by Cliff Ball
At Area 51, they were watching the speech on television, when one of the engineers said, “He’s got to be kidding, we don’t have the means to accomplish a moon landing, and we’re barely getting into orbit as it is. I’m all for beating the Soviets, but to accomplish a moon landing in less than nine years is going to be incredibly difficult, even with some of this alien technology at our disposal.”
“We can do it and we’re beginning to understand a lot of the advanced concepts in the Ragnor computer. Next thing you know, we’ll be landing people on Mars.” remarked Yeager, who was now second-in-command of Area 51.
In Moscow, Khrushchev was also watching this young American president declare his intentions on television to send the United States to the moon. The Soviet leader turned to face Kerim Kerimov, one of the founders of the Soviet space program, and said, “This young Kennedy fellow makes such brash declarations; he can’t possibly think they will get ahead of us and get to the moon. They’re not even being very serious about orbital flight, and he wants a moon program? What a foolish young man. Kerim, how soon do you think we could get a cosmonaut to the moon?”
“Comrade Secretary, I have not looked into it. We’re having difficulty fitting some of the alien technology into some of our systems. Our rocket systems have failed more often than the Americans and some of our cosmonauts have died because we’re trying to stay ahead. A moon shot that fails could be very well the end of our space program.”
“No matter, look into the matter Kerim and get back to me. I want this done.”
“Yes, Comrade Secretary.”
The next American orbital attempt was by Gus Grissom two months after Freedom 7 in a Mercury 4 capsule he named Liberty Bell 7, because the capsule appeared to him be shaped like a bell. So in tribute to the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, he painted a crack on the side of the capsule. McDonnell, the company that built the Mercury, built into the capsule a small window that the previous capsules didn’t have and came up with an explosive release hatch for Grissom to use once he returned to Earth and made a splash landing in the ocean. As Grissom was getting into the capsule, a launch pad technician discovered that the hatch bolts were misaligned, but NASA and McDonnell engineers decided that the other sixty nine bolts were sufficient enough to use to make the hatch blow at the appropriate time. Liberty Bell 7 was launched thirty minutes after the scheduled launch and made it into sub-orbit safely. The flight was for fifteen and a half minutes, but in those fifteen minutes of sub-orbital flight, Grissom was awed by the beauty of Earth through the little window he was looking through, but, he had work to do, so he took manual control of the craft. He went through pitch and yaw movements, and used a new command control system, which he found easier to use than the manual controls, but was using much more fuel.
Grissom re-entered the atmosphere, but felt like he was facing forward, instead of the backward position he was sitting in. His heart rate reached one hundred and seventy one beats a minute because of this, which worried mission control, but Grissom made it safely to the landing site once he angled the spacecraft the right way. The capsule splashed into the turbulent Atlantic Ocean, and as Grissom was preparing to disembark, the hatch suddenly blew off, causing water to pour into the capsules’ cabin. He hurriedly removed his helmet and climbed out of the capsule using the instrument panel for leverage. The helicopters that were used for recovery, tried to lift Liberty Bell 7, but the cable pulling it up snapped, and the capsule plunged back in, sinking beneath the waters of the Atlantic. Grissom’s spacesuit filled with water, which was dragging him beneath the ocean waves. He was beginning to panic, but was comforted at the sight of the rescue team on the helicopter tossing him the lifeline for him to be pulled into the helicopter. Once safely on land, some blamed Grissom for blowing the hatch prematurely and letting the capsule sink, which he vehemently denied.
