In space exploration conducted by the superpowers between 1958 and 1962. Today we will talk about the plans of ideological opponents that existed in the late 50s to literally drop a nuclear bomb on the moon.
Both sides proceeded from the fact that the best effect would be achieved when a bomb exploded near the lunar terminator - it was assumed that on Earth the flash would be visible even to the naked eye. And although the descriptions of both projects mentioned some scientific goals (for example, the explosion would help scientists better understand the structure of the Moon and conduct a spectral analysis of the rising cloud of dust), it is quite obvious that, first of all, the proposed action had a purely propaganda effect.
Project A119
The launch of the first Soviet satellite caused a state of confusion, at times turning into mass hysteria in some circles of American society. It is not surprising that in this atmosphere the most incredible rumors were born, one of which was that during the lunar eclipse on November 7, 1957, which so successfully coincided with the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution, the USSR would detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon.
Of course, no explosions occurred either on this or any other day, but nevertheless, in this situation, within the bowels of the US Air Force, “Project A119” began to be developed, which involved the explosion of a nuclear device on the Moon. A scientific group of 10 people was created at the University of Chicago, which was supposed to calculate all the possible consequences of such a test. This group included Gerard Kuiper And Carl Sagan.
Cover of one of the group's reports
The original plan was to detonate a hydrogen bomb on the surface of the Moon - but when it became clear that the power of the launch vehicle was not enough to throw such a weight onto the Moon, it was decided to use our old friends - W-25 warheads with a power of 1.7 kilotons, which had already exploded in space as part of Operation Argus.
It was assumed that the project would be implemented already in 1959, but fortunately in January of that year it was canceled for safety reasons - after all, any accident during a rocket launch could lead to the most unpredictable consequences. In addition, it probably dawned on the Air Force leadership that the propaganda effect of such an action may well be the opposite of what was expected.
As a result, priority was given to lunar expeditions, and the existence of plans to detonate a bomb on Luga remained a secret for a long time. In 1980, most of the documentation about Project A119 was destroyed, the first traces of its existence were discovered shortly after the death of Carl Sagan in 1996 by his biographer. In 2000, former project manager Leonard Reifel spoke to reporters and spoke in more detail about the plan half a century ago. It is worth noting that the American government has not yet officially recognized the existence of such plans.
Project E-4
While the lunar eclipse of 1957 was not overshadowed by any atomic testing, it is worth noting that rumors about the existence of a Soviet program to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon had some basis. It all started in 1958 when Sergey Korolev And Mstislav Keldysh sent a letter to the CPSU Central Committee outlining plans for the Soviet lunar program. Its main points were the collision of an artificial satellite with the Moon (the so-called E-1 project - this task was carried out by the Luna-2 apparatus), as well as the flyby of the Moon and obtaining photographs of its far side (projects E-2 and E-3 - this task was performed by the Luna-3 apparatus).
The first ever photograph of the far side of the Moon
Physicist Yakov Zeldovich proposed to supplement the plan with “Project E-4,” which involved detonating a nuclear device on the surface of the Moon. The main motivation is to demonstrate the successes of Soviet science and prove to all non-believers that Soviet stations really reached the natural satellite of the Earth.
Despite the presence of a significant number of opponents to this approach, it has undergone detailed study. A model of a spacecraft was even created that was supposed to deliver a bomb to the Moon. The charge itself looked more like a sea mine and was literally covered on all sides with fuses, which made it possible to ensure detonation at absolutely any angle of impact with the lunar surface.
As in the case of Project 119, in the end the Soviet leadership was smart enough to abandon these plans: the idea of a visible nuclear test was too dissonant with the declared exploration of space for peaceful purposes. In addition, the authors of the project faced all the same security issues as the Americans. What will happen if the third stage does not work as it should, and the bomb falls on the territory of a NATO member country? Or will the station pass by the Moon and the bomb will remain in heliocentric orbit?
It is worth noting that the technology of those years was not nearly as reliable as it is now. Before the same “Luna 2”, five attempts were made to launch a station to the Moon: four devices were lost due to launch vehicle accidents, and one simply “missed” (but since it still flew near the Moon, it was included in the official classification and now known as Luna 1). The next five attempts to launch the vehicle to the Moon, made after the Luna-3 mission, also ended in failure. In those circumstances, no one could give a 100% guarantee that everything would go as it should.
As a result, the first person to propose closing the project was Zeldovich himself. In 1962, a treaty was signed on a partial ban on nuclear tests, after which neither side, fortunately, never returned to these plans and still prefer not to talk much about the very fact of their existence (as historian David Lowry said, they were simply "shameful").
