Physicist Leonard Reiffel, 85, who headed a secret project codenamed “Project A119” for the US Airforce, said that a large atomic blast on the lunar surface could have intimidated the Soviets and boosted US confidence soon after the launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, in 1957.
“People were worried very much by Sputnik and the very great accomplishments of the Soviet Union in those days, and in comparison, the United States was feared to be looking puny” Reiffel told CNN.
“So this was a concept to sort of reassure people that the United States could maintain a mutually-assured deterrence, and therefore avoid any huge conflagration on the Earth”
The nuclear bomb would have been launched from a missile and detonated as it impacted the moon, causing an explosion that would have been visible from Earth.
The most powerful hydrogen bombs of the time were too heavy to fly a quarter of a million miles to the moon, so the plan called for a smaller plutonium bomb to be used.
Reiffel is a former deputy director of US space agency NASA, and was involved in nuclear research in the late 1950s.
He told the Associated Press that the lunar detonation could have occurred as early as 1959, after the US Air Force first deployed intercontinental ballistic missiles powerful enough for a moon launch.
But the plan was never put into action because US military chiefs were concerned about the effects that the nuclear blast might have on people on earth.
There were fears that radioactive fallout from the blast could contaminate space near the moon, or that the missile might blow up accidentally before leaving the atmosphere.
Project A119 was shelved in 1959, and the project documents were kept secret for nearly 45 years.
Instead of nuking the moon in a display of strength, the United States responded in kind to the “Sputnik Gap” with the launch of its own artificial satellite, Explorer 1, in 1958.