Outer Space Weapons Testing........An Introduction to Apollo's Role....
This thread, "LOST BIRD PROVES APOLLO INAUTHENTICITY", is about to get very scary, incredibly scary, scary beyond belief. That said, 7 months ago, when I first began my Apollo studies, I promised myself I would countenance my own fears and follow this hellishly disturbing thing wherever it might lead. And indeed, the Apollo story, the true Apollo story, has lead to one frightening revelation after another. How can anyone say that he or she is not scared to death in a sense by virtue of one's having learned that the American Manned Space Program was a cover by and large for American military programs, and most specifically, was a cover for some aspects of the American ballistic missile programs(ICBM, SLBM, not to mention others)?
Prior to April 22nd 2011, I personally had no such idea that this is what Apollo and the American Manned Space Program was about in general. Me naive? You betcha'. When I was seventeen years old and a freshman at UC Berkeley(1975), my roommate and I had a poster of the Apollo 12 Command Module's main control panel hanging over our funky living room couch. Looking back, it's easy to understand why we had the thing hanging there and were sort of semi proud of it all, proud of Apollo and our connection to it. We were Americans, not to mention students of the physical sciences. We were attending a major university, one known for outrageous excellence in its physics and math departments no less. Oh well……My views have changed, and my pride has turned to fear, healthy fear it is at least.
Brace yourselves. If what I have written so far has not scared you, the substance of this post surely will. I'll be introducing the subject of the American Manned Space Program's involvement in weapons testing. Up until now, I have focused on Apollo as a program of weapons deployment. For example, the LRRR placed on the lunar surface is a weapon, and is/was a weapon deployed by NASA and the American military in the context of the "Apollo 11 Mission". One may cite the LRRR's deployment as a weapons system deployment given the LRRR's role in determining empirically and with the greatest accuracy the strength of the earth's gravitational field and how that field varies from place to place on the earth's surface and how the earth's gravitational field varies over time as well. Next to having a good latitude and longitude fix on one's launch site and target site, earth gravitational field measurements are the most important datums in programming an ICBM or SLBM for successful targeting. One cannot calculate an accurate ephemeris/trajectory for an ICBM/SLBM without knowing in the greatest of detail the point to point strength of the earth's gravitational field. The planet earth's field was mapped with great precision beginning in the late 1960s and into the 70s and beyond thanks to the LRRR experiments. As such, the LRRR is a weapon. In this post however, I'll focus on the American Space Program's role not in deployment of weapons, but rather, in the testing of already exigent killing systems.
And so temporarily, I shall leave the subject of weapons deployment to begin a new topic, weapons testing with respect to that testing occurring under the guise of peaceful American Manned Space Programs; Mercury/Gemini/Apollo/Shuttle and so forth. I will primarily be discussing how the American Manned Space Programs were covers for the testing of our thermonuclear weapon delivery systems and the weapons/warheads themselves. This is why I stated earlier that this was about to get very scary.
I have read some dozen and a half books on the subject, 11 monographs, 313 archived newspaper articles, and have now viewed 39 hours of video on the subject since I began looking into this aspect of NASA's programs. To keep the thing simple, at least for starters, I will use just 2 references for this particular post. This way, my claims can easily be verified by those curious enough to check them out. Having access to NY Times Newspaper archives or monographs written on rocket performance and so forth won't be necessary. If you want to check on my fundamental claims, I'll make it easy so there is no question at least with regard to the claims' general nature. Of course all are entitled to disagree with the history of missiles as presented by the authors I shall be quoting presently.
I believe I have already introduced "INVENTING ACCURACY (A HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY OF NUCLEAR MISSILE GUIDANCE)" by Donald MacKenzie(MIT Press 1990). Fabulous book and the most comprehensive generally on the history of ballistic missile weapons' guidance. I am also generally impressed with "EVOLUTION OF THE SEA-BASED NUCLEAR MISSILE DETERRENT by George J. Refuto(Xlibris Corporation 2011). I'll be using these books for the most part to provide historical facts. I will not borrow from these authors with respect to their analyses however. Any analytical comments here shall be my own.
