
Project A119 - benbreen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119
======
cobbzilla
Fascinating. I never knew the Mr. Show segment “Let’s Blow Up the Moon”[1] had
any basis in fact.

[1]
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GTJ3LIA5LmA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GTJ3LIA5LmA)

~~~
HillaryBriss
love the part where the astronaut says "I walked on the moon. Did a push up.
Ate an egg on it. What else can you do with it?"

also love the fact that his voice kinda sounds like that of George HW Bush.

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erichurkman
This era of science always fascinates me.

First landing on the moon? July 20, 1969. First satellite launch? January 31,
1958. 11 years, 5 months, and 20 days.

Insane.

~~~
pjc50
The clock should really start in June 1944, with the first rocket to cross the
Karman Line: a V2 ballistic missile. In many ways the moon landings (and plans
to nuke the moon) were the continuation of the war effort's tremendous pace of
technological improvement. The early rockets were primarily designed as ICBMs
with peaceful payloads as secondary adaptations.

If you look at the early space programme it can really be seen as a set of
milestones directly aimed at the manned moon landing - orbital manned flight
with safe landing (Mercury), two-man operation (Gemini), space suits, EVA,
docking, and so on.

~~~
MisterTea
> The early rockets were primarily designed as ICBMs with peaceful payloads as
> secondary adaptations.

Von Braun was interested in astronomy and space exploration well before the
war. He is quoted as saying "the rocket worked perfectly, except for landing
on the wrong planet." \- referring to the Sept 7 1944 launch. In essence it
was a peaceful rocket turned into an ICBM and thankfully later on returned to
its peaceful status.

And on a side note: imagine being Von Braun after the US handed him the keys
to their state of the art space program with a cold war sized budget. Beyond a
dream come true.

~~~
pjc50
> Beyond a dream come true.

Luckiest man in the war. He could have been killed in any number of ways
during the war, he managed to surrender to the Allies and not the Soviets, and
they chose not to hold him responsible for the 12,000 slave labour deaths of
the V2 programme. Not all the beneficiaries of slave labour did so well.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Sauckel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Sauckel)

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walrus01
only slightly less crazy, they actually DID this:

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

see soviet union section for their equivalent:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_nuclear_explosion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peaceful_nuclear_explosion)

~~~
HillaryBriss
I'm intrigued by these atomic re-landscaping proposals.

Cooler coastal air could be drawn into California's dry, hot inland valleys by
blasting a number of large, artificial passes through mountain ranges up and
down the state.

And atomic explosions could ameliorate intense traffic problems in Los Angeles
not only by conveniently creating new passes through the Santa Monica
mountains for new multilane highways between the Valley and the West Side, but
also as a means of clearing gridlocked intersections.

~~~
pm90
I think for this to happen, there would need to be demonstrations of the
safety aspects of using nuclear weapons.

Can you imagine trying to justify this project to the public? It would be a
nightmare: "Nuclear explosions planned outside Los Angeles"... it would likely
trigger a mini-freakout.

~~~
TeMPOraL
How times have changed since people would drive to Las Vegas and party next to
a nuclear test...

[https://www.citylab.com/equity/2014/08/atomic-tests-were-
a-t...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2014/08/atomic-tests-were-a-tourist-
draw-in-1950s-las-vegas/375802/)

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lpeancovschi
Soviet Union did actually show their nuclear power 3 years after by exploding
Tsar Bomba

~~~
mikeash
Which was an utterly impractical weapon that had no use other than
geopolitical chest-beating.

~~~
asdff
The same is true for every nuclear weapon.

~~~
mikeash
Not really. Smaller ones are quite good for destroying a lot of stuff or
killing a lot of people, which can be really useful in war. Their presence can
also be good for preventing the other side from deciding it would be nice to
destroy a lot of your stuff or killing a lot of your people with their own
weapons. The problem with the Tsar Bomba is that it was so large it couldn't
be delivered to any real target. The test required a specially-modified bomber
that wouldn't have been able to make a strike in a real war.

~~~
Roboprog
Agreed. How many nuclear armed countries have been invaded?

~~~
dragonwriter
The UK and India, at least.

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philistine
Children, remain calm. The Falkland islands have just been invaded.

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michaelcampbell
> A young Carl Sagan was part of the team responsible for predicting the
> effects of a nuclear explosion in vacuum and low gravity and in evaluating
> the scientific value of the project.