What no one knew was that Area 51 had a hand in the malfunction of the capsule. They had a small submarine crewed by the CIA nearby, waiting for Liberty Bell 7 to sink beneath the waves, because they were the ones who had the engineers at McDonnell design the hatch to be misaligned, and they knew the hatch would blow once the capsule landed in the water. They had installed, without the knowledge of McDonnell or NASA, advanced technology that even Grissom knew nothing about. Area 51 was testing an advanced radar system, or what the alien had called sensors. Engineers had also installed a small, experimental computer hooked to the sensors, so all the data from the sensors could be recorded, saved on the computers’ hard drive, and studied. The sub crew waited until the Navy left the area and moved in to retrieve the orbiter. The capsule had just settled on the ocean floor when the sub sent out a retrieval team, they used the cable lines from the sub, hooked them onto Liberty Bell 7, and pulled it up. The submarine then quietly left the area, headed for the west coast of the United States, but they went east, the long way to California, instead of using the Panama Canal. A few weeks later, docked at Long Beach, the capsule was loaded on to a truck, and headed for Area 51 so the data could be analyzed for future space missions.
Before the Soviet Space Agency could figure out how much it would cost the Soviet Union to beat the Americans to the moon, something happened to nearly cause a nuclear war. The Americans found out about nuclear missile silos that the Soviet Union were building on Cuba, because the Cubans had feared an American invasion was imminent, even though the last one, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, had failed miserably. Khrushchev had boasted that with the fifty megaton nuclear bomb they had just built, that any American city could be easily targeted and wiped off of the face of the earth. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara decided that Cuba needed to be blockaded, while President Kennedy was thinking of conducting air strikes on Cuba. The Soviets threatened all out war if anything were to happen, so with the knowledge of Area 51 and the Soviets’ own version, McNamara convinced Attorney General Robert Kennedy to conduct secret negotiations with the Soviets to get them to back off. The official line later was that the Americans would remove their nuclear missiles from the bases in Turkey, if the Soviets got rid of the missiles in Cuba, which both sides agreed to. McNamara decided to add one other caveat to the discussion, the Space Race between the two nations.
The Secretary of Defense met with Kerim Kerimov, because he knew Kerimov was told by Khrushchev, through defectors and spies, to investigate the means for the Soviets to conduct moon missions before the Americans were able to. They met in secret at the United Nations while their leaders were yelling at each other in the General Assembly Hall. McNamara was sitting in a small conference room, waiting for the Russian, when Kerimov finally walked in. McNamara said, “Greetings, Mr. Kerimov. Do you know why I asked for you to meet me?”
“No. Why do you need to talk to me?”
“I need to talk to you about a matter that will eventually put our countries in another face-off that I’d like to avoid. You know about President Kennedy’s declaration that the United States will be going to the moon by the end of this decade, do you not?”
“Yes, of course. Everyone on Earth knows by now. What does that have to do with me?”
“Well, you’re one of the founders of the Soviet Space Program, so I would assume that your leaders want their country to be committed to beating the United States to the moon. Am I wrong?”
“No, you aren’t wrong. Khrushchev was quite upset when he watched your President declare your countries’ intentions on television. He ordered me to find out what it would take to get our cosmonauts to the moon. He wants it by any means necessary,” Kerimov said, with a heavy sigh.
“You must know that we have more resources than you, and our space program is being helped considerably by that crash landing back in 1947. Would that surprise you?”
“Of course you have more resources than us, but, if I were to mention that to my leaders, I would be either sent to Siberia or given a bullet to the head. As for the alien spacecraft we shot down, our space program has had more failures as a result of trying to incorpor
ate mostly damaged technology from that craft. I fear the Soviet Unions’ efforts to put men on the moon will end in absolute failure, and I will get my reward in the end. How do you propose that I tell my leaders that a moon mission is out of the question?”
“It’s simple, really. Tell them the cost of going to the moon will be more than it costs to keep your military running, and if they want to be defenseless against the United States, then go right on ahead and build spacecraft for moon missions. Besides, we have the means to make anything your space program tries to do, end in absolute failure, thanks to the alien we still have alive and his technology.” boasted McNamara.
“I suppose that will work. Does the esteemed Secretary of Defense also think the Soviets ought to just give up our space program too or can we continue going into orbit?” asked Kerimov, rather sarcastically.
“You can continue to go into space, but, I warn you, if your government decides to go ahead and try to send people to the moon, it will end in failure. Are we clear, Mr. Kerimov?”
