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Cold War Madness: How the Americans Planned to Blow Up the Moon
The Americans, scared by Sputnik, decided to "bring the Soviets to their knees" once and for all and show them who was boss. "Here" - not only on Earth. The A-119 project is still classified, but at that time it was a plan hidden behind 77 seals. The Pentagon wanted to blow up the Moon. An atomic bomb, or even better, a hydrogen bomb. As a result. The explosion could have been witnessed by Soviet citizens. Both the night and the weather were clear. It crashed due to an accident. The manned flight of the bard to the Moon is just a pitiful remnant of this program. We decided to go back and forth so that our work would not be lost.
We are talking about the terrible plans of Western powers in the 1960s that could have put an end to our civilization.
In 1924, our author created “The Union of Five,” a short but powerful story. A group of billionaires plans to establish a global dictatorship. Astronomers they have bribed report that the Moon resembles a can. All you have to do is strike. Public opinion is prepared. They say the first meteorite will smash the Moon. And here it is. Meanwhile, a rocket is secretly launched. The Moon actually disintegrates.
First panic. People are hiding, governments are paralyzed. This is what the oligarchs want. Using chaos, they seize power and provide confidence. The debris will never reach Earth. With our sensitive guidance, you can relax and get on with your life.
Now the public, having experienced fear of animals, is gradually changing. People are not afraid of anyone anymore. They are having fun and robbing stores, and the oligarch's army is shooting at the crowd, but to no avail. People calmly step over the corpse and continue drinking and carousing. Dictators think: "Why do we need such power?"
And it is clear that all this is not about the Moon or the future, but about Russia in 1924, exhausted by suffering and in a Neffman-like frenzy. But the story had every chance of becoming reality.
In 1949, the US Department of Defense began a large-scale research program. How do nuclear explosions behave in the air, on Earth, and underwater? Entire cities were built. They kept dummies in their homes. There's a woman leaning over the stove, while the head of the family is reading a newspaper, and the children are frolicking on the floor. Boom, the camera shows a half-raw wife, the husband's head is torn off, and the children are scattered, but they seem to have survived. There were dozens of such "experiments". There are still areas in the US where it is better not to go if you are going to be exposed to radiation. Some locals still cannot receive compensation for damage to health. The project is secret and officially does not exist.
In the mid-1950s, someone in the US Department of Defense had the brilliant idea of reaching the moon without wasting time on trivial matters. Why did you think so much about it?
The trigger, of course, was our Sputnik and the failure of their mission, Project Vanguard. The rocket exploded and the satellite failed to take off. Fear of the Soviet Union took on the character of paranoia. And the curious joined the game and cleverly created panic. As with Tolstoy, it all started with the newspaper "Duck".
Someone gave the tabloids "very reliable information." November 7, 1957 — the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution. And — a lunar eclipse. As is known, the Soviet Union decided to celebrate this date in a special way. To detonate a nuclear charge on the Moon. Against the backdrop of the eclipsed Moon — what a breathtaking spectacle! Of course, in reality, the Soviet Union had no such plans.
But at Illinois Institute of Technology, the "news" was so topical that questions inevitably arose. Were you, Master of Science, the one who got the "duck"? The institute was actively cooperating with the Army Research Foundation. It was the lab scientists who set up the dummies and saw whose heads were chopped off. Obviously, I wanted scale. And additional funds.
Eyewitnesses say that Edward Teller, the father of hydrogen weapons, was the first to criticize: "We must send a bomb to the moon before the Soviets do." Teller received enthusiastic support from astronomer Gerard Kuiper (discoverer of the "Kuiper belt", a group of asteroids very distant from the Sun, one of which is Pluto). And don't fall. Carl Sagan, peacemaker, humanist and generally a dove of peace. "Blue dot" (a photo of the Earth taken from afar - they say "look how fragile our planet is, we must live in peace"). Perhaps he sincerely changed his worldview. Or maybe fashion has simply changed and running around like a Pithecanthropus with a nuclear club is no longer stupid. One way or another, in the 1950s, a young graduate student wanted to take part in the "Star Battle".
It would be nice to destroy it.
Teller's idea of delivering a hydrogen bomb to the Moon was immediately rejected. There was essentially nothing to fly on. Hydrogen warheads are heavy, and at that time the US could only lift a radio transmitter into orbit (not even to the Moon), then into the hands of Wernher von Braun, who was captured in Germany (the US was the first to do this). (They succeeded) on February 1, 1958, they were shot).
We decided to limit ourselves to non-peaceful atoms. The base used the proven W25 warhead to destroy fake cities. It is light and stable, but I did not like its tactical and technical characteristics. The explosion yield was 1.7 kilotons (the bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of up to 18 kilotons). This means that the explosion should look brighter.
The team of Kuiper and Sagan (the whole project was led by physicist Leonard Reiffel) had a Herculean task. First of all, it had to explode on a clear night (for the European part of the Soviet Union), with the moon high and the explosion visible to the naked eye. If not the flash itself, make sure you see a cloud of dust. That means the flash must be more powerful.
