The Practical Values of Space Exploration | Page 6

perfected and will continue to be perfected until they are banned.[10]
While it is difficult to assess the actual extent of the Soviet preoccupation with missiles, it has been reported that the Russians are building upward of 100 IRBM and ICBM bases to be manned by about 200,000 men. Most of these, at least the intermediate range bases, are said to be along Russia's Baltic coast, in East Germany, in the southern Ukraine and in the Carpathian Mountains.[11]
In any event, the space age is clearly "here" so far as the military are concerned, and U.S. forces--particularly since the development of the much lighter atomic warheads--have been likewise diligent in their space efforts. This is because many military minds are now agreed that:
We are moving inevitably into a time of astropower. We face a threat beyond imagination, should events ever lead to open conflict in a world of hypersonic velocities and a raging atom chained as our slave. We must be strong, we must be able to change to meet change. What may come against our beloved America will not be signaled by one light from the North Church steeple, if they come by land, or two, if they come by sea. Never again. They will come through space, and their light of warning will be the blinding terror of a thermonuclear fireball.[12]
It is important to note, in connection with military matters, that pure rocket power, is not the only avenue to success in space use. The American Atlas missile, for example, which can carry a nuclear warhead and which operates on considerably less thrust than the powerful Soviet boosters thus far demonstrated, has nevertheless shown the capability of negotiating a 9,000-mile trek and landing in the target area. This is about 1,500 miles farther than any Soviet shots revealed to the public in the 2-1/2-year period following the first sputnik. It is also a sufficient range to permit reaching almost any likely target on the globe.
From the military point of view, the meaning thus brought out is that sophistication of missiles together with reliability and ease of handling is more important than pure power.
When we begin to consider both the civil and military aspects of space use in the decades ahead, however, rocket power acquires fresh importance. It is, as one expert says, "the key to space supremacy."[13] Not only is much heavier thrust required for ventures farther out into space, but probably thrust developed by different means as well, such as atom, ion, or even photon power.
This suggests the possibilities of weapons which today are considered to be "way out" or "blue sky"--in short, farfetched. Yet they include the ideas of men with solid scientific training as well as vision. For example, Germany's great rocket pioneer, Prof. Hermann Oberth, "has proposed that a giant mirror in space (some 60 miles in diameter) could be used militarily to burn an enemy country on Earth. For peaceful purposes, however, such a space mirror could be used to melt icebergs and alter temperatures."[14] Another reputable German scientist who has been working for a number of years on photon (electromagnetic ray) power as a source of propulsion, declares that if such power is possible so is "the idea of a 'death ray,' a weapon beam which burns or melts targets, such as enemy missiles, on which it is trained. The idea has been familiar in science fiction for a long time and has been scorned often enough. Yet, if the photon rocket is possible so is the ray gun."[15]
Still another proposal, one made to the Congress, involves use of the Moon as a military base. "It could, at some future date, be used as a secure base to deter aggression. Lunar launching sites, perhaps located on the far side of the Moon, which could never be viewed directly from the Earth, could launch missiles earthward. They could be guided accurately during flight and to impact, and thus might serve peaceful ends by deterring any would-be aggressor."[16]
In spite of the fact that ideas such as these are being sponsored by competent and responsible scientists, other scientists equally competent and responsible sometimes cry them down as impractical, impossible or even childish. One engineer, for instance, describes maneuverable manned space vehicles as having "no military value," bases on the Moon as having no military or communications use, and the idea of high velocity photon-power for space travel as "a fantasy strictly for immature science fiction." He also characterizes the reconnaissance satellite, which U.S. military authorities have long since programmed and even launched, as being "definitely submarginal * * *. A fraction of the cost of a reconnaissance satellite could accomplish wonders in conventional information gathering."[17]
Controversies such as these are difficult for the person who is neither a scientist nor a military expert to judge. One is inclined