BOMB THE MOON Project A119: “A Study of Lunar Research Flights” Nearly 60 years ago the U.S. military and federal government working with hand-picked scientists embarked on a project designed to vaporize part of the Moon and terrorize the leaders of the U.S.S.R. The audacious (and exceedingly risky) plan involved launching a powerful nuclear bomb to the Moon. After traveling for days and crossing nearly a quarter million miles, the atomic device would have exploded upon impact creating an intense flash and a glowing crater that could have been visible to everyone on Earth for days—including the Russian military. Team members realized that, because of engineering and lift capability,the bigger and heavier hydrogen bomb would be impracticable. Instead, they decided to use a specially built, ramped up atom bomb for the blast. Leonard Reiffel, the leader of the operation, told the AP in a 2000 interview that the idea was to intimidate the Soviet leaders and boost the confidence of the media and citizens after the shock that the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik, had on the American psyche. Military officials apparently abandoned the idea because of the danger to people on Earth in case the mission failed. Reiffel also mentioned the scientific team raised valid concerns about the uncontrollable dangers such a detonation on the Lunar surface could create. Among the negative scenarios that caused project members hand-wringing were: the possibility of a rocket failure causing atomic detonation on Earth; debris flung from the Moon that might fall to Earth causing catastrophic damage to cities or regions of continents; the possibility of long-lasting radioactive contamination of the Moon.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 21:48:19 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015