
The US Air Force's plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon (2000) - dsr12
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2000/may/14/spaceexploration.theobserver
======
beloch

      "At the time scientists still believed there might be
       microbial life on the moon and Sagan had suggested a 
       nuclear explosion might be used to detect organisms."
    

Somebody in charge must have finally realized nuking the moon would have made
the U.S. look insane, not strong. However, the most surprising thing to me is
that Carl Sagan managed to find a scientific silver lining in this turd of a
plan. Does anyone have more info on how a nuclear explosion might have been
used to detect life on the moon? Would it have involved spectroscopic analysis
of the debris cloud?

~~~
jordanb
Looking insane may have been the goal:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory)

------
hindenburg
According to the article, Dr. Reiffel said, 'The Air Force wanted a mushroom
cloud so large it would be visible on earth.'

That seems a very odd thing for a physicist to say, given that of course a
mushroom cloud wouldn't form in a vacuum. Perhaps Dr. Reiffel was not at his
best on the day of the interview?

~~~
justin_vanw
There are too many impossibilities and errors in this to even consider it as
remotely factual.

\- ICBMs can't reach the moon, or even anything remotely close to it

\- Mushroom clouds don't form in a vacuum.

\- The fact that some Air Force officer thought it would be a neat idea (if
any of this is factual) does not in any way imply that it was even remotely
considered by anyone with the authority to make such a decision, any more than
seeing a person who works at the Apple store drinking a coke implies that
Apple Inc is buying the entire CocaCola corporation.

~~~
versteegen
By "mushroom cloud" they must have meant the ball of dust thrown up by an
explosion at/below the lunar surface. That is why Sagan would have suggested
it as a possibility for detecting micro-organisms.

~~~
justin_vanw
But it still wouldn't make a cloud, it would just scatter dust, and each
particle of dust would fall back to the moon in a ballistic trajectory (it
would not last long at all).

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icebraining
Reminds me of the conversation in _Yes, Prime Minister_ regarding the nuclear
missiles (Trident).

    
    
      - Does the RAF [Royal Air Force] agree on canceling Trident?
      - You could ask them. If you're interested in the opinion
        of garage mechanics. They'd want to keep it. They want to drop
        the bomb from an aeroplane. They just like dropping things on
        people, but they're no good at it. Couldn't even close the
        runway at Port Stanley. Probably never find Moscow, and if
        they did they'd miss it.

~~~
teh_klev
Operation Black Buck:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck)

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Terr_
Reminds me of a webpage "Nuke The Moon" [0] which satirically says:

> World peace cannot be achieved by sitting around on our duffs singing hippy
> songs to the moon. Peace can only be achieved through excessive acts of
> seemingly mindless violence.

> [...] And all the other countries would exclaim, "Holy @$#%! They are nuking
> the moon! America has gone insane! I better go eat at McDonald's before they
> think I don't like them."

[0]
[http://www.imao.us/docs/NukeTheMoon.htm](http://www.imao.us/docs/NukeTheMoon.htm)

------
bootload
_" Reiffel was approached by senior US Air Force officers in 1958, who asked
him to 'fast-track' a project to investigate the visibility and effects of a
nuclear explosion on the moon. "_

Was the US Air Force capable of launching a missle to the moon in the late
'50s, early '60's?

Lets say they chose the Atlas. Lets be generous and say the Atlas E was chosen
(Lockheed , first launched in Feb 24, '61) [0] it was capable of an 820Kg
payload into low orbit. The interesting bit, for the total life of this
particular rocket there were _" 9 successful launches, 7 partial successful
launches and 2 failures."_

Hardly a reasonable plan to get a bomb to the moon. Nothing really happened
until Wernher von Braun was put in charge of the F1 and by then the target was
a manned mission.

[0] [http://www.designation-
systems.net/dusrm/app3/b-2.html](http://www.designation-
systems.net/dusrm/app3/b-2.html)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#NASA_career](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#NASA_career)

~~~
valarauca1
_a project to investigate the visibility [...] of a nuclear explosion on the
moon_

So the thought process was literally, "I wonder if we could see a nuclear
explosion on the moon?"

~~~
bootload
@valarauca1 good point, though I'm sure there was a good reason behind this.
Did someone think this might be a one-up on Sputnik? Anyway I'm glad it didn't
go through. The success rates for US Air Force rockets at that time wasn't
good.

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TrevorJ
Sometimes I am reminded how incredible it is that we haven't managed to make
ourselves extinct yet.

