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Making one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, the world changed when Neil Armstrong was the first person to step on the surface of the moon in 1969.
While the space race soon heated up and countries like Russia and China continued to explore the cosmos, the 12 people who've walked on the Moon have all been American men as part of the Apollo missions.
As we hope to head back to that big rock with Artemis III in 2027, this will be the first time anyone has walked on the Moon since Eugene Cernan last stood there as part of 1972's Apollo 17 mission.
There could've been a lot people to have walked on the Moon by now, with declassified CIA files revealing how there were once plans to build an army base there.
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Revealed by the National Security Archive, Lt. Gen. Arthur G. Trudeau, the Army's chief of research and development, put forward a plan to establish a lunar outpost in 1959.
Dubbed 'Project Horizon', it was a six-phase plan that would start in November 1964 and become fully operational in June 1969.
Considering Armstrong didn't step foot on the surface of the Moon until July 16, Project Horizon was extremely ambitious.
Back at a time when the Department of the Army, Department of the Navy, and Department of the Air Force were wholly in charge of the space program, the proposal states: "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."
Project Horizon was supposed to combat the expected territorial claims of the Soviets on the Moon, meaning the USA was hoping to build it 'as soon as possible'.
The outpost was going to cost a jaw-dropping $6 billion and be staffed with 12 soldiers by December 1966.
To accomplish this, 150 Saturn I and II launches were projected to carry some 226,796 kilograms of cargo to construct the underground base.
Plans included a main building block of cylindrical metal tanks and two nuclear reactors to provide power, while an antenna would allow communication with Earth. After construction was completed, those original quarters would be converted into bio-science and physics-science laboratories.
It was 1959 and this is the once classified Project Horizon missions and moon mining operations.
— Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) April 16, 2020
"There is a requirement for a manned outpost on the moon. The lunar outpost is required to develop and protect potential United States interests on the moon" pic.twitter.com/VkI83VVFUO
Two documents contain over 400 typed pages, outlining everything from magnetic fields to ballistic dynamics, how to hope with a lack of air, to what lunar bulldozers would look like.
As there's no permanent lunar base on the Moon and never has been, none of this happened. When the space program was transferred over to NASA, President Dwight Eisenhower rejected the idea of Project Horizon, and the rest is history.
Nowadays, we're looking further afield, with Elon Musk planning his own colony of self-sustaining life on Mars within the next 30 years. With humans finally getting back to the Moon in the near future, who knows whether a permanent base could be constructed there. For now, our astronauts are left aboard the ISS or whatever comes after it.