I shall demonstrate rather easily that the American Manned Space Program had to have functioned in the Apollo era, and functions presently, functions TODAY, in the capacity of a program with its primary role that of seeing to it our nuclear weapons, and in particular our ballistic missiles, function as they are supposed to. That is, in such a way that were one launched from the middle of America or the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the missile would climb from the earth to the cold of space, have the reentry vehicle with warhead pass back through the atmosphere, and in the process of so passing through the thick atmosphere, be exposed to extremes of heat, and then finally, ultimately, find say Moscow with a resounding BOOM and ORANGE GLOW.
In Chapter 7 of MacKenzie's book, a chapter entitled, "THE CONSTRUCTION OF TECHNICAL FACTS". MacKenzie seeks to answer among other questions the ever so salient, "Will Nuclear Missiles Work?" As surprising as this may sound, people in the 1960s, weapons experts no less, not to mention a thoughtful politician or two, had good reasons to doubt whether it was in fact the case that our ICBMs/SLBMs worked, or at least some people had good reason to doubt that our strategic missile would not work as well as we would hope if need be, as well as advertised.
In 1961 the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee formulated the following very reasonable question;
Who knows whether an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead will actually work? Each of the constituent elements has been tested, it is true. Each of them, however, has not been tested under circumstances which would be attendant upon the firing of such a missile in anger. By this the committee means an an intercontinental ballistic missile will carry its nuclear warhead to great heights, subjecting it to intense cold. It will then arch down and upon reentering the the earth's atmosphere subject the nuclear warhead to intense heat. Who knows what will happen to the many delicate mechanisms involved in the nuclear warhead as it is subjected to these two extremes of temperature."
A fairly thought provoking question is it not? Especially when one starts to consider the delicate gyros of the guidance system and accelerometers, and the MIRV bus, an idea evolving later in the decade, and later still, the mechanisms that functioned in the capacity to guide the reentry vehicles, and the nuke itself. To see if the thing really works, one must test it all at once, fire a live missile with a detonating warhead actually going off where it is supposed to go off, and in so doing validate the missile's performance in the only way such a performance could ever be validated. But one cannot just go off and shoot an ICBM at something. You can't even impulsively go off and target some "who cares about it after all" remote Pacific island and blow the island up.
Late 50s early 60s testing had for the most part amounted to detonating nukes from towers, fixed positions or from airplane drops. Missiles were tested over and over, but these missiles were tested without warheads. The Armed Services Committee wanted the military guys to PROVE THE THINGS ACTUALLY WORKED. Dropping a warhead from a plane and then detonating it, following up on that with the launching of said warhead's vehicle at an island in the Pacific and hitting the island WITHOUT the warhead, is decidedly not very convincing. You've got to put a bomb on the top of the stick and shoot the thing through space and see if it blows up where you had hoped it would blow up. A lot easier said than done for many reasons.
The American Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to fire live missiles, for this they needed presidential authority as missiles would be launched from and/or fly by population centers. The Kennedy Administration would NOT authorize such testing. Figuring that if they killed some Pacific Islanders testing a missile no one would much care, not here in the states anyway, the U.S.S. Ethan Allen on 6 May 1962 fired a live Polaris 1,200 miles at Christmas Island and blew the thing up, well blew up part of the island anyway. This test was known as, "OPERATION FRIGATE BIRD", and many claimed, "What more do you want? The missile flew 1,200 miles and hit the island dead on. The warhead exploded and so forth". But 1,200 miles is NOT 3,000. Also, the warhead used, the W47 proved to be very unreliable, only one quarter to one half of these warheads were found over time to detonate. As such, some claimed this test, OPERATION FRIGATE BIRD, was a "lucky fluke".
Air Force Chief off Staff , "Bombs Away" Curtis LeMay, told the Defense Appropriation Subcommittee of the House of Representatives that, "we have only had one test, it was not under fully operational conditions, we fired one Polaris out in the Pacific with a warhead on it. It was not truly operational. It was modified to some extent for the test". A long ways off from a ringing endorsement by our boy LeMay. Are you going to war with this test backing you up? No, the test hardly inspires confidence given its limitations and given the huge investment we had made in ballistic missile nukes and given the fact that we were investing more and more each day. We had to be sure these things worked and worked well. We had too much invested in all this to hope that things would go well based on individual component testing, especially given the testing was terrestrial, not done with live missiles that found space and then gave it up again to return running so hot to the earth.
