Cislunar cycler (1991)

The Space Exploration Initiative (SEI), launched on the 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing (July 20, 1989), differed from most other presidential space initiatives in that President George H. W. Bush and members of his Administration apparently truly believed in it. Bush, the 41st President of the United States, had been in office for only six months at the time he made his announcement on the steps of the National Air and Space Museum, so he did not perceive SEI mainly as a component in his re-election campaign. This was unlike President Richard M. Nixon, who delayed announcement of the Space Shuttle Program until January of the 1972 election year, President Ronald W. Reagan, who announced the Space Station in January of the 1984 election year, and President George H. W. Bush, who announced the Vision for Space Exploration in January of the 2004 election year.



Though among SEI's many failings was a flawed execution, Bush 41 did his best to support his initiative after he had announced it. Again, this differed from Nixon, Reagan, and Bush 43. Because of its rumored cost of a trillion dollars, SEI became a political liability for Bush; nevertheless, as late as the summer of 1991, he gave speeches about it and negotiated with Congress for funds to keep it alive in some form.



Bush was not reelected in 1992, and SEI ended soon after President William J. Clinton took office in January 1993. Bush's initiative was not, however, without result. It left behind it a substantial legacy in the form of a vast body of literature, a motherlode of ideas for ways to explore the moon, Mars, and, to a lesser extent, other destinations. Not since the 1960s space race had American aerospace engineers had the opportunity to be so creative.



In February 1991, for example, Chauncey Uphoff and Robert Crouch, engineers at Ball Space Systems Division in Boulder, Colorado, described a cycler system for regularly scheduled voyages between the Earth and its peculiarly oversized natural satellite. Cycling spacecraft take advantage of planetary gravity-assist flybys to continuously repeat voyages between at least two worlds with minimal use of rocket propellants. Almost all cycler designs proposed to date have been intended to link Earth and Mars.



Their cislunar cycler system would include at least two spacecraft, the design of which Uphoff and Crouch did not specify. It is logical to assume, however, that they would be derived from space stations meant to operate beyond the safety of low-Earth orbit (LEO). The images above show two such station designs. The middle image shows a 2002 NASA concept of an Earth-moon L1 "Gateway" station with many inflatable components, while the bottom image illustrates a North American Rockwell lunar-orbit station concept from the early 1970s.



The cyclers would carry the most massive equipment and structures needed for economical and safe cislunar transport - for example, a recycling closed-loop life support system and ample radiation shielding for protecting the passengers from solar flares and cosmic rays - plus a propellant farm for refueling small "taxi" spacecraft that would carry passengers and cargo to and from the cycler. The cycler would be launched from LEO only once, yet could complete many Earth-moon journeys. In effect, it would be a permanent space station following a complex path through the Earth-moon system. Compared with, say, an Apollo-type Earth-moon transportation system, the cycler system's propellant requirements would be negligible.



The twin cyclers would follow three kinds of paths through cislunar space. Used in combination, they would enable a lunar swingby every 14 days, with each cycler encountering the moon three times in two months.



The first of the three cislunar paths, an elliptical Earth-moon "transfer orbit," would need either nine days or 14 days to complete. The second, a novel circular high-inclination "BackFlip" moon-to-moon transfer, would need 14 days. The third, a circular "holding orbit" that would match the moon's orbit but be inclined slightly relative to its orbital plane, would need 28 days to complete.



Low-thrust electric (ion) thrusters would perform almost all routine cycler course adjustments once the pattern of Earth-moon transfers became established. These would have the advantage of requiring minimal propellant, thereby reducing the logistics burden of operating the cycler system. In short, electric propulsion would reduce the number of costly launches from Earth's surface that would be needed to keep the cislunar cycler system running.



The twin cyclers would also carry high-thrust rocket motors for emergency maneuvers. These would burn chemical propellants drawn from the taxi propellant farm.



Uphoff and Crouch described their cislunar cycler system in action by following the movements of one cycler spacecraft. At the beginning of its career, a chemical-propellant booster would launch the cycler from its LEO assembly orbit toward the moon on a trip that would last from 4.5 to seven days. As it flew past the moon, its passengers would enter taxis and undock to land at the moon base or capture into lunar orbit.



