In space, conducted by superpowers between 1958 and 1962. Today it will be about the plans of ideological opponents that existed in the late 50s to literally throw a nuclear bomb on the moon.

Both sides proceeded from the assumption that the best effect would be achieved with a bomb explosion near the lunar terminator - it was assumed that on Earth the flash would be visible even with the naked eye. And although the descriptions of both projects mentioned some scientific goals (for example, an explosion would help scientists better understand the structure of the moon and conduct a spectral analysis of the rising dust cloud), it is clear that, in the first place, the alleged action had a purely propaganda effect.

Project А119

The launch of the first Soviet satellite caused a state of confusion, at times turning into mass hysteria in some circles. 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 happened on this or any other day, but nevertheless, in this situation in the bowels of the US Air Force, “Project A119” began to be developed, involving the explosion of a nuclear device on the Moon. At the University of Chicago, a scientific group of 10 people was created, 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 lunar surface - but when it became clear that the power of the launch vehicle would not be enough to throw such a weight on the moon, it was decided to use our old acquaintances - the 1.7 kiloton W-25 warheads that 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 the same year it was canceled for safety reasons - after all, any accident during the launch of a rocket 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 could 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 on the "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, the former project manager Leonard Raifel spoke to reporters and spoke in more detail about the idea of ​​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

Although the lunar eclipse of 1957 was not overshadowed by any atomic tests, it is worth noting that rumors of the existence of a Soviet program to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon had certain grounds. It all started in 1958 when Sergey Korolev and Mstislav Keldysh sent a letter to the Central Committee of the CPSU outlining the plans of 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 performed by the Luna-2 spacecraft), as well as flying around the Moon and obtaining photographs of its reverse side (projects E-2 and E-3 - this task was performed by the Luna-3 spacecraft).

The first ever photograph of the far side of the moon

Physicist Yakov Zeldovich proposed to supplement the plan with the "project E-4", which involved the detonation of a nuclear device on the lunar surface. The main motivation is to demonstrate success Soviet science and to prove to all non-believers that the Soviet stations really reached a natural satellite of the Earth.

Despite the presence of a significant number of opponents of this we go, it has undergone a detailed study. A mock-up of a spacecraft was even created, which was supposed to deliver a bomb to the moon. The charge itself looked more like a sea mine and was literally covered with fuses from all sides, 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 visual nuclear test was too discordant with the declared peaceful exploration of outer space. 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, let’s say, 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?

And it is worth noting that the technology of those years was far from being as reliable as it is now. Before the same “Luna 2”, five attempts were made to launch the station to the Moon: four spacecraft were lost due to accidents of the launch vehicle, and one simply “missed” (but since it nevertheless flew close to the Moon, it entered the official classification and now known as "Luna-1"). The next five attempts to launch the apparatus 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, Zeldovich himself was the first to suggest closing the project. In 1962, a partial nuclear test ban treaty was signed, after which neither side, fortunately, never returned to these plans and still prefer not to talk about the very fact of their existence (as historian David Lowry said, they were just "Shameful").

True, after 50 years, NASA nevertheless carried out the bombardment of the moon as part of the mission LCROSS, but used for this a completely ordinary 2.5-ton upper stage Centaurus.

Scientific and technological progress, conceit and the general madness of the Cold War led to the fact that America wanted to drop an atomic bomb on the moon. The idea was presented as scientific, but in fact it was a way to get ahead of the USSR in some way. If you think this cautionary tale is not strange enough on its own, then you should know that young Carl Sagan was one of the brightest representatives used to carry out this plan.

A declassified report from the Air Force Center for Nuclear Weapons, which was drawn up in June 1959, shows how seriously the Americans took a plan called Project A119. In general, America wanted to explore the possibilities of weapons in space, as well as gain further understanding of the use of nuclear devices in the space environment.

The report says: "The motivation for such an explosion obviously has three parts: scientific, military and political." On 190 pages, the authors of the report discuss in detail the possible effects of an explosion on the lunar surface, the question of whether they will be able to carry out seismic observations on the moon when the atomic bomb is dropped, and how long the fallout can last.

