The race between the Soviet Union and the US to conquer the final frontier i.e. space, reached dizzying heights back in the 1950s. Space flight was considered the holy grail of all sciences and therefore both countries put massive resources into it. However, a little know expedition might have just sparked an interstellar race for testing nukes.

Project A119 was developed by the U.S Air Force in the 1950s. Dubbed “A Study of Lunar Research Flights”, the project had just one core mission – to nuke the moon and one-up the Soviet Union in the race to space supremacy. Many thought that the project would help improve the perception of the US at home, and prove that they were doing better than the Soviet Union. 

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Scientists in the US first planned to use the Hydrogen bomb for the project, but later dropped the idea because it would have been impossible at the time to propel the bomb into space due to its weight. Finally, a W25 warhead was selected with a yield of 1.7 kilotons. In contrast, the little boy bomb dropped on Hiroshima had a yield of 13-18 kilotons. 

Although the project didn't go through, one of the project leads on A119, Leonard Reiffel (a physicist) later said that hitting the moon with an intercontinental ballistic missile would have been easy and that means hitting the target within the designated limit of about 2 miles. This accurate hit would have made the explosion visible from Earth (if it detonated on the surface and not in a lunar crater) and made the desired impact on US' enemies. The plan was later rescinded because the higher-ups in the government felt that the public would not respond positively to dropping a nuke on the moon.

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In 2010, it was revealed that a similar Soviet project also existed under the codename “E”. Under the Soviet plans, project E-1 was planned to reach the lunar surface while E-2 and E-3 were planned to photograph the far side of the moon; E-4 was destined to be a nuclear strike to display Soviet power outside the union. While none of the two missions took off, the race to one-up each other might have sparked a real life interstellar crisis courtesy American inventiveness.