Man on the Moon: 1969 to 1995
The fourth chapter of The Next Fifty years in Space is the first in which Patrick Moore’s prediction of the future is seriously at odds with history as it subsequently unfolded. He begins by looking back at the Apollo program, which began in 1961 and was cancelled after Apollo 17 in 1972. Curiously, he raises a point which many skeptics have raised when casting doubt on the reality of the Moon landings:
But close though the Moon may be, reaching it is still a very hazardous business, and to my mind it is remarkable that up to the present moment there have been no tragedies in any of the flights there. Nine crews have now been either round or to the Moon. This brings me at once to an important point. The Apollo plans included no provision for rescue. An astronaut stranded on the Moon would have to stay there, probably in full communication with the rest of mankind but hopelessly out of reach. Had Apollo continued for another ten or twenty missions, then sooner or later something would have gone disastrously wrong. This is why I personally hold the view that it was right to end the programme with No. 17. Before man goes back to the Moon, he must have a vehicle which is much more adaptable. ―Moore 43
There follows a brief history of lunar exploration by the Soviet Union and the United States. The highlights of these pioneering efforts were:
Luna 2: A Soviet probe that crash-landed into the Moon on 13 September 1959, making it the first manmade object to make contact with another celestial body.
Luna 3: This Soviet probe made a flyby of the Moon, giving humanity its first ever glimpse of the far side of our nearest neighbour.
Rangers 7–9: The last three members of the Ranger program, and the only completely successful ones. All three impacted the surface of the Moon (July 1964, February 1965, March 1965), but sent back excellent photographs of the lunar surface during the last few minutes of their flights.
Luna 9: On 3 February 1966 the Soviet probe Luna 9 became the first craft to make a soft-landing on the Moon:
In 1966 there followed Luna 9, again a Russian craft, which made a soft landing and continued to transmit information after its arrival; this, incidentally, gave the coup de grace to a strange but much-publicized theory, backed by the full authority of some eminent professional astronomers, to the effect that the lunar maria were oceans of soft dust into which any space-craft rash enough to land would inevitably sink. ―Moore 46
These were followed by other successful missions to the Moon that paved the way for something bigger:
Surveyor 1–7: Seven robotic probes sent to the Moon by NASA between June 1966 and January 1968. All seven landed on the surface (five soft-landings and two impacts).
Lunar Orbiter 1–5: Five unmanned probes sent into orbit around the Moon by NASA between August 1966 and August 1967 as part of their preparation for a manned mission.
Then, between 1966 and 1968, there came further soft-landers, together with the five immensely triumphant U.S. Orbiters which went round and round the Moon, providing splendidly detailed photographs of almost the entire surface. By the end of the Orbiter series, lunar mapping―began by men such as Harriott and Galileo during the reign of King James I―was to all intents and purposes complete. ―Moore 46
Apollo and Beyond
Moore continues his history lesson with an account of the Apollo Program. He mentions, in passing, another point that skeptics sometimes raise when questioning the Apollo landings:
... but by this time there had been a sharp divergence in the paths of the Russian and the American lunar programmes. Had there ever been the prospect of a race to the Moon, which I personally doubt, the Russians had certainly abandoned it in favour of exploration by unmanned probes. ―Moore 46
It is certainly curious that the Soviet Union, whose space program on the whole had been much more successful than NASA’s, simply abandoned any plans to put a Russian on the Moon. But this is not the time to explore such curiosities.
Moore concludes his account of Apollo with some comments on the reasons that were given for the cancellation of the program:
Since I am not writing an account of the past, I will say very little about the remaining Apollo missions, which ended with No. 17 in December 1972 ... Yet by this time the “anti-space” faction was in full cry once more, and the enthusiasm of 1969 was ebbing away ... The plain truth was that Apollo had done about as much as it ever could ... Further Apollos could only repeat the same procedures in other parts of the Moon; and while this would have been scientifically useful, it did not seem worth risking human lives to achieve it, particularly as it had been shown that limited samples could be obtained by using automatic vehicles. Here the Russians led the way. They sent probes to the Moon and brought them back; they dispatched two Lunokhods or Mooncrawlers, which looked like demented taxicabs but which proved to be superbly efficient. If the Moon could be explored in such a manner, what was the point of sending men there? ―Moore 47–48
But Moore was not impressed with these reasons. He believed that both manned and unmanned programs were absolutely necessary for any future development of full-scale lunar bases, but he was astute enough to realize that a few decades at least would elapse before man returned to the Moon:
During the coming decade―perhaps for even longer―I am convinced that there will be no official plans to send more manned expeditions to the Moon ... There is little point in dispatching further astronauts until they can carry out completely new programmes―and, above all, until the risks can be minimized as far as possible. Essentially, this means using a vehicle which is far more reliable and far more efficient than Apollo. Chemical propellants have marked limitations, and we must await the development of nuclear rockets, which is why I have dated the present chapter to 1995 instead of 1990 ... A nuclear rocket of the type which should become operational within the next twenty years ought to be able to manage this. ―Moore 48
Writing around 1974, Moore could hardly have expected that more than fifty years later we would still be relying on clumsy and wasteful chemical propellants to get ourselves into space. He must also have been disappointed at how little unmanned exploration followed the heady days of the 1960’s and ’70’s:
Between 1975 and 1900 [typo for 1990?] the Russians may launch a whole series of soft-landing vehicles, so that they will establish a network of recording stations in different parts of the Moon―perhaps even on the far side, collecting their information by using orbital probes as relays ... Crawling Lunokhods, too, will be dispatched, and there will be more Lunas which can collect Moon-rock and bring it home, although this latter programme may have rather lower priority. ―Moore 49
These predictions must have seemed near certainties when Moore made them in the early 1970’s, but they were not destined to be borne out by the facts. On 18 August 1976 Luna 24 landed in the Mare Crisium. Four days later it successfully returned a small sample of lunar material to Earth. And with that the Luna program came to an end. In 1997 plans were laid to return to the Moon but the 1998 Russian financial crisis scuppered the Luna-Glob program. Luna 25 was finally launched in August 2023, almost half a century after Luna 24. It was a failure, culminating in a crash-landing on the lunar surface. Plans for Luna 26–30 are still on the table, with possible launch dates between 2028 and 2036.
