During the late 1950s, the US military wanted to detonate a nuclear device on the moon, large enough to be seen from the earth, as a sign of their might:
(Observer, via Slashdot)
'I made it clear at the time there would be a huge cost to science of
destroying a pristine lunar environment, but the US Air Force were mainly
concerned about how the nuclear explosion would play on earth,' said Reiffel.