Friday, July 9^th is the anniversary of a ‘fireworks’ show that should never have even been considered, let alone carried out.  Sadly, in a spectacular display of man’s stupidity, it is in fact the anniversary of the first H-bomb explosion set off in space from an American launch. 

On July 9^th, 1962, I was six months old and five years away from living in Hawaii, but on that night, America launched a nuclear bomb test 250 miles straight up into the skies above Hawaii.  The headline in the Honolulu Advertiser read: “N-Blast Tonight May Be Dazzling: Good View Likely” and hotels held “Rainbow Bomb Parties” on their rooftops and veranda’s.  The military gave it the code name of Starfish Prime.  You can hear eyewitness accounts here.  In the video below you can also see what it looked like.

Space scientist, James Van Allen announced the discovery of belts of high energy particles, mainly protons and electrons, held in place by magnetic fields that surround the Earth.  We now know these as the Van Allen belts.  After the press conference announcement, Van Allen joins with the military in a project to detonate nuclear bombs in the magnetosphere to see if they could disrupt it.  This is the same day that he announced the discovery of the radiation belts! 

I can’t begin to imagine the how’s or why’s of people seriously considering such a thing.  And not just any people but the very scientist who discovered the belts turning around and attempting to blow them up.  Perhaps it is like the hunters who like to hang the heads of their kill on the wall in the living room as decorations.  I don’t mean to offend hunters here, but I just don’t understand how someone can look at some magnificent animal and think “What a beautiful animal, how much better would it look beheaded and hanging on my wall?”  Perhaps Van Allen looked at the belts and thought “What a wondrous site!  I bet it would be even more wonderous if I destroyed it and scattered the particles all over space”.

“The plan was to send rockets hundreds of miles up, higher than the Earth's atmosphere, and then detonate nuclear weapons to see: a) If a bomb's radiation would make it harder to see what was up there (like incoming Russian missiles!); b) If an explosion would do any damage to objects nearby; c) If the Van Allen belts would move a blast down the bands to an earthly target (Moscow! for example); and — most peculiar — d) if a man-made explosion might "alter" the natural shape of the belts.”

Seriously?  That was the plan?  Let’s start with “a)”. It was the era of the Cold War and the threat of Russian bombs sent our way was high on people’s minds.  I get that, yet I can’t help but feel that the potential Russian missile attack was merely a convenient excuse to conduct a test that they had no good reason to conduct.

“b)”: Um, isn’t EARTH a “nearby object”?  Hello?

“c)”: If the blast HAD been carried down the bands to an earthly target, whether it was Moscow or any other point on Earth, we would have been the instigators of a nuclear attack for no other reason than the military and a scientist wanted to play with it’s “toys”.  How idiotic and careless can we be?

“d)”:  The belts were new discoveries and hence I am sure their importance in the scheme of things, most notably their effect of life on Earth or lack of effect, either way, could not have fully been known.  A scientist such as James Van Allen should have understood that.  The potential of such a test to possibly eradicate life on Earth and even the planet itself seems blatantly clear to me and I am no scientist.

And if all this is not bad enough, it is not the first “test” of bombs exploding in space by Americans or by Russia.  Russia and America had been sending tests of atom bombs into space since 1958 and Russia had sent hydrogen bombs as well.

It is beyond amazing that man has not completely wiped out the planet 100 times over as yet.  Holes in the ozone layer?  Global warming?  Major oil spills around the planet?  None of that will matter much once we finally blow ourselves to infinity and beyond.