Page 228 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

7.4 “Weather Modification”: (above) schematic drawing of the layout for a hovering-
type aircraft equipped with a nuclear heat source (note the lead-lined crew cabin and the
little pinwheel blowers for air inlet and mixing); (below) nuclear weather modification
helicopter in action (1) suppressing rain on one side of the mountain and (2) filling a
reservoir on the other. (wexler papers)

ionosphere was vulnerable to enemy attack by a thermonuclear detonation, and
undersea cables might be cut by a hostile power, the military wanted to be able
to guarantee secure worldwide communication channels, regardless of the pro-
tests of other nations about space debris or the concerns of astronomers about
visual or radio interference. The first launch, in 1961, failed, but two years later
the detritus injected by Project West Ford (originally called Project Needles) was
used to bounce radio messages across the continent.

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