The cycler, with no one on board, would then perform a gravity-assist lunar swingby that would take it into a BackFlip inclined 46° relative to the plane of the moon's orbit about the Earth. The spacecraft would remain within 318,000 kilometers of the moon (78% of the Earth-moon distance of 397,000 kilometers) during the BackFlip. Because of this, it would undergo gravitational perturbations to its orbit that it would need to correct using its electric thrusters.



Fourteen days after beginning the BackFlip, the cislunar cycler would for the second time encounter the moon, this time on the opposite side of the moon's orbit from the place where the first swingby took place. By applying electric-propulsion thrust selectively during the BackFlip, the cycler would reach the moon for the second time already positioned to enter either a 14-day or nine-day Earth-moon transfer orbit or a 28-day holding orbit.



If the cycler aimed for Earth, then passengers bound for the homeworld would leave the moon in taxis and dock with it during the second lunar swingby. Uphoff and Crouch suggested that the cycler carry chemical-propellant tugs for rescuing taxis that suffered propulsion or docking failures. The voyage to Earth would require 4.5 days (for a nine-day transfer orbit) or seven days (for a 14-day orbit). As the cycler neared Earth, the taxis would undock and aerobrake in the atmosphere to shed speed and capture into LEO, where they would rendezvous with the space station.



The unmanned cycler, meanwhile, would swing by Earth and complete the second half of its nine-day or 14-day orbit, in theory reaching apogee (its farthest point from Earth) at lunar distance (in practice, some nine-day orbits would not reach apogee at lunar distance, Uphoff and Crouch noted). The moon would not be there when the cycler attained apogee: instead, it would be located either one-third (for a nine-day orbit) or halfway (for a 14-day orbit) around its 28-day orbit from the point where the cycler reached apogee.



The cycler would then return to Earth in 4.5 days or seven days. If in a 14-day orbit, passengers bound for the moon would fly taxis to the cycler during this second Earth swingby. The cycler would then re-encounter the moon seven days later and drop them off. If in the nine-day orbit, the cycler would swing past the Earth unmanned and again reach apogee without the moon nearby 4.5 days later. It would then fall back to Earth. During its third Earth encounter, it would collect passengers, which it would deliver to the moon 4.5 days later.



If no one had need of a ride to Earth when the first BackFlip brought the cycler back to the moon, the unmanned cycler would enter a 28-day holding orbit. The holding orbit was, Uphoff and Crouch explained, an unfortunate necessity, for orbital mechanics dictated that BackFlips not occur in succession. This was because the lunar swingby needed to begin a new BackFlip immediately after completing one would occur below the lunar surface. In other words, the attempt would crash the cislunar cycler into the moon.



At the end of its 28-day holding orbit, the cycler would re-encounter the moon and, if passengers needed to travel from the moon to the Earth, would commence another nine or 14-day Earth-moon transfer orbit. Alternately, the unmanned cycler would begin another BackFlip, swinging by the moon again 14 days later.



Once every six weeks, the twin cyclers would fly past the moon at the same time. They could then enter a nine-day or a 14-day Earth-moon transfer orbit together, allowing them to dock for 28 days before they encountered the moon again. During this period, astronauts would board the cyclers to perform repairs and maintenance and restock supplies.



To reestablish the cislunar cycler system's pattern of one lunar encounter every 14 days, the cyclers would undock when next they encountered the moon. One would then enter a 14-day BackFlip, while the other would enter a 28-day holding orbit.

"Lunar Cycler Orbits with Alternating Semi-Monthly Transfer Windows," C. Uphoff and M. A. Crouch, AAS 91-105, Spaceflight Mechanics 1991, pp. 163-176; paper presented at the AAS/AIAA Spaceflight Mechanics Meeting held in Houston, Texas, February 11-13, 1991.

