The formation of Soviet plans for the exploration of the moon began with a letter sent by Sergei Pavlovich Korolev and Mstislav Vsevolodovich Keldysh to the Central Committee of the CPSU on January 28, 1958. It formulated two main points of the lunar program: firstly, hitting the visible surface of the Moon, and, secondly, flying around the Moon and photographing its far side. The program was approved by the first secretary of the CPSU Central Committee N. S. Khrushchev, who was more interested in the political aspect of space research, after which it began to be embodied in real developments.
The first proposals came from Keldysh and, on their basis, the main directions in which it was supposed to work were chosen. The first project received the code E-1 - hitting the surface of the Moon, the second - E-2 - flying around the Moon and photographing its far side, the third - E-3 - assumed the delivery of a nuclear charge to the Moon and detonation on its surface. There were other projects, but today I would like to talk only about the E-3 project, as the most exotic and, fortunately, not implemented. Why, fortunately, it will be clear from the further story.
Like all other projects, the proposal for a nuclear explosion on the moon came from academia. Its author was the famous Soviet nuclear physicist Academician Yakov Borisovich Zeldovich. The main goal of the project is to prove to the whole world that the Soviet station has reached the lunar surface. Zeldovich reasoned as follows. The station itself is very small and no earthly astronomer can record its fall on the lunar surface. Even if you fill the station with explosives, then no one on Earth will notice such an explosion. But if you detonate an atomic bomb on the lunar surface, then the whole world will see it and no one will have any more question: did the Soviet station hit the moon or not? It was assumed that an atomic explosion on the moon would be accompanied by such a light flash that it would be easily recorded by all terrestrial observatories.
Despite the abundance of opponents of such a project, it, like all the others, was worked out in detail, and in OKB-1 (KB S. P. Korolev) they even made a model of the station. Its dimensions and weight were set by nuclear scientists, who proceeded from the parameters of the then existing low-power atomic warheads. The container with the charge, like a naval mine, was all studded with fuse pins to guarantee an explosion in any orientation of the station at the moment of contact with the surface of the Moon.
Fortunately, the matter did not go beyond the layout. Already at the discussion stage, quite reasonable questions about the safety of such a launch were raised. No one undertook to guarantee one hundred percent reliability of the delivery of the charge to the Moon. If the launch vehicle had an accident at the first or second stages, the container with a nuclear bomb would have fallen into the territory of the USSR. If the third step had not worked, then the fall could have occurred on the territory of other countries. And this would have caused unpleasant international consequences, which they were trying to avoid. There could be other options for the consequences. The container could go into orbit around the Earth and get stuck there. And no one could predict when and on whose heads he could later fall. The prospect of missing the Moon and sending a nuclear bomb on an eternal journey around the Sun was also unpleasant.
There was one more, organizational and political problem. In order for the explosion to be recorded by foreign observatories, it was necessary to inform them in advance about the experiment. And no one could imagine how to do this. In those years, any information about space research, except for victorious reports, was strenuously hidden from everyone and everything, but here it was necessary to trumpet the whole world about their nuclear ambitions.
In the end, they decided to abandon the E-3 project. Moreover, the first who suggested this was the one who initiated it - Academician Zeldovich.
Subsequently, the E-3 index was assigned to a project that involved photographing the far side of the Moon with a higher resolution than was done by the Luna-3 station. Two launches were carried out, on April 15 and 19, 1960. Both of them ended in an accident and no more launches were made within the framework of the project.
