US planned to blow up the moon

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-te ... 2aejm.html

The United States planned to blow up the moon with a nuclear bomb during the cold war, according to reports.
The secret project, dubbed 'A Study of Lunar Research Flights' or 'Project A119', was allegedly devised by US military chiefs at the height of the space race in the late 1950s as a show of strength over the Soviet Union, scientists claim.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-te ... z2DWdlSVtE

LOL! Is that what counts as journalism in Australia?

CNN also posted it.

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/11/2 ... -the-moon/

There was quit a lot of weird stuff seriously considered during the cold war.

The original Orion Project the first well designed nuke powered launch vehicle sounded a bit crazy but would have probably worked. If it had been built we would probably have had decent sized Moon and Mars colony's in the 70's. Mind you your teeth would be slightly more radioactive than they are now but not by much.

Yeah but it was a much more accurate, professional article.

Context is everything.

It wasn't a "plan to blow up the moon", but to conduct a nuclear test and demonstration. Militarily and politically space was seen as the "high ground" with the Moon being the ultimate point of it. The project would have been to prove that the Moon wasn't an invulnerable position and that the US had the capacity to reach it.

Luckily, it remained a paper study and they chose to prove their superiority with the Apollo program instead of a nuke.

Russia thought of this one,, but the Kremlin was told a Nuclear explosion on the moon would create nothing more than a spark