Tangential question: if we send a nuclear bomb to divert a meteor from its way to earth, how does the bomb transfer energy to the meteor? On earth I guess you can detonate in the vicinity because the air helps to push. But how does this happen in a vacuum? Does the bomb have to touch the meteor?
Perhaps the mechanism is to explode the bomb close enough to the surface of the asteroid to heat it with the x-ray pulse and cause ejection of debris from the surface--that would impart a reaction force on the asteroid. That's suggested in this article: https://www.llnl.gov/news/nuclear-impulse-could-deflect-mass...
But the total amount of mass in a nuclear weapon is actually very small. Even obscenely large weapons like the Tsar Bomba are tiny compared to the rockets that were used to travel to the moon.
Nuclear weapons can do interesting things like fusion, but it isn't going to create persistent mass when detonated.
The actual proposed weapon was a W25, with a yield of 1.7 kilotons. That size of weapon is so small may non-nuclear explosions eclipse it.
The kinetic energy works of ejected mass, not just the mass of the bomb.
The bomb provides energy for acceleration of said mass - you vaporize and eject a big chunk of rock with the bomb if correctly placed. Which is why placing the bomb underground a'la Armageddon is much more effective at diverting it.
http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent... is a great website from the Before Times that includes long treaties on subjects like this (I first found it through a thing about stealth in space); when it comes to nukes, it does say the falloff is a lot higher than on earth, so yes it would have to touch the meteor. It's about using nukes to attack spaceships but the premise is the same.
> Nuclear weapons will destroy a ship if they detonate exceedingly close to it. But if it is further away than about a kilometer, it won't do much more than singe the paint job and blind a few sensors. And in space a kilometer is pretty close range.
> Please understand: I am NOT saying that nuclear warheads are ineffective. I am saying that the amount of damage they inflict falls off very rapidly with increasing range. At least much more rapidly than with the same sized warhead detonated in an atmosphere.
> But if the nuke goes off one meter from your ship, your ship will probably be vaporized. Atmosphere or no.
The bomb itself doesn’t have to touch the meteor but you do want it as close as possible so the radiative energy from the explosion doesn’t fall off too much. If there’s enough time you would want to build a bomb that acts like a shaped charge and release most of that energy in one direction and you would probably add a heavy element to it that could be energized and pushed in the direction of the asteroid.
Yes. Orion was a credible bomb powered rocket plan. The energy released is mostly thermal, metallic mirror will work to reflect it and if there are superheated gasses involved, you can direct these with rocket nozzles for example. The problem will be attaching that reflector so that it does not fly off.
Imagine a meteor made of ice. A nuclear bomb bombards the surface with immense radiation, vaporizing huge swaths of the surface. This superheated steam explodes off the surface of the meteor, and the meteor itself moves the opposite direction.
This is a throwback to an earlier age and zeitgeist - that seems to be fast approaching again. The same crazy idea might not resurface, but someone in the distant future will maybe (likely?) find some of our own, present-day convictions and schemes equally harebrained (like - cough - a renewed all out arms race involving multiple types of WMDs ...).
Otherwise I found this quote interesting:
> Incredibly, one scientist enabling this horrific scheme was future visionary Carl Sagan. In fact, the existence of the project was only discovered in the 1990s because Sagan had mentioned it on an application to an elite university.
It is surprising that Cark Sagan would have anything to do with something like this (but again, a zeitgeist compels all of us to do things that won't stand the test of time). It is also concerning to think that there might be projects like this that never gets revealed to the public - until it's too late.
> The same crazy idea might not resurface, but someone in the distant future will maybe (likely?) find some of our own, present-day convictions and schemes equally harebrained (like - cough - a renewed all out arms race involving multiple types of WMDs ...).
I don't think we need to wait for the future, I think most normal people living now would already consider this entire situation crazy. The situation and context is obviously complex, but I doubt there are many people outside governments who think a WMD arms race is a good idea.
