Re: Military service and the astronaut Corps

From: Stuf4 (tdadamemd-spamblock-_at_excite.com)
Date: 06/17/04 

Date: 16 Jun 2004 21:37:45 -0700

>From Ami:

> > We are in agreement that NASA was not a military agency. But unlike
> > your highway analogy, notice that NASA *did* have many military
> > personnel.
>
> We are? I was pretty sure that you were arguing otherwise.

Clearly, NASA was created as a civilian agency. It was civilian in
1958. It is civilian today.

The view I have been presenting is that NASA's mission of human
spaceflight had, primarily, a military purpose critical to national
defense.

Civilian government agencies could be split into two groups: those
that had national defense roles, and those that didn't. At the top of
the non-defense list, you'd find:

- The National Endowment for the Arts.
- ...

At the top of the other list, you'd find:

- NASA
- AEC
- CIA
- ...

And while NASA is a civilian agency, I would not apply the adjective
"non-military" because the military was so heavily involved in NASA.

(I hope this clarifies my position.)

> > > 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.
>
> But there were differences between the two versions.
> http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/launch/atlas.htm says that the
> man-rated ones were the Atlas LV-3B variant, which was the first operational
> version of the Atlas ICBM, but in 1960 the AF moved to the CGM-16D model.

Here is a website that shows the sequence of 1958 serial numbers of
Atlas boosters:

http://home.att.net/~jbaugher/1958.html

Notice that NASA launches are sandwiched between military ICBM
launches:
...
[ICBM] 7080 (85D) launched Nike Target 21 Dec 20, 1965, Vandenberg
AFB, CA
[ICBM] 7081 (86D) launched Nike Target 23 Feb 11, 1966, Vandenberg
AFB, CA
[ICBM] 7082 (87D) launched Aug 9, 1962, Vandenberg AFB, CA
[NASA] 7083 (88D) used to launch Mercury Atlas MA-4. First successful
orbital
            flight by Mercury capsule Sep 13, 1961. One orbit of
duration
            1 hr 49 min 20 sec. Capsule recovered.
[ICBM] 7084 (89D) launched OV1-9/10 Dec 11, 1966, Vandenberg AFB, CA
...
__________

> http://www.simnasa.org/mercury/launch_vehicles.html says that "Extensive
> redesign of several systems was needed in order to "man rate" this missile".

Compare to this statement on that other site you provided:
"The design of the basic Atlas has changed very little over the
years."

(That is referring to NASA as well as Air Force launches.)

> > 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.
>
> Sure, were they? I'm not saying that there wasn't a very close
> co-development cycle on the Atlas and the Titan II, but that co-development
> cycle was broken for the Saturn and various Delta, Centaur etc. planetary
> probe launchers.

The impression I have gotten is that the Air Force was generally
opposed to independent NASA development.

> > > 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.
> >
> Sure, but I don't think that "militarized" means what you think it does. It
> means "taken over by the military", or "issued arms". If anything, NASA
> "civilianized" military officers by including them in a civilian agency.

I was saying that NASA took over military programs for human
spaceflight. NASA could have done their own, starting from scratch.
They didn't. The Mercury 7 could have been seven civilians. They
weren't.

And the fact that astronauts were given *military promotion in rank*
for flying a space mission goes directly against your notion of having
civilianized them.

> > > 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).
>
> Yes, true. I am more or less in agreement with you that the initial manned
> programs of both the USSR and the USA both communicated military nuances --
> particularly the Vostok, Mercury, and Salyut programs. (And the USSR
> actually had purely military programs such as the Almaz.) I just think that
> this ended with the start of Apollo. The Saturn was not a launch vehicle
> with any real military purpose, and there was no intent for it to launch
> military payloads. (Unlike the Titan III, for example.)

There are others on this forum who have voiced that same view. It
basically holds that Mercury and Gemini had military implications.
Apollo didn't. And then the shuttle program again was military.

I certainly agree that Apollo was not a weapon. Now perhaps you'd
like to add your take on the direct words of JFK that the sole
justification for funding Apollo was its national security
implications.

I've posted the transcript. Here's a link with the audio if you'd
like to hear the man speak himself:

http://history.nasa.gov/JFK-Webbconv/index.html

> > > > 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.
>
> Part of national defense does not mean military. There are plenty of parts
> of the government which are, in part, a part of national defense (such as
> the CDC) which are nevertheless civilian. Some of these even have military
> officers who are attached to them. NASA had a heavy military presence
> because those military officers had the required skills that NASA needed.
> Their secondment or transfer was negotiated among the stakeholders.

Required skills?! Let's check that!

Ham and Enos had the required skills to pilot a Mercury capsule. You,
Ami, have the required skills. NASA had many thousands of
non-military candidates available to them who could have done just
fine.

A military presence was deliberately infused into NASA's most visible
roles, even though it was totally unnecessary.

> > 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.
>
> I believe that they were much more difficult to get during the 60s. Also,
> the delay (at least today) until final approval is over a year. Another
> issue was that, unlike many DoD or miltiary jobs which require a clearance
> to continue, it was felt that the astronaut candidates needed clearances to
> participate in the initial screening.

There were plenty of civilians who, like military test pilots,
*already had their clearance*.

That Right Stuff story does not hold water.

<snip>
> > "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.)
>
> Yes, but he was taking parts of the DoD and giving them to NASA. That seems
> to me that part of the DoD became parts of NASA.

(That is what I was saying.)

> The biggest case of the
> opposite would have occured had shuttles actually been launched from
> Vandenberg under AF control.

That would have been interesting to see.

> > 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.
>
> Most of the moonwalkers hadn't even been in NASA when JFK was alive. During
> that period, six years was a long period of time. I doubt that any of the
> astronauts were explicitly aware of JFK's justification. They were aware
> that they were participating in operations in the national interest.

Eight of the twelve moonwalkers were selected while JFK was alive.
While none of the twelve may have been at JFK's private meeting, they
*all* knew what the Cold War was about.

It was about a thermonuclear standoff.

All of those astronauts knew that they were volunteering to ride atop
ICBM boosters.

There was lots more going on to tell them that their primary mission
was thermonuclear power projection. Khrushchev boldly stated in
public that his cosmonauts could just as well have been warheads. I
provided links to that NORAD slideshow equating Vostok to a nuclear
onslaught. There have been hundreds of posts on this forum discussing
the overt signs of how the purpose of NASA was nuclear deterrence.

(You can search the archives for ["space race" "nuclear threat"] to
review many of the facts presented.)

> > 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?"
>
> I would be interested in seeing what they would say about that as well. The
> results are likely to be suprising to one or the other of us.

Actually I would not be surprised if none of them admit to seeing any
connection. I'm sure that they'd all prefer to be remembered as
having peacefully served all mankind, instead of bio-placebo warheads
along with the astrochimps.

A main reason why people tend to neglect this dark aspect to human
spaceflight is because it is, well, dark.

~ CT

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