The Time We Asked Carl Sagan to Nuke the Moon

Could you see a nuclear explosion on the moon with the naked eye? That was the question posed by the United States military in the 1950s as the cold war was heating up and the space race between the US and the Soviet Union was in full swing. Project A119, details of which were declassified in 2000, tasked scientists to “safely” target and hit the moon with a nuclear weapon in order to send a message to the USSR. We only discovered the details of this unconventional and bizarre plan 40 years later, via a posthumous biography…of the greatest science communicator to ever live: Carl Sagan. This episode of [HALF-LIFE HISTORIES] explores the true story of the plan to nuke the moon.