Project A119: The Secret Cold War Plan to Nuke the Moon
pplpod30 Juni

Project A119: The Secret Cold War Plan to Nuke the Moon

In the panic following the 1957 Sputnik launch, the United States seriously studied detonating a nuclear weapon on the Moon as a show of force. Code-named Project A119 under the bland cover title "A Study of Lunar Research Flights," the initiative tasked a team at the Illinois Institute of Technology, led by physicist Leonard Reiffel, with figuring out how to make a nuclear flash visible to the naked eye from Earth. This episode traces how Cold War humiliation pushed brilliant minds toward militarizing the cosmos.

We unpack the physics of detonating a weapon in a vacuum, the decision to target the lunar terminator to create a sunlit dust cloud, and the surprising roster of scientists involved, including a young Carl Sagan. We also reveal how the Soviets had a near-identical plan called Project E4, why both sides backed down, and how the whole secret unraveled decades later through a scholarship application and a book review in the journal Nature.

  • How the Sputnik crisis and the "Kaputnik" failures fueled the desire for a dramatic show of force
  • Why engineers chose a smaller W-25 warhead over a hydrogen bomb due to rocket thrust limits
  • The lunar terminator strategy designed to make the blast's dust cloud catch sunlight
  • Carl Sagan's early role modeling the dust cloud, and how his classified work later leaked
  • The launch-failure and contamination risks that led both superpowers to cancel their plans

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(8442)

Aespa: How K-Pop's Metaverse Group Conquered the Charts

Aespa: How K-Pop's Metaverse Group Conquered the Charts

Aespa turned a bold sci-fi avatar concept into one of K-pop's defining acts of the 2020s. Built by SM Entertainment and debuting in November 2020 with Black Mamba, the group of Karina, Giselle, Winter...

2 Juli 19min

Alanis Morissette and the Fury Behind Jagged Little Pill

Alanis Morissette and the Fury Behind Jagged Little Pill

Alanis Morissette went from being dubbed the Debbie Gibson of Canada, a synth-pop teen who opened for Vanilla Ice, to the queen of alt-rock angst behind a single album that sold over 33 million copies...

2 Juli 21min

Thank U, Next: How Grief Rewrote the Pop Rulebook

Thank U, Next: How Grief Rewrote the Pop Rulebook

In late 2018, at the peak of her career, Ariana Grande's personal life shattered publicly. Rather than issue careful PR statements, she locked herself in a studio with friends and champagne and made a...

2 Juli 20min

Ariana Grande: From Rejected R&B Kid to Pop Mogul

Ariana Grande: From Rejected R&B Kid to Pop Mogul

At 14, Ariana Grande was laughed out of a Los Angeles boardroom for pitching a soulful R&B album. Years later she held the top three spots on the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously, a feat untouched sin...

2 Juli 20min

Arlo Parks: The Cost of Comforting a Generation

Arlo Parks: The Cost of Comforting a Generation

Arlo Parks went from a teenager writing poems and listening to too much emo music to winning the Mercury Prize, touring with Billie Eilish, and co-writing for Beyonce. This deep dive traces her accele...

2 Juli 17min

Beabadoobee: The Misfit Who Escaped Her Viral Fame

Beabadoobee: The Misfit Who Escaped Her Viral Fame

Expelled from a strict Catholic school for misfit behavior, a teenager taught herself guitar from YouTube and uploaded a song as a joke under a gibberish Instagram name. Years later she was opening fo...

2 Juli 20min

Bebe Rexha: The Secret Hitmaker Who Claimed Her Voice

Bebe Rexha: The Secret Hitmaker Who Claimed Her Voice

She wrote a Grammy-winning track for Eminem and Rihanna, penned K-pop hits, and shaped the sound of pop radio, yet could walk through a coffee shop unrecognized. This deep dive into Bebe Rexha examine...

2 Juli 17min

Beyonce's Cowboy Carter and the Reclaiming of Country

Beyonce's Cowboy Carter and the Reclaiming of Country

When Beyonce performed a country song at the 2016 CMA Awards, the response was to scrub the evidence and reject the song as not country enough. This deep dive into her 2024 landmark album Cowboy Carte...

2 Juli 17min

Populärt inom Nöje

mellan-himmel-och-jord-med-jlc
filip-fredrik-svarar
mardromsgasten
badfluence
mannen-utan-spar
dialogiskt
rss-p3-musikdokumentar
chilla-med-de-vet-du
fem-i-topp
schulman-show
hemma-hos-strage
gott-snack-med-fredrik-soderholm
skandal
hollywood-love-stories-3
podme-bio-4
vem-fan-ar-max
sexet
karatefylla
rss-bl-metal-podcast
latens-dna