U.S. Considered Nuclear Bomb on Moon, Scientist SaysTuesday May 16 7:24 PM ET
dailynews.yahoo.com
By Deborah Zabarenko
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - At the height of the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force asked scientists to plan a
spectacular nuclear blast on the moon, a physicist who worked on the project said on Tuesday.
The purpose of such an explosion would have been to make a showy display clearly visible from earth at a
time when the Soviet Union was leading in the race for space, according to Chicago-based physicist Leonard
Reiffel.
``We never got to a specific (nuclear) weapon nor a launch vehicle,'' physicist Leonard Reiffel said in a
telephone interview. The scientists did, however, detail to the Air Force ''what ordinary human beings might
see on earth; the prime motivation in my view was to make a public statement.''
People would have seen a very bright flash, particularly if the dark side of the moon was
toward earth when the bomb went off, Reiffel said. Clouds of debris would also probably
have been visible, he said.
The classified project, which Reiffel said he and others worked on from late 1958 through
mid-1959, was known as A119, A Study of Lunar Research Flights (SECRET) and was
ordered by the Air Force Special Weapons Center.
The Air Force had no comment on the report on Tuesday.
Reiffel said part of the project was to determine what scientific data could be obtained from a nuclear lunar
blast.
Any possible scientific findings ``did not weigh heavily on the scale, compared to the contamination of the
moon and the confusion of lunar science data that would have occurred,'' Reiffel said. ``And I certainly was
not shy in my opinion of that.''
Times Of Tension
Looking back, Reiffel called the project ``ill-advised'' but said the tension of the times motivated it, as the
United States worked to compete with the launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite in 1957 and Soviet Luna
spacecraft that were circling the moon and taking pictures of it, even as an earthly arms race proceeded.
``It was extremely tense,'' Reiffel said. ``The people who asked us to do these things, I expect ... were
concerned about the political world of the United States and the Soviet Union, being led to a view that the
Soviets could do something that we could not successfully contest or deter.''
The matter came to light after Reiffel wrote a letter published in the May 4 edition of the British-based science
journal Nature, responding to a review of two biographies of astronomer Carl Sagan, who also worked on the
project.
In his letter Reiffel stressed the classified status of the project and said Sagan -- later a well-known popularizer
of astronomy -- breached security by revealing the nature of the program when he applied for a fellowship in
1959.
``Whether the project was motivated by a desire for the United States to impress the world (and the Soviet
Union in particular), or by fear that the Soviet Union itself might try the stunt, I cannot say,'' Reiffel wrote.
What happened to the project? ``After the final report in early- to mid-1959, it simply went away, as things
sometimes do in the world of classified activities,'' he said. |
