Rene-NASA-Mooned-America

Star Light - Star Bright / Chap. 5 p. 30
pored through thousands of service records in 1961, and after multiple screenings and batteries
of tests, NASA selected seven truly exceptional men for astronaut's training. Eventually
one of them, Alan Shepard, was put in a tin can and blasted into a ballistic arc, barely
touching what NASA called "space". "Close space" is a more accurate term.
Anyway, up he went. Despite the G's thrust on him from the cannon shell they called a
Redstone rocket, Shepard reported seeing no stars. (If somebody strapped me in a tin can
atop a Redstone rocket that pulled 4 G's acceleration, I think I would have seen stars!) Unbeknownst
to us at the time, this was the first recorded case of star-blindness in the whole
world. Alan, the poor guy, had all the "Right Stuff", but he was star-blind.
Next, NASA spent three and a half months setting up another lightweight tin can. This
time Virgil Grissom duplicated the ballistic arc for the same fifteen minutes or so. When he
was recovered and questioned, believe it or not, he hadn't seen any stars either. He too was
star-blind. That's two out of two, and I figure the odds against that to be pushing about
10,000 to 1. To cover this obvious blemish in the superior abilities of the astronauts, NASA
told us a little fabrication. Their apologists claimed that the eyes need a long time to adjust
enough to see the stars in the blackness of space. That's one of the dumbest lies they ever
told. We can stare at a street light and look quickly at a star and see it.
But at this stage of the game, someone in NASA must have been in a total panic. NASA's
real goal, to beat the Russians to the dark side of the Moon, required men who could certainly
see the stars. The only thing that NASA felt at this early stage in the space game was that this
goal had been jeopardized. Astronauts with star-blindness who cannot see the stars would be
unable to navigate to the dark side of the Moon. Being the first to get to the dark side was
vital to American interest for both military and scientific reasons. Such reasons have somehow
been almost synonymous since World War II. The military reason was that the first
country to get there could build a base hidden from Earth. The scientific reason was that
someday we could set up a telescope to study the stars.
Of course, a Lunar telescope could be almost as effective if it were located on the near
side of the Moon. What we term a month is actually a Lunar day. Either side receives equal
hours of day and night. The only advantage to be had was that the bright Earth would never
block out a small section of the sky. The down side is that an alternate transmission method
would be needed to communicate with Earth.
As soon as possible, NASA tinkered up another tin pot, this time bolting it on a bigger
rocket. John Glenn soared into space and not only attained orbit, but also, a bit later, won a
seat in the Senate. He was up for almost five hours and when snatched from the cold waters
of the Atlantic Ocean he reported that he could actually see a few stars and even some
constellations, indicating he was only a little bit star-blind. The odds against all three
randomly chosen astronauts being star-blind to some degree had to be a million to one. This
raised a scientific question: was star-blindness induced by space itself or by zero gravity
NASA surely must have been dithered! However, being guys with the "Right Stuff, they
next sent up a few more astronauts for even longer periods of time. But there was no improvement
in the rate of star-blindness. Apparently, almost everybody had it. They also
discovered that these poor souls were also planet-blind. On subsequent missions the various
astronauts would report seeing God, flying angels, and UFOs, but the stars remained dim and
fuzzy, and no one ever reported seeing a planet.
NASA MOONED AMERICA! / Rene