SHADO Vehicles: A Cheaper Way To The Moon And Back : an article by: GF Willmetts
With the recent fly around the Moon, I thought it would be appropriate to go back to 1972 and the 1980 version of our future and a look at one of Supreme Headquarters, Alien Defence Organisation’s fleet of lunar vehicles. When its commander, Edward Straker, was detailing plans for SHADO’s Earth’s defence, he wanted a fleet of specialised submarines and regular transport to the Moon, without relying on NASA or explaining their frequent activity. As such we have the Lunar Module and Lunar Carrier. For any other visitors to the Moon, all was known about Moonbase was that it was an international military installation.
Rather than a regular rocket launch as used by NASA, the Lunar Carrier would take the Lunar Module into the upper atmosphere before disengaging it. As such, it could be launched from the UK or any point on the Earth than be dependent on equatorial centrifuge in blasting off. As such, there was a proportionate reduction of fuel needed for the Moon trip. It was estimated that it could take 24 hours to travel to the Moon, providing the alignment was correction. Although principally a passenger transporter, it would seem unlikely that with so many trips that it also didn’t carry some order of supplies and cargo at the same time. Although we never saw it, we must assume NASA provided transport for the Space Interceptors missiles and other major regular supplies.
Landing on Moonbase necessitated a launch pad allowing for passengers to get out without the need for spacesuits, although one would have to question the inherent dangers to Moonbase personal should it crash. There have been some examples of this and in these instances, the pilots were successful in not crashing down on Moonbase.
The return trip necessitated a burn in the Earth’s atmosphere to lose speed and rendezvous with the Lunar Carrier to bring it back to its airport. As such, it was a reusable shuttle. Very few were lost in flight. Lunar Module 32, captained by Steve Maddox and navigator Alan Tucker, was interfered with by a UFO weapon hidden by an Apollo 8 rocket and blew up in the Earth’s atmosphere. An alien weapon left by the aliens in a creator near the Dalotek installation resulted in radio interference on Moonbase and the loss of a Lunar Module while taking off and it crashing nearby with loss of all crew lives. Colonel Craig Collins Lunar Module was lost in re-entry although he survived and brainwashed by the aliens in his missing two months. Later, Colonel Paul Foster and his navigator, Captain Frank Craig, didn’t even leave their Module, when they were programmed by the aliens to kill Straker. Their Module had allegedly bounced off the Earth’s atmosphere but had enough fuel to return to Moonbase, which gives some idea of its fuel supply. If you compare to the Apollo missions, once out of the Earth’s atmosphere, they didn’t really need to use much fuel there are back other than for course corrections.
Moonbase is also supposed to have at least three Modules in an underground hanger but these were never seen or how they were transported to the sphere launch pad. It would be doubtful if all members of Moonbase could be successfully returned to the Earth in an emergency.
Comparison Between The Luna Module And Artemis II
The objective of this article is on fuel deployment and navigation for the Lunar Module which we can compare to the Artemis II. Both share some similarities. Fuel can be conserved near the Earth and Moon as their gravity will draw the spacecraft towards them. It takes more fuel to leave Earth orbit than the Moon. Although we never see it, we will have to assume the Lunar Module does a translunar injection (TLI) to capitalise on the Earth’s rotation to minimise on fuel and enable the correct trajectory to the Moon or rather where the Moon will be when it arrives. With SHADO doing many lunar flights, this is probably seen as a fine art by their captains.
With so much fuel conservation, getting the Lunar Module up to 10,000-1600mph (16,000-25,000km/h) for a 24 hour flight seems less incredible. The real problem is slowing down mid-flight enough to land on Moonbase. You wouldn’t need to use the engines much once the correct velocity is reached and the Lunar Module would probably have sufficient fuel for a return flight or fuel to topped up at Moonbase.
The return trip would ultimately need less fuel as the pull of the Earth’s gravity would do much of the work once away from the Moon and might actually arrive in less than 24 hours.
Of course, there is some difference between a fictional and real lunar flight. The Lunar Module has no landing gear and so cannot land in the conventional sense, relying on a vertical landing bay for take-off on the Moon. No doubt it could be modified to have that or even to elevate its position for take-off. There is also the matter of payload.
There is still a matter of perfecting Module and Lander joining together and having the right air conditions to do it with. It would probably need a better anchoring together than just sliding into place. The true scale of either the Lunar Module or the Lunar Carrier is given. However, the Module has to be at least two times bigger than a Moonbase sphere, then it has to be at least close to 60 feet long.
I did a look around google for examples of aircraft acting as launch platforms for other aircraft and there are quite a few examples, including one by NASA trying this out for the space shuttle. Of course, one of the most seen is the crash of the M2-F2 when it lost manoeuvrability that seriously injured pilot Bruce Peterson, much to his distain, because the footage was used at the opening credits of ‘The Six Million Dollar Man’ TV series. It was only a testing body and not really a scale-up for bigger vehicles.
For our reality, putting a base on the Moon by 2030 is feasible but the cost of regular Moon flights looks awfully prohibitive. $4.1 billion a flight is going to burn into the budget, whether it is by private business or NASA. You would also need to leave an emergency spacecraft on the Moon to cover any eventuality.
As such you would think re-usable launch vehicles as used by SHADO might be worthy of consideration if only to bring the overall costs down.
© GF Willmetts 2026
All rights reserved
Ask before borrowing
