Shoot the Moon

A

Alex DeLarge

Registered Member
Has anyone else read/seen the story about the alleged 1950's Air Force proposal to launch an ICBM at the moon and detonate a nuclear warhead to 'impress' the Russians. Think it is real, or another piece of disinfo?

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The New Age of Enlightenment is approaching...are you ready?
 
One thing about those apocryphal stories that I can best relate to rental car advertisements on American television: there's a campaign for National Car Rental (I think) that portrays a team of bright, young marketing up-and-comers (oxymoronic as that may sound) trying to increase rentals with various gimmicks that end in disaster: incense that puts the driver to sleep, jet-packs to get you to your car quickly (but tangle you in power lines), &c.

The entire point of that is that I think, yes, this sounds like something our Best & Brightest might think up. But the sheer stupidity of such an idea should be apparent even before one stops laughing at the absurdity of the idea. So yeah, I think they did give the idea consideration. Perhaps five seconds-worth. But I don't think it was ever a serious consideration.

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

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We are unutterably alone, essentially, especially in the things most intimate and important to us. (Ranier Maria Rilke)
 
Tiassa, you are correct that it is an absurd idea, but then again nukes are an absurd idea by itself and yet there seem to be plenty of those to go around. It also seems that good ol' Carl Sagan thought it was worth doing (of course he was much younger back then, not that it should excuse him). Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but the more I think about it, more questions pop into my gulliver.

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The New Age of Enlightenment is approaching...are you ready?
 
I belive it is disinformation. The USSR tried to make us look like dumb back water hicks, and had the best disinformation machine known to man.

With what we know about radiation and nukes in this day and age nukes do seem pretty stupid, but it seemed to be the best answer for the issue at hand. Unfortunetly we didn't have a crystal ball or the knowlage of the future to show us that it was a mistake.

[This message has been edited by 666 (edited May 16, 2000).]
 
666,
I wish you put that in the Disarming Australia thread. Bummer.....

Things are a little better now. A probe sent to Jupitor is to be crashed into one of its moons at the end of its mission. One moon (can't remember the name) is believed to be nearly entirley made of water and hence the possibilty of life so they decided NOT to crash into it. Just as well, I'd say the power source would be nuclear??? just speculating on that. With hinde sight there are many things I wish could be uninvented including the idea of peace via an armed stalemate, and Windows 98.
 
This is true, they us were to detonate a nuke on the moon. If you want the report I will post it.
 
Mana...I wasn't trying to debate whether the story existed, rather whether the information is accurate. I have a hard time buying into it, at least the motivations for even considering it. Could you imagine if they had actually done it? There would be nothing left of our moon because you know darn well that the Sovs would have sent a bigger nuke to upstage the one we sent and so on and so on...you know how it goes.

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The New Age of Enlightenment is approaching...are you ready?
 
The Russians were trying to put a small nuclear warhead on Lunar1, only it wouldn't fit so they settled for a small radio transmitter.
 
Anybody recall the film The Right Stuff?

There's a running gag going on that summarizes American sentiment during the heat of the space race. The camera would follow a suit down a long hallway whereupon he would enter a dimly lit room and issue a panicky update on Russian progress; one of the men he reports to always says: "We know. Sit down ..." and begins his explanation.

Both sides, when you ask them, will say they were only considering the idea because the other side was.

thanx,
Tiassa :cool:

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We are unutterably alone, essentially, especially in the things most intimate and important to us. (Ranier Maria Rilke)
 
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