In a world where the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP)¹ was the plan for decades, involving vapourising thousands upon thousands of targets, on a pre-set and inflexible list, including virtually all the cities in Russia and most of China with an estimated death toll near 300 million, this probably one of the less horrific plans. Still hare-brained, but at least not outright murderous.
Daniel Ellsberg gives an "official" figure of about 600 million for a US nuclear strike in the early 1960s - this would probably include about 100 million in Western Europe.
This was known to be an underestimate as US targetting ignored some relatively unpredictable effects of nuclear weapons - their thermal radiation.
The mere existence of these plans and weapons have successfully deterred a nuclear war — so, while the execution of the plan would have been horrific indeed, the plan itself was something completely opposite.
It's sad that people often evaluate strategic military matters without applying even the minimal level of game theory.
MAD prevented war but trying to circumvent it did not. Which is ultimately why space weapons were banned.
The nuclear arms race is a game nobody should ever be allowed to win. That's a key point of the whole doctrine.
I didn't say it wasn't an effective strategy, since as it happened and we're alive, clearly, luckily, it was. It's just that a plan to blow up a small part of the lunar surface seems fairly not-horrific compared to the actually authorised and deployed plan with a intentional 9-figure death toll and the practical annihilation of many allied countries (the UK in particular was not projected¹ to do very well at all).
There doesn't seem to be a discussion here about the actual effects. To me space, including the moon seems to be a very hostile place already. I would guess a lot would be thrown away from the moon completely, and the rest would settle quickly. Would it present a big problem for suited astronauts?
Yes, broadly speaking, space is already a nuclear hellscape from the perspective of an Earth-based ecosystem. A bit more hellscape doesn't materially change much; any long term space habitation already needs to be designed as if it's in the middle of a nuclear waste dump.
I mean, take everything you've ever heard about the importance of the ozone layer, and everything you've ever heard about the importance of the magnetic shield the Earth has, add a few more little effects you may not even be thinking about like the effect the sheer bulk of atmosphere above us has on screening things, and you're getting to the baseline of what space is like. Add in the fact that sometimes space gets even worse courtesy of solar storms.
(For reference, the International Space Station is actually under the van Allen belts, so it still is substantially protected from radiation, though not entirely. Go above those and the situation gets much worse.)
If there are people or substantial infrastructure on the moon at the time, there are plenty of other good reasons not to light off nukes on the moon unrelated to the radiation. While some of the negative effects nukes have on Earth are the result of its relatively thick atmosphere, there are also ways in which the atmosphere is protective and limits the effect of nukes. Without any atmosphere, all material ejected from the nuke site does not lose any of its kinetic energy. Thus, a single surface nuke can pepper the entire surface of any airless planet with material below the escape velocity of the relevant planet. The moon's escape velocity is 2.38 km/s, or as we commonly measure bullet velocities, ~7,800ft/s. Modern high-power rifles reach ~3,900ft/s, so a single surface nuke on the moon potentially peppers the entire surface with high-powered bullets. I don't know how dense such a peppering would be without much more math, but at least some amount of material will go over the entire surface. Granted that anything built on the surface of the moon must be resilient against micrometeorites, that may still overwhelm such defenses, and anyone mobile on the surface would be in danger with little time to react (though not zero time).
The Castle Bravo test produced the highest fallout levels in history. The detonation produced an explosion approximately 2.5 times the predicted 6.0 megatons, equal to 15 Mt of TNT.
Since it's obvious but never stated in the article, ultimately the U.S. military did decide the risks heavily outweighed the benefits and put the plan on whatever dusty shelf such ideas end up on.
The history of nuclear weapons is full of stories like this, where something crazy is proposed or prescribed by policy but ultimately cooler heads prevailed.
It's not widely known for example that during the Cuban missile crisis nuclear weapons were deployed and Russian forces were told to use them if pressed. The U.S. did not know this, and pressed, heavily, but ultimately Russian forces opted not to use them against their orders.
It's also worth noting - again, since the article doesn't - the Soviets had a corresponding project and in the end came to the same conclusion.