True, 50 years later NASA still bombed the Moon as part of the mission LCROSS, but used a completely ordinary 2.5-ton Centaur upper stage for this.
How Khrushchev planned to arrange a nuclear explosion on the Moon
Moon From open sources
During the Cold War, the most important project was the E-3, which was supposed to provide indisputable evidence that the Soviet Union could get to the Moon and set off a nuclear explosion on it. This impressive image would demonstrate the “suitability for combat” of not yet fully ready Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles
Original on page Die Welt
Power is a transitory good: it needs to be constantly confirmed. At the same time, it leads to obsession: one who has 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 low-Earth orbit. The shock of the launch of Sputnik deeply shocked 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 his country’s achievements in the development of nuclear weapons and missiles. A rocket with a nuclear warhead was supposed to be sent to the moon.
News on the topic
Historian Matthias Uhl, an employee of the German Historical Institute in Moscow, some time ago discovered the corresponding 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.
This plan, codenamed E-3, which Khrushchev pushed through or at least encouraged, was part of a larger 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 goal of E-2 was to take pictures 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, pictures of its far side were to be taken in better resolution. The goal of the program was a soft landing on the Moon with the transmission of images of its surface.
News on the topic
But during the Cold War, the most important project was the E-3 project, which was supposed to provide indisputable evidence that the Soviet Union could get to the Moon and set off a nuclear explosion on it. According to Uhl, they hoped that the resulting flash of light would be visible from Earth. In this way, the “suitability for combat” of the not yet fully ready Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles would be demonstrated in an impressive way.
Six months later, on August 23, 1958, the resolution was detailed. The Ministry of Medium Engineering, responsible for the development of nuclear weapons, and the design bureau No. 11 subordinate to it were ordered to develop atomic and hydrogen bombs for the E-3 project. The nuclear warhead was supposed to weigh about 400 kilograms and develop “maximum explosive force”, the second bomb was supposed to weigh 200 kilograms and provide an explosion power of 10 to 20 kilotons. This was approximately equivalent to the explosion power of the American bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
News on the topic
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 the actual nuclear explosion, that is, without fissile materials. Then it had to be blown up to make sure that the complex equipment survived the long flight.
At the second stage, they were going to launch atomic and hydrogen bombs onto the surface of the Moon. These launches were planned for the period from April to August 1959, but the Central Committee noted that a special order would be necessary for this. The strikes had to be documented using special photo and video cameras.
The launch vehicle was to be a modified R-7 (NATO code: SS-6), the basic model of Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles, which was also used in most civil space projects of the USSR. During the development process, corresponding models of the rocket stage and explosive charge have already appeared.
However, numerous technical problems with the program soon emerged. In addition, there were concerns that due to the lack of an atmosphere, explosions on the Moon might not produce impressive images. In addition, there were concerns that the warhead could fall on foreign territory or even explode due to a launch vehicle failure. Therefore, the project was finally closed.
Sven Kellerhoff
The editors may not agree with the author's opinion.
NASA has once again played a cruel trick on the public and American taxpayers. Project LCROSS put into action this afternoon, the purpose was to ascertain whether there was water in the form of ice on the moon. The presence of water theoretically makes it possible to extract fuel and build some 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, agree.
Now about the technical part of the project. An observation apparatus was sent 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, which is at the lunar south pole. As planned, 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 what it should have looked like as planned by the initiators of the project.
A bunch of recording equipment was installed on the LCROSS detachable stage: a camera, an infrared camera, all kinds of sensors. They promised that the whole process would be shown live up close.
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 being destroyed by a research bomb, ice fragments shining beautifully in the sun, or, at worst, a large and beautiful cloud of dust. Okay, let it be small. But filmed up close.
What we saw, however, was not at all what we saw. Under the monotonous droning of the broadcast presenters, interspersed with negotiations of members of the mission control center, a black and white image of the moon approached at a speed of one frame per five seconds. When the image of the surface became very close, the image suddenly disappeared, and one of the technicians reported that “the signal all of a sudden switched to another camera.” He did not say which one exactly. No one also said why not a single camera or sensor 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 from their seats and behave somehow strangely: some are about to go home (so quickly?? - many were surprised at that moment, including me). One dispatch technician joyfully offered his hand to another, like “high five, everything is ok,” but he quickly and puzzledly left the room, as if someone was passing something into his earpiece. (Not clapping your hand “high five” is generally a rather disrespectful gesture in American etiquette, and means that a person Very not before). Some were fussing, some were showing strange ambiguous glances to their colleagues. This strange behavior of dispatchers is already being discussed on several forums. Something was clearly wrong.
