Needles and Calcium

Harvard is proposing the injection of massive amounts of calcium carbonate particles in the atmosphere to block the sun. They note:


Plans to test a technique that would cool the planet by blocking sunlight are one step closer to reality. Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has created an external advisory panel to examine the potential ethical, environmental and geopolitical impacts of this geoengineering project, which has been developed by the university’s researchers. Known as the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), the project would involve the release of calcium carbonate particles from a steerable balloon some 20 kilometres above the southwestern United States.

Now I am reminded of a similar thing at MIT in the early 1960s, Project Needles. As NASA notes:

The campaign began with the construction of the Haystack antenna, which replaced Millstone as the Lincoln Laboratory planetary radar. On 12 April 1962, Millstone stopped operating, so that Lincoln Laboratory could upgrade it to 1,320 MHz (23 cm; L-band) and increase overall system capability, as part of the Space Surveillance Techniques Program. Over the years, Lincoln Laboratory expanded the Millstone location. Near the Millstone planetary radar was the Lincoln Laboratory Communications Site, established in 1957 to test communication equipment. Upon completion of the tests, the antennas were torn down, and the site given over to construction of an X-band transmitting dish for use in Project West Ford, commonly known as Project Needles. A similar X-band station was built at Camp Parks, outside San Francisco. On 10 May 1963, Project Needles launched nearly 500 million hair-like copper wires into Earth orbit, thereby forming a belt of dipole antennas. Lincoln Laboratory then sent messages coast to coast via the orbiting copper needles between Camp Parks and Millstone at Westford, Massachusetts (hence the name Project West Ford). British radio astronomers, such as Martin Ryle and Lovell, as well as optical astronomers, objected fervently to Project Needles, and the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society formally protested to the U.S. President's Science Advisor. Haystack was intended officially as a state-of-the-art radar for Project Needles.

Yep, they sent a ton of needles into the atmosphere for communications, just when satellites were being launched. It messed up things for a while. People worry about ocean pollution but how about space pollution? Not every idea is a good idea.