In the 1950s, at the beginning of the Cold War - an era marked by intense rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union - the US Air Force had a naughty idea: if they detonated a nuclear weapon on the moon, it would not only be a victory in the space race but also in the nuclear arms race. It would be a display of American excellence that would intimidate the Soviets and potentially give the United States an upper hand in the ongoing Cold War.

If the plan had proceeded, the flash from the detonation would have been visible from Earth, creating a spectacle for everyone gazing at the night sky. The plan was to detonate the nuclear device on the moon's twilight zone, the region on the lunar surface between the illuminated and dark sides, for maximum visibility.

At the core of this plan, the US Military believed that a nuclear explosion on the moon would have been a highly successful show of force, considerably embarrassing the Soviets on the international stage and boosting confidence in the US-led world order.

The Air Force had a team of scientists evaluating the theoretical outcomes of the nuclear explosion, including one Carl Sagan.

Despite the theoretical feasibility, the project faced significant ethical and environmental concerns. Scientists questioned the wisdom of using the moon, a celestial body of great scientific interest and potential future exploration, as a testing ground for nuclear weapons. There were fears about contaminating the lunar environment and the unknown long-term effects of a nuclear explosion in space.

But this was during a time when we had just developed nuclear weapons and were only beginning to understand them.

Counterintuitively, blowing up a nuclear bomb on the moon posed no risk to humans (hear me out, NASA, I have a fun idea). The nuclear bomb intended for the moon would have been a small 1.7-kiloton device, several times smaller than the Hiroshima bomb. The explosion would have paled in comparison to other asteroid impacts the moon has endured, likely leaving behind a crater invisible from Earth. Radioactivity would not have been a concern, given that the moon is 238,900 miles away from Earth.

Nevertheless, the plan never moved forward because the Air Force believed, at the time, that the potential dangers outweighed the benefits and determined that a lunar landing would have a more significant appeal to the American and global public.

Project A119, as the plan was known, remained classified until the year 2000, after nearly 45 years of secrecy. The declassification only occurred after a formal freedom of information request was made about the project due to some leaked information.

There is no hope that this experiment will be considered again in the near future. After nuclear superpowers recklessly experimented with their nuclear weapons in space in tests now referred to as High Altitude Nuclear Explosions (HANEs), the practice of detonating nuclear devices in space was banned by the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963) and the Outer Space Treaty (1967). Nonetheless, one can't help but harbor a clandestine longing for a moonlit nuclear spectacle, where the world watches in awe as a carefully orchestrated, entirely safe, and utterly audacious explosion lights up the lunar surface.

Sources:
1. “U.S. Weighed A-Blast on Moon in 1950s” - Los Angeles Times
2. “Sagan breached security by revealing US work on a lunar bomb project” - Nature
3. “US planned one big nuclear blast for mankind” - The Guardian
4. “Inside Project A119, America’s Top-Secret Plot To Detonate A Nuclear Bomb On The Moon During The Cold War” - All That’s Interesting
5. “Why the Air Force Almost Blasted the Moon with an H-Bomb” - History

Editing by Myles Adoh-Phillips
Written by Lucas L