From Rick Jones:
Stuf4 wrote:
[quoting NdT in Cosmos]
Sending people to orbit the Earth or go to the Moon requires big
reliable powerful rockets, precisely the same technology you need to
carry a nuclear warhead half way around the planet to destroy your
enemy's largest cities.

Really? I thought that one of the reasons the US was initially
"behind" in the space race was it didn't have particularly large
rockets and it didn't have partiularly large rockets because its
nuclear weapons were small enough to be carried to their target(s) by
not particularly large rockets.

The US didn't need the Saturn V (nor even the 1B I suspect) to get a
nuclear weapon to Russia, and the Soviet Union didn't need an N1 to
get their weapons to the United States.

I agree with that statement, certainly.
But NdT is *not* saying that SatV's & N1's were needed to deliver nuclear weapons half way around planet Earth. What he said was that these were examples of the technology needed.

The point stressed here in this forum many moons ago was that the Moon Race served as Power Projection of nuclear ICBM warfare capability. A "shot across the bow" to scream out to your adversary that we have the technology to decimate you if you try anything. There has never been an end-to-end test of a nuclear ICBM. By putting a dog, a monkey or a person at the top of your R-7, Atlas or Titan, it was a clear message that you could easily be launching a nuke warhead into your adversary's back yard.

And this is why neither Alan Shepard nor Gus Grissom got a tickertape parade for their Redstone hops. Demonstrating the IRBM booster doesn't cut the mustard. There was no huge celebration that an American made it into space.. It mattered little until John Glenn showed that the US had boosters reliable and capable enough to reach out and touch someone. The parade was to celebrate that Americans could sleep more soundly at night now that the perception of the balance of power had been shifted back toward the middle.

I'll certainly agree that the space race was a front of the cold war,
but one of "Our system can do things better than the other guy's
system" not "So we can lob nuclear weapons." Certainly the moon race
battle of the space race.

I agree with a statement that the purpose of the Moon Race was to demonstrate that "our system is superior to yours". Today we have recordings of JFK explicitly stating that the Soviets were using human spaceflight as a test of the system.

But there's a huge point of disagreement here in what exactly is being referred to by "system". JFK did not mean "economic system". He did not mean "political system". What he was telling Webb and the others was that human spaceflight was a test of the system of strategic nuclear missiles. That same tape recorded discussion includes an explanation about how the capability demonstrated in Mercury-Atlas had a definite impact on the intimidation factor levied during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Wally Schirra's Sigma-7 capsule might as well have had "From Havana With Love" painted on it.

And perhaps the biggest piece of evidence is that after JFK got the nuke treaty signed, he went to the UN and announced that he wanted to terminated the Apollo Program, as it was being conducted. There was no longer any need to compete on a booster-v-booster basis. If anyone wanted to continue for some alternate purpose of scientific exploration, or whatever, it could now be done cooperatively.

He announced this to the entire world, and no one listened to him. The most prominent space historians totally ignore this key fact, because it doesn't fit into the story that they want to tell. It doesn't fit into the fantasy version of why we went to the Moon.

Neil deGrasse Tyson did not earn his laurels as a space historian. But he has leapfrogged way beyond what the history "experts" have been feeding the general public. The conventional wisdom regarding why we went to the Moon is grossly mistaken. And that is why we have seen the rise of hoax theories. They are trying to fill the vacuum to a bogus story that does not make sense.

But if you understand space history accurately, then it all makes perfect sense:

- The US was way behind in ICBM technology for one reason: they were not needed
-- The US had many sqdns of nuke bombers
- Russia needed to defend itself against this threat, but countering bomber for bomber would have been crazy expensive
-- So they took the "cheap" route of building ICBMs
- The US did not adequately predict the psychological impact of being threatened by this indefensible weapon until it was too late
-- The US would be behind throughout the period of 1957-1965, way behind at first
--- Yes, one reason for being behind was because the US had superior warhead technology, so when it finally decided to pursue ICBMs this design point resulted in the need for boosters that weren't as capable as the Soviets'
---- But this reason was not the primary reason why the US was behind
--- Another reason why the US did not beat Sputnik to orbit was because Eisenhower was being prudent in letting the USSR establish the overflight precedent
---- He put the Army's nuclear missile program on ice while giving the lead to Vanguard which could genuinely lay claim to being primarily scientific

- After getting thoroughly beaten by Sputnik and all the other Soviet missile/rocket firsts up through Gagarin, JFK knew that the stakes had to be raised if the US was going to have credibility in its nuclear ICBM system of defense
-- Establishing a program to send astronauts to the Moon would accomplish the desired effect of nuclear ICBM power projection

- But with the nuke treaty in pocket, Apollo was no longer needed and this exorbitant cost could no longer be justified by JFK, so he announced that he was going to pull the plug on Apollo (open to continued funding only as a joint effort)

Accurate space history can be seen plain as day for anyone willing to keep their eyes open to all significant facts, and not ignore the key pieces that don't fit the story that they'd like to cling to.

Long ago here I had asked for anyone to present an alternate explanation as to why JFK had pulled this 180 on Apollo. I've yet to see anyone offer any viable reasoning, let alone an explanation that fits with the standard story about why we went to the Moon. Certainly not the one you are presenting: in order to show that...
"Our system can do things better than the other guy's
system".
....in the sense where "system" is not integrally related to the defense system of strategic nuclear ICBMs.

A topic that's also been discussed at length here in past years is how AF general Sam Phillips had been imported by NASA to run Apollo. The man had absolutely no background in human spaceflight. He wasn't even interested in coming to NASA. (He explains this in his oral history.) But he was ordered to do the job, so he did it.

- Mercury demonstrated the capability and reliability of the Atlas ICBM.
- Gemini demonstrated the capability and reliability of the Titan ICBM (along with further demonstration of Atlas with the Agena).
- And what Sam Phillips did for Apollo was lend implicate capability and reliability of the Minuteman ICBM.

He had run the Minuteman program, and success in Apollo would reflect that Minuteman had been likewise. This is by far the biggest reason why this AF general had been brought to NASA against his desires, when there were many who were eager for that job who had plenty of experience in human spaceflight versus Sam Phillips' zero experience.

These are some of the more prominent facts that shout out how the primary purpose of Apollo was nuclear ICBM intimidation. Yet so many people who are very well versed in space history choose to ignore what is staring them in the face.

I'm very glad to know that Neil deGrasse Tyson is not one of them.

~ CT