Sure, the Russians bombed the atmosphere first, but certainly they couldn’t have compiled a table more horrifying than this one.
That table lists the horrors of Operation Fishbowl, the early 60’s space bomb tests. It is summarized below.
- Seriously, early 60s, as soon as people get into space, they say, “Hey, what would happen if we blew up space?” Or, “What would happen if the Russians blew up space?”
- Generally they detonated nukes in the upper atmosphere, but several times they attached the nuclear warheads to space rockets and detonated them in the clean, pure, unsullied space. Goodbye Telstar. Hello, space junk.
- Look at the empty “Fallout” column. They didn’t even try to measure that.
- It blinded people. You know, like nuclear blasts do.
- The naming convention is to tack “Prime” on the end of a mission after the first one failed (blew up on the launch pad, blew UP the launch pad, etc.). There’s a Triple Prime Bluegill mission.
This was all classified when I was in school. Perhaps young folks today all know this. I only know it because the Washington Post carried an article on the Russians nuking space, and yesterday I read about people nuking the ocean floor.
And you know as soon as we get to Mars, someone is nuking Mars, soon as they can.