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It would affect the Moon's natural radiation. It would vaporize plutonium and other isotopes and this would be attracted by the Moon's gravity and eventually s
by retrac 3y ago
It would affect the Moon's natural radiation. It would vaporize plutonium and other isotopes and this would be attracted by the Moon's gravity and eventually settle as a powder all over the Moon. (We did it to the Earth already. You can't find anywhere on the planet without detectable plutonium in the air or water.) This is maybe now less of a concern, now that we have samples returned for background comparison.
Blowing up the Moon would still be a very compelling scientific experiment. I can't think of a cheaper or easier way to get spectroscopy of a sample from below the surface. And aside from the fallout (literal and political) there's not much downside.
Wikipedia has an article about the proposal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119
- arethuza 3y ago"the flash of explosive light would have been faintly visible to people on Earth with their naked eye" That makes it sound like one of the reasons for cancelling it would have been that it really wouldn't have been that impressive.
- eszed 3y agoIf you picked the right spot at the right time of the month, could you get a mushroom cloud in "profile"? That would look pretty cool, though maybe still not large enough to see with the naked eye. I don't have a good intuition of the scales involved. [Edit: Or, wait: a mushroom cloud depends on atmosphere, doesn't it? So... What would a blast-created cloud of dust look like in a vacuum? Just a cloud? Yeah, not so impressive a visual.]
- thfuran 3y ago>This is maybe now less of a concern, now that we have samples returned for background comparison. As I understand it, the remaining Apollo samples are basically considered contaminated by earth now.