"There was even a plan, which ultimately fizzled, to set off a nuclear blast on the moon."
Humanity at its best
Humanity at its best
I’m imagining a sci-fi plot where you have two competing moon bases. And as one group is leaving, they detonate a bomb which kicks up enough debris to incapacitate the other base.
The Moon's Hill sphere is just under 52000 km in radius. This is the distance at which the Earth's gravitational influence is greater than that of the Moon. Using Keplerian orbital mechanics (i.e. KSP-style patched conics) as an approximation, a circular orbit at that distance takes about two weeks. This is the longest possible orbit around the moon (approximately), and therefore an upper bound on the maximum amount of time it can take for something to shoot up from the moon and fall back again.
EDIT: A couple of things to note: in the absence of other bodies, my argument wouldn't apply, as the Hill sphere would be infinite. I'm assuming here, for simplicity, that anything that exits the Hill sphere doesn't fall back. This is not entirely accurate. It's possible that something might enter orbit around the Earth, and hit the moon at some point in the future, but I'm ignoring that.
Pretty much none. The moon is big, and even nuclear blast would release a comparatively tiny amount of energy.
A pretty small one, perhaps.
Kurzgesagt: What if We Nuke the Moon? (9 min) https://youtu.be/qEfPBt9dU60
Or maybe a weird version of angry birds for a trillionaire
I applied to work for a job at a (explosions rather than power) nuclear agency, didn't get the job, slightly glad I didn't now really.