Nuke the Moon!

Even the uber-dry Wikipedia editors can't resist--the entry is "Project A119", but check out the URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuke_the_moon.

Yup, that's exactly what it sounds like. During the earlier days of the Cold War, before we had gotten quite used to (or used to suppressing) the fact that nuclear annihilation at the ends of our sworn enemies awaited us around every corner, we seem to have had some rather...interesting ideas. Take the Ford Nucleon, for example. Yes, a nuclear powered car. For civilians. Never got past the concept car stage, but still! And don't say a word about 'mileage benefits'--this was clearly "macho male symbol (car) + NUKES = atomic car" BEAT THAT, COMMIES!

Whelp, nuking the moon was the military equivalent. "Haha, we nuked the fucking Moon! The Moon! Every time you Reds look up at night, you'll see the AMERICAN crater on the Moon! Woohoo!" Couch it in all the scholarly diplomatic and military language you like, the social mechanism of deterrence rests on a pretty basic part of the human mind--that of cowing your opponent enough to make him back down: "'...the theory was that if the bomb exploded on the edge of the moon, the mushroom cloud would be illuminated by the sun.'" Interestingly, this whole idea appears to have been borne largely out of concern that the U.S. was perceived to be losing the space race, thus a public display of power was needed to reassert America's status. Hmmm, insecurity breeding desperate bravado, sounds familiar...

Dr. Strangelove wasn't too far off, mixing Freudian male neuroses with nuclear technology. Ugh, never have I seen a clearer contrast between the scientific and emotional extremes of the human mind: nukes + sex! How we haven't vaporized ourselves in the past 60 years...I won't jinx it, sorry.

Fun fact: a certain young physicist named Carl Sagan apparently worked on the project before it was shelved, calculating projections of dust flow from the blast.