Project Horizon was a study to determine the feasibility of constructing a scientific / military base on the Moon. On June 8, 1959, a group at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency (ABMA) produced for the U.S. Department of the Army a report entitled Project Horizon, A U.S. Army Study for the Establishment of a Lunar Military Outpost. The project proposal states the requirements as:
"The lunar outpost is required to develop and protect potential United States interests on the moon; to develop techniques in moon-based surveillance of the earth and space, in communications relay, and in operations on the surface of the moon; to serve as a base for exploration of the moon, for further exploration into space and for military operations on the moon if required; and to support scientific investigations on the moon.
The permanent outpost was predicted to cost $6 billion and become operational in December 1966 with twelve soldiers.
Wernher von Braun, head of ABMA, appointed Heinz-Hermann Koelle to head the project team at Redstone Arsenal.
Plans called for 147 early Saturn A-class rocket launches to loft spacecraft components for assembly in low Earth orbit at a spent-tank space station.
A lunar landing-and-return vehicle would have shuttled up to 16 astronauts at a time to the base and back.
Horizon never progressed past the feasibility stage in an official capacity.
Read more about Project Horizon: Location, Construction, Defenses, Layout
Famous quotes containing the words project and/or horizon:
“Although I mean it, and project the meaning
As hard as I can into its brushed-metal surface,
It cannot, in this deteriorating climate, pick up
Where I leave off.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The whole world of thought lay unexplored before me,—a world of which I had already caught large and tempting glimpses, and I did not like to feel the horizon shutting me in, even to so pleasant a corner as this.”
—Lucy Larcom (1824–1893)