on any proper space exploration. As a by-product of the Apollo program, computers started to get more and more powerful. In no time they got so good that they were able to do simulations on what happens when a nuke goes off. As a result, Thermonuclear weapons were miniaturized and it was decided that multiple warheads on one missile are better then one fat nuke on a huge missile.

Sadly, the moment the military stopped asking for huge missiles, space exploration died. NASA never got proper funding for developing it's 1981 (targeted) Mars landing, it's 1995 (targeted) Mars landing, it's 2010 (targeted) Mars landing and they got stuck with limited lifting capability.

We can only hope that the private sector that is leading the space exploration does not look for means of delivering nukes and that they will not stop developing launch vehicles because "what they have is enough".