Plot: The U.S. was planning to launch an atomic bomb, like Fat Man, pictured above, that would be launched into space in a scrapped plan to blow up the moon
Posted on 11/25/2012 4:28:28 PM PST by DogByte6RER
Revealed: How the U.S. planned to blow up the MOON with a nuclear bomb to win Cold War bragging rights over Soviet Union
- Scientists were hoping for giant flash on the moon that would intimidate the Soviet Union
- Aim of mission was to launch the nuke by 1959
- Plan was later scrapped due to possible danger to people on Earth
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.
Reiffel, now 85, directed the inquiry at the former Armour Research Foundation, now part of the Illinois Institute of Technology. He later served as a deputy director at NASA.
Sagan, who later became renowned for popularizing science on television, died in 1996.
The author of one of Sagan's biographies suggested that he may have committed a security breach in 1959 after revealing the classified project in an academic fellowship application. Reiffel concurred.
Under the scenario, a missile carrying a small nuclear device was to be launched from an undisclosed location and travel 238,000 miles to the moon, where it would be detonated upon impact.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Plot: The U.S. was planning to launch an atomic bomb, like Fat Man, pictured above, that would be launched into space in a scrapped plan to blow up the moon
Oy vey....
Hopefully the dark side where the Decepticons frolic.
Good God, what an idiot idea.
Misleading headline alert - the plan did not involve the complete destruction of the Moon. It was lunacy, though, no question about that.
okaaaaayyyyy
We really need a policy to keep British tabloids out of news, at least. I think a lot of people don't realize they're tabloids.
All that radioactive dust would have floated around and eventually got back into the Earth’s atmosphere...maybe years later.
5 posted on Sunday, November 25, 2012 4:33:41 PM by Las Vegas Ron
6 posted on Sunday, November 25, 2012 4:33:41 PM by onyx
;)
Mind meld!
Actually a nuclear explosion on the moon does send a pretty clear message about who the king of the hill really is.
Psshaw, Russia would have responded by blowing up the sun.
Luna[cy]
That was the era of big thinkers. I would have favored this being done of the 4th of July, just to underscore the point.
Why nuke the moon? Because we can.
Indeed!
“Oh goody, goody, it’s another Uronium PU-36 explosive space modulator! Now we can blow up the Earth!”
“GET ME OUTTA HERE!!!!”
;^)
Someone’s been reading Frank J Fleming’s web site again.
There was no bomb large enough to “blow up the moon.” It might have made a nice new crater, though.
Eisenhower administration gave up on the plan after realizing the explosion would have damaged the American flag planted there by Neil Armstrong, sources report.
could we have even put the thing into orbit back then?
“Daddy what is a moon?”
“It’s a planet that circulated around the earth before you were born, Jimmy!”
Which would have just added to the radioactive dust already being kicked up by the above-ground nuclear testing that was going on right here on planet earth.
The Polish went further and launched a nuke at the sun, but they launched at night so it was a failure.
We could probably build a bomb large enough to put a really major dent in the moon,if not perhaps disintegrate it.
I’m unclear why anybody would want to, though.
Eisenhower liked golf, and he encouraged the switch from nuking the moon, to playing golf on it.
It worked, less than a generation after the demonstration, the Soviet Empire collapsed.
The moon has been overrated for a long time. You can’t even write a song anymore rhyming the word ‘moon’!
In the spirit of turn around is fair play, it’s always reassuring to know that communists, who now control the military, have named American conservatives and US Vets, the post cold war enemy of the US. Would they nuke us? The commies are plotting civil war against the Tea Party at a military academy. I’m certain it’s nothing.
Nuking mecca would be better.
Somewhat related: Back in the 1950’s, Edward Teller wanted to built boat harbors on the remote Alaskan coast with nuclear bombs. They called it Project Chariot. He was quoted as saying, “If you have a mountain you need moved, give us a call.” Thankfully it did not happen.
Actually a nuclear explosion on the moon does send a pretty clear message about who the king of the hill really is.
I think it sends a message of another kind. God gives wisom and somehow we try to use it in the wrong way. This would have been soooo wrong.
Without the moon we wouldn’t have known the Moonies, Moon Zappa and Keith Moon.
We likely couldn’t do any real damage, at that point on time.
Those moon craters were created by meteorites that hit it with more force than anything we can create at the time of this report and the moon is still their.
I believe we could actually split the moon and suffer no real I’ll effects, because the gravity forces would re-meld the moon.
They also thought about using nuclear bombs as propulsion for rockets in the space program, called Project Orion.
Thank God that never went anywhere.
I think Teller was the one who came up with the idea of the “Thunder well”. Basically it was a potential means of launching payloads into space with nukes in a mine shaft. (Kinda like a big gun)
Don’t give Obama any ideas. Anything to take the economy out of the news.
LOL
Weren’t they going to try launching from the surface?
The moon has 1.2% the mass of the earth, per Google calculator. That would be like talking of a bomb that could disintegrate a conical wedge of the earth that encompassed the continental USA... I don’t think so, not the biggest thermonuclear device ever constructed on earth.
ping
LOL yeah surface launches was the original plan and fortunately cooler heads prevailed before anybody tried.
Aside from the surface launch, the idea has merit. Some petty serious guys like Freeman Dyson worked on the idea.
A ray of sense on this silly thread.
Well, by the looks of it, it seems like a good idea to me!
Destroy it! Blow it up!
Yer Damn Skippy !
On the other hand, the British had nukes that they stuffed with live chickens to keep the works from getting too cold to function.
Radioactive Chickensh*t Rain would be the forerunner of Nuclear Winter.
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