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Carl Sagan Was On US Team To Nuke the Moon
First time accepted submitter novakom writes "Apparently during the cold war, one fall-back position the U.S. was looking at to ensure mutual assured destruction was to put nukes on the moon. This would ensure that the U.S. could retaliate against even an effective first strike by the Russians. The first step, of course, would be to detonate a nuke on the moon. And yes, Carl Sagan was on the team (and apparently leaked the info!)"
In what world does putting nukes on the moon require first detonating them on the moon? It would seem like that might make things harder.
The things they'll sacrifice...
I know we all joke about politicians and bureaucrats, but to think there are really people that stupid in high places just scares the crap out of me.
...but also kind of badass at the same time.
For the claim that Carl Sagan wanted to nuke the frickin' moon.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
That would have been an amazing(ly terrifying) meeting between world leaders. Truman and Stalins exchange at the Potsdam conference might have gone quite quite differently. Or perhaps it was that conference that made Truman want to go to such lengths to put a nuke on the moon to show American might? Brinksmanship is such a strange game.
That's stupid. They should put the nukes on the dark side and then detonate them all at once to crash the moon into Russia. That's so much more direct and efficient than launching the missiles themselves from the moon at Russia.
I'd nuke the moon, if for no other reason than just to see what happens.
I know what you're thinking, and the answer is 'indeed, I am a mad scientist - why do you ask?'
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
> [...........] And yes, Carl Sagan was on the team (and apparently leaked the info!)
That's in the wiki entry. Slow news during the holiday season?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
If by "nuking" the moon, you mean completely obliterating it like some James Bond villain and screwing up our tides, don't be ridiculous. That isn't even within our capability.
They proposed detonating a nuclear device on the moon. So what? Aside from the needless complexity and expense, how is nuking a lifeless rock outside of Earth's atmosphere worse than than nuking the Bikini Atoll, or the desert in New Mexico?
That said, I don't understand what advantage they thought they would gain by having missile bases on the moon.
And here I thought Frank J. invented the idea: http://www.imao.us/index.php/a-realistic-plan-for-world-peaceakanuke-the-moon/
But then he'd find a base to neutralize it and clean it up with a mop.
I'll wait for the moondust to settle on this. But how's this any worse than Einstein writing or at least signing the letter that led to the actual detonation of three bombs, including the two original weapons of mass destruction? Sagan wasn't a nuclear scientist, so he couldn't have had a direct hand in the logistics of the operation, just as Einstein wasn't involved in the design of the first nukes.
I recall seeing this on Slashdot before:
http://slashdot.org/story/00/05/15/1238219/us-had-plan-to-nuke-the-moon
...they want their story back.
Table-ized A.I.
Well it's not going to nuke itself.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2000/may/14/spaceexploration.theobserver
Slashdot editors, kill yourselves.
The mother will be absolutely furious.
Table-ized A.I.
While everyone else is smart morons?
rewriting history since 2109
Hmm, might review your history a bit.
Potsdam (w/ Truman hinting to Stalin about the A-bomb) happened in 1945. Eisenhower was President after 1953. This nuke-the-moon plan didn't get rolling until 1957 (after Sputnik) when the US heard a rumor about a similar Soviet plan to nuke-the-moon (aka Project E-4).
The publication "A Study of Lunar Research Flights" (which documented the nuke-the-moon plan) wasn't printed until 1959.
Apparently, the last two astronauts on the Moon went through an exchange like this: "Hey, can you help me up the ladder?", "Sure, no problem". Thus, the exchange demonstrated a system whereby those with need were met by those with ability. Sometime later an analyst at the Pentagon reviewed this. Since those were the only residents, their interactions fully characterized the political orientation of the Moon. The interaction was communist in nature, even if not explicitly Communist or otherwise stated as such. Thus, the Moon was 100% Communist and needed to be dealt with as such.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
A Realistic Plan for World Peace
a.k.a
Nuke the Moon
http://www.imao.us/docs/NukeTheMoon.htm
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Nuclear explosions? On the moon?
Were they hoping to blast it out of the earth's orbit and travel across space on it, meeting a new alien civilisation every week?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
How are you going to throw a big enough rock? Consider Meteor Crater in Arizona. This is a crater with diameter less than a mile -- big enough to obliterate most of the core of a city, but not region-wide destruction kind of size. The meteor required to do that was 50 meters across and made of iron, making its mass somewhere around 500 million kilograms. The escape velocity from the surface of the moon is 2.4 kilometers per second. The energy required to accelerate 500 million kilograms to 2.4 km/s is 400 gigawatt hours.