“Oh, very clear, Mr. McNamara.”
“Good. Then, I bid you good day.” McNamara got up and walked out of the room, while Kerimov stayed where he was for a few minutes trying to do decide what to do next.
Kerimov’s boss was making a show out of being angry about the Americans and their spy planes over Cuba, the missiles, and everything in general having to do with the United States to the General Assembly of the United Nations. Pounding one of his shoes on the desk he was sitting behind and just being a bombastic annoyance. Once Khrushchev was through with his ranting and raving, he appeared to be laughing about it, so Kerimov waited until the session was through before he went to talk to Khrushchev. “Sir, would you like to hear about what it may cost to conduct moon missions, or would you rather hear it later?”
“Go ahead and tell me, Kerim, because the look on your face tells me it’s not good news,”
“Well, sir, I’m afraid that one manned mission to the moon will cost as much as our yearly budget for the military. I don’t think I need to remind you, sir, that some on the Central Committee don’t think we spend enough on the military as it is. You push this with them and they’ll certainly replace you, sir.”
“You’re right about that, Kerim. This little adventure we had in dealing with the Americans and the Cubans is costing me with my backers in the Committee. I’m supposed to shape up, and go back to the ideals of Lenin and Stalin; you know, the two murderers who killed more Russians than the Germans in two wars ever did. Remember, I didn’t say that, KGB could be listening, you know. Let’s go home and see what more trouble I can find myself in.”
The world was later caught off guard on November 22, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas going through Dealey Plaza. Officially, Lee Harvey Oswald was accused of killing the President, which made it even more plausible when Jack Ruby shot Oswald in front of the Dallas Police. Certain members of the CIA and FBI, who worked for Area 51, knew better. With alien-human hybrid technology, they investigated the grassy knoll, the Dallas Book Depository where Oswald had shot at the President, Dealey Plaza, and the entire route the President took through Dallas, which had been diverted to Dealey Plaza, and found DNA markers on one weapon they found near the grassy knoll matching Vice President Lyndon Johnson.
Johnson himself was waiting on Air Force One so that he could be sworn in as the new President of the United States, so someone else would have done the dirty work for him. The vice president hated the Kennedy’s, so Johnson organizing a hit on John Kennedy in Texas didn’t seem like much of a stretch to the investigators. Unfortunately for the investigative team, none of this could be on the official record, how would they explain all this advanced technology to a population who was beginning to become increasingly cynical? What was important to everyone at Area 51 and its associate programs was that NASA and the space program would still continue. After all, Houston Space Center was in Texas and employed a lot of people, so Johnson let the space program go on, and the Space Center was named after him. In the meantime though, he dragged the United States into an undeclared war in Vietnam.
Almost a year later, in October of 1964, Premier of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev was removed from power in a bloodless coup and replaced by Leonid Brezhnev. The Committee was upset and embarrassed with Khrushchev’s policies and cantankerous behavior, and believed he mishandled the Cuban Missile Crisis, relations with China, and made a disaster out the Soviet economy. Brezhnev wanted the space program to attempt a moon mission anyway, but, on the four official tests conducted on the rocket that was going to be used, the rockets malfunctioned and exploded, making at least one of the tests the worst rocket failure in the history of the Soviet space program, by killing more than four dozen people. Brezhnev had those responsible for the disaster that hadn’t died, sent to Siberia or killed. Finally, in 1974, the Soviets abandoned their moon program altogether.
Chapter Ten
Project Gemini was the next phase in manned spaceflight for the United States. NASA realized they were skipping a step between Mercury and Apollo, they hadn’t conducted long-term duration flights in orbit, hadn’t tested the equipment for anything longer than a day or two in orbit, and needed to test docking procedures for the landing module and the command module for the trip to the moon. The United States Air Force, through some of Area 51’s scientists and engineers, wanted to observe the ground from space, also wanted to intercept suspicious satellites while in orbit, and really didn’t want the Navy to recover the vehicle. The vehicle would paraglide to solid ground instead of splash-landing in the Atlantic. The USAF was calling it Blue Gemini, but NASA refused to let the Air Force do this, so Area 51 decided to conduct the mission themselves in secret, mostly to see if it could be done.