The idea of ​​the Americans

The idea was to drop a small W25 nuclear warhead onto the lunar terminator (the border between the illuminated and shaded parts). This means that the mushroom cloud will be illuminated by the Sun, and therefore it can be observed from the Earth, and in particular seen from Moscow. All studies have shown that the Americans did have sufficient technological capabilities to carry out this plan.

The force of the explosion of such a bomb would be 1.6 kilotons. This is a relatively low value for an atomic bomb, but still serious.

Who was behind this project

The grand plan for Project A119 was discussed by its leader, Dr. Leonard Reiffel (who later became Deputy Director of the Apollo Program of NASA), senior officials of the United States Air Force, as well as some of the leading scientists of the Western world, including Girard Cooper, a major figure in modern planetary science.

Carl Sagan, the legendary "prophet" in the field of science, also worked on this project. Years ago, he became an outspoken critic of nuclear weapons. Sagan was hired by Reiffel to study how large and visible the exploding dust cloud would be in space around the moon. Sagan's name even appeared on the list of the declassified report.

How the world learned about America's secret plans

In fact, this story became known to the world only because writer Kay Davidson did research for a book about Sagan in the late 1990s. His biography is called Carl Sagan: Life. Davidson kept this under wraps, but the information was eventually published in a book review in Nature magazine. After the project became known, Reiffel was the first person to officially disclose the plan in 2000.

In an interview with The Observer, shortly after this eccentric plan was revealed, Dr. Reiffel said it was scientifically significant. But given the height of the Cold War, it's hard to believe that the interest in him was purely scientific.

“Obviously, the main purpose of the proposed explosion was to demonstrate the strength of one of the participants in the Cold War. The Air Force wanted a mushroom cloud large enough to be visible on Earth, ”Reiffel said. "The United States lagged behind in the space race."

Why the atomic bomb was never dropped

Fortunately, this plan was never implemented. It was eventually slowed down for fear of public reaction. “I made it clear that the destruction of the pristine lunar environment would be a huge challenge for science, but the US Air Force was mostly concerned about how a nuclear explosion would be perceived on Earth,” added Reiffel.

He believed that the USSR also had a plan similar to the American project A119, although almost nothing is known about this. Nevertheless, it is very likely that if there was such a plan, then it began to be developed in response to the plans of the United States.

At present, the Moon cannot be used as a test site for nuclear weapons, if only because it does not correspond to common sense. The 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty and the 1967 Outer Space Treaty prohibit the detonation of nuclear devices on or near the moon.

NASA has once again cruelly pinned down the public and American taxpayers. Project LCROSS, activated this afternoon, it was intended to check if there was water on the moon in the form of ice. The presence of water theoretically allows you to extract fuel, and build any kind of infrastructure in the form of lunar bases. The idea is not bad, and not at all as absurd as many thought at first. Launching satellites and ships from the moon is several times cheaper than burning megatons of expensive fuel to lift a rocket from the ground, you must agree.

Now about the technical part of the project. An observation apparatus went to the surface of the moon, to which a specially designed bomb was fastened. This bomb was planned to be dropped on the Cabeus crater, which is at the lunar south pole. According to the idea, 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 dust clouds rising near the South Pole.

This is how it was supposed to look as conceived by the initiators of the project.

A bunch of recording equipment was installed on the detachable stage of LCROSS: a camera, an infrared camera, all kinds of sensors. They promised that the whole process would be shown live close up.

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 destroyed by a research bomb, shards of ice beautifully shining in the sun, or, at worst, a large and beautiful cloud of dust. Okay, let it be small. But shot up close.

We saw, however, not at all. To the monotonous chatter of the broadcasters, interspersed with the conversations of the members of the flight control center, the black and white image of the moon approached at a speed of one frame every five seconds. When the surface image became very close, the image suddenly disappeared, and one of the technicians reported that “the signal all of a sudden switched to another camera. " Which one, he did not say. No one also said why no cameras or sensors at all 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 and behave somehow strangely: some are going to sort of go home (so quickly ?? - many people were surprised at this moment, including me). One technician-dispatcher happily offered his palm to the other, like “high-five, everything is ok”, but he quickly and puzzledly left the room, as if something was being sent to him through the earpiece. (Not to slap a high-five on your palm is generally a rather disrespectful gesture in American etiquette, and means that a person very not before). Someone fussed, someone showed strange, ambiguous looks to colleagues. Several forums are now discussing this strange behavior of dispatchers. Something was clearly wrong.

