Scientific and technological progress, conceit and the general madness of the Cold War led to the fact that America wanted to drop an atomic bomb on the moon. The idea was presented as scientific, but in fact it was a way to get ahead of the USSR in some way. If you think this cautionary tale is not strange enough on its own, then you should know that young Carl Sagan was one of the brightest representatives used to carry out this plan.

A declassified report from the Air Force Center for Nuclear Weapons, which was drawn up in June 1959, shows how seriously the Americans took a plan called Project A119. In general, America wanted to explore the possibilities of weapons in space, as well as gain further understanding of the use of nuclear devices in the space environment.

The report says: "The motivation for such an explosion obviously has three parts: scientific, military and political." On 190 pages, the authors of the report discuss in detail the possible effects of an explosion on the lunar surface, the question of whether they will be able to carry out seismic observations on the moon when the atomic bomb is dropped, and how long the fallout can last.

The idea of \u200b\u200bthe Americans

The idea was to drop a small W25 nuclear warhead onto the lunar terminator (the border between the illuminated and shaded parts). This means that the mushroom cloud will be illuminated by the Sun, and therefore it can be observed from the Earth, and in particular seen from Moscow. All studies have shown that the Americans did have sufficient technological capabilities to carry out this plan.

The force of the explosion of such a bomb would be 1.6 kilotons. This is a relatively low value for an atomic bomb, but still serious.

Who was behind this project

The grand plan for Project A119 has been discussed by its leader, Dr. Leonard Reiffel (who later became Deputy Director of the Apollo Program at NASA), senior US Air Force officials, as well as some of the leading scientists of the Western world, including Girard Cooper, a major figure in modern planetary science.

Carl Sagan, the legendary "prophet" in the field of science, also worked on this project. Many years ago, he became an ardent critic of nuclear weapons. Sagan was hired by Reiffel to study how large and visible the exploding dust cloud would be in space around the moon. Sagan's name even appeared on the list of the declassified report.

How the world found out about America's secret plans

In fact, this story only became known to the world because the writer Kay Davidson did research for a book about Sagan in the late 1990s. His biography is called "Carl Sagan: Life". Davidson kept this under wraps, but the information was eventually published in a book review in Nature magazine. After the project became known, Reiffel was the first person to officially disclose the plan in 2000.

In an interview with The Observer, shortly after this eccentric plan was revealed, Dr. Reiffel said it had scientific implications. But given the height of the Cold War, it's hard to believe that the interest in him was purely scientific.

“It is obvious that the main purpose of the proposed explosion was to demonstrate the strength of one of the participants in the Cold War. The Air Force wanted a mushroom cloud big enough to be visible on Earth, ”said Reiffel. "The United States lagged behind in the space race."

Why the atomic bomb was never dropped

Fortunately, this plan was never implemented. It was eventually stalled out of fear of public reaction. “I made it clear that the destruction of the pristine lunar environment would be a huge challenge for science, but the US Air Force was mostly concerned about how a nuclear explosion would be perceived on Earth,” added Reiffel.

He believed that the USSR also had a plan similar to the American A119 project, although almost nothing is known about this. Nevertheless, it is very likely that if there was such a plan, then it began to be developed in response to the US plans.

At present, the Moon cannot be used as a test site for nuclear weapons, if only because it does not correspond to common sense. The 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty and the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibit the detonation of nuclear devices on or near the moon.

Power is a transitory blessing: it must be constantly confirmed. At the same time, it leads to obsession: the one who once demonstrated his strength to the enemy needs to feel this euphoria again and again, otherwise an increase in discontent is inevitable.

On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite into near-earth orbit. The shock from the launch of the satellite deeply shook the United States and the entire West: obviously, Soviet missiles were many times superior to American ones.

Less than six months later, Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the CPSU party, wanted to repeat the triumph: on March 20, 1958, at a meeting of the Presidium of the Central Committee of Soviet Communists, he ordered a sensational way to demonstrate to the world the achievements of his country in the development of nuclear weapons and missiles. A missile with a nuclear warhead was to be sent to the moon.

Historian Matthias Uhl, an employee of the German Historical Institute in Moscow, some time ago discovered the relevant acts in the Russian State Archives and published them. According to them, the proposal came from Yakov Zeldovich, a nuclear physicist and member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

© RIA Novosti, Savostyanov

This E-3 plan, which Khrushchev forced or at least encouraged, was part of an extensive program to demonstrate Soviet capabilities. Thus, the abbreviation "E-1" indicated a plan for a hard landing of a space probe on the moon. The purpose of "E-2" was images of the far side of the moon, that is, the satellite was supposed to fly around the moon, and as part of the "E-5" project, images of its reverse side in the best resolution were to be taken. The purpose of the program was a soft landing on the moon with the transmission of images of its surface.

