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The Cold War was a great power struggle that had the greatest impact on the world after World War II.
Although in retrospect, the Cold War, coupled with the tribulations of the First and Second World Wars, made the peoples of the world more eager for peace and against war.
But it was also during the Cold War period that the rapid development of science and technology was by far the fastest period of scientific and technological progress in human history. During that period, countless inventions and creations that could be called "against the sky" were born, and the United States and the Soviet Union were riveted enough not to fall behind in this war without large-scale gun smoke.
In addition to those inventions that can be called whimsical, the two of them have also launched a lot of crazy plans to contain each other and save themselves.
One of the most jaw-dropping, and still having an impact decades later, is the West Ford Project, which we are going to talk about today.
The Berlin Wall and the Checkpoint Charlie Incident
In 1961, the third Berlin crisis broke out, and in August of the same year, the United States and the Soviet Union simultaneously formed a confrontation between the two countries with millions of troops on the border. On August 13, almost overnight, the bear built a 155-kilometer-long, 5-meter-high cement wall in Berlin, later the Berlin Wall, which divided Germany in two and divided East and West Germany.
The establishment of the Berlin Wall also marked a new peak in the development of the confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Observers of the time predicted that the Berlin Wall would not only insulate itself from conflict, but would also be the beginning of another kind of conflict.
Two months later, the "prophecy" came true.
Because the Berlin Wall was built in a hurry, many places began with only barbed wire, and Checkpoint Charlie became one of the few intersections at the time that allowed east and west Berliners to pass.
Compared with other checkpoints, the architectural design here is quite rudimentary, so it has attracted many people to "exploit loopholes", and most of the US troops stationed in the garrison have turned a blind eye to these, or at most bluffed to scare, and even provided some assistance if possible.
However, due to the frequent occurrence of escapes, it attracted the dissatisfaction of the East German high-level, and under the protest of the Soviet side, the United States ordered that the stationed soldiers be prohibited from helping the East Germans climb over the barbed wire.
Although there was a verbal ban, in the actual situation, the uncooperative attitude of the Chinese and American forces laid the groundwork for the subsequent Checkpoint Charlie incident.
On the same day, a U.S. diplomat named Alan Leitner was preparing to pass through checkpoints from West Germany to East Germany. East German soldiers demanded that his documents be checked, but the diplomat refused to show them, and after a quarrel between the two sides, Leitner drove through the border.
East German soldiers, at the behest of the Soviets, arrested and detained Leitner. Later, a tough-line american general directly led people to drive a jeep into the police station and snatched Leitner out. The spokesmen of both the United States and the Soviet Union took a tough stance, claiming that they would never compromise.
Later, the U.S. side stopped the tank in front of the Berlin Wall, and the gun muzzle pointed directly at East Germany, which was regarded as a provocation by the Mao Bear authorities, so it also sent a tank unit to checkpoint Charlie.
After one escalation after another, the hot war was about to erupt. The consequences of this possible war are no less than those of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
In the end, it was Khrushchev, the leader of the woolly bear, who took the lead in dialing Kennedy's phone and saving the fate of mankind.
But it was also after this incident that the US side began to have a sense of crisis and began to consider the possibility of an all-out war with the bear, which indirectly led to the advent of the West Ford plan.
Crazy West Ford
After studying the possibility of an all-out war with the bear, the U.S. side realized a serious problem, and once the two sides really clashed, the bear side could easily cut off the Atlantic submarine cable for old U.S. communications with Europe.
At that time, whether it was military or civilian communications, etc., mainly relied on submarine cables and naturally occurring ionospheric reflective radios.
Among them, the natural ionospheric reflection radio is very unstable, which is not only extremely confidential, but also easily susceptible to external interference (such as encountering bad weather will directly cause signal paralysis).
Therefore, if the bear cuts the submarine cable, it will cause a fatal blow to the US communications and lead to its defeat on the battlefield.
In order to fundamentally avoid this situation, the United States intends to create a stable and controllable "artificial ionosphere" in space. In order to obtain a stable artificial ionosphere, Lao Mei needs to arrange a metal reflective layer in space.
On this basis, the crazy West Ford project was born.
The West Ford plan was to spread about 430 million copper dipole antennas in orbit to form a cloud-like ring, which would then be assisted by remote communications through satellite antennas set up in the town of West Ford.
The copper antenna is only 1.78 cm long and only 25.4 microns in diameter, so it is also called "space needle".
On October 21, 1961, Lao Mei sent the first batch of 430 million "space needles" into space through the Argena rocket, but due to the technical problems at the time and the impact of solar storms, the distribution of these "space needles" was problematic.
In other words, the first West Ford project can be said to be a failure.
Of course, Lao Mei naturally cannot give up easily. The researchers at the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who led the project, learned lessons and improved the size of the space needle from 25.4 microns in diameter to 17.8 microns.
In 1963, another Argena rocket carried another batch of 430 million modified space needles into space, this time they were evenly scattered into the orbit between 3500 and 3800 kilometers above the ground, forming a cloud-like ring 38 kilometers long and 8 kilometers wide.
This success has enabled the Old United States and the European continent to achieve unimpeded communication across 6,000 kilometers. However, when the West Ford plan was exposed, Lao Mei was quickly strongly condemned by the international community.
These "space needles" are like space junk, which seriously interferes with space exploration and brings many hidden dangers.
Almost all countries in the world have expressed their protest and dissatisfaction with this practice of lao Mei, and demanded that the US side stop the act of continuing to launch copper needles into space.
The bear directly pointed out that these copper needles thrown by lao Mei will have a strong reflection on the X-band, which will have a serious impact on the global electromagnetic wave environment.
In this regard, the United States also came forward to "clarify", indicating that these copper needles will not float in space for a long time, and under the action of solar radiation pressure, they will fall into the earth's atmosphere and burn in less than five years.
So, is this really the case?
Follow-up to the West Ford program
However, according to relevant understanding, five years after the launch of the copper needle, only 40% of the copper needle fell into the atmosphere, and the remaining 290 million copper needles are still floating in space.
To this day, 61 years have passed since the West Ford program, but there are still about 50 million to 150 million copper needles floating in space, still posing a threat to many satellites in medium-Earth orbit.
These copper needles are distributed in low Earth orbit, and there are many satellites and space equipment from many countries in low Earth orbit. These copper needles can cause damage to the weak links of these things. Critical points can even affect the normal operation and safety of these devices, or even cause crashes.
This is reminiscent of Musk's Starlink plan, almost like a copy of West Ford's plan. If Lao Mei did this to confront the bear and use the excuse of "maintaining its own safety" to prevaricate the past, then Musk's behavior now is a completely selfish act.
Today, a large number of satellites in the star chain have become space junk, just as they were 61 years ago. No wonder Hegel said, "The only lesson that man has learned from history is that he has not learned any lesson from history." ”
Why did the United States send 430 million copper needles to space 61 years ago? Musk has a say in this
61 years ago, why did Lao Mei send "430 million copper needles" to space?
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