A Brief History of the Ludicrous (And Misguided) Plots to Blow Up the Moon

Blowing up the moonOne zany professor, and even the U.S. military, once proposed plans for how—and why—we should blow up the moon.

Sci-fi is full of stories of wars or alien invasions destroying the moon or sending it Earthward. In the 2002 remake of HG Wells’ classic, The Time Machine, demolition work to establish moon colonies caused our only natural satellite to break up and head our way. In Oblivion (2013), the moon is destroyed in an alien war that the humans won, but which left Earth uninhabitable.

Clearly, mixing explosives and the moon is a terrible idea—but that didn’t stop the U.S. military or one zany professor from seriously floating such ideas.

Click here to read the rest of this story.