Even if we had a magic 100% reliable rocket it still wouldn’t be a good idea to send it into space. You’d have to have a stupidly powerful magic 100% reliable rocket to get into a solar intercept orbit, otherwise it would just hang around the Earth for a very long time and eventually come back down as nuclear fire dust.
It’s not as if storing it underground is an unsafe strategy so it seems like a pointless exercise.
Dagwood222@lemm.ee 5 months ago
The Space Shuttle Challenger has entered the chat.
Not sure anyone would sign off on sending potential dirty bombs into space.
A few years back people were floating the idea of sending up orbital solar farms that would collect power and beam it to the surface.
TranscendentalEmpire@lemm.ee 5 months ago
At least not anymore… We did a successful test of a nuclear powered ramjet in the 60’s with project Neptune. But I guess that was before people were afraid of dirty bombs welded into the shape of cruise missiles.
Dagwood222@lemm.ee 5 months ago
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A119
You probably know about it, but I thought I’d throw it into the mix.
tl, dr = the Air Force was planning on detonating an atom bomb on the moon because shit like that made sense in the Cold War.
splatt9990@lemmy.ml 5 months ago
There was also a plan to explode nuclear bombs on shorelines to create artificial harbors, and of course the infamous Project Orion, a manned interstellar spaceship powered by exploding hydrogen bombs. Doing unhinged shit with nukes was all the rage back then I guess
SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca 5 months ago
Be honest, if you had a lot of nukes lying around, you wouldn’t at least consider nuking the moon?
Also when you think about it, nuking the Moon is way less insane than nuking the Earth over 2000 times.