The plan was manifestly ambitious, and it soon became even more so: Wernher von Braun — at the time, the head of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency — appointed Heinz-Hermann Koelle, a brilliant aeronautical engineer, to oversee the project. It was then that plans began in earnest. The Project Horizon documentation notes that, initially at least, any such installation would have to be relatively small, housing 10 to 20 people at any given time. Nevertheless, the authors of the report stressed the importance of constructing the base in a fashion that would allow for it to be constantly expanded upon in size and scope, and eventually even allowing for a considerable presence to eventually be maintained on a permanent basis. It was clearly recognized that such a base would have allowed the United States to massively increase its scientific knowledge of the Moon and the new and expanding domain of space, but it was without doubt the military potential of the Moon that was deemed so important to America’s long-term goals.
Clearly realizing it was practically inevitable that space would one day become militarized, the Project Horizon team speculated that the Army’s emergency communications systems would greatly benefit from having a relay station on the Moon, in the event of some form of national emergency — such as an atomic attack by the Soviet Union — that might take out ground communication systems on Earth. As a result, plans were formulated — in a worst-case scenario — to vigorously defend the base with nuclear weapons against Communist attack.
Staff even anticipated the startling scenario of Russian soldiers — in full cosmonaut gear — reaching the secret Moon base and doing battle with U.S. Army personnel, as part of a concerted effort to either destroy the facility or capture it and place it under Soviet control. In a section of the report titled “Degree of Urgency,” it was made abundantly clear that one of the main aims of Project Horizon was to reach the Moon and establish an outpost before the Soviets did.
Army personnel outlined the extensive and rigorous training procedures that Army astronauts would need to follow when faced with living on the Moon for weeks or even months at any given time, as well as the means by which oxygen and water could be extracted from the Moon’s natural environment, to ensure the base could be maintained and inhabited at all times. Demonstrating the amount of thought the Project Horizon team had given to this aspect of the ground-breaking venture, reference was made to the possibility that the Moon might very well be rich in minerals and other materials that could successfully be mined and made commercially available.
Any such fantastic, clandestine operation would require a massive amount of planning, forward-thinking, and dedication to the task at hand. The program’s staff envisaged that the materials required in the construction of the lunar colony could be shuttled, piece by piece, to the Moon via huge, multi-stage rockets (and possibly even in conjunction with the use of huge orbiting space stations).
As for the base itself, it might very well have been advantageous, the report reveals, to carefully remodel a natural cavern on the Moon and into an environment suitable for the sustainment of the initial team. Such a program of construction, it was estimated, could begin by 1965 and would likely involve a two-person team flying to a specific location on the Moon where materials would have already been deposited via previously dispatched cargo craft. Chiefly, the facility would be constructed out of interlocking metal tanks, 20 feet in length and 10 feet in diameter, the first of which constituting the living quarters of the initial construction team. Astonishingly, those working on Project Horizon estimated that the base — albeit in small, rudimentary form — could be up and running within as little as two weeks after the arrival of the cargo and the crews.
It might be useful, opined those who prepared the Project Horizon documentation, to have the interconnecting cylinders buried underground. This would help protect the personnel form such potential hazards as meteorite strikes, lethal radiation, and extremes of temperature. Then, when this below-ground installation was of a sufficient scale and in full working order to allow for a permanent presence to be successfully maintained, it could be dramatically expanded in size and scope to include significant surface facilities.
More and more additions would be made to the initial constructions: landing-pads for shuttle-craft were envisaged, and launch sites for both manned and unmanned missions to some of the nearby planets were deemed possible. Eventually, what had begun as a compact military outpost resembling those at the North and South Pole might conceivably mutate into a huge strategic facility acting as a major hub for both scientific studies and military operations deemed vital to the national security and technological advancement of the United States.
Whereas the U.S. Army of 1959 was secretly sure it could have a permanently manned installation ready to go at some point between 1965 and 1966, history has shown that it took pretty much all of NASA’s time and expertise to even land a small team of men on the Moon by 1969. At the time, a Moon base was not in the cards for NASA. Some might suggest the military was being somewhat over-ambitious in its plans. For example, history has shown that, officially at least, Project Horizon was ultimately shelved as a result of budgetary concerns and the limitations of current technologies. Unofficially, some believe, Project Horizon — and perhaps further, far more ambitious programs — secretly continued, and ultimately led to the construction of large Top Secret installations on the Moon, not unlike that described by Karl Wolfe.
NASA and Gary McKinnon
Certain of NASA’s publicly acknowledged programs have been the subject of intense secrecy: Between 1982 and 1992 the space agency’s Space Shuttle fleet launched 11 classified payloads — spy satellites, in other words — for the U.S. intelligence community, particularly so for the super-secret National Reconnaissance Office. This we know. But far more notable is the strange saga of a certain Gary McKinnon. A product of the 1960s, and a man with a profound fascination for UFOs, McKinnon currently lives in London, England, under the dark shadow of extradition to the United States on charges of committing what one U.S. prosecutor has asserted was without doubt the largest computer hack of the United States’s official infrastructure ever. The prosecution also alleges that McKinnon caused major damage to a whole host of NASA computers in the process, as a result of his obsession with UFOs.
I have written about McKinnon’s antics at length in some of my other books, but what is especially relevant to this chapter is that McKinnon said he found files referencing something termed Non-Terrestrial Officers. This has led some commentators to speculate that it may be a reference to a secret team of American astronauts who are a part of an equally secret space program.
Richard Dolan
Another individual who has commented positively on issues relative to secret bases on the Moon and the theory that the U.S. government operates a clandestine space program is the respected author and historian Richard Dolan, who says, “Over the years I have encountered no shortage of quiet, serious-minded people who tell me of their knowledge that there is such a covert program. Are there bases on the far side of the Moon? I do not know for sure, but I cannot rule it out.”[43]