US planned one big nuclear blast for mankind
Antony Barnett,
Public Affairs Editor
Sunday May 14, 2000
The Observer
The US Air
Force developed a top-secret plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon as a
display of military might at the height of the Cold War.
In an exclusive
interview with The Observer, Dr Leonard Reiffel, 73, the physicist who fronted
the project in the late Fifties at the US military-backed Armour Research
Foundation, revealed America's extraordinary lunar plan.
'It was clear
the main aim of the proposed detonation was a PR exercise and a show of
one-upmanship. The Air Force wanted a mushroom cloud so large it would be
visible on earth,' he said yesterday. 'The US was lagging behind in the space
race.'
'The explosion would obviously be best on the dark side of the
moon and the theory was that if the bomb exploded on the edge of the moon, the
mushroom cloud would be illuminated by the sun.' The bomb would have been at
least as large as the one used on Hiroshima at the end of World War II.
'I made it clear at the time there would be a huge cost to science of
destroying a pristine lunar environment, but the US Air Force were mainly
concerned about how the nuclear explosion would play on earth,' said Reiffel.
Although he believes the blast would have had little environmental
impact on Earth, its crater may have ruined the face of the 'man in the moon'.
Reiffel would not reveal how the explosion would have taken place. But
he confirmed it was 'certainly technically feasible' and that at the time an
intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile would have been capable of hitting a
target on the moon with an accuracy of within two miles.
Reiffel was
approached by senior US Air Force officers in 1958, who asked him to
'fast-track' a project to investigate the visibility and effects of a nuclear
explosion on the moon. The top-secret Project A119, was entitled 'A Study of
Lunar Research Flights'.
'Had the project been made public there would
have been an outcry,' said Reiffel.
Many Cold War documents are still
classified in the US, but details of Project A119 emerged after a biography of
celebrated US scientist and astronomer Carl Sagan was published there last year.
Sagan, who died in 1996, was famous for popularising science in the US
and pioneering the study of potential life on other planets. At the Armour
Foundation in Chicago - now called the Illinois Institute of Technology Research
- he was hired by Reiffel to undertake mathematical modelling on the expansion
of an exploding dust cloud in the space around the moon. This was key to
calculating the visibility of such a cloud from the Earth.
At the time
scientists still believed there might be microbial life on the moon and Sagan
had suggested a nuclear explosion might be used to detect organisms.
Despite the highly classified nature of the work, Sagan's biographer,
Keay Davidson, discovered that he had disclosed details of it when he applied
for the prestigious Miller Institute graduate fellowship to Berkeley.
Yet, until today, the full nature of Project A119 has never been
revealed. Friends of Sagan believe he never would have wilfully revealed
classified information, but Reiffel has come forward to put the 'historical
record straight'.
Reiffel continued: 'It was well known that the
existence of this project was top secret. Had Sagan wanted to make any
disclosures to any party, as his boss at the time, I would have had to take
forward any such request and Air Force permission would have been extremely
unlikely in those very tense times.'
In a letter to the science magazine
Nature, Reiffel said: 'Fortunately for the future of lunar science, a one or two
horse race to detonate a nuclear explosion never occurred. But in my opinion
Sagan breached security in March, 1959.'
Reiffel produced eight reports
between May 1958 and January 1959 on the feasibility of the plan, all of which
were destroyed in 1987 by the foundation. Reiffel would not discuss details of
these reports, believing they were still classified, but it was clear the
conclusion was that the explosion would have been visible from Earth
He
does not know why the plans were scrapped, but said: 'Thankfully, the thinking
changed. I am horrified that such a gesture to sway public opinion was ever
considered.'
Dr David Lowry, a British nuclear historian, said: 'It is
obscene. To think that the first contact human beings would have had with
another world would have been to explode a nuclear bomb. Had they gone ahead, we
would never have had the romantic image of Neil Armstrong taking "one giant step
for mankind".'
Lowry believes Project A119 has relevance today with the
US proposing a missile defence system in space. He said: 'The US has always
wanted to militarise space and some of the fanciful ideas currently being put
forward will seem as incredible as the idea of nuking the moon in the Fifties
seems today.'
A Pentagon spokesman would not confirm or deny the
plans.
antony.barnett@observer.co.uk
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