LUNEX (1961)

Soon after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, the U.S. Air Force launched "Lunar Observatory" and "Strategic Lunar System" studies. The sky no longer seemed the limit for Air Force pilots. On October 1, 1958, however, the civilian National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) opened for business and began work on Project Mercury, the U.S. project to launch a man into space. Piloted spaceflight was seen by many in government as a one-off stunt for garnering Cold War prestige. The job went to NASA mainly so that it would not interfere with more consequential Defense Department space projects, such as development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and surveillance satellites.

On April 12, 1961, the Soviet Union launched Yuri Gagarin, the first man to reach space, on board the Vostok 1 spacecraft. The new Kennedy Administration responded to this new U.S. defeat on the space frontier on May 25, 1961, by calling for an American on the moon by the end of the 1960s.

Four days later, the Air Force released its classified Lunar Expedition (LUNEX) report. It identified the four "major 'prestige' milestones" for its proposed moon program. The first manned Earth-orbital flight of the LUNEX Reentry Vehicle would occur in April 1965. The first manned circumlunar flight in September 1966 would be followed by the first manned lunar landing in August 1967. Just five months later, in January 1968, the U.S. would establish the first permanent moon base. The LUNEX program, which would cost upwards of $7.5 billion by 1971 and would employ about 70,000 people in American industry, would need approval by July 1961 in order to place the first crew on the moon in August 1967.

The three-stage Space Launching System booster rocket would be the workhorse of the LUNEX program. Barges would deliver rocket components to an elaborate seaside launch facility. The report proposed as candidate launch sites Cape Canaveral in Florida, Port Arguello in California, Corpus Christi in Texas, and stretches of the Georgia and South Carolina coasts. The Space Launching System would be capable of boosting 350,000 pounds of payload into 300-mile-high Earth orbit or 134,000 pounds directly to the moon's surface.

The LUNEX program would rely on two types of lunar lander. The automated Cargo Payload lander would comprise a Lunar Landing Stage and cargo with a mass of up to 45,000 pounds. The Cargo Payload lander would bear equipment and supplies for lunar exploration to the moon ahead of the Manned Lunar Payload lander.

The Manned Lunar Payload would comprise a Lunar Landing Stage, a Lunar Launch Stage, and a 20,205-pound LUNEX Reentry Vehicle (images above). The Manned Lunar Payload, which the Air Force report called "the largest single development objective of the LUNEX program," would measure nearly 53 feet from nose to tail and 25 feet in diameter at the bottom of the Lunar Landing Stage, where it would join to the top of the third stage of the Space Launching System. The LUNEX Reentry Vehicle was a triangular lifting body with twin tail fins, twin winglets, and a dome-shaped nose.

The LUNEX piloted mission would begin when three astronauts entered the Manned Lunar Payload. The Space Launching System would then boost the Manned Lunar Payload and crew directly to the moon with no stop in Earth orbit. Abort options during launch would include separating the LUNEX Reentry Vehicle from the malfunctioning booster and gliding to a nearby runway.

Flight to the moon would last 2.5 days. The Manned Lunar Payload would touch down near the pre-landed Cargo Payload. The conical Lunar Landing Stage would include four descent engines and four landing feet shaped like horizontal cylindrical tanks with hemispherical end caps. Abort options during descent would include blasting free of the Lunar Landing Stage using the Lunar Launch Stage, then using the single Lunar Launch Stage engine to carry out a dangerous rough landing. The crew would then abandon their wrecked Manned Lunar Payload and use a pre-landed backup Manned Lunar Payload to fly home to Earth.

Assuming a safe landing on the lunar surface, however, the Manned Lunar Payload's nose would point upward toward the black sky. The LUNEX Reentry Vehicle's aft section would include two decks providing living quarters for the crew during their stay on the moon. A hatch in the lower deck's floor would lead down through the lifting body's tail to a bell-shaped airlock in the Lunar Launch Stage. LUNEX explorers would then exit a hatch in the Lunar Launch Stage's side and clamber down a sloping ladder to the lunar surface. The first landing mission would remain on the moon for about five days.

