"Reiffel was approached by senior US Air Force officers in 1958, who asked him to 'fast-track' a project to investigate the visibility and effects of a nuclear

"Reiffel was approached by senior US Air Force officers in 1958, who asked him to 'fast-track' a project to investigate the visibility and effects of a nuclear explosion on the moon. " Was the US Air Force capable of launching a missle to the moon in the late '50s, early '60's? Lets say they chose the Atlas. Lets be generous and say the Atlas E was chosen (Lockheed , first launched in Feb 24, '61) [0] it was capable of an 820Kg payload into low orbit. The interesting bit, for the total life of this particular rocket there were "9 successful launches, 7 partial successful launches and 2 failures." Hardly a reasonable plan to get a bomb to the moon. Nothing really happened until Wernher von Braun was put in charge of the F1 and by then the target was a manned mission. [0] http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app3/b-2.html http://www.designation-systems.net/dusrm/app3/b-2.html [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#NASA_career https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun#NASA_career