From America blowing up the Moon with an Atom bomb, to a lift that takes you all the way into space. This is a list of 5 insane space programs that nearly happened.
Project A119
The U.S wanted to blow up the moon with an atom bomb. The U.S thought it would terrify the Soviets and raise morale in America if they could successfully blow up the moon. One of the Astronomers working on the program was author Carl Sagan who was only a graduate student at the time. In the end the mission was abandoned because they were worried the nuclear radiation might contaminate space, or it could detonate prematurely and hurt people on Earth. Since blowing up your country probably wouldn’t raise morale, and they didn’t want to ruin space, they decided to concentrate on sending a man there instead.
The Nazi’s ultimate aircraft
In the late 1930’s Nazi scientists Eugen Sanger and Irene Bredt attempted to create the Silverbird, a plane which could carry an 8,000lb bomb from Europe, drop it on the U.S, and then land somewhere in the Japanese Empire. It could travel 12,000 miles in one shot, after being launched off of a 2 mile track pad. It would reach speeds of up to 3,000mph.
Zambian Space Program
In 1960’s Zambia a space program was launched to compete with the Soviets, and the U.S. The creator of the program was quite ambitious and claimed he would be able to beat both soviets and the U.S by sending twelve astronauts and two cats to Mars. The founder wrote a editorial for a newspaper where he wrote about how he asked UNESCO for seven million pounds to help with the program, and instructed his “afronauts” not to force Christianity onto the native Martian inhabitants if they didn’t want it.
Project Ithacus
Project Ithacus was a giant 500ft rocket designed to send over 1,000 marines anywhere in the world in just under an hour. The rocket would take the marines 120 miles into space, and then land them anywhere, the troops, of course, had jet packs as well. They would use the jet packs to get out of the rocket, and giant slides to exit the rocket upon landing.
Space lift
There have actually been many scientists who want to build an elevator going all the way into the space, so that we can take people, and vehicles there without rockets. The idea for a space Elevator was actually first proposed in 1985 by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. Although it works in theory we don’t quite have the materials to make it happen yet. Carbon nano-tubes have been suggested as a possibility however we don’t yet have the ability to mass produce them. Boron Nitride Nano-tubes, and diamond Nano-threads have been suggested as possible alternatives.