Gentlemen...Lets blow up the moon

[universecannon]

US planned to nuke the moon

The United States planned to blow up the moon with a nuclear bomb during the Cold War, according to reports.

www.smh.com.au

The United States planned to blow up the moon with a nuclear bomb during the cold war, according to reports.

The secret project, dubbed 'A Study of Lunar Research Flights' or 'Project A119', was allegedly devised by US military chiefs at the height of the space race in the late 1950s as a show of strength over the Soviet Union, scientists claim.

According to reports, the US would have used an atom bomb because a hydrogen bomb would have been too heavy.

A missile carrying the bomb would have been launched from an undisclosed location on Earth and travel to the moon, where it would detonate on impact.
The project would have been carried out in 1959, but was reportedly abandoned by military officials due to fears that it would endanger people on Earth should the mission fail.
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Physicist Leonard Reiffel, who was involved with the project, said it would have intimidated the Soviet Union and given the US a morale boost after the Russians successfully launched Sputnik in 1957. Reiffel went on to serve as deputy director at NASA.
Scientists involved raised concerns about contaminating the moon with radioactive material, Reiffel said.

Also involved in the project was astronomer Carl Sagan, at the time a young graduate, who carried out calculations about the behaviour of dust and gas generated by the blast.

According to the author of a Sagan biography, he may have committed a security breach in 1959 by disclosing the secret project in an academic fellowship application.

The US government has never formally confirmed its involvement in the project.
The US Air Force declined to comment on the claims.

 

[The Traveler]

This sounds like complete bogus.

The amount of energy you need to even make a crater that would be visible by the naked eye from earth will be more as all the nuclear weapons in the world combined. Also, on this moment they know that they cannot even blow up a large asteroid with our nukes so how would they want to do that with the moon?

This story is a complete fantasy I'm afraid.

According to reports, the US would have used an atom bomb because a hydrogen bomb would have been too heavy.

LOL, the person who wrote this possibly thinks that the moon is just a small piece of cheese.

Please people, don't be so gullible to believe stories like this.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

 

[empire]

cooooool

 

[Mindlusion]

you TOTALLY quoted me on that title.

 

[The Traveler]

Just some nice figures:

* A big superstorm like Sandy can easily produce the energy equivalent of 8000 megaton, a day;
* Currently the biggest nuclear arsenal is only 7000 megaton total;
* The biggest nuclear bomb to ever be detonated on earth was 50 megaton;
* The total mass of the moon is 7.34767309 × 10^22 kilograms.

So no, this story is fiction.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

 

[mescaline-man]

Intimidation of the Soviet nation with a little inflation. Pick up your glass spoon and shoot for the moon.

 

[spinCycle]

Given the cold war mindset, it would not surprise me if the idea was given consideration at some moment, though I am sure the technical details would have ended the discussion pretty quickly. Equally weird and misguided thoughts were acted on (MKULTRA for one) It's not like having thousands of nuclear weapons stockpiled is a reasonable basis from which to launch one's ideas to begin with, is it? The temptation to use one must have been huge. Once you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

 

[universecannon]

Interesting facts

But ay, just because i posted it doesn't mean i gung-ho believe its true!

I figured the headline was just sensationalistic, and that if it was true they really only intended to detonate a bomb on the moon- not actually blow it up. In any case, funny story... especially since today is a full moon

p.s. yes title credit goes to mindlusion, heheh

 

[Vodsel]

Whoever wrote that piece was spicing up facts a little. Spicing up as in, dumping a kilo of chili on a single nacho.

Project A119 intended to detonate a nuclear bomb in the moon, that's true. But the intention was no way near blowing up the whole satellite. Not even the most insane goat starers tripping balls would even come up with something like that.

What they considered was firing a small nuclear warhead so it would detonate on the dark side of the moon, raising a cloud of dust that would be visible from earth thanks to solar radiation. They figured it might have been a nice show off for the eyes of the public and for those pesky russians, but they reasonably set aside the idea and focused on the moon landing project.

 

[universecannon]

Less ridiculous article on it: Did U.S. Have Plans To Nuke The Moon?

 

[Mr.Peabody]

Ha! Take that, moon! What did you ever do for us? I mean, besides give us tides, stabilize the rotational axis of the earth and somehow make women's physiology follow a 28 day cycle?? You're a punk, you old moon!


Seriously, though. Radiation? They worried about radiation? That's what told me this is false. Space is almost nothing but radiation! The moon has been irradiated since it became a moon! Fun story though....

