http://rt.com/usa/news/us-moon-nuclear-project-631/
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What about the effect the moon has on the earth such as tides and such?
Pretty skeptical on this one.
That's what I was thinking Pappy. Anyone with sense enough to send a spaceship to the moon would surely think of that.
It wouldn't have destroyed the moon, even a massive bomb wouldn't do that. It would make a whale of a crater and a show though.
I don't really doubt it was out there and kicked around. Lots of crazy ideas get kicked around in the military. It's really what we want b/c some stick but we want them thinking outside the box. We do some pretty far out weapons research, but like it should if it doesn't make sense it doesn't go anywhere.
I personally love the Pykrete aircraft carrier idea from WWII, but the pigeon guided bombs probably wins for actually being buildable if unreliable. WWII was a golden era of wacky military experiments. Bat bombs, the Soviet idea of training dogs to run under Nazi tanks. The Soviet dog thing was tried, but since they trained with Russian tanks they turned around and blew up their own tanks.
But out of all that stuff, including a TON of nutso Nazi ideas, they came up with the V1 buzz bomb engine, the V2 rocket, remote guided and wire guided missiles, a lot of crazy but successful ideas.
The atomic bomb was straight out of theoretical physics, I'm sure considered wacky by many at the time who wanted that money to go to more ships and more tanks.
So estimating if we could do it isn't that disturbing to me. Doing it is a different thing.
Now if I'm wrong and they wanted to crack the moon like an egg, that's flat crazy. I think they just meant a big light show, b/c they had to know the moon is kind of important, but I'm sure some high ranking person somewhere with no knowledge of science probably mentioned it in a meeting. lol.
Oh, sorry for the quasi hijack slash walk down military research history lane. I find that stuff fascinating, this kind of sent me on that course.
Hey, blowing up the moon couldn't be any more dumb than "duck and cover" as the preferred way to defend from a nuclear blast. :)
There was also one in the cold war where they wanted to put chickens over (or in depending on the version) nuclear land mines. Really they were defensive bombs to be deployed in the event of a retreat. The problem with them was if they got too cold the electronics might malfunction and the chickens would keep it warm enough to operate. Love that one.
Yeah,I'm sure they realized that they couldn't destroy the moon completely, but I think it would safe to say that a huge atomic blast there could possibly have some adverse effects on weather patterns etc. It's not good to mess with things that you know nothing about. Probably the reason they didn't go through with the plan if there was one.
Agree completely. Something big enough to make a show from Earth could impact its orbit or something. The spreading of radiation in a nice circle around the planet sounds like a good reason to nix it as well.Quote:
Originally Posted by DanISSELisdaman
At least the Pykrete carrier wouldn't melt and poison the oceans.
Slight aside, but some think the Large Hadron collider may cause a black hole and suck in the planet. Boy wouldn't that be funny.
Yet another cause of Global Warming!Quote:
Originally Posted by DanISSELisdaman
If a nuclear bomb goes boom on the moon and no one is there, does it make a sound? Oh wait, there is no air on the moon, no air, no sound.
No air, no pressure wave from the bomb either, so very limited damage. Nice crater and some dust, but pfft, nothing much else except for making that part of the moon glow in the dark for 5,000 years.
Great point. There wouldn't be a mushroom cloud at all would there? Dust yes but with no atmosphere no oxygen etc catches on fire. Interesting. I don't have answers, but interesting.Quote:
Originally Posted by dan_bgblue
I suspect there would be a mushroom cloud of dust but there would be no fire. I always laugh in sci fi flicks where things in space burn, you know, when a ship gets hit with a rocket and it burns. So in the above scenario, I doubt there would be anything to see from earth.Quote:
Originally Posted by CitizenBBN
Not even sure there would be a mushroom cloud, as that is formed from atmospheric gasses expanding in the pressure wave and the burning gasses in the atmosphere. I do not know that to be fact, it just seems logical to me.
Maybe I should have said "dust cloud"? I assume there would be a dust cloud. :533:
Massive dust cloud. Some of it totally leaving the moon and getting pulled into our atmosphere or off to space, probably a fair amount of it floating around the moon a while. Depends on how big a blast if it would be enough to make the planet look fuzzy.