Red Flag Over the Moon

Let’s face it, we were caught flat-footed. Our projects were tied up in arguments between builders as to which design was the more ideal. Our Project Vanguard was lingering for lack of sufficient cash and manpower. The leaders of our country had their heads buried in the sands of golf courses, hoping like the ostrich that what they weren't willing to see would therefore cease to exist. A week after Sputnik had electrified the world, too many of these leaders were already busy trying to stick their heads back in the golf traps—denying the obvious, shrugging it off, pretending we had bigger plans all the time, and so forth. Such leaders would do well to study the last days of the Roman Empire and meditate on them. What can the rest of us do, especially those of us who, through science-fiction, know how real and vital space flight is going to be to the human future. We can do something—we can do our utmost to sway public opinion behind a new crash program for rocket engineering and space flight.

In spite of the fact that America has more science-fiction magazines and science-fiction readers than any other country in the world (and here again Russia is a close second), we have always been shy of publicly-admitting belief in space travel. Buck Rogers may be a household word, but serious people smile when they hear it. When the first American society of space-travel enthusiasts was formed back in 1931, it took the name of the American Interplanetary Society and called its journal Astronautics. But as soon as it grew large and began to attract practical engineers to its ranks, it embarrassedly changed its name to the conservative American Rocket Society and its magazine to Jet Propulsion. To this day rocket engineers would rather talk in public only about ballistic missiles, jet planes, and cargo rockets, and avoid public references to any “wild” ideas of moon-flight.

It is this curious reluctance to admit publicly what is actually the heart's desire of every rocket man that has helped to hold back our progress. Mention moon-flying to a congressman and he'd think you crazy. Instead talk about V-2s and missiles. That sounds more businesslike.

This sort of nonsense has got to stop. Rocket men must speak out and name their objective boldly and clearly. We want the moon! We want it now, and we want it for the free world! We have the means, we have the will—give us the money and we will give you the universe!

That's the way the Russians talk. They state their objectives without blushing. They never hesitated to put pictures of space rockets on the covers of even the most sedate of science journals. Their government bureau in charge of rocketry is boldly called the Ministry for Interplanetary Communication!

Science-fiction readers should speak out plainly. We can collar our acquaintances, write our congressmen, put letters in the newspapers, come out openly. Stop the nonsense, clear the decks, build the space-ships now.

If we don't, then in a few years we are going to be able to stand out in our back yards and look at a real new Soviet Satellite. It's going to be a big white sphere in the night sky with very familiar features. It's going to be called Luna; there'll be a red flag stuck on a mast in the middle of the Sea of Serenity and another on the top of Tycho. And the Man in the Moon will be broadcasting down to Earth every day—in Russian.

That's the way it's probably going to be.

THE END