Secret American Military Space Program?

© 2007 by Linda Moulton Howe

An artist's impression of X-20 Dyna-Soar
being launched on top of Titan booster, an American USAF
project based on work of German physicists Walter Dornberger, Wernher von Braun
and Eugen Saenger. Allegedly operated only from 1957 to 1963, but is that where
the American military's secret space program began, continuing to this day?

December 1, 2007 San Antonio, Texas - On November 20th, I interviewed Armstrong Aerospace draftsman, Michael Schratt, about his research into the question: Have black budget trillions supported a secret American space program that parallels the public NASA? [ See: 112007 Earthfiles.] Since then, I have received several supportive emails. Very valuable correspondence came from Richard Sauder, Ph.D. in Political Science, and author of three books: Underground Bases & Tunnels: What Is the Government Trying to Hide? © 1995; Kundalini Tales © 1998; and Underwater and Underground Bases © 2001.

One of Richard Sauder’s important discoveries is a New York Times article by reporter William Broad that headlined: “Military’s Secret Star Trek Is Over – Billions Wasted On Complex – and Shuttle.” That article was published on August 7, 1989 – eighteen years ago – and here are the lead sentences:

“The Defense Department is dismantling a secretive, coast-to-coast space complex that cost at least $5 billion and was intended to operate in collaboration with the civilian space shuttle.

“Over the last three years, the department has mothballed a $3.3 billion spaceport in California and scrapped a sprawling control center in Colorado. Last year, it disbanded a secret cadre of 32 astronauts based in Los Angeles.”

The New York Times, August 7, 1989.

This week I talked with Richard Sauder about what convinces him there is a secret military space program, separate from the civilian and public NASA?

---

Interview:

Richard Sauder, Ph.D., Political Science, and Author of Underground Bases & Tunnels: What Is the Government Trying to Hide? © 1995; Kundalini Tales © 1998; and Underwater and Underground Bases © 2001, San Antonio, Texas: “Let me start with one of the most interesting conversations I’ve had in many years that I had this year of 2007 and then I’ll get into the documentary information and hard data and will tell you why I believe what I was told.

I can tell you that I talked face-to-face earlier this year with a career federal alphabet soup physicist who worked for Project Blue Book back in the 1960s. He’s not one of the publicly known Project Blue Book scientists, but he did work out of Wright-Patterson at the time. He told me that back in the 1960s already, the U. S. Air Force had two UFOs, what he called ‘UFOs’ – that they would fly right out of Wright-Patterson AFB. He said they would open the hangar doors in the middle of the night and fly them right out of the hangars at full bore speed.

One he described as a ‘flying Studebaker’ – somewhat resembling the well-known vintage automobile of that name. The other he alluded to was a huge spherical object. He did not say whether these were of alien origin or reverse-engineered technology.

Over the years, I’ve gotten many indications from a variety of sources that the U. S. military has its own UFOs and this is just another data point from me pointing in the direction of a decades-long military program of deep deceit and thorough lies about the true involvement of U. S. military agencies in secret UFO and space technology and projects. In my view, it is highly likely that there are multiple, secret, classified, tightly compartmentalized UFO and space programs – not just a single space program, Linda, but programS, plural, and that the U. S. military and NASA have been lying through their teeth to the American people about all of this since at least the World War II era, if not before.

Disc On Raised Pylon at Lockheed's
Helendale, California Facility

Helendale, California, is southwest of Barstow and near Edwards AFB on the west
and south of China Lake Naval Weapons Center and Fort Irwin Military Reservation.

Out in Helendale, California, Lockheed has an underground facility where they have tested a lot of their aerospace stealth technology over the years.

[ Editor’s Note: Helendale RCS Test Range - Ufologie.net reports that "the Lockheed facility is adjacent to what used to be the Helendale auxiliary airport, six miles to the north of Helendale, California. This installation also has an visible underground entrance. The Lockheed facility is known as the RCS (Radar Cross-Section) Test Range, but is more widely identified as the 'Helendale facility.'

"Some of the most significant defense-related facilities in the United States are Radar Cross Section (RCS) test ranges. These facilities, being either contractor or government operated, conduct some of the most sensitive test programs in the defense industry. RCS ranges are used to test the radar signatures of various objects, most significantly with the aim of measuring their ability to evade radar detection against various radar types. Stealth platforms that rise from underground on pylons are tested at an RCS range in order to validate the design before flight testing.

Lockheed Martin's Helendale RCS test range, is situated 32 miles east by southeast of Edwards AFB. The range area consists of an antenna array at the southern end, with two secondary target positions situated 425 meters and 1520 meters downrange. The primary test article facility is a large structure situated 2300 meters from the radar array. This is a large, underground complex, with a sliding roof hiding the retractable primary test pylon. A mobile radar antenna is also present, which moves off to the west when not in use to allow the radar sensors to the south a clear field of view to measure the primary test article." ]

Superficially, if you look at this Helendale place from the air, it looks like an airstrip with big radar dishes. But underground, they have a sophisticated arrangement where they can raise huge pylons up from underground with whatever they wish to test. Then, they beam electromagnetic radiation at these things to test their radar signatures.

