Don't Mess With Earth (10 page)

“Sir, the Americans have finally
successfully launched their first satellite!”

“Well good for them. Lieutenant,
would you please stop telling me what the Russians or the Americans
are doing with their space programs. The only time you should
inform me of any Earth space activity is if they show up in Mars’
orbit, with a fleet of starships surrounding us and about to attack
us. Understood?”

“Understood, sir.”

Scientists at Area 51 also
worked on making satellites powered by solar energy, so they could
have continuous contact with a satellite long after the last
official communications occurred with Earth and the orbiter. The
first test came when
Vanguard
1
was launched on March 17, 1958; its first
mission was to test a three stage launch vehicle as part of Project
Vanguard and to measure the effects of the environment on a
satellite and its systems in Earth orbit. The satellite was
launched into a high enough orbit to last for more than five
hundred years, or so the scientists had hoped; but, due to solar
radiation pressure and atmospheric drag during high levels of solar
activity, it was estimated that the satellites’ lifetime would be
only two hundred and forty years. For the scientists at Area 51,
that statistic didn’t matter to them; they were only interested in
the development of increasingly more advanced satellites that could
detect any and all alien ships coming near Earth. The
Vanguard 1
kept
communicating officially with Earth until 1964, when flight control
at Area 51 turned off the transmitter on the
Vanguard
to NASA. For NASA,
the official story was that the satellites’ solar powered radio had
worked beyond its specifications, so it had gone dead, and NASA
really thought the radio had gone dead. For Area 51, the radio
continued to work for them and relay back to them where all Earth
space activity was occurring, even the activity of the Soviet space
activities. The satellite itself remained in orbit decades later,
even after Area 51 had moved on with bigger and more advanced
satellites.

The CIA also used Area 51 to build
and test high altitude spy planes, the most notable spy plane being
the Lockheed U-2. President Eisenhower had been asked by the CIA to
get permission from Pakistan so that a secret US intelligence base
could be built and used to conduct reconnaissance on the Soviet
Union. The facility was established at Badaber, ten miles from
Peshawar, close to the Soviet border, and was used to intercept
messages from the Soviet Union. The CIA recruited Gary Powers as a
pilot of a U-2 because he had an outstanding record in flying
single engine jet aircraft, and they wanted him to fly over the
Soviet Union and conduct espionage. The CIA thought the U-2 flew
too high to be intercepted by other aircraft or shot down by
missiles, but, on May 1, 1960, all of that changed.

Powers’ orders were to
photograph ICBM sites in and around Sverdlovsk and Plesetsk in
Russia, and then land in Norway. The Soviet Air Defense forces knew
a spy plane was supposed to fly over the region, so they were on
red alert status when the U-2 finally was detected flying over
Soviet air space. Lieutenant General of the Soviet Air Force
Yevgeniy Savitskiy, ordered, “I want all alert aircraft on the
foreign crafts’ course to attack the foreign aircraft, and ram it
if necessary".

The Soviets even attempted to
shoot down the U-2 with surface-to-air missiles, but, due to the
extreme altitude of the plane, the missiles never came close. One
enterprising Soviet pilot, Captain Igor Mentyukov caught up to
Powers’ U-2 at sixty-five thousand feet and attempted to ram the
American spy plane. Instead, since the U-2 was a tricky plane to
fly and anything could upset the aircrafts’ balance, including
another plane like the Sukhoi Su-9 interrupting the air flow around
the spy plane, the U-2 flipped over and one of the wings broke off.
Powers ejected, without destroying the aircraft like he was
supposed to, and parachuted to a landing, only to be immediately
surrounded and arrested by the Soviets. Unfortunately for him, the
plane also survived mostly intact, giving the Soviets a major
propaganda weapon to use against the Americans since the Soviet
Union and the United States were supposed to meet for a summit in
Paris in two weeks, which ends up not happening.

NASA attempted to claim that
Powers was flying a mission for them and even presented a photo of
the U-2 painted in NASA colors. President Eisenhower, assuming that
Powers was dead, issued a statement saying how much he regretted
the loss of an American pilot. Soviet Premier Khrushchev said that
he never claimed Powers was dead; the Soviets had Powers, put him
on trial for espionage, and locked him up. Powers was released two
years later when the US released a Soviet political prisoner and
they were exchanged. Once back in the United States, the
powers-that-be ripped into Powers for not destroying the U-2
because it gave away American secrets.

Yuri Gagarin, from the Soviet
Union, became the first human to orbit the Earth on April 12, 1961,
which took the United States by surprise, because they were
preparing their astronaut, Alan Shepard, to become the first man in
space. Gagarin was in orbit for one hour and forty-eight minutes,
and whistled a song called, "The Motherland Hears, The Motherland
Knows,” and said to ground control, “
The Earth is blue. How
wonderful. It is amazing.”
While in orbit, he was
also promoted from senior lieutenant to major.

Meanwhile, the newly formed
NASA had been working on Project Mercury since 1958 to get American
astronauts into orbit and chose seven men for Mercury out of one
hundred and ten to go into orbit. So, on May 5, 1961, after Gagarin
became the first man in orbit, Alan Shepard became the first
American in space. He named his Mercury capsule,
Freedom 7
, and
was launched by a Redstone rocket, which was a rocket primarily
used as a medium range ballistic missile. This flight was only for
fifteen minutes and was sub-orbital, but it showed the United
States that they could launch people into orbit. The capsule
splashed down in the Atlantic near where it was supposed to and
Shepard was picked up by the Navy. Khrushchev derided the effort by
calling it a piddling little shot, not on the same grand scale as
what the Grand Hero of the Soviet Union Cosmonaut Gagarin had
done.

Twenty days later, President
Kennedy declared first at Rice University and a few days later in
front of a special joint session of Congress, “
First, I
believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the
goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and
returning him safely to the Earth. No single space project in this
period will be more impressive to mankind or more important in the
long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or
expensive to accomplish,

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade
and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because
they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure
the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one
that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone,
and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

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.