After WW2, where did the idea of going to the moon came from?
In: 233
USSR went to space in 1957, and the first human object on moon in 1959 with Luna 2, and thus established they had advanced ICBM technology and could park a bomb in your backyard before you knew one was on the way, the US in turn to make their program seem more peaceful (to sell it to their war weary people) vowed to put a human on the moon for all humanity as opposed to just a
When really they were just trying to catch up with USSR Nuclear delivery technology and it had really nothing about getting to the moon.
NASA was basically non-existant when Russia did their thing and the US needed to massively sway public opinion to do so, and nothing Americans love more then winning competitions.
Space programs in both USSR and the US were more about developing ability to deploy the recent Hydrogen Nuclear Weapon anywhere on the planet then they were about actually doing anything in space. But were sold as scientific for the between of humanity…when really they were developing our doom.
Hence why by the earlier 70s neither country gave a shit about the moon, and attention turned to establishing space bases where “anything” could happen. a race Ussr won as MIR was capable of being a nuclear platform with at the time “hypersonic” balistics and persisted for like 30 years, while the US answer Skylab was a failure (meant to do the same).
Interestingly, going to the moon was NEVER popular with the average American. I have an old book “[The Case for Going to the Moon](https://www.amazon.com/Case-Going-Moon-Neil-Ruzic/dp/B0007DVXVU)” that.. makes the case for.. going to the moon.
It cites that polls of the time show people preferred to use tax money to help citizens and not on rockets. Not even a majority of scientists thought it was a good use of money. This is treated as a problem in the book, but is it?
NASA today feels almost like a secular religion in the US, but isn’t it unethical for elites to disregard citizen’s wishes like that? Maybe they should crowdfund NASA if they can’t convince people… Same goes for military spending IMHO…
Partly from science fiction such as Jules Verne, and directly influenced by Jack Parsons, a science fiction fan, who became a rocket fuel chemist in the 40’s and 50’s, co-founded the Jet Propulsion Lab, and was also a full blown Occultist.
Russians already beat US to most of the important space records, so US went big, really big.
Logical test as rocket technology was being developed rapidly. All extensions of the Nazi V2 program.
People started trying to figure out how to do it long before WWII. The ancient Greeks figured out that the moon was a distinct object that orbited the Earth, and a Syrian-Greek poet living in the Roman Empire 2000 years ago wrote a sci fi story about a ship traveling to the moon via a powerful water jet.
The Nazis were working on it and had made great strides in the rocket technology needed to do so. After the war, a lot of Nazi rocket scientists defected to the West or the USSR (likely in exchange for their freedom and/or lives).
Both the US and the Soviets prioritized rocket research alongside nuclear weapons, and a space race was a great way to boost public support for said research; most people get more excited about adventure and exploration than they do about the prospect of blowing up the planet they live on.
If you can make a rocket that can fly with such precision that you can land a person on the moon and then fly them back to Earth unharmed, then you can also make one precise enough to deliver a nuclear warhead to any specific location you want on Earth, so both governments stand to gain a huge strategic advantage from this research.
Latest Answers