 

[Crazyhorse]

Before dismissing this completely you have to remember the era we're talking about here... sputnik had just been launched, the first manmade object in orbit. They hadn't even started sending dogs and monkeys up there yet. Space was still pretty much a mystery. They probably had little to no idea of things like the amount of radiation outside our atmosphere, or how important the moon is to life on earth... Almost nobody would have had a clue about things like that in the 50's, especially a bunch of military brass looking for a way to retaliate against the implied threat that sputnik (an emptied out warhead) posed. Hydrogen and atom bombs were so new and they were so impressed with them, I could easily see them coming up with something like this as a show of force.

 

[Parshvik Chintan]

[YOUTUBE]

"we're earthlings let's blow up earth things!"

 

[Guyomech]

The moon is 1/6 the Earth's mass. They must have been aware that a bomb wouldn't have done significant damage. The dust plume story is more plausible, although its likely it wouldn't have been visible at all. But people certainly do come up with all kinds of crazy ideas.

 

[Mr.Peabody]

Before dismissing this completely you have to remember the era we're talking about here... sputnik had just been launched, the first manmade object in orbit. They hadn't even started sending dogs and monkeys up there yet. Space was still pretty much a mystery. They probably had little to no idea of things like the amount of radiation outside our atmosphere, or how important the moon is to life on earth... Almost nobody would have had a clue about things like that in the 50's, especially a bunch of military brass looking for a way to retaliate against the implied threat that sputnik (an emptied out warhead) posed. Hydrogen and atom bombs were so new and they were so impressed with them, I could easily see them coming up with something like this as a show of force.

That's true, I hadn't thought about that.....

And along with what Guyomech said, people do come up with crazy ideas. Especially the military!!

I guess I'd say it's plausible.

I could just see a bunch of military and government leaders sitting around in a tizzy saying, "Oh god! What are we going to do? Those damn Russians are beating us!" Then another individual says, "I know! We'll send a rocket to the moon!" Much applause. Then another jumps in and says, real slow and serious, "No. We'll blow up the moon." Then everyone goes nuts. Later, JFK hears and says, "What a bunch of morons! We'll send people to the moon."

That's how it happened, trust me.

 

[Pandora]

Just some nice figures:

* A big superstorm like Sandy can easily produce the energy equivalent of 8000 megaton, a day;
* Currently the biggest nuclear arsenal is only 7000 megaton total;
* The biggest nuclear bomb to ever be detonated on earth was 50 megaton;
* The total mass of the moon is 7.34767309 × 10^22 kilograms.

So no, this story is fiction.


Kind regards,

The Traveler

Sorry if this is a bit of a derail on the original thread, which in my opinion is absolutely fiction and silly, but Traveler where did you get these figures?

Surely the biggest nuclear arsenal in terms of gigatons is still in the hands of Russia and surely it is over 7 gigatons.

Didn't Russia explode one that was a lot closer to 100 megatons in the early days by taking a super powerful H Bomb configuration and wrapping it in a U-235 "jacket" then exploding it above ground and scaring the crap out of everyone, basically making Soviet and other scientists say "never again" for that particular design?

 

[Vodsel]

Project A119 on Wikipedia.

 

[The Traveler]

...

Sorry if this is a bit of a derail on the original thread, which in my opinion is absolutely fiction and silly, but Traveler where did you get these figures?

Surely the biggest nuclear arsenal in terms of gigatons is still in the hands of Russia and surely it is over 7 gigatons.

Didn't Russia explode one that was a lot closer to 100 megatons in the early days by taking a super powerful H Bomb configuration and wrapping it in a U-235 "jacket" then exploding it above ground and scaring the crap out of everyone, basically making Soviet and other scientists say "never again" for that particular design?

The total amount of nuclear weapons and their total yield is ever changing. Though it is believed that at the moment Russia has the biggest total arsenal while the USA has the biggest active arsenal:

Federation of American Scientists :: Status of World Nuclear Forces

The total yield of the total arsenal is again a number that is hard to get a precise number on, the best guesses are that this is currently about 7 Gigaton.

The biggest nuclear test on earth ever was with the Tsar Bobma, this was originally a 100 megaton weapon but this was thought to cause too much fallout, so it was reduced to 'only' 50 megaton.

[YOUTUBE]

Kind regards,

The Traveler

 

[Guyomech]

Thanks for the link, Vodsel. As always, stranger than fiction....

 

[cyb]

The biggest nuclear test on earth ever was with the Tsar Bobma

Wow...That was the prettiest thing I've seen in quite a while..:surprised
(Does that make me wierd??)

ps.Eva Longoria comes a close second..