But during the Cold War, the most important was the E-3 project, which was supposed to provide undeniable evidence that the Soviet Union could get into the moon and arrange a nuclear explosion on it. According to Ulu, they hoped that the resulting flash of light would be visible from Earth. Thus, the "combat suitability" of the not yet fully finished Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles would have been impressively demonstrated.

Six months later, on 23 August 1958, the resolution was detailed. Responsible for the development of nuclear weapons, the Ministry of Medium Machine Building and its subordinate design bureau No. 11 were ordered to develop atomic and hydrogen bombs for the E-3 project. The weight of the nuclear warhead was supposed to be about 400 kilograms and develop "maximum explosive power", the second bomb was supposed to weigh 200 kilograms and provide an explosion power of 10 to 20 kilotons. This roughly corresponded to the power of the explosion of the American bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

The E-3 project was to be implemented in two stages: first, a rocket with one warhead was to be sent to the moon, but without the “package” necessary for a nuclear explosion itself, that is, without fissile materials. Then it had to be blown up to make sure that the complex technique survived the long flight.

Context

Alabuga: more powerful than a nuclear bomb (Daily Star)

Daily Star 03.10.2017

Building up or modernizing nuclear forces?

Russia Matters 09/18/2017

Kim is silent, missiles are flying

Mainichi Shimbun 09/13/2017
At the second stage, they were going to launch atomic and hydrogen bombs on the lunar surface. These launches were planned for the period from April to August 1959, but the Central Committee noted that this would require a special order. The strikes were to be documented using special photo and video cameras.

The launch vehicle was to be the modified R-7 (NATO code: SS-6), the main model of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles, which was also used in most of the USSR civilian cosmonautics projects. In the development process, the corresponding models of the rocket stage and explosive charge have already appeared.

However, numerous technical problems of the program soon surfaced. In addition, there were concerns that, due to the lack of atmosphere, the explosions on the moon might not provide an impressive picture. In addition, there were concerns that the warhead, due to the failure of the launch vehicle, could fall on foreign territory or even explode. Therefore, the project was finally closed.

InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively by foreign media and do not reflect the position of the Inosmi editorial board.

Back in the late 1950s, the US Air Force was working to detonate a nuclear device on the moon. In 2000, the former head of NASA Loenardo Reifel announced this project - he led this development in 1958. Despite his revelations, the US government never officially acknowledged the work on this project. The nuclear arms race between the USSR and the USA led to the fact that both sides carried out a lot of nuclear explosions in space and in the upper atmosphere. The next plans were to detonate nuclear devices on the moon. However, in 1959, the plan, already closely developed by the United States, to deliver a nuclear charge to the Moon, was canceled. The real reasons were never announced, however, it can be assumed that, firstly, the United States feared a negative reaction from society, and secondly, if the launch was unsuccessful, it could carry a serious danger to the population. Another argument was the possible consequences of radioactive contamination of large areas on the Moon.

Unsurprisingly, the USSR also planned to deliver a nuclear charge to the moon and detonate it there. When the Soviet Union created the lunar program, it had several points: the first was to reach the surface of the moon itself, the second and third were to send probes to the far side of the moon for detailed photographs of the surface, and the fourth stage of the project was a nuclear explosion on the moon itself. After a detailed study and even the creation of models, one of the authors of the Soviet atomic and hydrogen bomb, Academician Zeldovich, was the first to suggest abandoning further work on the project of the explosion of a nuclear charge on the Moon: given the fact that peaceful space exploration was declared everywhere, this idea did not fit into these statements. In addition, the authors of the project were faced with the same security issues as the Americans.

Despite such an end to the lunar nuclear programs, the question remains - what would happen if these plans were realized? And if the plans were even more ambitious, would all nuclear weapons be enough to push the Moon out of its orbit?

Depending on where the nuclear detonation occurred, which could move the Moon out of its orbit, it would require an explosive device with a capacity of 10 billion to 10 trillion megatons in TNT equivalent. The most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated is the Soviet Tsar Bomb, with a yield of 57 megatons of TNT. Now the entire world nuclear arsenal is approximately 7000 megatons. Therefore, even if the entire world stock of nuclear weapons on the Moon is detonated at a time, this will not only not destroy it, but in general will not affect the satellite of our planet. Unless a huge crater forms on the lunar surface and, due to the smaller lunar attraction, thousands of tons of Moon dust will fly into space.

The moon is constantly moving away from the earth. The receding Moon pulls with it part of the Earth's water, which moves out of its natural position, creating bulges invisible to the armed eye at each end of our planet. As the Earth rotates, these thickenings of water affect the Moon in their own way, which makes its increase in its orbit even faster. On average, the moon moves away from the Earth by 3-4 centimeters every year.

Life without the Moon would be somewhat strange in the short term, and disastrous in the long term. If the stabilizing influence of the Moon disappears, then the Earth will begin to sharply change the tilt of its axis. This will lead to inconsistent seasons. In the long term, the axis of rotation of the Earth in general can change significantly, as happened with Uranus, which does not revolve around the Sun like all planets, but revolves on its side, like a rolling ball.

