Vince Houghton - Nuking the Moon - And Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board

And despite all the fun poked in the direction of the villains’ lairs, vehicles, nonsensical plots to take over the world, and overcomplicated methods for dispatching James Bond—“sharks with frickin’ laser beams” is so close to the real thing it’s barely a parody—there are a few that stand out. Maybe it’s because I watched 2002’s Die Another Day about thirty times in the theater and on TV (in the summer of 2003 you couldn’t escape it on basic cable), or because Toby Stephens as Tan-Sun Moon/Gustav Graves was a pretty good bad guy, but the orbital mirror satellite “Icarus” is a legitimately scary superweapon. The cover story is that Icarus is a new, benevolent technology designed to help the world feed itself—it would focus solar energy to provide constant sunshine for crop development. But that’s just a ruse. In reality, Icarus is a deadly weapon that can harness the extraordinary power of the sun. Moon/Graves could melt London. Vaporize Washington. Incinerate Moscow. Hold the world hostage for an obscene amount of money. [8] One miiiiiiilllion dollars. Have the world cower at his feet. Ultimate power. Unstoppable power. Unlimited power.

Or he could zap the minefield in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea to make way for a land invasion of South Korea.

Wait, what?! Are you kidding me? In a series of twenty-something movies defined by excess and over-the-top insanity, this is all you’ve decided to do? Use the world’s most powerful weapon to enable an old-fashioned land invasion ? Even Kim Jong-un probably thinks this is lame.

Yes, yes, I’m being unfairly harsh on the writers of this film. They are good people and had the impossible task of outdoing all the crazy ideas of their predecessors. I have no clue what they used for their inspiration, but they might have looked back at history for a guide. Because as evil as Graves was, he’ll never hold a candle to the most villainous group in human history: Nazis. [9] It’s important for you to know, when I write “Nazis” here, I’m saying it in my head like Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds .

If you readany of the numerous biographies (or obituaries) of Hermann Oberth, they tend to paint a picture of the German physicist and engineer as one of the great minds of the twentieth century. Along with American Robert Goddard and Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, Oberth is considered a pioneer in the fields of rocketry, astronautics, and astrophysics. After serving in the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I, Oberth turned to a career in the study of mathematics and physics. He tried to get his PhD in rocketry in 1922 yet, although he had studied with several notable scientists, his theory on rocket science (and his dissertation) was rejected. Oberth was ahead of his time.

Now, if Oberth’s life were a Bond movie, this is the point at which he’d say, “I’ll show them. And then they’ll be sorry!” before going off to his evil villain lair. [10] Maybe twirl his mustache a little bit too. But it’s not a movie, so Oberth did what so many graduate students—or ex–graduate students—do from time to time: He wallowed in self-pity, and then bucked up and moved on to bigger and better things.

Oberth knew he was on to something, even if his fellow scientists did not. He published his theories in a pamphlet titled “By Rocketry into Planetary Space.” [11] But in German, so “Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen.” It’s usually referred to as a “pamphlet,” but that is a bit misleading. This wasn’t Common Sense . It was a 429-page tome that mathematically proved a rocket’s ability to leave Earth’s orbit by achieving what is known as its “escape velocity.” Not only that, but it introduced important concepts concerning how rockets behave in a vacuum, which were key to understanding how they would operate for longer-distance space travel.

When these theories were finally published as a book in 1929, Oberth finally got the widespread belated recognition he deserved, crowning him as an expert in the rocketry and astronautics communities. With this success, he inspired many young dreamers to reach for the stars. One of these dreamers was a man—he was really a kid at the time, just eighteen—named Wernher von Braun. You’ve maybe heard of him. He joined Oberth as his assistant during early rocket tests. In return, Oberth mentored the budding von Braun, setting the stage for a lifetime of collaboration.

Skip ahead to 1940. Oberth had bounced around in the intermediate years (Romania, Austria, Germany, the United States), but during the second year of World War II he settled back in Germany and became a German citizen. In 1941, he deployed to the infamous Peenemünde rocket facility in Germany and began working again with Wernher von Braun, this time as his assistant. Together they developed the feared German V-2, the world’s first ballistic missile.

All of this information is found in most of the Hermann Oberth bios/obits. It’s pretty standard stuff. Failed Doctorate. Author. Rocket Guy. Von Braun. Nazi. The V-2. If you’ve read one, you’ve read them all.

But what’s wild is that by far the most interesting idea Oberth ever had is absent from almost every one of these biographies. It’s not in his NASA biography. Not in his write-up for the International Space Hall of Fame. Nor can you find any mention of it in his New York Times obituary. It’s not even included in his Wikipedia page.

It’s the sun gun. Nearly the very same one Moon/Graves employs in Die Another Day . Harnessing the energy of the most powerful object in the solar system to help the Nazis win the war. Thankfully, the German scientific machine never made this work. Or it would have been Hermann Oberth’s ultimate legacy.

Near the Elbe Riverand a German town called Madgeburg sat one of the Nazis’ most important weapons research centers. The Hillersleben Proving Grounds were used by the Germans to test-fire big artillery guns and howitzers. And when I say big, I mean big—massive railway guns that could launch a projectile miles into the distance. This was a huge enterprise. When the U.S. Army took control of the facility late in the war, they were in awe of the scale of operation. There was no equivalent facility in the United States. It was, as one ordnance officer put it, “a maintenance company’s dream.”

But Hillersleben had a purpose beyond the testing, upkeep, and maintenance of conventional (albeit really large) artillery weapons. Tucked into a corner of the facility was a group of more than a hundred scientists and engineers working on all kinds of devious and dastardly experimental weapons systems. Things like a 600-millimeter diameter (about twenty-four inches) mortar that could launch 2,000-pound projectiles up to three and a half miles, and parts of the sinister V-3 super-cannon, which could blast a massive projectile one hundred miles—five times the distance from France to England across the Strait of Dover.

Meanwhile, some of these scientists and engineers were working on a different kind of project, one that cannot be lumped in with all the other “conventional” experiments. It was called the Sonnengewehr, and it was based on a design concept originally described by Hermann Oberth in his 1929 book Ways to Spaceflight . [12] Wege zur Raumschiffahrt. Oberth called for a space station [13] Called Raumstations. that would orbit about 625 miles above the Earth (for comparison, the International Space Station orbits at about 220 miles up). Ways to Spaceflight is full of detail on the project: It would be sent into space and constructed in prefabricated sections that would be linked together like a Lego set once settled in orbit; it would spin on its axis to produce artificial gravity within the station; it would be used for scientific and astronomical observations, meteorological observations, search-and-rescue operations, and telegraph relays. Oberth, clearly understanding that his concept would be undeniably alluring to the German military and national security community (even before Hitler came to power), also suggested that his space station could be used for the collection of military intelligence. Because of course it could.