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Cold War Plan Tried To Put a Copper Ring Around the Earth
Wired has the story of a plan enacted in the early 1960s by the U.S. Air Force and the Department of Defense that had the goal of safeguarding the country's long-range communications from Russian interference. The solution they came up with wasn't easy, but it was straightforward: launch hundreds of millions of thin copper wires into orbit in the hopes of forming an artificial ring around the planet. From the article:
"Project Needles, as it was originally known, was Walter E. Morrow’s idea. He suggested that if Earth possessed a permanent radio reflector in the form of an orbiting ring of copper threads, America’s long-range communications would be immune from solar disturbances and out of reach of nefarious Soviet plots. Each copper wire was about 1.8 centimeters in length. This was half the wavelength of the 8 GHz transmission signal beamed from Earth, effectively turning each filament into what is known as a dipole antenna. The antennas would boost long-range radio broadcasts without depending on the fickle ionosphere. ... On May 9, 1963, a second West Ford launch successfully dispersed its spindly cargo approximately 3,500 kilometers above the Earth, along an orbit that crossed the North and South Pole. Voice transmissions were successfully relayed between California and Massachusetts, and the technical aspects of the experiment were declared a success. As the dipole needles continued to disperse, the transmissions fell off considerably, although the experiment proved the strategy could work in principle."
When America dreamed big, and the impossible fantasies were based on science, not religion!
There was quite a lot of bizarre technology pursued/developed in the cold war for communications, among other things. A similar system was meteor burst communications. The idea was you'd bounce your radio signal off the ionization trail of a meteor for the brief time it existed then wait for the next and so on. This way you could communicate way beyond the normal horizon without satellites, ground repeaters, etc. Unlike many crazy Cold War ideas, it was successful and is still used for military, civilian and amateur purposes.
I am not a crackpot.
Well considering how often the planet gets f**ked, it's about time someone committed :P
Der Tod ist der einzige Weg hier raus!
But it worked. It did exactly what they said it would. It was a successful experiment that tested dipoles and orbital mechanics. That you didn't personally find it valuable doesn't make it so.
Learn to love Alaska
This comment isn't the best example, although the poster has made quite a record of bad posts on science topics, which get modded up despite being flat out wrong with many unmoderated replies pointing out in detail why the information is incorrect. I don't usually look at the user name of posts, but still after the occasional glance have come to recognize a couple screennames because they are so consistently very wrong on the topics I'm interested in and/or have a background in. It can be amazing how a very small number of people can spread so much misinformation by repeating enough of it, even if completely unaware of what they are doing. And while it is tempting to reply to them non-anonymously when my background is relevant, having seen how they respond anyway, I don't need my name associated with arguing with idiots on the internet.