The spent Lunar Landing Stage would serve as a launch pad when time came for the Lunar Launch Stage to blast the LUNEX Reentry Vehicle off the moon. No abort options would exist during this mission phase, so the Lunar Launch Stage would demand a high level of reliability. The Lunar Launch Stage/LUNEX Reentry Vehicle combination would fly directly back to Earth with no stop in lunar orbit. Moon-Earth transit would last 2.5 days.

The astronauts would cast off the Lunar Launch Stage just before the LUNEX Reentry Vehicle reached Earth's atmosphere. As reentry deceleration ended and gliding flight began, the pilot would eject heat shields covering the forward viewports and the nose landing wheel, deploy landing skids, and then guide the lifting body to an unpowered landing on a runway at Edwards Air Force Base, California.

The Air Force report recommended that an automated probe such as NASA's proposed Lunar Orbiter map the moon ahead of the LUNEX piloted mission. In May 1961, when the LUNEX report was completed, lunar maps included no features smaller than about 16 miles wide. It also suggested that NASA's automated Surveyor landers be used to land radio/flashing light beacons on the moon to aid LUNEX pilots, and called for an automated sample-return mission to collect a subsurface sample before lunar base design began.

Lunar Exploration Plan - LUNEX, WDLAR-S-458, Headquarters, Space Systems Division, Air Force Systems Command, May 29, 1961.

Using Columbia to begin bringing the moon to America (1996)

Assembly of NASA's first spaceworthy Space Shuttle orbiter, OV-102 Columbia (middle image above), commenced in November 1975. The 111-ton reusable winged spaceship first reached low-Earth orbit on STS-1 (April 12-14, 1981), the Space Shuttle Program's first mission. Named for the first American sailing ship to circle the globe and the Apollo 11 Command and Service Module, Columbia completed 27 successful flights.

NASA's oldest Orbiter was also its heaviest. Unlike its sisters Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavor, Columbia could not reach the 51.6° orbital inclination of the Russian Mir station and the International Space Station (ISS) with a useful payload in its 15-by-60-foot payload bay. This performance constraint meant that, in the Shuttle-Mir/ISS era, NASA increasingly relegated to Columbia its few remaining low-inclination, non-space station missions, such as Hubble Space Telescope servicing. Extended-Duration Orbiter modifications also permitted Columbia to remain in orbit for more than two weeks to serve as a science research platform, but such missions would become increasingly rare after research commenced on board ISS.

In an April 1996 paper presented at the 33rd Space Congress in Cocoa Beach, Florida, Carey McCleskey of the Vehicle Engineering Directorate at NASA's Kennedy Space Center proposed using the oldest Orbiter's excess mission capacity "to ignite a billion dollar, sustained enterprise on the Moon." Specifically, he advocated using Columbia as a joint NASA/private sector Earth-orbital launch platform for rocket stages bearing small lunar landers. Columbia would remain in space for only a few hours during each of its lunar lander deployment missions.

The landers would deliver to the moon teleoperated "micro-robots" akin to Mars Pathfinder's Sojourner rover (bottom image above). These would serve as proxy lunar explorers for paying visitors at "space theme parks" on Earth.

Confident that his proposal would help to build public support for U.S. astronauts to return to the moon, McCleskey wrote that

use of Columbia only makes sense for the start-up and initial take-off phases of the enterprise. The Shuttle system. . .will reach a limit which will drive the nation toward advanced space delivery systems. The use of the Shuttle for starting a lunar enterprise, therefore, is not the answer for space delivery, but rather our next opportunity.

Columbia lifted off at the start of STS-107, its 28th mission, on January 16, 2003. Eighty-two seconds after launch, a piece of foam insulation about 20 inches long broke free from its External Tank and struck its left wing. Engineers examining high-resolution video images of the impact warned of possible wing damage, but Shuttle management elected to disregard their warnings.

The oldest Orbiter's seven-person crew conducted wide-ranging science research for 16 days - long enough for the moon to wax from nearly full to full, then wane to last quarter and new. The crew beamed to Earth a breathtaking image of the last quarter moon taken on January 26 (top image above).