In the studio, meanwhile, the project manager dryly and tensely declares: “The mission was completed successfully.” NASA said it has no plans to release any images for now. Why? That's a good question.
The Hubble Observatory did not detect any cloud, nothing. Other major observatories saw nothing either. At the moment, there is already a lot of speculation and suspicion circulating on the Internet, and not only among amateurs. Many media resources suspect that people, to put it mildly, are being led by the nose (again).
Another version: why was the LCROSS project needed?
Today information has surfaced that the LCROSS project was set up for the purpose of destruction, not research. The detonation was planned to destroy the colony on the Moon visitors. It was not possible to do this, and the project, conceived under the guise of NASA, was simply thwarted by countermeasures from other interested parties. The rocket itself and the LCROSS probe no longer exist: they were destroyed just at the moment the broadcast image was “turned off.” This is why NASA controllers acted so strangely. (link to the original of this information)
Be that as it may, for the Americans, the funniest (and tragic) thing is that for all this dubious “scientific” action they paid no less from their own pockets 79 million green Chizhikov. Note that it was not the government that paid, but citizens-taxpayers.
A top secret NASA photograph clearly shows a rectangular structure on the Moon.
A NASA employee passes on this photo of a base on the Moon that hits the press in 2012.
This building is located in the same crater where NASA sent a nuclear bomb to explode. It's in Cabius Crater! The scientists in the photographs have also been identified as Anthony Colaprete and Karen Gandy-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 Ames Research Center does have similar reconnaissance structures, because one of them is currently time is being used by the US Marine Corps!" Hacker Gary McKinnon confirmed this when he got into the computers of the US Air Force and NASA. Such a building is currently home to American military personnel, says Scott S. Waringa, 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 from NASA 2009 Bombing of the Moon.
Opening date: March 2012 (though photos were most likely taken in 2009)
Place of observation: Earth's Moon.
Here is a video of a live broadcast of NASA's LCROSS lunar mission to impact the Moon in search of ice here.
Back in the late 1950s, the US Air Force was working to detonate a nuclear device on the Moon. In 2000, former NASA head 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 many nuclear explosions in space and in the upper atmosphere. The next plans were to explode nuclear devices on the Moon. However, in 1959, the US plan to deliver a nuclear charge to the Moon, which was already being closely developed by the United States, was canceled. The real reasons were never announced, but it can be assumed that, firstly, the United States feared a negative reaction from society, and secondly, if the launch were unsuccessful, it could pose a serious danger to the population. Another argument was the possible consequences of radioactive contamination of large areas on the Moon.
It is not surprising that the USSR also planned to deliver a nuclear weapon 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 photography of the surface, and the fourth stage of the project was a direct nuclear explosion on the Moon. After detailed study and even creation of models, one of the authors of the Soviet atomic and hydrogen bomb, Academician Zeldovich, was the first to propose abandoning further work on the project of detonating a nuclear charge on the Moon: given that peaceful space exploration was declared everywhere, this idea did not fit into these statements. In addition, the authors of the project faced the same security issues as the Americans.
Despite this ending to the lunar nuclear programs, the question remains - what would have happened if these plans had been implemented? And if the plans were even more grandiose - would all the nuclear weapons be enough to push the Moon out of its orbit?
Depending on where a nuclear detonation occurred that could dislodge the Moon from its orbit, it would require an explosive device with a yield of 10 billion to 10 trillion megatons of TNT. The most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated is the Soviet Tsar Bomb, which had a yield of 57 megatons of TNT. Now the entire world nuclear arsenal is approximately 7,000 megatons. Therefore, even if you explode the entire world stock of nuclear weapons on the Moon at the same time, this will not only not destroy it, but will not have any effect on the satellite of our planet at all. Unless a huge crater forms on the lunar surface and, due to the lower lunar gravity, thousands of tons of lunar 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 leaves its natural position, creating bulges invisible to the naked eye at each end of our planet. As the Earth rotates, these thickenings of water have their own effects on the Moon, making the 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, the Earth will begin to sharply change the tilt of its axis. This will lead to inconsistent seasons. In the long term, the Earth's rotation axis may generally change significantly, as happened with Uranus, which does not revolve around the Sun like all the planets, but spins on its side, like a rolling ball.
