The effect of forbidding nuking the moon is more accidental. I guess that if I were a superpower, I would be really nervous if a rival decided to put nukes into LEO where they would pass a few hundred kilometers over my cities and into them with the smallest of nudges. The fact that mankind decided to skip on a race of “who can pollute LEO most by putting most nukes there” (which would have entailed radioactive material being scattered when rockets blow up during launch (as rockets are wont to) as well as IT security considerations regarding authentication and deorbiting concerns[3]) is one of the brighter moments in the history of our species.
Apart from ‘what if the nuke goes off on reentry?’ and ‘what if the radioactive material gets scattered’ there is also a case to be made that supplying a Great Old Ones with nuclear weapons may not be the wisest choice of action.
Thanks for the extra info—this is good stuff! I figured the moon difference might be, like, some extra rocketry on top of ICBMs, but not necessarily a lot—but this makes sense that it’s in fact a pretty substantial difference.
Yeah, I think people signing onto the OST really helped bury the idea. (It did not stop the USSR from at one point from violating it in 1974-75 by attaching a 23mm gun to a space station. (For “self defense”. It was never used.) This probably isn’t that related to the larger nukes question, I just learned that recently and thought it was a fun fact.)
The OST does prohibit nuking the Moon, but stationing conventional weapons like the Almaz cannons (or the USSR’s IS anti-satellite weapons) in Earth orbit isn’t actually a violation. The prohibition on stationing weapons in space is specifically on “weapons of mass destruction”, so lasers and guns and conventional explosives are all fine. There was a Soviet program that arguably violated it though: the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, which would put nuclear warheads onto a low Earth orbit trajectory (rather than the higher and slower trajectories used by ICBMs) and then deorbit them onto their targets. The Soviet position was that because the nuclear weapons would only complete a fraction of an orbit, it didn’t violate their obligation “not to place in orbit” weapons of mass destruction.
One thing to keep in mind is that the delta-v required to reach LEO is some 9.3km/s. (Handy map)
This is an upper limit for what delta-v can be militarily useful in ICBMs for fighting on our rock.
Going from LEO to the moon requires another 3.1km/s.
This might not seem much, but makes a huge difference in the payload to thruster ratio due to the rocket equation.
If physics were different and the moon was within reach of ICBMs then I imagine it might have become the default test site for nuclear tipped ICBMs.
Instead, the question was “do we want to develop an expensive delivery system with no military use[1] purely as a propaganda stunt?”
Of course, ten years later, the Outer Space Treaty was signed which prohibits stationing weapons in orbit or on celestial bodies.[2]
Or no military use until the moon people require nuking, at least.
The effect of forbidding nuking the moon is more accidental. I guess that if I were a superpower, I would be really nervous if a rival decided to put nukes into LEO where they would pass a few hundred kilometers over my cities and into them with the smallest of nudges. The fact that mankind decided to skip on a race of “who can pollute LEO most by putting most nukes there” (which would have entailed radioactive material being scattered when rockets blow up during launch (as rockets are wont to) as well as IT security considerations regarding authentication and deorbiting concerns[3]) is one of the brighter moments in the history of our species.
Apart from ‘what if the nuke goes off on reentry?’ and ‘what if the radioactive material gets scattered’ there is also a case to be made that supplying a Great Old Ones with nuclear weapons may not be the wisest choice of action.
Thanks for the extra info—this is good stuff! I figured the moon difference might be, like, some extra rocketry on top of ICBMs, but not necessarily a lot—but this makes sense that it’s in fact a pretty substantial difference.
Yeah, I think people signing onto the OST really helped bury the idea. (It did not stop the USSR from at one point from violating it in 1974-75 by attaching a 23mm gun to a space station. (For “self defense”. It was never used.) This probably isn’t that related to the larger nukes question, I just learned that recently and thought it was a fun fact.)
I appreciate your excellent comment.
The OST does prohibit nuking the Moon, but stationing conventional weapons like the Almaz cannons (or the USSR’s IS anti-satellite weapons) in Earth orbit isn’t actually a violation. The prohibition on stationing weapons in space is specifically on “weapons of mass destruction”, so lasers and guns and conventional explosives are all fine. There was a Soviet program that arguably violated it though: the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, which would put nuclear warheads onto a low Earth orbit trajectory (rather than the higher and slower trajectories used by ICBMs) and then deorbit them onto their targets. The Soviet position was that because the nuclear weapons would only complete a fraction of an orbit, it didn’t violate their obligation “not to place in orbit” weapons of mass destruction.
Oh, TIL, fascinating, thanks! Wild.