U.S. government actually planned to nuke the moon as a show of force

U.S. government actually planned to nuke the moon as a show of force

(NaturalNews) The U.S. government has come up with some crackpot ideas
before, but one of the goofiest was a plan during the 1950s, just as the
Cold War was heating up, to - of all things - nuke the moon, simply as a show of force.

In
what can only be described as part of the madness of the post-World War
II and Korean War era, U.S. scientists and government officials
actually debated over whether to detonate a nuclear weapon on the
surface of the moon as a way to send a menacing message to the Soviet
Union, according to Asian News International.

The secret
plan, dubbed, "A Study of Lunar Research Flights," was nicknamed
"Project A119." Amazingly, it was under serious consideration until it
was finally scrapped by a dose of sanity among military leaders who
feared the blast could wind up hurting people on earth. Obviously, it
was never carried out.

Still, it was a serious plan for a
time and involved some of the brighter minds of the day. Among those was
noted astronomer Carl Sagan, who was at the time a young graduate
student; he was tasked with figuring out what the behavior would be of
dust and gas generated by the atomic blast, The Daily Mail reported.

Plan was to fire missile at the moon

Scientists
and U.S. officials believed that if the Soviets could view the blast
from earth, it would intimidate Moscow while boosting confidence in
Washington following the launch of Sputnik, physicist Leonard Reiffel
told The Associated Press in an interview in 2000.

Now 85, Reiffel says he directed the planning at the former Armour Research Foundation, which has since become part of the Illinois Institute of Technology, AP said. He went on to serve as a deputy director at NASA.

Sagan later became famous for popularizing science on television; he passed away in 1996.

The
author of one of Sagan's biographies hinted that the popular scientist
could have committed a security breach in 1959 by revealing details of
the classified project in an academic fellowship application, a
suggestion that Reiffel agreed with.

According to details of the
plan, here's how it would have worked: A missile fitted with a small
nuclear device would have been launched from an undisclosed location,
then travel some 238,000 miles to the moon, detonating on impact.

Scientists
determined it would have to have been an atom bomb, because a hydrogen
explosive would have been too heavy for the missile to carry.

Reiffel
said the country's space program, which was in its infancy in the
1950s, could have carried the mission out by the end of the decade, when
the Air Force began to deploy intercontinental ballistic missiles
carrying nuclear warheads.

In the end; however, military
officials nixed the plan because they feared it would put people on
earth in danger should the mission have failed.

In addition,
scientists involved in the project voiced concerns about contaminating
the moon with radioactive materials, said Reiffel.

Nuking the moon as a show of force was not the only hare-brained idea concocted by the government in years past. Nor the most evil.

Nuking the moon not the worst thing

From
1955 to 1975, military "researchers" at Edgewood Arsenal, located near
the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground base in Maryland, used animals and
military "volunteers" to test a collection of drugs and chemicals
ranging from potentially lethal nerve gases like VX and sarin, to
incapacitating agents like BZ, CNN reported.

Military scientists also tested the effects of tear gas, barbiturates, narcotics, tranquilizers and hallucinogens like LSD.

This
diabolical research was done under a secret Cold War program that
ostensibly looked for ways to defend against a potential chemical or
biological attack by the Soviets, who were, at the time, thought to be
way ahead of the U.S. in "psycho-chemical" warfare, according to Army
documentation at the time.

In 2009, a class-action suit filed by the Vietnam Veterans of America and individual soldiers, charged the U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency,
with the help of former Nazi scientists, of using at least 7,800 vets
as guinea pigs to test the effects of as many as 400 different types of
drugs and chemicals. They included mescaline (psychedelic alkaloid), LSD
(psychedelic drug), amphetamines, barbiturates, nerve agents and
mustard gas.

The suit also says the government worked to cover up
the testing and the nature of its experiments, which began in the 1950s
under such exotic code names as "Bluebird," "Artichoke," and MKUltra."


Source:-
http://www.naturalnews.com/038152_nuclear_bombs_moon_government.html