A launch pad for the secret spacecraft was set up in the middle of White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico for the one and only launch of Blue Gemini that Area 51 decided they would do. Scott Carpenter, who was in trouble and grounded by NASA over the re-entry of another spacecraft, was chosen by Yeager to fly the mission. The mission was to fly over the Soviet Union and photograph as many of their missile sites as possible in less than a fifteen minute period and then re-enter the atmosphere before NASA or the Soviets detected the rogue spacecraft. The capsule would then glide to a landing at the Area 51 airfield, then the flight crew would make the spacecraft disappear within seconds, and the whole airfield itself would appear inactive.
Carpenter suited up, went outside in the hot New Mexican desert, and went on the launch pad elevator, going up the side of the massive Titan 3 rocket launcher to the capsule named Zeus that he was going to fly in. The flight engineers helped him into the craft, and the first thing he did was turn on the radio, and asked, “Command, this is Carpenter. Are we still a go for launch?”
“Roger, Carpenter. We have a thirty minute window where we can conduct this little mission. Nobody should be the wiser. Get strapped in and we’ll start the countdown as soon as you’re ready. Copy that?”
“10-4, I copy. I’ll be ready in less than five minutes, go ahead and start the countdown for fifteen. Over,”
“Ok, Zeus we are starting the countdown for fifteen minutes. Everyone, we need pre-flight checks now, so get through it quickly.”
As mission control was conducting hurried pre-flight checks, Carpenter was getting strapped in, and getting his pre-flight list finished. Fifteen minutes later, the countdown ended, the rockets fired, and the Titan 3 rocket launched with lots of fire and smoke trailing behind. Carpenter reached orbit and fired his guidance rockets to take him over Russia. Five minutes later, he was over the Soviet Union, activated the camera that would take detailed, clear, and in color photographs of missile sites on the ground. He also activated the hybrid sensors he was told about to see what was out there in near Earth orbit, but all he saw was space junk left behind by all the previous space flights. So, to test just how far these new fangled sensors could detect anything, Carpe
nter powered up the sensors to the furthest detection it could do, and discovered something suprising to him. The sensors could scan past Mars to the asteroid belt, but what surprised him was detecting a spaceship, at least that’s what he thought it was, since it was leaving Mars, heading away from the solar system at a higher speed than his sensors could keep up with. Since he was supposed to keep radio silence, he made sure all of this was recorded, since he figured nobody would believe him, at least not in the normal space program channels. Fifteen minutes later, Carpenter re-entered the atmosphere and glided to a landing at the Area 51 airfield. Everything worked out as planned and nothing seemed to have gone wrong.
Carpenter made his way to the de-briefing room and walked in, where he was greeted by Yeager, a pair of black suited men, and some engineers he didn’t recognize. He was motioned to sit down, where Yeager asked, “How did the mission go?”
“The mission went very well, sir. The data recorder has all the photos I took, and I also recorded a sensor reading I made where I extended the sensors to see how far the sensors could detect. I detected what appeared to be a spaceship leaving the vicinty of Mars headed towards the outer solar system, but, it went far too fast for my instruments to keep up with. That’s pretty much my report.”
“Good work, Carpenter. You accomplished more than we expected and confirmed a suspicion we had about Mars and alien spacecraft. You must be wondering why you’re at a top secret location and didn’t return to White Sands. Correct?” asked Yeager.
“Well, yes, sir. May I ask what’s going on? I am strongly curious, sir.”
“What we are about to tell you, Mr. Carpenter, is considered the highest level of classified that the United States has, so much so that the President knows nothing about what we’re about to reveal to you. If we find out you have revealed anything of this meeting or details of what we’re about to tell you, you will be visited by someone high up in either the CIA or FBI, and you might just disappear. Do you understand, Carpenter?” asked one of the men in black.