US Air Force Had Plans to Nuke The Moon!!

wait, theres no air in space though. doesnt fire need air so survive how would the explosion...explode without air

correct me if im wrong but isnt a nuclear bomb a deteonation that occurs at an atomic level causing vast distortion in matter and atmosphere, im not sure fire is the point of a nuclear weapon.

maybe the reason they wanted to nuke the moon was to hit the alien base stationed up there

And this would happen how exactly? If every nuclear weapon in all the arsenals on the planet were detonated on the moon, it wouldn't affect anything on the Earth, one iota. All it would do would be add some craters to the moonscape.

Originally posted by DalairTheGreat
wait, theres no air in space though. doesnt fire need air so survive how would the explosion...explode without air

So explosions couldn't happen under water because the water would put the fire out?

Would'nt debry engauge with earth?????????
what sort of damage would the blast cause, or i could be absolutlly wrong have those NASA geeks figure it out. I mean not that i have to worry or anything.

CDT SENATOR
AAFC 4WG
AUS

That's weird,
if they really wanted to detonate a nuclear bomb for experimentation, why they just couldn't threw it deep into the space and observe the results. To decide to use the bomb away from our planet proves they knew nukes' destructive abilities. The thing that concerns me is why they chose a single spot in the moon.

What was there?
Why there?

Years later, Sagan apparently presented some of the results of his research on the project in an application for an academic fellowship. Reiffel believes that by doing so Sagan breached national security, as the primary secret of the project was its very existence. This breach of security was discussed in a recent biography of the astronomer, but was not detailed in that book.

Of what research is he talking about? The detonation in the moon never occured, at least, as far as i know.

National Security?
This excusion i have heard many times before

Sorry for that, but i feel i have to do it:

I am pissed off from this National Security!!!
I want to know everything no matter how secure i am!!!
...and if i hear again:''For the sake of National Security, we will hoard matters up'' I WILL HIT THE CEILING

Now i feel better...

Hiroshima, Nagasaki, it's just a matter of where, next! Leave it to US to blow us all up!

reply to post by mikesingh


If I was them I wouldn't do that ever, they really are waving a stick in the face of a lion

DalairTheGreat
wait, theres no air in space though. doesnt fire need air so survive how would the explosion...explode without air

Fire needs air because air is part of the fuel..for instance a rocket works in space because it supplies its own fuel/air mixture so it can operate in a vacuum/space, same thing with a nuke..it has the fuel it needs to do what it does..it might snuff out pretty quick with no extra fuel to ignite. A nuke is a bit different though as fire is a simple chemical reaction while a nuke is something altogether different but you get the gist.
Cheers

Even if they did actually follow through, I bet the rocket wouldn't have even made it off the earth before exploding into a massive nuclear fireball. .....

Well both the Soviets and Americans have exploded nukes way up there..i think around 500+kms out/up

Maverickhunter
I wonder what one could do to nuke the moon. It probably would alter the earths oceans. Change the moon's gravity and affect many other problems and it would make it very problematic for us here in our world. Meh.

Not at all. Why do you think that? None of that would be subsequent to nuking the moon. How do you foresee it altering the Earth's oceans?

Why not nuke every country in the globe while you're at it?

We pretty much did - have you seen that nuke test map?

SalientSkivvy
Even if they did actually follow through, I bet the rocket wouldn't have even made it off the earth before exploding into a massive nuclear fireball. .....

Why? They're designed to be launched as a missile payload. What do you think an ICBM is?

DalairTheGreat
wait, theres no air in space though. doesnt fire need air so survive how would the explosion...explode without air

No explosive, with the exception of an FAE, requires air as an oxidizer.

Nuclear weapons do not have "fire". They don't need air at all. Nor oxygen of any sort. The reason they call them nukes is that they depend on nuclear reactions.

Now, you don't get as big a radius of destruction in a vacuum because you don't have air to distribute an overpressure wave. But they work just fine.

alpha20kilo
Would'nt debry engauge with earth?????????
what sort of damage would the blast cause, or i could be absolutlly wrong have those NASA geeks figure it out. I mean not that i have to worry or anything.

CDT SENATOR
AAFC 4WG
AUS

No, not at all. The moon's 250,000 miles away. A nuke wouldn't have the nads to kick debris to Earth. Those craters you see, most of them involve more energy than a nuke.

ababsdfg
that has to be one of the worst ideas ive ever heard,
the entire climate of the earth would change
also the force of the explosion, could send the moon flying into the earth, and even if that didnt happen the mass of the moon would change drammatically, and the chunks that were blown off would hit the planet..

thats proly why that didnt actually do it

No, the climate of the Earth wouldn't change one iota. We detonated lots of them HERE. And the Moon's 250,000 miles away. We're not connected to it other than by gravity.

And the force of the explosion would have made a crater. All the nukes we have on Earth couldn't change the orbit of the Moon. And, no, there wouldn't be any chunks blown off.

All those marks on the Moon? Most of them involve more energy than your average nuke. So does a big thunderstorm on Earth.

Blitz

In other words, detonating a nuke on the moon would be like, throwing a match into an ocean of gasoline.

Not at all. Helium 3 is a very VERY slow reactant in a fusion reaction. It's a poison to a nuke because it takes so long to fuse. That's why you have to filter it out of the tritium used in nuke boost gas and in initiators. And you lose heat as the fourth power of the temperature difference to radiation. That's why thermonuclear weapons don't just have a primary stuck in a bucket of deuterium. You have to really work at it to get it to fuse.

openmind1963
i can't believe that they would not know that nuking the moon,would over time destroy earth!

In what way? What do you foresee destroying the earth?

reply to post by Bedlam


aaaghh It was a lame attempt at a bad joke... with the challenger and ufo in the background, and moon people conspiracy.... lol

SalientSkivvy
reply to post by Bedlam

 

aaaghh It was a lame attempt at a bad joke... with the challenger and ufo in the background, and moon people conspiracy.... lol

Sorry...my sarcasmometer is offline due to overwork and wine. Hopefully I'm getting my maths right on this stuff I brought home. In this corner - Shiraz. In the other corner - radar data. Welcome to Chunderdome, only one of you will leave.