Page:The Air Force Role In Developing International Outer Space Law (Terrill, 1999).djvu/72



Even as it was resisting efforts in the early 1960s to formalize international outer space law, the Air Force was involved in Project West Ford, a project that would, inadvertently but directly, impact the development of space law. As proposed, West Ford was designed as an experiment to determine whether a small band of orbiting metal strips could be used as a military network providing a "positive, reliable, and survivable full-time communications capability between commanders and their forces." Project West Ford caused significant debate within the United States and the international scientific community. It raised the legal issue as to whether experiments that potentially could interfere with scientific research should be conducted at the sole discretion of any individual nation-state.

In 1958 the Air Force contracted with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory to study the feasibility of using a widely scattered belt of small metallic strips in orbit around the earth as the primary component of a space-based, worldwide communication system. Lincoln Laboratory, in its Barnstable study, concluded that such a system offered the advantages of physical invulnerability and antijamming protection. Given that insufficient information was available to design the system, the Air Force proposed Project West Ford to fill this void. Initially the Air Force planned to disperse 75 (later 110) pounds of disposable dipoles (thin strips of tin alloy) in outer space thereby creating an orbital belt 30 miles in diameter off which communications signals could be reflected. The Lincoln Laboratory was the Air Force contractor for the project.

The proposal proved controversial particularly with radio and optical astronomers, who were concerned that the belt might interfere with astronomical measurements particularly if the dipoles stayed in orbit beyond their projected one- or two-year life cycles. Astronomers feared that the reflectivity of the belt would harm astronomer's ability to observe outer space. In December 1959, the Space Science Board (SSB) of the National Academy of Sciences appointed an ad hoc committee to examine the consequences of West Ford. In July 1960 the SSB determined that the astronomers had raised legitimate concerns and