A top secret NASA photograph clearly shows a rectangular structure on the moon.
A NASA employee submits this photograph of the base on the Moon, which goes to press in 2012.

This building is located in the same crater where NASA sent a nuclear bomb to detonate. It's in Kabius Crater! The names of the scientists in the photographs are also established - these are Anthony Colapret and Karen Gandhi-Barlit, who work at the Ames Research Center.

“Yes, NASA dropped a small atomic bomb on the moon in 2009, I personally watched this event live on the Internet with my students. In addition, NASA's Ames Research Center does have such intelligence structures, because one of them is currently time is being used by the United States Marine Corps! " Hacker Gary McKinnon confirmed this when he hit the computers of the US Air Force and NASA. Such a building is currently inhabited by American military personnel, says Scott S. Waring, author of The UFO Diaries.

The person who discovered this fact states: “There is direct evidence that NASA is aware of the presence of extraterrestrial bases on the Moon, and, ultimately, one of these structures was bombed during the LRO / LCROSS mission in 2009, which was announced to be looking for water in the Cabeus crater. "

PHOTO below is from NASA 2009 Moon bombing.

Opening date: March 2012 (although the photos are most likely taken in 2009)

Place of observation: Earth's Moon.

Here's a video of a live stream of NASA's LCROSS lunar impact mission on the Moon in search of ice here.

NASA has once again cruelly pinned down the public and American taxpayers. Project LCROSS, powered this afternoon, it was meant to check if there was water on the moon in the form of ice. The presence of water theoretically allows you to extract fuel, and build any kind of infrastructure in the form of lunar bases. The idea is not bad, and not at all as absurd as many initially thought. Launching satellites and ships from the moon is several times cheaper than burning megatons of expensive fuel to lift a rocket from the ground, you must agree.

Now about the technical part of the project. An observation apparatus went to the surface of the moon, to which a specially designed bomb was attached. This bomb was planned to be dropped on the Cabeus crater at the lunar south pole. According to the idea, the detonation was supposed to raise a cloud of debris and dust 6-10 kilometers high. It goes without saying that such a cloud should have been observed by any observatory on earth. NASA invited all amateur astronomers to observe the clouds of dust rising near the South Pole.

This is how it was supposed to look as conceived by the project initiators.

A bunch of recording equipment was installed on the detachable stage of LCROSS: a camera, an infrared camera, all kinds of sensors. They promised that the whole process would be shown live close up.

The entire operation was broadcast today on NASA's Internet TV channel.

I myself (and a couple of million other people in the world) waited with interest for close-ups of the lunar landscape destroyed by a research bomb, shards of ice beautifully shining in the sun, or, at worst, a large and beautiful cloud of dust. Okay, let it be small. But shot up close.

We saw, however, not at all. To the monotonous chatter of the broadcasters, interspersed with conversations from the members of the mission control center, the black and white image of the moon approached at a speed of one frame every five seconds. When the surface image became very close, the image suddenly disappeared, and one of the technicians reported that “the signal all of a sudden switched to another camera ”. Which one, he did not say. No one also said why no cameras or sensors at all captured any changes in the crater of the moon. No flash, no cloud... Zero.

After a couple of seconds, NASA is already showing how people in the control center get up and behave somehow strangely: some are going to sort of go home (so quickly ?? - many people were surprised at this moment, including me). One technician-dispatcher happily offered his palm to the other, like “high-five, everything is OK”, but he quickly and puzzledly left the room, as if he was being told something through an earpiece. (Not to slap a high-five on your hand is generally a rather disrespectful gesture in American etiquette, and means that a person very not before). Someone fussed, someone showed strange, ambiguous looks to colleagues. Several forums are now discussing this strange behavior of dispatchers. Something was clearly wrong.

In the studio, meanwhile, the project manager dryly and stiffly declares: "Mission completed successfully." NASA said it is not going to publish any images for now. Why? This is a good question.

The Hubble Observatory did not detect any cloud, nothing. Other large observatories did not see anything either. At the moment, a lot of speculation and suspicion is already spinning on the Internet, and not only among amateurs. Many media outlets suspect that people are being fooled, to put it mildly (again).

Another version: why was the LCROSS project needed.

Information surfaced today that the LCROSS project was set up with the aim of destruction, not research. Detonation was planned to destroy the colony on the moon visitors... This could not be done, and the project, conceived under the name of NASA, was simply thwarted by countermeasures of other interested parties. The rocket itself and the LCROSS probe no longer exist: they were destroyed just at the moment the traced image was turned off. This is why NASA dispatchers behaved so strangely. (link to the original of this information)

Be that as it may, for the Americans the most ridiculous (and tragic), that for all this dubious "scientific" action, they paid from their pockets not much less 79 million green chizhikov... Note that it was not the government that paid, but citizens-taxpayers.