Suppose you wanted to be able to launch the rock within 30 seconds of a Russian sneak attack. That means a net power of 48 terawatts. Oh, and multiply that by the number of rocks you plan on throwing. How do you propose we produce 48 terawatts up on the Moon?
would have been from orbit.
To the moon, Brezhnev!
as a parent. Congrats. And good job of standing up to the Therapeutic State.
Thank you for the clarification. I completely misremembered the year of the conference.
from TFA:
"The military considerations were frightening.
The report said a nuclear detonation on the moon could yield information
"...concerning the capability of nuclear weapons for space warfare." "
Does this make sense to you? Exactly what practical information could it yield?
Explosions with that technology might not even be visible to earthlings,
nor be very destructive to the moon.
Perhaps the real reason for explosions on the moon was not written down.
I can't imagine any benefit; scientific, military or political; can you?
...omphaloskepsis often...
A lot of classified "stuff" never made it past the paper stage.
Many that do are unfeasible, Bat incendiaries, that burned up the test area, the nuclear powered airplane that
couldn't get off the ground as the shielding made it too heavy to fly.
The problem with nukes to the moon is the same as sending nuclear waste to the Sun, it might come back.
As for Sagan revealing "this secret" isn't odd at all, as anybody who's filled out a PSQ for a civilian nuclear security
clearance (Q type) would know. If you withhold anything and it's found out what else are you hiding, type thinking.
Which I'm sure he did fill out due to the nature of this paper. A requirement (updated PSQ) of a another job he was after within the "system", he would of listed it.
.
I'm guessing you're trolling, and it looks like you've been modded as such, but just in case you're not, Heinlen wrote that book in '66, 8 years later.
In a cybernetic fit of rage she pissed off to another age...
Well, first, this effort got underway in 1957, a TMIAHM was published in 1966. So that's not surprising. Second, the plan was never implemented, so its quite possible that some of the people involved in exploring it found various reasons for rejecting it, including the ones one might infer from TMIAHM.
Mutually assured destruction doesn't require 30 seconds... if you are on the moon. Think how long it took Apollo to get to the moon.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
God damn you Sagan, no one wants to eat radioactive cheese. Leave the moon alone!
A stealthed nuke or two would probably end that endeavour very effectively. The rock lobber would likely be very vulnerable to attack, as would the bases themselves.
How are you going to throw a big enough rock? Consider Meteor Crater in Arizona. This is a crater with diameter less than a mile -- big enough to obliterate most of the core of a city, but not region-wide destruction kind of size.
Bwa ha ha! More than most of the core of a city. Do you think nothing was affected beyond the rim of the crater? If you have been twenty miles away from that impact when that crater was formed, you'd have been quite very dead within seconds of impact. But the heat generated would have insured you had a nice, all-natural cremation.
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Propulsion out of gravity wells, on the other hand, does have some pretty strict time limits.
Apparently this whole situation started because a note from senior management was mistakenly written as shoot the moon instead of shoot for the moon.
If you can't get them out there in the first place how are you going to get them out AND back again?
In 1959, John Wyndham (the Day of the Triffids, the Chrysalids etc) wrote a set of linked short stories about a family participating in the colonisation of space. In one of these, the USA, Russia and the UK have nuclear armed moon bases.
An interesting case of art imitating life - even if the the life was top secret at the time!
Was Chairface Chippendale on the team, and if so, who the fuck cleared him?
Monstar L
Because if it turned out to be feasible, then some other power might have done it first. We should study ALL options.
Sounds like the perfect story for as science fiction movie!
"During the hight of the cold war, the US created nuclear lauch capability on the moon as a doomsday weapon. In the event of a nuclear strike that had wiped out all of the US launch capability, the moon station would be used to ensure that the enemies of the US were also wiped out. Due the the communications delay between the Moon and the Earth it was decided to automate the station to detect the specific situation, and proceed with a retalitory response. Fast forward to current day, when the cold war over and nuclear dissarment, the now forgotten station has come online and transmitted to a dusty computer no one remembers what it was for (until they look it up terrified), the intention to lauch a full scale nuclear attack on a countdown. The recieving transmitter of course has failed, not allowing the cancel codes to be recived. In addition moon station defences have been activated to prevent possible Russian infiltrators from sabotaging the station. Now NASA must send a special crew on short notice to the moon to disable the station!"
Possible twists...
"Amageddon remake - A plucky group of interesting non-experts must make the journey rather than normal crew, however one of them is a secret plant with his own agenda for a faction within the government that think the "accidental" strike might be a good thing!"
"Space Cowboys remake - A group of old folks must make the journey rather than normal crew, as no one else remembers how the moon station was constructed, or what the defences are, no documentation has survived this long, and it only exists in the memory of these old pluky engineers" :)