On February 1, 2003, the day of the new moon, Columbia fired its twin Orbital Maneuvering System engines to slow itself and reenter Earth's atmosphere. Temperatures on the Orbiter's belly tiles, nose cap, and wing leading edge panels began to climb as Columbia reentered at an altitude of 400,000 feet. About 40 minutes after the deorbit burn the wing leading edge temperature neared its peak value of about 3000° Fahrenheit.

As Columbia crossed the California coast in predawn darkness en route to its planned landing in Florida, hot plasma began to penetrate its internal structure through a breach in its left wing leading edge. Flight controllers in Mission Control in Houston puzzled over the cause of sensor failures in the Orbiter's left wing. The failures progressed aftward from the leading edge.

For observers on the ground in California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas, many of whom had observed pre-dawn Shuttle reentries before, Columbia was a fast-moving, brilliant point of light leaving behind a luminous, sky-spanning ionization trail. Veteran observers along Columbia's reentry path noted more than 20 unusual flashes around the Orbiter and peculiar bright streaks in the trail.

As Columbia crossed from New Mexico into Texas, it began to shed pieces. Meanwhile, thrusters fired automatically to compensate for increased drag on the left wing. Columbia did not give up without a fight.

Radio contact with Columbia was lost about 10 minutes after hot plasma first entered the left wing. Less than a minute later, the gutted wing folded over the fuselage. The oldest Orbiter disintegrated at an altitude of 203,000 feet just west of Dallas, Texas, killing its crew and raining wreckage over parts of eastern Texas and western Louisiana.

The STS-107 accident triggered far-reaching changes in the U.S. space program that have yet to play out fully. The most obvious of these was President George W. Bush's January 2004 call to end the Space Shuttle Program when ISS was completed, which at the time was scheduled for 2010. The 135th and last flight of the Shuttle, designated STS-135, concluded on July 21, 2011, with the landing of Atlantis in Florida. On August 16, 2011, Space Shuttle Program Manager John Shannon announced that the Shuttle Program would end officially on August 31, 2011.

"Using the Space Shuttle Columbia to Begin Bringing the Moon to America," Carey M. McCleskey; paper presented at the 33rd Space Congress in Cocoa Beach, Florida, April 23-26, 1996.

Who controls the moon controls the Earth (1958)

On January 28, 1958, U.S. Air Force Brigadier General Homer A. Boushey (bottom image above), Deputy Director of Air Force Research and Development, spoke before the Aero Club of Washington. The weekly news magazine U.S. News and World Report took note and published excerpts from his speech.



Boushey warned the Aero Club of dire consequences should the Soviet Union seize control of the moon. He presented his speech four months after Soviet engineers had launched 83.6-kilogram Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, three months after they had launched the dog Laika on board 508.3-kilogram Sputnik 2, and three weeks after the failure of Vanguard TV-3, the first U.S. attempt to launch a satellite.



When Boushey is described in any detail, he is often portrayed as a strangelovian Cold Warrior. He is, however, better seen as an early U.S. rocketry and spaceflight proponent. He had enrolled in Stanford University to study engineering in 1929, but the Wall Street Crash and consequent Great Depression intervened, so in 1932 he joined the Army Air Corps. During training at Randolph Field, Texas, he encountered a copy of U.S. rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard's seminal 1919 monograph A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes.



Goddard had launched the world's first liquid-propellant rocket, named "Nell," on March 16, 1926, in Auburn, Massachusetts. He received funding support for his rocket experiments from the Smithsonian Institution, which published his monograph, and from the wealthy Guggenheim family. The latter's support enabled Goddard to move his experiments to the wide-open spaces of New Mexico in 1930.



Boushey completed his aeronautical engineering degree at Stanford in 1936, and joined the Aircraft Laboratory at Wright Field in Ohio. While there, he corresponded with and visited Goddard. The two men became fast friends: Goddard would be godparent of one of Boushey's daughters.



On August 23, 1941, at Goddard's firing range outside Roswell, Boushey became the first person to pilot a rocket-propelled aircraft. Twelve 50-pound-thrust solid-propellant rocket motors boosted into the air a one-seater civilian Ercoupe airplane with its propeller removed, amply demonstrating the benefits of rocket-assisted take-offs.



