why the superpowers planned to nuke the moon, and what ultimately stopped them
Before actually landing on the Moon, both the U.S. and USSR were planning to use our natural satellite primarily for war.
We may joke about the Space Force and how it was just a political stunt today, but it was a deadly serious idea in 1957 as the United States prepared for the very real and looming possibility that the Soviet Union could land on the Moon first and start using space as a sandbox for its grand ambitions. Just as Americans were being inspired by science fiction and promises of bizarre and fantastic new worlds to explore, endless resources to exploit, and grand fleets to assemble, the Soviets were becoming every bit as interested in taking the Cold War into the final frontier.
And like everything during the Cold War, government officials on both sides quickly ended up invoking nuclear weapons. The U.S. had USAF’s project A119 and followup plans for a permanent lunar military base laid out by Project Horizon. The idea was to detonate a large nuclear warhead on the Moon’s surface as a show of force and claim a part of our natural satellite as American territory. A subsequent military base would ostensibly discourage and limit Soviet expansion beyond orbit.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was pursuing an eerily similar idea codenamed E-4, with almost identical goals. After celebrating the October Revolution with a massive blast on the lunar surface, the USSR would then send cosmonauts to — yes, that’s exactly right, you guessed it — build a base on the Moon as a counterweight to U.S. efforts in space and put the entire planet within easy reach of powerful ICBMs that could simply be dropped onto the planet below.
Now, we obviously all know both programs were cancelled and while we could just leave all this as an interesting historical footnote about how — to borrow from Maya Angelou — all humans are more alike than not, even when it comes to war, despite supposedly being polar opposites, where’s the fun in that?
If anything, it would be more interesting to imagine what could’ve happened if both programs went ahead after nixing the nukes, and look at why countries that would end up spending close to a trillion in today’s dollars between each other in games of oneupmanship cancelled their bids for early and swift military domination of space.
the hypothetical interplanetary war machine
You can actually get some idea of what an alternative world in which the USSR’s N1 rocket actually worked and NASA lost the space race would be like thanks to Apple TV’s series For All Mankind. In the show’s universe, the public black eye to America ensured that ever more ambitious space exploration remained a matter of existential importance and critical political currency and prestige for superpowers.
Advances in computing, medicine, and engineering become far more rapid because so much more money is dedicated to grandiose goals. STEM jobs are in constant, high demand, economies boom, and post-secondary education would be cheap, if not free, thanks to the endless demand for scientists, engineers, and doctors. Both nations would have their fingers on nuclear triggers, but still very hesitant to actually use them given just how much would be at stake, devoting a lot of energy to missile defense and spy craft.
The economic gains and focus on what lies beyond our orbit just as much as what’s happening on Earth may prevent the Soviet Union’s collapse, another point the show probably gets right. And with the start of asteroid mining and as innovations to power terrestrial civilian infrastructure thanks to innovations from space programs, we’d be less reliant on fossil fuels so OPEC and dictatorships in the Middle East have far less effect on superpower policies and global politics. Mining on Earth also becomes way less lucrative as asteroids quickly offer much better returns on investment.
We could have averted even moderate climate change and global warming, removing the preconditions of Regan’s presidency and the rise of trickle down economics. But yet, this is not to say that the world would be a utopia. Red scares, conspiracies, racial disparities, spying, paranoia will still be there, as well as, undoubtedly, new crises that threaten the world order, only now they could start on the Moon, or Mars, or on a rock somewhere in the asteroid belt, then spiral out of control to bring us all to the edge of war with guaranteed nuclear exchanges.
Yet, as interesting as it may sound to stay in this world, an entire show already did that for four whole seasons, and we have to return to reality where science got in the way, then politics, with Nixon’s pivot to spending trillions on ever more advanced nukes, as well as the Outer Space Treaty’s ratification in 1967 significantly restricting what both nations could do in space. And that brings us right back to the superpowers’ plans to colonize the Moon with nuclear saber rattling.
why physics is also a harsh mistress
“You know what, the universe of For All Mankind actually sounds a lot more fun and promising than what we have now,” you might say. “So why didn’t the U.S. or USSR actually follow through so we could be living in that world today?”
Believe it or not, you should blame the nukes and the state of 1950s rocketry. Maybe also Carl Sagan. Yes, the one of the Pale Blue Dot and Cosmos fame. During his work on Project A119, he and astronomer Gerard Kuiper — who was supervising Sagan and his research projects at the time — found a whole lot of problems with the whole idea of nuking another world then trying to settle it posthaste.
By themselves, even the most powerful nuclear warheads detonated on the Moon would make for a lousy show of force thanks to the laws of physics. All of the horrible and spectacular things nukes do on Earth involve a thick atmosphere pushing down on them, creating shockwaves. In space, there is no resistance and so, all you would see is a blink-and-you-miss-it flash of light. For more details, I recommend this highly informative little cartoon on the subject…
Note the most important part there. Yes, the explosion wouldn’t be dramatic, but even small warheads like the tiny 1.7 kiloton W25 that ultimately be considered for Project A119 — not the kind of weapon generals wanted, but it was light enough to launch on a state of the art 1950s’ rocket and have a real chance of reaching the Moon — would contaminate the surface with heavy radioactive debris.
I know, I know, the Moon is already radioactive, what’s a few rads more? Turns out, it’s actually kind of a big deal. Lunar regolith normally doesn’t have byproducts of dense, weapons grade metals, is dry like volcanic glass, and would be needed to shield the astronauts and soldiers from solar radiation. Now imagine all those heavy, decaying metals sitting on top of a base, slowly adding to the poisoning your crew. Even worse, since the regolith is electrostatic and clings to space suits, it will be tracked into the base along with cesium and other products of nuclear fallout.
a very small, risky bang for your buck
So, in short, you couldn’t have launched a massive device with a yield in megatons as it would require a modern heavy lift rocket like the Falcon Heavy or Ariane to even get into orbit, much less to the Moon. Even if you could, it would be a lousy show of force to an enemy power because they’d need a heads up and a telescope to see it, making it far from intimidating. And finally, after all that, you have fallout polluting the regolith you need for your lunar military base spread far and wide.
Finally, there’s the question of what happens if the rocket carrying the nuke explodes on the launchpad, during ascent, or falls from orbit. As noted in one of the previous links, the bomb wouldn’t explode since setting off a nuclear warhead with maximum yield is a very precise and complicated procedure. It would, however, shower a wide swath of the planet with radioactive debris from its core, raining uranium, plutonium, and polonium, like a premature flying Chernobyl.
What conclusions can we draw from all this? First, if you explore space, it’s best to do it without an opening nuclear bombardment. Second, competition in space has done some amazing things for our world and could have done a lot more if the USSR hadn’t just given up on the Moon after a series of mishaps and the U.S. didn’t decide to rest on its laurels. Third, you should probably watch For All Mankind. And finally, always let scientists make sure that your big ideas actually make sense before they end in utter disaster, as the leaders of projects A119 and E-4 did.