Re: Military service and the astronaut Corps

From: Stuf4 (tdadamemd-spamblock-_at_excite.com)
Date: 06/16/04 

Date: 15 Jun 2004 22:45:12 -0700

>From Ami:
> "Stuf4" <tdadamemd-spamblock-@excite.com> wrote
> > From Ami Silberman:
> > > "Stuf4" <tdadamemd-spamblock-@excite.com> wrote

> > NASA was created as a civilian agency. Its nature was national
> > defense. They owned and operated lots of ICBM boosters. There are
> > hundreds of indicators that have been presented to this forum. The
> > single most direct that I know of is from the private words of JFK
> > where he stated point blank that the sole justification for funding
> > Apollo was because of the "defense implications".
> >
> > For whatever reason you snipped that reference without comment.

> It was irrelevent. The federal highway system was originally funded for its
> defense implications, but that doesn't make it a military road, nor
> toll-collectors on toll portions of it military personel.

We are in agreement that NASA was not a military agency. But unlike
your highway analogy, notice that NASA *did* have many military
personnel.

> And NASA did not
> own or operate a single ICBM booster. They owned and operated boosters which
> had been developed as boosters for ICBMs, but were modified for manned and
> unmanned space missions.

Both the weaponized ICBM and the Mercury booster carried the exact
same Air Force designation:

Atlas-D.

NASA ordered the Atlas and the Titan boosters straight from the Air
Force, not the contractors. I don't know what Atlas modifications you
are referring to, but in the case of the Titan, minor modifications
(for pogo suppression, etc) could actually be used by the Air Force as
improvements to future versions of the ICBM.

(And to avoid an extremely narrow focus, I'll point out that ICBM
refers to a ballistic missile that has intercontinental range. The
Air Force put nukes on top. NASA put astronauts there.)

> I'm sure that civilian agencies used plenty of
> Jeeps, which were originally military vehicles. That doesn't mean that those
> agencies were militarized.

I consider it to be a plain fact that NASA was militarized. Military
pilots flying on top of military rockets. Those boosters even had Air
Force serial numbers.

The plan to launch test pilots into space atop Redstone rockets and
Atlas rockets existed before NASA ever came into existence. They were
Army and Air Force programs. NASA simply took over.

> NASA was an important part of the cold war, which, broadly speaking, was
> about defending the American way of life. Not everything involved in doing
> so was military. NASA utilized experienced military personel, rented space
> from the Air Force, and used equipment developed originally for the
> military. They did not, however, participate in deterence, force projection,
> nor (until the shuttle) military development.

No? You might be interested in looking at this Vintage NORAD
Slideshow that was posted to the forum a couple of years ago. I'll
cut straight to a two slide sequence:

http://www.pinetreeline.org/slides/slide12.html
http://www.pinetreeline.org/slides/slide13.html

The first slide is of nuclear annihilation of America. The second
slide shows the orbital groundtracks of Vostok 3 and 4. The message
is crystal clear:

Launches of ICBMs with human payloads communicates nuclear destructive
capability (as Sputnik did years before).

> They even handed off
> development of MOL to the Air Force. The military role of NASA (as opposed
> to the role of the military in NASA) was primarily as a technology
> demonstrator. It showed that the US had the technological superiority over
> the Soviet Union, and did so in an open manner. It had the military
> implications that if space were to become directly militarized, the US would
> be in a better position than the Soviets to do so.

I agree with that.

> > Take a look at those pictures of astronauts standing on the Moon
> > saluting the flag. They are doing so out of habit, because they are
> > active duty military personnel.
> >
> (http://images.google.com/images?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=apol
> lo+salute)

> This is never mentioned in the Apollo Surface Journal. Do you have a
> citation for anyone stating that the salute was done out of habit? IIRC, at
> least one astronaut said that he did so because it seemed the correct thing
> to do. Remember, this was a time when patriotism was expressed quite openly.

My point was that military personnel are habitually trained to salute.
 I don't see it as a controversial statement (if you want, you can put
the two together and surmise that it "seemed the correct thing to do"
because of the habit).

