Word: coppers
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...protests were still mounting when the first attempt at Project West Ford flopped. Its collection of copper wares went into orbit as scheduled, but the wires failed to spread out. Circling the earth as a few lumps, they remained inactive, bothering neither optical nor radio telescopes...
...dispenser shot 18 rapidly spinning disks. The disks were only 0.7 in. thick and 4.5 in. in diameter, but each was made of 22 million copper wires one-third as thick as a human hair. The wires were stuck together with naphthalene, the familiar material of mothballs. As the disks spun in space, the naphthalene slowly vaporized, releasing a cloud of wires that spread into a sausage shape, then into a long cylinder curving around the earth, 2,000 miles above its surface...
Four hundred million copper wires are now circling the globe in a polar orbit at an altitude of 2300 miles. These "needles" are part of Project West Ford which began in 1958 when it was first suggested by Mr. Walter E. Morrow of M.I.T.'s Lincoln Labs. Morrow planned to place a belt of copper wires above the earth in order to provide a jam-proof, fail-proof, destruction-proof communication system...
...October, 1961, the first attempt to orbit the copper particles was made. However, the package designed to disperse the copper "needles" into the required belt failed to operate properly and all the Air Force got for its money were four or five useless clumps of wire floating around the earth. But two weeks ago Lincoln Labs was given its second chance, and seems to have succeeded. The dispenser package was mounted piggyback on another Air Force satellite and launched into orbit...
After careful checking to be sure the "needles" package was in proper orbit, radio command was sent to the satellite, activating its dispensing mechanism. Within a day, 50 pounds of copper wire were strewn in a large cloud about the dispenser. As time passes, this cloud will disperse evenly to form a orbiting belt of "needles" roughly five miles wide and 25 miles thick. At present the belt is about 11,500 miles long, and is spreading around the globe at the rate of 1000 miles...