From a scientific point of view, however, they were of extremely limited value. The lunar landings still stand as a measure of humankind's technological achievements. In May 1961, in the wake of the Bay of Pigs debacle, President Kennedy vowed that the US would put a man on the moon within the decade. In 1961 Russia again pipped the US to the post, sending the first man, Yuri Gagarin, into orbit. Things had still to go the US's way, however. An ostensibly civilian space agency would also provide very useful cover for the development of new intercontinental rocket systems and spy satellites. The conquest of space had now become a crucial psychological test. In the context of the Cold War, civilian and military goals had become intertwined. Johnson talked of how the sky above his Texas ranch was now full of ominous question marks: 'I don't want to go to sleep by a Communist moon.' In the midst of his tirades Johnson let slip the real reasons behind the space race: 'If, out in space, there is the ultimate position-from which total control of the earth may be exercised-then our national goal. Democrat Lyndon B Johnson was one US politician willing to provide a voice for the hysteria which swept the US caused by the launch of Sputnik. And yet here they were launching a 183 pound satellite into space, while the US was still struggling to get a five pound one off the ground. The Russians were supposed to be a race of backward farmers, whose country's technology was being stretched to the limit just keeping their tractors running. The successful launch of the Russian Sputnik satellite on 4 October 1957 sent a tremor through the US establishment. What no one expected was that the Russians might get there first. It seemed certain that the US would be making all the running in the race into space. What a perfect cover! In 1955 President Eisenhower approved the secret plans for the first US spy satellite. Every country in the world was invited to try its hand at launching a research satellite during 1957-58. It also suggested that this potential be deliberately underplayed, the emphasis being put instead on the peaceful uses of this 'remarkable technological advance'.Īt the height of the Cold War the announcement, in 1954, of plans for an International Geophysics Year seemed heaven sent. In 1946 a highly confidential US government report drew attention to the 'great military value, of satellites. In one of the first interviews given in the US in 1945, von Braun envisaged an orbiting rocket, a primary task of which would be the observation of 'troop movements' on the earth below. The link between space exploration and military aims did not disappear after the war. He designed the Saturn V rocket which carried the astronauts to the moon. In any case, the US had the money, and for the next 20 years von Braun was at the centre of the US space effort. The fact that the missiles had left 2,770 Britons dead and 21,000 wounded made any advances that the British government would have liked to have made towards von Braun and his team a little awkward. What helped to change this attitude was the very practical wartime demonstration, by the German V-2 missile, that rockets could be powerful weapons of mass destruction.Īfter the war everyone wanted to be friends with the V-2's architect, Wernher von Braun. The pioneering efforts in rocketry of characters like the American Robert H Goddard were largely ignored or ridiculed by the establishment. Yet space exploration has been inextricably bound up with another rather more sinister tendency the drive within capitalism towards war. Who but a total cynic could not be moved by the beauty of our solar system as it has unfolded over the past few decades? Whether it is the awesome volcanoes and canyons of Mars, the boiling hell of Venus, the aquamarine beauty of the blue gas giant Uranus or its strange, scrambled moon, Miranda, it is hard to know whether to class these images as science or art. The drive to discover and explore the natural world is surely one of humanity's endearing attributes. I cannot have been the only child who truly believed Neil Armstrong when he stepped out from the lunar lander and uttered those famous words, 'One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.' Thirty years ago this month, on 20 July 1969, a human being stood on the surface of the moon for the very first time. One of the distressing features of coming to terms with the reality of capitalist society is learning that events which inspired us as children were based on quite different motives than we perceived at the time. Dark side of the moon On the 30th anniversary of man's first walk on the moon, John Parrington looks at the real reasons for the space race
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