In my first book, Underground Bases and Tunnels, I actually have two photographs of an unorthodox disc-shaped object mounted on one of these pylons at the Helendale Lockheed facility in California. These photos were passed to me by a fellow researcher, who flew over the site one day and had the good luck to catch one of these tests underway and photograph it in progress. That would have been back in the early 1990s.

The object on the pylon is rather UFO-like in appearance. My best guess is that it looks UFO-like precisely because it is a UFO-like technology that Lockheed was working on. In my opinion, what we see in those photos is only one example of the sorts of technologies that the military-industrial complex is working on and has been working on and keeps mostly hidden from public view.

Pylon rises from underground installation with disk object attached.
Speculation is that electromagnetic radiation is beamed at test objects on the raised pylons.
Photographs originally printed in Underground Bases & Tunnels: What Is the Government
Trying to Hide? © 1995 by Richard Sauder, all rights reserved, written permission required.

DO YOU THINK THAT A SECRET U. S. MILITARY SPACE PROGRAM EMERGED IN THE 1950S BECAUSE WE WERE TRYING TO COPE WITH AN EXTRATERRESTRIAL PRESENCE?

It might be. I don’t know. I think that’s one possible source of secrecy. Another source of secrecy was the Cold War. I believe it is instructive to look at the antecedents of NASA and the manned American space programs, starting all the way back to the immediate post-WWII era and continuing up into the 1950s and 1960s. If you recall, under Project Paperclip, the American military and government brought over to the United States a lot of Nazi scientists and engineers to work on a number of projects – prominent of which was the early space program.

Group of Project Paperclip German physicists at Ft. Bliss, Texas, circa 1947.

[ Editor's Note: Wikipedia - "Operation, or Project, Paperclip was the code name under which the U.S. intelligence and military services extracted German scientists from Nazi Germany, during and after the final stages of World War II. In 1945, the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) was established and given direct responsibility for Operation Paperclip.

"In early August 1945, Colonel Holger N. Toftoy, Chief of the Rocket Branch in the Research and Development Division of Army Ordnance, offered initial one-year contracts to the rocket scientists. After Toftoy agreed to take care of their families, 127 scientists accepted the offer. In September 1945, the first group of seven rocket scientists arrived from Germany at Fort Strong in the US: Wernher von Braun, Erich W. Neubert, Theodor A. Poppel, August Schultze, Eberhard F. M. Rees, Wilhelm Jungert and Walter Schwidetzky. Eventually the rocket scientists arrived at Fort Bliss, Texas, for rocket testing at White Sands Proving Grounds as 'War Department Special Employees.'"

Werner von Braun, Walter Dornberger and Eugen Saenger

Major General Walter Dornberger (on left), Commander of the V-2 laboratory
at Peenemnde, Germany, standing next to physicist Wernher von Braun (arm in cast), who
had invented the V-2 rocket. Photograph taken in Austria on May 3, 1945, after surrender
to American troops. Image source: National Archives and Records Administration.

Werner von Braun, for example, brought over a team of more than 100 Nazi scientists and engineers and they went out first of all to Fort Bliss, Texas, and soon after to the White Sands Proving Ground in southern New Mexico. The U. S. Army, at the same time, brought over as many V-2 (Vengeance 2) rockets as it could recover from occupied Nazi Germany. Von Braun and his crew spent several years doing scores of test launches of V-2s from launch complex Number 33 at White Sands.

THE REASON WHY I BROUGHT UP THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL QUESTION IS THAT IT’S NOW PRETTY WELL DOCUMENTED THAT AT WHITE SANDS DURING THAT PROJECT PAPERCLIP EXPERIMENTATION WITH THE V-2 ROCKETS, THERE WERE WHITE OR SILVER DISCS INTERACTING WITH LAUNCHES AND CAUSING PROBLEMS.

Yes, I think that’s correct. I think there is also some information to indicate that von Braun and perhaps others of his team were brought in on the (July 1947) Roswell crash scenario to consult on that recovery operation. So, it’s entirely plausible to me that von Braun and the ex-Nazis at White Sands had some involvement with the extraterrestrial question, beginning all the way back at the immediate post-WWII period.

Then von Braun and his crew left White Sands and went to the Army’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, where they continued to perfect ballistic missile technology, both for the military and the burgeoning civilian NASA manned space program effort.

Werner von Braun’s boss at Peenemuende, Germany, where the Nazis fired the V-2s and V-1 rockets during WWII was SS General Walter Dornberger also brought over to the United States under Project Paperclip. Dornberger brought with him the plans for the next generation of chemical rocket technology that the Nazis were working on at the close of WWII. That was the boost-glide technology first proposed by Eugen Saenger before WWII.

