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.

It would have been scientific in name only. I don't think there is any open scientific question of any great consequence where people are saying "if we could only set off a nuke on the moon, we would know for sure."

What sets my eyes rolling is the midcentury enthusiasm for setting off nukes wherever we could possibly put them. I bet there were people thinking about nukes under the antarctic ice cap, in a volcano, a major fault, a hurricane's eye...