Evening star., 1961-10-22
WEST FORD
WEST FORD
Scientific Panel Discounted
Blast at 'Antenno' Project

DHOSO VI
Continued From First Page
the West Ford belt. One sta
ton is at Parks Air Force Base,
Calf, and the other at Mill
stone Hill, Mass.
The adio-transmission phase
Of the West Ford experiment
is expected to start in a few
days.
Panel Made Findings
Announcement of the West
Ford experiment last August
caused a small storm in scien-
tific circles. Some astronomers
expressed fear that metallic
objects intruded into the sky
would cut down both optical
and radio astronomical See
ing"
A panel Of American Scien-
lists convened by Presidential
Science Adviser Jerome B.
Wiesner said:
l. The obstruction by West
Ford to incoming light from
any star would amount to only
about one part in a billion,
or in the case of incoming
radio signals, about one part in
a million.
2. The belt of copper wires
would remain aloft cnly tenn
porarily-a matter of a few
years at most. They explained
that pressure of sunlight would
deform the orbit and push the
filamentS back into the at
mosphere to burn up.
One of the astronomers who
objected most violently to West
Ford, Prof. Hermann Bondi of
London, said. IF we could be
reaSSured the band would not
be permanent, it would be all
right"
Official Government policy
on the West Ford experiment
states that mo further
launches will be planned
until after the results of the
West Ford experiment have
been analyzed and evaluated."
If it is found that a West
Ford-type project can be insti-
tuted without compromising
earth-bound astronomy, two
such belts may eventually be
placed in orbit. One would cir
Gle over the poles, as the pres
ent belt, while the other would
be in an equatorial orbit. This
would give virtually worldwide
communications over a radio
frequency not widely employed
at present.
The copper wires used in
West Ford are known to radio
engineers as "dipoles." Each
one is about two-thirds Of an
inch long ad about one-third
the thickness of a human hair
Each weighs less than a quar-
ter-millionth of an ounce, and
once West Ford's orbit is es-
tablished they will be scattered
so thinly in space that there
will be only about SIS wires to
a cubic mile.
Virtually Undetectable
Scientists at Lincoln Labo-
ratories of the Massachusetts,
Institute of Technology said
the belt will be virtually unde-
tectable from earth. Even the
specially equipped stations in
California and Massachusetts
will have difficulty receiving
signals bounced off the tiny
dipoles, they said.
But such American precau-
tions and reassurances did not
placate all space scientists. Sir
Bernard Lowell, director Of the
Jodrell Bank radio telescope
in England branded the West
Ford launching "a stain on the
hitherto untarnished United
States program Of space re-
search"
Sir Bernard predicted that
the Russians-who have been
silent to date about the West
Ford project-would seize on
this for propaganda purposes
to Justify their own activities
involving the contamination of
the atmosphere"
There is no relationship be-
tween the orbiting Of copper
filamentS, as in West Ford, and
the deposition of radioactive
"fallout" material in the at
mosphere, as in the current
series of Soviet hydrogen bomb
teSts.)