As the article states China may indeed have or be toying with this idea as well, but in the end will in all probability come to the same conclusion.
I'm reminded of a Q&A Putin did in the mid 2000s where a student asked him what Russia would do if provoked too much, and in a rare candid moment Putin responded despite all the rhetoric countries may throw out, the truth is no one wants nuclear war and in such a war there are no winners.
Not following.. why is this dumb again? If the moon is irradiated, then everyone landing on the moon would potentially be exposed to radiation and may suffer radiation poisoning.
"New measurements show moon has hazardous radiation levels"
Astronauts would get 200 to 1,000 times more radiation on the moon than what we experience on Earth—or five to 10 times more than passengers on a trans-Atlantic airline flight, noted Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber of Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany.
Yes and the material irradiated by the explosion itself is not very dangerous after a few weeks especially if you’re in a hermetically sealed space suit that prevents you from ingesting any of it. After 1 to 5 years there’d be very little left except for any small amounts of uranium or plutonium that were not fissioned but due to the Moon’s low gravity and lack of atmosphere a lot of these particles will be flung into space or so widely dispersed that there are unlikely to be any hot spots.
Also, the hand wringing about adding a crater to the Moon’s surface is just laughable. The whole surface is cratered, a tiny man made one wouldn’t even be noticeable.
> The premise of Space: 1999 centres on the plight of the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, a scientific research centre on the Moon. Humanity had been storing its nuclear waste in vast disposal sites on the far side of the Moon, but when an unknown form of electromagnetic radiation is detected, the accumulated waste reaches critical mass and causes a massive thermonuclear explosion on 13 September 1999. The force of the blast propels the Moon like an enormous booster rocket, hurling it out of Earth orbit and into deep space at colossal speed, thus stranding the 311 personnel stationed on Alpha.
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[ 1.7 ms ] story [ 84.6 ms ] threadhttps://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/tickmooncha_84...
Imagine a large combined bomb and asteroid at rest before it explodes, so combined momentum has to stay at zero after.
If explosion happens when not combined, particles from the bomb hit the asteroid and transfer their momentum to the rocket.
Nuclear weapons can do interesting things like fusion, but it isn't going to create persistent mass when detonated.
The actual proposed weapon was a W25, with a yield of 1.7 kilotons. That size of weapon is so small may non-nuclear explosions eclipse it.
> Nuclear weapons will destroy a ship if they detonate exceedingly close to it. But if it is further away than about a kilometer, it won't do much more than singe the paint job and blind a few sensors. And in space a kilometer is pretty close range.
> Please understand: I am NOT saying that nuclear warheads are ineffective. I am saying that the amount of damage they inflict falls off very rapidly with increasing range. At least much more rapidly than with the same sized warhead detonated in an atmosphere.
> But if the nuke goes off one meter from your ship, your ship will probably be vaporized. Atmosphere or no.
Otherwise I found this quote interesting:
> Incredibly, one scientist enabling this horrific scheme was future visionary Carl Sagan. In fact, the existence of the project was only discovered in the 1990s because Sagan had mentioned it on an application to an elite university.
It is surprising that Cark Sagan would have anything to do with something like this (but again, a zeitgeist compels all of us to do things that won't stand the test of time). It is also concerning to think that there might be projects like this that never gets revealed to the public - until it's too late.
Also, without making a big spoiler, read Silo. It shows a very relevant development.
I don't think we need to wait for the future, I think most normal people living now would already consider this entire situation crazy. The situation and context is obviously complex, but I doubt there are many people outside governments who think a WMD arms race is a good idea.
In a world where the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP)¹ was the plan for decades, involving vapourising thousands upon thousands of targets, on a pre-set and inflexible list, including virtually all the cities in Russia and most of China with an estimated death toll near 300 million, this probably one of the less horrific plans. Still hare-brained, but at least not outright murderous.
1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_Integrated_Operationa...
