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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.
Have faith that there are so many stupid people in so many positions that they kinda cancel each other out most of the time
...but also kind of badass at the same time.
What is stupid about it? At the time, the only true revenge weapon was the nuclear submarines, and the US in 1959 had just 5 of those.
You need an if-all-else-fails weapon, otherwise you have to keep your nuclear forces on high alert at all times to avoid losing to a first strike. Staying at high alert risks launching by mistake.
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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.
The things they'll sacrifice...
Yes. Us, basically. We *so* need to get out of this egg before we run out of resources.
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> [...........] 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.
The entire idea of revenge in a thermonuclear exchange is what is stupid. The priority should be PREVENTION, not lobbing nukes with our dying breath. The only winning move is not to play.
Good-bye
We *so* need to get out of this egg before we run out of resources.
.. and into the giant pit of vacuum in which there are even less resources? Good plan.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
But then he'd find a base to neutralize it and clean it up with a mop.
...they want their story back.
Table-ized A.I.
Well it's not going to nuke itself.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2000/may/14/spaceexploration.theobserver
Slashdot editors, kill yourselves.
"MAD" was exactly what the prevention was about. If you have a system that's going to kill the opponent even after he kills you, then they will likely not try to kill you in the first place.
If Russians felt, at any time, that a quick strike would take the US revenge capability, they'd be a lot more likely to strike than if they knew that moon nukes would be coming afterwards.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
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.
Remembers me the Armaggedon movie. Should be "a bit" harder to take out the moon from its orbit than stopping a asteroid falling on Earth with nukes. Probably a lot of the big impacts on the moon in historical times were orders of magnitudes stronger than any nuke ever made here... and it still there.
And about making some light up there to showoff, maybe this could give an idea of the dimension of the project.
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.
Na, what's really frightening is the U.S. missed the moon 2 times in their first attempts.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_program so you would have two nukes flying who knows where.
Be try to spot a big boy sized "asteroids" at this time.
To actually answer your post, yes the U.S. was very paranoid and sure the Russians were going to strike.
It wasn't until they tapped into the undersea telephone cable that they found it far from the truth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
Yeah, but the Moon deserved it. Have you seen the way it can hit your eye?
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Fair enough, but in 1959 you were probably somewhat concerned about what havoc (almost-)conventional warfare could wreak.
At that time the number of warheads was insufficient to destroy humanity. An all-out nuclear war at that time would kill MUCH fewer people than the Second World War did, albeit quicker. Nuclear war was not at all unthinkable -- in fact, right at that time there was Air Force and CIA leaders which believed that the US would soon have an outright missile majority which would make a first strike possible and desirable.
It is quite likely that if the US had done a first strike during the Cuban missile crisis, the number of warheads striking the US would be in the low single digits, perhaps even zero. That particular atrocity could have saved the world from 25 more years of the USSR. Horrible? Of course. Unthinkable? Certainly not.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
WTF man? Of course he was talking about going some where else with sufficient resources and habitable conditions. You might as well have assumed he meant we should set up a colony on the surface of the sun for all the idiocy you've attributed to him.
As long as you stayed inside during the day, and only went out at night, a solar colony might be workable.
Other types of schooling including apprenticeship, personal teachers and universities are a lot older than that. The idea that teaching your own kids is not such a hot idea is quite old, probably at least thousands of years.
Apparently this whole situation started because a note from senior management was mistakenly written as shoot the moon instead of shoot for the moon.