In 1958, spooked by the Soviet Sputnik launch, the US Air Force secretly commissioned a study to detonate a nuclear weapon on the surface of the Moon, visible from Earth, purely as a show of force; the plan was ultimately shelved over fears the fallout would ruin the Moon for future scientific study

In 1958, spooked by the Soviet Sputnik launch, the US Air Force secretly commissioned a study to detonate a nuclear weapon on the surface of the Moon, visible from Earth, purely as a show of force; the plan was ultimately shelved over fears the fallout would ruin the Moon for future scientific study

In 1958, a year after the Soviets put Sputnik into orbit and shook the confidence of an entire country, the US Air Force quietly asked a physicist named Leonard Reiffel to study something that sounds almost too dramatic to be real: whether it was possible to detonate a nuclear weapon on the surface of the Moon, timed and positioned so the flash would be visible from Earth. The goal had nothing to do with the Moon itself. The point was sending Mo…