It may sound like a plot straight out of a science fiction novel, but a U.S. mission to blow up the moon with a nuke was very real in the 1950s.
At the height of the space race, the U.S. considered detonating an atom bomb on the moon as a display of America's Cold War muscle.
The secret project, innocuously titled 'A Study of Lunar Research Flights' and nicknamed 'Project A119,' was never carried out.
However, its planning included calculations by astronomer Carl Sagan, then a young graduate student, of the behavior of dust and gas generated by the blast.
Viewing the nuclear flash from Earth might have intimidated the Soviet Union and boosted U.S. confidence after the launch of Sputnik, physicist Leonard Reiffel told the AP in a 2000 interview.
Robert Pearlman Editor
Posts: 42981 From: Houston, TX Registered: Nov 1999
posted 11-26-2012 02:08 PM
Why this is news escapes me; it is not like this is a new revelation. The article itself refers to the Associated Press article from 2000 that was among the first to report on this subject after initial reports in the 1950s.
Heck, a Wikipedia article on the project has been online since September 2011.
And to be clear, it wasn't a plan to "blow up the moon" as the Daily Mail, and many of the subsequent headlines, suggest.
The aim of the project was to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon to boost public morale in the United States after the Soviet Union took an early lead in the Space Race.
gliderpilotuk Member
Posts: 3398 From: London, UK Registered: Feb 2002
posted 11-26-2012 02:59 PM
The aim of the project was to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon to boost public morale in the United States after the Soviet Union took an early lead in the Space Race.
Oh, well that's all right then! More fool me for thinking Doctor Strangelove was fiction.
p51 Member
Posts: 1642 From: Olympia, WA Registered: Sep 2011
posted 11-26-2012 03:18 PM
You're right, Robert, it's not news at all. Must be a slow news day.
Remember, this was the timeframe when we thought nukes had all kinds of applications other than killing people in large areas. They were suggested for all kinds of uses, such as excavating for mining and underwater lane channel clearing. Some even suggested that we could have dug a Panama Canal-sized waterway in a few months with low-yield nuclear warheads in the right place. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed.
It's not space related, but If you want to read something really spooky, look into how close we came to handing nukes over to France in their last gasps in Indochina in that timeframe. I shudder to think how history would have been changed had we done that as the French probably would have set one off at the end of the battle at Dien Bien Phu...
Blackarrow Member
Posts: 3118 From: Belfast, United Kingdom Registered: Feb 2002
posted 11-26-2012 03:33 PM
I remember talk in the early 1960s about exploding a nuclear warhead on the Moon. I can't remember the reasons cited (I was only 7 or 8 or thereabouts) but I remember thinking it seemed like a bad idea. Fortunately, so did the right people. I preferred the idea of rockets being fired at the Moon with people inside. I still do.
Glint Member
Posts: 1040 From: New Windsor, Maryland USA Registered: Jan 2004
posted 11-26-2012 03:49 PM
quote:Originally posted by Robert Pearlman: Why this is news escapes me...
Same here. I have a May, 1958 copy of Popular Science that discusses hitting the moon with an atomic bomb. Someone gave me the magazine at least one decade ago.
The idea was to send two space vehicles. One to drop the bomb, and the other to fly through the dust cloud and collect samples.
The article is a discussion of flights leading up to a manned lunar landing in the year 2000 A.D.!
fredtrav Member
Posts: 1673 From: Birmingham AL Registered: Aug 2010
posted 11-26-2012 07:07 PM
NBC News reported tonight that the U.S. was going to "blow up the Moon" in the 50's to show the Soviets what we could do. Said Carl Sagan talked them out of it.
Apparently, Dr Strangelove didn't think big enough. Stanley Kubrick's famous film featured a Russian failsafe intended to blow up the Earth in the event of nuclear war - but now we learn that US scientists really were plotting to nuke the Moon. After falling behind in the Space Race, America explored the possibility of a lunar missile strike that would create enough of a flash and bang to terrify the Communists.
This seems a bit of a half-measure. If you're going to deface the lunar surface, why not go the whole hubristic hog, by blasting out an image of the Stars and Stripes, or the president's face, to dangle in the sky for eternity?
moorouge Member
Posts: 2454 From: U.K. Registered: Jul 2009
posted 11-30-2012 04:15 PM
Despair not. Project A119 did reach fruition. It became the main road that links Hertford and Stevenage in the UK.
gliderpilotuk Member
Posts: 3398 From: London, UK Registered: Feb 2002
posted 12-01-2012 04:32 AM
quote:Originally posted by moorouge: Despair not. Project A119 did reach fruition. It became the main road that links Hertford and Stevenage in the UK.
That's plagiarism!
moorouge Member
Posts: 2454 From: U.K. Registered: Jul 2009
posted 12-01-2012 11:31 AM
quote:Originally posted by gliderpilotuk: That's plagiarism!
So I watch TV as you do.
stsmithva Member
Posts: 1933 From: Fairfax, VA, USA Registered: Feb 2007
posted 12-02-2012 12:52 PM
Another sign that this is not a new revelation: it was covered extensively in a 1997 episode of the HBO documentary series "Mr. Show." Watch for the glitch NASA ran into at 2:20.
Ohhhhhhh, all right - "Mr. Show" was a great sketch comedy series. The pictures of Mars at the beginning have chocolate on them - I can't remember why.
posted 11-26-2012 01:56 PM
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