​The SLS rocket is gearing up for another launch attempt, scheduled for November 14, which will be the first test of the vehicle to begin a long-term exploration of the moon. Because, unlike the Apollo program, this time we are going to the moon not to have a place to return from, but to stay there and prepare research on the planet Mars. Staying on the moon for more than a few days requires the presence of lunar bases. But how old is the idea of ​​outposts on our natural satellite?

Constellation, canceled program

In 2009, when I had the pleasure of visiting the Johnson Space Center in Houston, on the grounds of the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL), home to the world’s largest indoor pool used for extravehicular training for astronauts, there were several inflatable modules, prototypes of a lunar base, which will reach the moon in a few years.

This is due to the fact that in 2009 NASA was intensively preparing for the Constellation program: launched during the administration of Bush Jr., the program aimed to create two new rockets, Ares I (with a crew) and Ares V (for cargo), with which NASA will send astronauts to the moon again.

In Building No. 5 of the Johnson Space Center, engineers were assembling a lunar vehicle, a kind of mini-caravan that would allow future lunar astronauts to travel long distances on the surface of the moon (much greater than the distances traveled by the Apollo rover). .

Unfortunately, the Constellation program was deemed unsustainable by the Obama administration and was canceled. The only surviving element was the Orion capsule, designed for the Ares I rocket but now sitting on the SLS rocket ready for launch to the moon. Although many other elements of the program were built, which are either abandoned or today are in museums.

So, plans to base on the moon are not new at all, since at the beginning of the space age, even before the first humans in space, there were documents confirming interest in placing modules on the surface of the moon, where the crew could carry out their activities. mission for a period longer than a few days. Were these civilian NASA missions or military missions coordinated by the Air Force.

von Braun’s plans

In 1945, correctly sensing the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, Werner von Braun and his engineering team decide to surrender to American forces near Peenemünde in northern Germany (to avoid capture by the Soviet Army). , the V-2 missile operations center developed by that team.

Von Braun arrives in the US and continues to design rockets, culminating in the legendary Saturn V rocket, which is still the world’s largest and most powerful rocket used in the Apollo missions. But von Braun is also a great popularizer of science, since 1952 he has been talking about rotating space stations to create artificial gravity or about bases on the moon and Mars.

Although they had a solid technical structure, his plans could not be put into practice immediately due to the lack of maturity of space technology, as well as financial considerations. Fortunately, Von Braun (NASA’s first director) lived to see all of the Apollo missions, but died in 1977 regretting that humanity’s short lunar adventure had been so short.

Wernher von Braun’s plans may have been somewhere on the borderline between technical feasibility and popularization of science, but that didn’t stop the US military from having its own plans for future bases on the moon.

US Air Force plans

In 1958, the same year that NASA launched the Mercury program, well known for being the first American to be put into orbit, the Air Force showed semi-naïve, semi-insightful optimism and proposed a three-phase program to build lunar bases: step 1 the MISS program (Man in Space Soonest, i.e. the launch of the first man into orbit), step 2: the LUREC program (Lunar Reconnaissance, sending a person into orbit around the moon) and step 3: the LUMEN program (manned landing on the Moon and Return, sending a person to the surface of the moon).

However, everything came to a halt after the MISS program was canceled a few months later and the entire operation was transferred to the civilian jurisdiction of the newly created NASA agency. However, a year later, the Air Force created Project Horizon, which wanted to put a military base on the moon and even detonate a nuclear bomb to intimidate the USSR, an action presented in the form of a scientific experiment (in the 50s-60s, nuclear tests were in order daily, and not only in the USA).

Looks like we’re starting to understand where the conspiracy theories about military bases on the far side of the moon come from, huh? The program was quickly shelved, but for the first time there was talk of placing modules in the lunar regolith (the very fine dust that covers the surface of the Moon) or extracting oxygen from the regolith, concepts that are still used in plans for future lunar outposts.

In 1961, Project LUNEX, also developed by the US military, proposed a manned mission to the Moon in 1967. If all goes well, construction will begin in 1968 on an outpost capable of housing 21 military astronauts. The problem with this project is that, while a vehicle that would reach the moon seemed realistic, it lacked a rocket that could launch everything a crew would need to the moon to return to Earth.

The complexity of a giant rocket to achieve this goal forced engineers to find an alternative to a direct mission to the moon, and eventually the Apollo program used an option that could be launched on a Saturn V rocket and involved docking two vehicles in lunar orbit (this saved enough of fuel to make the Saturn V rocket a viable option).

Zirka lunar base

After all, it was not only the Americans who had such ambitious plans: the USSR planned to use the huge H-1 rocket to carry the modules of the Soviet space station, but repeated failures of the launch vehicle forced them to switch their attention to something else. rockets Well, the space race was already lost for them, and I don’t know how realistic their plans were, but the USSR planned to place a “Zirka” base on the surface of the moon, assembled from several modules that were to be launched from the UR-500 Rocket.

Later, the UR-500 became the Proton, the lunar base turned into the Salyut space stations, which only reached Earth orbit, and the Zvezda is today called a module of the International Space Station.

We have Artemis left

I am convinced that many of the projects listed above are technically viable. We may already have lunar bases, but it’s not technological shortcomings that have prevented us from returning to the moon or sending crews to Mars. The only problem is the cost and political interest directed at such programs, which instead of being substantial and permanent, have been intermittent and rather anemic.

Thus, after the Apollo program, instead of flights to Mars, orbital stations, and space shuttles, we were left with only space shuttles. The orbital station came late, near the end of the space shuttle’s life, and plans for Mars are always 30 years away. Let’s hope the Artemis program lives long enough to see the first humans living and working on the moon for at least six months, as is currently the case at research bases in Antarctica or aboard the International Space Station.

This is the only way to learn how to fly to Mars and stop manned exploration of a planet that is, after all, our neighbor, 3 decades away.

Photo source: profimediaimages.ro