During the Second World War, Boushey commanded the first U.S. jet-powered fighter group. In the days after the war's end, he flew over Hiroshima, allowing him to observe first-hand the devastation atomic weapons could cause.



In his January 1958 talk, Boushey acknowledged that there existed in the nascent U.S. space community "divided opinion as to whether or not a manned or unmanned moon base has any military significance." He then presented arguments in favor of a military lunar base.



The moon, he explained, is 239,000 miles away, a distance a rocket might cross in about two days. Boushey noted that the moon is a synchronous rotator, which means that it keeps the same face turned always toward Earth. Telescopes on the moon's Earth-facing Nearside could thus monitor military activities on the revolving Earth as they passed in and out of view. Boushey estimated that objects as small as 100 feet wide might be visible. Conversely, the Farside hemisphere is always turned away from Earth. Boushey believed that this would make it an ideal location for the conduct of secret military operations beyond the gaze of prying eyes in Russia.



Earth's moon, Boushey declared, could also provide "a retaliation base of unequaled advantage." If the U.S. gained control of the moon, then the Soviets would be unable to attack the United States without suffering "sure and massive destruction." They could either attack the U.S. first and endure a counter-strike from the moon about 48 hours later, or they could launch missiles at the moon first. The U.S. military lunar base would, of course, immediately detect the light and heat of the Soviet missiles' rocket exhaust and retaliate.



Boushey then spoke what are probably the most famous words in his speech: that "[i]t has been said that 'he who controls the moon controls the earth.' Our planners must carefully evaluate this statement for, if true - and I, for one, think it is - then the U.S. must control the moon."



The excerpts from Boushey's speech in U.S. News & World Report contained no overt mention of the possibility that U.S. missiles might be launched from the moon preemptively: that is, that the U.S. moon base might be used to destroy the Soviet Union with little risk of retaliation. Boushey did, however, describe attributes of the moon that could make a preemptive attack feasible. The moon's weak gravitational pull, coupled with its lack of an atmosphere, would permit missiles to be "catapulted" from their siloes, thereby avoiding use of rocket motors. Hiding the siloes on the Farside would further increase the odds that a U.S. attack would go unnoticed until warheads entered Earth's atmosphere over Soviet territory.



Building and maintaining the U.S. military lunar base would not, Boushey maintained, have to break the bank. He assumed that the moon would be found to be made of the same elements as the Earth, so that the "possibilities of construction and creation of an artificial environment [would be] virtually unlimited." Electricity from solar panels made on the moon could be stored using massive lunar-made flywheels which, once spun up by moon-made electric motors, could spin for weeks in the absence of atmospheric friction. By using the flywheels to turn the electric motors, the latter could become generators for supplying the base with electricity during the two-week lunar night.



Boushey ended his speech by offering an alternative to lunar militarization. He pointed out that on "January 16 [1958] Secretary [of State John Foster] Dulles proposed the formation of an international commission to insure (sic) the use of outer space exclusively for peaceful purposes, and if the Soviet premier is sincere in decrying the production of ever-more-powerful weapons he will jump at the chance. In 10 years," he added, "the opportunity of jointly imposing control may have been lost."



Almost exactly nine years after Boushey delivered his speech, on January 27, 1967, the U.S., Soviet Union, and United Kingdom signed the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies. The following October, they called upon other nations of the world to sign and ratify what had become known as The Outer Space Treaty. Among other far-reaching provisions, it required that the moon not be put to any military purpose. The Outer Space Treaty became the rock upon which the body of international space law is built.



By the time The Outer Space Treaty took effect, Boushey had been retired from the Air Force for six years. He had ended his career at age 52 in July 1961 as Commander of the Air Force Arnold Engineering Development Center in Tennessee. By that time, President Dwight Eisenhower had passed over the military in favor of civilian U.S. space exploration under the aegis of NASA. Despite military support for NASA programs and some brave starts, such as the Dynasoar spaceplane and the Manned Orbiting Laboratory project, U.S. military spaceflight would be limited mainly to unmanned surveillance satellites until the Space Shuttle era.



