A top-secret document describing a 1958 United States Air Force program to build an underground base on the Moon was redacted right after the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik program.The report stated that: “The Lunar Expedition base has its objective manned exploration of the moon with the first manned landing and return in late 1967. This one achievement, if accomplished before the USSR, will serve to demonstrate conclusively that this nation possesses the capability to win future competition in technology. No space achievement short of this goal will have equal technological significance, historical impact, or excite the entire world.”While NASA would eventually develop its own plan to land a man on the Moon, as so eloquently stated in President John F. Kennedy’s 1962 ‘We choose to go to the Moon’ speech, the Air Force didn’t want to wait for a mere scientific expedition. Instead, they wanted the: “strategic high ground,” and that meant having a US military station firmly entrenched on the Moon, well above its enemies on Earth.—