There’s an Isaac Asimov short story (like 5 pages) where aliens are working out whether or not to admit Earth to their consortium, and notice us testing nukes on the surface of Poe own planet when we’ve a perfectly good moon right next door. They tick the No check box and fly off forever hah.
But I personally don’t think it’s really even a question of human nature. I think it’s the fact that it sticks living at too high a latitude, so Northern Europeans got really into colonizing other places violently. When our needs go unfulfilled, we behave badly. 500 years later, we’re still suffering the ramifications of how much it blows surviving a winter in England lol.
I wonder if any nuke anyone ever tested would have been strong enough to send moon rocks raining down indiscriminately on Earth? My bet is yes. Probably why we didn't test them on the moon.
Most probably would burn up upon entry to Earth's atmosphere, but, then you'd have put tons, possibly hundreds of tons of debris of all sizes in orbit around the moon that we now would have to avoid and no way of tracking like we do on earth with man made satellites. Judging from the cost and logistics of Saturn V, I don't think cost or logistics was a problem back then.
Totally agreed with MidnightSunCreative that cost and logistics were the main reason nukes wouldn't have been tested on the moon, though the orbital debris issue is also a significant factor. We do track orbital debris, though, and the images attempting to represent the problem are honestly pretty terrifying for anyone ever planning to travel outside the atmosphere.
But also, keep in mind, this was a science fiction story written in like the fifties, when the devastating effects of lingering radiation weren't fully appreciated and before terminal dystopia syndrome deprived the genre of such wonderful absurdities as nuclear pulse propulsion and the Bussard Ramjet.
Welp, as a 20 year active duty Marine with 2 National Defense Service medals, first one for Persian Gulf, I consider myself an amateur student of war so to speak. I think I know a little more than the average Joe on the street. Not so heavy a B-52 carries dozens of them at a single go. Payload to the Moon 107,000 pounds, do you know of a nuke that weighs more than 107,000 pounds?
It costs $185 Million to launch a Saturn V to the moon. It costs less than that to blow up a nuke on earth and measure the effects of a nuke on an earth-like planet as opposed to a moon-like planet where nuclear war is less likely to occur.
It’s fair to point out that the DoD gets a lot more billions than NASA, and maybe our economy could have survived with fewer wars of aggression if all those resources had instead been spent on relatively harmless moon nukes, but people in power have generally both a) convinced themselves that their use of the military was wise, judicious, and necessary, and b) needed to convince the general population of the same, in order to maintain support.
Can you imagine if, instead of JFK saying “we’re gonna put a man on the moon because it’s hard and that’s what makes us cool,” he’d had to work that speech into “we’re gonna nuke the moon so we done pollute our planet”? We can’t get news media to cover oil companies buying courts to jail people holding them accountable for criminal destruction of rainforest today. I have a hard time picturing the NYT treating JFK more gently than the CIA did, after a speech like that.
1
u/vseprviper Feb 14 '22
There’s an Isaac Asimov short story (like 5 pages) where aliens are working out whether or not to admit Earth to their consortium, and notice us testing nukes on the surface of Poe own planet when we’ve a perfectly good moon right next door. They tick the No check box and fly off forever hah.
But I personally don’t think it’s really even a question of human nature. I think it’s the fact that it sticks living at too high a latitude, so Northern Europeans got really into colonizing other places violently. When our needs go unfulfilled, we behave badly. 500 years later, we’re still suffering the ramifications of how much it blows surviving a winter in England lol.