HISTORY THAT WASN’T: Why the Air Force Almost Blasted the Moon with an H-Bomb.

Blame Sputnik, the beach-ball-sized satellite slung into space by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957, which jolted U.S. officials and citizens alike into a state of high alert. As the two Cold War superpowers duked it out for postwar world dominance—framed by many as a titanic struggle between freedom and tyranny—the prospect of America’s arch enemy gaining any measure of military-industrial advantage seemed chilling indeed.

America needed to show the world it was squarely in the race. And it needed something big—like nuking the moon.

Sometime before May 1958, the U.S. Air Force asked the ARF team to investigate something truly out of the ordinary: the visibility and effects of a hypothetical nuclear explosion on the moon. The Air Force wanted to surprise the Soviets and the world: Hey, look at what we can do. We can blow the hell out of the moon.

Well, it was a “realistic plan for world peace.”