Goldwater jumped all over this and when he ran against Johnson in 1964 for the presidency he said, "I have raised and will continue to raise until all the facts are in, fundamental questions about the credibility of our intercontinental ballistic missiles. It is not a question of theoretical accuracy. the fact is that not one of our advanced ICBMs has ever been subjected to a full test (of all component systems, including warheads) under simulated battle conditions".
But how in the world could one figure out if a missile might/could/should/would work? The Kennedy/Johnson Administration had committed the US to the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty. THERE WERE TO BE NO ATMOSPHERIC, UNDERWATER OR OUTER SPACE TESTS PERIOD!!!!
Goldwater rather eloquently , not to mention with good reason as well, hit hard with the following statement, "We are building a Maginot Line of missiles".
Some said that post test ban there then existed this paradoxical decline in the ICBM credibility challenge precisely because after the test ban treaty was signed, one simply could not fire a live missile and have its warhead detonate at the end of the missile's run. That said, the People's Republic of China were said to have performed a successful live ICBM test in 1966 and then again in 1976. The Ruskies were said to have pulled off a successful live missile test in 1963. But come on now, really….we are sinking millions of bucks into this stuff and we have got one OPERATION FRIGATE BIRD 1,200 mile shot at Christmas Island, 2 Chinese shots and a Ruskie shot to convince us we are ready to go come that big scary day? I do not think so and of course military people are the last to think like this. Most readers by now can see where this thing is heading. Is it not obvious?, but let's continue with some more background.
As time went on, the reentry vehicles became guided, first by way of rather simple mechanical mechanisms and then later by much more sophisticated systems. MIRVs developed and a MIRV carrying bus would have to cruise about in the cold of space launching one reentry vehicle after another on its way across our enemies' terrain.
Is one going to leave ICBM/SLBM reliability to chance, a warhead freezing its tail off in the cold of supra-atmospheric space only to heat up to unimaginably hot temps on the way back in? Of course not. Even the direction of rocket launch would be an issue. Essentially all "publicly" acknowledge missile tests are from our west coast out over the Pacific. What happens if we launch toward the north? How about East? The earth's gravitational field is DIFFERENT under these different launch conditions/directions. Do we have it down? Is our model good? The only way to figure out how a live Atlas is going to perform when launched from the US toward the east and north, toward the Soviet Union, is to launch a LIVE Atlas East and North toward Moscow say in the Soviet Union.
With test bans in place, the military cannot do do this, launch a live/near live warhead and see what happens to it on reentry. They are "watched" to carefully and so they need to perform occult tests of their missiles and warheads under the guise of the American Manned Space Program(s). The "NASA clowns", the very few inside NASA, inside the know, were well aware that they could not detonate warheads in space. But they could get a test, a good one to see how the military stuff worked.
Getting the hang of this, are you?! YES! THAT IS CORRECT! One simply would pretend as though one's manned flights were peaceful. Instead, one might perhaps pretend guys were on board but instead have a nuke on board. Let the thing float back in through the earth's atmosphere and now you can see what happened to this warhead as it passed through the atmosphere. THIS OF COURSE IS ESSENTIAL INFORMATION. Did everything work out OK? Do your MIRVs work, the bus that carries them and on and on and on and on. The only way to test this stuff is to test it in space(no actual detonations of course, but short of that everything goes) under the guise of Mercury/Gemini/Apollo. This does not mean that all of these missions were unmanned. It does mean that every mission was in some sense to some greater or lesser degree about testing our strategic war making equipment, not to mention planting some equipment on the moon as was the case with the LRRR and other interesting items such as planting LMs retrofitted to do more than taxi phony astronauts around.
This was a lot to take in for the uninitiated and so I'll leave it there for now. One may conclude with utter certainty that American nuclear weapons work and reliably so. As they could not be tested openly due to the test ban treaties, they were and continue to be tested under the guise of the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo/Shuttle/New NASA Programs and forever more unless we can put an end to this nonsense by way of heightening public awareness and concern.
I am not kidding, write to your Congresspersons today about your outrage over the weaponization of space.