~~~
revscat
Oh we will, I have no doubts about that. If we are still here in any
significant numbers 100 years from now it will be a miracle. Religious
zealotry towards prophets and/or profits means climate change gets ignored.

~~~
an_account
You think climate change will wipe out a majority of people, and within only
100 years?

If so, you're ignoring science just as much as the religious zealots.

~~~
username223
Global warming can't do it directly, but the resulting instability -- mass
migration, famine, political and religious zealotry -- could certainly
increase the odds of nuclear conflict. I doubt that a majority, i.e. 3.5+
billion, will die, but it won't be pretty.

------
orionblastar
The space race was basically due to the Cold War between the USSR and USA.
Putting a rocket on the Moon, meant that it could reach the USSR and beyond if
they wanted to.

Nuking the Moon meant that they could put a nuke to reach Russia and beyond.

Remember rocket science is the same if you are putting people on the Moon or
just using missiles with nuclear payloads to hit an enemy nation.

It was a show of superior technology, and if they nuked the Moon it would have
been one more step for longer range nuclear missiles.

Be glad that the cold war was fought in space via the space race instead of
sending missiles to different places in the world or even to the Moon.
Technology from the space race really innovated things and brought about the
microchip and personal computers.

------
okonomiyaki3000
It's not a big deal to nuke a small part of a lifeless rock but it is a big
deal to put a nuke on a rocket and shoot it into space.

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username223
Speaking of crazy shit the US actually _did_ do...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime)

We already nuked space, just for fun.

~~~
fennecfoxen
"Just for fun?" They were trying to figure out whether they could detonate
nukes in space to blow up incoming ICBMs, which were a real and growing threat
in 1962 (unlike _anything_ to do with the Moon).

~~~
username223
The "fun" part was a flippant attempt to point out that the US had, at
enormous risk and cost, and with previous mistakes, launched an H-bomb into
space over 50 years ago. The ICBM part is new to me -- any further info?

------
mr_tyzic
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csj7vMKy4EI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csj7vMKy4EI)

------
lyonlim
Curious: What would such an explosion on the moon cause to the positioning of
its orbit around earth? Would that affect the tides on earth?

~~~
Synaesthesia
Gravitational potential energy of moon = 7.35 * 10^29 J Energy of largest
nuclear bomb (50 megatons) = 2.1 * 10^17 J

So the bomb is over 10^12 times weaker than the moon, affecting its orbit and
the tides by one part in a trillion. Quite unnoticeable. Source: Wolfram Alpha

~~~
analog31
I wonder if a more interesting effect would have been the spewing of debris
into earth orbit. The moon doesn't have an atmosphere to damp the ejection of
material from an explosion.

Although, I suppose this also happens if a meteor hits the moon.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Its a reasonable question. If you did it such that the explosion was on the
earth facing side, you would impart a significant amount of energy to the
material ejected. Some of that would move in a retrograde motion to the moon,
thus reducing its orbital velocity and lowering its orbit relative to the
moon. Other material would have the opposite effect, and material ejected
perpindicular to the orbital plane would find itself in a very strange orbit
indeed (probably reconnect with the moon later as the orbits eventually
intersected).

I can't imagine though that you'd get enough of it into an orbit that
intersected the Earth's atmosphere to do any sort of damage. You might have
some great meteor showers as it entered the atmosphere but probably no chunks
big enough to reach the ground.