Another mission is that it would be nice to destroy the Moon, like Tolstoy. At that time, little was known about the Moon. The first soft landing (on the Soviet base Luna-9) occurred only on February 3, 1966. Before that, we were puzzled. Is the Moon really solid? Tolstoy did not create out of thin air that the night light resembles a "broken pot". Many astronomers thought so. Soviet dreamer Nikolai Barabashov demonstrated in the late 1940s, using an incredibly inventive method of crawling his eyes on our satellite, at the behest of the party and government: Yes, the satellite is strong and will not fall apart. Then we will not drown in dust. If not for his calculations, the Soviet Union would not have spent money on the lunar race and there would be no Luna-9. But are the conclusions of Soviet scientists a lie? In particular, Sagan studied where and how the debris would fly.
Everything was done in the strictest confidence. Officially, the A119 project was called "Lunar Scientific Flight Research", but even in this form the program was not even reported in the press.
The spies (whose testimony was later revealed to be fabricated) were convinced that the Soviets planned to detonate the bomb at the boundary between light and shadow (the "Terminator") or "morning on the Moon." However, this contradicts another "agent report" about the detonation during a lunar eclipse. In fact, a solar eclipse occurs during a full moon, and without a terminator, the Moon is daylight everywhere.
But scientists and soldiers were not bothered by minor disagreements. It is clear that the communists are damn cunning and can do anything. Even a lunar day would turn into night if Lenin's teachings demanded it.
It is not entirely clear how or why the program collapsed. Certainly there was no explosion on November 7, 1957. Perhaps the military called for an independent investigation (not the Illinois Institute) and realized that the Soviet Union could not have dropped a bomb on the moon and that the military had simply been duped. Leonard Reiffel, the leader of the Egg Group, demanded that the banquet continue, declaring that the United States would have the necessary rockets and technology by 1959.
But a wave of enlightenment came over the military, and the program was ended in early 1959. The justification was obvious. If the rocket exploded on launch, we ourselves would become contaminated. Reiffel later claimed: They decided not to contaminate the Moon, and we would live there anyway (hard to believe, since common sense was pretty poor on the part of all involved).
In 1995, journalist Kay Davidson was working on a biography of Carl Sagan, then a symbol of science with a human face and a figure of humanitarianism in general. He probably realized this, especially since he spoke out against Ronald Reagan's Star Wars.
Suddenly, the reporter came across Sagan's 1959 application for a fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley. In describing his career, Sagan mentioned a project to blow up the moon and work as a journalist. "What?"
Sagan himself could explain nothing further (he died in 1996), and the journalist published this in his biography. A scandal erupted. Sagan's former boss Leonard Reiffel gave an extensive interview to Nature magazine. In it, he accused Sagan of revealing state secrets (the project was not even allowed to be mentioned). He said he did not know why the project was canceled.
- I'm glad it was cancelled. It was a terrible idea. I didn't think so before, but my thoughts have changed.
- This is an obscene and disgusting idea. Instead of the romantic image of Neil Armstrong, this one will go down in history.
The U.S. government has never officially acknowledged the existence of A119. According to Reiffel, the last document was destroyed by the Illinois Institute in 1987. Under public pressure, the government declassified the first volume (Lunar Exploration Flight Study – Volume 1), but its contents remained relatively clean. Most importantly, it ensures that it will be known for certain that the project existed.
Space and the military are closely intertwined. This is well documented in the recently published Russian translation of Neil Tyson and Avis Lang's book "In the Service of War" (but there is little about the A119).
Of course, the military was the main supporter of the Apollo program. It is well documented that military men (not astronomers) supervised the astronauts and that many of the parts and tools were made by the Defense Department. Few have written about wanting to detonate a small nuclear bomb again during one of the landings. Throw it right after the launch from the moon. But they were afraid of blowing themselves up.
Today, it's the same story. The moon race is in full swing. Countries are flocking to the moon's south pole, where water is thought to be concentrated. Why drink water? And most importantly, it's what rocket fuel is made from. The moon is thought to be an indestructible military base. Whoever owns the moon owns the earth, and the face of the moon, a symbol of romance for centuries, will soon become the evil eye that hurries to hide as soon as it appears on the horizon.
But you can't hide from the Moon.
Despite its secrecy, our intelligence services learned about the A119 project. We had to react somehow. The lunar program included provisions against a nuclear attack. But they kept it in reserve. If so, so did we. Unlike the American program, the risks (initially accidents, nothing more unknown) were considered a priority. When the intelligence community reported that the Americans had come to their senses, we also curtailed the research without ever starting it.
What happens if they blow it up?
A small explosive would intensify an already aggressive arms race, but would have no effect on the Moon or Earth. But what would happen if a really big bomb exploded? For example, at a future military base?
If the Moon doesn't collapse, the Earth will get an electromagnetic shock (electronic devices will fail during the tests, as the entire city will be without power until they are banned). A cloud of radioactive dust flies into space and will soon reach the vicinity of the Earth. For centuries, particles of radioactive dust will fall on us. It will probably have no health consequences. And perhaps there will be results. No one has tried.
Destroying the Moon is difficult, but possible. We would have to detonate all the nukes there and place more nukes deeper in the volcanic basin. Since the Moon and Earth are binary planets, the Earth's rotation would be tangled. The Earth would lose its protection from asteroids. (The Moon would now take on most of that.) The debris would soon fall to Earth, destroying all life. Without tides, the oceans would change, and the mass extinction of ocean-native organisms would be just the beginning. Essentially, the end of the world.