[ Editor’s Note: Major-General and physicist, Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger (September 6, 1895 - June 27, 1980) was a leader of Germany's V-2 rocket program and other projects at the Peenemuende Army Research Center. In April 1930, Dornberger was appointed to the Ballistics Council of the German Army Weapons Department as Assistant Examiner to secretly develop a mass-producible military liquid-fuel rocket to surpass the range of artillery. On December 21, 1932, Dr. Dornberger watched a rocket motor explode at Kummersdorf while Wernher von Braun tried to light it with a flaming gasoline can at the end of a four-meter pole.

The first successful V-2 test launch was the third test on October 3, 1942, from the Isle of Usedom in east Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Ten months later on July 7, 1943, Major-General Dornberger, Wernher von Braun and Dr. Ernst Steinhoff were flown to Hitler's Führerhauptquartier headquarters where Hitler viewed the film of the successful V-2 test launch, narrated by Dr. von Braun.

Rocket physicist Dornberger was brought to the United States in Operation Paperclip to develop guided missiles. From 1950 to 1965, he worked for the Bell Aircraft Corp. and was a key consultant for the X-20 Dyna-Soar project and the Strategic Air Command (SAC)'s nuclear air-to-surface guided missile called Rascal.

Wernher von Braun, the former technical head at Peenemünde, went beyond the Project Paperclip V-2 rocket research to lead development of the Saturn rocket, which was to carry Apollo 11, with astronauts Commander Neil Alden Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene 'Buzz' Aldrin, Jr., to the moon on July 20, 1969. After that successful moon landing, Wernher von Braun became Director of the National Aeroronautics and Space Administration, NASA.

Eugen Saenger (September 22, 1905 - February 10, 1964) was a German rocket propulsion engineer whose "antipodal bomber" - a boost by liquid rocket to gliding in stratospheric altitude, had a range far greater than what was possible by its fuel capacity alone.

Dornberger was working on the A-4 with the A-9 and A-10 to come with which the Nazis hoped to bomb the mainland United States. Dornberger, therefore, brought along all the research and development blueprints and technical specifications for these projects and they proved to be the forerunner of the later space shuttle.

Dyna-Soar - Beginning of Secret
American Military Space Program?

When Dornberger arrived in the U. S., he was farmed out to the Bell Corporation in upstate New York and there he helped design and develop the USAF’s Dyna-Soar space plane project, which was the forerunner of our space shuttle. But Dyna-Soar was the original manned space shuttle program, which was developed in the 1950s by the USAF. And the Air Force put a lot of money into developing the X-20 Dyna-Soar, for which they planned to use Titan boosters. But publicly, the Titans were used to put the Gemini spacecraft into orbit."

An artist's impression of X-20 Dyna-Soar
being launched on top of Titan booster, an American USAF
project based on work of German physicists Walter Dornberger, Wernher von Braun
and Eugen Saenger. Allegedly operated only from 1957 to 1963, but is that where
the American military's secret space program began, siphoning trillions
of black budget dollars and continuing to this day?

[ Editor’s Note: Wikipedia - "The X-20 Dyna-Soar ("Dynamic Soarer") was a United States Air Force (USAF) program to develop a space plane that could be used for a variety of military missions, including reconnaissance, bombing, space rescue, satellite maintenance and sabotage of enemy satellites. Officially, the Dyna-Soar program ran from October 24, 1957 to December 10, 1963.

Dyna-Soar was much more like the much later civilian NASA Space Shuttle. It could not only be boosted and travel to distant targets at the speed of an intercontinental ballistic missile, but it was designed to glide to earth like an airplane under the control of the pilot. It could land at an airfield, rather than simply falling to earth and landing with a parachute. Dyna-Soar could also reach earth orbit, like the Mercury or Gemini. This made Dyna-Soar far more advanced in concept than the other human spaceflight missions of the period. It had military missions other than simply placing one or two men into space.

1. Maximum Dyna-Soar Speed: 17,500 mph (28,165 km/h)
2. Range: Earth orbit 22,000 nautical miles, (40,700 km)
3. Service Ceiling: 530,000 ft (160 km)
4. Rate of Climb: 100,000 ft/min (510 m/s)

In April 1960, eight astronauts were secretly chosen for the Dyna-Soar program.

1) Neil Armstrong (NASA) 1960–62
2) Albert H. Crews, Jr. (Air Force) 1962–63
3) Bill Dana (NASA) 1960–62
4) Henry C. Gordon (Air Force) 1960–63
5) Pete Knight (Air Force) 1960–63
6) Russell L. Rogers (Air Force) 1960–63
7) Milt Thompson (NASA) 1960–63
8) James W. Wood (Air Force) 1960–63" ]

By the end of 1962, Dyna-Soar had been given the designation X-20, the acceleration rocket (to be used in the Dyna Soar I drop-tests) and had been successfully fired. The USAF held an 'unveiling' ceremony for the X-20 in Las Vegas and yet mysteriously, the cancellation of the Dyna-Soar project was announced a year later in December 1963 right after spacecraft construction had begun and $660 million had been spent, according to public records.

But is that where the cover-up of the secret military American space program began and the diversion of trillions of dollars over the next years to finance its operations?