This was known to be an underestimate as US targetting ignored some relatively unpredictable effects of nuclear weapons - their thermal radiation.
https://apjjf.org/-Daniel-Ellsberg/3222/article.html
It's sad that people often evaluate strategic military matters without applying even the minimal level of game theory.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strath_Committee and that is for a fairly mild strike of "only" 10 bombs.
I mean, take everything you've ever heard about the importance of the ozone layer, and everything you've ever heard about the importance of the magnetic shield the Earth has, add a few more little effects you may not even be thinking about like the effect the sheer bulk of atmosphere above us has on screening things, and you're getting to the baseline of what space is like. Add in the fact that sometimes space gets even worse courtesy of solar storms.
(For reference, the International Space Station is actually under the van Allen belts, so it still is substantially protected from radiation, though not entirely. Go above those and the situation gets much worse.)
If there are people or substantial infrastructure on the moon at the time, there are plenty of other good reasons not to light off nukes on the moon unrelated to the radiation. While some of the negative effects nukes have on Earth are the result of its relatively thick atmosphere, there are also ways in which the atmosphere is protective and limits the effect of nukes. Without any atmosphere, all material ejected from the nuke site does not lose any of its kinetic energy. Thus, a single surface nuke can pepper the entire surface of any airless planet with material below the escape velocity of the relevant planet. The moon's escape velocity is 2.38 km/s, or as we commonly measure bullet velocities, ~7,800ft/s. Modern high-power rifles reach ~3,900ft/s, so a single surface nuke on the moon potentially peppers the entire surface with high-powered bullets. I don't know how dense such a peppering would be without much more math, but at least some amount of material will go over the entire surface. Granted that anything built on the surface of the moon must be resilient against micrometeorites, that may still overwhelm such defenses, and anyone mobile on the surface would be in danger with little time to react (though not zero time).
The Castle Bravo test produced the highest fallout levels in history. The detonation produced an explosion approximately 2.5 times the predicted 6.0 megatons, equal to 15 Mt of TNT.
https://web.archive.org/web/20130927145851/http://nuclearwea...
The history of nuclear weapons is full of stories like this, where something crazy is proposed or prescribed by policy but ultimately cooler heads prevailed.
It's not widely known for example that during the Cuban missile crisis nuclear weapons were deployed and Russian forces were told to use them if pressed. The U.S. did not know this, and pressed, heavily, but ultimately Russian forces opted not to use them against their orders.
It's also worth noting - again, since the article doesn't - the Soviets had a corresponding project and in the end came to the same conclusion.
As the article states China may indeed have or be toying with this idea as well, but in the end will in all probability come to the same conclusion.
I'm reminded of a Q&A Putin did in the mid 2000s where a student asked him what Russia would do if provoked too much, and in a rare candid moment Putin responded despite all the rhetoric countries may throw out, the truth is no one wants nuclear war and in such a war there are no winners.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEfPBt9dU60
> But what if the Moon Armstrong stepped onto was scarred by huge craters and poisoned from the effects of nuclear bombardment?
https://phys.org/news/2020-09-moon.html
"New measurements show moon has hazardous radiation levels"
Astronauts would get 200 to 1,000 times more radiation on the moon than what we experience on Earth—or five to 10 times more than passengers on a trans-Atlantic airline flight, noted Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber of Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany.
Also, the hand wringing about adding a crater to the Moon’s surface is just laughable. The whole surface is cratered, a tiny man made one wouldn’t even be noticeable.
"Did they ever think to try this suspicious idea, Yes."
"Did anything as such ever occur? Don't be proposetheorist!"
> The premise of Space: 1999 centres on the plight of the inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha, a scientific research centre on the Moon. Humanity had been storing its nuclear waste in vast disposal sites on the far side of the Moon, but when an unknown form of electromagnetic radiation is detected, the accumulated waste reaches critical mass and causes a massive thermonuclear explosion on 13 September 1999. The force of the blast propels the Moon like an enormous booster rocket, hurling it out of Earth orbit and into deep space at colossal speed, thus stranding the 311 personnel stationed on Alpha.