Let's Nuke the Moon!

The 50s weren’t going so great for the Cold War, at least if you were American. The USSR had just launched Sputnik, the first human-made satellite in space. This was a shock heard far and wide. I remember my parents telling me that it was possible to find Sputnik in the night sky.

This was no good for Americans! If the Soviets could launch something into space, then surely they could deliver nuclear explosives across an ocean.

The US needed a win badly, and Kennedy’s Moonshot speech was still a few years off.

Enter Project A119.

The United States Air Force recognized that a potent symbol of American might was the only thing that would do the trick. They also needed to couch this show of force in the guise of scientific discovery.

If the Russians could demonstrate their ability to bring nukes across the ocean, then the United States would bring them to the moon, creating a spectacle nobody on planet Earth could ever forget.

Notable scientists like a young Carl Sagan were brought in to consider this enormous problem, and they were faced with daunting technical challenges right from the start. While the primary goal was a demonstration of military might, there was also a unique opportunity to gather scientific data, particularly about the lunar geology and the mechanics of an explosion in a vacuum.

Of course, transporting a nuclear device to the Moon posed significant risks. The rocket technology of the time was in its infancy, and the possibility of a launch failure, which could result in the bomb detonating on Earth, was a genuine concern.

Even worse, people on Earth might not even be able to see the explosion. The Earth’s atmosphere causes the familiar mushroom cloud blast, and without an atmosphere, the energy might dissipate into space before being seen on Earth. Sure, the Air Force could overshoot the mark, but the Moon was pristine, and blasting a chunk out of it seemed like it might not be remembered well by history.

Leaving behind radiation on an untested surface like the Moon also seemed like maybe not the best idea.

The other day, I wrote about how far away the Moon is from the Earth. The Moon is just such a universally recognized symbol, it’s natural that I would think about it at night.

Maybe it’s only natural that we humans have already made plans to blow it up.