Soon after his retirement, Boushey became an outspoken critic of the escalating war in Indochina. Despite this, President Richard Nixon recognized his key role in U.S. astronautics by inviting him to the "Astronaut's Dinner" held at the White House to celebrate the July 1969 triumph of Apollo 11, the first manned moon landing.



In 1982, while the Administration of President Ronald Reagan called for expansion and modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal, Boushey co-sponsored California's Nuclear Freeze ballot initiative, which passed overwhelmingly. In 1985, he joined other retired U.S. military officers in Moscow to draft an agenda for nuclear arms control. He cited his 1945 flight over Hiroshima when he declared that political leaders did not adequately grasp the destructive power of nuclear weapons. The man who had spoken out for a U.S. military moon base in 1958 spoke out against nuclear weapons to the end of his days. Boushey died in 2000 on Christmas Day at the age of 91.

"Who Controls the Moon Controls the Earth," Homer A. Boushey, U.S. News & World Report, February 7, 1958, p. 54.



"Gen. Homer Boushey dies; he was a pioneer in rocket-powered aircraft," The Almanac, January 3, 2000 (accessed 8/17/11).



"Homer A. Boushey," Keay Davidson, SFGate.com, January 6, 2000 (accessed 8/17/11).

The Cow jumped over the moon (1957)

In June 1957, launch of the U.S. Vanguard 1 satellite (bottom image above) was thought imminent. That month, Krafft Ehricke and George Gamow wrote in Scientific American magazine that, after the artificial satellite reached orbit, "the next interesting target in space" was the moon. They estimated that, with "luck and sufficient effort," an automated probe could reach the moon by 1963.

Ehricke and Gamow proposed a design for such a probe, which they dubbed "Cow" in tribute to the moon-jumping nursery rhyme character. Cow would have a mass of between 400 and 800 pounds. A 100-foot-tall, 120-ton rocket would boost it to a speed of 23,827 miles per hour on a path toward the moon. If the Earth existed in isolation, Cow would then enter an elliptical orbit around the Earth taking it 280,000 miles out into space - that is, about 40,000 miles beyond the moon. The gravitational attraction of the moon and Sun meant, however, that Cow would follow a "distorted" path to a point 1281 miles from the moon 75.6 hours after launch. The probe would then swing around the moon, collecting data all the while, and fall back to Earth.

Cow would strike Earth's atmosphere moving at 25,000 miles per hour 157 hours after launch. Though high-speed reentry would drive Cow's skin temperature to 5000° Centigrade, Ehricke and Gamow maintained that "preventing the capsule from burning up by means of insulation and a cooling system" would not be "technically prohibitive." This would enable recovery of photographic film and recorded data.

Ehricke and Gamow then proposed a follow-on lunar sample-collection mission that would employ two probes launched on a "Cow-type" trajectory. The lead probe would drop an atomic bomb on the moon, blasting a debris cloud far into space; then, through "a miracle of electronic guidance," the trailing probe would "dive into the cloud, collect some of the spray and emerge from its dive by means of an auxiliary jet." It would then fall to Earth for recovery.



On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first Earth satellite. Vanguard exploded on its launch pad on December 6, 1957, so the U.S. Army's Explorer 1 became the first U.S. Earth satellite (January 31, 1958). Soon after, both the U.S. and U.S.S.R. began to launch probes toward the moon (see link below). The Soviet Luna 2 spacecraft became the first human-made object to strike the moon on September 13, 1959, and Luna 3 imaged the moon's hidden Farside on October 6, 1959. No spacecraft would fly Ehricke and Gamow's Cow-type trajectory until the Soviet Zond 5 (an unmanned test of a manned circumlunar spacecraft) in September 1967, and none would return samples of lunar surface material until the first manned moon landing (Apollo 11, July 16-24, 1969).

A Rocket Around the Moon, K. Ehricke and G. Gamow, Scientific American, Volume 196, Number 6, June 1957, pp. 47-53.



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