Word: coppers
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...Copper Calhoon, that beautiful but bitchy businesswoman, barked at her secretary: "Take a letter to-ah-what's his name in the Defense Department." Then she began dictating: "The manner in which you are running your office is a combination of Alice in Wonderland and the sort of strategy which resulted in Custer's last stand...
Each of the copper wires is .7 inches long and .0007 inches wide. When the dispersion process has ended, there will be roughly 50 wires in every cubic mile of belt. Despite the small size and low density of these wires, their ability to act as individual dipole antennae should make it possible to bounce signals of a specific frequency off the belt. According to J.A. Kessler of Lincoln Labs, theWest Ford experiment is operating on schedule and the results of wave propagation and actual communication experiments have been "quite good." If the "needles" program succeeds, the Air Force...
Scientists are concerned with West Ford for three reasons. First, the copper wires may interfere directly with the observations of optical and radio astronomers. Furthermore, the present West Ford effort is indicative of the American belief that the sky belongs to Uncle Sam. Thirdly, scientific projects run in the name of national defense are not subjected to the rigorous and open evaluation given to other research projects...
...first objection raised by scientists has little validity. Astronomers admit that they cannot detect the "needles" today. But they argue that the little dipoles will cause real interference if their observational equipment improves as much during the next decade as it has in the past one. However, the copper wires, forced down by pressure from solar radiation, should burn up harmlessly in the lower atmosphere in less than five years...
Although radio astronomers have the most reason for concern, the optical observers are also worried. William Liller, a member of the NAS watchdog group and Professor of Astronomy, has attempted to determine the optical brightness of the copper cloud with the Harvard 61-inch telescope. So far Liller has had no success, but other astronomers have photographed the cloud and have shown that it is not unduly bright...