The US Air Force's plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon (2000) | Hacker News Reader

The US Air Force's plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon (2000)

theguardian.com

42 pointsdsr1235 comments

  "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?

Looking insane may have been the goal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madman_theory

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?

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.

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.

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).

It was probably just a metaphor to vulgarize what he meant. They wanted a big assed bomb.

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.

Operation Black Buck:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck

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

"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

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

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?"

@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.

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

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.

Political zealotry is just as dangerous, if not more so. A singularity or nuclear war is more of an existential threat than any religious ideology could ever be.

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.

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.

I think most climate scientists will tell you they just don't know what will happen that far out.

Well, if _you_ indeed have any nukes or involvement with those humans referenced in this story (as implied in your comment) and even if not, then this song might give you a smile.. and some pause before listening to someone who would feel no remorse for making Life extinct: [Randy Newman - Political Science ("Let's Drop the Big One")](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGO42gvCSPI)

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.

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.

Speaking of crazy shit the US actually did do...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfish_Prime

We already nuked space, just for fun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Chrome_Dome#Accident...

http://www.oocities.org/southbeach/1380/crmoon.html

"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).

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?

the moon has more gravitational potential energy in it than all the nukes on earth times one million

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Csj7vMKy4EI

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?

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

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.

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.

Either that, or it would blast the moon out of Earth orbit and send it on a journey across the galaxy.

Source: Space 1999

Nothing, and no. https://www.quora.com/What-would-happen-if-every-nuclear-pow...

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