Project Horizon (Military Version)

In the first two months of 1958 President Eisenhower ordered the creation of a new department at the Pentagon, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA. One of the first tasks appointed to ARPA was to choose which branch of the military would handle the country’s space program. Almost arbitrarily ARPA chose the Air Force. This decision stood for just a few months before the President announced the formation of NASA, but it became clear to the heads of the U.S. Army that they were running second in a two horse race. The Pentagon would only be allowed into space if they could persuade the President that there was a military need to be there. Almost immediately the Air Force and the Army produced their rival visions for operating off-world. The Army team led by Generals Medaris and Trudeau turned to Wernher von Braun whose team presented a long-term plan based around their new one-million pound rocket the Juno V; but the Air Force went all-out and showed its plans for strategic domination by building a moon base.

In March 1959 the Army responded with its own vision for a moon base which they called “Project Horizon.” The plan was conceived and presented to the President in June 1959 and was immediately recognised as a useful beginning for a civilian moon base, and so the report was reduced from 800 pages to 400 pages and given to NASA.

Now, exactly sixty years later, three of the four volumes of the original military report are available here. Volume III still remains classified as SECRET.

Reproduced from the actual copy of Horizon which was used to create the edited Civilian version. This version includes the original colour graphics.