Copper ring almost made the Earth look like Saturn

While these days the talk seems to revolve around the idea of mining asteroids, during the Cold War US Government-backed scientists came up with a plan to wrap a ring of copper wire around the Earth to serve as a giant antenna.

The so-called Project West Ford, reports Wired, aimed to build an emergency communications system that wasn’t as vulnerable to attack or natural disasters as the undersea telephone and telegraph cables used at the time.

Just as the Soviet’s plan to reverse the ocean and other big ideas dreamed up during the Cold War, Project West Ford was outdated pretty much as soon as it got going, since communications satellites were doing a much better job at relaying information than the giant wire antenna ever could.

Read more at Wired.

Image from Wikimedia Commons

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