On March 16, 1926, the American physicist Robert Goddard successfully launched the first liquid fuel rocket. A young German student at the time, Wernher von Braun took interest in Goddard’s work and aspired to some day build a rocket that would carry man to the moon.
As World War II was getting under way in 1939, a secret German missile program was being developed in the remote area of northern Germany known as Peenemnde, not to carry man to the moon or explore outer space, but as a tactical weapons system. Wernher von Braun was the projects lead engineer, and in 1963 retrospectively gave credit to Robert Goddard and his liquid fueled rocket design as the model for the German V-2 rocket. In September of 1944, The Nazi’s began launching V-2’s and terrorizing the citizens of London. While the V-2 project had become an operational strategic initiative, an even more formidable design called the A-4, a ballistic missile, was on the drawing boards. These ballistic missiles could conceivably be launched into sub orbital space and targeted at locations on the other side of the globe.
Bombing raids on Peenemnde probably delay the A-4 project enough to prevent it from ever being used in WWII. By May of 1945 the war in Europe was all but over and von Braun an members of his team defected to the allies. On August 6 of that year, the United states dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima leading to an end of war in the Pacific a few weeks later. A major factor in Truman’s decision to deploy the worlds first weapon of mass destruction was the fact that the Russians were now moving troops into Manchuria and had designs on taking back territorial islands the Japanese had seized in the war. If WWII was over, so too apparently, was any alliance between the Soviets and Americans as the waters of detente were icing over, defining the incipient stages of the cold war.
A few German A-4 ballistic missiles outfitted with atomic bombs could do more damage in twenty minutes than all the conventional bombs dropped in WWII. The soviets had captured a number of German scientists as well as Peenemnde and other installations located in East Germany. Both sides were now working overtime to develop an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) capability, but the Russians apparently made better use of the resources they had picked up in the aftermath of WWII. On October 4, 1957, the world formally enter the space age when the Soviets successfully launched Sputnik 1 and achieved an orbital trajectory. The Americans were stunned and had been anything but successful in even getting an ICBM off the ground to that point.
The United States understood all to clearly the implications of Soviet successes and the unprecedented first strike capability that a space based orbital launch platform would provide. In July of 1958, The U.S. stepped up its own development efforts with the establishment of NASA, but was clearly in second place in the space race and playing catch up to the Soviets at this point. In April of 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to go into space and subsequently the first human to orbit the Earth. A month later, Alan Shepard would finally become the first American to travel into outer-space, but it would be two more years before the first American, John Glen would make an orbital flight.
On September 12, 1962, at Rice University in Houston, Texas, President John F. Kennedy delivered his famous challenge and commitment, to send a man to the moon and return him safely to Earth (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYb_mhiE-qU). On the surface of it, the speech trumpets the peaceful scientific exploration of space, but this is no more than a well constructed facade to veil the real intent of the initiative. Clearly evident in the undertones of the speech is the deliberate voice of a strategic objective to take back the high ground in the cold war, to beat the Soviets in the race to establish dominance in space. In short, the manned Moon landings of the Apollo program had little to do with space exploration and a whole lot to do with gaining supremacy in the cold war.
In reality the United States Government and President Kennedy personally had little interest in sending a man to the Moon or exploring space in general for any reason other than to gain the advantage in the cold war. In audio tapes made in cabinet room meetings, Kennedy is emphatic in discussions with NASA administrator James Webb, that a Lunar landing should be NASA’s only priority and that the only reason for spending the kind of money the U.S. was investing in the space program was to beat the Soviets; to win the cold war. (http://www.space.com/news/kennedy_tapes_010822.html)
The question begs to be asked however, why the Moon? Wouldn’t a manned space station, perhaps an orbital missile launch platform with a smaller price tag have been just as effective as a cold war strategy? Then Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara provided the answer to this critical question in his documentary The Fog of War. While the U.S. Was charging full speed ahead with the space program, it was also negotiating an atmospheric test ban treaty with the Soviets. McNamara points out in the Fog of War that there was a fear that once the test ban was in place, the Soviets, who were well ahead in lunar exploration having already sent three Luna spacecraft to the Moon by the end of 1959 (http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/lunarussr.html), would use the dark side of the Moon as new venue to test larger nuclear weapons.
Ironically, Wernher von Braun, who’s greatest ambition was to build rockets that could take man to the Moon and beyond, not for military conquest or a cold war status of supremacy but for scientific exploration, lived to see his dream come true. But had it not been for the cold war, we may still be gazing at the Moon and wondering if man will ever get there. To suggest that the cold war has influenced space exploration is an unequivocal misnomer. To see American and Soviet space programs as an extent of cold war strategic implementation provides a far more accurate portrayal.
But in the final analysis, there is another note of irony to mention in this saga. The United States prevailed in the cold war as a direct result of the mission to be the first to safely land man on the moon and return him to Earth, but the achievement had nothing to do with the accomplishment in any cold war military strategy. In the end, it was the commerce generated by the development of technology and the capitalist system that won the cold war and created the most robust economy the world has ever experienced.
