Burning the Sky: Operation Argus and the Untold Story of the Cold War Nuclear Tests in Outer Space

The summer of 1958 was a nerve-racking time. Ever since the Soviet Union proved that it possessed an operational intercontinental ballistic missile with the launch of Sputnik, the world watched anxiously as the two superpowers engaged in a game of nuclear one-upmanship. Tensions escalated between the United States and the Soviet Union over their respective nuclear weapons reserves, both sides desperate for a solution to the threat of the massive, instant destruction the one could cause on the other.In the midst of this rising tension, Nicholas Christofilos, an eccentric Greek-American physicist, brought forth an outlandish, albeit ingenious, idea to defend the US from a Soviet attack: launching atomic bombs from the South Atlantic Ocean, about 1,100 miles from Cape Town, to detonate in outer space to fry incoming Soviet ICBMs with an artificial radiation belt. Known as Project Argus, this plan is the biggest, most secret, and riskiest scientific experiment in history, and classified details of this operation have been long obscured. In Burning the Sky, Mark Wolverton tells the unknown and controversial story of this scheme to reveal a fascinating narrative almost completely forgotten by history―one that still has powerful resonances today. Drawing from recently declassified sources, Burning the Sky chronicles Christofilos’s unconventional idea from its inception to execution―when the so-called mad scientist persuaded the military to carry out the most grandiose scientific experiment ever conceived, using the entire Earth’s atmosphere as a laboratory. With over a decade of experience researching and writing about the sociological and political impacts of the science of the Cold War, Wolverton is the ideal authority on this risky experiment. Meticulously researched, with the pacing of a thriller and the language of science fiction, Burning the Sky will intrigue any lover of scientific or military history and will remind readers why Project Argus remains frighteningly relevant nearly sixty years later.

• Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage: The Declassified Stories of Cold War Reconnaissance Flights and the Men Who Flew Them
• A TECHNICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA'S NUCLEAR ARMS: VOLUME I - INTRODUCTION AND WEAPON SYSTEMS THROUGH 1960
• A TECHNICAL HISTORY OF AMERICA'S NUCLEAR WEAPONS: VOLUME II - WEAPON SYSTEMS FROM 1960 TO THE PRESENT
• The Bomb and America's Missile Age (The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science)
• Rockets and Missiles of Vandenberg AFB: 1957-2017
• The Soviet Space Program: The Lunar Mission Years: 1959-1976 (The Soviets in Space Series)
• M65 Atomic Cannon (Images of War)
• Taiwan's Former Nuclear Weapons Program: Nuclear Weapons On-Demand
• Sam Goudsmit and the Hunt for Hitler's Atom Bomb
• Fallout: Conspiracy, Cover-Up, and the Deceitful Case for the Atom Bomb