In the studio, meanwhile, the project manager dryly and stiffly declares: "Mission completed successfully." NASA said it is not going to publish any images for now. Why? This is a good question.

The Hubble Observatory did not detect any cloud, nothing. Other large observatories did not see anything either. V this moment there is already a lot of speculation and suspicion on the Internet, and not only among amateurs. Many media outlets suspect that people are being fooled, to put it mildly (again).

Another version: why was the LCROSS project needed.

Information has surfaced today that the LCROSS project was set up for destruction, not research. Detonation was planned to destroy the colony of those on the moon visitors... This was not done, and the project, conceived under the guise of NASA, was simply thwarted by countermeasures of other interested parties. The rocket itself and the LCROSS probe no longer exist: they were destroyed just at the moment the traced image was “turned off”. This is why NASA dispatchers behaved so strangely. (link to the original of this information)

Be that as it may, for the Americans the most ridiculous (and tragic), that for all this dubious "scientific" action they paid out of their own pockets not much or less 79 million green chizhikov... Note that it was not the government that paid, but citizens-taxpayers.

Power is a transitory blessing: it must be constantly confirmed. At the same time, it leads to obsession: the one who once demonstrated his strength to the enemy needs to feel this euphoria again and again, otherwise an increase in discontent is inevitable.

October 4, 1957 Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite into low-earth orbit. The shock from the launch of the satellite deeply shook the United States and the entire West: apparently, 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 the achievements of his country in the development of nuclear weapons and missiles. A missile with a nuclear warhead was to be sent to the moon.

Historian Matthias Uhl, an employee of the German Historical Institute in Moscow, some time ago discovered the relevant acts in the Russian State Archives and published them. According to them, the proposal came from Yakov Zel'dovich, a nuclear physicist and member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences.

© RIA Novosti, Savostyanov

The E-3 plan, which Khrushchev forced or at least encouraged, was part of an extensive 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 purpose of "E-2" was images 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, images of its back side in the best resolution were to be taken. The purpose of the program was a soft landing on the moon with the transmission of images of its surface.

But during the Cold War, the most important was the E-3 project, which was supposed to provide undeniable evidence that the Soviet Union could get into the moon and arrange a nuclear explosion on it. According to Ulu, they hoped that the resulting flash of light would be visible from Earth. Thus, the "combat suitability" of the not yet fully finished Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles would have been impressively demonstrated.

Six months later, on August 23, 1958, the decree was detailed. Responsible for the development of nuclear weapons, the Ministry of Medium Machine Building and its subordinate Design Bureau No. 11 were ordered to develop atomic and hydrogen bombs for the E-3 project. The weight of the nuclear warhead was supposed to be about 400 kilograms and develop "maximum explosive power", the second bomb was supposed to weigh 200 kilograms and provide an explosion power of 10 to 20 kilotons. This roughly corresponded to the power of the explosion of the American bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

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 a nuclear explosion itself, that is, without fissile materials. Then it had to be blown up to make sure that the sophisticated technology survived the long flight.

Context

Alabuga: more powerful than a nuclear bomb (Daily Star)

Daily Star 03.10.2017

Building up or modernizing nuclear forces?

Russia Matters 09/18/2017

Kim is silent, missiles are flying

Mainichi Shimbun 09/13/2017
At the second stage, they were going to launch atomic and hydrogen bombs on the lunar surface. These launches were planned for the period from April to August 1959, but the Central Committee noted that this would require a special order. The strikes were to be documented using special photo and video cameras.

The launch vehicle was to be the modified R-7 (NATO code: SS-6), the main model of Soviet ICBMs, which was also used in most of the USSR civilian cosmonautics projects. In the process of development, the corresponding models of the rocket stage and explosive charge have already appeared.

However, numerous technical problems of the program soon surfaced. In addition, concerns have arisen that, due to the lack of atmosphere, explosions on the moon may not provide an impressive picture. In addition, there were concerns that the warhead, due to the failure of the launch vehicle, could fall on foreign territory or even explode. Therefore, the project was finally closed.

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