> > I have never seen a single photo of any non-military astronaut
> > saluting the flag on the Moon. I am guessing that they considered it
> > improper for a civilian to do that.

> Well, the civilians could hardly hold their hats over their hearts, could
> they...

Not for very long, at least.

> I think that deciding whether to salute the flag or not was a personal
> decision. I'm waiting for Fox to release the Apollo 17 DVD, when I get it
> I'll figure out if Schmidt saluted the flag. Tonight I'll check to see if
> Armstrong did. I'm even having difficulty figuring out whether all (or most)
> of the military astronauts saluted the flag, or just paused to look at it
> respectfully (like Aldrin appears to have done, although he did salute
> President Nixon).
>
> > * Anyone who maintains that NASA is non-military has completely missed
> > the very essence of NASA. *
> >
> > It was about national defense in 1958. It is still about national
> > defense today. Eisenhower created it to consolidate key military
> > space programs. JFK hammers the point that it was funded as a defense
> > program. Reagan repeats that theme in his 1982 space policy.

> Anything more recent? It was about national defense (satellite recon) in the
> late 50s. It was about technology demonstration and possible defense
> applications in JFKs day (but it was not funded by the DoD.) Reagan was
> pushing the shuttle as a vital carrier for military payloads, including SDI.

Those are three solid points. More recent? It all seemed downhill
from Reagan. But if we look hard enough, I'm sure we'd find
something.

> It was never the essence of the planetary science portion of NASA, and it is
> very arguable whether the manned program was more than part-time dedicated
> to defense needs. As an artifact of history (the cold war), NASA was
> originally staffed with many active duty defense people, and people who had
> worked for the services, because they had the experience, and the security
> clearances. (Just because something is civilian doesn't mean that it doesn't
> require security.)

Security clearances aren't all that hard to get for people who walk in
off the street. Even Bill Clinton can get one! I've never taken much
stock in that explanation for why test pilots were chosen.

> > If you want to know why today NASA is dying, it is because it is no
> > longer needed in this defense role. The threat has changed. As Ike
> > melded the NACA with DoD to meet the threat in 1958, we may see Bush
> > decide to meld the FAA with DoD to meet the threats of today. That's
> > what the Department of Homeland Security reorg was all about. It is
> > "today's NASA". 9-11 is "today's Sputnik".

> NACA became part of the DoD? That's news to me. There are a lot of
> agreements between the DoD and NASA, but that doesn't mean NASA is part of
> the DoD. Where in
> http://www.defenselink.mil/odam/omp/pubs/GuideBook/Pdf/DoD.PDF, which is the
> organization of the DoD, is NASA? It's not a command, an agency, anywhere.

In an attempt to clear up this disconnect, I'll go back and be more
explicit:

"Ike melded the NACA to *parts* of DoD..."

(Take the case of JPL and Redstone getting broken away from the Army
and absorbed by NASA as two examples.)

> > Is anyone still confused? I'll defer to LaDonna's excellent statement
> > that this whole subthread sprouted off of:
> >
> > "...surely with the news coverage of the
> > past week you have heard of the "Cold War?" What do you think the
> > race to the Moon was all about?"

> That still doesn't make everything involved with the Cold War part of the
> defense establishment, the military, or the DoD.

What happened is that there was so much focus on the cheerleader
aspects of the space program, the public lost sight of it's primary
reason for being funded. If a poll taken today were to state- Check
off the following agencies that were part of the Cold War defense
establishment:

__ Air Force
__ Atomic Energy Commission
__ Navy
__ NASA
__ Army
__ CIA

...I expect that the vast majority would not include NASA.

I would even guess that several of the moonwalkers themselves got so
wrapped up into the PR aspects that they lost contact with the sole
justification that JFK had to remind Jim Webb about.

A question that I would be very intrigued to hear them field is, "What
connection do you see between Apollo and the nuclear arms race?"

~ CT

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Military service and the astronaut Corps
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  • Re: Military service and the astronaut Corps
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