When the Cold War began, one of the markers of leadership in it could be considered the ability to detonate a powerful nuclear charge on the Moon, which all people would immediately see from Earth. Work of this kind was carried out simultaneously in the USA and in the USSR.
The main command of the US Air Force in 1957, after the flight of the first Soviet satellite, sent a corresponding request to American nuclear scientists. Its goal was to prepare a show that could, in its effect, leave the launch of a Soviet satellite far behind. The main thing is that this explosion can be seen from the Earth with the naked eye. In the plans of the Pentagon, this project was designated A-119. American scientists worked on it until mid-1959. As historians of science suggest, this project was terminated after an unexpected information leak. For the first time, genuine information about him leaked into the American press only under President R. Reagan.
It is curious that in the United States the news that the SSR was planning a nuclear explosion on the Moon began to spread immediately after the launch of the first Soviet satellite. The Americans argued that the Russians were planning this explosion for the anniversary of the Great October Revolution - on November 7, 1957 …
In the USSR, the first similar project was proposed by Academician Ya. B. Zeldovich in 1958. He received the code name E-3, and in the design bureau of academician S. P. Korolev, he was given the necessary technical characteristics.
Zeldovich reasoned as follows. Any spacecraft itself is too small to cause an explosion visible from Earth. Only an atomic explosion on the Moon, at the appointed time and place, can be recorded from the Earth. Therefore, only a nuclear explosion on the surface of our natural satellite can serve as a confirmation of the Soviet priority in space.
A model of the station was made at the Korolev Central Design Bureau. The Research Institute of Nuclear Physics instructed the task - to work out the parameters of a thermonuclear charge, which was to be detonated on the Moon. The lunar nuclear bomb was studded with fuses - even such a detail was worked out.
But then the problems began. The rockets could not give a 100% guarantee that the bomb would be delivered to the moon. If it exploded at the very beginning of the launch - over the territory of the Soviet Union - it would be all right. After all, there were many nuclear tests taking place in the USSR, about which the population was not informed. But if the third stage of the carrier rocket had not worked, and the nuclear charge fell into the Pacific Ocean, or even into the territory of the "enemy"? It was worth thinking about.
Further, since it was about the informational prestige of the USSR, foreign countries should have been notified of the explosion in advance. This was completely incompatible with the Soviet conditions for the secrecy of spacecraft launch.
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In the end, they say, Zeldovich himself abandoned the project. But he refused, but the state did not. Academician M. V. Keldysh put forward the E-2MF project, according to which it was possible to photograph the far side of the moon in the outbreak of a nuclear explosion. What is noteworthy is that the launches under this program did take place (in April 1960), though, fortunately, without nuclear bombs.
What prompted both the USA and the USSR to abandon these ambitious projects? First and foremost, of course, is the lack of guarantees. It was impossible to ensure that the nuclear charges were delivered safe and sound to the moon and only detonated there. Even at the take-off stage, such a project could bring a lot of, to put it mildly, inconvenience to a country that decided to implement it. And after the launch of a rocket with such a filling into orbit, this could turn into unpleasant international complications.
Yaroslav Butakov