I would be interested in their research on this, from a purely curious
standpoint.

~~~
MisterTea
Thinking about this, the interesting part is what happens when there is no air
to heat and expand? From my understanding, in a chemical explosion the
explosive itself releases a pressure wave of gas from the burning of the
explosive. The air surrounding a chemical explosion helps carry the pressure
wave further out.

But what physical material is ejected from a nuclear explosion and can it
create a pressure wave? I was under the impression that the main component of
a nuclear explosion is heat. Lots and lots of heat in the form of photon
energy in a rainbow of EM spectrum. The destructive pressure wave is a result
of the air/material around the detonation being violently heated to millions
of degrees in mere microseconds.

Of course even in the vacuum of space anything within "ground zero" (can you
say that in space?) of a nuclear explosion will still vaporize, producing
expanding gases which can create a pressure wave. This is how I imagine a
nuclear "asteroid buster" would have to work. The bomb would have to be on the
surface or damn close to vaporize material from the object to influence its
trajectory.

~~~
wtracy
I had to double-check with the Atomic Rocketship website. You are correct in
that the energy released by a normal nuclear detonation in a vacuum would
follow the inverter square law, and would not transfer force as effectively
over distance as it would in a fluid medium.

Note that I said "normal" nuclear weapon. ;-) The Atomic Rocketship page
describes something called a Casaba Howitzer. This is basically a shaped
charge version of a nuke, that discharges its energy in a beam or cone shape.
Details beyond that are still classified.

Anyway, there's more than you ever wanted to know here:

[http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent...](http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php)

Search within that page for "nuclear" or "Casaba" and have fun.

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keeganjw
What a crazy time when the first thing people wanted to do when they reached
the moon was blow it up. I wonder, with the mass of the moon being so much
less than Earth's, would the explosion have altered it's orbit?

~~~
thatcherc
Nope! Wolfram Alpha puts the orbital kinetic energy of the Moon at 3.425e28
joules, or 8.186e18 tons of TNT [1]. The Tsar Bomba, the biggest nuclear
weapon ever detonated, had the energy equivalent of 50 megatons of TNT (5e7
tons), which is 100 billion times smaller than the Moon's kinetic energy. The
Moon is just really heavy - it's unlikely we could ever do much to change it's
orbit (with current technology at least!).

[1] -
[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=kinetic+energy+of+the+...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=kinetic+energy+of+the+moon)

~~~
firethief
What if we build a gigaton-range warhead (which modern rockets could easily
lob[1]) and watch for an opportunity to deflect a comet or large asteroid? The
parts I have no idea about are: how often suitable projectiles come close
enough to the Moon's path that a Gt nudge would do the deed; and whether we
could predict the effects of a huge nuke well enough to steer the object with
the requisite precision--but it seems to me interfering with the Moon is only
a bit more difficult than defending against a doomsday impact on Earth, so I
hope it would be possible.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance#Come...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance#Comet_deflection_possibility)

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smpetrey
Fascinating. Kind of sad that this was ever _considered_.

~~~
kbenson
Why? Of all the places to detonate a nuclear bomb in the name of science, the
moon seems a pretty safe one with little consequence to any living thing.

I don't really see it as all that different than drilling for a core sample,
except in scale, but that scale still doesn't affect anything, so I'm not sure
it matters.

~~~
mikeash
We blew up a bunch of Pacific islands and various other places with hundreds
of explosions for no purpose other than to make sure we could more effectively
kill people. Nuking the moon is positively benign by comparison.

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outadoc
What a crazy time.

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francoisdevlin
Am I the only one that expected an article about Pixar?

~~~
JakeWesorick
Nope. lol.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A113](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A113)

~~~
thrilleratplay
Thank you. I wanted to make sure I wasn't the only one.

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mitchtbaum
This just boggles the mind. Soon, we'll find out that the military has had
time travel technology and they've been bringing back dinosaurs to conduct
research experiments to build mammoth, militarized, non-mammalian militias.
Believe it.

~~~
pampa
From SG-1:

Maynard: Mr. President, I'm here to bring you up to speed on a program we've
been running out of Cheyenne Mountain for the past seven years.

Hayes: I've already had my top secret briefing.

Maynard: Yes, Mr. President. But not this. Mr. President, for the past seven
years the United States Air Force has been sending teams to other planets by
means of an alien device known as a "star gate".

Hayes: That's funny. That's very funny. My first day. This is a joke, right? I
have a great sense of humor—I didn't know that you had one—but this is good
because we're finding out about each other. Now I have to call the ex-
President of Togo, and when I'm done, apparently, the rest of the world is
coming to an end.

Maynard: The ex-President of Togo will have to wait, sir. This is not a joke.