The Lunokhod program had been an offshoot of the Luna program, and it suffered the same fate. Lunokhod 1 (deployed by Luna 17) and Lunokhod 2 (deployed by Luna 21) had been hugely successful. Lunokhod 3 was to be deployed by Luna 25, but the indefinite postponement of that probe brought this period of Soviet lunar exploration to an abrupt and unforeseen end. This was not at all what Moore had expected from his vantage point in 1974:
If the network [of Soviet recording stations in different parts of the Moon] is to be operational by, say, 1983 we may expect many launchings during the previous year or two. I also suggest that the Soviet planners may send several payloads to one specially selected area (perhaps the Mare Imbrium?) so that when their pioneer cosmonauts arrive, at a later stage, they will find plenty of miscellaneous material to hand. ―Moore 49
Moore was a little closer to the truth when he predicted that Japan and China might eventually take up the baton of lunar exploration, though he would have been disappointed to learn how long it would take them to join the race. Both countries have indeed scored important successes in this field, but not until many decades had passed. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched its first lunar probe SELENE in September 2007. The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program launched its first probe Chang’e in October of the same year.
The only definite probability so far as America is concerned, for the period until now to the early 1980s, is a polar orbiter ... If funds are forthcoming, the polar orbiter is scheduled for launching some time during 1979. ―Moore 49
In 1976 Moore’s colleague at the BBC James Burke presented a paper on this mission at the 27th International Astronautical Congress of the IAF, which was held at Anaheim, California. This paper was published the following year in the science journal Acta Astronautica. As Burke reported, the orbiter was scheduled to be launched in 1980, but the Lunar Polar Orbiter Mission never materialized. NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which eventually carried out the objectives of the aborted mission, was not launched until 2006. In the decades after the cancellation of Apollo, NASA largely turned its back on the Moon, while continuing to throw heaps of money at almost every other type of space exploration. Moore accepted that manned exploration of the Moon would stall, but he never envisaged that the next fifty years would elapse without a single astronaut or cosmonaut ever travelling beyond low-earth orbit:
So far as the Moon is concerned, then, I predict that the only major activity for the next fifteen years will be the continuation of data-collecting by Russian Lunokhods, the possible establishment of a network of surface transmitters by the Soviet teams, and at least one polar orbiter from America. The main U.S. emphasis will be on Shuttles, space-dockings and orbital bases. But if nuclear rockets are developed as quickly as we are entitled to hope, official attention will start to swing back toward the Moon by 1990, and we may expect a significant change in attitude. ―Moore 50
He did correctly predict that our prolonged absence from the Moon would have one important consequence:
There must be a new generation of lunar astronauts; much of what was learned from Apollo will have to be re-discovered. ―Moore 50
Patrick Moore died in 2012. He lived long enough to see history unfold at a much much slower pace than he had predicted in 1975. The Lunar Base, which he imagined would be constructed before the end of the century, is still a distant pipe dream:
All in all, I expect that in the years following 1989 or 1990 there will be new expeditions, using new types of rocket vehicles which will make Apollo seem very antiquated. It is very much to be hoped that the trips will be international, and that all the results will be pooled. Some of the missions will last for much longer than the brief there-and-back hops made at the time of Apollo, and preparations will include the transport of materials which will be needed for the [Lunar] Base itself. This phase should end before 1995, and the next great step forward will be imminent.
It seems a long time ahead, but there is a great deal of sound common-sense in the old cliché about learning how to walk before trying to run, and the Moon, at least, is content to wait. ―Moore 51
The Moon is indeed a harsh mistress.
And that’s a good a place to stop before the next stage of our journey.
References
- James Burke, Lunar Polar Orbiter: A Global Survey of the Moon, Acta Astronautica, Volume 4, Issue 8, Pages 907–920, Pergamon Press, Oxford (1977)
- Patrick Moore, The Next Fifty Years in Space, With Drawings by Andrew Farmer, William Luscombe Publisher Limited, The Mitchell Beazley Group, Artists House, London (1976)
Image Credits
- The Next Fifty Years in Space: William Luscombe publisher Limited, Andrew Farmer (illustrator), foyled-again (photographer), Fair Use
- Model of Luna 9: Model of Luna 9, Musée de l’Air et de l’Espace, Le Bourget, France, © Pline (photographer), Creative Commons License
- Model of Lunokhod 1: Model of Lunokhod 1, Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics, Moscow, © Petar Milošević (photographer), Creative Commons License
- The Launch of Apollo 17 (17 December 1972): NASA/KSC, Public Domain
- James Burke: © BBC, Fair Use
- Patrick Moore: Anonymous Photograph, Fair Use
